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NUCLEAR
Powell Draws Mixed Reviews from Nonproliferation Experts
Abraham Leaving Energy Department
Asia-Pacific powers target terror, nuclear arms, trade
Baroness Symons Welcomes Nuclear Agreement
Old uranium is a killer
German arrested in Switzerland in Libya nuclear probe
German Scientist Arrested in Nuclear Probe
U.N. Finds No Nuclear Bomb Program in Iran
Europeans Say Iran Agrees to Freeze Uranium Enrichment
U.S. is skeptical of Europe-Iran nuclear solution
Nuclear accord upsets Iran press
Text of Iran-EU nuclear agreement
'Iran tried to acquire N-equipment at Lavizan'
Securing nuclear materials unfinished
Nuclear-power Industry Sees Signs Of A Revival
Nuke plant decommissioning 'progressing'
N.R.C. Continues Scrutiny of Problems at Salem Plant
Salem Nuclear accused of ignoring repairs
N.R.C. Continues Scrutiny of Problems at Salem Plant
Nuke plant decommissioning 'progressing'
Waste can stay in N.M., EPA rules
A New Vision for Nuclear Waste
MILITARY
In Sudan, a Sense of Abandonment Victims See Little Help From Outside
U.N. Imposes Arms Embargo on Ivory Coast
U.N. Imposes Arms Embargo on Ivory Coast Amid Violence
EU urged to maintain China arms sales ban
Russia Ready to Supply Weapons to Iraq - Defense Minister
Ex-Boeing CFO Pleads Guilty in Druyun Case
Lockheed Martin Delivers Reliable Net-Centric Communications To Iraq
Sarkozy, Clement want balance of power to be maintained at EADS
China faces up to growing unrest
Colombia Proposes 10-Year Terms for Paramilitary Atrocities
Few Foreigners Among Insurgents
Insurgent strikes many
U.S. and Iraqis Continue Battle Against Rebels in Mosul
Insurgent Attacks Spread In Iraq
Fallujah Battered And Mostly Quiet After the Battle
Rebels Attack in Central Iraq and the North
Palestinians Hold Meeting Among Rivals About Power
Rumsfeld Urges Latin American Cooperation
2 top CIA officers quit after clash with Goss staff
CIA Chief Seeks to Reassure Employees E-Mail Sent After 2 Officials Resign
C.I.A. Churning Continues as 2 Top Officials Resign
Killing the messenger
Russia Claims U.S. Spy Plane Spotted Near Black Sea Border
Former G.I.'s, Ordered to War, Fight Not to Go
Punishment recommended for soldiers who refused
Iraq Casualties
Marines Probe Apparent Slaying of Wounded Iraqi
CAPTIVES TV Report Says Marine Shot Prisoner
Military Bases Are Told Not To Sponsor Boy Scout Troops
Punishment Urged for Reservists Who Disobeyed
Trial Begins for Three Kosovo Albanians Accused of War Crimes
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Supreme Court Rebukes Texas Again Over a Death Sentence
Poppies Retain Powerful Hold on Afghanistan
Homeland Security Employees Required to Sign Secrecy Pledge
Approval Imminent for National WMD, Terrorism Response Plan
U.N. Chief for Human Rights Raises Concern on Falluja
FBI Faulted in Arrest of Ore. Lawyer
POLITICS
Iraq Gained $21 Billion Illicitly, Senate Panel Says
Nevada's Reid tapped to lead shrunken Senate Democratic caucus
Powell Announces His Resignation
Analysis Moves Cement Hard-Line Stance On Foreign Policy
Bush Nominates Rice to Replace Powell at State Department
As Powell Leaves, Hardliners Make Their Move
Congressmen urge Bush to drop guest-worker plan
Nevada's Reid tapped to lead shrunken Senate Democratic caucus
VOLUSIA COUNTY ON LOCKDOWN
ENERGY
Green Car Sets Speed Record
Abraham resigns from DoE
Some Steps Taken on Critical Energy Issues, but No Breakthroughs
OTHER
Terror Informant Ignites Himself Near White House
Election Over, McCain Criticizes Bush on Climate Change
E.P.A. Says Enforcement Shows Results
-------- NUCLEAR
Powell Draws Mixed Reviews from Nonproliferation Experts
Global Security Newswire
By Mike Nartker
November 16, 2004
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_11_16.html#92702479
WASHINGTON - On the day he announced his resignation, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday received mixed reviews from experts for his handling of arms control and nonproliferation issues (see GSN, Oct. 27).
Powell formally submitted his letter of resignation to President George W. Bush on Friday. During a press conference yesterday to announce his departure, Powell said he had "always" indicated to the president his intent to serve four years as secretary of state.
"As we got closer to the election and the immediate aftermath of the election, it seemed the appropriate time and we were in mutual agreement that it was the appropriate time for me to move on," Powell said.
Bush issued a statement yesterday thanking Powell for his service, calling him "one of the great public servants of our time."
"He is a soldier, a diplomat, a civic leader, a statesman, and a great patriot. I value his friendship. He will be missed. On behalf of all Americans, I thank him for his many years of service," Bush said.
During his tenure, Powell has had to address a number of arms control and nonproliferation issues, ranging from a successful effort with Russia to negotiate the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty - which calls for cuts to both countries' deployed nuclear arsenals - to halting suspected nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea.
Nonproliferation experts yesterday provided a mostly downbeat assessment of Powell's record on such issues, with some saying that his views received little attention within the administration.
Never before has a secretary "entered with such great expectations and left with such meager results," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Nonproliferation Project.
Instead, Undersecretary of State John Bolton played a larger role than Powell concerning nonproliferation issues, according to William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Bolton has been called a leading neoconservative in the administration.
Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball yesterday, though, described Powell as leaving behind "a mixed legacy" regarding nonproliferation. Kimball praised Powell's efforts to have the White House engage North Korea on its nuclear program, as well as the secretary's support for negotiations on a treaty to ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Kimball also said, though, that Powell had "not succeeded" in some areas, such as achieving a permanent solution to the North Korean nuclear issue.
One issue likely to loom large in Powell's legacy, according to experts, is the administration's allegation that Iraq possessed widespread WMD capabilities prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In February, Powell presented a detailed overview to the United Nations of prewar Iraq's alleged WMD efforts in an attempt to gain international support for the war. Powell's presentation was later found to contain a number of errors, and coalition inspectors have determined that prewar Iraq did not possess WMD stockpiles or large-scale programs to produce them at the time of the U.S. invasion.
"We'll have to see in his memoirs what he has to say about that," said Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the CATO Institute.
Kimball said, though, that it was Powell's influence that led the Bush administration to go before the United Nations in the first place before invading Iraq.
Experts said that Powell's departure will remove a key voice of moderation from the Bush administration.
"There's really not a moderate voice left," Cirincione said.
Potter said that Powell's departure, along with the resignation of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, would likely increase the influence of the Defense Department in arms control and nonproliferation issues "in the short term."
In his remarks yesterday, Powell said that he would continue to serve as secretary of state until a replacement is in place.
Earlier today, Bush nominated national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Powell. Citing people close to Rice, the New York Times reported today that she had wanted to either replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense or return to Stanford University, where she had previously been provost, but would serve as secretary of state if asked.
In addition to Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has also decided to leave the State Department, according to reports. Armitage's departure was hinted at yesterday during a department press briefing.
"I think all of us realize that the two of them, Secretary Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage, have been a very successful team," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "So there's generally the expectation that it's like Bosnia: in together, out together."
Boucher also suggested yesterday that other department officials may also leave following Powell's departure.
"I do know personally for me and for many others that there was a something about working for Secretary Powell that made us sort of stay in jobs longer than we might otherwise have done. And so for, I think, various people it might be time to move on. We'll just have to see how that sorts itself out," he said.
-----
Abraham Leaving Energy Department
Nonproliferation Efforts Won Praise
By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52857-2004Nov15.html
Spencer Abraham joined the exodus from President Bush's Cabinet yesterday, submitting his resignation as energy secretary after four years of running a department that faced a series of high-profile challenges.
Abraham's watch coincided with the California energy crisis of 2001, the collapse of Enron and the energy-trading market, last year's investigation of a major blackout in the Midwest and Northeast, record oil and gasoline prices, and stepped-up efforts to secure Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the repository for the nation's nuclear waste.
He worked to destroy nuclear stockpiles in Russia and to reorganize his department's nonproliferation offices, winning praise from the International Atomic Energy Agency for his efforts. Abraham also was an enthusiastic advocate for advancing research into hydrogen power.
The administration's signature effort during his tenure was a change in direction in national energy policy. But the package of legislation pushed by Bush and Vice President Cheney, who both had ties to the energy industry in their days as businessmen, remains stalled in conference committee.
Abraham, 52, said in his letter to the president on Sunday that he is proud of his accomplishments but needs to spend more time with his wife and three young daughters.
The former Republican senator from Michigan was an unlikely choice for secretary of energy. He had no experience in the energy field and once even advocated abolishing the department. The easygoing Abraham wound up winning generally good reviews, although critics charged that he went along with an administration that was too friendly to industry.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Abraham served as chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle before being elected to the Senate in 1994. His primary area of expertise was his home state's auto industry.
"Going into the job without a strong energy background, I thought, was a huge asset for him, that he wasn't automatically aligned with oil or coal or gas. He really could approach all of the different energy sectors with an evenhanded approach," said former Michigan governor John M. Engler, who heads the National Association of Manufacturers and is a friend of Abraham's.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, praised Abraham for his bipartisan spirit.
"He was always willing to hear our perspective, which I appreciate," Bingaman said. "I think he's had a very difficult job" because Cheney has clearly been the administration's lead voice on energy policy, the senator added.
Advocates for the environment and for alternative energy say Abraham did not provide leadership during a time of increasing concern about global warming and dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Although the Bush administration deserves credit for making energy policy a national priority, it produced a strategy that relies too heavily on fossil fuels, said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park.
Abraham's successor will have to pick up the matter and push Congress to act, experts said, as well as deal with the unresolved matter of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Abraham said he will stay in office until a successor is confirmed. If that stretches beyond Inauguration Day, Jan. 20 -- which is likely -- he will qualify as the longest-serving energy secretary.
After leaving office, Abraham plans to stay in the Washington area and work in private business, Engler said.
Staff writer Dafna Linzer in New York contributed to this report.
-------- asia
Asia-Pacific powers target terror, nuclear arms, trade
Nov 16, 2004
Agence France Presse
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041116/wl_asia_afp/apec_041116232630
SANTIAGO (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) and partners in the Asia-Pacific axis converge to thwart North Korea (news - web sites)'s nuclear weapon plans, press the "war on terror" and rip away trade barriers.
Foreign and trade ministers were gathering Tuesday in Santiago, against the backdrop of the soaring peaks of the Andes, for a two-day conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (news - web sites) forum.
The talks, a fuzzy combination of official agendas and informal political arm-twisting, aim to produce a strong message for a weekend summit of the 21 APEC (news - web sites) leaders, including US President George W. Bush (news - web sites).
A massive security operation had yet to reach its peak a day before the ministerial meeting began.
At the airport, security was low-key.
Military-style police screened officials and their bags on entry to the Espacio Riesco conference center. Three police on horseback stood in a field of hip-high grass on one side of the building.
Santiago and its five million inhabitants are under surveillance by at least 3,500 police, officials said.
Radical groups plan a student march Wednesday.
The Chilean Social Forum said it would hold a rival summit, and a protest march on Friday through the center of Santiago.
Broader security risks will occupy the policymakers.
Powell -- vowing to work hard until the "very, very end" as he announced his resignation Monday -- set his sights on North Korea, which has refused to participate in six-country talks to end its nuclear weapons drive.
"(We will) make sure that we use our alliances in Asia and the partnerships we have in Asia to keep pressing to find a solution to the North Korean nuclear program," Powell said at a news conference in Washington Monday, two days before his arrival.
Bush, who announced Tuesday that his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), will succeed Powell, seems bound to push his core agenda, the "war on terror" and the Iraq conflict.
In the runup to the talks, the US leader called Philippine President Gloria Arroyo to patch up relations, soured when she withdrew Filipino troops from Iraq at the demand of insurgents who took a Filipino truck driver, Angelo de la Cruz, hostage.
The terrorism stakes in Asia are high.
Indonesia has suffered a spate of attacks this decade by the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group, including the 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 people died.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group has been kidnapping foreigners in the southern Philippines.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra initially cancelled plans to attend the November 20-21 summit due to a surge of violence in the mainly Muslim south, although officials confirmed Sunday that he would attend.
Asia-Pacific leaders also want to wrench back their role as the standard bearers for free trade.
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who arrives Wednesday, touted a batch of one-on-one free trade agreements with Singapore, Chile and the United States. Talks are under way for deals with Peru and Thailand, he said.
"The United States hopes to work with others to build on APEC's market-opening efforts," he said in Washington.
APEC powers are struggling over how to deal with a growing network of free-trade agreements. They also hope to inject new dynamism into a major round of World Trade Organization (news - web sites) negotiations, begun in Doha, Qatar in 2001.
Business leaders in the APEC Business Advisory Council have called on the APEC leaders to put some zip in the free-trade agenda by studying setting up their own Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific.
Taiwan said it backed the scheme.
"Chinese Taipei has expressed our view of approval on the issue of the FTAAP," Huang Chih-Peng, director of the Board of Foreign Trade, said at a news conference, according to an official translation of his remarks.
He recognized, however, that some APEC members had reservations, noting that APEC economies differed hugely. It was unclear how much support the plan will get from APEC, which generally shirks binding agrements.
APEC comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea (news - web sites), Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.
-------- britain
Baroness Symons Welcomes Nuclear Agreement and Looks Forward to Deepening Co-Operation Between UK and Iran
Scotsman.com
16 Nov 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3766832
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE News Release issued by the Government News Network on 16 November 2004
I am delighted to welcome HE Eng Eshaq Jahangiri, Minister of Industry and Mines of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to London and to meet him this afternoon. His visit is especially timely. Yesterday's agreement on Iran's nuclear programme and future co-operation between Europe and Iran provides a framework within which both sides can build mutual confidence. It is vital that the agreement should be fully implemented, to allow this process to begin. Over the next few months, I hope we will be able to make progress in a wide range of areas. I have been discussing with the Minister how this might be taken forward. I hope his visit will show the great potential for co-operation between the UK and Iran, if we can achieve the necessary political basis, and mutual confidence.
Notes for Editors:
1. The agreement came into force on 15 November 2004.
2. The text of the agreement is set out below:
AGREEMENT
The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Governments of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, with the support of the High Representative of the European Union (E3/EU), reaffirm the commitments in the Tehran Agreed Statement of 21 October 2003 and have decided to move forward, building on that agreement.
The E3/EU and Iran reaffirm their commitment to the NPT.
The E3/EU recognise Iran's rights under the NPT exercised in conformity with its obligations under the Treaty, without discrimination.
Iran reaffirms that, in accordance with Article II of the NPT, it does not and will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons. It commits itself to full cooperation and transparency with the IAEA. Iran will continue to implement the Additional Protocol voluntarily pending ratification.
To build further confidence, Iran has decided, on a voluntary basis, to continue and extend its suspension to include all enrichment related and reprocessing activities, and specifically: the manufacture and import of gas centrifuges and their components; the assembly, installation, testing or operation of gas centrifuges; work to undertake any plutonium separation, or to construct or operate any plutonium separation installation; and all tests or production at any uranium conversion installation. The IAEA will be notified of this suspension and invited to verify and monitor it. The suspension will be implemented in time for the IAEA to confirm before the November Board that it has been put into effect. The suspension will be sustained while negotiations proceed on a mutually acceptable agreement on long-term arrangements.
The E3/EU recognize that this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation.
Sustaining the suspension, while negotiations on a long-term agreement are under way, will be essential for the continuation of the overall process. In the context of this suspension, the E3/EU and Iran have agreed to begin negotiations, with a view to reaching a mutually acceptable agreement on long term arrangements. The agreement will provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes. It will equally provide firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and economic cooperation and firm commitments on security issues.
A steering committee will meet to launch these negotiations in the first half of December 2004 and will set up working groups on political and security issues, technology and cooperation, and nuclear issues. The steering committee shall meet again within three months to receive progress reports from the working groups and to move ahead with projects and/or measures that can be implemented in advance of an overall agreement.
In the context of the present agreement and noting the progress that has been made in resolving outstanding issues, the E3/EU will henceforth support the Director General reporting to the IAEA Board as he considers appropriate in the framework of the implementation of Iran's Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol.
The E3/EU will support the IAEA Director General inviting Iran to join the Expert Group on Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.
Once suspension has been verified, the negotiations with the EU on a Trade and Cooperation Agreement will resume. The E3/EU will actively support the opening of Iranian accession negotiations at the WTO.
Irrespective of progress on the nuclear issue, the E3/EU and Iran confirm their determination to combat terrorism, including the activities of Al Qa'ida and other terrorist groups such as the MeK. They also confirm their continued support for the political process in Iraq aimed at establishing a constitutionally elected Government.
FCO Press Office: 020 7008 3100
Press Office, Downing Street (West), London SW1A 2AH Telephone: 020 7008 3100 Fax: 020 7008 3734
-------- depleted uranium
Old uranium is a killer
Nov. 16, 2004
Pulitzer Central Coast Newspapers
http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2004/11/16/sections/opinion/111604letters.txt
David Baskett's case in his letter, "Old Uranium and its uses," is written by a corporate cheerleader. Depleted Uranium (DU) is the Uranium 238 isotope with U234 and U235 removed. As a result, alpha particle emissions are increased, creating a greater internal hazard to life.
The Pentagon tested this toxic waste during the 1973 Arab/Israeli war. When DU slams into a target, it becomes pyrophoric and up to 70 percent becomes vaporized, rendering it toxic dust. The Department of Energy recently admitted that DU-contaminated uranium has been processed with neptunium, plutonium and U236 at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion plant in Kentucky.
During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, physicist Doug Rokke was assigned to direct a military clean-up of allied vehicles hit by DU. Within eight months of their mission, the first of his team died from larynx cancer due to inhaled DU dust which permeated Iraq. All members of this team have died from a variety of cancers.
The military/industrial complex told us the lie that Agent Orange was safe for our troops in Vietnam. The same military/industrial complex tells us that DU is safe. Corporate cheerleaders tell us daily that toxic sludge is good for you.
James Murr Santa Maria
-------- europe
German arrested in Switzerland in Libya nuclear probe
(AFP)
Nov 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041116153508.k00blpu5.html
KARLSRUHE, Germany - A German engineer has been arrested in Switzerland on suspicion of helping Libyan efforts to develop a nuclear bomb, German federal prosecutors announced on Tuesday.
The 61-year-old, identified only as Gotthard L., was detained on Saturday in the Swiss canton of St Gallen on an international arrest warrant.
He is suspected of helping to develop a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons over a two-year period from 2001, for which he was paid between four and five million Swiss francs (3.4 million and 4.25 million dollars), a statement from the prosecutors said.
His arrest follows others linked to what investigators believe is a network of mainly Dubai-based engineers who supplied nuclear equipment and know-how to Libya.
The network is believed to be linked to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who admitted this year to supplying nuclear technology to other countries.
Another German man, Gerhard W., was arrested in August and released on bail by German authorities before being re-arrested in South Africa in September.
And last month, German authorities arrested Urs Tinner, a 39-year-old Swiss engineer, on suspicion of involvement in the ring.
Libya announced last year that it was abandoning attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after months of secret negotiations with London and Washington.
-----
German Scientist Arrested in Nuclear Probe
Nov 16, 2004
Associated Press
By DAVID RISING
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041116/ap_on_re_eu/germany_libya_nuclear_2
BERLIN - A 61-year-old German engineer became the latest European scientist arrested on suspicion of helping Libya's now abandoned effort to build a nuclear bomb, German prosecutors said Tuesday.
Swiss authorities arrested the engineer, identified only as Gotthard L., on Nov. 13 in the canton of St. Gallen, acting on an international warrant, according to the German federal prosecutor's office.
The name of a German living in Switzerland, Gotthard Lerch, has previously emerged in investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
The engineer was arrested on suspicion that he helped in the development of a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium for use in atomic weapons, for a fee of up to $4.25 million, said Frauke Scheuten, a spokeswoman for the German prosecutor's office.
The arrest came during an investigation into the nuclear proliferation network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who admitted in February that he passed nuclear technology to other countries, and was the latest involving a European, according to prosecutors.
In August, German authorities arrested Gerhard Wisser, whom they described as a main suspect. He was released on bail but re-arrested in South Africa in September. Gotthard L.'s home was searched at the time, but authorities lacked evidence to arrest him, prosecutors said. Last month, they arrested Swiss engineer Urs Tinner, 39, on allegations he was a member of the ring.
The three are accused of attempting to deliver centrifuge parts made by a South African company to Libya between 2001 and 2003 at the request of Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan who prosecutors said was a middleman between the network and Libya.
The parts were shipped to Dubai and loaded onto a German-registered freighter with false customs papers, headed for Libya, but are not believed to have reached their destination, prosecutors said.
The IAEA said in January that Pakistani scientists were involved in selling technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea (news - web sites). The Pakistani government detained several scientists, including Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb and a national hero. He admitted to the charges but was pardoned by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The agency's announcement came a month after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi renounced his weapons programs - a move meant to help rebuild relations with the West. The European Union (news - web sites) last month ended 12 years of sanctions against Libya and eased an arms embargo, and the United States lifted most of its commercial sanctions in April.
-------- iran
U.N. Finds No Nuclear Bomb Program in Iran
Agency Report and Tehran's Deal With Europe Undercut Tougher U.S. Stance
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52673-2004Nov15.html
In its most positive assessment of Iran in two years, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported yesterday that it had found no evidence the nation had a nuclear weapons program and that Tehran's recent cooperation with the agency has been very good.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog's report, along with Europe's acceptance of a wide-ranging nuclear agreement with Tehran, capped a pivotal day for the Islamic republic's relations with the West and left little chance for the Bush administration's Iran strategy to succeed in the near term.
U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss policy on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that both the IAEA's upbeat tone and the European deal deeply undercut the White House's diplomatic drive to confront Iran now with the prospect of international sanctions.
"We still think they should go to the U.N. Security Council, but it's clear no one is with us on that right now," one senior policymaker said.
Instead, the administration will focus on lobbying IAEA board members to approve more aggressive inspections in Iran and an automatic referral to the Security Council if Tehran breaks any part of the European deal, U.S. policymakers said.
President Bush's senior foreign policy officials are expected to discuss wording for the resolution and a strategy for the IAEA's Nov. 25 board meeting in Vienna over the coming days.
On Sunday, Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear programs in exchange for European guarantees that it will not face the Security Council as long as their agreement holds. Iran has said its programs are for energy production, but the equipment and expertise could also be used for making weapons.
Officials from the State Department and the National Security Council were briefed by European diplomats in Washington yesterday and raised concerns regarding one item in the deal.
In a last-minute concession to Iran, the three European powers agreed that the suspension would begin Nov. 22 and that until then Iran would complete converting up to 15 tons of raw uranium to a state that makes it nearly ready for enrichment. The process still leaves Iran a long way from being able to make bomb-grade uranium, and the converted material would be stored by the IAEA, but its insistence on completing that work worried U.S. officials.
The IAEA said it would start tagging and sealing equipment at other facilities first and move on to the conversion plant on Nov. 22. Inspectors need to complete the verification by the time the IAEA board meets three days later.
"We believe that the conclusion of this agreement can both allow for confidence-building in respect of Iran's nuclear program and represent a significant development in relations between Europe and Iran," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday as he confirmed the deal.
Throughout European capitals there were toasts for the deal, and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said it started a "new chapter" for Iran.
In addition to the suspension, the agreement commits Iran to support two U.S.-led endeavors: the war against al Qaeda and efforts to establish a democratic government in Iraq. Iran is holding several senior al Qaeda leaders and exerts significant influence in neighboring Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the deal indicated "a little bit of progress," but no other official would comment publicly on it. Administration spokesmen said the government was reviewing the IAEA report and the agreement.
In his 32-page report yesterday, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," such as weapons programs.
ElBaradei said there he could not rule out the possibility that Iran is conducting a clandestine nuclear weapons program. But its decision to suspend work aimed at developing a new energy source could make it more difficult to pursue a covert program. "It becomes harder to conceal without legitimate activities," said Robert Einhorn, who ran the State Department's nonproliferation bureau until 2001.
Several outstanding issues remain in the Iran investigation, mostly due to missing Iranian paperwork and a lack of cooperation from Pakistan, which supplied much of Iran's nuclear equipment. But ElBaradei wrote that Iran's cooperation had increased and that he would no longer need to issue special reports on a regular basis.
Over 18 years, Iran secretly assembled uranium enrichment and conversion facilities that could be used for a nuclear energy program or to construct an atomic bomb. The underground sites became a target of a massive IAEA investigation after they were exposed by an Iranian exile group two years ago.
Iran, rich in oil and gas, says its efforts are aimed at building a new energy source. But the scale and secrecy of the program fueled suspicions that Tehran planned to develop nuclear weapons.
While the IAEA inspections will continue, Iran and Europe's three main powers will begin talks for a final accord that would give Iran lucrative trade deals with the EU when it permanently halts its nuclear work.
An Iranian diplomat, Hassan Rohani, said the negotiations "will be a matter of months, not years." But European officials insisted the talks will be open-ended to avoid time-pressured negotiations. One European diplomat said Europe expected the negotiations to last two years or more.
--------
Europeans Say Iran Agrees to Freeze Uranium Enrichment
November 16, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/international/middleeast/16iran.html?pagewanted=all&position=
PARIS, Nov. 15 - France, Britain and Germany announced Monday that they had reached a formal agreement with Iran committing the country to freeze a critical part of its nuclear program in exchange for an array of possible rewards.
Under the complex but limited agreement, intended to prevent Iran from developing nuclear bombs, Tehran has agreed to suspend all of its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities while it negotiates the benefits it is to receive.
While both sides were relieved to reach an agreement, neither seemed particularly satisfied. Both sides had to make hard concessions, and the pact fell far short of the comprehensive deal the Europeans had hoped for, by which Iran would permanently stop enriching uranium.
Iran is the second largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the announcement of the deal appeared to have calmed fears in the commodities markets, propelling crude oil prices to their lowest levels in almost two months.
"We believe that the conclusion of this agreement can both allow for confidence-building in respect of Iran's nuclear program and represent a significant development in relations between Europe and Iran," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain said in a written statement. "It is essential now for the agreement to be implemented in full."
In Brussels, Javier Solana, the European Union's senior foreign affairs official, said the deal could open the way for "a solid, long-term agreement" with Iran if there could be "lasting confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program."
Enriched uranium has become a contentious issue because it can be used to make nuclear weapons as well as fuel for nuclear power plants.
The Bush administration reacted cautiously to the announcement, saying top officials wanted to study the agreement's details before endorsing it. But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that "we have seen a little bit of progress, hopefully, over the last 24 hours."
Administration officials said conservative hard-liners, most notably John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, were highly skeptical that Iran would carry out the accord without cheating. Officials were also said to be concerned that by itself the deal might lead to complacency that the problem of Iran's suspected nuclear arms program was being addressed.
The Europeans were deeply embarrassed after Iran violated a much vaguer agreement to suspend enrichment activities that was reached in Tehran 13 months ago. This time, the Europeans insisted that Iran accept the new agreement as negotiated and rejected Iran's attempts in the last several days to modify it.
In a related development, the United Nations agency that monitors nuclear programs said Iran had informed the agency that it would suspend its uranium enrichment program starting a week from now. That step, which covers verification and monitoring, was a necessary part of the pact with the Europeans.
But the agency, known as the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not totally reject the view of the United States and the three European countries that Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons, saying it could not rule out covert activities.
"All the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," the agency said in a report, referring to possible weapons activity. "The agency is, however, not in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran."
Under the agreement with the Europeans, there must be "objective guarantees" that Iran's nuclear program "is exclusively for peaceful purposes." In exchange, the Europeans must provide "firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and economic cooperation and firm commitments on security issues."
Specifically, Iran agreed to suspend "the manufacture and import of gas centrifuges and their components," all work on plutonium separation and the construction or operation of any plutonium separation installation, and "all tests or production at any uranium conversion installation."
Last year's agreement said nothing about the production and assembly of centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, and when inspectors from the United Nations agency caught Iran building them, the Europeans felts duped.
The agreement also commits both sides to combating terrorist activities, including those of Al Qaeda and the Iranian opposition group known as the People's Mujahedeen.
Once the suspension of enrichment is verified, the European Union will restart negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement with Iran. It will also "actively support" negotiations for Iran to enter the World Trade Organization, a move that the Bush administration has blocked and can continue to block.
Iran's leadership has steadfastly held to the position that Iran is not engaged in a nuclear weapons program but has the sovereign right to enrich uranium. So as a face-saving gesture, the agreement says Iran's suspension of enrichment activities "is a voluntary confidence-building measure and not a legal obligation."
Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief negotiator on nuclear issues, reiterated that point in a news conference in Tehran on Monday, calling uranium enrichment "Iran's right," and adding that "Iran will never give up its right to enrich uranium."
He also said the suspension during negotiations for the incentives package "will be a matter of months, not years," an assertion that the Europeans immediately rejected.
"Suspension must remain in force until the I.A.E.A. gives Iran a clean bill of health," said one European official. "If the suspension is lifted the process is deemed to have broken and we, the Europeans, will withdraw and go to the Security Council."
Making concessions on its nuclear program has been widely unpopular inside Iran, and Mr. Rowhani was put on the defensive by conservative Iranian journalists.
When a reporter for the official Islamic Republic News Agency remarked, "The reason Iran has given so many concessions is because the Iranian team was weak," Mr. Rowhani replied that the country's best diplomats had conducted the negotiations and "this is the outcome of our best diplomacy."
Another Iranian journalist cited an interview in an Iranian newspaper that accused Iran of giving "a pearl in exchange for a lollipop."
"That's not true," Mr. Rowhani shot back.
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.
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U.S. is skeptical of Europe-Iran nuclear solution
November 16, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041115-102908-2962r.htm
Washington reacted skeptically yesterday to the news of a short-term negotiated solution between Iran and Europe whereby Tehran said it would temporarily freeze its uranium-reprocessing activities.
European policy-makers, however, hailed the agreement as an important step toward a long-term settlement.
In the deal cut with Britain, France and Germany, Iran managed to duck being brought before the U.N. Security Council, frustrating U.S. demands that Iran be punished for what it claims is Tehran's covert nuclear-weapons program.
"It is an attempt by Iran to forestall being reported to the Security Council and an attempt to separate us from our European allies," said a U.S. government official familiar with the issue.
"It's not OK with us," the official said, but then added: "It's worth something. The Europeans will have told the Iranians if they screw this up, they will report them to the Security Council."
The administration repeatedly has demanded that Iran permanently stop enriching uranium, seen as a potential first step toward developing nuclear arms. Iran, a major oil producer, insists that its nuclear program is geared only toward generating electricity.
The White House took a cautious approach to the announcement yesterday, with spokesman Scott McClellan saying that Washington wanted to discuss the accord further with its allies.
"We will have more to say after we've had the opportunity to learn more about the specific details," Mr. McClellan said. "At this point, we have not had that opportunity."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States will "be looking to the International Atomic Energy Agency to be able to verify the commitments on suspension and to be able to report, we hope, if the Iranians really do comply."
But France and Britain both heartily welcomed Iran's pledge to suspend uranium enrichment by Nov. 22 as an important step in the drawn-out diplomatic effort to bring Iran back into the international fold.
"We believe that the conclusion of this agreement can both allow for confidence-building in respect of Iran's nuclear program and represent a significant development in relations between Europe and Iran," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday issued a report stating that all the declared nuclear material in Iran had been accounted for.
But IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei added that the agency was "not yet in the position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials" that could be used in a weapons program.
The deal between Tehran and the three European nations revealed that Iran was looking for a comprehensive aid and trade package with Europe in exchange for a longer-term agreement.
The U.S. government official predicted that a final accord would be months, if not years, away.
Details of the current pact were not clear, and Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani, insisted Iran's ultimate goal was a full nuclear-fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment - deemed legal under IAEA protocols.
"It is no problem if Iran wants to start uranium enrichment," Mr. Rohani said on state television. "Based on the agreement, it is said the Europeans will support Iran to become a member of the fuel-cycle club."
Mr. Rohani said Iran hoped that the deal with Europe would help nudge Iran off the nuclear agenda of the IAEA, where the United States has been holding Tehran's feet to the fire regarding its nuclear ambitions.
Europe won two important concessions from Tehran in the deal - a suspension on the production of uranium tetraflouride, a precursor to the gas used in centrifuges, and the length of that freeze.
In exchange, once the suspension is verified, Europe will actively support Iran's negotiations to enter the World Trade Organization and restart a trade and cooperation agreement it had with Tehran.
"This is a big deal for Iran," said Valerie Lincy, nuclear-arms control research associate at the Wisconsin Project. "If they had not arrived at an agreement, there was a pretty strong chance Europe would have supported the Security Council option."
But whether the United States would endorse the deal, and how warm its endorsement is, is an open question.
"It's not a defeat, and it's not a victory. It's more of a wait-and-see," she said.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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Nuclear accord upsets Iran press
bbc
16 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4015525.stm
The Iranian press is unhappy at the deal Tehran has agreed with the European Union to suspend most of its uranium enrichment in a bid to resolve the dispute over its nuclear programme.
Most commentators think the agreement shows Iran in a weak light, although some take solace that the country has been given the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
This is undoubtedly an unlimited suspension of uranium enrichment. It is exactly the same illegitimate and illegal demand from European countries which Iran had previously clearly rejected.
Kayhan
What Iran has agreed is the cessation of uranium enrichment under the name of a long term and a full scale suspension. No one can offer this right to foreigners before it is ratified in the Majlis [parliament]. If Iranian negotiators think that Iran's dossier won't be sent to the UN Security Council, they should know that first, there is nothing to guarantee this. But secondly, we shouldn't be afraid of it.
Jomhuri-ye Eslami
No major changes have been made in Iran's nuclear dossier. However Iranians had expected to obtain more than what we have got.
Khorasan
At least the agreement, though not desirable, has prevented the emergence of a consensus between the US and the European countries against Iran's nuclear technology.
Shargh
Iranians have every right to know the details of the current and the earlier agreements between Iran and the European countries. Perhaps the most recent agreement was the best possible but the negotiators should explain to the people what had weakened Iran's position in the nuclear negotiations.
Aftab-e-Yazd
The EU big three ultimately accepted our right to use nuclear technology for civil use. The key point in the latest agreement is that Iran's right to peaceful nuclear activities has been established.
Iran Daily
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
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Text of Iran-EU nuclear agreement
tehrantimes.com
November 16, 2004
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=11/16/2004&Cat=2&Num=007
TEHRAN (MNA) -- The Mehr News Agency received a copy of the final text of the recent nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the European Union. Following is the text of agreement:
The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Governments of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, with the support of the High Representative of the European Union (E3/EU), reaffirm the commitments in the Tehran Agreed Statement of 21 October 2003 and have decided to move forward, building on that agreement.
The E3/EU and Iran reaffirm their commitment to the NPT.
The E3/EU recognize Iran's rights under the NPT exercised in conformity with its obligations under the Treaty, without discrimination.
Iran reaffirms that, in accordance with Article II of the NPT, it does not and will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons. It commits itself to full cooperation and transparency with the IAEA. Iran will continue to implement the Additional Protocol voluntarily pending ratification.
To build further confidence, Iran has decided, on a voluntary basis, to continue and extend its suspension to include all enrichment related and reprocessing activities, and specifically: the manufacture and import of gas centrifuges and their components; the assembly, installation, testing or operation of gas centrifuges; work to undertake any plutonium separation, or to construct or operate any plutonium separation installation; and all tests or production at any uranium conversion installation. The IAEA will be notified of this suspension and invited to verify and monitor it. The suspension will be implemented in time for the IAEA to confirm before the November Board that it has been put into effect. The suspension will be sustained while negotiations proceed on a mutually acceptable agreement on long-term arrangements.
The E3/EU recognize that this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation.
Sustaining the suspension, while negotiations on a long-term agreement are under way, will be essential for the continuation of the overall process. In the context of this suspension, the E3/EU and Iran have agreed to begin negotiations, with a view to reaching a mutually acceptable agreement on long-term arrangements. The agreement will provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. It will equally provide firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and economic cooperation and firm commitments on security issues.
A steering committee will meet to launch these negotiations in the first half of December 2004 and will set up working groups on political and security issues, technology and cooperation, and nuclear issues. The steering committee shall meet again within three months to receive progress reports from the working groups and to move ahead with projects and/or measures that can be implemented in advance of an overall agreement. In the context of the present agreement and noting the progress that has been made in resolving outstanding issues, the E3/EU will henceforth support the Director General reporting to the IAEA Board as he considers appropriate in the framework of the implementation of Iran's Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol.
The E3/EU will support the IAEA Director General inviting Iran to join the Expert Group on Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.
Once suspension has been verified, the negotiations with the EU on a Trade and Cooperation Agreement will resume. The E3/EU will actively support the opening of Iranian accession negotiations at the WTO.
Irrespective of progress on the Nuclear issue, the E3/EU and Iran confirm their determination to combat terrorism, including the activities of Al Qa'ida and other terrorist groups such as the Mek. They also confirm their continued support for the political process in Iraq aimed at establishing a constitutionally elected Government.
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'Iran tried to acquire N-equipment at Lavizan'
IranMania.com
November 16, 2004
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=27047&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
LONDON, Nov 16 (IranMania) - Iran tried to acquire equipment that could have been used in uranium enrichment at the Lavizan site in Tehran which the United States says was used for developing weapons of mass destruction, the UN atomic agency said in a report Monday.
Iran gave this new information only last month about Lavizan, a plot of land from which buildings and topsoil were removed over the past year.
Iran has said the site was razed since the Defense Ministry was returning the land to the city of Tehran, after having used it since 1989 for a physics research center studying casualties due to possible nuclear attacks, the report said.
But it said "in October 2004, Iran provided some information to the agency" about the physics research center trying "to acquire dual use materials and equipment that could be useful in uranium enrichment or conversion activities."
The IAEA has found "no evidence of nuclear material" from "vegetation and soil samples" it has taken at Lavizan but said this may be because all the topsoil had been removed.
Suspicion has surrounded the Lavizan site since satellite images from a US commercial firm showed that buildings which had been there in August 2003 had been razed to the ground by March 2004 and that topsoil had been taken away.
The Washington think tank the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said on its website that this set alarm bells ringing "because it is the type of measure Iran would need to take if it was trying to defeat the powerful environmental sampling capabilities of IAEA inspectors."
Environmental sampling involves swipes taken to find traces of radiation.
Washington claims that Iran is hiding an atomic weapons program and has urged the IAEA The United States has been pushing to have the U.N. Security Council impose sanctions on Iran for allegedly contravening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The IAEA also took environmental samples from "two whole body counter," machines, designed to measure radiation on humans, which were connected with Lavizan "and a trailer said to have contained one of the containers while it was located at Lavizan," the report said.
The IAEA said it was still looking, however, for the trailer that contained the other counter, in order to check it for radiation that might show what sort of work the Iranians were doing at Lavizan.
According to Reuters, the IAEA said the UN inspectors were investigating attempts by Iran to acquire materials that could be used for uranium enrichment at a razed site called Lavizan, which Washington suspects may have been linked to atomic arms work.
The IAEA found no traces of nuclear materials at Lavizan but acknowledged that Iran's decision to completely raze the site made it difficult to draw firm conclusions.
Iran has acknowledged producing a small amount of plutonium, which can be used as fuel in nuclear weapons, but told the IAEA it had carried out no plutonium-related activities after 1993. The IAEA has been investigating plutonium solution stored in bottles in Iran to verify this.
The IAEA said in the report that "the age of the plutonium solution in the bottles appeared to be less than the declared 12-16 years" and that "the plutonium could have been separated after 1993."
According to AFP, the IAEA meanwhile also said in the report that it had requested to visit the military complex of Parchin, 30 kilometres (19 miles) southeast of Tehran, "in order to provide assurance regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities at that site" but was still waiting for permission to go there.
Iran has denied carrying out any nuclear-related work at Parchin, but a senior US official told AFP in September that the United States was concerned about high-explosives testing in Parchin that may "amount to (nuclear) weapons intent".
The official said the concern about Parchin was that the Iranians may be working on testing "high-explosive shaped charges with an inert core of depleted uranium" as a sort of dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work.
The official said the IAEA had, according to verbal accounts, dropped the mention of Parchin in its September 1 report on Iran, as well as a reference to concern about Iran's work with beryllium.
Beryllium has civilian applications but can also be used in combination with polonium to make a neutron initiator that is effectively a trigger for a nuclear bomb.
However, the IAEA will continue to investigate the discovery of traces of enrichment uranium found in Iran and other issues that have never been satisfactorily explained. The uranium traces raised concerns that Tehran had been secretly enriching uranium for use in weapons.
The IAEA said it has no evidence to support such suspicions.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Securing nuclear materials unfinished
Abraham leaves his mark on Energy Department
San Mateo County Times
By Ian Hoffman
November 16, 2004
http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11268~2538314,00.html
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham lasted longer than most of his predecessors in an agency that he once hoped to abolish and a job that often has been a political dead end.
Abraham did not elaborate on his own future in his resignation letter Monday to President Bush, but it's clear that several of his initiatives with the greatest potential impact will remain incomplete when he leaves office.
Abraham shook up security in the nation's nuclear-weapons complex, expanded efforts to secure foreign nuclear materials and ordered consolidation of U.S. nuclear material.
Breaking more than 60 years of tradition, he ordered management of the world's first nuclear weapons lab, Los Alamos, operated by the University of California since 1943, put up for competitive bid.
What happens in those areas could determine who looks after the majority of U.S. nuclear bombs and warheads, and how secure
A-bomb ingredients at home and abroad will be.
But as Washington insiders speculated on Abraham's replacement, the talk was of gas prices and energy policy, matters over which the energy secretary can have surprisingly little influence.
Two of the three prospective nominees are well known in energy and political circles, but not viewed as know-
ledgeable about nuclear weapons, nonproliferation policy or nuclear security.
Retiring Sen. John Breaux, D-La., has close ties to the oil and natural gas industry and supports President Bush's plans to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. He deflected accusations in mid-1990s that several companies were shortchanging the government by underestimating the royalties due on oil and gas harvested from federal lands. Because he is a Democrat and a former senator, Breaux could offer an easy confirmation.
Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute trade group, also is mentioned as an Abraham replacement. He is a former Yale classmate and a loyal friend of the president, as well as a Bush "pioneer," raising more than $100,000. In the 2004 election, Kuhn assembled Bush contributions from electric company CEOs.
Abraham's deputy, Kyle McSlarrow, is often mentioned as a successor. He runs the Energy Department day-to-day and heads a joint U.S.-Russian Energy Working Group set up by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is well-liked on Capitol Hill and well-versed in nonproliferation and security issues.
The next secretary will inherit the massive task of negotiating tighter security for Russian nuclear facilities, clean-out of highly enriched uranium -- the material most easily made into a nuclear bomb -- from dozens of unsecure research reactors and the costly tightening of security at U.S. nuclear facilities.
Abraham's critics say he took too long to tackle each of those problems, especially securing Russian weapons materials.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, said she hoped the next secretary would be "productive and innovative (at) returning nonproliferation efforts to the administration's priority list."
But on toughening security at home, domestic critics often underestimated the resistance within the Energy Department and its network of factories and laboratories.
"While they had been paying lip service to security, they really hadn't been (improving security) and he made them," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group.
It took the agency almost three years to upgrade the estimated terrorist threat to its nuclear materials facilities after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. This new number of potential attackers, known as the "design basis threat" and issued a few months ago, could drive hundreds of millions of dollars in new security arrangements, depending on how fast an energy secretary presses the issue.
Last summer, Abraham promised to review storage of nuclear materials nationwide, including hundreds of pounds of plutonium and uranium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Lab officials acknowledge some material is waste residue and can be removed. But they say they need much of what remains, plus more for new research on exotic methods of plutonium separation and the experimental fashioning of weapons components.
Security critics say the work can be performed at more secure facilities elsewhere, such as the Nevada Test Site, away from residential neighborhoods.
"For the first time, a secretary of energy said, 'Do we really need these materials at Livermore? Let's look at that.' That's a big step for a secretary to even ask the question," Brian said. "I hope he set the standard for the next secretary."
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .
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Nuclear-power Industry Sees Signs Of A Revival
The Day
11/16/2004
By KATHRYN KRANHOLD
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=A591E7EE-DFDA-413B-B466-C3681A16D32C
New York- The nuclear-power industry is laying the groundwork to build new plants in the U.S. for the first time in more than two decades.
Buoyed by the re-election of President Bush, whose administration has pushed to expand nuclear power as part of its national energy plan, the industry sees a window of two to three years in which the political environment could make it easier to win approval for new projects.
Late last week, two separate consortiums consisting of power companies and reactor makers received word that the Department of Energy would share in the cost of obtaining regulatory approval for new nuclear reactors. The two groups expect the cost of winning that approval to be about $500 million apiece, due to the detailed engineering and testing required by regulators for new reactors.
"There's lots of enthusiasm for what we're trying to accomplish here," said William D. Magwood IV, director of the Energy Department's office of nuclear energy, science and technology. "If both of these goes to fruition, we could see new nuclear plants by 2014."
In part, the revived prospects for nuclear power stem from the volatile energy market and concerns about global warming, which are forcing utilities and their power-generation vendors to consider alternatives. Faced with skyrocketing natural-gas prices and uncertainty about the costs of containing carbon emissions from coal-fired plants, electric companies believe nuclear plants are becoming more economically competitive and safer.
They are also being driven by manufacturers - General Electric Co. and its longtime rival Westinghouse Electric Co., along with a new entrant, Canada's Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., or AECL - who are looking to sell newly designed reactors into the long-dormant U.S. market, which dried up in the early 1980s amid public outcry over safety and investors' dismay over high costs. Since then, the companies have continued to build reactors overseas in Asia and Europe; GE currently is nearing completion of new reactors in Taiwan. But the U.S. remains the most coveted market because of its economic might and hunger for new sources of energy.
While opposition to new plants is likely to be fierce, the companies and Energy Department hope to win approval for construction from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as early as 2009.
The Energy Department also is pushing to overcome legal and regulatory hurdles to establish a depository for used nuclear fuel in Nevada. Power companies say they won't build new plants without a storage site. They currently store spent fuel at their plants.
To be sure, the power companies and their reactor makers are being cautious not to commit formally to new plants. Longtime proponents of nuclear energy, fearful of being burned by policy changes, are seeking solid government guarantees before proceeding. The collapse of support for nuclear power in the 1980s cost the industry billions of dollars.
So far, the proposed new plants would be built at existing facilities. One group, led by Virginia's Dominion Resources Inc., is proposing to build a new reactor, designed by AECL, on a site in Mineral, Va., where a nuclear plant has operated since 1980.
A second, much larger consortium led by Exelon Corp. and Entergy Corp., plans to select in 2007 a newly designed reactor from either GE or Westinghouse for a potential new plant. The consortium, NuStart Energy Development LLC, hasn't selected a site but is considering existing locations in Clinton, Ill., and Port Gibson, Miss.
GE and Westinghouse, longtime competitors since they built their first reactors in the 1950s, are marketing new reactors that they say are more economical to build and operate. GE says its design takes a new approach to safety, relying on an automated system triggered by gravity instead of human operators to release 360,000 gallons of water to flood a core containing radioactive fuel if it becomes necessary to prevent a meltdown. The design attempts to eliminate human error, which contributed to the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa.
Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse, which was acquired by the British government in 1999, recently received approval from the NRC for its own new reactor design, which has safety features similar to those of the GE reactor. The approval enables it to begin offering customers clearer cost estimates and construction schedules, and the company, which has invested close to half a billion dollars on its latest reactor, is hoping to land contracts to build new reactors for China in the next year. "This opens up possibilities for us," said Westinghouse Chief Executive Steve Tritch.
By contrast, GE has so far invested about $100 million in its new design. But under Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, it is aggressively pursuing regulatory approval for its new design. "The opportunity exists for the industry to come together around the right technology for a new nuclear plant," said John Rice, chief executive of GE Energy, one of the conglomerate's two biggest businesses.
Electric companies also won't have to carry the entire financial burden this time around. GE, Westinghouse and government-owned AECL say they will share the financial risks of building new nuclear plants. That could include providing loans or equity to utilities that build new plants or construction budget guarantees. Such support was missing in the 1970s and 1980s when utilities got clobbered by billions of dollars in cost overruns, among other things.
Nuclear power currently accounts for nearly 20 percent of all the electricity produced in the U.S., compared with 51 percent coal and 17 percent natural gas. To maintain that mix, the industry says new plants must be built in the U.S. as older ones are retired.
One big challenge, however, is convincing the public that nuclear energy is safe. Opponents charge that utilities aren't adequately maintaining existing plants to prevent possible accidents.
The nuclear industry points to a strong overall safety record since the Three Mile Island accident, in which no one was killed, though a small amount of radioactive material leaked into the atmosphere. But the 1986 explosion and deadly aftermath at the former Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear plant - which was caused by major design flaws and by engineers who were conducting unauthorized tests - continues to haunt the public's view of nuclear power. More recently, a deadly explosion in Japan this year, in which a steam pipe broke because of poor maintenance, caused five deaths.
"Reactors aren't inherently safe," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union for Concerned Scientists, a group that monitors the industry.
Lochbaum, who has sat in on hearings on the new reactor designs, said he thinks they are safer because they have fewer pieces of equipment to operate and maintain.
But "a lot of those new features haven't been tested yet except in cyberspace," he said. Nuclear opponents also worry that new plants could become targets of terrorist attacks.
Said GE's Mr. Rice, "You've got all this hysteria. You still have in the rearview mirror Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which people haven't forgotten about." Reactors made by Westinghouse and GE already dot the U.S. landscape. Of the 103 reactors currently operating, 49 use Westinghouse-owned designs and another 34 have GE-made models.
For now, utility executives are hedging their bets on the new reactors, saying each has its pros and cons and they prefer to make a final judgment when they see pricing and final designs. Though Westinghouse is ahead with design approval, some executives expect that GE's new model could be cheaper because it will produce more electricity and spread capital costs across bigger plants.
GE's new design has no large water pipes entering the lower portion of a reactor below the fuel core. The risk in older models is that if those pipes, which carry water in and out of the vessel, burst, water could flow rapidly out of the container's bottom and leave the core uncovered. GE's new design places the pipes above the core so water can't drain out as quickly in case of an accident.
In case of accidents, both GE's and Westinghouse's designs use gravity rather than operator-run pumps to force water in and out of reactor vessels and flood the area surrounding the core containing fuel. GE's reactor also holds more water.
The NuStart consortium says that cost as much as design will determine its choice of a reactor. A new GE reactor that can provide power to about 1.5 million households could cost roughly $1.8 billion, or 20 percent less than its current model. Westinghouse's reactor, which is smaller, could cost about $1.14 billion once the costs associated with doing detailed engineering plans are recovered.
Building two of AECL's newest reactors, which would produce the same amount of power as one of GE's, would cost about $1.89 billion. But Canada stresses that unlike other reactors, its design doesn't require the plant to be shut down during regular, lengthy refuelings. They argue to utilities that that will increase their revenue during the several weeks such refueling typically takes.
The Department of Energy cautions that these construction estimates are overly optimistic and new plants are likely to cost more. Still, proponents argue that nuclear power is efficient. Nuclear power, they note, costs about $1.71 a kilowatt-hour to operate over the life of a plant, compared to $1.85 for coal and $4.06 for gas, according to industry estimates. In addition, nuclear doesn't emit pollutants, while coal's carbon emissions contribute to global warming.
"I cannot see any energy future ... without an expanded nuclear base," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and chief executive, told a group of managers at a climate policy meeting this summer.
-------- connecticut
Nuke plant decommissioning 'progressing'
11/16/2004
The Middletown Press
By JOSH MROZINSKI
http://www.middletownpress.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13371354&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
MIDDLETOWN -- The decommissioning of the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power plant continues to progress, according to a company spokeswoman.
An update of the progress will be given at tonight's Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee meeting at the Connecticut Light & Power building on Randolph Road.
"Since we started self-performance work last fall, decommissioning is about 50 percent complete," Kelley Smith, spokeswoman for the plant, said. "As of this week we'll have 26 casks on the fuel storage pad."
The decommissioning process, which began in 1998, involves demolishing buildings and moving 43 spent-fuel and greater than Class-C Waste into dry casks at a storage area which is three-quarters of a mile from the plant. Greater than Class-C Waste is cut-up metal from the reactor vessel.
The spent-fuel and waste will eventually be transported to Yucca Mountain in Nevada when it opens. Smith said the fuel transfer will be completed by the first quarter of 2005.
Smith said they've started to take down the turbine building and have three buildings and structures now undergoing demolition. Five buildings and structures, she said, have been demolished.
She said the two-story building involved in the late September fire has been torn down. The fire broke out in the building during demolition. Workers were outside of the building pulling down steel beams when the fire broke out.
The workers were cutting the steel beams with torch cutting equipment. The beams became hot from the cutting, and the insulation that was behind the beams caught fire when it was exposed to the air from the workers pulling down the beams.
There were no injuries in the fire.
"Overall, things are moving very smoothly and we are making good progress," Smith said.
Hugh Curley, chairman of the Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee, said condition reports will be reviewed at the meeting. Demolition, he said, seems to be speeding up while the radiological activity has entered a regular pace.
He said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which couldn't attend the late September meeting, will report on the last six months of the plant's decommissioning.
And talk about how to demolish the containment dome, he said, will continue. The question is more about how to get rid of the bulky waste and its schedule than how the dome should be demolished, he said. The waste could be taken away on barge or on the river.
He thinks the plant will take the route of its sister plant, Maine Yankee, in Wiscasset. Curley, who witnessed the destruction of the dome in June, said at the meeting that the blast left a 75-foot high pile of ruble.
The columns were wrapped to keep the blast from spreading debris.
Curley said there also might be a discussion on what the future community oversight of the storage site will look like.
"There should be a vehicle to call management to the table," Curley said.
To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222 or jmrozinski@middletownpress.com.
-------- delaware
N.R.C. Continues Scrutiny of Problems at Salem Plant
By JOHN SULLIVAN
November 16, 2004
nytimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/nyregion/16salem.html?ex=1101272400&en=5b30a0ee783857da&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1
Two years ago, federal regulators uncovered problems with a critical system in one of three reactors at the Salem nuclear power station in South Jersey. But when regulators returned last July, the company that owns the reactor, P.S.E.G. Nuclear L.L.C., still had not fixed the endangered system, and the regulators said that if it was not fixed, the reactor would have to be shut down. The repairs were finally made, and the regulators declared themselves satisfied.
But last month, during an emergency shutdown at the reactor, that same system, the high-pressure coolant-injection system, malfunctioned, and operators at the plant had to turn to other equipment to make sure the reactor did not overheat dangerously. Federal investigators, who launched an immediate investigation, said recently that they do not believe that the earlier problems with the cooling system were the cause of the malfunction during the October emergency. But they said their inquiry was continuing at the troubled plant, where for months regulators and private consultants have found serious problems with equipment, maintenance and the ability of employees to raise safety concerns.
"To the best of my knowledge, there is no way the two issues could have a common cause," Eugene W. Cobey, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission official in charge of the investigations at Salem, said in a recent interview, referring to the repairs that were made to the system and the problems it had last month. "They are totally separate issues."
Other experts are not so sure. David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, said it was too early to rule out a connection between the July repairs and the October malfunction. After reviewing federal reports describing the repairs, Mr. Lochbaum said it was possible that the changes had contributed to the malfunction, although he said further tests would have to be made to discover the actual cause. "That remains to be answered," he said.
The most recent investigation comes at a difficult time for the Salem station, which is the country's second-largest nuclear plant in terms of power generation. In a nine-month investigation that concluded this summer, federal regulators and technical consultants found maintenance problems such as a leaky generator and malfunctioning pumps. Some employees said they were reluctant to report maintenance problems for fear of angering their supervisors. P.S.E.G. Nuclear has pledged to spend millions to fix the aging equipment and has promised to ensure that employees feel free to report any new problems. The N.R.C. has placed the company under increased scrutiny until all the repairs are made.
The high-pressure coolant-injection system was not one of the areas that attracted the concern of regulators during the nine-month investigation. The system is an important piece of equipment, but it is rarely used. It is designed to shoot tremendous amounts of water - about 5,000 gallons per minute - into the reactor to ensure that overheating does not occur.
The system, which helps maintain water levels that adequately cover the nuclear fuel, is considered critical because if the water ever dropped below the fuel, it could result in a meltdown. Unsatisfied with the company's efforts to fix the two-year-old problems with the system, regulators determined in July that it was not capable of delivering enough water in extreme conditions, like very high pressure inside the reactor. The company solved the problem by increasing the size of openings in pipes that deliver water to the reactor, enabling the system to pump more water in a shorter time. The regulators signed off on the improvements.
But then came the emergency last month. A steam pipe burst in a building outside the reactor, and the control room operators turned to the high- pressure coolant-injection system to stabilize water levels as the plant was shut down. But, according to the N.R.C., the operators were forced to use other equipment when a circuit breaker repeatedly shut off a vacuum pump on the system.
Experts like Mr. Cobey and Mr. Lochbaum disagree on whether changing the pipe openings might have increased stress on the vacuum pump. P.S.E.G. officials have said they do not believe there is a connection between the malfunction and the July repairs. The question is expected to be addressed by the company and regulators before the system is reactivated.
Some critics have asked why P.S.E.G. did not perform more intensive tests before restarting the system in July. The company said it was not required to perform the more intensive tests because it had not made any fundamental changes to the system.
The nuclear reactor involved in the shutdown, the Hope Creek reactor, has remained offline since the shutdown in October. The company said managers had decided to keep it closed to perform long-scheduled repairs. The closing was originally scheduled to last 52 days, and P.S.E.G. says the repairs are on schedule so far.
The three reactors that make up the Salem station are on the Delaware River about 15 miles south of Wilmington. The station provides about 60 percent of the electric power supplied to P.S.E.G.'s two million electricity customers in New Jersey.
Company officials say the closing is not expected to have any impact on consumers. Before the reactor returns to service, P.S.E.G. will report to the N.R.C. on the causes of the equipment problems and on its repair efforts.
-------- new jersey
Salem Nuclear accused of ignoring repairs
November 16, 2004
By JEROME MONTES Staff Writer, (856) 794-5115
Press of Atlantic City, NJ,
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/cumberland/111604NUCLEARSAFETY2.cfm
LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TOWNSHIP - A former employee of the Salem Nuclear Generating Station says a decision to restart the facility's idle Hope Creek reactor without making repairs to a water re-circulation pump could have disastrous consequences.
Dr. Kymn Harvin was a former manager at the plant who says she was fired in 2003 for raising safety concerns. She has since filed a "whistleblower" lawsuit against Public Service Enterprise Group's nuclear division, which owns the facility.
Harvin said sources within the facility informed her PSEG officers plan no repairs for a section of the pump subject to severe vibrations.
The pump provides coolant for Hope Creek's reactor core. Nuclear watchdog groups say the vibrations could lead to a break in the pump's piping and a worst-case scenario known as a "loss-of-cooling-water" incident.
"If everything works as designed, the reactor core will not overheat and fail despite such a pipe break," said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "If one or more safety systems fails, the result could be meltdown."
"Once again PSEG officers have put profits and production ahead of ensuring the safety of employees and the public," Harvin said. "It is pretty tough for employees to hold the line on safety when their bosses make bad decisions like this one."
PSEG spokesman Skip Sindoni disputed Harvin's statement. He said no final decision has been reached regarding repairs or replacing parts.
Sindoni said an independent team examining the pump concluded there was no need for repairs to the vibrating section.
"But the leadership here is still discussing the issue," he added. "We haven't made a final decision yet. We won't restart the plant until we're confident it's safe to do so."
The plant has drawn heavy criticism from federal regulators and independent consultants on numerous safety issues and maintenance problems.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently investigating an Oct. 10 steam leak that prompted the shutdown of Hope Creek reactor, one of three at the plant. The reactor has remained idle since then for repairs and refueling.
Hope Creek has suffered other mishaps since the leak. A Freon leak on Oct. 28 temporarily restricted access to the building's second floor. On Nov. 3, a worker was hospitalized after fracturing his fingers and suffering slight radiation contamination.
NRC officials said Monday their investigators are still evaluating the re-circulation pump.
Harvin maintains PSEG's decision has been made. She says issues at the pump only surfaced because of the actions of another unidentified employee who was terminated for raising safety concerns.
Harvin added the pump has been in disrepair for years because PSEG has been unwilling to spend the millions of dollars needed to fix it.
"PSEG keeps saying safety is its top priority," she said. "If that was true, it would be a no-brainer to replace this pump instead of taking chances with everyone's safety."
To e-mail Jerome Montes at The Press:
JMontes@pressofac.com
-----
N.R.C. Continues Scrutiny of Problems at Salem Plant
November 16, 2004
NY TIMES
By JOHN SULLIVAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/nyregion/16salem.html
wo years ago, federal regulators uncovered problems with a critical system in one of three reactors at the Salem nuclear power station in South Jersey. But when regulators returned last July, the company that owns the reactor, P.S.E.G. Nuclear L.L.C., still had not fixed the endangered system, and the regulators said that if it was not fixed, the reactor would have to be shut down. The repairs were finally made, and the regulators declared themselves satisfied.
But last month, during an emergency shutdown at the reactor, that same system, the high-pressure coolant-injection system, malfunctioned, and operators at the plant had to turn to other equipment to make sure the reactor did not overheat dangerously. Federal investigators, who launched an immediate investigation, said recently that they do not believe that the earlier problems with the cooling system were the cause of the malfunction during the October emergency. But they said their inquiry was continuing at the troubled plant, where for months regulators and private consultants have found serious problems with equipment, maintenance and the ability of employees to raise safety concerns.
"To the best of my knowledge, there is no way the two issues could have a common cause," Eugene W. Cobey, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission official in charge of the investigations at Salem, said in a recent interview, referring to the repairs that were made to the system and the problems it had last month. "They are totally separate issues."
Other experts are not so sure. David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, said it was too early to rule out a connection between the July repairs and the October malfunction. After reviewing federal reports describing the repairs, Mr. Lochbaum said it was possible that the changes had contributed to the malfunction, although he said further tests would have to be made to discover the actual cause. "That remains to be answered," he said.
The most recent investigation comes at a difficult time for the Salem station, which is the country's second-largest nuclear plant in terms of power generation. In a nine-month investigation that concluded this summer, federal regulators and technical consultants found maintenance problems such as a leaky generator and malfunctioning pumps. Some employees said they were reluctant to report maintenance problems for fear of angering their supervisors. P.S.E.G. Nuclear has pledged to spend millions to fix the aging equipment and has promised to ensure that employees feel free to report any new problems. The N.R.C. has placed the company under increased scrutiny until all the repairs are made.
The high-pressure coolant-injection system was not one of the areas that attracted the concern of regulators during the nine-month investigation. The system is an important piece of equipment, but it is rarely used. It is designed to shoot tremendous amounts of water - about 5,000 gallons per minute - into the reactor to ensure that overheating does not occur.
The system, which helps maintain water levels that adequately cover the nuclear fuel, is considered critical because if the water ever dropped below the fuel, it could result in a meltdown. Unsatisfied with the company's efforts to fix the two-year-old problems with the system, regulators determined in July that it was not capable of delivering enough water in extreme conditions, like very high pressure inside the reactor. The company solved the problem by increasing the size of openings in pipes that deliver water to the reactor, enabling the system to pump more water in a shorter time. The regulators signed off on the improvements.
But then came the emergency last month. A steam pipe burst in a building outside the reactor, and the control room operators turned to the high- pressure coolant-injection system to stabilize water levels as the plant was shut down. But, according to the N.R.C., the operators were forced to use other equipment when a circuit breaker repeatedly shut off a vacuum pump on the system.
Experts like Mr. Cobey and Mr. Lochbaum disagree on whether changing the pipe openings might have increased stress on the vacuum pump. P.S.E.G. officials have said they do not believe there is a connection between the malfunction and the July repairs. The question is expected to be addressed by the company and regulators before the system is reactivated.
Some critics have asked why P.S.E.G. did not perform more intensive tests before restarting the system in July. The company said it was not required to perform the more intensive tests because it had not made any fundamental changes to the system.
The nuclear reactor involved in the shutdown, the Hope Creek reactor, has remained offline since the shutdown in October. The company said managers had decided to keep it closed to perform long-scheduled repairs. The closing was originally scheduled to last 52 days, and P.S.E.G. says the repairs are on schedule so far.
The three reactors that make up the Salem station are on the Delaware River about 15 miles south of Wilmington. The station provides about 60 percent of the electric power supplied to P.S.E.G.'s two million electricity customers in New Jersey.
Company officials say the closing is not expected to have any impact on consumers. Before the reactor returns to service, P.S.E.G. will report to the N.R.C. on the causes of the equipment problems and on its repair efforts.
-------- pennsylvania
Nuke plant decommissioning 'progressing'
Middletown Press
By JOSH MROZINSKI
11/16/2004
http://www.middletownpress.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13371354&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
MIDDLETOWN -- The decommissioning of the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power plant continues to progress, according to a company spokeswoman.
An update of the progress will be given at tonight's Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee meeting at the Connecticut Light & Power building on Randolph Road.
"Since we started self-performance work last fall, decommissioning is about 50 percent complete," Kelley Smith, spokeswoman for the plant, said. "As of this week we'll have 26 casks on the fuel storage pad."
The decommissioning process, which began in 1998, involves demolishing buildings and moving 43 spent-fuel and greater than Class-C Waste into dry casks at a storage area which is three-quarters of a mile from the plant. Greater than Class-C Waste is cut-up metal from the reactor vessel.
The spent-fuel and waste will eventually be transported to Yucca Mountain in Nevada when it opens. Smith said the fuel transfer will be completed by the first quarter of 2005.
Smith said they've started to take down the turbine building and have three buildings and structures now undergoing demolition. Five buildings and structures, she said, have been demolished.
She said the two-story building involved in the late September fire has been torn down. The fire broke out in the building during demolition. Workers were outside of the building pulling down steel beams when the fire broke out.
The workers were cutting the steel beams with torch cutting equipment. The beams became hot from the cutting, and the insulation that was behind the beams caught fire when it was exposed to the air from the workers pulling down the beams.
There were no injuries in the fire.
"Overall, things are moving very smoothly and we are making good progress," Smith said.
Hugh Curley, chairman of the Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee, said condition reports will be reviewed at the meeting. Demolition, he said, seems to be speeding up while the radiological activity has entered a regular pace.
He said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which couldn't attend the late September meeting, will report on the last six months of the plant's decommissioning.
And talk about how to demolish the containment dome, he said, will continue. The question is more about how to get rid of the bulky waste and its schedule than how the dome should be demolished, he said. The waste could be taken away on barge or on the river.
He thinks the plant will take the route of its sister plant, Maine Yankee, in Wiscasset. Curley, who witnessed the destruction of the dome in June, said at the meeting that the blast left a 75-foot high pile of ruble.
The columns were wrapped to keep the blast from spreading debris.
Curley said there also might be a discussion on what the future community oversight of the storage site will look like.
"There should be a vehicle to call management to the table," Curley said.
To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222 or jmrozinski@middletownpress.com.
-------- us nuc waste
Waste can stay in N.M., EPA rules
tri-cityherald
By Annette Cary
November 16th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5785780p-5719330c.html
The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that 602 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste from Hanford may remain for now in a Department of Energy underground repository in New Mexico.
However, no more similar waste may be sent to the national repository until EPA approves procedures for evaluating the contents of the Hanford waste. DOE already has stopped shipments.
The stop applies only to solid waste from Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant. In a letter sent Friday to DOE headquarters from EPA headquarters, EPA said an additional 926 drums of mixed oxides from the Plutonium Finishing Plant were correctly characterized and sent to the repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP.
Plutonium left in the plant when it shut down operations in 1989 has been converted to a stable form for storage, and waste from the plant that is contaminated with certain levels of plutonium is being sent to WIPP for disposal. The plutonium was produced at Hanford for the nation's national nuclear weapons program during the Cold War.
"In our initial assessment of the underlying causes for this violation, we have determined that the Hanford site operated according to its established procedures," said the letter from Elizabeth Cotsworth, director of EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air. "That is, it sent only waste certified for disposal at WIPP by the DOE's Carlsbad Office."
The 602 drums in question were certified by Carlsbad even though an August 2003 letter from EPA to DOE put restrictions on sending certain types of waste from the Hanford plutonium plant to WIPP.
In an EPA inspection earlier that summer, the Hanford plant had been unprepared for an evaluation of its system that used historical knowledge and documents to characterize waste, rather than a direct analysis of waste to certify it as acceptable for WIPP.
DOE discovered it had allowed waste shipments in violation of EPA regulations and notified EPA in an October letter. DOE's Carlsbad office has refused to make that letter public.
EPA does not believe the 602 drums sent improperly to WIPP pose a threat to human health, the environment or the long-term performance of WIPP. However, it will continue to assess whether documentation was technically sufficient.
The drums still could be removed from WIPP, but EPA does not believe that will be necessary.
Taken in conjunction with other waste characterization issues from other DOE sites, EPA considers the violation significant, according to the letter. It indicates the need "for significant attention from DOE management to improve internal coordination and oversight," Cotsworth wrote.
----
A New Vision for Nuclear Waste
Storing nuclear waste underground at Yucca Mountain for 100,000 years is a terrible idea. A better approach may be to buy some time-until new containment technologies mature.
By Matthew L. Wald
December 2004 Technology Review
November 16, 2004
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/12/wald1204.asp?p=0
Map of "Dozens of Yucca Mountains": http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/12/wald31204.jpg
When American Airlines Flight 11 flew at low altitude down the Hudson River valley on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, its target was the north tower of the World Trade Center. But its impact is still being felt at a cluster of buildings it passed about five minutes before it reached lower Manhattan, at a nuclear-reactor complex called Indian Point in Buchanan, NY. Adjacent to the site's two operating reactors are two buildings packed with highly radioactive spent-fuel rods, in pools of water 12 meters deep and tinged Ty-D-Bol blue by boron added to tamp down nuclear chain reactions. The soothing hum of the pumps that circulate the building's warm, moist air-and, critically, keep the water cool-lends an atmosphere of industrial tranquility.
Without that cooling water, the fuel cladding might overheat, melt, catch fire, and release radiation. Whether the impact of a Boeing 767 like Flight 11 could drain one of the pools and disable backup water pumps, starting such a fire, is far from clear. Nevertheless, the threat of terrorism in general and the flyover of Flight 11 in particular have reignited the debate about why all of this dangerous fuel is still here-indeed, why all spent fuel produced at Indian Point in three decades is still here-and not at Yucca Mountain, the federal government's burial spot near Las Vegas, where it was supposed to be shipped beginning six years ago.
Late this past summer, a construction project began at Indian Point that will allow the fuel to be pulled out of the pools. But it's not going to Yucca. The government says Yucca won't be ready until 2010. Executives in the nuclear industry say a more likely date is between 2015 and never. So instead of traveling to Nevada, Indian Point's fuel is traveling about 100 meters, to a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. On a late-summer day this year, a backhoe tore out maple and black-walnut trees to make way for a concrete pad. Beginning next year, the first of a planned 72 six-meter-tall concrete-and-steel casks will be placed there, a configuration that adds storage capacity and thus allows the twin power plants to keep operating. Though they provide a hedge against a worst-case fuel-pool meltdown, these casks are merely another temporary solution. The fact that they're needed at all represents the colossal failure of the U.S. Department of Energy's Yucca plans and technology.
Yet as engineering and policy failures go, this one has a silver lining. Conventional thinking holds that Yucca's problems must be solved quickly so that nuclear waste can be squirreled away safely and permanently, deep within a remote mountain. But here's the twist: with nuclear waste, procrastination may actually pay. The construction of cask fields presents a chance to rethink the conventional. The passage of several decades while the waste sits in casks could be immensely helpful. A century would give the United States time to observe progress on waste storage in other countries. In the meantime, natural radioactive decay would make the waste cooler and thus easier to deal with. What's more, technological advances over the next century might yield better long-term storage methods. "If it goes on for another 50 years, it doesn't matter. It could go on for 100 or 200 years, and it's probably for the better," says Allison Macfarlane, a geologist at MIT and coeditor of a forthcoming book on Yucca. "We've got plenty of time to play with it."
The government must now accept that its Yucca plan is a failure and that casks are the de facto solution. Indian Point's cask pad will not be the first; about two dozen operating reactors have them already. Others are likely to soon join the list. And some casks-at Rowe, MA, Wiscasset, ME, Charlevoix, MI, and a site near Sacramento, CA-are nuclear orphans, having outlived their reactors. Each cask pad is roughly the size of a football field, floodlit, watched by motion sensors and closed-circuit TV, and surrounded by razor wire and armed guards. Given the homeland-security concern posed by nuclear-waste facilities, and the need to guard them individually, do we really want 60 of them-serving all 125 commercial reactors that have ever operated-to rise around the nation, many near population centers? If casks are the solution for the next generation or two, they should be put in one place.
Yucca is already on tenuous ground; in July a federal appeals court said that to open the mountain burial site, the government would have to show that it could contain waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Extensive scientific analyses by the Energy Department show it cannot. The court's decision throws the whole question back to the U.S. Congress, which must now decide whether to proceed with Yucca at all. This presents an opportunity to align policy with physics and abandon the Yucca-or-bust dogma that has dominated the debate for nearly 20 years. Casks, centrally located, could make the high-level-waste problem a lot easier to solve and increase national security much sooner, too.
The Tunnel Vision
The federal fixation on Yucca Mountain now spans two decades. Beginning in the early 1980s, the government agreed to take waste from any nuclear utility that paid a tariff of a tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated by its reactors. All the companies quickly signed up. But the selection of Yucca, 150 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas, was never driven by science. The site was chosen by that august group of geologists and physicists, the U.S. Congress. So far, the Energy Department has spent about $6 billion on development, including building an eight-kilometer, U-shaped tunnel through the mountain, in some places nearly 300 meters below the surface. It plans to spend at least $50 billion more to build dozens of side tunnels, package the waste in steel containers that look like the tanker portion of a gasoline truck, place the waste in the tunnels, and operate the site for 50 to 100 years before sealing it for eternity.
Problems have plagued Yucca since the beginning. In Senate debate, proponents stressed how dry it is. Yucca is, in fact, located in what is now a desert. But it turns out that the ground is moist. Even the 19 or so centimeters of rain the mountain gets each year is a major problem. Over time, moisture can corrode even the best alloys known to man. Corrosion would mean that rainwater percolating through the ground could carry radioactive materials with it and convey them to irrigation systems and drinking-water wells in the region, delivering substantial doses of radiation to unsuspecting people generations hence.
Heat is another problem. The shorter-lived radioactive isotopes in used fuel, principally cesium-137 and strontium-90, give a single fuel assembly, fresh out of the reactor, a heat output equal to that of about 20 handheld hair dryers. That's why each power plant has an adjacent storage pool that circulates cooling water. Once the fuel was underground at Yucca, it would be hot enough to boil ground water into steam. Steam could corrode the containers or break up surrounding rock, raising uncertainty about secure burial. Spreading the waste out would dissipate the heat, but it would also greatly reduce Yucca's storage capacity. Then there's the problem of radioactive decay. High-energy particles can interact with surrounding materials, breaking them down or causing them to give off hydrogen, a gas that can explode or burn.
Early this year, researchers at Catholic University of America, hired by the state of Nevada, took samples of the kind of metal the Energy Department wants to use at Yucca and put them in some water mixed with the minerals present in the mountain. As a series of speakers lectured reporters on why Yucca was a bad idea, the researchers sautéed the metal over a burner. By the time the lectures were done, the samples had corroded, some of them all the way through. How faithfully the stunt reproduced the chemistry of Yucca Mountain is debatable. But clearly, Yucca is subject to serious doubts. "You have to think somewhere back in the premise structure of the whole thing, something was dreadfully wrong," says Stewart Brand, a San Francisco-based consultant who once advised the Canadian government on what to do with its own waste.
Cooler Fuel
The argument against casks is that they are merely temporary, not meant to serve longer than perhaps 100 years, and that they are a kind of surrender, leaving this generation's waste problem to a future generation to solve. Yet their impermanence is exactly what's good about them. A century hence, spent reactor fuel will be cooler and more amenable to permanent disposal. In fact, within a few decades, the average fuel bundle's heat output will be down to two or three hair dryers. After 150 years, only one-thirty-second of the cesium and strontium will remain. The remaining material can be buried closer together without boiling underground water. Reduced heat means reduced uncertainty.
Granted, spent fuel will be far from safe after such a relatively short period. Even after 100 years, it will still be so radioactive that a few minutes of direct exposure will be lethal. "It's many, many, many thousands of years before it's a no nevermind," says Geoffrey Schwartz, the cask manager for Indian Point, which is owned by Entergy Nuclear. "But the spent fuel does become more benign as time goes by."
The fuel could be more valuable, too. For decades, industry and government officials have recognized that "spent" reactor fuel contains a large amount of unused uranium, as well as another very good reactor fuel, plutonium, which is produced as a by-product of running the reactor. Both can be readily extracted, although right now the price of new uranium is so low, and the cost of extraction so high, that reprocessing spent fuel is not practical. And the political climate does not favor a technology that makes potential bomb fuel-plutonium-an item of international commerce. But things might be different in 100 years. For starters, the same fuel could be reprocessed much more easily, since the potentially valuable components will be in a matrix of material that is not so intensely radioactive.
And in 100 years, advances in reprocessing technology might make the economics compelling. The existing American technology dates from the Cold War and involves elaborate chemical steps that create vast quantities of liquid waste. But an alternative exists: electrometallurgical reprocessing. Though research into the technique has lagged of late because of the economic climate, the concept might be taken more seriously in the future. Electrodes could sort out the garbage (the atoms formed when uranium is split) from the usable uranium (the uranium-235 still available for fission and the uranium-238 that can be turned into plutonium in a reactor), in something like the way jewelers use electrometallurgy to apply silver plate. Resulting waste volumes would be far smaller.
Perhaps most importantly, in 100 years, energy supply anddemand might be very different. Reprocessed nuclear fuel might well become a critical part of the energy supply, if the world has run out of cheap oil and we decide that burning coal is too damaging to our atmosphere. If that happens, we might have 1,000 nuclear reactors. On the other hand, we might have no reactors, depending on the progress of alternate energy sources like solar and wind. At this point, it's hard to tell, but we are not required to make the decision now; we can put the spent fuel in casks for 50 years and then decide if it is wheat or chaff.
There is a final, more practical reason that we might choose to take the plutonium out of spent fuel for reactor use: it makes the remainder easier to store. For the most part, what's left will not be radioactive for nearly as long, and the sheer volume of material will be lower. Mark Deinert, a physicist at Cornell University, says reprocessing, like recycling, removes about half of the material from the waste, dramatically decreasing storage costs and effectively doubling the capacity of a facility like Yucca.
Betting on Better Storage
While nuclear waste would be easier to handle in 50 or 100 years, it would still require isolation for several hundred thousand years. But there is every reason to expect that storage technology will improve in the next century. When we decide to permanently dispose of the waste, either after reprocessing or without reprocessing, we may be smarter at metallurgy, geology, and geochemistry than we are now.
Today, the basic technology at Yucca is a stainless-steel material called alloy 22, covered with an umbrella of titanium-a "drip shield" against water percolating down through the tunnel roof. That could look as primitive in 100 years as the Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer looks to us in 2004. Or it might simply be obsolete. Space-launch technology could become as reliable as jet airplanes are today, giving us a nearly foolproof way to throw waste into solar orbit. The mysteries of geochemistry might be as transparent as the human genetic code is becoming, which would mean we could say with confidence what kind of package would keep the waste encased for the next few hundred thousand years.
Or there might be easier ways to process the waste. For example, particle accelerators, routinely used to make medical isotopes, could provide a means to make the waste more benign. The principle has already been demonstrated experimentally: firing subatomic particles at high-level radioactive waste can change long-lived radioactive materials to short-lived ones. Richard A. Meserve, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now the chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel on nuclear waste, says this technology, known as transmutation, might become more practical in 100 years. The technology of accelerators has advanced in the last few years, he says, and it is a good bet that it will continue to do so.
Some alternative storage technologies may need only a few more years of research and development. One is ceramic packaging. Ceramics have good resistance to radiation and heat, and they don't rust. At the moment, nobody casts ceramics big enough to hold fuel assemblies, which are typically about four meters long. But there is no theoretical limit to the sizes of ceramics; there has simply been no economic incentive to make giant ones. Nor will there be, until the only likely customer for them, the Energy Department, decides that the metal it is shopping for now isn't up to the job.
Another alternative calls for mixing waste with ceramics or minerals to form a rocklike material comprising about 20 percent waste. The waste would be chemically bound up in stable materials that are not prone to react with water. With a few decades' grace time, engineers could build samples and test them in harsh environments. But even though the idea has been around for more than 10 years, no one has put serious research money into it, since its only possible American customer, the Energy Department, has been committed to Yucca.
That situation shows no sign of change. The Energy Department, following Congress's orders, has so far declined to consider alternatives. Man-Sung Yim, a nuclear researcher at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, argues that some of these technologies are already mature but have been shoved aside in the Energy Department's rush, possibly futile, to open Yucca. "My reading at this point is, people working at the Yucca Mountain project office do not really want to change the design. The more change you bring in, the more delayed the processes," Yim says. "It's a pity, because we could make it better."
Central Casking
But the pursuit of the perfect solution (assuming deep geologic disposal even could be perfected) has ignored a realistic solution. And when the perfect fails, as now seems likely, we will be left with something no rational person would have chosen: waste sites scattered from coast to coast, in places where reactors used to be, each with its own security force, maintenance crew, and exclusion zone. "We're here to run a business as efficiently as possible," says John Sanchez, the project manager who oversaw the planning for the pad at Indian Point when he worked at Consolidated Edison, the site's former owner. "In a perfect world, you would not have 60 of anything, if you could have one." But after 20 years of pursuing geologic disposal, and 15 years of chasing Yucca and avoiding any mention of a plan B, just such an ad hoc, and suboptimal, solution is emerging.
And it's emerging without the support of the Energy Department. Testifying before the Senate Energy Committee over the summer, Kyle McSlarrow, the Energy Department's deputy secretary, said that "continued progress toward establishing a high-level waste repository at the Yucca Mountain site is absolutely essential." He told another committee on the same day that with progress toward Yucca's opening, "industry saw clearly that the nuclear-power option was truly back on the table." (The department would not make McSlarrow or other officials available for comment for this article.)
Cask storage is not pretty, but what's wrong with the idea of an industrial repository, a few hectares set aside for the next century or so, a single, guarded location in a little-populated area, a location that in ten years or so will be remarkable only because it's a place where the snow doesn't stick? Macfarlane of MIT says making such site secure and terrorist-proof would cost $6.5 billion, at most. "Isn't that worth it? How much have we spent on Iraq? Look what we got for that money. And there's more at risk here," she says.
Finding a central site poses obvious challenges; nobody wants any type of radioactive waste site in his or her backyard. But after extended negotiations, a group of utility engineers, including Sanchez, cut a deal with the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian tribe for a long lease on part of its reservation 80 kilometers west of Salt Lake City. The area already hosts an air-force bombing range, a nerve gas depot and incinerator, and a dump for low-level radioactive waste; the Goshutes figure they can use the rent to buy themselves land in a nicer neighborhood.
Some experts think the federal government could take over the Goshute project and push it to completion, but there is a snag-an ironic one, given the fears of a September 11-style attack on a nuclear site. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that an F-16's crashing into the casks on its way to or from the test site is a "credible accident." But while such a crash would doubtless be disastrous, casks do provide some safety advantages over today's fuel pools. The fuel in casks is much more spread out and does not require a flow of cooling water to prevent spontaneous, spreading fire. Thus the worst-case effects are more limited. In any case, one remote central site would be easier to protect with air defenses than numerous scattered sites.
Those scattered sites are already creating local problems. The casks from the former reactor in Wiscasset, ME, are blocking the redevelopment of the peninsula where they're stored, a valuable industrial site. A cask site near the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant in Welch, MN, is adjacent to a tribal day-care center and casino, which is nobody's idea of a long-term solution. Inevitably, in the wake of September 11, the Indian Point casks will be a locus of fear. These outcomes will seem even sillier in 30 years, when many of the reactors that made the waste are gone.
Sanchez recalls carrying a picnic lunch to the stand of maples and black-walnut trees now being replaced with a concrete pad for storing nuclear waste. As the years roll by, fewer and fewer people will know those trees existed. Several decades from now, as today's aging nuclear power plants are decommissioned, people may not remember that the reactors themselves existed. If we don't take action soon, however, casks of waste will stand alone on that bluff above the Hudson River-and in dozens of other places across the country.
Matthew L. Wald, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, has written about the nuclear industry for 25 years.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
In Sudan, a Sense of Abandonment Victims See Little Help From Outside
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52663-2004Nov15?language=printer
NEW AL-JEER SUREAF, Sudan -- The Bush administration has called it genocide. Other governments have labeled it ethnic cleansing and the world's worst humanitarian crisis. There have been calls for collective action and promises of relief. There have been somber reminders of the slaughter in tiny Rwanda a decade ago and solemn vows not to let such a thing happen here, in Africa's largest country.
But months later, the displaced inhabitants of Darfur, in western Sudan, find themselves consoled by little more than words. No Western country has been willing to commit troops to a small peacekeeping mission mounted by the African Union, while aid donors have been distracted by the conflict in Iraq, and U.N. sanctions have been frozen by diplomatic disputes.
The depth of the crisis can be felt in this steamy, desolate camp for the displaced, where Fatina Abdullah's family is still on the run from marauding Arab militiamen. She fled her village weeks ago, and her current home is under a wooden cart. Her son Bakheit, 8, is weak from diarrhea, anemia and a chest infection, afflictions that have killed dozens of children here.
"No one cares," said Abdullah, 45, burying her face in work-scarred hands. The ailing boy lay by her side, gasping for air and perspiring heavily. "No one is protecting us."
Since Sept. 9, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the events in Darfur constituted genocide, U.N. officials estimate that the death toll has nearly doubled, to 70,000, in a region where African rebels have been battling government troops and Arab militiamen known as the Janjaweed for the past 20 months.
Violence and crime are surging, with almost daily reports of assaults against aid workers and civilians, while squalid tent cities continue to swell. More than 1.4 million people have fled their farms and villages.
In a recent agreement with rebel forces, the government agreed to establish a no-fly zone and the fighters promised to allow food convoys to reach thousands of displaced families. But U.N. officials said both sides had repeatedly violated a long-standing cease-fire, and some fear the new agreement may also collapse.
Meanwhile Jan Pronk, the top U.N. envoy to Sudan, has warned that Darfur "may easily enter a state of anarchy." Pronk said there were "strong indications" that war crimes had occurred "on a large and systematic scale."
In addition, according to U.N. officials, almost half the families in Darfur still do not have enough to eat, and 200,000 people are unable to receive food rations because of armed attacks on convoy routes. In one turbulent area called Zalengi, some 160,000 civilians have been cut off from food aid since Sept. 25 because roads are blocked.
"We need a political solution quickly here," said Bettina Luscher, a public affairs officer with the World Food Program. "Things are getting far worse and more complicated by the day. We are really concerned about how we will feed these people by the end of the year."
The continuing international reluctance to address the Darfur crisis has led critics -- including diplomats and former peacekeeping officials -- to complain that the United States and other powers have cynically substituted dramatic rhetoric for meaningful actions. One such critic is Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who led the stymied U.N. peacekeeping mission during the 1994 Rwanda massacres.
"The use of the word 'genocide' was nothing more than the U.S. playing politics with a term that should be sacrosanct," said Dallaire, who argues that the American government should back up its words with deeds, in part by "putting a lot more pressure" behind efforts to bolster the African Union mission.
Charles R. Snyder, the State Department's senior representative on Sudan, defended the U.S. role in Darfur, saying the Bush administration took the lead when no other country was willing to do so and has been the largest donor of aid.
"The word 'genocide' was not an action word; it was a responsibility word," Snyder said in a telephone interview. "There was an ethical and moral obligation, and saying it underscored how seriously we took this. . . . If I didn't believe the U.S. was doing enough, I would resign."
An Underfunded Mission
With Darfur edging toward chaos and no Western country willing to send in troops, the burden of trying to contain the situation has fallen to the 700 African observer forces stationed there. The fledgling African Union says it needs $220 million to finance the mission for one year and is still $80 million short.
Beginning late last month, in its first and only regional operation to date, the U.S. military airlifted several hundred African soldiers from Nigeria and Rwanda into Darfur as part of a plan to increase troop strength to about 3,000.
But some experts assert that a force 10 times that number is needed, and that the troops need a stronger mandate so they can intervene in fighting and criminal activity. Some experts and diplomats have also raised concerns that the Africans, who lack military vehicles and helicopters, may not be adequately equipped for the task.
"Sudan is something that all members of the international community have to deal with," said Howard F. Jeter, who was U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 2001 to 2003. "The Nigerians . . . are willing to risk their own lives to bring stability on the continent. We have to help them do it right."
Dallaire said Darfur needed a force of up to 44,000 peacekeepers, who would set up checkpoints and safe aid corridors, disarm combatants and be given the power to protect civilians. To date, the government of Sudan has refused to permit a peacekeeping force to enter the country.
"The mission of observing will do nothing except destroy the credibility of African Union troops," Dallaire said. He said it was unfair to criticize observer troops as "inept when it's not their fault. Observing people getting beaten up and dying is useless."
Already, the African troops have faced volatile situations in which they are greatly outnumbered and unable to help. Last week, more than 100 Sudanese police officers with guns, sticks and teargas overran a refugee camp in an attempt to force occupants to move to another location. Some refused to leave and took refuge in a mosque, while the soldiers careered through the camp in trucks, swinging their batons.
Two African Union officers arrived from a nearby base to investigate, but they were armed only with notebooks and cameras. Lt