NUCLEAR
Russia Wants "Serious Dialogue" With Bush Administration
Buying Russian Uranium May Hurt U.S. Producers
Russia Considers U.S. Missile Talks
Italian soldier who worked in Balkans dies of leukemia
Clinton ends effort to stop Pyongyang's missile program
Putin Still Facing Many Challenges
Russia Uranium Deal Troubles U.S.
Bush's Security Team Is All for Missile Shield
Pentagon pick points up missile defense
LAW SUIT CHALLENGING POWER TO START A NUCLEAR WAR
Faster removal of INEEL waste on hold
Eighth Leukemia Case in Nevada
From Missile Defense to a Space Arms Race?
MILITARY
Iran Threatens Retaliation on Israel
UNM May Aid in Search for Life on Jovian Moon
OTHER
October Sky
Ecological crisis looms in struggle for balance
-------- NUCLEAR
Russia Wants "Serious Dialogue" With Bush Administration
Russia Today
Dec 30, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=240185
MOSCOW -- (Reuters) Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Saturday that Moscow would move quickly to establish a "serious dialogue" with the incoming administration of U.S. president-elect George W. Bush on missile defense.
But in an article published in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, Ivanov made it clear that Russia was not yet ready to drop its opposition to a proposed U.S. national missile defense (NMD) shield which would violate a landmark arms control treaty.
"We intend without delay to start a serious dialogue with the new American administration on the entire range of disarmament issues, including the retention of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM)," Ivanov wrote.
Russia has refused to re-write the accord, which has formed the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament accords for three decades, and warned the NMD would spark a new global arms race that would draw in China.
Bush vowed during his election campaign to push ahead with the $60 billion "Star Wars"-style national missile defense shield, even if that meant unilaterally violating the ABM treaty.
Washington says it needs the system -- which would shoot down incoming nuclear missiles -- to protect America from possible attack by so-called "rogue states" like Iraq and North Korea. Both are developing missile and nuclear capabilities.
Moscow says American fears are exaggerated and any concerns could be met by jointly developing a non-strategic missile defense system (which would leave ABM intact), lower nuclear arsenals and a diplomatic drive focused on states of concern.
"ABM TARIFF"
Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to scrap all disarmament accords with the United States if Washington deploys the NMD regardless of Moscow's security worries, although some military commentators believe Moscow will have to shift its stance if Bush does not back down.
Last month the head of Russia's strategic rocket force, General Vladimir Yakovlev, caused a stir by suggesting for the first time that Moscow could live with the NMD if the United States in exchange agreed an "ABM tariff".
That would mean any improvements in missile defense would be automatically compensated by cuts in offensive capability, thus restoring the strategic balance.
In his comment piece, Russia's Ivanov also said Russia had spoken with an increasingly confident voice on the international stage since Putin's election in March.
He cited the flurry of Putin's overseas trips, notably to Asia, leading European capitals and major international summits, adding that ratification of the START-2 arms reduction accord and nuclear test ban treaty had boosted Russia's disarmament credentials.
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Buying Russian Uranium May Hurt U.S. Producers
Washington Post
Saturday, December 30, 2000; Page A11
By John Heilprin Associated Press
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64969-2000Dec29?language=printer
Buying more than 100 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium from Russia helped U.S. national security but may be hurting domestic producers as the nation's nuclear power plants become dependent on Russian uranium, congressional auditors said yesterday.
In 1993, the United States agreed to a 20-year program of buying highly enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons, imported in a form suitable to fuel commercial reactors.
The Energy Department created the U.S. Enrichment Corp. to handle the purchases, then let the corporation be privatized through a July 1998 public offering that brought the Treasury $1.9 billion.
Congress's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, found that a committee of officials from several federal agencies, formed to oversee the uranium purchases, "has not fulfilled all of its responsibilities."
The Enrichment Oversight Committee had no contingency plan for replacing USEC, as it was instructed to have, when the company considered severing its ties with the Russia deal in 1999. The committee likewise has yet to complete a study of how government purchases of Russian uranium are affecting the U.S. nuclear fuel industry.
Undersecretary of Energy Ernest Moniz told the GAO he agrees with some of the report's broad themes and noted the 1993 agreement has succeeded in removing the equivalent of 4,000 nuclear weapons from Russia since 1995.
He said, however, the report "understates" some of the oversight committee's accomplishments, such as acting to "address domestic market and fuel cycle interests."
The number of Russian nuclear warheads is projected to drop to 1,000 or fewer within seven years due to treaties and obsolescence. The prospective START III arms control treaty, which is still to be negotiated, is expected to establish ceilings of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads.
Nuclear power supplies about 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs. In 1999, about half the 47.9 million pounds of uranium bought by U.S. utilities for commercial reactors came from the United States and Canada. The other half came from overseas sources.
The "growing dependence on Russian-origin material for nuclear fuel" that emerged from the 1993 agreement has prompted worries among industry officials about the United States' continued ability to produce fuel sufficient for commercial nuclear power plants domestically, the report said.
From June 1995 through October 2000, USEC paid Russia $1.6 billion for slightly more than one-fifth of the 500 metric tons of uranium that the United States agreed to buy between 1993 and 2013.
The corporation now plans to close its Portsmouth, Ohio, uranium enrichment facility in June 2001, leaving just one plant, in Paducah, Ky. The GAO says that would increase USEC's production costs and cause reliance on an aging plant that lies in an earthquake zone.
The Energy Department is to spend $630 million over five years to keep the Ohio plant in "cold standby" status to be reopened quickly if needed.
---
Russia Considers U.S. Missile Talks
Associated Press
December 30, 2000 Filed at 12:07 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, in an article published Saturday, said Russia will seek serious talks with the United States on missile defense, one of the most difficult issues between the two countries.
President-elect Bush is expected to push strongly for the creation of a national missile-defense system, which Russia vehemently opposes. Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's choice for secretary of defense, led a commission two years ago that said potential missile attacks from so-called rogue nations were a serious concern, stoking arguments for the proposed U.S. system.
Although Russia could also be a target for such attacks, the Kremlin rejects amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow creation of a limited missile-defense system.
Russia argues that building such systems undermines the treaty's basic premise that neither Washington nor Moscow would likely launch a nuclear attack against the other if they have no way of defending themselves against retaliatory strikes.
``We intend to enter into serious dialogue with the new American administration on all complex disarmament problems, including preservation of the 1972 ABM Treaty,'' Ivanov wrote in an article in the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
There has been ``wide support in the international arena for the line of Russia on preserving the treaty ... as a cornerstone of strategic stability in the world,'' Ivanov wrote in a possible indication that Russia would hold to its firm opposition.
However, speaking Saturday on Russian television, Ivanov said ``the originality of Russia's approach is that we are ready to closely consider the concerns that the U.S. administration has.''
He described previous talks with the United States on the issue as constructive ``and it is in the same way that we want to discuss this difficult problem with the Bush administration as well.''
On other matters, Ivanov said in the article that Russia's influence in international affairs is growing and he credited this in part to the domestic policies of President Vladimir Putin.
``The main thing is that the positive processes that began in Russia after the presidential elections -- first of all the stabilization of the economy and the general situation in the country -- have been beneficial to its international position,'' Ivanov wrote.
``The voice of Russia is sounding in world affairs ever more confidently,'' he said.
-------- depleted uranium
Italian soldier who worked in Balkans dies of leukemia
Saturday, December 30 8:11 PM SGT
http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=asia/headlines/001230/world/afp/Italian_soldier_who_worked_in_Balkans_dies_of_leukemia.html
ROME, Dec 30 (AFP) - An Italian soldier who served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia has died of leukemia linked to radiation exposure from depleted uranium arms, according to the latest edition of the Italian gendarmes' newspaper.
Rinaldo Colombo, 31, who died in September, worked as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1995, said the newspaper, published by the association "Un arma".
His death brought to five the number of Italian soldiers who are believed to have died from "Balkans Syndrome," the name given to a series of health problems contracted by those who served in the former Yugoslavia.
The Italian press reported Saturday that four other Italian gendarmes, including an officer, were undergoing tests and that there were about 20 suspected cases in all.
According to the independent Italian Observatory for the Protection of the Armed Forces, seven military personnel who served in Bosnia and Kosovo have died and a dozen others are ill from exposure to radiation from depleted uranium weapons.
In Belgium, five cases of cancer have been diagnosed in soldiers who worked in the Balkans, but no link with the arms has been established.
On Friday, Belgian Defence Minister Andre Flahaut asked his counterpart Bjorn von Sydow of Sweden, whose country takes over the EU presidency in January, to consider a collective study of health problems suffered by Balkans peacekeepers.
Several cases of leukemia have been recorded amongst Dutch veterans of the Balkans. Spain too has launched an intensive study of some 32,000 military personnel who were on duty there.
Portugal's army chief of staff said Thursday that about 900 former peacekeepers would undergo medical tests to see if they had been exposed to radiation linked to depleted uranium arms.
The newspaper Publico -- citing a Lisbon cancer specialist -- reported last week that the death of a Portuguese soldier who served in Kosovo could be linked to NATO's use of the weapons in the Balkans.
NATO officials said last week that US aircraft fired 10,800 depleted uranium projectiles in Bosnia between 1994 and 1995.
Depleted uranium weapons are denser than conventional arms, which means they can penetrate heavy armour more easily. They were also used in Iraq in 1990 and 1991 and during the air campaign against Belgrade in 1999.
-------- korea
As time runs out, Clinton ends effort to stop Pyongyang's missile program
Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 30/12/2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/30/text/world4.html
Washington: President Bill Clinton has abandoned his ambition of forging a deal ending North Korea's nuclear missile program before his term ends. Negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are expected to stall under the incoming Republican administration.
Mr Clinton said he made the decision after evaluating last-minute talks with the secretive Government, and not because of any pressure from the incoming Bush administration, which would be left with the task of putting the deal into effect.
But the efforts to strike a deal were clearly a source of tension with the Bush team. Some advisers to President-elect George W. Bush and a few Republicans in Congress had warned Mr Clinton not to reach an agreement that would tie their hands.
Mr Clinton's decision could well mark the start of a long pause in the intense negotiations with North Korea, which was long viewed as a rogue state. It could take a year or more, some White House officials and members of Congress say, for the new administration to assess relations with North Korea.
That likelihood was reinforced on Thursday when Mr Bush said Mr Donald Rumsfeld would be his secretary of defence.
It was Mr Rumsfeld's report two years ago, suggesting that American intelligence agencies had underestimated the missile threat from North Korea, that accelerated the current negotiations.
According to Clinton Administration officials, in the past few months North Korea did offer a complete halt to exports of missiles and related technologies. But time ran out before the two sides could resolve some key issues.
The US and South Korea agreed on Thursday to strengthen Seoul's jurisdiction over American soldiers charged with murder and rape in a bid to resolve one of the most contentious issues between them.
Under the deal, US military personnel accused of murder or many other serious crimes will be turned over to South Korea after they are indicted.
-------- russia
Putin Still Facing Many Challenges
Associated Press
December 30, 2000 Filed at 1:30 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Putins-Year.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW (AP) -- Charging through his first year at Russia's helm, Vladimir Putin rarely stepped on the brakes, ramming through measure after measure to consolidate his grip on power. But as he enters 2001, the tasks still look enormous: a seemingly endless war in Chechnya and a populace demoralized by years of crime, poverty and corruption.
``I hope that with time, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will turn from the problems he knows to the real problems plaguing society,'' said Vladimir Rimskiy, an analyst with the Information for Democracy Foundation.
Boris Yeltsin shocked the nation and the world when he abruptly stepped down Dec. 31, 1999, and named his prime minister acting president. But Russians were pleased with the choice, and they delivered Putin a resounding victory in the March 26 presidential election.
Putin quickly moved to remake the relationship between Moscow and the regions, pushed through tax reform and a long-stalled arms control treaty, and toured the world to underline that Russia was still a power to be reckoned with. He said his policies were oriented toward a common goal: priming Russia for reform to reverse the nation's decline.
The economy was buoyed by high world prices for oil, one of Russia's major export earners, but it was widely expected to decline in 2001 as oil prices fall. Putin warned this week that economic growth, which reached some 7 percent in 2000, was already sagging, and that unemployment seemed to be rising.
The popularity he won through raising pensions and salaries -- bringing real income up by 7 percent -- could fade fast if the economy sinks. Putin told Russian reporters this week that he was torn between the need to institute far-reaching reforms and to ease social pressures.
``I always keep in mind that despite all the positive tendencies, a huge number of our citizens endure extreme hardship and live in poverty,'' Putin told Russian journalists this week. ``I would not say that this feeling helps to make pragmatic or even technocratic decisions in the economic sphere ... . But this feeling helps me to make more balanced decisions and it is by no means harmful for a leader of such a country.''
Putin's other big, haunting problem is the Chechen war.
In spite of his vows to crush separatist rebels, the conflict has ground into its 16th month. Putin has shown no sign that he would try to negotiate an end to the war next year -- and rebels have demonstrated time and again that they can inflict daily casualties on federal forces.
The explosion and sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk underlined the decay in the Russian armed forces and the pressing need for long-delayed military reform. Putin said this week that Russia's long-term goal must be a professional army to replace the mandatory draft -- but he said that would take years.
Aging infrastructure and frequently flouted safety regulations also took their toll in 2000. The fire that ravaged the Ostankino television tower pointed up the disastrous neglect that put Russian lives at risk every day. Yet Putin has not indicated that he'll devote scarce resources to cleaning up the mess.
Russians' chief hope was that the new president would reverse the nation's decades-long decline, which accelerated following the 1991 Soviet breakup.
They saw in Putin everything that his predecessor Boris Yeltsin lacked: energy, sobriety, pragmatism and a knack for forging consensus.
Putin, a 16-year veteran of the Soviet KGB, proved to be a talented political operator. His team combined liberal economists and old-style security operatives, and he pushed Russia to acknowledge its contradictory heritage by adopting symbols including the czarist, double-headed eagle and the Soviet anthem.
He deftly disarmed almost all opposition, either by coopting dissenting politicians, cowing them or simply pushing them out. The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, acceded to his every request, from cutting the powers of regional governors to passing the nation's first balanced budget. Most of the media fell in lockstep behind him.
Putin's most ambitious project was administrative reform to reassert the federal government's control over the country's 89 regions. The move was aimed at undoing one of Yeltsin's legacies: giving the regions autonomy, which some leaders had used to build their own political and economic empires.
He also worked to make good on his pledge to raise Russia's standing in the world.
Less than a month after winning the presidential election, he persuaded the two parliamentary chambers finally to ratify the 1993 START II nuclear arms reduction treaty, which Yeltsin and President Clinton had signed in 1993 and the former, Communist-dominated legislature had blocked.
But there was also a chill in U.S.-Russian relations. Putin repeatedly objected to Washington's possible deployment of a new, limited missile defense. More ominously, for the first time in 40 years, an American was convicted of espionage in Russia.
Edmond Pope, a former naval officer-turned-freelance defense contractor, protested his innocence, and both his lawyer and the U.S. government said prosecutors didn't prove his guilt. Still, Pope was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison. Putin pardoned him as a humanitarian gesture.
In a series of whirlwind foreign visits, Putin made fast friends with Western leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Helmut Schroeder. But he discomfited the United States in particular with trips to such old Soviet allies as North Korea and Cuba.
At home, such visits won him praise from the Communists and other hard-liners. Liberals expressed misgivings.
``He decided to become a link between them and the rest of civilization, and that's not a bad thing,'' said Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Russian Journalists Union. ``But when you go into a quarantine ward trying to cure someone else, it's important not to get infected yourself. Don't turn Russia into North Korea.''
There were worrying signs that the government would crack down on press freedoms. In January, federal authorities arrested Radio Liberty reporter Andrei Babitsky in Chechnya and handed him over to alleged Chechen rebels -- whom Babitsky claimed were tied with Russian security services.
Human rights advocates claimed Putin had given the security services and prosecutors new freedom to persecute opponents, including environmentalists and business leaders Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky. The two are among the so-called oligarchs who used their connections with Yeltsin's inner circle to spin vast fortunes, and both own large media interests in Russia.
Putin denied the agencies were working for political ends, but at every turn he stressed the need to safeguard the nation's security. And he vowed that his administration would not tolerate the oligarchs' interference in government.
Putin spoke frequently about the need for economic reform, and he surrounded himself with pro-market economists. But with the exception of the tax reform -- which introduced a flat, 13 percent income tax as of Jan. 1, 2001 -- the government did not manage to turn any reform policy into reality.
``This year has been the year of missed chances,'' said Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the pro-reform Union of Right Forces.
He said Putin's priorities in 2001 should be revamping the nation's natural gas, electricity, and railroad monopolies; carrying out land reform; strengthening the corrupt and ineffectual court system; and implementing radical cuts in the military.
Another area where Russians expect results is in the battle against corruption. In spite of Putin's pledge to install a ``dictatorship of law,'' bribe-taking, favoritism and the diversion of state funds still thrive.
Rimskiy, the political analyst, said continuing corruption proved that Putin still had not established enough authority to tackle the nation's most difficult problems.
``I think that Vladimir Putin is, as a person, concerned to end corruption. He thinks it's unacceptable to allow criminals to come to come to power, to allow budget money to be squandered, that it's absolutely unacceptable that people freeze in the winter when there are enough energy resources,'' Rimskiy said.
``But he's unable to solve these problems. His tragedy is that he understands this, he feels that it's not working -- a management system that could achieve big government tasks.''
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Russia Uranium Deal Troubles U.S.
Sat, 30 Dec 2000 12:01:30 EST
By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Buying more than 100 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium from Russia helped U.S. national security but may be hurting domestic producers as the nation's nuclear power plants become dependent on Russian uranium, congressional auditors said Friday.
In 1993, the United States agreed to a 20-year program of buying highly enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons, imported in a form suitable to fuel commercial reactors.
The Energy Department created the U.S. Enrichment Corp. to handle the purchases, then let the corporation be privatized through a July 1998 public offering that brought the Treasury $1.9 billion.
The Russian government's counterpart is Technsnabexport, known as Tenex, which processes the uranium and takes the payments.
Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, found that a committee of officials from several federal agencies, formed to oversee the uranium purchases, ``has not fulfilled all of its responsibilities.''
The Enrichment Oversight Committee had no contingency plan for replacing USEC, as it was instructed to have, when the company considered severing its ties with the Russia deal in 1999. The committee likewise has yet to complete a study of how government purchases of Russian uranium is affecting the U.S. nuclear fuel industry.
The GAO said that study should be done and the United States ``should be prepared to either replace (USEC) or to take on the responsibilities itself.''
While the corporation has tried ``to balance conflicting commercial and national security interests,'' the report said, its stated ``priority as a private company is to remain a profitable commercial enterprise and maintain maximum value to its shareholders.''
The 40-page report was requested by House Commerce Chairman Thomas Bliley, R-Va., who is leaving Congress in January.
Undersecretary of Energy Ernest Moniz told the GAO he agrees with some of the report's broad themes and noted the 1993 agreement has succeeded in removing the equivalent of 4,000 nuclear weapons from Russia since 1995.
``It is a unique agreement that breaks new ground in the relations among nuclear weapons states,'' Moniz said.
He said, however, the report ``understates'' some of the oversight committee's accomplishments, such as acting to ``address domestic market and fuel cycle interests.''
The number of Russian nuclear warheads is expected to drop to 1,000 or fewer within seven years due to treaties and obsolescence. The prospective START III arms-control treaty, which is still to be negotiated, is expected to establish ceilings of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads.
Nuclear power supplies about 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs. In 1999, about half the 47.9 million pounds of uranium bought by U.S. utilities for commercial reactors came from the United States and Canada. The other half came from overseas sources.
The ``growing dependence on Russian-origin material for nuclear fuel'' that emerged from the 1993 agreement has prompted worries among industry officials about the United States' continued ability to produce fuel sufficient for commercial nuclear power plants domestically, the report said.
An oversupply of uranium caused by Russian imports has led to price drops, lower domestic production and decreased employment in the U.S. industry.
From June 1995 through October 2000, USEC paid Russia $1.6 billion for slightly more than one-fifth of the 500 metric tons of uranium that the United States agreed to buy between 1993 and 2013.
The corporation now plans to close its Portsmouth, Ohio, uranium enrichment facility in June 2001, leaving just one plant, in Paducah, Ky. The GAO says that would increase USEC's production costs and cause reliance on an aging plant that lies in an earthquake zone.
The Energy Department is to spend $630 million over five years to keep the Ohio plant in ``cold standby'' status to be reopened quickly if needed.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush's Security Team Is All for Missile Shield
Future Defense Chief Was Key Advocate
International Herald Tribune
Saturday, December 30, 2000
Steven Lee Myers New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=5871
WASHINGTON For more than two years, one name more than any other has driven the debate over whether to build a national missile defense: Donald Rumsfeld.
Now, in choosing Mr. Rumsfeld to be his secretary of defense, President-elect George W. Bush has signaled that the politically and diplomatically divisive goal of building a shield against nuclear missiles will be at the core of the new administration's national security agenda.
In 1998, Mr. Rumsfeld, the former Republican congressman, former ambassador to NATO and former secretary of defense, oversaw a commission that concluded that "rogue" nations could threaten America with ballistic missiles sooner than analysts had predicted.
Conservatives who supported a missile shield hailed the findings as refreshingly candid and worrisome. Liberals who supported arms control criticized them as too focused on potential threats and not on the diplomatic and financial obstacles to building a missile shield.
Either way, the commission's report - followed a month later by a provocative North Korean missile test - led President Bill Clinton's administration to propose its own limited version of a national missile defense.
"The Rumsfeld report was the main reason the debate was gradually turned around and the administration turned around," said Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, an advocate of a missile defense.
In his campaign for president, Mr. Bush repeatedly advocated building a more expansive defensive system than the one Mr. Clinton proposed and, in the summer, deferred.
Mr. Rumsfeld offered little detail, however, except to say that he would not rule out defenses based on the ground, as Mr. Clinton proposed, or at sea and in space.
Mr. Bush was no more specific Thursday, saying only that he would expect Mr. Rumsfeld to work closely with his budget director "to make sure that the missile defense receives the priority we think it must receive in future Pentagon budgets."
Still, it is clear that Mr. Bush's selection of Mr. Rumsfeld completes a national security team - including the next vice president, Dick Cheney, and the next secretary of state, General Colin Powell - that shares the dream of building the sort of shield against nuclear ballistic missiles that President Ronald Reagan envisioned in the 1980s.
When his selection was announced on Dec. 16, General Powell made the case forcefully, calling a defensive shield "an essential part" of U.S. security.
Mr. Bush himself referred to Mr. Rumsfeld's prominence on the issue of missile defense, citing his work as chairman of the commission, to which congressional Republicans had appointed him.
"In picking Don Rumsfeld, we'll have a person who is thoughtful and considerate and wise on the subject of missile defense," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Rumsfeld's report, issued in an unclassified form in July 1998, was striking in its contradiction of previous analyses by U.S. intelligence agencies, which had concluded that no country lacking the capacity to strike the United States with ballistic missiles would be able to develop that capacity for at least a decade.
Instead, the commission warned that countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq could develop a missile "with little or no warning" - and essentially at any moment.
Since the report became public, North Korea, in particular, has undergone significant changes.
The North's once hermitic leader, Kim Jong Il, had been negotiating with the Clinton administration to halt its production of long-range missiles, though the White House said Thursday that progress had not been enough to warrant a presidential trip to North Korea to complete a deal.
Mr. Rumsfeld did not address North Korea on Thursday, but his remarks indicated that his assessment of the threat of a ballistic missile attack on the United States had not changed.
"There is no question but that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the delivery systems for them is extensive across the world," he said.
Mr. Bush's proposals for a missile defense will face the same hurdles as Mr. Clinton's.
And since Mr. Bush's would go further, they may be more contentious, especially in Russia and China, two nuclear-armed countries that view missile defenses as destabilizing.
Mr. Clinton decided against moving ahead with a limited system after failing to persuade the Russians to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
Although Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have not advocated abandoning the ABM Treaty, they have suggested that they will not be bound by its prohibition on developing a missile defense.
---
Pentagon pick points up missile defense
When Bush nominated Rumsfeld, he tapped a man with grand plans.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday, December 30, 2000
By Jonathan S. Landay INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/12/30/front_page/DEFENSE30.htm
WASHINGTON - By tapping Donald Rumsfeld as his Pentagon chief, President-elect George W. Bush signaled his intention to push for the development of a large-scale missile-defense system.
Bush said yesterday that he believed the Cold War veteran, who served as defense secretary a quarter century ago, would "make sure that missile defense receives the priority we think it must receive in future Pentagon budgets."
Rumsfeld has advocated a missile-defense system far more ambitious than the program pursued by President Clinton or the more extensive shield Bush called for during the campaign.
The United States must be protected against missile attacks not only from other continents but also from points close to U.S. shores and borders, Rumsfeld said in a Jan. 28, 1999, appearance on PBS's The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.
A national missile-defense system "ought to be able to protect the 50 states and possessions," Rumsfeld said in that interview. "It ought to be able to deal with the shorter-range threats as well as the longer-range threats, that is to say, a shorter-range ballistic missile from a ship."
By contrast, Clinton's program is designed to defend the country against a handful of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Clinton decided against moving ahead with the program earlier this year after two of three tests failed. He left a decision on its fate to his successor.
Russia and China vehemently object to U.S. plans to build a missile-defense system because they fear the system could neutralize their nuclear arsenals. European allies worry that deployment of a U.S. missile-defense system would ignite a new nuclear arms race.
Bush has been vague about his vision of missile defenses. But he made clear during the campaign that he believed Clinton's program was inadequate.
He said he would pursue a system that could shield the United States, its allies and troops overseas from "missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches."
The exact structure and capabilities of the system Bush will promote is to be determined in an extensive Pentagon review over which, Bush indicated Thursday, Rumsfeld will wield significant influence.
"In picking Don Rumsfeld, we'll have a person who is thoughtful, considerate and wise on the subject of missile defenses," Bush said.
Rumsfeld in 1998 led an independent bipartisan evaluation of the missile threat against the United States.
The commission contended that the CIA had underestimated the danger of missile attacks by countries such as Iran and North Korea. It warned that those countries could develop missiles that could loft chemical, biological or nuclear warheads into the United States "with little or no warning."
The panel also asserted that U.S. foes could launch short-range or cruise missiles tipped with such warheads from ships off the U.S. coast or from aircraft.
Many experts dispute the report's findings, saying it exaggerated the threats.
The system Rumsfeld apparently envisions would be costlier than Clinton's program, which has an estimated price of $60 billion, or the system advocated so far by Bush, which could exceed $100 billion, they said.
Michael O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, a left-of-center think tank, said defending the United States against short-range ballistic and cruise missiles would require deploying massive networks of sensors and interceptors all along the country's coastlines.
"You would have to militarize the West Coast, the Caribbean and the East Coast," he said. "You would have to be constantly monitoring your perimeter like you were at war."
Arms-control advocates argue that Rumsfeld does not comprehend the huge technical and financial hurdles to building a missile-defense system. Many scientists also have said it is highly unlikely that the technology can ever be developed.
"He is clearly an advocate of national missile defenses, but that is easy to do from the outside," said Spurgeon Keany, a former U.S. arms negotiator who heads the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
Conservatives are pressing for the kind of system that Rumsfeld described in his PBS interview, which would employ sensors and interceptors on land, in space, and on Navy ships along the U.S. coastline.
Proponents say that with adequate funds and strong presidential backing, a system could be developed.
Conservatives also want Bush to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which prohibits Washington and Moscow from deploying nationwide missile defenses.
Rumsfeld, in the PBS interview, said there "isn't a doubt in my mind" that the United States should "relieve ourselves of the restrictions of the treaty."
Bush said he would abandon the treaty if Moscow refused to accept amendments allowing deployment of U.S. national missile defenses.
Clinton tried to persuade Moscow to modify the accord, but the Russians refused and threatened to abandon nuclear and conventional arms-control accords with the United States if Washington moved ahead with such a system.
Jonathan S. Landay's e-mail address is jlanday@krwashington.com
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CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT CHALLENGING PRESIDENT'S POWER TO START A NUCLEAR WAR
Sat, 30 Dec 2000
Dear friends,
Proposition #3, "The Citizen's Right To Review All Nuclear Weapons Use" is launching our signature drive Saturday, Jan 6th on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder Colorado at noon to get this citizen's driven measure on the ballot for November 2001. If successful, this initiative will require the state attorney general to file a class action lawsuit challenging the capacity of the president to start nuclear war on just his authority and in violation of Article I of the Constitution which gives Congress alone that power. We really need the help of the Greens in getting this effort under way or it probably won't succeed.
Prop #3 takes a unique approach by only questioning presidential control of the land-based missiles, many of which are hidden here in Colorado, while leaving the bombers and sub-based missiles still available for our defense. By leaving two of the three legs of our strategic triad untouched, we can begin a slow and gradual discussion about a fossilized nuclear war fighting system without endangering national security and do so in a way that isn't destabilizing or frightening to people.
But our Jan. 6th effort is also meant to generate publicity for our candlelight vigil at the Pentagon on Jan 20th, the evening of the inauguration. We have permit #0528 to legally gather there and because a lot of people will already be in Washington to protest, it's the perfect time to transfer our anger at not having our votes really count in the presidential election to the fact there is not going to be a vote about this country going into nuclear war.
So we are hopeful that anyone in Colorado can attend on the 6th as well as have your organization copy this message and send it to others. What would be just as helpful would be if you could contact the following three papers and ask them to cover our signature drive kickoff at the courthouse. Without this initial publicity, our efforts will probably fail. The papers are:
The Denver Post Mr. Even Dreyer Newsroom editor phone (303)-820-1201 email: newsroom@denverpost.com
Daily Camera Mr. Kevin Kaufman News room editor phone (303) 473-1365 email:
Denver Rocky Mountain News Mr. Luke Clarke Newroom editor phone (303) 892-5381 metro@rockymountainnews.com
I've also attached a copy of our web page which is located at www.respectthelaw.org http://www.respectthelaw.org in case the file doesn't open. Now is the best chance we have to rise up and take back control of our military because there might not be another opportunity or a better plan. I do know that the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines used the Internet to great success in their efforts. With your help, we can do the same and take advantage of the genuine anger on the Left at being shut out of the last election. Thank you for your valuable time.
Contact me back if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Mr. Page Penk Founder ppenk@indra.com
RESPECT THE LAW FOUNDATION RESTORING THE RIGHT TO VOTE ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS USE
"We have guided missiles and misguided men." Martin Luther King
Hello and welcome,
If you feel your vote didn't really count for president, make it count on another important issue on January 20th, 2001. That's when we hold our candlelight protest at the Pentagon against the power of the Commander-and-Chief to begin nuclear war without a vote from Congress first as required by Article I of the Constitution. On the evening of the inauguration, we are going to rise up and demand that the rule of law be respected when it comes to the most important decision a free people can ever make, when and if to go to atomic war. Because right now, not only won't your vote be counted against the start of that war, no one is even going to ask what you or Congress think about the matter.
But there is a plan to make our voices heard again on this issue and enforce the law of the Constitution to our favor. Demonstration Permit #0528 allows us to peacefully and legally gather at the Pentagon to bring national attention to Colorado Proposition #3, "The Citizen's Right To Review All Nuclear Weapons Use." If approved by the voters in the November 2001 election, it would require the state attorney general to begin a class-action lawsuit against the power of the president to start nuclear war on his word alone.
For the first time ever, the military establishment would have to justify their fossilized nuclear war fighting policy in the court of public opinion as well as a court of law. But the best part is that the lawsuit would question only the president's ability to instantly launch land-based missiles while leaving the bombers and submarine-based missiles still under his control. This allows for a slow and gradual legal inspection of a policy that is no longer in touch with the defense realities we face in the 21st Century and do so without leaving us vulnerable to potential attack. You can click here <initiative.html> to read Proposition #3 and learn that these missiles are not only still on hair-trigger alert despite the end of the Cold War, but that many are hidden inside Colorado right near our homes.
However, in order to get the word out to as many people as possible about the Pentagon protest, we need your help on January 6th, 2001 at noon. That's when we begin our signature drive at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder in front of the courthouse to get enough people to sign our petition to make it on the ballot for the fall. Even a small group of citizens showing up could convince the media to cover this event. Without this initial boost, we probably won't get any news coverage and our efforts will stall. And without that coverage, the hard truth is that our Pentagon protest will fail as well.
Now this may not be the best plan for restoring the rule of law and the voice of the citizens when it comes to nuclear war fighting systems left over from last century, but it is a workable plan with a set timetable. If you ever want your opinion to matter about the most import decision a free people can ever make, when and if to go to nuclear war, now is the time to take a stand. You might not get another chance, ever.
Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. We sure would like to hear that we have some support for this effort. Thanks for your valuable time. Sincerely,
Mr. Page Penk Citizen and founder
RESPECT THE LAW FOUNDATION 641 Eldorado Blvd. #812 Broomfield, CO 80021 ppenk@indra.com
Unplug Salem Campaign; Coalition for Peace and Justice; 321 Barr Ave; Linwood NJ 08221 609-601-8583/8537
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- idaho
IDAHO
Faster removal of INEEL waste on hold
Spokane Spokesman Review
Saturday, December 30, 2000
Compiled from our staff and wire services
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=123000&ID=s902036
Carlsbad N. M. _ New Mexico environmental officials are reconsidering a federal request to accelerate waste shipments from Idaho to the underground dump near Carlsbad.
The Environment Department initially approved the Energy Department request on Dec. 13 but then withdrew the approval nine days later, citing public comment as a partial reason for the reversal.
State officials have declined to comment since then.
The federal government wants the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and other sites shipping radioactive materials to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to send drums of waste that have not rested for as long as required by the Hazardous Waste Facility permit.
Currently, the drums must sit from 142 to 225 days before they can be tested for potentially dangerous gases.
The government asked that the number of days be determined by the type of packaging and filters on the drums and by how many layers of waste they contain, Energy Department field officer Inez Triay said.
A drum that currently must rest for 142 days could sit for as few as 57 days in certain cases, Triay said.
Energy Department spokesman Greg Sahd said the denial of the permit will significantly disrupt the waste shipment schedule.
The INEEL has sent 28 shipments to New Mexico since the plant opened in March 1999, but Sahd said the dump hopes to receive four shipments a week in the near future.
The acceleration would help the government meet court-enforced deadlines in the 1995 nuclear waste deal it signed with the state of Idaho. Under that agreement 15,000 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste must be moved to New Mexico before 2003.
Shipments so far have contained about 1,000 drums.
-------- nevada
Eighth Leukemia Case in Nevada
Associated Press
December 30, 2000 Filed at 11:21 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Leukemia-Cases.html
FALLON, Nev. (AP) -- An eighth case of childhood leukemia this year has surfaced in this small rural town where the drinking water was found to contain twice as much arsenic as allowed by law, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The cases are under investigation by the state Health Division, which is searching for a common link among the children.
``To see this many cases all of a sudden is unusual,'' state epidemiologist Randall Todd said in Saturday's Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle Standard. ``If there is something in the environment, we need to find it so we can prevent further cases.''
Since the investigation began in July, Todd said he has met with the children and their families but has been unable to find any common factors that could account for the cause.
The city of Fallon, with about 8,300 residents 60 miles east of Reno, is under a federal Environmental Protection Agency order to treat its drinking water. EPA officials have said they're unaware of any public water system in the country with such a high level of arsenic.
Todd said it's only a remote possibility that the leukemia is linked to local water supplies. The water sources aren't the same for all the families, he said.
In his investigation, Todd said he read through scientific studies of childhood leukemia in Woburn, Mass., that were the basis for the book and film ``A Civil Action.'' The case was associated with women drinking water from two wells containing several contaminants while they were pregnant.
Todd said there was a small amount of arsenic in the wells in Woburn, but it was not found to be responsible for the leukemia there.
``Many times we don't find any common factors,'' Todd said. ``The odds of this type of investigation yielding answers is not good, but the importance is high.
``We have not found an answer yet and there is quite a bit more work that has to be done.''
The latest case involves a 5-year-old boy diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia in November, the newpaper reported.
No one knows what causes childhood leukemia. Suspected triggers include radiation exposure, electromagnetic fields or volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, solvents and fossil fuels.
Arlene McDonnell, director of quality risk management for Churchill Community Hospital in Fallon, said some people have speculated about the effect of nuclear testing outside Fallon in the 1960s or activities associated with the Fallon Naval Air Station.
``Think about all of the products we live with every day that we don't really think about,'' she said. ``There are so many things we are exposed to each day. ... It is way too premature to know anything.
``Statistically, based on our population, this is huge. Is it a coincidence, or is there a reason?''
-------- us nuc politics
From Missile Defense to a Space Arms Race?
Washington Post
Saturday, December 30, 2000; Page A02
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/fedpage/administration/A64231-2000Dec29.html
Donald Rumsfeld, President-elect Bush's nominee for secretary of defense, is a leading proponent not only of national missile defenses, but also of U.S. efforts to take control of outer space by developing technology to attack and defend satellites in orbit.
Together, these initiatives could bring a dramatic militarization of space over the next two decades, a prospect that some defense experts have long urged and others have passionately condemned.
The Pentagon is using national missile defense "as a wedge to accelerate our activities in space," charged Bruce Blair, head of the nonprofit Center for Defense Information.
"It is inevitable," countered Richard Haass, a National Security Council staff member in the first Bush administration and now head of national security programs at the Brookings Institution.
The combination of missile defenses and America's growing dependency on satellites "means space is no longer a sanctuary and is too central that we won't be challenged" by other countries developing anti-satellite weapons, Haass said.
The system that the Clinton administration was developing to protect the 50 states from ballistic missile attack would have been strictly land-based, with interceptor missiles launched from Alaska. It was to include some satellites for tracking enemy missiles, but no weapons based in space.
President-elect Bush, on the other hand, has said his administration will strive for a far more ambitious shield, possibly using space-based weaponry. Such weapons do not yet exist, but the United States has been working for years on powerful lasers that might someday be mounted on aircraft or satellites.
Rumsfeld chaired a commission that helped build political support for national missile defense by issuing a 1998 report warning that Iran and North Korea were closer than previously believed to having missiles that could reach the United States.
Now, another congressionally mandated commission headed by Rumsfeld is finishing a report on threats to U.S. satellites, which are increasingly vital to military and civilian communications. The report, expected in mid-January, will endorse "U.S. control of space, including defending our own satellites and engaging those of any enemy," according to a colleague of Rumsfeld. In a press conference announcing his nomination Thursday, Rumsfeld himself listed "defense of our space assets" as one of his top priorities.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense research organization, said some members of Congress pushed for the latest commission because they think the United States should be working harder to develop "anti-satellite weapons, lasers and other space weapons" and should consider establishing "a separate space force, much as we have a separate air force."
In Pike's opinion, however, putting weapons in space would be "a singularly misguided track when we are the only nation with satellites worth shooting at."
Other countries -- particularly Russia and China, but also many U.S. allies -- oppose the U.S. missile defense effort and warn that it could set off an international arms race in space.
If the United States builds a missile shield, "space will become a new weapons base and battlefield," Sha Zukang, head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's disarmament department, said in June. "Since other big powers will not sit and look on unconcerned, this will inevitably mean the extension of the arms race into space."
The Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967 by the United States and other major powers, prohibits placing nuclear weapons in orbit.
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Bush wants to change or discard, outlaws space-based lasers to attack strategic intercontinental missiles, and a side agreement signed in 1997 in Helsinki carries that concept over to theater missiles.
But no treaty bans anti-satellite weapons, which both the United States and Russia have been researching and testing for more than 20 years. The original impetus for developing these so-called ASATs was the prospect of space-based missile defense systems. When President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars," plan was dropped by the first Bush administration, the race to develop ASATs receded back to research.
Last August, the Army used a ground-based chemical laser to hit an aging U.S. military satellite in an apparent ASAT test that officials claimed had not been cleared in advance by the White House or State Department.
When the test was publicized, the Pentagon said its purpose was to develop defenses for U.S. satellites. Russian diplomats, however, complained that the United States was preparing for war in space.
The fiscal 2001 Defense Department budget contains funds for numerous Army and Air Force ASAT programs, including $20 million for the Army's ground-based kinetic energy anti-satellite technology program, which began more than 20 years ago. An additional $5 million is marked "for the development of space control technologies that emphasize reversible or temporary effects."
Some $30 million is allocated to prepare Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico as the central management point for the Pentagon's directed-energy laser programs. The Air Force's Satellite Assessment Center, which studies satellites and their vulnerabilities, already is located at Kirtland.
The budget also contains $73.2 million for a space-based laser program and $37.5 million for high-energy laser tests similar to the one last August. A classified $3 million research program called Big Crow could lead to devices that could "impede" enemy satellite operations, according to a congressional source.
Some experts contend that if there is an arms race in space, it will be far cheaper to develop offensive weapons than defensive ones.
"Chinese strategists consider U.S. reliance on communications, reconnaissance and navigation satellites as a potential Achilles' heel," Maj. Mark A. Stokes, a Pentagon expert on China who was assistant air attache in Beijing from 1992 to 1995, wrote last year.
Stokes said Chinese aerospace officials have argued that an anti-satellite capability is "easier to develop than ballistic missile defense systems." The cost to China, he estimated, would be about $30 million for ground facilities and roughly $4 million per interceptor that could destroy a $1 billion U.S. missile defense satellite.
The Soviet Union, which first tested an ASAT in 1968, developed a workable version by the mid-1980s, although it was limited to attacking low-orbit satellites. A comparable American ASAT, launched from an F-15 fighter, consisted of a miniature homing device on a two-stage rocket that used ground-based radar directions to hit the target satellite.
As recently as in the 1980s, scientists were also considering so-called space mines -- satellites containing explosives that could be placed in orbit, maneuvered and detonated from Earth.
Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, head of the U.S. Space Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last spring that "the dependence of our national security on orbiting satellites" makes them "a tempting target for terrorism and adversarial military operations."
Eberhart's predecessor at Space Command, Gen. Richard B. Meyers, also said last year that several countries were developing satellite-blinding lasers, missiles capable of dispersing shrapnel in the path of satellites and jammers to foil the U.S. Global Positioning Satellite system, which has both military and commercial uses.
"We are going to have to protect our assets in space," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael E. Ryan told reporters last summer. "In the next 25 years, I see us moving into a substantial defensive requirement in space."
-------- MILITARY
-------- iran
Iran Threatens Retaliation on Israel
Associated Press
December 30, 2000 Filed at 4:29 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Israel.html
KUWAIT (AP) -- If Israel were to attack Syria or Lebanon, Iran would retaliate in an ``astounding and unexpected'' way, Iran's defense minister was quoted as saying in remarks published Saturday.
Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani was quoted in an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan as saying Iran would not leave its ``strategic ally Syria'' or Lebanon to face Israeli attacks alone.
``This is very normal and our response would be astounding and unexpected,'' he was quoted as saying. According to the report, Shamkhani did not say what form the retaliation might take, but added that ``not all what is known could be said, and not all what is said is reported.''
Late Saturday, Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency carried a Defense Ministry statement denying reports that Shamkhani had made similar comments to a Lebanese daily newspaper, Al-Mustaqbal. The statement said the minister had not granted the newspaper any interview.
Defense Ministry officials could not be reached late Saturday, and it was not clear whether the ministry was denying only the Al-Mustaqbal interview or the substance of the report.
Israel has threatened to take action against Syria if the violence along the Lebanese-Israeli border continues. Syria is the main power broker in Lebanon, where it stations up to 30,000 troops, and Iran is the principal backer of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.
Lebanese civilians throw stones at Israeli troops across the border fence almost daily, sometimes provoking gunfire. In October, Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. Last month, the guerrillas planted a roadside bomb that killed an Israeli soldier.
Iran has built several missiles, including the Shahab-3 whose reported range of 810 miles is sufficient to reach Israel. The United States condemned a July test of the missile.
-------- space
UNM May Aid in Search for Life on Jovian Moon
Mohamed El-Genk wants to help NASA build a robotic burrowing ice-mole.
Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, December 30, 2000
By John Fleck Journal Staff Writer
mailto:jfleck@abqJournal.com
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/212695news12-30-00.htm
Using heat from a radioactive battery, it would burrow straight down through miles of ice covering the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, seeking signs of life.
To pull off the trick, NASA needs better radioactive batteries, which is why it has turned to El-Genk's Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies at the University of New Mexico.
It will be a decade, if ever, before El-Genk's new battery makes the trip to Europa.
The UNM team's radioactive battery is one of several designs in development, and even if the development work succeeds, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has yet to approve the mission.
But to NASA engineer Wayne Zimmerman, it is a dream worth pursuing.
Europa has attracted more attention from planetary scientists than any other object except perhaps Mars.
Europa, about a quarter the diameter of Earth, is believed to have liquid water beneath a miles-thick crust of ice.
Where there is water, scientists believe, there might be life.
Zimmerman and his team have been working for three years designing what they call a "Cryobot," their name for the robotic mole designed to seek out signs of life in Europa's ice.
Zimmerman's plan is to land a probe on Europa. It would drop the long, slender probe from its belly, using radioactive heat to melt a path for itself down through the ice.
As the Cryobot descends, Zimmerman said, the hole will freeze up behind it, leaving the robot on its own with only its radioactive batteries for power and heat and a radio to send data back on what it finds to the lander on the surface above.
When it reaches the bottom of the ice after a year or more, the Cryobot will release a floating, tethered probe of instruments into the ocean below, studying the ocean's chemistry and searching for signs of life.
To help make it work, El-Genk and an international team of researchers have assembled a suite of test equipment in a basement lab in UNM's Farris Engineering Center.
For years, NASA has used plutonium-powered batteries to power deep space missions.
Using a type of plutonium that gives off heat as it decays, the batteries convert heat to electricity to power the craft's computers, radios and other gear.
It's proven marvelously effective. Batteries aboard NASA's fabled Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft dating to the 1970s are still working, said Jeff King, a UNM graduate student working on the project.
The problem is that the current battery design is not very efficient. El-Genk and his colleagues, working with a team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hope to develop improved batteries that can pack more power into a smaller package.
"We expect to have twice the efficiency," El-Genk said.
To fund the work, NASA just awarded the group a $1 million grant.
The UNM group's work involves the components used to turn heat into electricity. That means they can use electric heaters instead of plutonium to measure the device's efficiency and reliability.
If it works, and if NASA goes ahead with the mission, the team's plutonium batteries could be on their way to Europa around 2008 or later.
-------- OTHER
October Sky
How close does Thirteen Days come to telling the true story of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis?
Slate
Friday, Dec. 29, 2000, at 9:30 a.m. PT
By Jared Hohlt
http://slate.msn.com/LifeAndArt/00-12-28/LifeAndArt.asp
(Note: "Life and Art" is an occasional column that compares fiction, in various media, with the real-life facts on which it is ostensibly based.)
Thirteen Days, Kevin Costner's new film about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, comes with its own checkered history. It passed through three studios and eight directors before being made by Roger Donaldson. And media reports suggest that its makers may have distorted the missile-crisis history by making Special Assistant to the President Kenny O'Donnell (Costner) the story's central character. Stirring those speculations was an Inside.com piece that reported that the late O'Donnell's son, Kevin, helped bankroll Thirteen Days. As the article noted, it didn't help Thirteen Days' reputation that Costner starred in Oliver Stone's fact-bending JFK. Nor that co-producer Armyan Bernstein also co-produced the controversial, factually challenged bio-pic The Hurricane, about boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
How does the film, which started a limited release at Christmas to qualify for the Oscars, stack up against the record?
While there will no doubt be some gripes about made-up scenes (some involving O'Donnell), narrative streamlining, and Costner's subtle-as-a-bullhorn Boston Irish brogue, Thirteen Days doesn't rewrite history. And O'Donnell doesn't upstage President John F. Kennedy or his brother Robert F. Kennedy.
In the film, as in life, the White House learns of the deployment of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles in Cuba on Oct. 16, 1962, from photos taken by U-2 spy planes. The photos indicate that just one month earlier, Nikita Khrushchev's government had lied about the military situation on the island, claiming that only defensive weapons had been sent there. Kennedy had publicly responded that if this were not so, the "gravest" issues would arise.
The administration hopes to avoid nuclear war and to have the missiles removed. Ensuing White House debates are shaped by past events such as Munich (demonstrating the dangers of appeasement) and the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle (demonstrating the dangers of poor military planning and the perils of invading Cuba), as well as concerns over how the crisis affects the Cold War power struggle in Berlin. The movie does not dramatize deliberations in Moscow or Havana, remaining focused on Washington.
Kennedy must contend not only with the Russian threat, but also with deep mistrust between the "hawks" and "doves" advising him. The hawks are epitomized in the film by Gen. Curtis E. LeMay (Kevin Conway), who talks of "red dogs" and "getting the bastards," the doves by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson (Michael Fairman), who is seen as potentially too weak to handle negotiations with the Soviets at the United Nations. These portraits are broad, but not unfair.
Ultimately, the doves win. While the Joint Chiefs of Staff push for airstrikes on the Cuban missile sites, possibly coupled with an invasion, the president decides on a naval blockade. And a secret deal-in which the U.S.S.R. agrees to remove its missiles from Cuba if the United States does the same with its missiles in Turkey at a later date-defuses the crisis at the end of October.
One of the credited sources for the script by David Self is The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis-a collection of transcripts of the deliberations, which were being secretly tape-recorded by the president. Kennedy Tapes co-editor Philip D. Zelikow, who was not involved in the making of the movie, notes that anyone who's read a couple of books on the crisis will be able to poke holes in the film's rendition of events and characters. He himself has "hundreds of quibbles," not least of which is that McGeorge Bundy (Frank Wood), Kennedy's special assistant on national security affairs, comes across as "youthful and callow" in the film, whereas in life he was marked by a "dry wit."
But Zelikow argues that Thirteen Days meets three important historical standards for a film: 1) "The narrative is sound, the chronology is sound." The film won't do any historical "injury" to its viewers. 2) "Do [the filmmakers] get the big personalities right? I think yes, particularly the Kennedy brothers." (JFK is played by Bruce Greenwood, RFK by Steven Culp.) 3) The movie does a good job with the "atmosphere." It "makes the cold war come alive." Viewers, for example, struggle along with JFK to figure out exactly what Khrushchev was thinking.
Zelikow says that O'Donnell was as close to the Kennedys as the movie suggests. (Among other things, he'd played football with RFK at Harvard, where he was captain of the team.) But his "Irish Mafia" standing aside, what role did he have in the Cuban Missile Crisis?
The real O'Donnell barely makes a cameo appearance in the exhaustive tapes. As Sheldon M. Stern, who retired in 1999 after 23 years as a historian at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, puts it: "O'Donnell said two words at one meeting." Still, whether he spoke or not, O'Donnell did attend some crisis meetings, and the movie-to its credit-doesn't make him a loquacious participant when depicting the gatherings.
Behind the scenes, Costner's O'Donnell is a bona fide player. At one point, for example, the Oval Office door has barely closed when he is the first to warn JFK that the U.S. military is trying to start a war over the missile situation-a dramatic exchange that is completely unverifiable. Stern, who has not seen the movie, says, "Knowing the way JFK operated, there's no question in my mind that he would have talked to Kenny O'Donnell about things." But he adds, "There's nothing on the record."
Certainly, O'Donnell, who worked as Kennedy's appointments secretary, had power. In a rather puffy April 1963 Wall Street Journal article, one " New Frontiersman" says, "You can make your list of the most important advisers as short as you want, and Kenny still would be on the list." And another "White House colleague" declares, "The President thinks aloud a lot, and Kenny is the guy who most often thinks aloud with him." But in a recent Boston Globe interview, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who read an early script of Thirteen Days and who consulted on the film with former Kennedy assistant Theodore Sorensen, said, "Ted saw the film and told me it was Kenny O'Donnell saving the world. Now, Kenny was an admirable man, but he had nothing to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis."
In what is arguably the film's most egregiously fictitious scene, Costner's O'Donnell calls an Air Force pilot who is about to undertake a risky low-level surveillance flight over Cuba and tells him "not to get shot." Mechanical failures are OK, O'Donnell tells the disbelieving pilot, mountain crashes are fine. Just don't get shot.
In Thirteen Days, both O'Donnell and the president fear that a shot pilot would prompt the generals to start a war. In the film, the pilot's plane is fired on, but he later lies to LeMay (again, on O'Donnell's instructions), telling him the mission was a "cakewalk." In life, the surveillance plane did take some flak-and, as the film later shows, a U-2 plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. But O'Donnell made no such call, and nobody pulled the wool over the generals' eyes.
At another point, Costner's O'Donnell learns via Stevenson that the New York Times is going to print a story about the missiles in Cuba, and he quickly alerts the president. The concern is that this story will run before Kennedy can address the nation, which he did on Oct. 22. In life, it was the president's press secretary, Pierre Salinger-played as rather out-of-the-loop in the movie-who told him that the press in general would soon have the story. In the movie, JFK calls the publisher of the Times and persuades him to hold his explosive scoop. In life, he called the publishers of both the Times and the Washington Post. And the Times, in fact, was alerted to the story through his call.
And in the movie, O'Donnell calls Stevenson and tells him to "stick it to" Soviet delegate Valerian Zorin (Oleg Vidov) in the United Nations. Stevenson goes on to deliver his famous I'll-wait-for-your-answer-on-whether-missiles-are-in-Cuba-until-hell-freezes-over speech, but it's unlikely that O'Donnell ever instructed him to be so uncharacteristically tough. Stern says the two men "despised" each other.
Finally, viewers may be moved to wonder: Was it really necessary to show a "red phone" in O'Donnell's dining room?
Ultimately, it's JFK, with help from Bobby and the others, who really saves the day, and the movie can be forgiven for highlighting the Kennedys' finest hours. But the film neglects to dramatize how the crisis was instigated not by the missiles but by Khrushchev's lies. According to The Kennedy Tapes, had Khrushchev privately told the president that he planned to "base IRBMs [intermediate-range ballistic missiles] in Cuba ... conceivably there might have been no crisis at all. In the second meeting [of his advisers] on October 16, Kennedy said, 'Last month I should have said that we don't care.' "
Viewers won't leave theaters with a terribly skewed perspective of the crisis. But after having seen the White House vaporized in Independence Day, will they warm to a movie in which the protagonists talk and take very little action? As Professor Zelikow says, admiringly, "The filmmakers decided to spend $80 million on a film in which the hero wins by not shooting anybody." These days, such a decision is-to borrow Kennedy's words from October '62-one hell of a gamble.
With additional research by Yael Schacher.
Related in Slate
cDavid Edelstein took the pulse of the political film here, and Jacob Weisberg put in his 2 cents here. Jeff Shesol reviewed a slew of Kennedy books, including The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, here.
The film's official site includes an eerie what-if simulation of international warfare with a casualty counter that tabulates the scope of the human damage had no deal been brokered. You can read ExComm memorandums and Kennedy-Khrushchev communications from the crisis here, find a chronology of events and information on all the major players here, and listen to Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations and Kennedy talking about Oct. 22 here. A 1973 film about the crisis, The Missiles of October, inspired this California rock band of the same name.
Jared Hohlt is a news editor at Inside.com.
Photograph of President Kennedy talking with advisers (c) Corbis; scene from Thirteen Days (c) New Line Cinema. All rights reserved.
-------- environment
Ecological crisis looms in struggle for balance
The Age
Saturday 30 December 2000
By JOHN VIDAL and PAUL BROWN LONDON
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2000/12/30/FFX0GN9QAHC.html
It started with the popping of millions of natural champagne corks and ended with a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warning that plastic corks sales were rising so fast that the world's cork forests would be uneconomic and in danger of being cut down within 15 years, with terrible consequences.
In between, there was record rainfall and floods, record deaths from the human form of "mad cow" disease, record low fish catches in the North Sea, record melting of the icecaps, record numbers of rats in Britain and record emissions from the Environment Secretary after climate talks in The Hague collapsed.
All the signs suggest that 2000 was another ecologically disastrous year, with more deterioration of vital resources and ecosystems. Worldwide desertification, the result of unsustainable farming and global climate change, was found to be advancing quickly and menacing far more people than previously thought.
Global deforestation continued apace, with about 10.2 million hectares lost - a slight improvement on previous years - and there were yet more weather-related disasters.
The first global survey of groundwater pollution showed that a toxic brew of pesticides, nitrogen fertilisers, industrial chemicals and heavy metals is fouling fresh water in deep aquifers everywhere. The ozone hole got bigger and coral reefs were in deeper crisis.
Damage to the blue-water environment also continued apace. The great white shark, once a most feared and hunted species, became an object of concern. The world united to oppose whaling countries, such as Norway and Japan, in their ocean hunts. The Patagonian toothfish and the southern bluefin tuna joined the list of sea creatures in retreat.
Australia is ranked fifth for species threatened with extinction, according to an international report on the global biodiversity crisis.
The 2000 Red List, released by the IUCN-World Conservation Union, identifies 18,276 endangered species worldwide, but warns the number is conservative because many categories such as amphibians, fish and plants have not yet been fully assessed.
The United States topped the list for numbers of threatened species with 998, followed by Malaysia with 805, Indonesia with 763, Brazil with 609 and Australia with 524.
Year 2000 was not too kind to people, either. Wealth and natural resources were concentrated into even fewer hands as most countries pursued economic liberalisation and privatisation. International trade made competition tougher and environmental protection measures were further eroded.
The patenting of life forms continued at a dizzying pace, world debt grew and the technological gap between rich and poor widened.
The number of children without access to education reached about 125 million and, while there are no official figures, the number trying to flee poverty and environmentally unsustainable regions is thought to be growing.
The nuclear industry began the year badly with a critical assessment of safety at the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield on England's north-west coast and Japan demanding that nuclear fuel with false documents be returned. By the year's end, the British Government still had not produced its green paper on what to do with nuclear waste and the growing mountain of unwanted plutonium.
Next year reprocessing might end as customers get edgy about the cost and prefer to store spent fuel.
International protests against globalisation increased. More than a million people worldwide took to the streets in 2000. After the shock of Seattle in 1999, protests in Prague, London and 24 other countries made headlines, but there was little sign of significant reform of the World Trade Organisation, let alone a shift in the path of economic growth.
Resource wars, or conflicts fuelled by land grabs or mining, were part of African life. In South America, the Philippines and elsewhere, oil, mining and logging companies are locked in dispute with indigenous people.
But the continuing industrial revolution showed more cracks as sustainable initiatives grew. Commercial wind and wave power stations made some headway and there were record global sales of solar roofs and devices.
As a sign of the times, the defection of many coal, oil and car corporations from the Global Climate Coalition, which long denied global warming, was significant. There was evidence, too, of many companies coming to grips with energy saving, pollution control and environmental remediation.
Western architects and designers are becoming more environmentally aware. Some of the most ecologically advanced buildings were commissioned in 2000, many as a result of millennium or lottery cash which helped many communities' conservation efforts.
There was more good news. Chernobyl was finally closed 14 years after the nuclear disaster polluted vast areas of Ukraine and killed or affected more than 30,000 people. Against that, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development decided to finance two new reactors in Ukraine to keep Western nuclear companies in business.
Organic food sales continued to rise in the West as more farmers changed their methods and sustainable agriculture in many countries developed. Fair trade initiatives also increased.
Meanwhile, industrial genetically modified food production, although expanding in developing countries, met more resistance. US farmers and grain processors began to get cold feet over the technology, with some US analysts predicting big falls in North American plantings in 2001.
But there was much to cheer about for the greens. In the US election, Ralph Nader collected twomillion votes, while in Europe, several high-profile environment ministers stood firm against US and British climate change proposals.
The Greenpeace 18 were acquitted of criminal damage after destroying part of a GM maize crop in 1999. Big dam builders and the governments that support them were embarrassed by a report showing how economically and socially destructive dams can be.
Year 2000 will be remembered mostly for global warming, with one scientific report after another showing that the world is heating up as a result of human influence.
So the champagne to welcome 2001 should be kept on ice - assuming, of course, that it is not melting and that the bottle still has a natural cork.
GUARDIAN, own correspondents
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