-------- good news
Simple Blood Test Measures Cell Damage from Radiation
March 1, 2000
Nuclear Free News
http://www.nuclear-free.com/english/cell.htm
Bookmark this news page!: http://www.nuclear-free.com/english/frames7.htm
(By Lois Baker) -- Scientists from the University at Buffalo report that they have developed and patented a simple blood test that can measure accumulated cell damage from ionizing radiation--one of the major causes of cancer--long before any physical signs are evident.
Results of research that led to the development of the test, described as a "life-long wide-range radiation biodosimeter," appear in a recent issue of Health Physics.
Joseph K. Gong, Ph.D., associate professor emeritus of oral diagnostic sciences and chair of UB's Radioisotope Safety Committee, is lead author on the paper. Gong has spent a lifetime researching, lecturing and writing on the health effects of low-level radiation. His work has centered on seeking a predictable, accurate and practical cell marker of internal biological damage from radiation, using a rat model.
Gong's test, called the Transferrin Receptor Red Cell Assay, or E- Tr assay, measures the amount of radiation that has been absorbed by the body. Using a specific biomarker, it reveals the extent of stem-cell mutations due to exposure to X-ray, or to anything potentially carcinogenic that mimics X-ray damage, such as many chemicals used in the microchip industry.
"All cancers develop from a pool of mutated cells that are 'turned on' by one or more triggers," Gong said. "The larger the pool of mutated cells, the greater the risk. Cancer can take years to decades to develop, depending on the type.
"This test provides a way to measure the damage before the first sign of cancer appears," Gong said. "It also can determine if cell mutations from ionizing radiation are increasing over time. If so, the individual can take steps to stop the increase, perhaps through a change in job, diet or environment. It gives people more control over their health."
The method most widely used to determine radiation exposure in the workplace is a badge containing radiation-sensitive film, which the worker wears on the job. The badge measures external radiation exposure only.
Gong and his co-investigator, Chester A Glomski, M.D., Ph.D., UB professor of anatomy and cell biology, were able to show that radiation exposure causes stem cells--the "mother" of all blood cells-- to express an excess of erythrocytes (red-blood cells) bearing receptors for the protein transferrin on their surface membrane.
Knowing this cause and effect, it then became possible to use the number of red blood cells with transferrin receptors as a biomarker for radiation exposure. Subsequent blood tests can monitor any increase or decrease in cell damage.
The test, which requires a drop of blood and about two hours for analysis, is capable of measuring the effects of radiation doses ranging from normal levels experienced in everyday life to amounts that would kill 50 percent of those exposed within 30 days, Gong said.
The test could allow individuals who work in jobs that expose them to radiation or chemicals that mimic radiation's effects to know how much cellular damage they've experienced from the exposure and to make appropriate, well-informed health decisions, Gong noted. The test can be taken as often as desired.
Such a test also could be useful to the general public to determine exposure to ionizing radiation, such as X-rays and gamma rays used in cancer treatment, Gong said, and to tiny amounts of ionizing radiation emitted by such consumer products as cellular phones, microwave ovens and computer screens.
After decades of working with an animal model, Gong and Glomski used the E-Tr assay on blood samples of seven cancer patients who had received radiation treatment and blood samples from 10 healthy individuals who had been exposed to only a few dental and chest X-rays to determine the effectiveness of the test on humans. The assay produced similar results in human blood samples as in the animal studies, the researchers found.
Gong postulates that this dose-response relationship will allow patients to reconstruct their past radiation doses, as well as project the amount of residual injury from past exposure that will exist at various times in the future.
Gong received an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) grant in 1964 to study the biomedical effect of low-dose radiation. In 1965, a 20- year follow-up report on the survivors of the A-bomb led to a consensus among experts that low-dose radiation was safe.
That finding was overturned in 1986 after advances in measuring radiation made a reassessment possible, but in the interim, very little research in low-dose radiation was conducted. Gong, however, carried on his work, accumulating data on the effects of radiation exposure.
His decades-worth of data led to the recognition of the specific bone-marrow syndrome induced by radiation and to the discovery of the E-Tr assay.
Also participating in the research was Yuqing Guo, Ph.D., biophysicist and research scientist at Biomira USA, Inc., in Cranbury, N.J. -
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Crabgrass {and Sunflowers] as Cleanser
How Plants Can Mop Up Humans' Messes
By Lee Dye
Special to ABCNEWS.com
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DyeHard/dyehard.html
March 1 - Thousands of oil wells in southern Arkansas have left the land around them so contaminated with crude oil from routine operations that only the hardiest of plants can survive.
"Some of these sites look like asphalt parking lots," says Greg Thoma, a chemical engineer at the University of Arkansas. If he and other researchers succeed, some day those desolate plots will be transformed into pine forests.
How?
Crabgrass, says Thoma.
More Than Just a Weed
It may be hated by gardeners around the world, but crabgrass may be just the thing to clean up sites contaminated with hydrocarbons, according to research that is under way at dozens of institutions. Scientists are trying to find ways to use nature to clean up our messes, employing plants to destroy or extract everything from heavy metals to radioactive elements.
The idea has been around for a long time, but only recently have scientists begun long-term experiments to see whether "phytoremediation" can be an effective tool.
The alternative is to dig up the contaminated soil, or pump out the dirty ground water, and deposit it somewhere else - a costly procedure that relocates the problem to some other place. For major pollution sites in the United States, that cost could easily run in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
"There's a lot of promise here," says Phil Sayre, a microbiologist and co-chair of the Environmental Protection Agency's program to explore phytoremediation for cleanup of hydrocarbons.
"The seriousness is indicated by the participation that we have," including nearly every major oil company in the United States and many research institutions and government agencies, he adds.
Successful Tests
Phytoremediation (phyto means "plant" and remediate means "clean up") is much slower than digging up the mess and carting it off, but in some cases it might be more effective. And a lot cheaper.
Preliminary studies, mostly in greenhouses or at small test sites, have been encouraging. For example:
Sunflowers successfully removed radioactive contaminants from a pond of water near the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, according to the EPA. The plants were "harvested" and incinerated after taking up the radioactive elements, and the ashes were put in a hazardous waste site. Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory found that a common weed, Koschia scoperia, and hybrid willow trees do the same thing.
Hybrid poplar trees, grasses, and Indian mustard have been used to extract heavy metals and solvents from soils at several locations.
Mulberry trees sprouted in a sludge pond near Texas City, Texas. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma say the roots of the trees attracted micro-organisms to the contaminated soil, and the microbes are eating the hydrocarbons.
And the Army is exploring the use of several plants to extract explosive compounds, including TNT, from several test sites.
Much needs to be done before these techniques can be practical on a large scale. The EPA, for example, wants to be sure that root-eating rodents and insects do not transport the hazardous materials to other areas, thus spreading the problem rather than solving it.
Phytomediation also won't be a solution for all toxic waste sites. Thoma says it would take decades to clean up most sites using toxics-eating plants, compared to centuries for nature to do it with no human help. Because it's slower, the approach works best for sites that need to be cleaned up, but pose no immediate danger to people.
How the Plants Clean Up
The science is a bit complex because many different plants work in several different ways to clean up contaminants. There are 400 known plants, for example, that suck up metals such as nickel, zinc and copper. Most extract the materials by absorbing them into their roots, branches and leaves, which then must be destroyed. But crabgrass, which seems to thrive under almost any conditions, works in a very different way.
The grass attracts microbes, or bugs, to its roots, which then devour the oil.
"The oil is used as food for the microorganisms in the soil," Thoma says. "What it's converted to is more bugs."
The grass roots excrete chemicals that allow them to penetrate through the soil more easily, and those chemicals attract more microbes. The roots also increase the oxygen content in the soil, "and of course bugs are going to be happier with some oxygen to burn," Thoma says.
The number of bugs near the roots may be 100 times higher than the population farther away, he adds, so the grass literally pulls in armies of critters to gnaw away at the oil.
In some cases, the contaminants are harmful to plants - TNT seems particularly hard to digest - but there are surprising exceptions.
Thriving on Solvent
Scientists at the University of Washington and Washington State University have developed hybrid poplar trees to see if they can extract the widely used solvent trichloroethylene, TCE for short, from soil and water. The deadly solvent doesn't hurt the trees, even at concentrations much higher than would be expected in a hazardous waste site, according to researchers there.
In fact, the trees must love the stuff. They grow at a remarkable rate of 10 to 15 feet per year.
The trees were especially effective at sucking TCE out of ground water. Studies showed that 95 percent of the solvent could be removed from the water by simply planting the trees and letting them grow.
Researchers have found that the trees break down about 90 percent of the solvent into harmless compounds, but more studies are under way to confirm that.
Other studies have shown that trees can act as hydraulic pumps, preventing the spread of contaminated water to other areas.
Scientists expect to monitor their sites for many years to determine which types of vegetation work best. Generally speaking, grasses might be most suitable to sites where the contamination is very close to the surface, because grasses have aggressive but shallow root systems. For sites with deeper contamination, trees may be the answer.
"We're right at the beginning of this whole process," Thoma says.
Maybe, eventually, we'll all learn to love crabgrass.
Lee Dye's column appears Wednesdays on ABCNEWS.com. A former science writer for the Los Angeles Times, he now lives in Juneau, Alaska.
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Planet Ark
GM introduces new fuel cell concept vehicle
SWITZERLAND: March 1, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5839
GENEVA - General Motors Corp. yesterday introduced what it billed as the auto industry's most-advanced fuel cell stack, saying it is smaller, cheaper and more efficient than the nearest competitors.
The Opel Zafira fuel cell concept vehicle is the "most advanced operational fuel cell today," G. Richard Wagoner Jr., president of world's largest automaker, said at the Geneva Motor Show.
A fuel-cell stack is the significant element of a fuel cell system that replaces a vehicle's conventional engine. Automakers are pushing to develop alternatives to traditional gasoline engines in an effort to meet environmental mandates established in the United States and Europe.
GM's new fuel cell was developed in Germany and the United States and will be tested in Europe this summer, Wagoner said.
The five-seat vehicle, based on GM's popular European passenger van, has a driving range of 400 kilometres and can drive as fast as 140 kilometres per hour, he said. It is powered by liquid hydrogen.
Previous fuel-cell stacks took six minutes to reach full acceleration at freezing temperatures, Wagoner said. The concept model developed takes 30 seconds. Such research is conducted to show fuel cells can operate in regions of the world where the temperatures reach far below zero.
The size of the new fuel-cell stack is also 15 percent smaller than the nearest competitor and half the size of GM's previous effort, he said.
GM also removed half the platinum used in previous fuel-cell stack last year, cutting expenses significantly because of platinum's high costs, Wagoner said.
A commercial version of the fuel-cell vehicle is at least four to five years away and, realistically, more, he said.
The newest fuel-cell stack is GM's seventh generation and the automaker said it has several more under development.
The Zafira fuel cell concept vehicle will pace the marathon at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, this summer, Wagoner said.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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U.S. Energy Dept seeks designs for solar Sun Wall
USA: February 29, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5823&newsDate=29-Feb-2000
WASHINGTON - Seeking to lead by example, the U.S. Energy Department said yesterday it is conducting a national design competition for turning one side of agency headquarters into a gigantic solar-panelled Sun Wall.
In a statement, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the competition will show the attractiveness of renewable energy by turning the south wall of the department's Forrestal Building into a solar power source.
"This design competition will offer a perfect example of how beauty and grandeur can go hand-in-hand with environmental sensitivity," Richardson said.
The south wall of the Forrestal building is currently blank, and spans a space nearly two-thirds of an acre. It is hoped that a solar panelled system would generate as much as 200 kilowatts of electric power, equivalent to powering 60 homes.
The announcement was made in conjunction with the American Institute of Architects.
Interested designers can access information on the contest starting Wednesday at: www.doe-sunwall.org.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/3/22.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 3, 2000
International Clean Energy Initiative
February 3, 2000
To accelerate the development and deployment of clean energy technologies around the world, President Clinton is proposing the Clean Energy for the 21st Century: International Initiative -- a $200 million multi-agency effort (a more than 100 percent increase over FY 2000 enacted levels) to encourage open competitive markets and remove market barriers to clean energy technologies in developing and transition countries and to provide new incentives for clean energy technology innovation and export. This initiative will promote U.S. exports and create high-value jobs, and will help countries power their economic development while fighting air pollution and climate change.
Window of Opportunity for America and the World. Developing country energy use will overtake that of industrial countries in the next 20 years. These energy technology markets are projected to total $4 to $5 trillion over the next 20 years and $15 to $25 trillion over the next 50 years. Developing country energy use is expected to account for three-fourths of the increase in global energy use between now and 2050.
Advanced, low-polluting energy technologies can provide these energy services efficiently, but existing markets often do not value these benefits. In addition, environmentally superior options often carry higher up-front costs, may be unfamiliar, or are perceived as more risky by decision-makers in developing countries. The initiative builds on a recent set of recommendations by the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and is directed at leveling the playing field between cleaner U.S. energy technologies and services and polluting alternatives.
Real Benefits At Home and Abroad. The initiative will help lay the technical and policy foundation that will allow developing and transition countries to build a clean energy future, leapfrogging past the polluting energy technologies used by the industrial countries, while building competitive markets open to U.S. firms. The goals of this initiative include:
- Doubling clean energy technology exports by 2005, creating as much as $5 billion in new export revenues for U.S. companies and as many as 100,000 new U.S. jobs.
- Cutting energy use in targeted country buildings and appliances in half through advanced building design tools and building equipment codes and standards.
- Developing integrated renewable energy technologies that have the potential to power the full range of energy services for the 2 billion people in developing countries that do not now have electricity.
- Sharply reducing sulfur, particulate, and greenhouse gas emissions by developing advanced coal-fired power plants and low-cost hydrogen fuels.
- Maximizing use of combined heat & power systems through technical and policy assistance.
- Reducing transition and developing country methane emissions from pipelines and other fossil sources by an amount equal to 100 million metric tons of carbon per year by 2005.
- Providing technical and policy support to encourage the development of natural gas grids.
- Reducing energy use in the industrial sector through the introduction of best practice methods, including advanced sensors and controls, and energy efficient motor drive systems.
- Conducting research in nuclear energy to address cost, waste, safety, and proliferation concerns.
Initiative Structure. This initiative will streamline current bureaucratic procedures to better assist U.S. firms wishing to invest in clean energy projects in developing and transition countries. By doing that, it will encourage public-private partnerships with foreign counterparts to demonstrate clean energy technologies, drive down their cost, and facilitate private sector financing for their large-scale deployment. It will also encourage open, competitive markets while protecting public interests. The initiative will employ a range of proven policy tools, including U.S. technical and policy assistance to developing countries through personnel exchanges, conducting collaborative R&D with key foreign research groups, developing integrated renewable energy, energy efficiency, and advanced fossil energy technologies and pilot projects, and providing a range of trade supports to expand clean energy exports.
The initiative's requested $103 million increase for these activities includes an additional $49 million for activities at the Department of Energy; $30 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development; $15 million for the Export-Import Bank; $5 million for the Trade and Development Agency; and, $4 million for the Department of Commerce.
-------- activism
Assiociated Press
March 1, 2000 Filed at 9:42 a.m. EST
Japanese Mark Nuclear Anniversary By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Nuke-Protest.html
See Japan
-------- australia
Maralinga clean-up nearly complete
ABC News
This Bulletin: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 8:38 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-1mar2000-44.htm
The clean-up of contaminated nuclear test sites at Maralinga in South Australia's far-north west is now virtually complete.
Plutonium from major blast zones has been buried and the area's Aboriginal inhabitants will now be able to resume their traditional activities.
Britain conducted seven atomic tests at Maralinga between 1955 and 1963, the largest a 27-kiloton atmospheric explosion over a site code-named Taranaki.
Several hundred minor trials also spread radioactive contamination.
At the end of testing, more than 3,000 square kilometres of land remained off limits to the Maralinga Tjarutja people.
After a lengthy Royal Commission, Britain agreed to help fund the Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, paying almost half of the $108 million clean-up cost.
Today, at a ceremony near Ground Zero at Taranaki, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency will certify all but 120 square kilometres of the Taranaki area safe to live on permanently.
But even there, contamination levels are low enough to allow safe hunting.
-------- belarus
Post-Chernobyl genetic disaster in Belarus
BELARUS: March 1, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5847
MINSK - Post-Soviet Belarus has been plunged into a demographic disaster, with soaring levels of infertility and genetic changes 14 years after the Chernobyl disaster in neighbouring Ukraine, doctors said yesterday.
"Science cannot yet assess the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, but it is plain that a demographic catastrophe has occurred in Belarus," Vladislav Ostapenko, head of Belarus's radiation medicine institute, told a news conference.
"It is clear that we are seeing genetic changes, especially among those who were less than six years of age when subjected to radiation. These people are now starting families."
Belarus, a country of 10 million downwind from Chernobyl, bore the brunt of the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire in the power station's fourth reactor.
One quarter of its territory was subjected to severe contamination and tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes. Radiation from Chernobyl spread throughout most of Europe, but Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were worst hit and still devote huge resources to cleanup operations.
Ostapenko said that within seven years of the accident, mortality rates were outstripping birth rates.
Girls in affected areas had five times the normal rate of deformations in their reproductive systems and boys three times the norm. Each year, 2,500 births were recorded with genetic abnormalities and 500 pregnancies were terminated after testing.
Thousands of cases of thyroid cancer, rare in areas not subject to high radiation levels, have been recorded in Belarus's "risk zone", where a million people still live. High levels have now been observed among teenagers.
"We are seeing problems of infertility in this generation," he said. "Exactly the sort of observations we saw in animals subjected to similar radiation."
Belarus, Ostapenko said, needed more outside help to cope with the consequences. "It is impossible to say whether we are over the peak of the consequences of radioactive contamination or whether we are just on the threshold."
Gennady Lazyuk, head of a state institute for hereditary diseases, said the aftermath of the accident was compounded by ills associated with post-Soviet hardship.
"Of course this is a complex problem and includes low living standards, alcoholism and poor nutrition," he said. "Regardless, in contaminated areas the growth rate in genetic abnormalities is more than twice as high as in uncontaminated areas."
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
-------- britain
UK nuclear firm's chief quits over safety
UK: March 1, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5833
LONDON - British Nuclear Fuels chief executive John Taylor has resigned over a safety scandal at the state-owned company, the Independent newspaper reported.
Britain's nuclear watchdog this month issued a damning report on the Sellafield reprocessing plant in northern England which British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) operates.
The Independent said Taylor's departure was part of a wide-ranging management shake-up that could include other senior resignations. It said this might scupper government plans to raise 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) through the sale of 49 percent of BNFL before the next general election.
No BNFL or goverment official was immediately available for comment.
The Independent quoted Trade Secretary Stephen Byers as saying: "I welcome John Taylor's decision to resign. In the circumstances it was the appropriate course of action. We can now look forward to a fresh start at BNFL under a new chief executive."
It said Taylor had wanted to stay in his job until he was told of the serious concerns that government ministers had about senior management.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate revealed in its report that BNFL's Mox (mixed oxide fuel) Demonstration Facility, on the site of the main Sellafield plant, had provided erroneous quality control measurements for reprocessed fuel exported to Japan.
The Japanese have demanded BNFL take back the plutonium consignments, and the government has conceded the row is a setback to its privatisation plans.
Germany's PreussenElektra says it will seek damages from BNFL after having to shut down one of its nuclear plants temporarily after finding the documentation of nuclear fuel bought from BNFL was wrong.
A U.S. campaign group is also trying to block BNFL's plans to build a nuclear waste incinerator near the famous Yellowstone National Park.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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BNFL 'should end nuclear reprocessing'
BBC
Friday, 18 February, 2000, 06:00 GMT
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_647000/647276.stm
Sellafield has long been a target for green groups.
Environmental groups are calling on British Nuclear Fuels Limited to abandon reprocessing in the light of the revelations about faked safety tests at Sellafield.
Pete Roche, nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace, called on BNFL to move towards decommissioning and "cleaning up" work at nuclear installations across the world.
He said the dismissal of senior executives would not address the real problem.
"Removing one or two people from the top would not make any difference at all. That would be like moving deckchairs on the Titanic.
"BNFL should move towards the decommissioning and cleaning-up of nuclear installations and give up on reprocessing.
"There is plenty of work for them all across the world cleaning up and decommissioning and immobilising plutonium rather than turning it into fuel."
BNFL facing choice
Friends of the Earth (FoE) said it too believed BNFL needed to change its core business.
Dr Patrick Green, senior nuclear campaigner at FoE, said: "This is a damning indictment of a management culture that has led to the aggravation of problems rather than solving them.
"British Nuclear Fuels now faces a choice - it can either continue down its existing path, which will lead to the creation of more radioactive waste and more problems and ultimately its business will fail.
"Or it can start to reconstitute itself and turn itself into a centre of excellence for nuclear waste management, decommissioning and clean up."
Martin Forwood, campaign coordinator for Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment, said he was worried other plants at Sellafield, not just the one dealing with mixed oxide (Mox) fuel rods, were also being mismanaged.
"I don't believe that this culture of mismanagement will be confined simply to the Mox plant - that is the concern for us when you have some other very important and very dangerous plants operating at Sellafield," he said.
"If we have the same kind of cavalier attitude towards management from BNFL then I think we should be extremely worried."
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What is nuclear reprocessing?
BBC
Saturday, 19 February, 2000, 18:55 GMT
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F647000/647981.stm
Sellafield takes nuclear waste from nine countries
The future of Britain's nuclear reprocessing industry has been cast into doubt following a damning safety report. BBC News Online studies the advantages and disadvantages of reprocessing.
What is reprocessing?
Fuel for nuclear power stations comes from concentrated uranium which is made into fuel rods.
The average life of a nuclear fuel rod is four years, after which time waste products have built up making it less efficient.
Reprocessing is the chemical operation which separates the useful fuel for recycling from the waste.
There are only two commercial reprocessing plants in the world - Sellafield in the UK and Cogema in France. But Japan is developing its own plant at Rokkashomura.
Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing centre receives waste nuclear fuel from 34 plants around the world. The metallic outer casing is first stripped away and the spent fuel is then dissolved in hot nitric acid.
This produces three things - uranium (96%) and plutonium (1%) and highly radioactive waste (3%).
The reusable uranium is turned into a powdered form, processed into fuel pellets and sent back for use in nuclear reactors.
What about the plutonium?
Plutonium can be combined with uranium and turned into a mixed oxide fuel called Mox.
Each six-gramme pellet holds the equivalent energy of one tonne of coal. British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) says three pellets can provide a family's needs for an entire year.
Mox is a way of using up the otherwise unusable plutonium. But there are fears that if it fell into the wrong hands it would be easy for someone to extract the plutonium for nuclear weapons.
What happens to the left over radioactive waste?
The waste is turned into a powder and mixed with glass to produce a pellet and goes into storage for eventual return to the customer.
All customers with BNFL have a clause in their contract to accept back their own waste, but no return date is specified.
Who are BNFL's customers?
BNFL processes spent nuclear fuel from nine countries: the UK, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Netherlands and Canada.
Its orders are worth £12bn, of which two thirds are from overseas customers, mainly Japan.
Environmentalists say if Japan pulled out, Sellafield's reprocessing operation would be economically unviable.
What are the advantages of processing?
BNFL says reprocessing ensures 97% of nuclear waste can be recycled and sent back to customers.
If it was not reprocessed it would have to be stored on site.
Reprocessing one tonne of fuel saves about 100,000 barrels of oil, according to BNFL.
It also helps conserve the world's uranium supplies, which are currently estimated to last 175 years.
And the disadvantages?
Environmentalists fear Sellafield is linked to increased rates of cancer in the area, and they blame the plant for a major increase in radioactivity in the Irish Sea.
BNFL has been dumping waste into the sea since the 1950s, but says it is safe.
Critics say reprocessing does not result in a substantial saving of uranium and is more expensive than uranium fuel.
And there are fears that reprocessing increases the chances of terrorists obtaining plutonium for nuclear weapons, and the risks of nuclear proliferation.
How easy would it be for terrorists to get hold of Mox?
Almost impossible says BNFL. The guards used to escort Mox shipments are Europe's most heavily armed police force. They carry rifles, gas masks and grenades.
The first Mox shipment to Japan was transported in two ships mounted with naval cannons to guard against pirates.
The hatches to the cargo hold were welded shut and the cranes for loading the containers were removed before the ships embarked.
BNFL guidelines say ships used for transporting nuclear materials should have double hulls and enhanced buoyancy in case of a collision or accident.
----------- canada
Veterans Affairs to pay for soldiers to be tested at independent U.S. centres - minister
Canadian Press,
March 1, 2000
ALISON AULD
http://www.canada.com/cgi-bin/cp.asp?f=/news/cp/stories/20000301/national-673024.html
HALIFAX (CP) - The federal government will pay for soldiers to be tested for exposure to depleted uranium at independent American centres, the minister of veterans affairs said Wednesday.
George Baker said veterans who have been suffering from an array of illnesses since returning from the Persian Gulf War will be able to bill Ottawa for expenses related to the testing.
"The Department of Veterans Affairs will be paying for all of the costs associated with the testing for depleted uranium on behalf of any of our veterans who wish to get these tests done," Baker told The Canadian Press in an interview.
The minister, who is expected to announce the program Wednesday in Ottawa, said the approved funding would cover expenses related to the veterans' transportation and hotel accommodations, and would include a per diem.
Canada has stopped using depleted uranium, which is used to make shells hard enough to penetrate armour plating.
Baker's department is reviewing three independent, privately owned test centres in the United States to see if they can accommodate the request. But Baker wouldn't reveal their locations or how much it could cost the government.
"As soon as we identify whether or not they have the ability to do all of the tests, then those people who are now waiting . . . will be able to go and get tested," he said.
About 20 people had requested the test so far, but that could rise substantially once all of Canada's 4,000 Gulf War veterans become aware of the program.
Dozens of ailing veterans have been urging Ottawa in recent weeks to finance testing at independent sites.
They want to know whether their illnesses were caused by exposure to depleted uranium when they were serving in Kosovo and the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s.
Several have complained of a combination of mysterious ailments that include dizziness, blindness, loss of memory, insomnia, painful ejaculations, migraines, tingling, poor motor skills and painful skin.
Some claim the alleged exposure has been fatal.
Terry Riordon died last April after a lengthy battle with a host of bizarre illnesses. A doctor at an independent, uncertified American centre claimed to find depleted uranium in his bones.
His wife, Sue Riordon of Yarmouth, N.S., was pleased with Baker's decision and said testing could help illuminate the bewildering problem.
"If that is his announcement, and pending the laboratory and if the person tested retains confidentiality, it is an extremely positive move," Riordon said after meeting with Tory defence critic Elsie Wayne in Ottawa.
Defence Minister Art Eggleton announced last month the military is willing to test any member of the Canadian Forces who fears they might have been exposed to depleted uranium. However, veterans have said they would only go ahead with the testing if it was done at an independent facility.
In Ottawa, Wayne and Riordon demanded the Liberals launch an inquiry into why so many veterans are suffering.
"After nine years, it is time for a full and thorough public investigation," Riordon said, adding that the finding of "significant, trace levels" of depleted uranium in her husband's bones can explain his death.
Experts might disagree.
The U.S. Defence Department says it has spent $160 million on 145 different research projects into Gulf War illnesses without finding a cause.
They have looked at depleted uranium, nerve gas, nerve gas antidotes, smoke from burning oil wells, insect repellents, chemicals in tents and clothing, and combinations of these.
Also, the British Ministry of Defence stated in March 1999 that "it is judged that any radiation effects from these possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf War veterans."
Naomi Hartley, an American expert in radiological physics, stated in January that: "Fortunately, it's really impossible to breathe in enough depleted uranium to do you any serious damage.
"You would choke to death before you could inhale that much material."
In 1998, the American Legion, a major U.S. veterans' organization acknowledged that "the available scientific evidence weighs against DU as a likely risk factor" for Gulf War illnesses.
Baker said a team of medical experts will examine the new illnesses over the next 14 months and eventually include them in the department's table of disabilities. That would allow the veterans to receive compensation.
-------- china
China Says Taiwan Attack Threat Not New
New York Times
March 1, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/29cnd-china.html
BEIJING -- Chinese Vice-premier Qian Qichen insisted that Beijing's threat to attack Taiwan if the island indefinitely delayed talks on reunification was not new, and some foreign media have misrepresented China's position, state television reported on Tuesday.
Qian said the warning was first delivered by the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1984.
China issued a policy "white paper" on Monday last week setting out three scenarios under which China could use force against Taiwan -- if the island declared independence, if it was invaded by a foreign power, or if it dragged its heels indefinitely on reunification.
In recent years China had only stressed the first two scenarios, and last week's policy statement shocked Taiwan and the U.S. government, which saw it as an attempt by Beijing to influence the outcome of Taiwan presidential elections in March.
"Since the publication of the white paper, some foreign media have regarded China as making a major change to its policy on solving the Taiwan issue," state television quoted Qian as saying.
"This view is incorrect. This has been our consistent policy, it is not a new formulation," he said.
Qian quoted Deng as laying out the policy in an October 1984 speech.
China "all along has never abandoned the possibility of non-peaceful means -- we cannot make such a promise," he quoted Deng as saying.
"What do we do if the Taiwan authorities indefinitely avoid talks with us? You don't think we'd abandon the reunification of the country, do you?" he quoted Deng as saying.
While recognising Deng's comments on Taiwan, analysts have said that prior to the White Paper the threat had never been formally spelled out as policy.
State media now refers to the "Three Ifs" to describe China's policy on military force against the island.
Taiwan has been governed separately from the mainland since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government fled to the island after being defeated by Mao Zedong's Red Army.
Beijing considers reunification its most sacred mission.
Some analysts have suggested the revival of the third threat resulted from the freeze in cross-strait talks following Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's declaration that Taipei-Beijing ties should be on a "special state-to-state" basis.
China has assailed the policy as a dangerous lurch towards independence, and warned that Taiwan was "playing with fire."
U.S. lawmakers have said the threat to Taiwan could undermine congressional support for a bilateral market-opening agreement with China that would pave the way for the communist country's entry to the World Trade Organistion.
It has also stoked congressional support for a proposed bill that would call for closer military ties between the United States and Taiwan.
Beijing is bitterly opposed to the legislation, and U.S. President Bill Clinton has threatened to veto it, arguing it would actually harm Taiwan's security by ratcheting up tensions with the mainland.
---
China Dismisses Furor Over Its Taiwan Policy
New York Times
March 1, 2000
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/030100china-taiwan.html
Related Article
Taiwan Asks U.S. to Let It Obtain Top-Flight Arms
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/030100china-us-taiwan.html
BEIJING, Feb. 29 -- A new Chinese policy paper on Taiwan, which has prompted a furious reaction in the United States, merely "reiterates the government's consistent stance" and does not represent a change in policy, a senior Chinese official said today.
"Some foreign media have regarded China as making a major change to its policy on solving the Taiwan issue," state television quoted Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen as saying this evening. "This view is incorrect."
A "white paper" issued last week by the State Council, China's cabinet, declared that China would be forced to take "all drastic measures," including military force, under three conditions: if Taiwan declared independence, if it were invaded by foreign troops or if Taiwan's government refused "indefinitely" to make progress on the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.
The third condition had long been implicit in China's policy toward Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province, but it had never been so clearly stated.
With Taiwan's presidential election just a few weeks away, the stark inclusion of this third condition in the document was interpreted in Taiwan and by many Western politicians as a new direct military threat.
In Washington, members of the Administration and Congress were caught off guard by the policy paper, and many reacted swiftly and harshly.
Some American foreign policy analysts said that the potential for a crisis in the Taiwan Strait was now "very high." Lawmakers said they would now consider arms sales to Taiwan with a new urgency, and a Congressional vote needed to help usher China into the World Trade Organization suddenly seemed in jeopardy.
But China's leaders seemed equally taken by surprised at the passion of the American response. In the past week, Chinese officials have said in private that the ultimatums in the paper were not new and were, in fact, intended to encourage a peaceful settlement to the Taiwan issue.
The paper's warning against delaying reunification talks is, at least, a sign of China's growing impatience with Taiwan. In recent speeches, President Jiang Zemin and other Chinese leaders have repeatedly said that reunification with Taiwan is a top priority, now that Hong Kong and Macao have been absorbed.
Still, despite such statements, the mood in China is more relaxed than in 1996, in the weeks before Taiwan's last presidential election, when China lobbed missiles near Taiwan. American warships steamed into the region in a show of support.
Instead, this week, Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of United States forces in the Pacific, was in Beijing for a previously scheduled visit with Defense Minister Chi Haotian and top Chinese military officials. While Mr. Chi told Admiral Blair that China would "never commit not to use force," the New China News Agency reported, he also stressed that Beijing was "committed to peaceful reunification with Taiwan."
---
Beijing is warned to ease rhetoric
March 1, 2000
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/news2-03012000.htm
Two senior congressional leaders said yesterday that China's threats against Taiwan are undermining support for passage of legislation that would boost trade between Washington and Beijing.
"It's going to be tougher and tougher to get the votes [in the House] if China doesn't quit threatening Taiwan," said House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott also said Chinese threats have placed passage of China trade legislation in doubt.
"The great danger with regard to China being admitted to [the World Trade Organization] and permanent trade status is China's conduct," Mr. Lott said.
"They cannot be threatening their neighbors and participating in nuclear proliferation, and violating human rights, and participating in religious persecution and expect the representatives of the American people to say, 'Oh, well, yes, that's all bad, but . . .' "
"I would urge China to re-evaluate their threatening demeanor" toward Taiwan and others in the region, said Mr. Lott, Mississippi Republican.
President Clinton dismissed a recent Chinese government report that threatened force against Taiwan as election politics. But he called on the two nations to settle their differences peacefully.
China last week issued a government "white paper" threatening force against Taiwan if reunification talks don't happen sooner.
Then on Monday, China's official military newspaper, the Liberation Army Daily, issued a threat to use missile strikes against the United States if Washington intervenes to defend Taiwan in a conflict.
Mr. Clinton said the white paper contains "some fairly inflammatory language" that caused him to reiterate that the United States follows a "one China" policy.
"And we are adamantly opposed to any sort of force," he said.
The president said the Chinese remarks may be part of "the political season over there."
"They're having a presidential election in Taiwan, and I have noticed, not only in this election in America but in previous ones, sometimes things are said in political season that might not be said at other times," he said.
Mr. Clinton said he does not believe China's war of words will defeat the trade-status change.
Congress must approve legislation granting China permanent, normal trade relations - which currently is granted annually - as part of a trade agreement approved last year that will let China join the World Trade Organization.
The normal trade status would lower tariffs on Chinese goods sold in the United States.
Mr. Clinton could send legislation to Capitol Hill as early as next week on the trade-status issue. Mr. Armey said he hopes Congress will approve the trade legislation soon.
On China's threat to use nuclear missiles, the military newspaper, the official organ of the People's Liberation Army, said the United States would suffer "serious damage" for intervening in any conflict between China and Taiwan.
It said that China could resort to "long-range" strategic counterattacks - a reference to Beijing's arsenal of 24 CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
"It is not a wise move to be at war with a country such as China, a point which the U.S. policy-makers know fairly well also," the newspaper said. The paper also said China is not Iraq or Yugoslavia, two recent targets of U.S. military operations.
Asked about the PLA statements, reported in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters that the article did not change Chinese nuclear warfighting doctrines.
"The Chinese have said, certainly since the days of Deng Xiaoping, that they do not have a policy of first-strike attacks," Mr. Bacon said. "They will only strike in response to attacks. And there is nothing new in that article that changes that."
The Liberation Army Daily stated in the Monday commentary that China "has certain abilities of launching strategic counterattack and the capacity of launching a long-distance strike."
On the Pacific exercises by the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and two cruise-missile destroyers off Japan, Mr. Bacon said the ships are on a standard deployment.
"She is southeast of Japan, not close to Taiwan," Mr. Bacon said. "And this is a short-term, long-planned exercise that has nothing to do with the situation between China and Taiwan."
The Senate also is set to debate a bill that passed the House last month calling for closer military cooperation with Taiwan.
Mr. Lott said the Senate has not set its debate on the measure and will discuss the legislation with White House National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger soon.
Meanwhile, a representative of the ruling Kuomintang in Taiwan said yesterday that the threatening white paper has had little impact on the presidential campaign.
"China's white paper had no significant impact in the last week," Wu Hoi, a spokesman for the Taiwanese party, told reporters.
Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen said yesterday the threat to attack Taiwan over delays in reunification talks was not new, state television reported in Beijing.
Mr. Qian said the first warning was issued in 1984 by Mr. Deng, China's leader.
"Since the publication of the white paper, some foreign media have regarded China as making a major change to its policy on solving the Taiwan issue," Mr. Qian said. "This view is incorrect. This has been our consistent policy, it is not a new formulation."
U.S. officials have said the warning contained in the white paper represented a new policy toward Taiwan. In the past, China has threatened to use force against Taiwan if it declares independence.
The white paper stated that force is an option if Taiwan resists talks on reunification.
According to Mr. Qian, Mr. Deng stated in October 1984 that "non-peaceful means" would never be abandoned in reunifying Taiwan.
"What do we do if the Taiwan authorities indefinitely avoid talks with us? You don't think we'd abandon the reunification of the country, do you?" he quoted Mr. Deng as saying.
China delivered a new threat yesterday in Beijing to Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.
Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian told Adm. Blair that China sought peaceful reunification with Taiwan but that "China will never commit not to use force."
Adm. Blair completed two days of meetings with Chinese leaders weeks before Taiwan's second presidential elections March 18.
He told Chinese military leaders that the United States would view any use of force against Taiwan with "grave concern." A U.S. official said the four-star admiral appealed for "patience and moderation" on the part of Beijing
This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----- china
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/1/22.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 1, 2000
PRESS BRIEFING BY JAKE SIEWERT AND DAVID LEAVY
... Q Jake, regarding China, one of the reasons for the six-month waiting period on export controls was fear of China taking some of our technology, particularly in supercomputers, going back some time. Is the feeling that that has changed somewhat now, that a threat from the Chinese is not as great, and we simply have to be in that market -- not just China, but also other markets? And what can the President do, since the six-month waiting period is by law? Are you talking about some sort of executive order today?
MR. SIEWERT: No. The executive order that we're putting in place eases licensing requirements today. What we're trying to do -- we can't change the waiting period; that is part of law. But we can -- what the law does now is allow the President to change the type of computer that's being exported, but we have to wait six months for those regulations to go into effect. And that's something the computer industry says is just too long a period given how quickly the technology changes, how quickly the technology moves.
What the President wants to do is shorten that time period, by law, to one month, so that we don't need to spend every six months going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out what kind of computers are widely available in the marketplace today and whether we need to take another look at our regulations. A short waiting period would give computer industry a better chance to figure out its product lines and what they can export, its marketing schemes for exports overseas.
On China, we're still maintaining a lot of the security controls that are in place under the current law. We have loosened some requirements to reflect the realities of today's marketplace, but we still have tier one, tier two, and tier three countries, so that we cannot sell -- the computer industry cannot sell the same computers that it sells to an ally in Europe that it can to places like Pakistan or China.
Q Isn't the real problem that you have to define, change the definition of what a supercomputer is, because as you say, the speed of these chips just changes expedientially these days?
MR. SIEWERT: We've committed to a six-month review. We'd like to change the law so that we can have more rational review periods. But the President will order today that we have another review, beginning in April, and we may have a decision after that because the technology is moving so quickly. But we've been consulting with the Pentagon and with the NSC about how to keep in place some of the security controls that the law envisions, and ensure that we do everything we can to make sure that high-performance computers don't get into the hands of the wrong users.
Q Can you talk about the realities of the marketplace, where we don't sell the computers somebody else will?
MR. SIEWERT: Well, also the realities of the fact that the marketplace -- America has some of the best technology in the world, and a lot of people don't have any recourse but to come to the United States, but to ensure that in a very open global economy that our rules on licensing are more or less reflecting what's going on in the actual industry today....
------
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/1/19.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release February 1, 2000
FACT SHEET
Export Controls on Computers
The President today announced an update of U.S. export controls on computers that will promote our national security, enhance the effectiveness of our export control system, and ease unnecessary regulatory burdens on both government and industry.
Today's announcement is President Clinton's fourth revision to U.S. export control parameters since 1993. This action reflects the Clinton Administration's efforts to ensure effective controls on militarily sensitive technology while taking into account the increased availability of commodity products, such as servers and workstations, of which millions are manufactured and sold worldwide every year.
The Administration's computer export controls are designed to permit the government to calibrate control levels and licensing conditions depending upon the national security or proliferation risk posed at a specific destination, to enhance U.S. national security by ensuring controls on computer exports are effective, and to minimize impediments to legitimate computer exports, which will help preserve the technological lead of the U.S. computer industrial base.
As directed by the President in July 1999, the Administration has conducted a review of our computer export controls that took into account (1) advancements in computing technology since mid-1999, (2) our security, nonproliferation and other national security interests, and (3) the need for a policy that would remain effective for at least six months.
This review found that advancements continue in the power and capabilities of widely available computing systems, reflecting the exponential growth in individual microprocessor speeds that has occurred since 1995. The speed of the general purpose microprocessor used in standard personal computers and business applications today has increased by a factor of eight since the Administration's 1995 decision took effect. This growth will continue - U.S. companies plan commercial sales of individual "chips" rated over 5000 MTOPS by late 2000. Moreover, while there are military The term "military" encompasses nuclear, chemical, biological, missile or conventional military end-users/uses. applications across a range of MTOPS levels, the national security agencies have reaffirmed their previous conclusion that there is no definitive line that separates levels of computing power on the basis of their usefulness for military applications. In light of this finding, the advances in basic computing technologies, and the problems inherent in trying to control commodity level items, the Administration has determined that widespread commercial availability of computers with performance capabilities up to 12,500 MTOPS makes that a realistic and enforceable control level.
The Revised Controls
The revised controls announced today maintain the four country groups announced in 1995, but amends the countries in, and control levels for, Tier 2 and Tier 3 as follows:
Tier I (Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Brazil): Exports without an individual license are permitted for all computers (i.e. there is no prior government review).
Tier II (South and Central America, South Korea, ASEAN, Slovenia, most of Africa): Exports without an individual license are permitted up to 20,000 MTOPS with record-keeping and reporting as directed; individual licenses (requiring prior government review) are needed above 20,000 MTOPS.
- Today's decision will raise the individual licensing level from 20,000 MTOPS to 33,000 MTOPS immediately.
- The President's decision today will move Romania from Tier 3 to Tier 2. As required by the National Defense Authorization Act of 1998, this decision requires a 120-day congressional notification before it becomes effective.
Tier III (India, Pakistan, all Middle East/Maghreb, the former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Central Europe): Based on President Clinton's July 1999 decision, exports are permitted without an individual license up to 6,500 MTOPS, and require individual licenses for military end-uses and end-users above that figure. Exports without an individual license are permitted for civil end-users between 6,500 MTOPS and 12,300 MTOPS, with exporter record keeping and reporting as directed. Individual licenses are required for all end-users above 12,300 MTOPS.
- The President's decision today will maintain the current two-level system for civilian and military/proliferation end-users. The decision will raise the individual licensing levels from 6,500 to 12,500 MTOPS for military end-users and from 12,300 to 20,000 MTOPS for civilian end-users.
- The Commerce Department will immediately raise the licensing level for civilian end-users and will raise the licensing level for military end-users in six months, at the same time as it adjusts the level that triggers the NDAA notification requirement, which is discussed below.
The 1998 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), P.L. 105-85, imposed a requirement for companies to provide the Commerce Department with prior notice of exports for systems above 2,000 MTOPS to all Tier 3 end-users. U.S. export control agencies have 10 days to inform the company if it must apply for a license. The President's July 1999 decision raised the NDAA notification level to 6,500 MTOPS; that decision became effective on January 23, 2000 (the end of the 180-day Congressional notification period.)
- The President's decision today will raise the NDAA notification level from 6,500 MTOPS to 12,500 MTOPS. The President will advise the appropriate Congressional committees of his decision to raise the NDAA notification level. By law, Congress has six months to review this decision, after which the change to NDAA notification level will go into effect.
- The Administration will continue to review the licensing levels and the NDAA notification level to determine if further adjustments are warranted. Given anticipated significant increases in individual microprocessor performance in the near term, the Administration will review these levels by April 2000 to determine if further adjustments are warranted.
Tier IV (Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, and Syria). There are no planned changes for Tier IV, current policies continue to apply (i.e. the United States will maintain a virtual embargo on computer exports).
For all these groups, reexport and retransfer provisions continue to apply. The revised controls will become effective when they are implemented in formal Commerce Department regulations. We will continue to implement the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI), which provides authority for the government to block exports of computers of any level in cases involving exports to end-uses or end-users of proliferation concern or risks of diversion to proliferation activities. Criminal and civil penalties apply to EPCI violators.
In addition, the Department of Commerce will continue to add to its list of published entities of concern as a means of informing exporters of potential proliferation and other security risks. The Department will remind exporters of their duty to check suspicious circumstances and inquire about end-uses and end-users. Exporters are advised to contact the Department of Commerce if they have any concern with the identity or activities of the end-users. The Commerce Department also will work to expand its efforts -- through public seminars and consultations with companies -- to keep industry regularly informed regarding problem end-users and programs of proliferation concern.
Microprocessor Controls. In addition to revising computer export controls, the Administration revised controls on general-purpose microprocessors on November 26, 1999 by raising the control level from 1900 MTOPS to 3500 MTOPS. Export control agencies agree that general purpose or "mass market" microprocessors are not controllable because they are used in virtually all consumer and business personal computers, are highly portable, and are sold in very large quantities through multiple distribution channels worldwide. The November 26, 1999 change was made given the continuing increases in microprocessor technology. We will continue to review microprocessor technology and will adjust controls as necessary. We also will continue to maintain controls on higher performance, general-purpose microprocessors that are sold in small quantities for high-end computer and other applications, and those application-specific microprocessors that have military applications and are sold in relatively small quantities.
Legislative Proposal. The National Defense Authorization Act of 1998 requires a six-month Congressional notice period if the President decides to raise the level that triggers the 10-day pre-export notification requirement for Tier 3 countries, and a four-month notice if the President decides to move a country out of Tier 3. The six-month notice period in particular limits our ability to respond quickly to rapid changes in technology. We will continue to work with Congress to change both waiting periods to one month.
On a longer-term basis, we will work with Congress to adopt an approach that permits us to adjust our export controls in a predictable and timely manner when we are faced with the practical impossibility of controlling items so widely available that they amount to commodity items, like computers and microprocessors, which are sold by the hundreds of thousands and even millions.
Multilateral Coordination: The Administration is consulting with other nations in the context of our common controls on high performance computers, and with the members of the Wassenaar Arrangement -- the multilateral successor to COCOM, to ensure that they understand the basis for the changes in controls. We are committed to working closely with them to adjust multilateral controls to reflect technological advances and collective security concerns. Our controls are consistent with the purposes of the Wassenaar Arrangement -- to deny arms and sensitive dual-use technologies to countries of concern, and to develop mechanisms for information sharing among the partners as a way to harmonize our export control practices and policies....
----------- egypt
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/3/9.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 2, 2000
TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:
With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Treaty Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, signed at Cairo on May 3, 1998. I transmit also a related exchange of diplomatic notes for the information of the Senate. The report of the Department of State with respect to the Treaty is enclosed.
The Treaty is one of a series of modern mutual legal assistance treaties being negotiated by the United States in order to counter criminal activities more effectively. The Treaty should be an effective tool to assist in the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes, including terrorism and drug-trafficking offenses. The Treaty is self-executing.
The Treaty provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes taking the testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records and items of evidence; locating or identifying persons or items; serving documents; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to immobilization and forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the Requested State.
I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Treaty and give its advice and consent to ratification.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 2, 2000
---------- france
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 31, 2000
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/1/9.text.1
TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:
With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Treaty Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of France on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, signed at Paris on December 10, 1998. I transmit also, for the Senate's information, an explanatory note agreed between the Parties regarding the application of certain provisions. The report of the Department of State with respect to the Treaty is enclosed.
The Treaty is one of a series of modern mutual legal assistance treaties being negotiated by the United States in order to counter criminal activities more effectively. The Treaty should be an effective tool to assist in the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes, including terrorism and drug trafficking offenses. The Treaty is self-executing.
The Treaty provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: obtaining the testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and items of evidence; locating or identifying persons or items; serving documents; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to immobilization and forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and rendering any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the Requested State.
I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Treaty and give its advice and consent to ratification.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 31, 2000.
----------- greenland
Greenland seeks say on U.S. missile defence plan
By Peter Starck
Wednesday March 1, 7:24 pm Eastern Time -
Reuters
http://www.marketwatch.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=ColYJ0b8ZtdaXmJe0ody2&FQ
COPENHAGEN, March 2 (Reuters) - United States missile defence plans, which would require additional use of its Thule air base in northwest Greenland, are meeting opposition in the vast Arctic island and doubts in Denmark, which is responsible for its foreign policy.
``It would be dangerous for Greenland to permit an upgrade of the Thule radar,'' said Johan Lund Olsen, an influential member of the leftist Inuit party in a debate in the local parliament on Tuesday.
``Enemies of the United States would try to destroy it. This means that Greenland will be bombed,'' he told the single-chamber assembly in the capital Nuuk on the west coast 2,200 km (1,300 miles) south of Thule.
Thule, build in the 1950s, is an important link in the chain of radar stations that stretches from Alaska to the British Isles and is designed to detect missiles bound for North America.
Washington has informed Copenhagen of preliminary plans to upgrade the Thule radar, if President Bill Clinton decides this summer to deploy the proposed national missile defence or NMD.
But Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen told the Danish parliament last Friday that Thule must not be used in violation of international agreements.
ABM TREATY MUST STAND
Petersen referred in particular to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibits systems such as NMD. U.S. and Russian arms control experts resumed talks on Tuesday on revisions sought by Washington to accommodate for NMD.
Arguing for the missiles shield, Washington says rogue states such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya could within a decade be able to launch nuclear, chemical or biological missile at North America.
Greenland's Prime Minister Jonathan Motzfeldt declared last November that the home-rule administration would not accept an upgrade of the Thule radar based on a unilateral American decision in violation of the ABM treaty.
``If upgrading the radar is on the agenda, Greenland's government expects to be directly involved in the deliberations,'' he added.
Petersen has rejected all earlier attempts by Nuuk to gain a voice in foreign and defence policy but has promised to keep the home-rule government fully informed.
Washington agreed last autumn to start talks on returning Dundas, a traditional Inuit hunting ground near Thule which appropriated when the base was built.
Some Greenlanders suspect that is a bid to win them over on the base upgrade but the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen and tThe Danish foreign ministry deny any link.
-------- imf/wto/world bank
The Future of Globalization
New York Times
March 2, 2000
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.f0816c0
The delegates and protesters have departed Seattle but the debate over free trade and the scope of globalization continues. How will governments in the developed and developing world respond to this outcry against the World Trade Organization? Will the disparate anti-WTO coalition of labor unions, environmentalists, human rights activists and other organizations be able to maintain a unified stance against efforts to expand free trade? And can the process of economic globalization be impeded or reversed?
--------
Choice of IMF chief divides U.S., Europe
USA Today
03/01/00- Updated 03:28 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm#duel
WASHINGTON - The split between the United States and Europe over the top job at the International Monetary Fund widened Tuesday as Europe pushed ahead with its candidate one day after Clinton administration officials bluntly let it be known that they considered him unacceptable. Germany's IMF representative in Washington formally submitted Caio Koch-Weser's name to the 24-member executive board Tuesday night, saying ''he is the right choice'' for the job based on his years of ''global professional experience.'' But the Clinton administration did not back down either. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States felt it was critical for the IMF's next leader to be ''somebody who can do what needs to be done'' to institute reforms.
---
RECKONINGS
New York Times
March 1, 2000
By PAUL KRUGMAN D.O.A. at the I.M.F.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/krugman/030100krug.html
Related Articles
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Nothing in the bylaws of the International Monetary Fund says that its managing director has to be European. Still, there is a long tradition to that effect -- part of a gentlemen's agreement that gives the considerably less critical directorship of the World Bank to an American.
But on Monday, when European Union finance ministers formally endorsed Caio Koch-Weser -- a Brazilian-born German official who has spent most of his career at the World Bank -- the United States promptly and bluntly rejected that choice.
To appreciate why the Americans decided to be so ugly, you need to understand that the head of the I.M.F. is one of the most crucial economic officials in the world, right up there with the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Secretary. The managing director not only needs to be smart and experienced; he also needs to be diplomatically forceful. It's not a job for an ordinary bureaucrat.
Unfortunately, people who should know regard Mr. Koch-Weser as, well, an ordinary bureaucrat. He is, by all accounts, intelligent and likable. But he has spent his career at the wrong kind of institution; the World Bank is not a place to get experience in financial firefighting. More important, insiders I spoke to described Mr. Koch-Weser as someone who got along by going along -- someone who never expressed strong ideas of his own, who always seemed to say what he thought his superiors wanted to hear. That's not exactly the kind of man you want in the hot seat when the next global crisis breaks out.
So why did the Europeans select such a weak candidate? That's where the story gets awfully funny -- that is, it's funny, but it's also awful.
The problem begins with the French. France has long been an ardent advocate of the idea of Europe -- a Europe led by Frenchmen. And Paris has been ruthless in its determination to put its nationals in charge of everything from the I.M.F. to the European Central Bank.
At some point, however, Europe's largest nation was going to demand its turn. Given that a Frenchman has headed the I.M.F. for the last 22 years (and for 32 of the last 37 years!), the Germans figured that it was about time they got a chance. The trouble was that they didn't have any qualified candidates.
No, they aren't a nation of dummkopfs; it's a question of background. Germany does not have an elite civil service like the French or the British; nor does it have the kind of cross-pollination among business, academia and government that produces a Robert Rubin or Larry Summers. Nobody I talked to could come up with any German candidate he regarded as suitable for the job. Mr. Koch-Weser was the best Germany could find -- and he wasn't good enough.
Even the British and the French made their disappointment clear, withholding their endorsement for three months after the German government began pushing Mr. Koch-Weser. What finally concentrated their minds was the horrifying prospect that the job might actually go to the right person.
Last week a coalition of developing countries forced the issue by formally nominating Stanley Fischer, the I.M.F.'s first deputy managing director. Mr. Fischer (a former teacher and colleague of mine) has every conceivable qualification but one. An eminent economist, he is also an experienced policy maker -- he was the point man in the Asian crisis -- who has been noteworthy for his tact, discretion and ability to stay cool under fire. Even those who have criticized some of the I.M.F.'s decisions regard him as perfect for the job. But though born in what is now Zambia, Mr. Fischer is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
That apparently does not bother the African, Latin American and Middle Eastern (!) nations that have championed his candidacy. But the Europeans want a European, though most of them don't really want Mr. Koch-Weser. (Everyone suspects that Britain and maybe even France were willing to give lip service to an unsatisfactory candidate only because they counted on the Clinton administration, which is having trouble defending the I.M.F. against a hostile Congress in any case, to veto him.)
Now the truth is that there are plenty of qualified Europeans; there are citizens of Britain, Italy, Sweden, Poland who could do the job. Still, one wonders: Is it too late for Mr. Fischer to acquire a German passport?
---------- france
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 31, 2000
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/1/9.text.1
TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:
With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Treaty Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of France on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, signed at Paris on December 10, 1998. I transmit also, for the Senate's information, an explanatory note agreed between the Parties regarding the application of certain provisions. The report of the Department of State with respect to the Treaty is enclosed.
The Treaty is one of a series of modern mutual legal assistance treaties being negotiated by the United States in order to counter criminal activities more effectively. The Treaty should be an effective tool to assist in the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes, including terrorism and drug trafficking offenses. The Treaty is self-executing.
The Treaty provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: obtaining the testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and items of evidence; locating or identifying persons or items; serving documents; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to immobilization and forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and rendering any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the Requested State.
I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Treaty and give its advice and consent to ratification.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 31, 2000.
----------- india / pakistan
India, a Nuclear Power, Raises Military Spending 28 Percent
By BARRY BEARAK
HRRP://WWW.JANDR.COM
NEW DELHI, Feb. 29 -- With relations between the bitter foes India and Pakistan at their worst point in three decades, New Delhi announced a 28.2 percent increase in military spending today. It is the largest single-year increase in the nation's history.
"We shall not shrink from making any sacrifice to guard and protect every inch of our beloved motherland," Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said in presenting the country's annual budget to Parliament.
The announcement comes less than three weeks before President Clinton is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on a mission that is at least partly intended to ease the strain between the world's two newest nuclear weapons states.
A big jump in military spending is no surprise. It has been expected since India fought intense battles with Pakistani-backed forces in the frigid mountains of Kashmir six months ago. The Indians drove off the invaders, but the incursion revealed weaknesses in the nation's defenses. The military complained that a decade of belt-tightening had left it without needed funds for basic supplies, surveillance equipment and upgraded weapons.
Tensions have only grown worse. Pakistan's military overthrew the elected government. Guerrilla attacks have become epidemic in Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for the hijacking of an Indian airliner on Christmas Eve.
"India is sending a message with the new budget," said George Perkovich, author of the new book "India's Nuclear Bomb" (University of California, 1999). "It's saying to Pakistan, 'O.K., you may want to use a bellicose strategy against us, but you're broke and we're not. We're going to spend 28 percent more. Can you match that?' "
Indeed, Pakistan is deeply in debt. But India, too, has a ballooning fiscal deficit. The budget for the year beginning April 1 calls for tax increases on higher-income people, a review of state subsidies and cuts in the government payroll.
Manpower cuts will not include the military, which will now have an allowance of $13.5 billion. Nearly half the money will go to the army. It is unclear how much will be devoted to nuclear weapons, though the Pakistanis will no doubt fear the worst.
"It's really mind-boggling how a country could increase a budget 28 percent if it was just for conventional forces," said a spokesman for Pakistan, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi.
In May 1998, India tested a nuclear device and Pakistan followed 17 days later. Ever since, there has been fear of an arms race.
The rise in India's military budget is a victory for the nation's hawks, who want to beef up the armed forces. However, it is also a repudiation of their earlier views, when they argued that nuclear weapons would buy a better defense for less money.
Others see a bigger military budget as an overdue payment. "India has a one-million-man army, a two-fleet navy and a 35-combat-squadron air force -- and that takes money," said Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.
In 1990, when India was experiencing a financial crisis, the military budget was cut back as a percentage of the gross domestic product, Mr. Bhaskar said.
The decline largely continued, though the largest increase in recent years was 14 percent in 1998.
Fighting last summer in Kashmir was a jolting reminder, Mr. Bhaskar said. "All that's happening now is that we're catching up," he said.
---
India is accused of 'provoking' its nuclear neighbour
By Tasgola Karla Bruner in Islamabad
29 February 2000
Fresh clashes in Kashmir have heightened the tension between India and Pakistan just before President Bill Clinton visits the subcontinent.
Fourteen civilians, including three who were beheaded, were killed in Pakistani Kashmir shortly before midnight on Thursday. On Sunday, an apparent revenge attack resulted in the deaths of one Indian officer and six soldiers.
Pakistan, which like India possesses a nuclear arsenal, blames Indian soldier for the attack against the civilians. India blames Pakistan for the subsequent attack on its soldiers. Both countries have vehemently denied the accusations. A militant group, Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami, announced that it had avenged the civilians' deaths by killing the Indian soldiers and returning to Pakistan with the body of an Indian captain and the heads of four soldiers.
The killings come three weeks before Mr Clinton is due to visit India. The President, who has expressed a desire to see a peaceful solution to the Kashmiri problem, has yet to announce if he will also visit Pakistan. While Pakistan wants international mediation, India says it does not.
Analysts in Pakistan say India is "provoking" its Islamic neighbour over the divided Himalayan province. General Aslam Beg, a former Pakistan army chief who now runs a think-tank, said India attacked the villagers because "indirectly, they do want someone to help them out ... particularly when Clinton is due to visit".
Khalid Mahmud, a research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad who specialises in Indian politics, said Delhi is "preparing for war, even though they may not go to war at all" in an effort to "intimidate" Pakistan.
"If the Clinton visit is only aimed at making a deal with India and not mediating peace in the subcontinent I think there is no hope for international intervention," he said.
-----
Command and control of nuclear weapons
The News International Pakistan
Monday, February 28, 2000 --
Ziqa'ad 21, 1420 A.H.
NEWS UPDATE [Opinion]
With the overt nuclarisation of the subcontinent, Pakistan has no choice but to address nuclear command and control C-3) as a critical underpinning of deterrence and of desired military stability in the relationship with India.
The scope of the C-3 issue that needs urgent attention will depend on whether India and Pakistan deploy operational nuclear forces ready for action on short notice. If such nuclear forces are not deployed, the near-term requirements are comparatively manageable. It would be desirable to keep them that way by agreeing tacitly, if not formally, not to deploy. If deployment nevertheless proceeds, the full range of C-3 requirements will have to be developed.
An effective C-3 system would be derived, logically, from a coherent nuclear strategy and doctrine, whether they are proclaimed publicly or left unstated. An effective C-3 system will be conditioned by the number and configuration of available nuclear weapons and delivery systems and the nature of the opposing threat to the survivability of the deterrent.
An effective C-3 system depends on measures to assure its own survivability, enabling it to function in two other ways that are critical to the credibility of the deterrent forces: (1) to assure that nuclear weapons are under tight control and not used inadvertently, or by accident, or an unauthorised agent--in fact, are not usable except by verified command from the top; (2) to ensure that nuclear weapons, if used, are used only in accordance with directives from the top, following pre-designed plans and procedures in which operating personnel have been rigorously trained. Ideally, this will also support options short of all-out retaliation.
The incalculable consequences of nuclear weapons are such that they must never be used unless the survival of the state is at stake. An effective C-3 system would support the use of nuclear weapons only as a last resort. Such a system would also ensure the safety of nuclear weapons and preclude theft or intrusion by terrorists.
Command and control is challenged by the temptation of the nuclear armed opponent to attack the C-3 system pre-emptively as a damage-limiting or war termination objective.
No nuclear C-3 system has ever experienced the need to function under nuclear attack, so there are great unknowns about what "effectiveness' means, or what it requires, under nuclear attack.
There is a huge learning curve with nuclear command and control. Some things that have been learned in the past by existing nuclear powers can be described and transmitted to newcomers--if they are open to learning lessons vicariously.
But the full weight of what it means to gain experience of C-3 cannot be absorbed without moving down that path.
A newcomer may also find that it learned additional lessons distinctive to its own unique situation. Past lessons of crisis management relevant to C-3 learning by newcomers, do incorporate certain lessons of conventional asymmetry, but the prevalent lessons are those that emerge from something approaching nuclear symmetry and the condition described as mutual assured destruction. The applicability of these lessons to the asymmetries of the India-Pakistan relationship is uneven; while worth studying it cannot always be transferred directly as prescriptive principles for stability.
An effective command and control system must solve a range of technical challenges. Safety and security techniques are probably the easiest technical challenges to overcome from information in the public domain. Survivable communications are more difficult to develop and must cope with dynamic changes in the threat to communications links. Most difficult technically are overcoming the obstacles of strategic warning.
Whatever the state of the art of technical means, the human and organisational factors are paramount. Effective nuclear C-3 depends on the human capacity to correctly analyse invariably incomplete information, and information in which disinformation has been mixed. It depends on the capacity to make rational judgements under stress, and on the discipline of personnel to follow through with commands and procedures.
The disciplines of organisations cannot be learned and toughened up, except by practice, vigilant monitoring, and self-criticism.
Arrogance, laziness, pettiness, are human susceptibilities that must be weeded out or overcome through training and management techniques since they are incompatible with effective nuclear C-3. Effective C-3 depends on peacetime analysis and development of responses to a comprehensive set of plausible scenarios and the injection of surprise elements that would cause a chain of developments to branch in unanticipated directions. Realistic simulations provide needed experience for operations and managers at every level to sharpen judgement, sensitise perceptions, and reduce the sources of human error when confronting incomplete information, disinformation, damage and disruption.
Effective C-3 is ultimately dependent on developing an operational culture that guards against the obstacles, inertia, or disruption that may arise from societies of varying diversity, development and from recruitment patterns that draw differentially on the social composition of these societies.
The operational culture will also be conditioned by the nature of the political system--whether highly stable or unstable, democratic or authoritarian, etc.
Public understanding of the arcane technical and organisational problems of nuclear C-3 probably cannot be expected, but public confidence in and support for a rational decision-making process that treats nuclear weapons with stringent care should be engaged. Public confidence is enhanced by discussions and debates among the educated public and signals of responsibility by the leadership in a process that tackles identified problems in an orderly way and combined military preparedness with negotiations, or readiness to negotiate with the opponent in ways that:
(1)reduce apprehension of surprise attack; (2) achieve movement in resolving disputes; (3) establish mutually acceptable limits on the numbers of weapons and delivery system; (4) expand areas of potential understanding and mutual confidence that curb unnecessary suspicion and tension (ie that declining to endorse no first-use is not equivalent to being predisposed to exercise first-use as a matter of course) ; and (5) be open to ways that would avert "hair trigger" deployment/employment conditions by agreeing on verifiable restraints that raise the nuclear threshold.
Major outside powers with special nuclear experience should explore possible ways to reduce the likely pitfalls and shortcomings of newcomer nuclear C-3s in a manner that is conducive to measures of restraint, and stability, reducing thereby the risks of necuelar war, while consistent with maintenance of the strongest possible international controls against further nuclear proliferation.
This was the consensus reached by the ICWA-ISS seminar in which besides Pakistani scholars, international experts on command and control of nuclear weapons (C-3) participated.
These eminent personalities were Sir Michael Quinlan, former permanent undersecretary of defence of the United Kingdom; Shaun Gregory, also from the UK, now affiliated to the International Peace Institute in Washington; Professor Grigory Khozin, of the Russian Diplomatic Academy, Dr Rodney Jones of the United States and Dr Karl Kamp of Germany.
Some of the ideas that surfaced in the debate which were kept in mind in grafting the seminar's consensus included the following:
Agha Shahi, in his keynote address to the seminar, noted that Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf had made it clear that Pakistan will resort to the use of nuclear weapons only as a last resort if its security is threatened.
"Last" resort would be difficult to precisely define, given the asymmetry in conventional as well as nuclear arms of the two sides and Pakistan's lack of geographical depth. Some experts think that a policy of ambiguity would appear best for Pakistan's security.
Other experts favour an open declaration by Pakistan and India of the size of their nuclear arsenals, their deployment and the circumstances in which they may be used, as useful increasing transparency and mutual confidence.
Mobility, dispersal, camouflage and deception of its missiles can provide assurance of survival of at least a fraction of Pakistan's arsenal for retaliation. Pakistan may well be confronted with a "hair-trigger-alert" situation.
A launch-on-warning system would elude Pakistan and India because of a 2 to 10 minutes flight time for missiles. The risk of a nuclear strike by miscalculation or unauthorised use would, therefore, be very high.
Managing nuclear capability in a scenario of "operationalised" deterrence would pose contradictions--for example, between dispersed deployment for survivability and effective control against accidental or unauthorised use--there could be several different ways of meeting this challenge. The international community should assist in providing early warning capability.
Weaponised deployment will increase the danger of use of nuclear weapons as long as the Kashmir dispute is not resolved. Sir Michael Quinlan maintained that any use of nuclear weapons has to be related to ending the conflict, not to win it.
In deterrence, it is vital to know at what point there would be a nuclear showdown--the other side should be clear where the lines are drawn which, if crossed, would provoke a nuclear strike. It must correctly understand and interpret the signals sent. Any C-3 system would be quite expensive.
Rodney Jones who drafted the above stated consensus said there was no need to succumb to counsels of despair in regard to costs. Another international expert said that one could go for a simple system that works and not for a colossal apparatus such the ones erected by the West for their C-3 systems.
Shaun Gregory maintained that nuclear weapons must not be used.
Lessons could be learned from the West, but it is the regional dynamics that will figure in C-3 in South Asia. The lowest possible level of the nuclear situation should prevail for India and Pakistan. But there were obstacles. These were:
i) Costs of a C3 system;
ii) Phasing of setting up of the system--to be developed in sections and enforced in sequence. Which section should come first? Malfunctioning may spark a conflict;
iii) bilateral management of C-3 is essential because of the proximity of Pakistan and India. Each side should know what C-3 system is possible. Hence there should be one which is a coupled or "dyadic" system. Neither Pakistan nor India can insulate itself from instabilities or failures;
iv) limited access to outside technical assistance;
v) the issue of asymmetry--at present, the disparity between the two sides is overstated. But India is developing a triad, so the disparity will grow;
vi) distrust and misperception are other obstacles;
vii) Kashmir involves all ongoing confrontation, so a conflict could arise;
viii) escalation is a most important dynamic. Kashmir is linked to escalation to the nuclear level.
Dr Karl Kamp pointed out that German-Nato understanding of nuclear deterrence has changed from a military interpretation of nuclear weapons to a highly political understanding of nuclear deterrence. "Political" means that nuclear weapons are not a means of war fighting but an instrument to change the risk calculation of an opponent. A political role puts much higher requirements for command and control because nuclear weapons have to be militarily usable weapons, not just ones for demonstration purposes. At the same time, the danger of an international or politically unauthorised use has to be excluded.
Professor Khozin was emphatic that any C-3 system should comprise critical top elements of civil and military control. Dr Tanvir Ahmad Khan stated that Pakistan's choices were difficult. First and foremost, it has to meet the threat of a massive conventional and a possible nuclear strike to disable its nuclear deterrence. Its nuclear doctrine should opt for ambiguity.
Pakistan had proposed a comprehensive nuclear restraint and stability regime for the Indo-Pakistan Joint Working Group on Peace and Security. It was important to revive the India-Pakistan dialogue. The international community is already focussed on the need for the resumption of the stalled negotiations.
Dr Riffat Hussain was of the view that given the centrality and pivotal role of C-3s in stable deterrence, it would be in the common interest of both India and Pakistan to reach an agreement on not targeting each other's nuclear command centres as a nuclear risk-reduction measure.
India and Pakistan should be assisted by the international community in the use of Permissive Action Links technology. The United States shared this technology with France and Britain.
Dr. Umar Khan said, "If we examine our objectives for going nuclear, we can then develop the appropriate C31 structure without having to pursue much more elaborate and extensive structures suited for much wider objectives".
It does not appear that India has the capability to establish an effective C31 system to handle a nuclear missile triad for a forward deployed and first-strike capability; hence the real challenge to C31 in South Asia is India's forward nuclear posture.
This article is based on the consensus statement released at an international seminar jointly organised by the Islamabad Council of World Affairs (ICWA) and the Institute of Strategic Studies (ISS) on the command and control of nuclear weapons in South Asia.
The News International, Pakistan
----
For Immediate Release
February 1, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE DENNIS HASTERT, SENATOR TRENT LOTT, SENATOR TOM DASCHLE, AND REPRESENTATIVE DICK GEPHARDT IN PHOTO OPPORTUNITY
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/1/17.text.1 Errors-To: Mail-Server@pub.pub.whitehouse.gov
Q And on India?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm going because it's the biggest democracy in the world, and I think we haven't been working with them enough. Just as I believe we have to engage China that has a political system very different from ours, we have to engage India that makes decisions sometimes we don't agree with, but is a great democracy that has preserved their democracy, I must say, against enormous odds. And we have an enormous common interest in shaping the future with them, and I'm looking forward to it.
I think it's unfortunate that the United States has been estranged -- or, if not estranged, at least it's had a distant relationship with the Indians for too long.
----------- japan
Japanese Mark Nuclear Anniversary
Wednesday March 1 9:42 AM ET
http://rd.yahoo.com/addtomy/*http://edit.yahoo.com/config/set_news?.add=aprw
TOKYO (AP) - Demonstrators on Wednesday protested against nuclear weapons by laying roses at the grave of a Japanese fisherman who died in U.S. atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll 46 years ago.
Some 1,700 protesters carrying photographs of Aikichi Kuboyama walked about a mile from Yaizu Station in Shizuoka Prefecture (state) to hold a ceremony at Kuboyama's grave, said protest organizer Shoji Umeda.
Umeda said the marchers, who included members of Japanese civic groups and representatives from the United States and the Marshall Islands, laid roses at the grave. Some of the leaders repeated Kuboyama's dying wish: ``I hope I will be the last victim of atomic and hydrogen bombing.''
Kuboyama was a radio operator aboard a fishing boat on March 1, 1954 when the United States tested a nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean.
Radiation from the blast engulfed the 23 fishermen aboard Kuboyama's boat, which was trolling for tuna about 100 miles away.
Kuboyama died from the effects of radiation poisoning six months later on Sept. 23, followed by 11 others who died from the same cause over the next 21 years, Umeda said.
The march in Shizuoka, about 94 miles west of Tokyo, is held annually in memory of Kuboyama.
Umeda said some of the marchers were members of groups protesting nuclear power for civilian use, a growing concern in Japan after the death late last year of a worker who suffered radiation exposure in Japan's worst nuclear accident.
The death of Hisashi Ouchi, the first at a nuclear power facility in Japan, fueled calls for a slowdown in the country's atomic energy program.
--------- korea
U.S., North Korea Talks Set
Associated Press
March 1, 2000 Filed at 4:44 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. and North Korean officials will meet in New York starting March 7 to make final preparations for high-level talks between the two countries in Washington in about one month, the State Department said Wednesday.
Leading the U.S. delegation to the New York talks will be Ambassador Charles Kartman. The North Korean delegation will be headed by Vice Foreign Minister Kimn Gye Gwan.
The U.S. coordinator for counter-terrorism, Michael Sheehan will inform the North Koreans of the steps they must take to be removed from the U.S. list of countries that engage in international terrorism activities. One such step is a public pledge foreswearing future involvement in terrorist acts.
North Korea is one of seven countries on the terrorism list. The State Departments says Pyongyang has not been linked to any terrorist incident since 1987.
Removal from the list would qualify the North Koreans for certain economic benefits now denied them.
The visit to Washington by a high-level North Korean delegation would reciprocate a visit to Pyongyang last May by former Defense Secretary William Perry, who led a North Korea policy review for President Clinton and issued a report last fall.
State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said the high-level visit a month from now will provide ``an important opportunity for serious talks and progress on issues central to peace and stability in Northeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, including improving U.S.-North Korean relations.''
No high ranking North Korean official has visited Washington in the nearly 47 years since the Korean War ended.
The administration attempting to wean North Korea away from a militaristic path through a policy of economic incentives.
In September, Clinton lifted trade, banking and other sanctions that had been in place against North Korea for decades. In exchange, North Korea promised not to test an intercontinental ballistic missile so long as normalization talks with the United States continue.
Also under discussion is the opening of diplomatic offices in each other's capital.
------
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/24/13.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
For Immediate Release
February 24, 2000
Presidential Determination No. 2000-15
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
SUBJECT: U.S. Contribution to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO): Certification and Waiver Under the Heading "Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining and Related Programs" in Title II of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2000, as enacted in Public Law 106-113
Pursuant to section 576(b) of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2000 (the Act), as enacted in the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2000 (Public Law 106-113), I hereby certify that:
(1) the parties to the Agreed Framework have taken and continue to take demonstrable steps to implement the Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in which the Government of North Korea has committed not to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons, and not to possess nuclear reprocessing or uranium enrichment facilities;
(2) the parties to the Agreed Framework have taken and continue to take demonstrable steps to pursue the North-South dialogue; and
(3) North Korea is complying with all provisions of the Agreed Framework.
Pursuant to the authority vested in me by section 576(d) of the Act, I hereby determine that it is vital to the national security interests of the United States to furnish up to $15 million in funds made available under the heading "Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs" of the Act, for assistance for KEDO, and therefore I hereby waive the requirement in section 576(b) to certify that:
(4) North Korea has not diverted assistance provided by the United States for purposes for which it was not intended; and
(5) North Korea is not seeking to develop or acquire the capability to enrich uranium, or any additional capability to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
You are hereby authorized and directed to report this certification and waiver to the Congress and to arrange for its publication in the Federal Register.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
----------- india
India, a Nuclear Power, Raises Military Spending 28 Percent
New York Times
March 1, 2000
By BARRY BEARAK
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/030100india-military.html
NEW DELHI, Feb. 29 -- With relations between the bitter foes India and Pakistan at their worst point in three decades, New Delhi announced a 28.2 percent increase in military spending today. It is the largest single-year increase in the nation's history.
"We shall not shrink from making any sacrifice to guard and protect every inch of our beloved motherland," Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said in presenting the country's annual budget to Parliament.
The announcement comes less than three weeks before President Clinton is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on a mission that is at least partly intended to ease the strain between the world's two newest nuclear weapons states.
A big jump in military spending is no surprise. It has been expected since India fought intense battles with Pakistani-backed forces in the frigid mountains of Kashmir six months ago. The Indians drove off the invaders, but the incursion revealed weaknesses in the nation's defenses. The military complained that a decade of belt-tightening had left it without needed funds for basic supplies, surveillance equipment and upgraded weapons.
Tensions have only grown worse. Pakistan's military overthrew the elected government. Guerrilla attacks have become epidemic in Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for the hijacking of an Indian airliner on Christmas Eve.
"India is sending a message with the new budget," said George Perkovich, author of the new book "India's Nuclear Bomb" (University of California, 1999). "It's saying to Pakistan, 'O.K., you may want to use a bellicose strategy against us, but you're broke and we're not. We're going to spend 28 percent more. Can you match that?' "
Indeed, Pakistan is deeply in debt. But India, too, has a ballooning fiscal deficit. The budget for the year beginning April 1 calls for tax increases on higher-income people, a review of state subsidies and cuts in the government payroll.
Manpower cuts will not include the military, which will now have an allowance of $13.5 billion. Nearly half the money will go to the army. It is unclear how much will be devoted to nuclear weapons, though the Pakistanis will no doubt fear the worst.
"It's really mind-boggling how a country could increase a budget 28 percent if it was just for conventional forces," said a spokesman for Pakistan, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi.
In May 1998, India tested a nuclear device and Pakistan followed 17 days later. Ever since, there has been fear of an arms race.
The rise in India's military budget is a victory for the nation's hawks, who want to beef up the armed forces. However, it is also a repudiation of their earlier views, when they argued that nuclear weapons would buy a better defense for less money.
Others see a bigger military budget as an overdue payment. "India has a one-million-man army, a two-fleet navy and a 35-combat-squadron air force -- and that takes money," said Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.
In 1990, when India was experiencing a financial crisis, the military budget was cut back as a percentage of the gross domestic product, Mr. Bhaskar said.
The decline largely continued, though the largest increase in recent years was 14 percent in 1998.
Fighting last summer in Kashmir was a jolting reminder, Mr. Bhaskar said. "All that's happening now is that we're catching up," he said.
---
Peace seen unlikely on Indian subcontinent
Washington Times
March 1, 2000
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/world2-03012000.htm
A sharp boost in military spending announced by India yesterday - just three weeks before a visit by President Clinton to South Asia -came as yet another disappointing sign to U.S. officials that prospects for peace in the region remain remote.
"India's defense budget increase is an indication they do not believe they will have peace with Pakistan in the near future," said a senior U.S. official.
India boosted its military budget for the coming year by 28 percent to $13.6 billion, the largest increase ever for the world's fourth-largest military. The announcement came as artillery barrages exploded over the Line of Control separating Pakistani- and Indian-held portions of Kashmir.
March is the traditional time for an upsurge in fighting as snows melt to open high mountain passes to troop movements.
Some analysts predicted that this year would be especially violent for the two nations, which have fought two wars over the disputed Himalayan region since independence in 1947.
India is anxious to recover from the humiliation of last summer's incursion into Kashmir by Pakistani-backed Islamic militants, and the shame of having to deal with Pakistani hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet during Christmas week.
Pakistan, now ruled by military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is seeking to erase the humiliation of being forced to evacuate Kashmir last summer and being named the aggressor by the United States -once its major ally.
To top it off, U.S. officials still will not say if Mr. Clinton will make a brief stop in Pakistan during his March 19-26 visit to the region.
A visit to India and not Pakistan would be an enormous embarrassment to the shaky Islamabad government and the Pakistani people, analysts say.
"No decision has yet been made on a visit to Pakistan during Mr. Clinton's trip to India and Bangladesh," the U.S. official said yesterday. "Pakistan is a work in progress. We are in communication with each other."
The official noted that U.S. advance-planning teams are actively working in India to prepare for Mr. Clinton's visit, the first by a U.S. president in more than 20 years to the world's most populous democracy, with 1 billion people.
While Mr. Clinton's visit draws near, tensions continue to climb in the region.
A Pakistani official yesterday said the military-budget increase was a sign that India had "hegemonic designs" of controlling South Asia.
The U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said that India remains barred, since May 1998 when it set off nuclear blasts, from purchasing U.S. weapons.
"If they moved towards the international mainstream in nuclear proliferation, we'd ease the sanctions," the official said. "Benchmarks have been prepared, but we do not talk about them openly."
The United States wants India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was rejected by the U.S. Senate, or a significant move to limit nuclear proliferation in South Asia.
According to James Clad, professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University, Mr. Clinton's visit is increasing tension because it has been poorly planned.
"This impending visit seems to have been clumsily put together. The U.S. clumsiness results from the administration's well-intentioned efforts to try to have some ameliorating effect on Pakistan's downward slide in a time of severe troubles," said Mr. Clad. "And the visit - which many see as mostly designed to fill in President Clinton's lame-duck 'dance card' anyway - remains hostage to the nuclear issue."
Both countries set off nuclear blasts in 1998, triggering automatic U.S. sanctions, which Congress later allowed Mr. Clinton to waive if he sees fit.
"In broadest terms, Bill Clinton thinks that as the first American president born after World War II, he can put Indian-American relations on a better, different course" than during the Cold War, when the United States was Pakistan's ally, the U.S. official said.
The official noted that India has become less aggressive toward its smaller neighbors, aside from Pakistan: "I think they are beginning to understand that bullies are not really appreciated."
-------- japan
Japanese Mark Nuclear Anniversary
Assiociated Press
March 1, 2000 Filed at 9:42 a.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Nuke-Protest.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Demonstrators on Wednesday protested against nuclear weapons by laying roses at the grave of a Japanese fisherman who died in U.S. atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll 46 years ago.
Some 1,700 protesters carrying photographs of Aikichi Kuboyama walked about a mile from Yaizu Station in Shizuoka Prefecture (state) to hold a ceremony at Kuboyama's grave, said protest organizer Shoji Umeda.
Umeda said the marchers, who included members of Japanese civic groups and representatives from the United States and the Marshall Islands, laid roses at the grave. Some of the leaders repeated Kuboyama's dying wish: ``I hope I will be the last victim of atomic and hydrogen bombing.''
Kuboyama was a radio operator aboard a fishing boat on March 1, 1954 when the United States tested a nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean.
Radiation from the blast engulfed the 23 fishermen aboard Kuboyama's boat, which was trolling for tuna about 100 miles away.
Kuboyama died from the effects of radiation poisoning six months later on Sept. 23, followed by 11 others who died from the same cause over the next 21 years, Umeda said.
The march in Shizuoka, about 94 miles west of Tokyo, is held annually in memory of Kuboyama.
Umeda said some of the marchers were members of groups protesting nuclear power for civilian use, a growing concern in Japan after the death late last year of a worker who suffered radiation exposure in Japan's worst nuclear accident.
The death of Hisashi Ouchi, the first at a nuclear power facility in Japan, fueled calls for a slowdown in the country's atomic energy program.
------------ russia
Police Failed To Close Down Greenpeace
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 13:14:35 -0500
From: Josh Handler jhandler@princeton.edu
Organization: Princeton University
Moscow. Today police officers tried to close down the Russian office of the international organization "Greenpeace".
At about 12 o'clock in the morning a police officer demanded that in 20 minutes the Greenpeace officers leave the premises after which the office doors would be sealed. As he claimed, the reason why the office was to be closed down was the illegal replanning of the premises by Greenpeace. However, the officer could not present any papers to support his claims. He could not produce any document to confirm the existence of the order to close down the organization, either.
At the police department of the Begovoy District Sergey Tsyplenkov, Director of Greenpeace Russia, could not get any documents that could give officers of Greenpeace Russia any reasons to stop working and leave their working places. Neither could Mr. Eugeny Andrianov, Chairman of the "Begovaya" City Council, present any official documents to support the actions of the police.
According to some unofficial information and as people from law enforcement bodies and the City Council were saying the decision to shut down the Greenpeace office had been drawn on February 29 at a session of the Moscow Interdepartmental Anti-terrorist Commission.
As of 4.30 p.m. Greenpeace Russia continues its work.
For additional information, please, contact Eugeny Usov, Polina Malysheva or Ivan Blokov at 257-41-16/18/22.
==============
Prosecutors Are Looking Into Greens Nationwide
By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer Moscow Times
Wednesday, March 1, 2000
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/01-Mar-2000/stories/story6.html
The Prosecutor General's Office has ordered its investigators to look into environmental groups across the nation, in what ecology activists say is an attempt to hinder their work.
Groups being audited include Zelyony Mir, which has offered critical reports over the years of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, or LAES; the Ariston Fund, which keeps an unofficial eye on Karelia's Nadvoitsk Aluminum Plant; and Ecological Watch of Sakhalin, which has reported on the dumping of industrial waste in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Officials at the Prosecutor General's Office confirmed Monday that they have ordered a nationwide check into ecological organizations.
----
ARRESTS IN MOSCOW
FSB officials are calling two young women "terrorists"
From: Alisa Nikoulina - aln@glasnet.ru
February 26, 2000
The events of February 23 became well-known in Russia quickly: "Terrorists who blew up the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) entrance hall on April, 4, 1999, have finally been caught and arrested". That's how TV has presented evidently falsified information which of course was provided by the FSB, itself. FSB employees were even confused enough to say that the arrestees are two young women who couldn't be caught because they weren't escaping from anyone. One of them, Nadezhda Raks, 26, worked as an English teacher in a school, the other one, Olga Nevskaya, 23, is a musician. Nadezhda is a member of a youth RKSM(b) organization and a communist, Olga is an anarchist and a member of the ecological movement. Neither of them hid from anyone, and Nadezhda has been interrogated prior to her arrest several times, which was preceded by months of searches and observation. An FSB employee was interviewed on TV saying these are "the young people of anarchist worldview" and "their organization NRA (New Revolutionary Alternative) consists of about hundred people".
That's remarkable, the "NRA" case is conducted by the same investigators who acted within "Krasnodar case" and "RVS case". Both cases, as known, had been broken because the guilt of the accused persons (the young people as well) couldn't be proven. But the investigators don't feel bad. An investigator Andreev told a witness at one of the last interrogations, "we'll imprison you all just after March, 26".
We can answer some questions, of they don't say the truth. First, an investigation needs to "close" the case right now, before the Putin's elections, because he was the first one to come to the place right after an explosion. Second, the mostly unsafe people have been arrested and just because they are the friends of a "Krasnodar case" heroes, connected with terrorist accusations as well. Third, it's the next case provoked by FSB in order to report on different versions of the explosions at Moscow: the ones about Chechyens, anarchists and ecologists. Fourth, even before any formal and legitimate legal investigation, FSB officials are already calling these women "terrorists" and the press has not challenged this.
We'll never know the true perpetrators of any explosions. We can be sure, however, that the FSB will tell more lies the next time, and the Russian media will not hesitate to broadcast them across the country. That's what will be called "a democracy in pre-Putin epoch".
Project of Opposing Political Repressions
http://www.ecoline.ru/POPR
popr@mail.ru, aln@glasnet.ru
Russia 121471, Moscow, Gvardeyskaya, 1-104
---------
Putin leading Russia towards "modernised Stalinism": Bonner
MOSCOW, Wednesday, March 1 6:15 PM SGT (AFP) -
http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=hke/headlines/000301/world/afp/Putin_leading_Russia_towards__modernised_Stalinism___Bonner.html
Vladimir Putin is overseeing the introduction of a dark era of "modernised Stalinism," Yelena Bonner, widow of rights activist Andrei Sakharov, said in an opinion piece published Wednesday.
Bonner and a raft of leading Russian rights activists urged the West to "re-examine their attitude toward the Kremlin leadership, to cease indulging it in its barbaric actions, its dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights."
The harshly-worded polemic urged the "democratic world" to support "our efforts to stop the war in Chechnya; restoration of freedom of the press; and the activity of civil rights and national-minority organisations."
The article, published in the English-language Moscow Times, marked a rare critical outburst in Russia, where press and television carry largely pro-Putin coverage.
It painted a stark picture of life under Putin, who became acting president on December 31 following the shock resignation of Boris Yeltsin, and remains the overwhelming favourite to win March 26 elections.
"Under Putin, a new stage in the introduction of modernised Stalinism has begun. Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarised, the military budget is increasing," the group added.
Special units of the FSB domestic intelligence agency were being recreated within the military, military education is being reintroduced into schools, university students and high school graduates were being drafted.
"Nationalist and anti-Western propaganda is increasing. The influence of the security agencies is increasing," the authors noted.
The Andrei Babitsky case highlighted civil rights concerns, they said, noting that three-quarters of civil rights organisations had been stripped of their right to conduct legal activity.
Bonner and her co-authors said the modernised form of Stalinism had been re-established" during Yeltsin's reign under the cover of democratic and market reforms applauded by the West.
Two-thirds of Russians worked for nothing or symbolic wages, twice Stalin-era levels; more than one million people were languishing in gruesome prisons.
"Add to that the victims of two Chechen wars and the mafia terror throughout the country. Yet today, all the citizens of the country are free and may even travel abroad. Modernisation!"
Powerful businessmen known as "oligarchs" ensured a compliant mass media, the rights activists wrote, adding: "Elections in such conditions have become a farce.
"The mass media pour filth upon all serious opponents of the Kremlin and barely let their voices be heard. Falsification of vote counts has flourished," they said saying that at least real elections were possible within the Communist Central Committee."
A Kremlin spokesman said "we have no comment."
Putin's potential rivals for the Kremlin, Moscow's powerful mayor Yury Luzhkov and ex-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, saw their poll ratings destroyed by a vicious mud-slinging campaign in state-controlled media orchestrated by the presidential administration.
-----
U.S. And Russian Arms Officials Resume ABM Talks
GENEVA, Mar 1, 2000 -- (Reuters)
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=139344
Senior American and Russian arms control experts began fresh talks on Tuesday expected to focus on a proposed U.S. national missile defense system which would require changes in a major treaty, diplomatic sources said.
John Holum, senior arms adviser at the State Department, was expected to press U.S. proposals to modify the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in his closed-door talks with Russian counterpart Yuri Kapralov, they added.
A U.S. spokesman confirmed that the three-day talks - which were not announced by either side - began in Geneva on Tuesday afternoon, but he declined to give details.
Russia opposes a proposed U.S. weapons system which would breach the 1972 ABM treaty. Russian disarmament ambassador Vasily Sidorov, addressing the U.N. disarmament forum in Geneva last week, firmly ruled out accepting any changes to the Cold War-era pact which limits the type of systems Russia and the United States may deploy to intercept incoming missiles.
China is also bitterly opposed to the controversial U.S. weapons system and to any changes in the ABM, hailed as a cornerstone of strategic stability.
U.S. and Russian delegations were also expected to discuss a future START-3 treaty aimed at further reducing their long-range nuclear weapons' arsenals, the diplomatic sources said.
"Officials from the United States and Russia are meeting once again in Geneva in accordance with the Cologne agreement," a U.S. spokesman told Reuters in response to an enquiry.
U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed last June in the German town of Cologne to work to resolve their differences over the ABM and strategic nuclear weapons.
Yeltsin agreed at the time to hold talks to listen to U.S. proposals to modify the ABM, although he reiterated Russia's strong opposition to changes.
The Geneva talks, which follow a three-day session in January, are the fourth technical-level round since the summit.
Clinton is to decide this summer on whether to go ahead with a national missile defense scheme to be deployed by 2005.
The program would cost some $12.7 billion over the next six years and start with the building of a base in Alaska equipped with 100 interceptors capable of shooting down incoming ballistic missiles targeted on the United States.
U.S. officials say it would be a limited version of former President Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' program designed to protect U.S. cities against attack from perceived rogue states such as North Korea or Iran.
The United States shot down a dummy warhead over the Pacific Ocean last October, but a second test failed last month.
-----
Radar No Threat To Russia, Says Norway
OSLO, Mar 1, 2000
Agence France Presse
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=139585
A US-built radar station being installed in northern Norway does not violate the 1972 ABM Treaty and poses no threat to Russia, Norwegian Defense Minister Eldbjoerg Loewer said here Wednesday.
"Construction of the American Globus-2 radar does not violate the ABM Treaty," Loewer said in parliament during a question-answer session.
"It also poses no threat to Russia," Loewer said.
The radar, which Norway says will be used to track satellite trajectories, will be placed entirely under Norwegian control and operated by Norwegian personnel, Loewer assured.
The station -- which is linked to the Echelon interpretation center in Britain -- provides early warning in case of missile launches, but Russia maintains it is equally used to listen in on Russian radio emissions, ITAR-TASS said last week.
Globus-2 will be stationed 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border.
The radar was formerly in use in California at the Vandeburg Air Force Base and was known as Have Star. After modifications implemented in 1999, it was christened Globus-2 when it was shipped to Vardoe to replace the existing, and aging, original Globus.
"These modifications would not make the radar a link in any anti-missile defense system," Loewer said.
The United States on Thursday denied European allegations that Echelon had been used in economic espionage to profit US firms.
Controversy over Globus-2 and its aims has surfaced in Norway, with one member of parliament this week demanding it be dismantled and "sent back to Vandenberg" since it was "part of a United States nuclear missile defense system." ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)
-----
Russian Navy To Resume Exercises In The Mediterranean
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=139581
MOSCOW, Mar 1, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The Russian Navy has decided to dispatch around 10 battleships to the Mediterranean next November for three months of combat maneuvers, the force's chief told the Interfax news agency Wednesday.
Admiral Viktor Kravchenko said the Amiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and several nuclear submarines would take part in the exercises, and justified the expedition by pointing to the end of hostilities with the West.
"The era of the cold war is over," said the admiral, arguing that the mission had been deemed necessary because Russian warships were no longer required to patrol the Mediterranean "permanently."
Reconnaissance ships from Russia's Black Sea fleet began regularly patrols last month in the waters of the Mediterranean, with the aim of supply Russia's military with information on activities in the sea and the Gulf, he said.
The reconnaissance vessel Kildine was dispatched to the Mediterranean in early February to monitor a NATO naval build-up in the Gulf, a senior Russian commander said. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)
-----
Russian psychobabble
Albright gets in touch with the inner Putin
Washington Times
March 1, 2000
David J. Kramer
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/kramer-20000301.htm
In the words of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, enough "psychobabble" about Russia's acting president, Vladimir Putin. "What is important," she said during her recent trip to Moscow, "is to judge him by what he does."
Impressed by Mr. Putin's "can-do approach," Mrs. Albright, like her counterparts in Britain, Germany, France and Italy, clearly came away positively impressed by Russia's new leader. Unlike former President Boris Yeltsin, here is a man who can discuss key issues coherently and vigorously.
If Mrs. Albright were to follow her own advice, however, she might think twice before embracing Mr. Putin. The first senior Clinton administration official to visit Moscow since Mr. Yeltsin's resignation last Dec. 31, Mrs. Albright days before her trip dubbed Mr. Putin "one of the leading reformers" in Russia. She based this judgment on his activities as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, overlooking the fact that Mr. Putin spent 16 years in the Soviet KGB and then more recently served as head of Russia's unreformed successor agency, the FSB, before becoming prime minister last August.
Until rising to the top last summer, Mr. Putin was not considered one of Russia's real reformers. More importantly, to judge Mr. Putin on his record is to focus on the war in Chechnya. Mr. Putin's rise in the polls and to the presidency rests solely on his handling of the military campaign in the breakaway region. Many Russians like his no-nonsense, take-charge approach after years of impotence under Mr. Yeltsin.
If we in the West are comfortable with what he has done in Chechnya, then we should feel good about four more years of a Putin presidency. If, on the other hand, we are appalled by Russia's bloody, indiscriminate slaughter in Chechnya -which has devastated an already impoverished region, killed countless innocent civilians, created more than 200,000 refugees, and has seen Russian troops commit war crimes as documented by Human Rights Watch - then we should feel less sanguine about a Putin-led Russia.
Both Mrs. Albright and President Clinton have warned that Moscow's bloody policy toward Chechnya would lead to Russia's becoming "increasingly isolated." Yet the Council of Europe only postponed until April - conveniently after Russia's presidential election - any consideration of suspending Moscow's membership because of Chechnya.
Moreover, high-level foreign visitors, including the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany, France, and Italy as well as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan have streamed into Moscow in recent weeks. During Mrs. Albright's visit, Russia co-sponsored a round of Middle East negotiations. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, on a recent visit, sought to end the thaw in Russian-NATO relations. If this is isolation, Moscow must wonder what engagement would look like.
Beyond empty rhetoric criticizing Russia's campaign against Chechnya, the administration has twice blocked the release of funds to Russia - but without acknowledging honestly that its actions were driven by concern over the war.
Yet few observers doubt that the second $640 million installment from the International Monetary Fund has been held up for several months because of opposition to Chechnya, not because of Russia's failure to meet ever-changing economic criteria, as the administration and the IMF claim. Why was the IMF not such a stickler for conditionality when it released the first installment last July? The IMF should either give Russia the money and reject linkage to Chechnya, or, preferably, hold up the funds and explicitly link such suspension to the war.
In hiding behind economic criteria that Russia supposedly has not met, the administration and other Western governments are guilty of the worst possible politicization of the IMF.
The same goes for the State Department's intervention last December on a loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to Tyumen Oil Co., a Russian company. Hours before the Bank's board members were to decide on the Tyumen application, the State Department stepped in to block the loan, officially because proceeding with the loan would not be in "the national interests." Despite being under pressure from human rights groups to do something to register its outrage over the war in Chechnya, the administration claimed unconvincingly that Chechnya in fact had nothing to do with the delay. According to government officials, it was Tyumen's questionable business activity and the need to reinforce the importance of the rule of law in Russia that caused State to intervene. The proposed loan was a terrible idea for reasons having nothing to do with Chechnya, yet the administration before Chechnya became an issue never weighed in against the loan.
That Mr. Putin wants good relations with the United States is no surprise; Sergei Ivanov, the head of Russia's security council, was recently in Washington to explore the possibility of a Clinton-Putin summit meeting this summer. To Moscow, it's business-as-usual with the West and the Clinton administration is a willing interlocutor.
Yet a business-as-usual approach to Russia seems wholly unwarranted. In addition to Chechnya, Mr. Putin's record includes the accord he engineered in January between his party and the communists in the Russian Duma, which calls for massive increases in defense spending. He has approved for Russian security services to expand surveillance of the Internet, and he has condoned a crackdown against media critical of his government and its Chechen campaign (including, notably, Andrei Babitsky - a Radio Liberty correspondent arrested for his reporting from Grozny).
It is important for U.S. officials to get a first hand feel for Russia's new leader, but it would be misguided on the basis of Mrs. Albright's one meeting for the administration to jump on the Putin bandwagon. Mr. Clinton's comments in a recent CNN.com interview suggest, however, that he has already hopped on board. "What I have seen of him so far indicates to me that he is capable of being a very strong, effective, straightforward leader," Mr. Clinton said. That amounts to replacing "psychobabble" about Mr. Putin with wishful thinking.
--------
Released Reporter Describes Beatings
Babitsky Claims Russians Abused Chechen Captives
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 1, 2000; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/01/211l-030100-idx.html
MOSCOW, Feb. 29-Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky, freed from captivity at the suggestion of acting President Vladimir Putin, returned to Moscow early today and said he and other prisoners were beaten by Russian forces while jailed in Chechnya.
His descriptions of severe abuse matched testimony from former inmates given to The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch last month about conditions at a "filtration camp" in Chernokozovo, where Chechen men and women suspected of rebel connections are taken for interrogation.
Besides beatings with rubber truncheons, Babitsky said, guards sprayed prisoners with tear gas in their cells. Women were also tortured. "Everything we read about Stalin's concentration camps, everything we know about German concentration camps, can be found there," Babitsky said of Chernokozovo.
Babitsky spoke both on Radio Liberty, the U.S.-funded station with a bureau in Moscow, and NTV, an independent Russian television station.
He traveled to Moscow overnight from the southern Russian region of Dagestan on a plane ordered for him by Interior Minister Vladimir Rushaylo. Babitsky's wife, who had gone to Dagestan to visit him in jail, was not told of his release. She later followed him to Moscow by commercial jet.
Babitsky, 35, was released on condition that he not leave Moscow. His return to the capital ended a six-week period of fearful uncertainty for the reporter. He was detained in mid-January by the Russians as he tried to leave Grozny. Later, his captors turned him over to masked men in exchange for Russian prisoners. The trade sparked an uproar among Russian journalists and foreign governments.
Babitsky's saga highlighted both Russia's poor treatment of Chechens and its battle with journalists over war coverage. Officials have branded independent reports of indiscriminate bombing, looting and murder from Chechnya as "terrorist lies" and have accused reporters of working either for the rebels or for foreign intelligence agencies aiming to undermine Russia's campaign in the breakaway southern region.
Babitsky's first interviews upon arrival were likely to further anger officials. "I saw people who had been beaten most brutally, till their backs were blue," he told NTV.
Babitsky described the beating of a man named Aslanbek Shaipov, from Katyr-Yurt, a town where heavy combat between rebels and government security forces took place last month. "He was summoned in the morning, afternoon and evening. He was beaten, beaten and beaten.
"While we were spending the night in a prison van, he had all his teeth beaten out."
Speaking of the guards, he said, "They enjoyed their small pleasures. They would set people off running on their knees along the corridor. The detainees were 'helped' with batons to reach an officer at the far end . . . and had to address him as 'Mr. Colonel,' or thank him in a fanciful manner."
A woman was tortured for two hours on Jan. 19 or 20, he recalled. "There were cries testifying to the fact that a human being was being subjected to excruciating, unbearable pain for a long time," he said.
He told Radio Liberty that he was "in the hands of sadists" in Chernokozovo. He played down abuse he suffered directly, saying, "I underwent a routine light 'registration.'
"It's several dozen strikes of a club on the body, whose traces disappear within two or three days and do not leave any serious, irreparable internal consequences. I do not consider what happened to me there as 'beating up,' because getting beaten up in Chernokozovo is real torment."
Russian officials have denied stories of torture and beatings in Chernokozovo. They took reporters there this week to show prisoners exercising and lounging in their cells. Some of the cells had newly painted doors, which guides had to pry open.
Prisoners said recently guards were rotated out and replaced by new ones. Women outside the prison charged that many inmates were spirited from the jail by the Russians the night before the visit, according to NTV.
In January, Babitsky was held incommunicado for several days before his exchange for Russian prisoners. He said he agreed to the exchange, but changed his mind when he discovered that the Chechen rebels he expected to retrieve and free him were not involved.
Instead, masked men took him into custody and held him for another month in a Chechen village. Finally last Friday, he was ferried in the trunk of a car east to Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital. There he was arrested for carrying a false passport. He said the passport was given to him by his captors, who took his authentic documents.
-------- taiwan
Taiwan Asks U.S. to Let It Obtain Top-Flight Arms
New York Times
March 1, 2000
By ERIK ECKHOLM with STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/030100china-us-taiwan.html
Related Article
China Dismisses Furor Over Its Taiwan Policy
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/030100china-taiwan.html
BEIJING, Feb. 29 -- At a time of high tension among China, Taiwan and the United States, Taiwan's government is pressing Washington to sell it some of the most advanced defensive weapons as part of an ambitious new plan to counter China's growing military power.
The request for weapons, including four warships equipped with sophisticated radar and antimissile systems costing more than $1.5 billion each, has already provoked severe warnings from Beijing and has put the Clinton administration in a serious political bind.
Chinese diplomats have privately said that the warship sales in particular would be regarded as a serious violation of China's national sovereignty and would create dangerous new tensions with the United States as well as across the Taiwan Strait.
But Taiwan is determined to create a new shield against China's expanding forces of ballistic and cruise missiles, officials in Taipei said in interviews last week. An American refusal to sell Taiwan the weapons would cause enormous bitterness on the island, the officials said.
The Clinton administration is divided over the sales, which are supported by some American military officers and Pentagon officials as justified for Taiwan's defense but opposed by some officials in the State Department and the National Security Council as an unnecessary and risky provocation of China. Beijing regards Taiwan as Chinese territory, separated by civil war.
President Clinton seeks better relations with China. But refusing Taiwan's request would anger Taiwan's most ardent supporters in Washington, who want closer military ties with Taiwan as a price for one of Mr. Clinton's major goals, China's admission to the World Trade Organization.
In recent years, Republicans in Congress have accused the administration of ignoring Taiwan's needs, an argument supported by lobbyists for military contractors.
While Taiwan officials were reluctant to comment directly on the arms request, they did not mask their fervent desire for the weapons.
"We are not so confident that if we are attacked, the United States will be there," said Maj. Gen. Tyson G. Fu, director of strategic studies at the Armed Forces University in Taiwan. "So we have adopted a stand-alone strategy."
As part of a larger weapons request, Taiwan has asked the United States to sell it four guided-missile destroyers equipped with Aegis radar, tracking and battle management systems -- one of the American military's most advanced warships and one never before sold abroad completely equipped.
A decision is expected by April, when the United States and Taiwan hold annual talks on arms sales. The consideration of Taiwan's request, submitted to Washington last fall, comes as American relations with China are further strained by China's warning last week that it may use force if Taiwan delays negotiations on reunification indefinitely.
China's warning prompted new criticism in Washington and appeared to bolster Congressional support for the proposed Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, which would deepen American military contacts with Taiwan and is opposed by Mr. Clinton. The House passed the legislation earlier this month, and the Senate is now considering it.
The administration's debate over the arms sales, carried out in private over issues that are as much political as military, crystallizes all the contradictions in American policy toward Taiwan, which the United States wants to protect from attack even as it officially recognizes Beijing as the sole government of "one China."
"I don't think I've seen so much anxiety over a decision," a senior administration official said.
The commander of American forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, who is now visiting China for discussions on Taiwan and other issues, has supported the sale of destroyers, but not necessarily with the elaborate Aegis system, officials in Washington said. He has not yet made a formal recommendation.
In addition to the Aegis-equipped warships, Taiwan has also asked to buy batteries of the latest Patriot missiles, which are ground-based interceptors, as well as advanced long-range radar.
Taiwan officials see the three purchases together as the core of a new defensive shield, General Fu said, and the Aegis system is considered essential "because it's mobile and more survivable than the Patriot."
Taiwan has also requested diesel submarines, P-3 surveillance aircraft and a variety of American missiles. But the request for submarines is a perennial one and is certain to be denied.
While China opposes any significant weapon sales to Taiwan, the Aegis-equipped warship is the most controversial, because it would involve a leap in Taiwan's technological level and because it could also, experts say, someday be adapted for use in the kind of upper-atmospheric missile defense that China has most vehemently condemned.
In private warnings to American scholars and diplomats, the Chinese have vehemently warned against the sale of Aegis warships, calling such a sale a violation of China's sovereignty and of previous agreements.
Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is to provide Taiwan only with defensive weapons "in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability."
In a 1982 agreement with China, President Reagan also pledged not to increase the quantity or quality of arms sold to Taiwan and said the United States would gradually reduce arms sales if the mainland and Taiwan pursued a peaceful solution to their conflict, a condition that some say Beijing has violated with its threats.
Officials at the State Department and White House have argued that neither the Aegis system nor other ultra-sophisticated weapons can buy Taiwan real security, which they say depends on negotiations and, ultimately, American support.
Supporters of the sale, including senior military officers, counter that Taiwan has a good case. "We are required to give capabilities that help Taiwan defend itself," said one senior administration official who favors the sale.
Ultimately, administration and Pentagon officials said, President Clinton may approve only part of Taiwan's request, rejecting the Aegis destroyers but offering enough other weapons to avoid criticism that the administration is not supporting Taiwan enough.
In Taipei, officials said they saw a vital need for advanced defenses, including the Aegis system on Arleigh Burke missile destroyers, despite the enormous costs. The four ships that Taiwan has requested would cost $6.5 billion to build and equip, officials in Washington say.
Taiwan must act now, its officials say, to counter China's buildup of ballistic missiles on its coast near Taiwan, its crash program to develop long-range cruise missiles and its recent purchase of Russian destroyers.
Taiwan's special interest in the Aegis system is not hard to understand. American military experts said the system had originally been designed to counter waves of cruise missiles, including the Sunburn guided missiles carried on the four Russian destroyers China ordered.
With computers able to track many threats at once and coordinate responses, the Aegis system also can combat jet fighters and warships.
American experts say China is right in contending that the Aegis system could be adapted for use in a future, "upper-tier" defense that could spot incoming missiles early in their trajectory and target them high in the atmosphere or even above it -- the so-called theater missile defense that the United States and Japan are working to develop and that China strongly opposes.
"That's true," agreed General Fu in Taipei, of the potentially expanded use. "But any excuse will serve a tyrant. The Chinese even say the Patriots have offensive uses." The Patriot antimissile system is a less advanced weapon.
Taiwan officials insist that their proposals are based on military need, but such requests inevitably take on a heavy symbolic burden.
"If the United States turns us down, Taiwan's elite groups will feel a very emotional bitterness," said a senior Taiwan national security official, who spoke on condition that his name not be used. "We have the money, and we think this is important to our survival."
Michael D. Swaine, a military expert at the Rand Corporation in California, said, "There are those in Taiwan who see the Aegis sale as a strong symbol of the United States commitment to defending Taiwan."
If the Aegis destroyer sales are approved, the first delivery will not be for perhaps five years, followed by more years of training and technical cooperation between the American and Taiwan militaries so that the systems can be used effectively.
Learning to use the highly sophisticated Aegis "is a tall order for the Taiwanese from an operational point of view," Mr. Swaine said, but without such instruction, the warships "will just become big magnets for Chinese missiles or torpedoes."
Such enhanced cooperation between the two militaries is, in itself, a political goal of Taiwan and is strongly objectionable to China.
China's intense concern about the Aegis system arises in part from the potential link to the broader antimissile network that the United States and Japan are pursuing. China fears that if Taiwan is included, not only will Beijing's best weapons be blunted, but Taiwan's military will also become closely integrated with American forces in an effective alliance.
Taiwan's defense minister, Tang Fei, has publicly joked that T.M.D. stands for "Taiwan missile defense." But he and other officials say for the record that they have decided only to develop a "lower-tier" defense with the Patriot and Aegis systems, withholding judgment on any future defensive network.
"If the United States and Japan do develop an upper-tier defense, then, from the bottom of our hearts, of course we'll want to join," General Fu said.
Causing new worries in Washington and Beijing, Taiwan's leaders have recently spoken of developing a new, more aggressive deterrent strategy, with a goal of fielding offensive weapons including long-range missiles.
In a Dec. 8 speech on national security, Vice President Lien Chan, who is the Nationalist Party candidate for president in the election on March 18, said, "Our country must establish effective deterrent forces so that Communist China won't dare take on Taiwan," including "the attacking potential of long-distance surface-to-surface missiles."
The statement angered American officials who are hoping to cool tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
In Taiwan there seems to be a near-consensus on military issues among the three major contenders for president. If anything, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which has a history of advocating Taiwan's formal independence, might be more hawkish.
"We all agree that the best defense is a good offense," Parris Chang, a legislator from that party and one if its defense experts, said in an interview. "Taiwan needs cruise missiles able to reach Shanghai as a deterrent."
---
Taiwan Awaits U.S. Weapons Decision
Associated Press
March 1, 2000 Filed at 3:44 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Taiwan-Defense.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Beijing's new threats of war have already roiled the Taiwan Strait. Tensions between China and Taiwan could spike again next month when Washington makes its annual decision about which weapons it will sell this island.
The Taiwanese military is secretive about what weaponry it hopes to buy from the United States, fearing that Beijing will try to block the deals. A military spokesman declined to discuss the list Wednesday or say exactly when Washington will respond.
But a lawmaker and local newspapers with close ties to the military say Taipei wants to purchase guided-missile destroyers equipped with the sophisticated AEGIS battle management system, as well as upgraded Patriot missiles and advanced radar systems for an anti-missile shield.
The AEGIS system, which can track hundreds of targets at once, is ``more sophisticated than anything the Taiwanese have now,'' defense expert Paul Beaver said, and by providing a missile defense umbrella over ships or coastal areas would balance out Taiwan's current vulnerability to Chinese missiles.
Taiwan has also wanted to buy submarines and supersonic AIM-120 air-to-air missiles from the United States, one of the only nations that dares to incur Beijing's wrath by supplying arms to the island. However, Washington has repeatedly denied these two requests, saying the weapons could be used for offensive purposes.
Taiwan could be more successful this year because of increased threats from China, said Pan Hsi-tang, a political science professor at Tamkang University in Taipei.
Last week, China issued a policy paper that for the first time threatened to use force against the island if it indefinitely rebuffs talks on unification. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and Taiwan has said it would only reunify when the mainland is more democratic and economically developed.
``The United States might think that China's new threats have created instability in the region and will evaluate more closely Taiwan's arms requests,'' Pan said.
Taiwan was a major topic during two days of meetings this week in China between Chinese military leaders and Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of U.S. Pacific forces. Blair ``expressed great concern'' about China's new threat, U.S. Embassy spokesman Bill Palmer said.
Taiwanese legislator Parris Chang of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party agreed that China's recent warning will improve Taiwan's chances of getting what it wants. The United States will probably approve the radar system and will want to further study the submarine request, Chang said.
``With the AEGIS ships, right now it's a 50-50 chance,'' said Chang, a defense specialist within the Democratic Progressive Party. ``We'll need more help from China. If they issue more threats, then we might get the ships.''
A Chinese official, speaking to reporters last week in Beijing on condition of anonymity, vaguely threatened a Chinese attack if Taiwan gets AEGIS. He said China considers an AEGIS deal to be a violation of U.S. agreements not to sell higher-tech weapons to Taiwan.
``China knows full well how to respond,'' the official said.
Beijing has fiercely opposed any attempts to build up Taiwanese defenses against missiles, which are a major part of China's forces. The AEGIS system, considered one of the most advanced in the world, would dramatically improve Taiwan's missile defenses.
``It makes it more difficult for the Chinese to invade,'' said Beaver, spokesman for the London-based Jane's Information Group, the publishers of Jane's Defense Weekly.
AEGIS would ``bring equilibrium, in that China has a great number of systems, including missiles'' to bring to bear against Taiwan, he said. Washington has previously sold AEGIS systems to Japan.
In a new report by the U.S.-based Rand Corp. think tank, Michael Swaine urged U.S. policymakers to pay closer attention to how Taiwan decides what weapons it needs because of the high risk of conflict with China.
Swaine said Taiwan's decision-making process for security issues is poorly coordinated and that Taiwan often tries to buy advanced weapons without fully considering whether it could operate and maintain the arms.
Taiwan's National Security Council, which advises the president on defense issues, has said the report was flawed.
-------- turkey
Environmentalists protest ahead of Turkish nuclear decision
TURKEY: March 1, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5841
ISTANBUL - Environmental activists wearing "masks of death" yesterday staged a lie-down protest on the eve of an expected Turkish government decision to award the first ever nuclear power plant.
Police in riot gear rapidly carted off some 30 people chanting "No to nuclear power plants" who lay down in the middle of a busy Istanbul square. Many demonstrators wore yellow masks with a black skull and crossbones.
Turkey has until Wednesday to award the multi-billion tender to build the plant on its southern coast. The project, delayed five times since bids were first collected in 1997, has been fraught with controversy.
Environmentalists argue that it is unnecessary when Turkey has not explored any alternative energy sources, and that the proposed site of Akkuyu, on the Mediterranean coast, lies off an active earthquake fault line.
But a housing ministry satellite survey map showed the region as one of the least earthquake prone areas in Turkey.
Two devastating earthquakes ripped through northwest Turkey last year, killing more than 18,000 people and igniting a refinery blaze which threatened to spread out of control.
Building the plant on the coast could also hurt tourism, an important source of income in the region, critics argue.
But the government says Turkey will not be able to meet a projected growth in energy demand if the plant is not built.
The three bidding consortia are lead by Westinghouse Electric Co., which is a unit of Britain's BNFL, Canada's AECL and French-German Nuclear Power International (NPI).
The project is expected to cost up to $5 billion and is slated for completion in 2007.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
-------- us nuc facilities
This issue paper was prepared for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
http://www.dnfsb.gov/techrpts/tech-4.html
May 5, 1995
DNFSB/TECH-4
INTEGRITY OF URANIUM HEXAFLUORIDE CYLINDERS
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
Technical Report
This issue paper was prepared for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board by the following staff members:
David Grover Steven Krahn Charles Martin Cynthia Miller Richard Tontodonato
William Yeniscavich with advice from outside expert:
Theodore Quale
Note: This revision reflects several minor editorial corrections to the original report dated April 27, 1995.
INTEGRITY OF URANIUM HEXAFLUORIDE CYLINDERS
I. OVERVIEW A. Inventory B. Hazard Summary C. Ultimate Disposition D. Corrective Action
II. DISCUSSION A. Corrosion B. Inspection Program C. Cylinder Handling D. Safety Analyses E. Status of Breached Cylinders
III. CONCLUSIONS
Appendix A -- Risk Assessment for UF6 Cylinders in Storage
Appendix B -- Summary of Preliminary Structural Analyses for Uranium Hexafluoride Cylinders in Storage
References
I. OVERVIEW
This report reviews the safety of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6) presently stored in large cylinders at the K-25 Site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the gaseous diffusion plants in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky. Depleted uranium hexafluoride is referred to as the "tailings" of the gaseous diffusion process in uranium enrichment. Cylinders have been used in the uranium enrichment program since the late 1940s for transportation and storage of uranium hexafluoride. This report addresses the integrity of the cylinders as containment vessels.
Cylinder life is limited by exterior corrosion or mechanical damage. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Board) staff reviews of Department of Energy (DOE) actions for remediation of breached cylinders and management of the UF6 cylinder inventory indicate that DOE's present program is not adequate for long-term storage of depleted UF6. After discovering seven breached cylinders in 1990-1992, DOE increased its efforts to study the effects of corrosion, established an inspection program, revised handling procedures, and updated safety reports. However, it appears that:
corrosion studies have not addressed sufficiently the effect of accelerated corrosion mechanisms on cylinder integrity, nor have they been used to predict future cylinder integrity;
the inspection program does not adequately verify cylinder integrity, nor does it document actual current conditions of the cylinders;
handling procedures do not compensate for possible fragility associated with degradation of cylinder integrity, nor do they incorporate lessons learned to prevent further occurrence of cylinder damage during handling; and
safety analyses do not address the potential impact of a breach on the upper portion of the cylinder wall (around the vapor space), nor do they investigate degradation of cylinder integrity as a high-probability initiator of accident scenarios.
Management of the UF6 cylinder inventory would benefit significantly from a systems engineering approach to integration of efforts. Martin Marietta Energy Systems (MMES) attempted a systems approach in its UF6 Long-Term Storage Cylinder Integrity Management Plan. The plan does not, however, integrate aspects of the UF6 program into a useful, problem-solving and decision-making process. In addition, the plan has never been formally approved for implementation by DOE and evidence suggests that many portions of it have never been implemented or closed out, though many of the due dates have passed.
A. Inventory
There are approximately 50,000 storage cylinders containing over 500,000 metric tons of UF6 at the Oak Ridge K-25, Portsmouth, and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plants. UF6 produced prior to July 1994 is legacy material from national defense programs and is the property of DOE; UF6 produced since July 1994 is owned by the U. S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC), and under the regulatory purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. DOE plans to store the depleted UF6 inventory in these cylinders until the year 2020; as shown in Figure 1, the oldest cylinders have been in storage since 1956. Depleted UF6 continues to be produced, filling approximately 2,000 cylinders per year; this material is tailings from the USEC enrichment processes and, therefore, not considered in this report.
The majority of the cylinders, made from low carbon steel, exhibit extensive areas of general corrosion. Outdoor storage in yards with poor drainage, however, gives rise to an even greater concern - accelerated corrosion. Numerous dents and gouges from improper stacking, ground contact, debris buildup on cylinders with skirts, and pitting at the interface area between the cylinder and storage saddles, all present potential sites for initiation of accelerated corrosion mechanisms. The discovery of seven breached cylinders between 1990 and 1992 gave rise to concern about the long-term, safe storage of depleted UF6 in these cylinders.
B. Hazard Summary
UF6 is highly reactive with water, forming soluble reaction products such as uranyl fluoride (UO2F2) and hydrogen fluoride (HF), both of which are toxic. Aqueous HF is an extremely corrosive acid. Exposure to HF can be fatal; however, individuals can smell HF at concentrations two orders of magnitude below the lethal concentration specified in EPA's Integrated Risk Information System.
When released to the atmosphere, gaseous UF6 reacts with water vapor to form a cloud of particulate UO2F2 and HF fumes. The reaction is fast, but is dependent on the availability of water. External contact with HF results in chemical burns of the skin, while exposure to airborne HF causes chemical burns/irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. Because UF6 reacts readily with water and organic materials, it must be handled in clean equipment and out of contact with moist air. A breach in a cylinder allows the external atmosphere to react slowly with the UF6. The solid reaction product tends to plug the breach; however, the HF formed releases slowly, attacks the metal cylinder, and enlarges the breach over time. The hole diameter is estimated to increase at a rate of approximately one inch per year. The reaction products, consisting of UF4, FeF3, and other iron oxides, fall to the ground or onto adjacent cylinders. The material released to the environment is HF and solvated uranyl fluoride [H3O]2[U(OH)4F4], which is soluble in water. Figure 2. is a photograph of the largest breach discovered to-date.
As described in the Draft Preliminary Report of the DOE Independent UF6 Cylinder Assessment Team, the radioactivity UF6 material depends upon the assay, but is approximately three curies per cylinder. Martin Marietta Energy Systems (MMES), the maintenance and operating contractor at all three sites, calculated that the amount of material lost by the largest cylinder breach (in Portsmouth) was about 110 pounds of UF6. Neither this amount nor the amounts of material estimated lost from the other smaller breaches was reportable per EPA standards.
C. Ultimate Disposition
In light of the fact that demand for depleted uranium had become quite small compared to quantities available, the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy directed a study in 1990 to review options and develop a comprehensive plan for inventory management and the ultimate disposition of depleted uranium accumulated at the three gaseous diffusion plants. The report, The Ultimate Disposition of Depleted Uranium, concluded that "it is acceptable and desirable to maintain depleted uranium working inventories as UF6 as long as they remain potential feed sources for the plants and as long as cylinders and storage facilities are adequately monitored and maintained." The report discussed possible options for ultimate disposition, such as transfer or sales to other government programs or to the private sector, but recognized that commercial and government sectors would use only a small fraction of the depleted uranium in the foreseeable future. The report recommended that: UF6 cylinders be inspected on a semi-annual basis; cylinder maintenance and storage yards be upgraded; and depleted uranium be converted to U3O8 for long-term storage or disposal. Contrary to this last recommendation, the present plan established by DOE provides for long-term storage of the depleted, uranium stockpile as UF6 until conversion to uranium oxide begins in fiscal year 2020.
No further decision has been made on the ultimate disposition of the depleted UF6 material. However, DOE published two Federal Register notices in November 1994 concerning UF6: a notice of request for recommendations for potential uses of the depleted UF6 and technologies that could facilitate the long-term management of this material; and an advance notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement. An independent review team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is currently reviewing forty-five written responses to the request for technologies. DOE continues to manage the depleted UF6 resource as "source material" under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended. DOE has also received two unsolicited proposals for conversion of the depleted UF6 to uranium oxide and metal.
D. Corrective Action
DOE and MMES have conducted corrosion studies and investigations of cylinder management to both determine the causes of breached cylinders and to recommend preventive measures against future breaches. These efforts have been undertaken by several different groups, including special investigation teams and one independent review team.
The review conducted by the DOE Independent UF6 Cylinder Assessment Team was a comprehensive assessment of the entire cylinder program. The team reviewed the design, fabrication, transportation, filling, storage, handling, inspection, legal considerations, safety and health considerations, environmental considerations and ultimate disposition of the cylinders. Unfortunately, this report is still considered "draft" after three years. Other investigations, such as the Cylinder Yard Inspection and Corrective Actions, and Investigation of Breached Depleted UF6 Cylinders at the K-25 Site, were focused on smaller segments of the cylinder program. Each report brought forth specific, technically supported recommendations which collectively cover nearly every aspect of UF6 cylinder management.
In each report the findings were very similar and they each came to similar conclusions. These reports proposed solutions as basic as forcing contractor compliance with the manual, Uranium Hexafluoride: A Manual of Good Handling Practices, and painting or coating the cylinders to arrest corrosive attack. While some of the recommendations have been incorporated into MMES plans, it appears that several feasible courses of remedial action, such as painting or coating the cylinders, or installing spacers between stacked cylinders, repeatedly proposed to DOE, have not been seriously considered as options.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Corrosion
1. Background
Cylinders used to contain and store depleted UF6 are made of formed and welded ASTM A516 or A285 carbon steel plates. Nominal thickness is 312 mils; the minimum allowable thickness for safe transportation is 250 mils per the DOE Manual of Good Handling Practices. Coatings on the vast majority of cylinders have not been maintained, leaving them vulnerable to a variety of localized corrosion mechanisms. Two cylinder breaches have been attributed to localized external corrosion initiated by extended contact with the ground. Such external corrosion could weaken cylinders to the point that failure occurs during handling, shipping, or unloading operations. Cylinders could also become breached from the inside due to corrosion resulting from valve leakage and failure to identify and correct such leaks in a timely manner.
Visual inspections of the cylinders have shown abundant pitting and crevice corrosion (differential oxygenation corrosion) on the cylinders, as well as some apparent galvanic attack near bronze valves and plugs. Other than the failures, the deepest corrosion discovered thus far was slightly over halfway through the cylinder wall.
2. Summary
MMES corrosion studies have focused mainly on the variables affecting the general corrosion rate of carbon steel. The highest corrosion rate is estimated to be three mils per year. More work needs to be done to characterize the localized accelerated corrosion mechanisms that are occurring and to identify methods to ameliorate this accelerated corrosion.
It does not appear that inspection methods, such as ultrasonic thickness measurements, are consistently being used in a manner that will provide needed information about the extent and rate of cylinder corrosion. For example, thickness measurements made on cylinders at K-25 were not correlated with the actual storage history of the cylinders (e.g., ground contact versus non-ground contact, or surfaces formerly on resting blocks). Also, ultrasonic measurements of the cylinders at K-25 and the bottom row of cylinders at Paducah were typically limited to spots that visually appeared to be the most corroded. Views and stacking arrangements of typical cylinders are shown in Figure 3.
The discussion below is drawn from Board staff observations and several MMES and DOE reports (see references).
3. Corrosion Mechanisms
INTERNAL CORROSION: Experimental testing and operating data on corrosion of ASTM 516 steel by UF6 show that uniform corrosion of the internal surfaces of intact cylinders (i.e., corrosion of steel in contact with solid UF6) occurs at a negligible rate. However, in the presence of moisture, UF6 reacts to form HF which results in significant corrosion of the steel. Corrosion of cylinder walls by this mechanism have been estimated to enlarge an existing breach (in diameter) at a rate of one inch per year.
EXTERNAL CORROSION: Atmospheric corrosion of mild steel varies from zero (for those cylinders with paint intact) to about 1 to 10 mils per year (on bare cylinders or those with degraded paint, from Monitoring of Corrosion in ORGDP Cylinder Yards). The life expectancy of many of the cylinders, however, has been greatly reduced by accelerated, localized corrosion mechanisms associated with several storage environments and design features. Types of localized corrosion that have been identified include ground contact corrosion, resting block corrosion, skirt corrosion, other types of crevice and differential oxidation corrosion, and galvanic corrosion at valves, plugs, and nameplates.
Ground contact corrosion occurs when the cylinders sink into the ground, or debris and water accumulate under the cylinder. In both scenarios, foreign material and moisture stay in almost continuous contact with the steel and accelerated corrosion and/or pitting result. Accelerated corrosion continues even after the cylinder is removed from ground contact, due to moisture retained in the oxide scale formed while on the ground.
Two of the cylinder failures at K-25 were attributed, at least partially, to the fact that the cylinders had spent several years in ground contact. A total of 29 cylinders in ground contact from two different storage yards at Paducah have been raised and inspected. Accelerated corrosion and pitting were found in the ground contact areas. Ultrasonic thickness measurements made at the deepest pit locations found that corrosion and pitting had reduced the wall thickness by one-third on average and by one-half for the worst cylinder inspected. However, this sample size is quite small and does not necessarily include the worst-case cylinders.
A total of 136 cylinders stored in what MMES termed "substandard conditions" at K-25 were also ultrasonically inspected. Wall thicknesses had been reduced to less than half the nominal thickness at the worst locations.
Resting block corrosion occurs at the interface between the cylinder and its resting block. Cylinders that have been inspected during movement have shown that a line of pits develops in the cylinder, immediately adjacent to the block at the cylinder-block interface. Ultrasonic measurements at Paducah have found wall thicknesses reduced to less than half their nominal thickness in pitted areas next to the resting blocks.
Skirt corrosion occurs on the heads of cylinders with skirts. The skirts are an extension of the cylinder body over the head ends to protect the heads from impact damage. About one-third of the cylinders have skirts where puddles form and piles of corrosion products (rust) collect. Puddles and debris in the skirts greatly accelerate cylinder head corrosion and pitting by trapping moisture and promoting differential oxidation. At Paducah, for example, ultrasonic wall thickness measurements were made on a sample of 50 skirted cylinders and correlated with the depth of the rust pile accumulated in the skirt. For rust depths of 1 to 1-1/2 inches, 10%-15% thinning occurred, and for rust depths greater than 1-1/2 inches, 10%-30% thinning occurred. Over 2,000 skirted cylinders still contain debris. However, not all of these are accessible for cleaning; other cylinders need to be moved to provide access.
Crevice corrosion occurs in crevices, cracks, surface defects, and where cylinders contact one another. Visual inspections have found numerous dents, gouges, and cracks in the cylinders at these points. Additionally, piles of corrosion products have accumulated on top of cylinders and on the line of contact between stacked cylinders without stiffeners. The extent of corrosion in such areas has not been evaluated by MMES.
Galvanic corrosion has occurred where bronze plugs and valves screw into the steel cylinders and where stainless steel nameplates are welded to the cylinder. If the joint between the plug or valve and the cylinder becomes moist, corrosion of the threads in the steel vessel could allow air to leak into the cylinder. Air and moisture entering through a failed valve will react with UF6 to produce acids, which can eventually corrode through the cylinder wall. DOE and MMES have not performed analyses to quantify the damage expected by this mechanism.
Valves have failed in storage and allowed leakage of HF to the atmosphere. The cause of failure has been identified as stress corrosion cracking of packing nuts. This pathway could also permit air leakage into the cylinder.
Channel-type stiffeners on many cylinders have also shown accelerated corrosion. Some have become perforated allowing water to accumulate in close proximity to the cylinder shell. MMES believes that such channels are anodic relative to the shell and, thus, this phenomenon poses no threat to cylinder integrity. Limited examinations have tended to confirm this opinion, but a thorough investigation has not been performed by MMES.
B. Inspection Program
1. Background Prior to 1990 there was no routine inspection program for cylinders in storage. In June 1990, inspection of valves on cylinders was initiated in response to several reports of leakage. During this inspection, a cylinder with a large hole was found at Portsmouth. This discovery resulted in the immediate initiation of a new inspection program to identify holes and indications of degraded conditions (Cylinder Yard Inspections and Corrective Actions). A total of seven breached cylinders were found: five at K-25; two at Portsmouth; and one at Paducah.
To conduct this inspection, a special checklist with 52 defect criteria was developed. Examples of the defect criteria that indicate a degraded state include: heavy scale on cylinder (or ground); poor yard drainage; body in ground contact; and scale in the cylinder's protective skirt. The result of this aspect of the inspection program was that about half the cylinders were classified by MMES as potentially at risk, and were put on an annual reinspection cycle; the remainder were put on a four-year reinspection cycle. Due to storage conditions, however, not all surfaces on all cylinders were inspectable. Thousands of cylinders were in contact with the ground, and a significant fraction of the rest were stacked so tightly that not all surfaces are accessible. The contact area between the saddle and the cylinder cannot be inspected until the cylinder is moved. Therefore, the potential exists for additional breached cylinders to be discovered.
2. Summary
The Board staff performed a detailed review of the inspection program and procedures. As it exists today, the program has a number of deficiencies that minimize its usefulness in evaluating cylinder integrity. The documentation required for defects is not adequately descriptive and, therefore, does not lend itself to analysis of cylinder integrity. The results and scheduling of the inspection program are not integrated with other portions cylinder management, such as corrosion studies and cylinder maintenance. For example, there is presently no cohesive plan to take advantage of scheduled cylinder movements to inspect previously inaccessible areas. The inspection program does not aggressively pursue full inspection of all cylinder surfaces; in fact, a one hundred percent inspection of all cylinder surfaces is not expected until around the year 2000 (plans are not yet definite). Finally, training provided to personnel performing the inspections is inconsistent and inadequate; this has led to widely varying quality in the inspection results.
3. Discussion
A logical starting point for the discussion of an inspection program are the criteria used for inspections. In MMES' program these criteria are embodied in the inspection checklist and accompanying procedure (Inspection of UF6 Cylinders In Storage). In accomplishing the inspection, inspectors are not required to record the size, type, number, locations nor a physical description of the defects they observe; they simply check very broad categories of defects. Without this type of information, the condition of the cylinder is not documented and it is impossible to compare follow-on inspections. In addition, it has been MMES practice to withhold the results of previous inspections from inspectors in an attempt to judge the comparability of inspections. These practices make trending of cylinder condition very problematic.
Notwithstanding the limitations described above, the inspection program has developed some useful information. The program, however, is not being integrated with other efforts, further limiting its utility. The inspection data are not being used to design maintenance programs for specific cylinders; rather, it being lumped into broad categories that ignore the specific condition of a given cylinder. Personnel from the corrosion engineering effort have not yet been consulted as regards important parameters for their corrosion studies, thus this information is being gathered in a less than comprehensive manner.
Several thousand cylinders have extensive areas that are not accessible for visual inspection. This condition exists for a number of reasons, as discussed above. Since even the imperfect visual inspections performed to-date have identified important information, it would appear prudent to complete inspections of all surfaces on the cylinders. Present DOE plans do not complete the inspection of all surfaces of the cylinders in storage until somewhere around the year 2000 (plans are neither precise nor complete). Consistent with the need for further understanding of the risks involved in moving these cylinders, completing this inspection should be pursued in a timely manner.
Performance of the personnel conducting the inspections appears to have been inconsistent. The Board staff reviewed the inspection records of 56 cylinders chosen randomly at the three sites. The staff review indicates that inspection results from the initial inspection and subsequent reinspections are very dissimilar. Reviews performed by MMES have shown similar inconsistencies. This raises further questions concerning the efficacy of the inspection program and the need for more comprehensive and thorough training for personnel performing the inspections.
C. Cylinder Handling
1. Background/Summary
Poor handling of UF6 cylinders has caused five of the seven identified cylinder breaches to date (Investigation of Breached Depleted UF6 Cylinders). It is typical at all three sites that cylinders are severely rusted, dented, and gouged. While some changes have been made in the procedures to minimize damage to new cylinders, the procedures still do not consider all potential consequences involved in moving deteriorated ones. Special procedures focused toward the task of relocating degraded cylinders from their current, substandard yards to new, engineered yards have yet to be developed. While procedural changes can limit new or additional damage to cylinders, some stacking improvements previously rejected by MMES and DOE may need to be reconsidered to minimize future damage to cylinders.
2. Discussion
a. Handling Damage
Handling damage can be divided into two categories: surface coating and structural. While the most common damage is to the surface coating, damage resulting in a structural breach of the cylinder wall is of more immediate concern. The two major initiating events that have the potential to produce a structural breach are: (1) impacting cylinders against one another and (2) handling degraded cylinders.
The most common damage to the cylinders is the chipping of the surface coating. The coating is scraped off in the vicinity of the handling equipment and saddles. Corrosion initiates at these areas and can result in the large-scale blistering of paint currently seen in the storage yards.
The most probable cause of five of the seven breaches discovered is the lifting lug or stiffening ring of an adjacent cylinder impinging upon the breached cylinder. During testing at Paducah, it was determined that an impact adjacent to a welded stiffening ring may result in tearing of the cylinder wall (Fracture Control of Steel UF6 Cylinder). While only five cylinder breaches have been attributed to this mechanism, a large number of cylinders at all three facilities have such damage. Although modified handling procedures direct that the lugs be oriented to avoid impinging on adjacent cylinders, there will still be impact between the stiffening rings of one cylinder and the wall of another when an upper row cylinder is dropped into place. This situation has not been sufficiently examined as a potential cause of tearing of the cylinder wall, especially in older, deteriorated cylinders.
The cylinder handler itself removes paint on new cylinders as the claws scrape along the bottom until force is sufficient to support the weight (11 to 15 tons). Since the cylinder is supported only by the four tips of the claws, the potential to breach a deteriorated cylinder with this loading scheme warrants thorough structural analysis.
b. Handling Procedures and Practices
The current procedures are oriented toward the USEC processing of UF6. Although they are labeled as critical lift procedures, they do not contain the elements of a critical lift as specified in the DOE Hoisting and Rigging Manual. This manual states that "a lift shall be designated a critical lift if collision, upset, or dropping could result in ... significant release of radioactive/other hazardous material or other undesirable conditions." Critical lift requirements include: the appointment of a qualified person-in-charge of the lifting operation present at the lift site during the entire operation; a procedure which specifies equipment to be used by identification number and capacity; rigging sketches including lifting points on the cylinder, load vectors, and the method of attachment to the cylinder; and special instructions to operators including rigging precautions and safety measures. The procedures and rigging sketches are required to be approved by the responsible manager, and safety and quality assurance groups. A critical lift procedure also requires signalers on the ground to prevent miscommunication with the stacker operator. The current procedures do not comply with the requirements in the DOE Hoisting and Rigging Manual.
The Handling of UF6 Cylinders procedure is being revised and was in draft form when reviewed by the Board staff. More precautions and limitations aimed at reducing cylinder damage are being incorporated. The precautions regarding lifting lug orientation reviewed, however, are contradictory. One instructs the operator to maintain the lugs horizontal, while a later precaution states "roll the cylinder until a lifting lug touches the side and chock the cylinder in place." The current handling procedures are geared for production operations utilizing new cylinders. New procedures that would comply with the DOE Hoisting and Rigging Manual and cover the transfer of depleted UF6 cylinders from current storage yards to the new engineered storage yards may need to be significantly different from past operations, due to the degraded condition of the cylinders. Safety analysis could determine whether these handling operations should be categorized as critical lifts.
The analysis required if UF6 cylinder handling is designated a critical lift would have several benefits. Load vectors and lifting speeds would show the distribution of forces in the equipment so that rated capacities should not be exceeded. Typically, for this handling operation, a cylinder handler/stacker is used. The handler grabs the wall of the cylinder rather than pulling up from the lifting lugs. If designated a critical lift, the handler would be analyzed for cylinder stresses to ensure that a degraded cylinder would not be breached by the handler, or by incidental impacts during stacking. If the calculations determine that a cylinder handler operating normally may cause the postulated accident, the critical lift guidelines would require modifications such as alternate rigging operations, use of a crane, attachments, and new procedures.
The stacking operations observed did not comply fully with the instructions in the procedures. A distinct person in control of the handling operations could not be identified. The operator of the cylinder handler/stacker was seen to be performing actions contrary to the direction of the on ground spotter. In addition, comments from the handling supervisor regarding a misaligned saddle were overruled by the spotter. The lack of a clear person in charge increases the potential for an accident due to the lack of effective communication and control of the handling operation.
D. Safety Analyses
1. Summary
Safety analyses of the depleted UF6 cylinders are incomplete and, therefore, do not provide DOE and its contractor reasonable assurance that operations canbe accomplished without undue risk. A formal, systematic, and comprehensive examination of the facilities and processes, including storage, and on-site transportation, is not evident. Detailed evaluations of potential hazards and accidents associated with normal operation, deviations from normal processing, internally initiated events (e.g., fires), and externally initiated events (e.g., high winds, tornadoes, earthquakes) are missing.
Physical and administrative controls for hazards that could result in unacceptable consequences have, in some cases, been identified, but not implemented. In addition, the safety analyses do not incorporate results of corrosion studies or data collected during inspections, and do not address degradation of cylinder integrity over time.
2. Status of Safety Documentation
Safety documentation for the cylinder yards at K-25, Portsmouth, and Paducah are not in compliance with DOE Order 5480.23, Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports. Implementation Plans were submitted to DOE Headquarters in January 1993, and the Portsmouth and Paducah plans were approved in June 1993. The K-25 implementation plan has yet to be approved by DOE and was one of several addressed in a memorandum from DOE Oak Ridge that caused MMES to stop efforts on Implementation Plans for DOE Orders 5480.21, 5480.22, and 5480.23. MMES has yet to produce the Bases for Interim Operation (BIOs) for K-25, Portsmouth, or Paducah. (Letter, K. Edwards to G. Draper).
3. Adequacy of Safety Documentation
DOE Order 5480.23, Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports, defines safety analysis to be a documented process to: (a) provide systematic identification of hazards; (b) describe and analyze the adequacy of measures taken to eliminate, control, or mitigate identified hazards; and (c) analyze and evaluate potential accidents and their associated risks. It appears that the available safety and hazard analyses for the cylinders do not sufficiently address information considered necessary to adequately support an overall understanding of the facility operations as they pertain to safety.
Potentially hazardous environments and processes (such as open storage) and facility processes (such as handling or movement) that could have an effect on cylinder integrity, have not been evaluated as part of the safety analysis. For example, the impact and potential consequences of lifting a corrosion-degraded cylinder are not examined.
The accident analyses relating to UF6 cylinder operations tend to disregard without rationale the need for detailed assessment by anticipating a low probability of occurrence of events such as: airplane crash/fire, fire in the cylinder yard, and earthquake and flood. A systematic identification and evaluation of hazards, and rationale for or against corrective actions are not identified. In addition, the existing safety analyses do not address the impact of the lack of capability to off-load breached cylinders at K-25. Assumptions of worst case cylinder conditions or incident scenarios have not considered localized accelerated corrosion effects.
A paper entitled Investigation of Breached Depleted UF6 Cylinders, presented at the Second International Conference on Uranium Hexafluoride Handling, proposed experimental effort directed at examining the effect of a hole near the top of the cylinder that remains undetected. Scenarios had been proposed that could lead to a steam-driven expulsion of contaminated liquid and HF from the cylinder due to accumulation of water in the vapor space (due to rain and condensation) and subsequent chemical reactions. Further examination of this potential accident would appear warranted, based on the information available to-date.
There are a number of other apparent inadequacies in of the safety analysis. There is no treatment of mechanical degradation caused by aging, brittle fracture, propagation of cracks, corrosion, or irradiation. Inspection criteria are not explicitly related to a safety analysis of cylinder integrity. Risks associated with cylinder movement are not analyzed, and environmental insult from uranium compounds exiting the cylinder yards has not yet been studied. Consequences of seismic events in the storage yards are not addressed. The use of preventive maintenance as a mitigative measure is not considered.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has begun work (using previously collected data, risk assessment methods, and cylinder modeling techniques) to assess health risks related to release of UF6 contaminants, gage the current corroded condition of the cylinders, and predict the probability of future breaches. The Board staff review of this preliminary work can be found in Appendices A and B.
E. Status of Breached Cylinders
Remediation of the four breached cylinders at K-25 is apparently being handled as a low priority task. Although the breached cylinders were discovered in late 1991 and early 1992, they still await shipment to Portsmouth or Paducah, where capability exists to off- load the contents. The UF6 Long-Term Cylinder Integrity Management Plan originally scheduled obtaining Department of Transportation approval to transport one of the cylinders from K-25 by September of 1993, but the approval request has yet to be submitted by DOE. K-25 is therefore still, after four years, "maintaining" the hazards associated with storage of four incompletely patched cylinders.
The one breached cylinder at Paducah was off loaded in December 1994; the two at Portsmouth have been weld patched and are stored indoors pending completion of off load.
III. CONCLUSIONS
DOE has stored depleted UF6 in transportation cylinders for more than 40 years and may continue to store them for an additional 30 years. The analysis of the adequacy of the existing cylinders for use as storage systems over this extended time period has not been systematic and has not addressed all the pertinent concerns. Specifically, the following areas need further assessment:
1. the potential for failure by accelerated corrosion mechanisms needs to be better characterized and then quantified;
2. the inspection program, used to characterize the condition of the cylinder population and monitor continued adequacy for storage, needs significant overhaul to achieve these purposes;
3. cylinder handling procedures need to be analyzed and then revised to incorporate precautions for handling potentially degraded cylinders; and
4. the safety analyses for the cylinder storage yards need to be upgraded to: include insights gained through the above reviews; investigate the unique problems presented by a breach in the vapor space; investigate the hazards associated with moving degraded cylinders; and incorporate structural analyses of the cylinders.
Appendix A
Risk Assessment for UF6 Cylinders in Storage
Background: Preliminary risk assessment performed and reported in ORNL Risk Assessment used EPA-approved risk assessment methodology.
Methodology: The contaminants of concern identified in the methodology are hydrogen fluoride (HF) and uranium compounds (the latter includes both toxicological and radiation effects). At the time of review, risks from uranium compounds had not been assessed. The dominant risk is toxicological in the case of low enriched UF6. The potential receptors identified include the off-site population within a 50-mile radius, the on-site, non-involved workers, and the involved workers.
The release rates computed are 7.91 x 10-3 g/hr at Portsmouth and 9.06 x 10-3 g/hr at K-25 and Paducah, with the difference due to mean annual temperature differences between the sites. An estimate for the number of predicted cylinder breaches was made (see Appendix B) and incorporated into the release rates for each site from the present until the year 2020. The maximum release rate corresponds to a 30-year-old breach. ORNL computed worker risk, non-involved worker risk, and off-site population risk for UF6 cylinder breaches.
Results: The results of the analysis indicate that the probable releases from cylinders based on the expected number of breaches and the expected growth of the holes have a significant margin of safety through the year 2020 with the worst case risk occurring in the G-yard at Paducah. The relative hazard was 0.287 (where 1.0 represents unacceptable risk).
Board Staff Observations: It does not appear that these estimates include larger breaches which may result from handling of cylinders with walls weakened by general or local corrosion. Similar calculations for the release of UF6 in such cases have yet to be performed. These estimates also discount the more severe consequences of releases due to fire or seismic events.
A fire-induced release has been assumed to be very unlikely. Similarly, the probability of an aircraft crash has been estimated as incredible (2.8 x 10-7) due to design and administrative constraints. The risk from earthquake damage to cylinders may be the least well-characterized, based on results of calculations by Battelle (Structural Integrity Analysis of UF6 Storage Cylinders). The case of a major solid UF6 release during a heavy rain was evaluated with the following results: the concentration leaving the site is 1.2 mg-U/liter (where no health effects are expected below 5 mg-U/liter). In the analyzed event, the HF is assumed to dissolve in the rain as it is evolved.
Appendix B
Summary of Preliminary Structural Analyses for Uranium Hexafluoride Cylinders in Storage
In February 1995, ORNL briefed the Board staff on recent analyses involving UF6 cylinders (Draft Report, Prediction of External Corrosion for UF6 Cylinders: Preliminary Results of an Empirical Method. ORNL is applying statistical and finite element methods to predict the number of cylinder failures that could be expected in the future. One analysis grouped existing data from ultrasonic tests and corrosion studies at the three sites, and used statistical methods in an attempt to estimate the number of breaches that could be expected in the yards in 1995, as well as by the year 2020. The results of these calculations predicted the number of cylinders that will fail the ANSI N14.1 specification for minimum wall thickness for normal processing and for transportation, as well as the number of breaches that could be expected. The preliminary indications from the analysis, which is still underway, is that 12 additional breached cylinders may currently exist elsewhere in the yards, and that the number could be as high as 200 additional breaches.
Other efforts briefed at the February 1995 meeting were structural analyses using finite element methods. The analyses attempt to determine stresses, due to corrosion or other damage-caused weaknesses, imparted on the cylinders during handling or as a result of patching breached cylinders. At the time of the February briefing, the ORNL personnel present were unable to provide clearly describe the assumptions and methods used in the analysis; additional information has since been provided in the October 1992 Battelle report entitled Structural Integrity Analysis of UF6 Cylinders. This information is presently being evaluated.
These calculations of structural analysis of the ASTM A516 steel cylinders were performed by Battelle to determine the punching shear force requirements, the actual versus allowable stresses for normal stacking conditions, the minimum thickness for a 3-inch diameter thinned area, and the allowable loads for dynamic loading due to transport, lifting/stacking operations and seismic conditions. The analysis showed that, for the case of typical stacking conditions with the stiffening rings in contact with the cylinders, stresses are above the design stress, but below the allowable elastically-calculated local stress limit. For the case of lug-contact with a cylinder under static loading, the ASME allowable local stress would be exceeded for a thickness of 270 mils or less. Thus, lug-to-cylinder contact stresses would generally not be acceptable.
The Board staff is in the process of conducting a technical review of the analyses that have been provided to date, and have requested additional information, as it can be made available.
References
1. Martin Marietta Energy Systems, "UF6 Long-Term Storage Cylinder Integrity Management Plan," K/ETO-114, September 1992
2. "Draft Preliminary Report: DOE Independent UF6 Cylinder Assessment Team," DOE Oak Ridge Field Office, March 25, 1992.
3. Lemons, T.R., et al, "The Ultimate Disposition of Depleted Uranium," K/ETO-44, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, December 1990.
4. Barlow, C.R., et al, "Cylinder Yard Inspections and Corrective Actions," K/SS-546, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, July 13, 1990.
5. Barber, E.J., et al, "Investigation of Breached Depleted UF6 Cylinders at the K-25 Site," K/ETO-155, ORNL/TM-12840, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, October 1994.
6. U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Field Office, "Uranium Hexafluoride: A Manual of Good Handling Practices," ORO-651 Rev. 6, October 1991.
7. Henson, H.M. et al, "Monitoring of Corrosion in ORGDP Cylinder Yards," date unknown.
8. "Inspection of UF6 Cylinders In Storage," SMTLS-OP-201, Rev 0, K-25 Operations, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, February 1994.
9. Barber, E.J., et al, "Investigation of Breached Depleted UF6 Cylinders," POEF-2086 ORNL/TM-11988, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, September 1991.
10. Blue, S.C., "Fracture Control of Steel UF6 Cylinders," in Uranium Hexafluoride-Safe Handling, Processing, CONF-880558, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc., Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, May 1988.
11. U.S. Department of Energy, "Hoisting and Rigging Manual," DOE/ID-10500, April 1993.
12. Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, "Handling of UF6 Cylinders," CP4-GP-BG2102 Rev. 2-Draft.
13. U.S. Department of Energy Order 5480.23, "Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports."
14. Letter from K. Edwards, DOE, Oak Ridge Operations to G. Draper, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, "Clarification Regarding the SAR Rule vs. Implementation of DOE Orders 5480.21, 5480.22, and 5480.23," January 9, 1995.
15. "Investigation of Breached depleted UF6 Cylinders," Second International Conference on Uranium Hexafluoride Handling, October 1991.
16. Smith, C.W., Risk Assessment, Center for Risk Management, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, February 15-16, 1995.
17. Wilkowski, G.M., et al, "Structural Integrity Analysis of UF6 Storage Cylinders," Battelle, October 1992.
18. Lyon, B.F., "Draft Report, Prediction of External Corrosion for UF6 Cylinders: Preliminary Results of an Empirical method," Center for Risk Management, Oak Ridge National laboratory, March 1, 1995.
-------- connecticut
General Dynamics Electric Boat Is Awarded Work Worth up to $55 Million
March 1, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/pr/000301/ct-general-dynamic
GROTON, Conn., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The U. S. Navy has awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine engineering and life-cycle support work worth up to $55 million.
The largest of the awards -- $38.3 million -- will provide for design, engineering, material and logistics support for the Trident program. The award also supports work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to backfit older Trident submarines to accommodate D-5 missiles, and missile-tube maintenance at Kings Bay, Ga.
Sixty percent of the work will be performed at Groton; 11 percent at the Newport engineering office and Quonset Point facility, both in Rhode Island; 13 percent at Bangor, Wash.; and 5 percent at the Washington, D.C., engineering office.
Under the terms of the other award, Electric Boat will perform $4.2 million worth of planning work in support of Selected Restricted Availabilities (SRA) scheduled for USS Dallas (SSN-700) and USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720) in 2001. The option to perform the maintenance and upgrade work at the New London submarine base will be worth $12.4 million, bringing the total potential value for the SRAs to $16.6 million.
"This represents a significant amount of work for Electric Boat employees," said Electric Boat President Mike Toner. "It also underscores our continuing commitment to retain and build upon our core strengths -- in these two cases, in engineering and life-cycle support."
Electric Boat is the industry leader in the design, construction and life-cycle support of nuclear submarines for the U.S. and employs 9,250 people. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics (NYSE:GD), headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia. General Dynamics has leading market positions in shipbuilding and marine systems, land and amphibious combat systems, information systems, and business aviation. The company employs 43,000 people worldwide and has annualized sales of approximately $10 billion. More information about the company can be found on the World Wide Web at www.generaldynamics.com.
----------- michigan
Plutonium Opponents Claim Disarmament Treaty Violations as First Nations & Canadian Environmentalists Join MOX Suit
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 01:55:31 -0500
From: Kay Cumbow jcumbow@greatlakes.net
KALAMAZOO, MI. (Tuesday) ...Opponents of the recent clandestine shipment of nuclear weapons plutonium across the Great Lakes Basin have reactivated their federal court lawsuit through a formal request to Judge Richard Enslen. Plaintiffs seek to halt the planned shipment of mixed oxide fuel (MOX) from Russia to Chalk River Ontario, Canada. This MOX fuel was derived from Russian weapons plutonium. Plaintiffs claim that the United States' role in the scheme to use the plutonium-uranium / MOX fuel violates the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Michigan plaintiffs in U.S. District Court in Kalamazoo were joined by First Nations and Canadian plaintiffs: Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians, Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, Northwatch, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, all are now parties to the suit.
The Treaty is an agreement among some 180 nations of the world which requires a halt to the spread of nuclear bombs and other weapons and immediate negotiations to outlaw them completely. The plaintiffs say that a cooperative test of MOX fuel at the Chalk River Reactor in Ontario, using MOX from both the U.S. and the Russian Federation in one of Canada's CANDU reactors, will send the wrong signal to the world community. They believe that CANDU owner nations, in particular, will see the feasibility of using MOX as an excuse not to disarm. The plaintiffs want the court to order a halt to the test shipment coming from Russia after a similar request to stop transport of the U.S. MOX was denied last December. Plaintiffs seek an order requiring closer public examination of the environmental effects of the Parallex test and its implications on the international nuclear disarmament picture.
Argentina, China, India, Pakistan, Romania, South Korea, have CANDU reactors. Turkey is ordering one. India and Pakistan each tested nuclear bombs in 1998, and India has not denied that its bomb plutonium was reclaimed from spent fuel from its CANDU reactors. Neither India or Pakistan has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"The U.S. should be signaling to the world that any use of plutonium is unacceptable, and marks a turn toward a world plutonium economy, further endangering humankind. The U.S. and Russia should immobilize this plutonium in glass ceramic placing it forever in a guarded repository. Instead, the U.S. goes along with Russian government's insistence that plutonium has redeeming qualities as reactor fuel. That will let India and Pakistan off the hook as undeclared nuclear powers who are accelerating their arms race, outside of the Non-Proliferation Treaty said Terry Lodge, attorney for plaintiffs in the Kalamazoo Federal Court case.
"Keeping more, not less, plutonium in the nuclear fuel cycle provides twenty thousand years worth of potential for illegal marketeering and international trafficking of the most potent and destructive material in the world," said Alice Hirt, a U.S. plaintiff. "The use of MOX in Canadian reactors will undermine disarmament efforts around the world."
"Russia and Canada are discussing the use of Russian MOX in Canadian reactors for 20 to 25 years. CANDU reactors have design problems, and those reactors are aging. That's a recipe for serious radioactive pollution, in the Great Lakes Basin" noted Kristen Ostling, Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout (Ottawa).
"We came into this lawsuit as Canadian plaintiffs to help demonstrate to the U.S. court that the international grassroots community disagrees with the narrow-minded policies being made by our governments," said Ole Hendrickson of the Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, Ontario, where Chalk River test facility is located.
"Be it resolved that any attempt to transport MOX fuel through the Territorial Lands and Waterways of the Mohawk People of Akwesasne will be met with full resistance by the People of Akwesasne." proclaimed Larry White of The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne as they announced their active participation as plaintiffs in this legal challenge. --- 30 --- Contact: Kristen Ostling (613) 789-3634 Alice Hirt (616) 335-3405 Larry White (613) 575-2377 Anabel Dwyer (517) 332-4863 Kay Cumbow (810) 346-4513 Terry Lodge (419)255-7552 Original Lawsuit and Motion for Preliminary Injunction available at: http://www.nirs.org
-------- new mexico
Appeals Court Curbs Scientist's Bail Bid
New York Times
March 1, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/00/03/01/news/national/nuclear-lee-reject.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Feb. 29 -- A federal appeals court today rejected the effort by a former government nuclear scientist to secure release on bail until he is tried on charges of breaching security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, will remain in jail awaiting trial on charges he illegally downloaded nuclear secrets from secured to unsecured computers and to computer tapes, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled today in Denver.
Mr. Lee's lawyer, Mark Holscher of Los Angeles, would not comment on whether he plans an appeal to the Supreme Court, saying, "We're going to evaluate our options."
Mr. Lee, a naturalized citizen who was born in Taiwan, is charged with 59 counts involving security breaches but not espionage. His trial is set for Nov. 6. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.
Mr. Lee's supporters say the government is trying to make him a scapegoat for the government's security shortcomings at the laboratory.
---
Court upholds no-bail ruling against Lee
USA Today
03/01/00- Updated 04:03 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#pa
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected a fired government scientist's effort to secure release on bail until he is tried on charges of breaching security at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Wen Ho Lee will remain in jail awaiting trial on charges he illegally downloaded nuclear secrets from secured to unsecured computers and to computer tapes, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in Denver. Defense attorney Mark Holscher would not comment on whether he plans an appeal to the Supreme Court, saying, ''We're going to evaluate our options.''
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New Mexico
USA Today
03/01/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Santa Fe - A $26 million planned upgrade of U.S. 285-84 north of Santa Fe has been put on hold . The state couldn't afford to move ahead with the project because the federal government has withheld $20 million in a dispute involving the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an underground nuclear waste storage site near Carlsbad, state transportation officials said.
------ nevada
High radiation found in wells outside limits of Test Site
By Mary Manning manning@lasvegassun.com
LAS VEGAS SUN
March 01, 2000
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2000/mar/01/509924526.html
Nye County experts have discovered radiation in ground water outside the boundary of the Nevada Test Site that is 25 times higher than the federal drinking water limit.
Nye County officials announced today that they are investigating the source and the type of radiation that is causing the reading in one of eight wells that act as an early warning system to detect radiation that may be escaping the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Nye County Commissioner Jeff Taguchi said the reading on one well monitor may be a mistake. It could also come from radiation naturally occurring in Southern Nevada's rocks, he said.
"Scientists are trying to determine a source, whether it is from nuclear testing or a natural source," Taguchi said. "In the interest of public health and safety, we are informing the public about this preliminary finding."
Les Bradshaw, director of the county's nuclear waste division, and Nye County Manager Jerry McKnight were meeting today to map out a detailed plan for further studies.
The wells, designed to detect radiation from 928 nuclear warhead experiments conducted at the Test Site from 1951 to 1992, also would serve to detect any radiation coming from a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository being studied at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Yucca Mountain is the only site in the nation being considered as a repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors and defense activities.
Farmers and ranchers living downstream from the Test Site have expressed concern that radiation could seep into the ground water that grows crops and supports Nevada's largest dairy, Ponderosa Dairy.
Neither the DOE's Nevada Operations Office nor the Yucca Mountain Project Office had heard of the preliminary finding, and DOE tests have not found any radiation in Nevada ground water.
"This is interesting to us," DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said after learning of the report. "The DOE and the county have the same goal to protect the public. This is important to us."
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REID, BRYAN WANT TEST SITE WORKERS IN BILL
Donrey Washington Bureau,
March 1, 2000
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2000/Mar-01-Wed-2000/news/13070387.html
WASHINGTON -- Nevada Test Site workers should be included in legislation to compensate Energy Department employees injured while handling materials to trigger nuclear weapons, Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., said in letters Tuesday.
"The test site workers deserve the same level of compensation as their counterparts in Paducah, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee," Bryan said in a letter to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
Reid sent a similar letter to Bingaman urging the inclusion of former test site workers in the compensation bill.
Bingaman introduced a bill in November to create a compensation program for department contractors and subcontractors whose health suffered after producing and handling beryllium. Beryllium is a toxic element used in nuclear weapons while they were being tested between 1951 and 1992.
The legislation specifically excludes test site workers, although department officials have said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson would favor including them.
On Friday, more than two dozen people spoke at a department hearing in Las Vegas about health problems they developed after working at the test site.
If Bingaman doesn't revise his bill, Bryan and Reid said they would offer an amendment that would include workers from the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
----- washington
PNNL ends 13-month search, names Maryland chemist new leader
Hanford News
This story was published March 1, 2000
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2000/mar1.html
Chemist Lura Powell is to be named the new director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory today, ending a 13-month search by Battelle, which operates the lab for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Powell, 49, recently took early retirement from her job as director of the Advanced Technology Program at the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology. There, she was responsible for selection and management of a technology investment portfolio exceeding $2 billion in a wide rangeof technologies, including biology,information, electronic, manufacturing,material and chemical technology.
"She has a national reputation in the management of large research and development organizations," said Douglas Oleson, president and chief executive officer of Battelle.
Besides a strong record in advanced technology and business planning, Powell also has experience communicating with congressional leaders and the public, Oleson said.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson was out of the country Tuesday but in a prepared statement called the choice of Powell "forward looking."
"(It) is right in sync with the department's efforts to provide innovative solutions to the national security, energy and environmental challenges facing our nation," he said.
Richardson also said he was pleased a woman would be appointed. Battelle appeared close to appointing a director in the fall, before Richardson said he was disappointed the pool of candidates considered had not included more women and minorities.
"Dr. Powell's appointment demonstrates that we can succeed in attracting the best qualified leadership for our laboratories while also improving the representation of women and minorities in top management," Richardson said. "I'm delighted that Battelle's broad and inclusive search for a lab director reached beyond the traditional and customary sources to recruit such a top talent."
Powell is expected to be in the Tri-Cities today for the announcement of her appointment and should become the lab director April 1 after she finishes some consulting work. Her husband and two school-age daughters will remain in Maryland until the school year ends and then join her in the Tri-Cities.
She visited a few weeks ago before agreeing to take the job and liked what she saw of the laboratory and the community, she said.
"I was very impressed when I visited the lab," she said. "I see there are tremendous strengths in a range of areas of science and technology that can bring to bear growth."
She plans to work on building collaborations with other national laboratories, universities and companies, she said. That could provide "tremendous leverage for research," she said.
Besides science and technology, she also is interested in economic development issues in the community, she said.
She started working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology as a student in the summer of 1972. Until 1985, she conducted research there in high accuracy trace analysis and in more precisely determining the atomic weights of elements using thermal ionization mass spectrometry.
She moved into management after her first daughter was born, holding positions that included director of the biotechnology division, deputy director of the Center for Chemical Technology and deputy director of the National Measurement Laboratory.
In 1995, she was named director of the Advanced Technology Program, which focuses on speeding up development of high-risk technologies that promise large commercial payoffs and widespread benefits for the economy. More than half of the program's awards go to small companies, but she also worked with universities, national laboratories and not-for-profit organizations.
"There is tremendous leverage to turn science to technology to products through working in partnership," she said.
In her new position, she'll report to Oleson but also work closely with former PNNL director Bill Madia, who was promoted to executive vice president at Battelle in charge of management, strategic direction and coordination of all of Battelle's DOE business. He also has been named director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Madia has said he's interested in research collaborations between the two labs.
Powell also will be working closely with DOE's Richland office. About 18 percent of the lab's annual budget is Hanford-related.
"The laboratory's world-class facilities and know-how are the primary foundation for our plans for the future, and Dr. Powell will be instrumental in helping us make our vision a reality," said Keith Klein, DOE's Hanford manager. He said Powell would bring a good mix of energy, vision, leadership skills and scientific knowledge to the job.
Powell also is active in several science, professional and community organizations and has served on the boards of the American Chemical Society and the National Institutes of Health Women's Health Initiative Advisory Committee.
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Bill to exempt waste plants from taxes uncertain
Hanford News
This story was published March 1, 2000
By Chris Mulick Herald Olympia bureau
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2000/mar2.html
OLYMPIA - Supporters of a major Hanford cleanup project are going to have to squirm a little bit.
Passage of a bill to exempt tank waste glassification plants from personal property taxes, once hoped to be a simple afterthought in the Legislature, is highly uncertain. If they are to secure what has become a top Tri-City priority, Mid-Columbia legislators will have to work the bill out in the session's waning days.
And with this being the time when negotiations are most delicate, this one could be close.
"It'll go out at the very end," said Sen. Pat Hale, R-Kennewick.
DOE and BNFL Inc., the contractor hoping to build plants to turn Hanford tank waste to glass logs, asked for the bill fearing another $1 billion would be added onto an already $6.9 billion price tag. BNFL had earlier underestimated its tax obligation on the facilities.
Without the bill, supporters fear Congress would be less likely to approve the project.
The bill sailed through the Senate but ran into trouble in the House Finance Committee. It was given a public hearing Monday but wasn't allowed to be voted on, causing it to miss its cutoff deadline.
Committee Co-chairman Brian Thomas, a Renton Republican who couldn't be reached Tuesday evening, wouldn't tell Tri-City lawmakers why he didn't allow a vote.
Now, House co-speakers Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, and Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, must agree to pull it from the committee straight to the floor, a relatively rare maneuver. And although Tri-City lawmakers are confident they will, Ballard wouldn't commit to it Tuesday.
"It's in the works," Ballard said. "It's an important bill to some of our members, and hopefully it'll get there."
Some fear that Republican leadership is using Senate Bill 6724 as leverage for budget negotiations, something the caucus could use. Democrats already control the governor's office, and the Senate and the two parties are split in the House.
"My feeling is he was going to negotiate with that bill," Rep. Jerome Delvin, R-Richland, said of Thomas. "Thomas isn't being up front with me, but I know it has something to do with Loveland and her budget."
That would be Sen. Valoria Loveland, a Pasco Democrat and the Senate's top budget writer. She hasn't spoken to Thomas yet this session but said she won't trade horses when she does.
"You don't leverage me," Loveland said. "That's not the way I work."
In the meantime, House Republican leaders haven't articulated their intent. Hale said Thomas wouldn't tell her why he didn't let the bill out of his committee.
"He's playing his power game," she said.
Loveland said she would try to sneak the bill into the budget she is writing if she has to, though she's not sure if it would be allowed.
"That's not the appropriate way," she said. "They should see if they can pull it out on the floor for a vote over there. I know Frank (Chopp) is fine with it."
Gov. Gary Locke said last week that he recognizes the importance of getting the glassification plants built but wasn't sure if the bill is needed to exempt the project from personal property tax. At the time, Department of Revenue staff was researching the issue for him.
"We're exploring that very very carefully," Locke said. "We know how important it is."
Loveland already has been through that and is pretty sure the bill is needed.
Hale was the bill's prime sponsor instead of Loveland so she could work it Republican to Republican during crunch time. And Hale, Delvin and Rep. Shirley Hankins, R-Richland, say they've received assurances from party leaders everything will be taken care of.
Even so, it's sure taking a long route to Locke's desk.
"We're going to get that bill one way or another," Hankins said.
----------- us nuc weapons
NMD - The Target is Russia
THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 30-35
by Theodore A. Postol
March/April 2000
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/2000/ma00/ma00postol.html
The Clinton administration is relentlessly moving toward an ill-informed decision this summer to deploy an untested and fundamentally unworkable national missile defense (NMD) system. The administration claims this technically flawed defense is needed to negate an unproven long-range missile threat posed by "rogue" states.
The cost of this defense will not simply be measured in dollars. It may include an end to further nuclear arms reductions with Russia, an increased Chinese effort to expand its nuclear forces in response to the defense, negative reactions from U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia--who know that their security will also suffer from this ill-thought out American initiative--and an eventual collapse of global arms control and nonproliferation efforts.
The Clinton administration, already confronted by strongly negative and adverse public reactions from Russia and China, insists that this defense system would not upset global efforts to reduce the dangers from existing nuclear arsenals and potential nuclear proliferants. Instead, the administration sticks to its false claim that the proposed system will be sharply limited, and that it will not compromise Russia's retaliatory deterrent forces.
Although Iran and Iraq have been named as targets of this defense, North Korea is the alleged serious and immediate threat. But if the proposed national missile defense system is to be aimed principally at North Korean missiles, why is the United States deploying a radar that is ideally suited for gathering intelligence for such a system on the northern tip of Norway, less than 40 miles from the Russian border?
On September 8 and 9 in Moscow, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott presented Russia with a proposal to modify the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the United States to deploy a light but rapidly expandable national missile defense system. Talbott told the Russians that if they did not accept the U.S. proposal, the United States would simply withdraw from the treaty and proceed on its own.
Not surprisingly, the Russians viewed Talbott's statements as a threat and an ultimatum rather than as a proposal for serious and honest discussion about matters of fundamental importance to both nations. Talbott's heavy-handed approach to the Russians was another notch in a perfectly consistent record of Clinton administration actions that add up to a coherent pattern of hostility and deception toward Russia. This record has created throughout the Russian political system a deep distrust of and anger toward the United States. In its seven-plus years, the Clinton administration has piled blunder upon blunder in dealing with Russia. The administration's initiative to expand NATO eastward has created a constant threat that the United States and Russia will stumble into an unwanted crisis that could easily escalate to nuclear alerts.
The administration's continued emphasis on maintaining a hair-trigger nuclear strike force serves no constructive purpose and endangers the United States, Russia, and the rest of the world by threatening Russia's increasingly vulnerable nuclear forces.
And now the Russians have been presented with an insulting pretense that the United States is vulnerable to long-range missile attacks from the likes of North Korea, Iran, or Iraq.
The latter two countries have no substantive long-range missile programs. Although North Korea does have a program, it is based on primitive, scaled-up Scud technology.
The Russian Scud is based on the work of German engineers captured by the Russians at the end of World War II. The Scuds themselves consist of modest improvements over the German V-2 missile, first flown by Nazi Germany in the early 1940s.
Despite the vast resources available in Nazi Germany, and the dedicated and well-supported national effort in the Soviet Union that followed, the first ICBM was not achieved until 1957. The United States now tells the Russians that it has an urgent need for a national missile defense to protect itself from an imminent ICBM attack from a state that has a gross domestic product smaller than Delaware's. Against a backdrop of years of misrepresentations by the Clinton administration, the North Korean, Iranian, and Iraqi "threat" is seen as a strawman by the Russians and Chinese.
The Russians and the Chinese also understand that the administration's "limited" defense is in fact a system that is indistinguishable from one aimed at them. They correctly understand the full technical implications of the administration's proposed battle-management upgrades of early warning radars at Fylingdales Moor, Britain; Thule, Greenland; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and Clear, Alaska. These upgrades are exactly those that would be needed for a national missile defense system aimed at Russia and China.
And now comes the most recent addition to the array of misrepresentations to the Russians--installation of a state-of-the-art, NMD-capable radar in Vardo, virtually on the Russian border. The administration claims that the radar's purpose is tracking space debris in earth orbit. It is obvious to any technically informed person that this claim is simply another misrepresentation.
A poke in the eye
The certain principal use of this X-band radar, along with a second one planned for Eareckson Air Station on Shemya Island, some 1,500 miles south west of Anchorage, will be to collect detailed intelligence data on Russia's long-range ballistic missiles. This data will cover the entire trajectory of the missiles, including their powered flight, "bus" maneuvers, deployment of warheads and countermeasures, and reentry into the Pacific near the Kamchatka peninsula.
The data collected by these radars will be of primal value to a U.S. national missile defense system. The information will be fed into the NMD data base, which will increase the discrimination capabilities of the proposed system against Russia's ballistic missiles. It is not clear that the Vardo radar, code-named HAVE STARE, is a formal violation of the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. But it is clear that the radar could be added to an NMD sensor system in a way that would unmistakably violate the intent if not the letter of the treaty. It is also clear, both to Washington and Moscow, that the basic infrastructure of the proposed limited national missile defense system could be rapidly scaled up to become an overtly anti-Russian system. The Vardo radar may be "treaty compliant." But it is also one more threatening and insulting poke in the eye of the Russian bear.
Fingerprinting
The HAVE STARE radar was developed in the early 1990s by Raytheon, under the direction of the Electronic Systems Center, the air force's lead organization for the development and acquisition of command-and-control systems. According to the Defense Department, HAVE STARE is "a high-resolution X-band tracking and imaging radar with a 27-meter mechanical dish antenna." It became operational at Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's coast in 1995, where it was used in early developmental tests of the national missile defense program. In late 1998, HAVE STARE was quietly dismantled and sent to Norway, where it is being jointly reassembled by the United States and Norway under the Norwegian project name "Globus II." It is located at a Norwegian military intelligence facility and its mission, according to the U.S. and Norwegian governments, is to track and catalog space junk in high earth orbit.
Space junk is no trivial matter. There are many thousands of manmade objects orbiting earth, ranging in size from paint flecks and nuts and bolts to booster rockets. But the new location of the HAVE STARE radar, publicly revealed in April 1998 by Inge Sellevag, a Norwegian newspaper reporter, is nearly the last place on earth one would choose for a radar with the purpose of tracking space debris. Because many objects of concern are in orbits that can never be seen from a far north location, a space tracking installation is in fact best placed much closer to the equator.
But the location of the radar is ideal for collecting very precise data on Russian missile tests. The Vardo machine is--at least for now--the most advanced tracking and imaging radar in the world. The HAVE STARE radar potentially has a resolution of roughly 10 to 15 centimeters, which means it could provide detailed radar images of Russian warheads and decoys. In contrast, U.S. early warning radars have a resolution of--at best--5 to 10 meters.
When a pulse from the Vardo X-band radar illuminates a target, reflections are generated mostly by the numerous edges, surfaces, and other geometric details of the target. These distinct reflections are, in effect, a radar-fingerprint of the object.
Because the radar-fingerprint of an object varies with the frequency of the radar, it is especially important that the Vardo radar operate in the X-band, the same frequency range of the NMD X-band radars. In addition, the radar signal will not simply be a complex mix of the many individual reflections. The signal will fluctuate in time as the targets of interest rotate and precess, providing yet additional fingerprint data that could be exploited by the NMD X-band radars. In short, the Vardo radar can provide critical information for a national missile defense system aimed specifically at Russia. Further, the Vardo radar and the planned radar for Shemya Island at the western end of the Aleutians could, operating together, collect precision radar signature data on virtually every phase of Russian tests of missiles and decoys, within minutes of launch from the Plesetsk test range, about 150 miles south of the White Sea, to splashdown 4,000 miles away, near Kamchatka.
Of particular importance, HAVE STARE will be able to obtain precision signature data at X-band frequencies and in mid-course--the critical point at which warheads and decoys separate from the "bus." Previous U.S. radars at Vardo and Shemya have lacked the ability to perform such measurements at X-band frequencies.
Even though both the United States and the Soviet Union (and now Russia) have long been capable of defeating missile defense systems by deploying decoys and other devices along with warheads, this well-focused intelligence-gathering activity understandably appears to the Russians as a determined and planned step towards a U.S. National missile defense capability aimed at Russia. The existence of this radar at this location further adds to Russian perceptions that the Clinton administration is again being deceptive about its true intentions.
What is "real time"?
U.S. officials have said little about the export of the HAVE STARE radar to Norway, leaving Norwegian officials to explain its uses. [See "Vardo Exposed."] Sellevag, a reporter with Bergens Tidende in Bergen, Norway, stirred the pot in the spring of 1998 with stories revealing that HAVE STARE was moving to Norway and that it had a potential national missile defense capability.
In response, Dag Jostein Fjarvoll, Norway's secretary of defense, assured parliament that the Globus II radar (HAVE STARE) was "under full Norwegian control." At best, that was misleading. Norwegian personnel may man the system but the radar will be directly linked, according to a viewgraph prepared by the air force's Electronics Systems Center, to "Cheyenne Mountain and NMD." (The nerve center of the proposed national missile defense system will be buried deeply within Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain.)
This information clearly indicates that Fjarvoll's assertions that the radar could not "contribute to any eventual American defense" were false. Indeed, they seemed deliberately crafted to mislead the Norwegian parliament.
The minister added that "only Norwegian personnel have access to data in so-called real time." His use of "real time" was repeated, perhaps for emphasis. "In other words, there was no connection between Globus II and the U.S. Air Force in real time. . . . The radar can therefore not contribute to any eventual American missile defense." To those not familiar with how acquisition and tracking systems work--and members of the Norwegian parliament surely fit that category--the no-real-time argument might seem compelling. From a commonsense point of view, if a sensor system does not supply data in real time, it is useless for missile defense.
In fact, none of the existing U.S. early warning and tracking systems, or those projected for the national missile defense system, operate in "real time"--as the defense minister seems to define it.
They are not real-time systems because they collect vast amounts of data that are not sent directly to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. All of these systems--in place and projected--extract critical information from the mass of data after short processing delays. Once the data are extracted, only then is it sent to operational command centers. Each Defense Support Program satellite, for instance, collects about 170 million bits of information per second. These data are then sorted by a vastly powerful signal processing system on the satellite. By the time the data sorting is completed, only one million bits per second are actually transmitted to the ground.
Once on the ground, the data are further processed. That processing takes place in 10-second batches, creating a vastly simplified but supremely accurate surveillance "picture" of the earth below. In turn, that information is updated and further processed every 10 seconds. In cases where there is very clear data indicating a missile launch, it takes 20 to 40 seconds before the system can "initiate" tracking of the launch. The operators of the system would not see this information for 30 to 90 seconds, depending on specific circumstances. Hence, the Defense Support Program satellites in high earth orbit, currently the heart of the U.S. early warning array, do not comprise a "real time" system according to the definition implied by the statements of Norway's defense minister.
Why Norway?
What is the purpose of the HAVE STARE radar at Vardo, which the Norwegians call Globus II? Its purpose is clear to the Russian civilian and military analysts I have talked to. It is an intelligence-gathering system optimized to collect data on Russian ballistic missiles that can be directly used by a U.S. National missile defense system aimed at Russia.
The technical information on HAVE STARE released by the U.S. Air Force and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization indicates that it is a very capable tracking and imaging radar. Testimony given in Congress and statements made elsewhere further confirm this. On June 18, 1996, for instance, Rear Adm. Richard D. West, then acting director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, testified before the House National Security Committee about the NMD program.
In his testimony, he described plans to upgrade existing early warning radars "for inclusion in the NMD architecture." He added, "If needed, other existing forward-based radars (such as Cobra Dane or HAVE STARE) could also be used to support the NMD system." More recently, Sellevag has tracked references to HAVE STARE's potential usefulness to the NMD program. A mid-1990s air force environmental impact statement provided by the U.S. Air Force Atmospheric Interceptor Technology Program, noted: "Two existing U.S. Air Force radar systems have high potential for NMD application. The upgraded Precision Acquisition Vehicle Energy-Phased Array Warning System (PAVE PAWS) radar located at Beale Air Force Base (AFB), California is a wide-looking potential target detection element of a future NMD system. The HAVE STARE tracking radar located at Vandenberg AFB, California represents a candidate design to perform the narrow-looking, target tracking radar role in a future NMD system. "To fully understand the utility of these radar systems in an NMD role, the [air force] plans to integrate and test these systems using realistic threat scenarios. California is the only location where these radars are close enough to be tested together. The PAVE PAWS radar initially detects an incoming target and hands over specific target tracking to the HAVE STARE."
The tests were carried out. Two Minuteman III launches were picked up by the Defense Support Program's early warning satellites; in turn, that data cued PAVE PAWS and HAVE STARE, which tracked the missiles. Sellevag documents that HAVE STARE was later involved in two test flights in the NMD program. In June 1997, a Minuteman II lifted off from Vandenberg with dummy warheads and balloon decoys--targets for sensor payloads aboard Boeing's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, launched from Kwajalein. A similar test of Raytheon's entry into the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle sweep stakes took place in January 1998. (Both tests were of the sensors; no intercept of the target was attempted.)
Occasional air force and Ballistic Missile Defense Organization briefing viewgraphs and slides allude, directly or indirectly, to HAVE STARE in future NMD architecture. One December 1999 slide produced by the Strategic and Nuclear Deterrence Command-and-Control Program Office shows HAVE STARE clustered with a host of "Global Awareness" sensors, all of which are linked to Cheyenne Mountain & NMD.
Could HAVE STARE act as an early warning and tracking radar if a national missile defense system is deployed? Yes--but only as a backup to other sensors closer to home or parked in safe orbits. The U.S. Air Force would have to assume that in the event of an intentional missile attack by Russia, Vardo would be immediately destroyed. (According to Sellevag, the idea that the Vardo radar might put northern Norway at the top of Russia's nuclear target list has unsettled at least a few members of the Norwegian parliament.) But the real value of the Vardo radar and of the not-yet-built Shemya radar is that they can do critical advance work for the national missile defense system. They can collect radar signatures--"fingerprints"--from a host of Russian missiles, warheads, decoys, and other devices as they are tested in east-west flight high above the Russian hinterland.
These fingerprints constitute vital information for any system designed to counter the Russian missile "threat," which must function perfectly within minutes of the need to do so. A system that cannot quickly separate warheads from everything else is fatally flawed. If the purpose of a national missile defense system is to protect the United States from North Korean missiles, why is the world's most advanced tracking and imaging radar about to go online at the northern tip of Norway instead of northern Japan?
Why Norway? is an especially intriguing question in the context of the threats made last September by Strobe Talbott to the Russians, when he said that the United States was considering unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty
Meanwhile, the administration may soon make a decision to deploy a national missile defense that could well end whatever momentum is left in the U.S.-Russian strategic arms reduction process. The truth is that domestic politics in the United States has led to false claims about the promise of missile defense technology--as well as fantastic claims about "emerging threats." Both the Republicans and the Democrats have been involved in a charade trying to make each look less concerned about national defense while they together drive the United States toward a disaster of historic proportions.
If the administration decides this summer to deploy the national missile defense system, it should at least be honest about it. The Pentagon still defines the principal missile threat as Russia, not North Korea. That is why HAVE STARE is in northern Norway instead of northern Japan.
A new arms race?
In his visit to Russia last September, Talbott assured the Russians that the proposed system would only be capable of handling "tens of missiles." Apparently Talbott thought that would reassure the Russians and not alarm the Chinese.
But the Chinese have, according to the CIA, only 20 missiles capable of reaching the United States. The Chinese have long said that the proposed "limited" system has an anti-Chinese face. And the Russians clearly believe that a system that could be rapidly expanded and upgraded looks like an anti-Russian system.
Talbott's words got an immediate response from Russia and China. When I was in Moscow in October, only a few weeks after Talbott's visit, I was told by several government officials about a meeting in Beijing, from which they had just returned.
The meeting was sponsored by the foreign ministries of Russia and China. However, most of the participants were from the Russian and Chinese ministries of defense. The purpose of the meeting was to begin Russian and Chinese political and technical cooperation to deal with the threat of a U.S. National missile defense system. George N. Lewis, John Pike, and I published an article in the August 1999 issue of Scientific American, which attempted to show that the proposed U.S. National missile defense system could be defeated by the simplest of countermeasures. I personally know missile experts in Russia and China, and they agree.
A U.S. decision to deploy will nevertheless result in a strong negative, coordinated, and unequivocal reaction from Russia and China. This is because there will be constant concerns that the United States may eventually expand and modify the defense with nuclear-armed interceptors instead of the pitiful hit-to-kill interceptors now planned for the system.
A modified and expanded nuclear system could also be readily defeated, but the Russians and Chinese would have to dedicate more resources to the task. Most important: They might want to expand their offensive capability, following the Nuclear Age dictum that a good offense beats any defense.
The Russians and Chinese also will not want to agree to a cutoff in the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. After all, they may need these materials to expand their nuclear arsenals in response to upgrades in U.S. missile defenses.
They will want to reserve the option of nuclear testing, so that new nuclear weapons designs--hardened to the effects of U.S. nuclear interceptors--can be tested.
And they will certainly not be interested in engaging in further arms reductions. Instead, they may need to expand their forces in response to changes in the U.S. National missile defense system. While this game is going on between the United States, Russia, and China, the non-weapon state signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be watching their security erode along with that of the three great competing powers. Some states may choose to withdraw from the treaty while others may choose to stay.
However, some of the states that withdraw may create pressures on neighboring states to also withdraw, especially if there are traditional tensions between these states.
Thus, a decade after the end of the Cold War, the Clinton administration has put us on the path to a new arms race and a breakdown of the entire international regime of treaties that has been built over the past 30 years. It is bad enough if the administration simply does not understand what it is doing. It is even worse if it does.
Theodore A. Postol is a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked as a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and on missile-related issues at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He has done extensive work on the Patriot anti-missile system's performance during the 1991 Gulf War. (c)2000 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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OPINION
Asian nuclear chain reaction
Joseph Cirincione,
March 1, 2000
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/03/01/fp9s2-csm.shtml
WASHINGTON - These are not happy days for global arms-control advocates. This summer, the Clinton administration may approve the deployment of a national missile-defense system - a move that could prompt a renewed arms race with Russia and China. Last fall, the US Senate stunned the world with its rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). And the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty may be the next pact headed for the chopping block.
Defeat of the CTBT crystallized the mantra now popular among conservatives: Distrust treaties, increase defenses, and assert American authority. Now that the era of superpower rivalry is over, critics assert, the US strategy of negotiated arms reductions must change to confront "a world of terror and missiles and madmen," to borrow a phrase from presidential hopeful George W. Bush.
But those who wish to reinvent arms control for the 21st century are turning their backs on history. As far back as the early 1960s, policymakers warned that the true threat to the United States was not only that third-world despots might acquire the bomb but that advanced industrial countries might do so.
Nuclear weapons in "the hands of countries large and small, stable and unstable," President John F. Kennedy warned, would create "the increased chance of accidental war and an increased necessity for the great powers to involve themselves in what otherwise would be local conflicts."
Kennedy understood what many today seem to forget: Rather than attempt just to limit the spread of advanced-weapons technology, policy makers must seek to build political firewalls that preclude the need for nuclear arms, so that even nuclear-capable nations would choose not to develop or deploy such weapons.
Unfortunately, these firewalls are now crumbling in much of the world - particularly in Asia, where declining faith in arms control is prompting advanced and developing countries alike to contemplate the acquisition or development of nuclear weapons. Like neutrons splitting from an atom, one nation's actions may trigger reactions throughout the region, which in turn stimulate additional actions. Asian nations form an interlocking nuclear reaction chain that vibrates dangerously with each new development.
South Asia is the region most likely to see the combat use of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan - two nuclear-armed nations sharing a common border and a history of aggression - are developing new missiles and crafting nuclear-deployment doctrines. The disputed Kashmir region, the cause of two past wars between these nations, remains a frightening flash point.
But it is Japan that may well be the critical element in this chain. In 1998, the Japanese were caught by surprise when the Indian-Pakistani tit-for-tat nuclear tests suddenly doubled the number of Asian nuclear-weapon states. Many Japanese were disturbed by how quickly the world accepted India and Pakistan's de facto status as new nuclear powers. This was not the bargain Japan had agreed to when - after a lengthy internal debate - it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1976.
North Korea's launch of a long-range Taepo Dong missile in August 1998 further agitated Japanese policymakers, stirring new debates over security policies. Then Vice Defense Minister Shingo Nishimura argued that Japan "ought to have aircraft carriers, long-range missiles, long-range bombers. We should even have the atomic bomb."
Mr. Nishimura was forced to resign over his comments, but if nuclear-weapon deployments increase in Asia, Japan may well conclude that its security is best served by building its own nuclear arsenal. And Japanese withdrawal from the NPT would almost certainly trigger the collapse of the treaty.
Finally, there are two new emerging risks in Asia: Russia faces the prospect of fragmentation into separate, nuclear-armed states, while the possible unification of Korea - although solving one set of problems - could create a single country with nuclear ambitions and capabilities. If these new nations find themselves in a world with an increasing number of nuclear-weapon states, they may well opt to join the club.
In this environment, it would be foolish to let the nonproliferation and arms- reductions treaties unravel, thereby disarming the US of its most effective weapons for fighting nascent nuclear threats. Some critics, such as Henry Kissinger, argue that the US can pick and choose which particular arms treaties it finds most advantageous.
Unfortunately, an arms control a-la-carte strategy will not work - the non-proliferation regime functions only as an integrated whole.
Provocative US actions, such as the deployment of national missile defense, could well set in motion a chain of events that diplomacy will be powerless to stop. Only by expanding the resources devoted to international negotiations and leading by example in reducing nuclear dangers can the US hope to prevent a nuclear tsunami from sweeping out of Asia.
Joseph Cirincione is director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. This essay is adapted from a forthcoming article in the spring issue of Foreign Policy magazine (www.foreignpolicy.com).
For further information:
Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization
http://www.ctbto.org/
A Nuclear Crisis Jimmy Carter/Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/008l-022300-idx.html
Q&A: What is the CTBT? BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_472000/472751.stm
Arms Control Today Online
http://www.armscontrol.org/ACT/act.html
------
Put beepers on missile motors? Deseret News editorial
Deseret News
March 01, 2000
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,150017792,00.html?
Not being able to find a pen or a watch is one thing.
Everyone misplaces car keys now and then. But not being able to keep track of missile motors for intercontinental ballistic missiles - the type that carry nuclear warheads - is something else entirely.
The Air Force has no excuse for not being able to account for all missile motors in its inventory.
The trouble started when the Air Force Audit Agency tested the accuracy of a computerized, worldwide inventory of spare motors for ICBMs. The inventory is maintained by Hill Air Force Base.
Auditors tried to count the 760 motors that supposedly were stored at various sites in Utah. However, they found that 47 motors listed on records didn't exist. Another three motors weren't where records said they should be and several others had been listed as operational and mission-ready but in fact had been fired in tests and destroyed years before.
Auditors also found that "destroyed missile motors were not always identified as destroyed" in the inventory because managers were not always notified of test motor firings. The inventory had an error rate of at least 7 percent for just those motors supposedly stored in Utah, based on documents obtained by the Deseret News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
That raises questions about the possibility of theft or ensuring compliance with treaties that limit missiles. As noted in the report from Air Force inspectors, "Accurate Air Force records are essential to verify compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty."
What the inability to keep track of the motors also means, according to Chris Hellman, senior analyst for the private Center for Defense Information, is that "theft is a threat. If you don't know where things are, how can you tell if they're missing?"
The motors by themselves do not represent technology that is extraordinarily sensitive or secret. However, given the nature of how they're used, it becomes imperative for the Air Force to significantly improve the way it accounts for components involved with strategic arms.
Until the Air Force is able to demonstrate the ability to do that, efforts to monitor treaties and prevent theft will be compromised, and so, potentially, will national security.
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US, Russia Try Breaking Deadlock
Associated Press
February 29, 2000 Filed at 7:32 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Disarmament.html
GENEVA (AP) -- Top U.S. and Russian negotiators on Tuesday sought ways of breaking their deadlock over nuclear disarmament, officials said.
Both sides favor obtaining Russian parliamentary ratification of the START II package of strategic arms cuts. They could then go on to negotiate further cuts.
But Washington and Moscow are at loggerheads over U.S. attempts to reopen the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the United States can deploy a limited missile defense.
Meeting for a new three-day round in Geneva were John Holum, the Clinton administration's key disarmament specialist, and Yuri Kapralov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's arms control department.
The meeting is the latest high-level follow-up to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's agreement with President Clinton last June to at least consider changing the ABM treaty, a U.S. spokesman said.
The treaty sets tight limits on each country's missile-defense systems, theoretically ensuring that neither would launch a missile attack because it could not defend itself against retaliation.
Washington wants to reopen the ABM treaty so it can develop a limited system to intercept any missiles from ``rogue'' nations, such as North Korea. It insists the defense would pose no threat to Russia.
Russia, backed strongly by China, says such a U.S. system would upset the strategic balance and start a new arms race. Moscow maintains that the treaty would be destroyed by U.S. efforts to modify it.
Russian Ambassador Vasily S. Sidorov underscored before the world's main disarmament forum in Geneva last week that Moscow refuses to modify the treaty.
``We want to unambiguously state that the Russian side is not holding negotiations on adaptation of the ABM Treaty with the U.S.,'' Sidorov told the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament.
The Clinton administration has said it will decide in July whether to withdraw from the ABM and begin work on the system, which could not be operational before 2005.
START II, which would halve U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 3,000-3,500 warheads each, was signed in 1993 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1996. But Communists and other hard-liners in the Russian Duma have balked at ratifying it.
The Clinton administration has proposed a START III treaty, which could reduce the sides' nuclear arsenals to as few as 2,000 warheads each. Russia wants even deeper cutbacks, possibly to 1,500 strategic warheads on each side.
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COLD WAR MONUMENT
Archaeology Magazine
March/April 2000
NEWSBRIEFS Volume 53 Number 2
http://www.he.net/~archaeol/0003/newsbriefs/coldwar.html
Blast-door art at Delta 1 (Tim Pavek)[LARGER IMAGE]
President Clinton has signed a bill establishing the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Included in the site are the Delta 1 Launch Control Center and Delta 9 Launch Facility of the 44th Missile Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, near Rapid City in western South Dakota. President Kennedy brought the Minuteman system on line during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It was, he said, his "ace in the hole." The missiles could reach the Soviet Union in 30 minutes or less. "It was a weapon for which there was virtually no defense," says the Air Force's Tim Pavek, "for a war no one could win." Deactivation of the missiles at Ellsworth, mandated by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, was completed on July 4, 1994.--MARK ROSE
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DRS Technologies Receives Order for International Tow Missile Systems
March 1, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/000301/nj-drs-technologies
PARSIPPANY, N.J. (BUSINESS WIRE) - DRS Technologies, Inc. (ASE:DRS) announced today that it has received, through its DRS Optronics unit in Palm Bay, Florida, a $6.5 million contract from Electro Design Manufacturing, Inc., Decatur, Alabama, to manufacture components and assemblies for the ground-launched TOW (Tube-launched Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) missile system in association with a U.S. Army Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
DRS will produce TOW Optical Sight Sensors and M83 TOW Traversing Units. The award includes contract options, which, if exercised, could increase the total value of this contract to $12.8 million. Deliveries on this initial contract are scheduled to begin in 2001 and continue through 2002.
Chairman, president and chief executive officer of DRS Technologies Mark S. Newman remarked: "DRS's decade-long experience as the U.S. Army's depot maintenance and repair facility for the TOW system has qualified us to perform efficiently on this program. Used by more than 40 allied nations around the world, the TOW missile system assemblies we provide will enhance our leadership position as a global supplier of advanced electro-optical systems technology for military sighting and weapons systems for the digital battlefield."
The TOW Optical Sight Sensor allows the gunner to track and control the missile in flight. Deviations between the gunner's line of sight and the missile's flight path to the target are detected by the Optical Sight Sensor and can be corrected by the wire command link. The M83 Traversing Unit is the mounting base for the launch tube and Optical Sight Sensor.
DRS Technologies provides leading edge products and services to government and commercial markets worldwide. Focused on defense electronics, the company develops and manufactures a broad range of mission critical products, from rugged computers and peripherals to systems and components in the areas of communications, data storage, digital imaging, electro-optics, flight safety and space. The company offers a full complement of technical support and advanced manufacturing services.
Additional information is available on the company's web site at www.drs.com.
-------- us politics
Bush: Go Ahead, Underestimate Me
Associated Press
March 1, 2000 Filed at 1:52 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Meet-George-Bush.html
His speeches are sure to be sound Republican doctrine, the campaign trimmings just right for whatever the occasion. And yet there is a hint of irreverence to George W. Bush.
The two-term Texas governor, the multimillionaire businessman, the son who would follow his father's footsteps to the Oval Office is single-minded in his quest -- but never ``too serious,'' in the words of wife, Laura.
If that leads some people to underestimate him, all the better, says Bush.
Over the past 25 years, he has transformed modest oil-business profits into an eye-popping $15 million payoff on his ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team. And his high-profile baseball niche -- along with that famous Bush name -- stood him in good stead as he defeated popular Democratic incumbent Ann Richards for the Texas governor's seat in 1994.
Now 53 and midway through his second term, Bush offers himself as a governor who has gotten results and the man to restore ``honor and dignity'' to the post-Clinton White House.
Serious talk for the man known as ``life of the party'' since his frat-boy days at Yale. And from a man whose critics question whether he has the intelligence to be president.
``I've got confidence in my capabilities,'' Bush retorts. ``I love to be underestimated.''
After his graduation from Yale came a stint in the Texas Air National Guard. No Vietnam. He recalls it as a ``nomadic period'' in which he tried to ``reconcile who I was and who my dad was, to establish my own identity in my own way.'' After a series of jobs, Bush went east to claim an MBA from Harvard. Then it was back to Texas, a 29-year-old looking to find his way and his fortune.
His marriage to Laura Welch, a librarian, provided a steadying influence. But his first foray into politics proved a disappointment when he lost a 1978 bid for an open congressional seat. Through the ups and downs of those volatile years in the oil business, Bush was an enthusiastic social drinker.
In the hangover after a boisterous 40th birthday party in 1986, Bush decided to give up drinking as part of what he describes as a broader and more gradual spiritual awakening.
``Drinking began to compete with my energy,'' he recalls in his autobiography. ``I'd be a step slower getting up.'' He has been less precise about whether he ever used illegal drugs, denying any use in the past 25 years.
This is not his first presidential campaign. In 1988, he moved to Washington to aid his father's winning campaign and served as the senior Bush's self-described ``loyalty thermometer.'' He also helped in 1992 but to a lesser extent.
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FAMILY
Bush and his wife, Laura, have twin 18-year-old daughters, Barbara and Jenna. Mrs. Bush, still described as a stabilizer to her husband, says she often keeps the TV off to avoid seeing hurtful things about her husband. The Bushes have tried to keep their daughters out of the hurly burly of the campaign and out of the public spotlight that shines on the Texas governor, safeguarding their ``private family life,'' as Mrs. Bush puts it.
Bush is the oldest of five children of former President Bush and wife Barbara. A brother, Jeb, is governor of Florida.
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ISSUES
Bush calls himself a ``compassionate conservative,'' and defines the term to include favoring broad tax cuts, improved schools and a strengthened military. He points to his Texas record as evidence of his ability to govern, although critics say he hewed to popular initiatives and avoided political risks. His tenure has been marked by pragmatism in working with Democrats to push education reforms and tax cuts through the Legislature.
Some of his policy positions:
--Abortion: Supports abortion only in cases of rape, incest or when a woman's life is in jeopardy from pregnancy. Would not make anti-abortion constitutional amendment a priority.
--Campaign reform: Would ban unlimited ``soft money'' contributions from corporations and unions to political parties but not from other groups. Would raise the limit on individual campaign contributions.
--Military: Wants to increase weapons research and development spending by $20 billion over five years, spend an extra $1 billion a year to raise military salaries, build missile defense systems for deployment inside and outside United States.
--Education: Wants scholarships of $1,500 a year for children in public schools that fail state testing for three years. Proposes $300 million over five years to reward states that improve student performance. Wants loan guarantees for charter schools. Would allow families to put $5,000 per year into education savings accounts from which money could be withdrawn tax-free for K-12 expenses.
--Gun Control: Stresses enforcing existing laws. Would raise age for handgun purchases to 21; backs instant background checks at gun shows; opposes universal gun registration. Signed laws in Texas permitting carrying of concealed weapons and protecting gun makers from lawsuits filed by cities.
--Taxes: Proposes $483 billion, five-year plan to gradually cut all tax rates. Current child tax credit to be doubled to $1,000 and income ceiling for getting the credit to be doubled to $200,000. Extends charitable deduction to non-itemizers.
-------- chemicals
Tenn. chemical reaction sickens 30
USA Today
03/01/00- Updated 04:03 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#pa
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - An accidental mix of odor control chemicals at a downtown water treatment plant Tuesday created a toxic cloud that sickened about 30 workers. At about 10 a.m., a contractor driving a tanker poured sodium hypochlorite, a bleach used for odor, into a tank with the residue of ferric chloride, another odor control chemical, said a spokesman for the Metro Water Services. The chemical reaction formed chlorine vapors. About 50 workers were evacuated. Hazardous materials workers removed the hose from the tank and reopened the building after about an hour
-------- fyi
Washington Post
Wednesday, March 1, 2000; Page A08
Today in Congress
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/01/197l-030100-idx.html
SENATE
Budget--2 p.m. Energy Dept. nuclear weapons research, development, manufacturing and control programs. Sec. Bill Richardson. 608 DOB.
------ us world police
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/24/11.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 24, 2000
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
I have just signed a Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) that will improve America's ability to strengthen police and judicial institutions in countries where peacekeeping forces are deployed. The PDD directs the Departments of State, Defense and Justice to undertake a series of critical enhancements in the areas of police-military coordination, as well as in police, penal and judicial training and development.
In peacekeeping missions from the Balkans to East Timor, establishing basic law and order has been among the most important -- and formidable -- challenges. Developing effective local police forces, establishing credible court and penal systems, and reforming legal codes can make the crucial difference between building a just future and lapsing back into conflict.
When fully implemented, this PDD will help overcome major obstacles that currently confront international peacekeeping operations. By enhancing cooperation between police and military peacekeepers, we will better ensure public security during these operations. By more effectively training and fielding international police monitors, we will better ensure that local police fairly and effectively prevent the breakdown of law and order in post-conflict societies. And by improving our ability to provide assistance to local judicial and penal institutions, we will better ensure accountability, as well as confidence among local populations often traumatized by the conflicts they have endured.
We must do everything possible to improve our ability to help countries in transition to get the job done -- and to encourage other governments and the United Nations to be deeply engaged in these efforts.
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http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/2/4/16.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 4, 2000
PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY OF TREASURY LARRY SUMMERS, DIRECTOR OF DOMESTIC POLICY COUNCIL BRUCE REED, DIRECTOR OF ATF BRAD BUCKLES, UNDER SECRETARY OF TREASURY FOR ENFORCEMENT JIM JOHNSON
The Briefing Room
MR. KENNEDY: We have with us Secretary Summers; Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Bruce Reed. Also with us is Jim Johnson, Under Secretary for Enforcement; and Brad Buckles of the ATF. Thank you.
MR. REED: Today's announcement is further proof that we will do everything in our power this year to keep guns out of the wrong hands. We're fighting a two-front war on gun crime, first with the most aggressive enforcement efforts in history and, second, by pressing Congress to strengthen our gun laws.
On enforcement, we announced earlier this year that federal gun prosecutions are up 16 percent since we took office, up 25 percent in the last year alone, and that the average sentence of those convicted of federal gun crimes is two years longer than it was when we took office. It has gone from six years to eight years. Overall, gun prosecutions, federal, state and local, are up by an even greater percentage, at a time when gun crime has dropped by a third.
Today's report, which the Secretary will talk about, shows that the number of licensed gun dealers has dropped from 284,000 in '92 to just 104,000 today. Today's action, which the President announced, is the most aggressive regulatory effort on suspect dealers in history. It builds on the findings of the Commerce in Firearms Report that the Secretary will talk about and as the President mentioned, on the work of Chuck Schumer from New York. And, finally, we asked Congress for a $280 million increase for gun crime enforcement to hire 500 new agents and inspectors at ATF; to hire 1,000 new federal, state and local gun prosecutors, and take other measures. If Congress is serious about enforcing gun laws, our budget gives them the chance to put their money where their mouth is.
As the President said, we also need to strengthen our gun laws this year. Our top priority is passing the gun bill to close the gun show loophole. The President called in the State of the Union on Congress to make that the first order of business. We've also proposed other measures to make it easier for ATF to do its job, by allowing three unannounced inspections a year, for example, instead of one, which is current law. And the President has called for photo licensing, requiring all new handgun buyers to have a photo license that demonstrates they passed a Brady background check and a gun safety course.
We will continue to take executive actions all year long to keep guns out of the wrong hands, and to press Congress to do its part. So, now, let me turn it over to Secretary Summers, who has made fighting gun crime a top priority at Treasury, and who has assembled a very impressive team with Deputy Secretary Eizenstat, Under Secretary Jim Johnson and the new Director of ATF, Brad Buckles.
SECRETARY SUMMERS: I want to acknowledge the hard work of Jim Johnson, Brad Buckles, Susan Ginsberg, Wally Nelson, Neal Wolin, on the report that is being announced today. This is the first Annual Report on Commerce and Firearms in the United States. It represents new analysis leading to new measures. Let me highlight six measures.
First, the ATF will conduct intensive inspections of the one percent of dealers that account for over half of all crime guns traced last year. If violations of law are found, we will take action against these dealers.
Second, ATF will require a subset of those dealers, those whose guns fall especially quickly into criminal hands, to provide it with information on all used guns taken into inventory. This will allow us, for the first time, to trace used guns sold by those dealers when they're recovered in crime.
Third, ATF will require dealers who fail to cooperate with crime gun trace requests, to produce all their firearms transaction records for the past year and on an ongoing basis. This will enable us to make sure that those uncooperative dealers follow the law and revoke their licenses when appropriate.
Fourth, based on our finding that large numbers of guns are lost or stolen in transit each year, the ATF will require -- is proposing to require all firearms dealers to maintain close tabs on their firearms by conducting inventories and notifying ATF within 48 hours of losses or thefts.
Fifth, ATF will tell manufacturers which of their guns are used in crimes, information that responsible manufacturers can use to make sure that they do not sell their guns to problem dealers.
And, sixth, we are proposing -- reiterating our proposal to hire 500 more ATF agents, agents and inspectors, and to increase the budget for gun tracing.
This represents an aggressive set of measures directed at enforcing more fully and effectively the laws on the books so as to reduce gun crime.
Let me just say on a separate note that today's economic statistics confirm that the expansion is healthy, that the momentum of expansion is continuing, and that the strategy of deficit reduction for investment-led, capacity-creating growth is working.
Q What do you think of an interest rate hike?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Helen, we don't comment on the independence of the Fed. That's one of the respects in which our macroeconomic policies have been sound. But what I think is most important is that the fundamentals of the economy are sound -- that even eight years into a period of economic expansion, capacity utilization is at relatively normal historical levels. And the reason capacity utilization is at normal levels, even after prolonged expansion, is that the expansion has been investment-led, with a record share of our total GNP going to new equipment, new equipment investment. We've seen rapid growth in demand, but we've seen supply keep pace. And that is why it has been a non-inflationary, prolonged expansion.
Q Mr. Secretary, on that point, what do you think, or who do you think, deserves the most credit for the state of the economy? The President and fiscal policies, Fed Chairman Greenspan and his policy on interest rates, or perhaps the folks in Silicon Valley, who helped fuel the growth of this new industry -- or none of the above?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: I feel like I'm taking an exam question. And my answer would be E, all of the above. And I say that because I think that it's a little bit like asking which blade of a scissors gets credit for cutting the paper.
Without the progress we have seen in bringing down budget deficits and removing $2 trillion of sterile government debt, and making room for that $2 trillion of sterile government debt to be instead invested in new plant and equipment investment, there wouldn't have been the resources for the information technology investment. There wouldn't have been the capacity creation that would have permitted the Fed to allow this expansion to continue so strongly.
So I believe that credit goes to workers and businesses. But the economic energy that they had was unlocked by our progress in bringing down the budget deficit, and that the prudent and appropriate monetary policies that we've had during this period have allowed us to reap the full benefits of deficit reduction, and the information technology revolution.
Q Mr. Secretary, going back to the unemployment numbers, though, is there concern about -- I mean, how low can the unemployment number go? And will this downward pressure on the unemployment number create other pressures in a tight labor market?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Let me say that an economy where jobs are looking for people, as well as people looking for jobs, is one of the best social programs that we have. An economy where employers are looking hard for workers is an economy where they will invest more in training. It is an economy where they will invest more in those who have traditionally been disadvantaged, it is an economy where they will invest more in being family friendly, in creating an environment that can keep workers. It is empowering of workers and it is a great advantage for our country.
What we have to do with a tight economy is work to make sure that we are bringing all the capacity on line that we can. That's why the President is working so hard to stimulate investment in traditionally depressed areas through the New Markets Initiative. That's why the President's proposals for reductions in the -- for increases in the Earned Income Tax Credit to encourage more lower income people to work are so important. That is why measures like the Disability Act that the President signed that will remove barriers to people with disabilities going back to work are so important.
What's crucial now is that we increase the supply of labor. And what we've seen is, with the right kinds of programs, there are millions of Americans who want to work, who can work and who can make a great contribution and that's our strategy with respect to the low unemployment rate.
Q A question on the ATF report. One percent of the gun dealers account for 57 percent of gun crime traces. How many -- what percentage of gun sales do those dealers account for?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: We don't have that number. We will get it for you. I think it's considerably less.
Q And another question. You said you were going to give gun manufacturers information on which of their weapons and maybe which of their dealers are being used in crimes. Are you going to make that information public as well so that the press and the public can have access to it?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Yes.
Q Mr. Secretary, would you care to comment on the weakness of the Euro against the dollar? Just reiterate your dollar policy?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: I don't have anything new to add on that. On that topic, I would offer the observation that a strong dollar is in the national interest.
Q Mr. Secretary, at least initial comments from the National Rifle Association regarding these new initiatives reported in The New York Times today, basically NRA is saying, nothing new here, the administration is making a lot of show about stuff that it already is able to do, I believe. What's your response to that?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: We welcome the NRA's agreement that we are acting within our legal authorities. But this is something new. This is an intensified focus and allocation of enforcement resources in the most effective way.
This is a kind of approach with which all Americans ought to agree, because the steps are steps that are specifically targeted at gun crime and at a more effective strategy for tracing guns that are used in crime, and preventing violations of law with respect to the sale to criminals. So this is not an approach that is in any way punitive with respect to guns in general, but it is an approach of assuring that our resources are targeted as effectively as possible at reducing the incidents of gun crime. And so I would hope that it would be widely supported.
Q To follow up on that, one of the criticisms of the NRA has also been that we don't need new gun laws, we need better enforcement of the ones on the books. What you're doing is better enforcing gun laws, using the ATF. Why, if that's so important, hasn't it already been done?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Well, we have worked in recent years to expand substantially our capacities in gun tracing. And as -- I began my statement by saying that new analysis is leading to new measures. For the first time, we've had the most comprehensive gun tracing data available, and that's what has led us to the conclusion that a large part of the problem comes from a small part of the population of dealers, and to the focus that's been announced today.
Q I'm wondering what the administration is doing about the problem of completing background checks within the three business days, as required. We're finding that guns are going to criminals because the background checks just weren't completed in a timely fashion.
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Brad?
MR. BUCKLES: The background checks, of course, are conducted through the national Insta-Check system. And that system is very successful in completing the overwhelming majority of cases. But there are cases where they're not being completed in time.
The difficulty in the federal government fixing that problem is the fact that it generally involves limitations on state and local authorities to be able to produce the records that are necessary in time, because not all state and local systems are computerized. And there has been additional monies, as part of the overall Brady law, that were made available to upgrade those state systems, and those actions are continuing to take place.
Q How serious is that statutory constraint that there can only be one inspection per year -- or one unannounced, random inspection per year? And how will you conduct these focused inspections if you have to operate within that constraint?
MR. BUCKLES: The statute permits one standard regulatory inspection a year. There are circumstances under which we can gain access to dealer records that require some sort of -- depending on what it's for -- some level of suspicion of something that's going on. We can go in anytime if we need a record for purposes of completing a criminal investigation. We can go in at other times if we have reason to believe that there's some violation going on. But for purposes of checking up on people to make sure that the routine records are being kept, that is the situation where we're limited to one inspection a year.
Q And you could do these focused inspections as part of that?
MR. BUCKLES: These will be using our one inspection a year. Now, what we will see out of this is that, with the 1,000, some small number of those, or some percentage of those, will be people we've done recently, already, because of our previous inspection. They weren't picked out because of this process. But we'll find that when we look at it, some of those will already have undergone intensive inspections. So with those people, we're not going to be able to go back and do a second inspection within the calendar year.
Q Mr. Secretary, if I could ask on another subject -- would the administration be willing to accept a marriage penalty tax cut of any kind as a stand-alone measure, or is it your view that tax cuts such as these have to be linked in a package, as the President talked about?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: As my letter to Chairman Archer indicated, the President's budget provides a framework in which marriage penalty relief represents a significant element and so it is something we could support as part of a process where we were sure we were doing it in the right way, and where we were sure we were going to be making progress on what are the key national priorities of paying down debt, strengthening Social Security and Medicare and assuring that core government functions could continue in a fiscally responsible way.
Q That sounds like a no.
SECRETARY SUMMERS: I think it sounds like what it sounds like.
Q One more question on guns for Bruce. Bruce, I wonder if you can tell us what the status is of the administration's potential negotiations with the gun industry over this national class action lawsuit, and whether the administration talked with the gun industry about this new proposal it's announcing today, and if the gun industry is supportive of this crackdown on rogue gun dealers?
MR. REED: Well, to the first question, as the President said today, we continue to believe that there are responsible voices within the gun industry who will want to join with us to make progress. We had planned to meet in Las Vegas two weeks ago to have those discussions and, under pressure from the gun lobby, some of the gun manufacturers refused to go forward. But we continue to believe that we will be able to make progress on it this year, however we are prepared to go forward with the lawsuit if we need to.
As to today's announcement, I think these steps should be welcomed by the gun industry. They have long sought the information that ATF is now going to make available to them about gun traces and I think that, as Secretary Summers said, there should be no debate about the need to intensify our efforts to enforce gun crime laws.
Q Do you think they are two separate entities, the NRA and the gun industry?
MR. REED: I do.
Q And one isn't supported by the other?
MR. REED: I think there are a number of responsible manufacturers who have not been well-served by the gun lobby. The gun lobby has consistently tried to shoot down every legislative effort to make progress and we have had a good working relationship with many gun manufacturers who have supported legislative efforts. So I think that they are two distinct entities.
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Can I just add that in this area, there are, obviously, a range of views and there is, obviously, room for substantial controversy over some aspects of this agenda. But I would hope that the idea that we should be trying to design and market firearms in a way that reduces the likelihood that children will be killed in accidents, that we should be trying to design and market firearms in a way that reduces the risk that they will come into the hands of felons is something that we can all agree on. This is not about politics, and we in the Treasury and at the ATF are committed to working with responsible manufacturers of firearms towards the achievement of those important objectives.
Q Why isn't the figure of 12 children killed every day more publicized by the government?
SECRETARY SUMMERS: Helen, I think the President -- neither the President, nor Bruce, nor I, nor Brad has been -- nor the Attorney General have been reticent in the use of that figure in any way. We believe that if one child is killed on one day, that is one too many. And we are very committed to an agenda of strengthening the available resources, strengthening the targeting under existing law, and strengthening the legislative framework. And each of those three things can make an independent contribution, and that's our approach to something that I think the President in the State of the Union made very clear was one of his major priorities.
MR. REED: And, Helen, if I could just say, the American people are not the problem here. The American people overwhelmingly support what we're trying to do. They were shaken by the tragedy in Columbine 10 months ago. The problem here is that Congress has failed to act on the American people's concerns.
THE PRESS: Thank you.