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NUCLEAR
Ultrafast Laser Speeds Up Quest For Atomic Control
France and Japan fail to resolve row on nuclear project
Chernobyl caused slight rise in cancer rates in northern Sweden: study
Nuclear proliferation, terror overwhelm Asia-Pacific meet
Wisconsin PSC blocks proposed sale of nuclear power plant
Environmental groups ask Martin to reject overhaul of N.B. nuclear plant
IRAQ: High levels of radioactive pollution seen in the south
Environmental Health Perspectives
Turkey plans to build three nuclear power plants by 2011: minister
Iran urges U.N. to ignore nuclear claims by exiles
Nuclear Disclosures on Iran Unverified
Bush Confronts New Challenge on Issue of Iran
Iran has black market nuclear bomb drawings, still enriches uranium
Japan eyes plant exports via nuclear technology alliance with US
Powell Presses for Nuclear Talks With North Korea
Bush to step up pressure for NKorea to discuss nukes
LockMart's PAC-3 Missiles Intercept Two Targets During Flight Test
U.S. Ambassador Calls on Russia to Fully Support Efforts
Non-aligned states on nuclear mission to Iran
US Congress Keeps Alive Plans For Nev Nuclear Waste Dump
Spending bill includes $577 million for Yucca
NRC EXTENDS COMMENT PERIOD
MILITARY
Rivalries, Divisions Take Toll on Taliban
Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says
U.N. Pleads for 3 Captives
At Unusual U.N. Session, Sudanese Factions Vow to End War
Colonial Tensions Reemerge in Ivory Coast
How Russia keeps China armed
Trouble in Thailand
Army chief has many pals
Boeing Chiefs Knew of Insider Data, Lockheed Says
Pentagon Updates Rules on Post-Government Work
Carnegie Military University :
Intelsat Government Solutions Becomes Intelsat General Corporation
US company fined for illegal sale of military parts to China
Bridging Beijing to Tibet with each new track
Supercomputer Advances To New Level In China
In triangle of death
Beheaded Bodies Found in Mosul; U.S. Storms Baghdad Mosque
Insurgent Base Discovered in Fallujah
U.S. and Iraqi Troops Storm Baghdad Mosque
Jailed in Israel, Palestinian Symbol Eyes Top Post
First Space Council To Set Course Towards A European Space Program
Iraq Casualties
American Teenagers as War Fodder
Back To Basics As IEDs Change Urban Warfare
U.S. War Crimes in Fallujah
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Compromise Sought on Intelligence Legislation
Agreement May Be Near on 9/11 Bill
RQ-5 Hunter UAVs Deployed For US Border Patrol Missions
Haitian pastor dies on U.S. doorstep
Belarus Accuses U.S. of Rights Abuses
Official Allegedly Hinted at Saudi Torture of Va. Man
POLITICS
Canadian PM expels anti-Bush MP
A softer-style Putin defends his policies on national TV
Putin Denies Retreat From Democracy
Debt Limit to Rise to $8.18 Trillion
Congress Passes $800 Billion Debt Limit Increase
Congressional Leaders Work on Compatible Spending Bill
Greenspan Warns That U.S. Deficits Pose Risk to Dollar
House Ethics Panel Warns Lawmakers About Complaints
R.I. Reporter Found Guilty In Trial for Not Naming Source
Reporter Convicted for Refusing to Give Identity of a Source
Spain re-arrests al-Jazeera man
Release of Future Election Day Poll Results Is to Be Delayed
ENERGY
Ethanol Plant Would Run on Methane Produced from Cattle Manure
OTHER
Greens Paint Grim Picture of Future, Warmer World
U.S. Ends Effort at U.N. to Ban All Human Cloning
Concerned somebodies help the homeless
ACTIVISTS
Protests Erupt in Chile in Advance of Bush's Arrival
Protesters Denounce APEC Summit in Chile
Anti-Bush Protesters Battle Police at Chile Summit
Ivorians Deliver a Wake-Up Call To White House
-------- NUCLEAR
Ultrafast Laser Speeds Up Quest For Atomic Control
Gaithersburg MD (SPX)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/physics-04zl.html
It's the scientific equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. A team of researchers from JILA, a joint institute of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder, has developed an efficient, low-cost way to measure the energy levels of atoms in a gas with extremely high accuracy, and simultaneously detect and control transitions between the levels as fast as they occur.
The technique is expected to have practical applications in many fields including astrophysics, quantum computing, chemical analysis, and chemical synthesis.
Described in the Nov. 18 online issue of Science Express, the method uses ultrafast pulses of laser light like a high speed movie camera to record in real-time the energy required to boost an atom's outer electrons from one orbital pattern to another.
The pulses are so short that scientists can track precisely the fraction of atoms in each energy state and how those populations change with time.
Moreover, the atoms respond to subsequent laser pulses cumulatively - the energy adds up over time - which allows fine-tuning to affect specific orbital patterns of interest with a much lower power laser than usual.
All of chemistry depends on the configurations of these outer electrons. The technique promises to make it easier for scientists to systematically understand the radiation "signatures" (or spectra) given off by atoms and molecules as their electrons jump between different energy levels.
Ultimately, it should allow improved control of the complex chain of events that combines atoms into desired compounds.
The JILA team is a world leader in applying so-called "frequency combs" to practical science problems. The laser system used in the current work emits a hundred thousand different infrared frequencies at once in individual pulses lasting just femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second).
The JILA researchers used the laser to precisely study the electron energy levels within an ultracold gas of rubidium atoms.
The ability to probe atoms with many different laser frequencies simultaneously and to monitor atom responses in real time should allow scientists to study and control systems in a vastly more efficient and precise manner.
A. Marian, M. C. Stowe, J. R. Lawall, D. Felinto, and J. Ye. 2004. "United time-frequency spectroscopy for dynamics and global structure." Science Express. Nov. 18.
-----
France and Japan fail to resolve row on nuclear project
(AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041119/sc_afp/science_energy_iter_eu_041119212150
PARIS - France and Japan failed to resolve their differences on where to build a revolutionary nuclear fusion project, with Foreign Minister Michel Barnier saying France was determined to host the facility.
"Our determination has not changed on that subject," Barnier said after talks in Paris with his Japanese counterpart Mobutaka Machimura.
The EU's executive arm warned Tuesday that Europe would go ahead and build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France without Japan if an agreement with Tokyo is not reached "as soon as possible".
Five nations and the European Union (news - web sites) have been cooperating to develop the reactor, a test bed for what is being billed as a clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future.
Barnier his talks with Machimura as "frank", but said he remains "convinced a solution acceptable to all can be worked out."
Machimura said ITER was a project that should go forward with six parties.
"It is not in confrontation but partnership that a solution can be found," said the Japanese minister.
The deputy director of Japan's Office of Fusion Energy, Takahiro Hayashi, on Wednesday criticized threats by the EU to go ahead alone and build the reactor at Cadarache in southern France.
"(The EU's) negotiating stance is worrisome and regrettable," said Hayashi.
The United States and South Korea (news - web sites) back building ITER at Rokkasho-mura in Japan, while China and Russia support the Cadarache site.
The ITER budget is projected to be 10 billion euros (13 billion dollars) over the next 30 years, including 4.7 billion euros to build the reactor. The European Union plans to finance 40 percent of the total.
The project, emulating the sun's nuclear fusion, is not expected to generate electricity before 2050.
-------- accidents and safety
Chernobyl caused slight rise in cancer rates in northern Sweden: study
STOCKHOLM (AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041119134606.e9b5x2tp.html
Radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in Ukraine led to an increase in cancer cases in northern Sweden, a study shows.
Researchers from the Linkoeping and Oerebro university hospitals found "a slight exposure-related increase" in total cancer incidence after the Chernobyl disaster.
It is the first study to suggest a possible increase in post-Chernobyl cancer rates outside the Soviet Union as a result of the accident.
The findings appear in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, published by the British Medical Association (BMA).
The world's worst civilian nuclear disaster occured on April 26, 1986, when reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant blew up, spewing out a radioactive cloud that swept across and contaminated much of northern Europe.
Previous Swedish studies have shown no increase, say the authors, led by Martin Tondel of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Linkoeping University.
Cancer rates were monitored among 1,143,182 people living in 450 parishes in seven out of Sweden's 21 counties during the two years after the accident.
People who lived in the region but whose area was not contaminated by radioactive fallout served as a control group.
During a follow-up carried out from 1988 to 1996, some 22,400 people in the contaminated areas were diagnosed with various types of cancer during the period.
This was 849 more than would otherwise have been expected, when compared to cancer incidence in this region in 1986-88.
Although this represents only a "slight" increase in the cancer rate, the authors say they were surprised to find a higher-than-expected rise among people who had received low doses of radiation.
"Our study shows that the risk from low-dose irradiation might come earlier and be slightly slightly higher than predicted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection estimates," they say.
The commission's estimates are based on a study among survivors of the 1945 atomic bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, that study has been attacked as flawed, as it was carried out five years after the bomb explosions. By that time, many people who had received low doses of radiation may already have died, thus skewing the picture among survivors, according to critics.
-------- asia
Nuclear proliferation, terror overwhelm Asia-Pacific meet
SANTIAGO (AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118232126.mdxgmb3n.html
Asia-Pacific powers, gearing up for a weekend summit, vowed Thursday to keep mobile missile launchers out of terrorist hands and to curb nuclear proliferation by "axis of evil" members North Korea and Iran.
Meeting behind tight security in Santiago by the foothills of the snow-capped Andes, dry Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade talks were overwhelmed by the terrorist and nuclear threats.
US President George W. Bush, already the target of protesters who clashed with riot police Wednesday in Santiago, is expected to pursue his core "war on terror" agenda after arrival Friday evening.
At a breakfast Thursday, foreign ministers of the 19 states -- excluding Taiwan and Hong Kong -- in the APEC forum sought to keep closer tabs on shoulder-fired missiles capable of downing a plane.
"The focus of that discussion was making sure that the APEC region was well equipped to deal with the threat of MANPADs (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems)," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
"But there was also a focus on export controls and in particular export controls on materials that could be used for weapons of mass destruction," he told a press conference.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers said they would work to eliminate the danger of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and delivery systems, and to set up guidelines to closely control the movement of shoulder-fired missiles.
In a main ministerial "retreat" after breakfast, ministers broached the North Korean nuclear crisis.
There was "a general agreement that all of us in the region had to put increasing pressure on the North Koreans to participate in the six-party talks," the Australian minister said.
Outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters Wednesday that he saw some signs North Korea may be ready to give up its insistence on bilateral, not multilateral, talks to end the stand-off.
Three rounds of multilateral talks, seeking to persuade Pyongyang to take aid and security guarantees in return for mothballing the nuclear program, have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002.
North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks in September, bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States in Beijing. All but North Korea are members of APEC.
Downer appeared less optimistic than Powell about the prospects for getting Pyongyang back to the table.
"We very much hope the North Koreans, now the American presidential election is resolved, will be more positive about participating in the six-party talks. But the Japanese had a delegation in North Korea last week and they did not get a very positive reception during that trip. So we will just have to wait and see," he said.
A "substantial onus" fell on China to use its leverage with North Korea, the Australian said.
Without any North Korean movement, economic sanctions could be considered, Downer cautioned.
"There may be some feeling as time goes on that the degree of economic interaction should be reduced if there is not going to be appropriate cooperation by the North Koreans at all with the five (other) parties or with the broader international community. But that is a work in progress," he said.
Downer said he was hosting a "Northern Dinner," named after New Zealand club where a group of ministers first dined, with Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hasim Wirayuda and Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai to broach nuclear proliferation, including North Korea and Iran.
"The potential of Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program is a very significant issue for the international community," Downer said.
Powell said Wednesday Washington had information that Iran was seeking to adapt its missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
Aside from terrorism, ministers supported a swift conclusion to World Trade Organization (WTO) efforts to get a new deal freeing up global trade.
They also supported measures to contain oil price shocks, set some guidelines for the proliferation of regional or bilateral trade arrangements and sought reforms to boost efficiency, including anti-graft measures and greater transparency.
-------- business
Wisconsin PSC blocks proposed sale of nuclear power plant
American City Business Journals
11 19 04
http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2004/11/15/daily48.html
The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin on Friday rejected the proposed sale of an aging nuclear power plant in Kewaunee to an out-of-state firm.
The PSC said the agreement for Wisconsin Power & Light Co. and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. to sell the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant to Dominion Resources Inc., Richmond, Va., was not in the public interest. The sale would have resulted in the power plant being turned over to unregulated entity, reducing the PSC's ability to regulate the facility.
The 545-megawatt plant is co-owned by Wisconsin Power & Light, Madison, and Wisconsin Public Service, Green Bay. The two utilities announced in November 2003 that they agreed to sell the plant to an affiliate of Dominion for $220 million. The utilities also agreed to enter into purchased-power agreements with the new owner.
The rejection of the deal by the PSC was praised by consumer advocates and municipal utility officials.
"Had the sale been approved, the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant would have become a merchant plant not subject to the regulation of the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin," said David Benforado, executive director of the Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin, an association of 82 municipal electric utilities. "The state would have lost its authority to regulate the cost of electricity from the facility, approve major repairs or replacements at the site and oversee the financial integrity of the facility's owners."
In a statement, officials from Wisconsin Power & Light, a unit of Madison-based Alliant Energy Corp., and Wisconsin Public Service, expressed disappointment with the decision.
"Clearly this was a difficult decision for the PSCW to make, but we're disappointed their decision does not reflect what we believe to be a transaction that is substantially beneficial to our customers, shareowners and plant employees," said Charlie Schrock, Public Service president and chief operating officer-generation.
The utilities filed an application for the sale with the PSC to shift financial risk from utility customers and shareowners to Dominion, offer greater certainty of future costs and return nearly $200 million of decommissioning funds to customers, the utilities said.
Wisconsin Public Service and WP&L are currently assessing the implications of today's decision and are reviewing their options to continue pursuing sale of the plant.
"We continue to believe the timing is right to sell the plant," said Barbara Swan, president of WP&L. "We will consider our options after further review and discussion, and proceed in the best interests of our customers and other stakeholders."
The PSC panel rejected the sale by a 2-to-1 vote. Chairperson Burnie Bridge and commissioner Mark Meyer voted to reject the sale, while commissioner Bert Garvin supported the sale.
The Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant is a baseload facility, providing low-cost energy to meet Wisconsin's energy demands. It started operation in 1974 and has an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that expires in 2013.
-------- canada
Environmental groups ask Martin to reject overhaul of N.B. nuclear plant
Canadian Press
CHRIS MORRIS
Nov 19, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20041119/ca_pr_on_sc/nb_lepreau_1
FREDERICTON (CP) - A coalition of environmental groups is calling on the Canadian government to reject any involvement in refurbishing New Brunswick's aging nuclear power plant.
New Brunswick's Conservative government is expected to announce its plans for the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station near Saint John by the end of the year.
Greenpeace Canada, the Climate Action Network, the Sierra Club (news - web sites), the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, have joined forces and sent a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin asking that he reject any proposal from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. for reactor refurbishment at Lepreau.
"AECL can only obtain a contract for Point Lepreau refurbishment by accepting the risk for cost overruns, delays, equipment failure, workmanship problems and poor performance," states the letter, released Friday.
"These government-backed guarantees for the $1.4 billion project would entail huge risks for federal taxpayers."
The Tory government of Premier Bernard Lord is trying to figure out whether it should decommission the 22-year-old Candu plant or fix it up at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion.
The province has said it would prefer to attract a private partner to share in the cost and the risk of the new facility.
There is speculation that Bruce Power, with its experience in nuclear generation in Ontario, could be one of the private companies the province is hoping to attract.
AECL, which would design and engineer the refurbished reactor at Lepreau, would like to see New Brunswick proceed with the retrofit.
The coalition of environmental groups says that AECL has no prospects for reactor sales and is trying to keep itself alive through the Point Lepreau refurbishment.
"A contract for refurbishment of Point Lepreau would amount to a 25-year backdoor subsidy for the nuclear industry in New Brunswick," the environmental groups state.
The organizations note in their letter to Martin that even the province's own Public Utilities Board has ruled that refurbishing the plant would not be in the public interest.
"No nuclear project in Canada has ever been completed on time or on budget," the environmentalists' letter states.
-------- depleted uranium
IRAQ: High levels of radioactive pollution seen in the south
Nov 19, 2004
Axis of Logic
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_13724.shtml
BASRA, - Iraqi environmental scientists investigating radioactive pollution around the southern city of Basra are finding alarmingly high levels of radiation left by the use of depleted uranium (DU) in recent wars.
But given the lack of a permanent, elected government in Iraq and poor security, they are finding it difficult to get permission to remove contaminated material amid growing instances of cancer and birth defects in the area.
One such scientist is Khashak Wartanian, a researcher at the University of Basra on radioactive pollution, who also works for the city's Environmental Direoctory. While carrying out a survey during the summer on radiation levels in the Qibla area near Basra, he found two Iraqi tanks which had been hit by DU-tipped ammunition. They found children playing near the site, which was then fenced off and marked by warning signs.
"These tanks are just two in a series of tanks and ammunition we have uncovered since the Radiation Unit at the Environmental Directory was set up in 2001," he told IRIN.
DU is an extremely dense, heavy metal, and a waste product of atomic bomb production. It has a half-life of over 4 billion years. It contains trace amounts of plutonium and is 60 percent as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium.
According to local residents, the area was a military target during the 1991 Gulf war and again in 2003, when it came under heavy fire from US aircraft. Wartanian took a radiation reading of 0.6 mR/h on one tank and 0.5mR/h on the other. "This is 1,000 times more radioactive than average background radiation," the researcher said.
He also checked radiation levels in nearby residential areas and found they were worringly high. In the home of Abdel-Zahra Shindy, a resident living near the polluted site, he took a reading of 0.2 mR/h-0.3 mR/h, compared with normal levels of 0.008R/h.
DU occurs naturally in the environment but when used in weapons it burns releasing uranium oxide dust into the air.
Officials at the Environment Directory in Basra told IRIN that although they were collecting data on areas exposed to radioactive debris, the lack of government direction was making it hard to take measures to remove material.
They added that there was also a lack of reliable information about areas contaminated. "We only know about tanks in areas hit more than 10 years ago, during the Gulf war in 1991," an official at the directory said. "There were more concerns with pollution during the former regime. Two radiation units were established in Baghdad and Basra in 2000 and were provided with the needed modern equipment," the official said.
The Pentagon admits to dropping 320 mt of DU in Iraq, although the environmental organisation Greenpeace puts the estimate at over 800 mt. Immediately after last spring's war to oust the former regime, residents said the US military cleared the area, picking up unexploded ordnance and other debris. However, they refused to remove many artillery pieces.
In the aftermath of the war, Wartanian made a reading around a tank in the centre of Basra, which picked up evidence of Thorium (th324), a DU equivalent. "Since May 2003 we have been trying to search for more contaminated areas. We met with the WHO [World Health Organisation], as well as with British troops, to investigate the matter but things have moved slowly due to a continuous deterioration in security," Wartanian said.
In December 2003, 22 DU-polluted tanks were found in an area 5 km away from Basra city, close to the Iranian border. So far his team have found DU-polluted tanks across the south in Basra, Muthana, Abu al-Kahsib and in Samawa.
Some local residents, unaware of the radiation danger, cut scrap metals from DU-polluted tanks and sell them. An Environmental Directory official said that they were trying to warn people of the dangers of using such metal. Scrap metal plants may also have released contaminants from destroyed military vehicles, he said.
In conjunction with the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the directory succeeded in banning licences to sell scrap metals to other countries last June, but it is uncertain how effective this has been given the lack of a proper government to enforce the law.
"It was sold for 50,000 Iraqi dinars [US $34] per ton, but some people may still be doing the business unofficially," the official said.
Another serious problem, which has long been linked to the use of DU, is the rise in cancer and birth defects in the area. Wartanian said that although many of the residents close to radio-polluted sites may have registered cases of cancer, skin sensitivity and respiratory diseases, the relation between radiation and cancer was still controversial.
However, doctors in Basra have registered an increase of incidences of colon cancer and thyroid cancer, in addition to leukemia and lymphomas.
According to Dr Janan Hassan, an obstetrician at the Basra Maternity and Children's Hospital, malignancies and leukemia among children under the age of 15 have more than tripled since 1990.
Whereas in 1990 young children accounted for only 13 percent of cancer cases, today over 56 percent of all cancer in Iraq occurs among children under the age of five.
"Also, it is notable that the number of babies born with defects is rising astonishingly. In 1990, there were seven cases of babies with multiple congenital anomalies. This has gone up to as high as 224 cases in the past three years," she said.
Dr Jawad al-Ali, director of the Oncology Centre of Sadr Educational Hospital in Basra, told IRIN that there were a number of cases that led some doctors to assume DU's adverse effects on human health in Iraq.
"There has been a sharp rise in cancer, birth defects, miscarriage, and in neurological disorders, muscular disease and kidney failure; causes have not been identified but they could be assumed to be caused by the toxicity of DU munitions," the doctor said.
According to a study of cancer patients in Basra carried out by the doctor in 1988, cancer rates were 11 per 100,000 people. The number went up to 116 in 1991 and 123 in 2002. There was also a sharp rise in the leukemia patients in 1996 and there has been another rise in recent years. Many cases are near places where DU weapons were used, he said.
--------
Environmental Health Perspectives
112:17; pp994 to 1005
Battle Scars - Global Conflicts and Environmental Health
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2004/112-17/EHP112pa994PDF.pdf
Some DU information herein, but the .pdf is 30+mb and would not save.
For the DU extract, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/files/ EHP Dec 04 v 112 # 17 pp A998-A1000.doc Extract on DU fr EHP article - - Battle Scars full pdf is 30 mb, lots of graphics of mine victims and refugees DU text - contemptibly inclonclusive
Mostly pictoial graphics, this article is likely aimed at Human Rights Week - the issues it canvasses are germane and timely. But I don't know who the hell is going to be motivated to follow up DU on the basis of this piece. I wonder who they think their audience is, to put a huge file of the sort which I assume is very unlikely to be widespread.
The text is below. I cut and pasted it to a Lookout Express rich text eml then converted it to plain text. It may supersede the du-list file, which would print poorly anyway, as it is graphic cutandpastes in a word doc.
The text is worth forwarding to human rights groups and I hope someone has the time and patience to follow up here. I am thoroughly exasperated and late for something else.
Robert
Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 112, Number 17 December 2004
Focus
Battle Scars: Global Conflicts and Environmental Health The Price of Preparing for War
Valerie J. Brown
Abstract The nature and weapons of war have changed radically in the last century, bringing conflict off the battleground and into city streets, and thereby magnifying its environmental health consequences. Age-old problems still follow war---lack of food, shelter, water, and sanitation, risk of infectious disease, and psychological trauma. But modern war also saddles populations with new threats from industrial and military chemicals, pesticides, and radiation, and humanitarian aid systems designed to help people after natural disasters cannot function properly in combat environments. A few encouraging strides are being made, such as the overall reduction in landmine production and use. It remains to be seen what further progress can be made in alleviating the environmental health disaster that is war.
War is as old as humanity, but the study of its environmental health effects is just beginning. Age-old problems still follow war--lack of food, shelter, water, and sanitation, risk of infectious diseases, and psychological trauma. But war today, in all its modern permutations, can also saddle populations with new threats from industrial and military chemicals, pesticides, and radiation.
Modern conflicts show a fundamental departure from the form of earlier wars. The Nobel Foundation report Wars in the 20th Century and Nobel Peace Prize Statistics states, "From 1900 to 1910, wars of all categories were represented rather evenly, whereas from 1990 to 2000 most were civil wars." Between 1945 and 1975 many former European colonies waged wars of independence in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. "Today there are few interstate wars with clearly defined parties, but civil wars have become increasingly internationalised," states the report. "Few internal wars today take place without the intervention of foreign states."
The post-Cold War world is split by development inequities, competition for control of natural resources, and seemingly intractable ethnic and religious divisions. Today, more than ever, conflict is a tangled interplay of social, political, and economic factors. In a speech delivered to the United Nations on 5 October 2004 titled "Development and Conflict," Paul Collier of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University noted that the more dependent a country is on the export of natural resources, the more vulnerable it is to civil war, and that doubling the per capita income halves the risk of conflict. [For more on the connection between conflict and natural resources, see "Global Resources: Abuse, Scarcity, and Insecurity," EHP 112:A168-A175 (2004)].
Wars are costly, too. Civil war in a poor country lasts an average of 10 years and costs $50 billion. More than half this cost is borne by neighboring countries, which often see influxes of fleeing refugees and combatants, Collier said. Perhaps the most important change in warfare, from the perspective of the environment, is the fact that wars are no longer limited to a designated field and clearly identifiable combatants. Instead, they may rage in urban streets and village squares, on cultivated land, or along highways, and the fighters may emerge from and blend into the civilian population. Because conflicts are no longer cordoned off in specified combat zones, but are now played out in everyday human environments, the environmental health consequences of war increase exponentially.
The Effects of Destabilization The invasion of modern warfare into urban areas means millions of people can be rapidly displaced. Some of these people become refugees in other countries, but many others stay in-country as so-called internally displaced persons (IDPs). Globally, the movement of refugees and IDPs is a fluid, indeed tidal phenomenon. The country of origin for the largest number of refugees is Afghanistan, with about 2.1 million people having fled by the end of 2003, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees report 2003 Global Refugee Trends. Most Afghan refugees go to neighboring Pakistan (which hosts about 12% of all refugees under the protection of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) and Iran. Despite the seemingly constant number of conflicts around the world and the many populations of refugees and IDPs, the 2003 Global Refugee Trends report noted a drop of just over 3 million in such populations from 2002 to 2003. An "almost unprecedented level of voluntary repatriation" was observed in 2002 and 2003, with 3.5 million refugees going home. The number of IDPs has also decreased in some regions, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Angola, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Not yet out of the woods. Ethnic Albanian families leave the woods below Gajre to head to a safer location. They hid in the woods for three days while Serbian forces shelled their villages. image credit: Andrew Testa/Panos Pictures
But the report also noted significant increases in refugees moving from Sudan to Chad and from Liberia to Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Ghana. And a total of at least 1 million IDPs remain in Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Serbia and Montenegro. Colombia and Liberia each saw more than 250,000 more IDPs in 2003. By far the greatest danger to the greatest number of people in conflict areas and those fleeing violence is the lack of life's most basic necessities: potable water, food, shelter, and sanitation facilities. Crowded quarters make infectious disease outbreaks inevitable. Stressed by trauma and malnutrition, and without adequate medical care, refugees cannot fight off cholera, typhus, hepatitis, scabies, and numerous other contagious ailments.
The barest of necessities. Chechen refugees in the Republic of Ingushetia collect water from a damaged well in Sputnik camp. There, some 8,000 people are living in 800 tents and an abandoned train. image credit: Leo Erken/Panos Pictures
Carol Smedberg, an emergency medical technician who volunteers with the Portland, Oregon-based Northwest Medical Teams, visited Liberian IDP camps in September 2004. "The main problem is the water," Smedberg says. "Normally we tell people to drink more water, but there the water is the cause [of most of the health problems]." People have only charcoal briquettes for fuel, Smedberg says, and it is almost impossible to boil their drinking water, which is taken out of a stream that is also used as a toilet. Chicken pox breaks out about every two weeks as new people arrive in the camps, according to Smedberg.
Relatively developed countries are at just as much risk of war-related environmental health problems as the developing world. According to the GEO Year Book 2003 published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), unreliable electricity supplies in Iraq have caused sewage treatment equipment to stop working, sending raw sewage and industrial waste directly into the Tigris River, Baghdad's only source of water, as well as other bodies of water. On 25 September 2004 The New York Times reported that water and sewerage failures had contributed to an outbreak of at least 200 hepatitis E cases and 5 deaths. Like other forms of the disease, hepatitis E causes fever, jaundice, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting; it is especially threatening to pregnant women and fetuses.
True environmental exposure. A refugee family in Sar-e-Pol, Afghanistan, huddles together against the cold in a makeshift shelter. Médecins Sans Frontières estimates there are 3,500 families living in tents made of nothing but cloth and plastic, in dire need of water and sanitation. image credit: Tim Dervin/Panos Pictures
Iraq's problems don't end there. In a Lancet paper published online on 29 October 2004, Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies reported that the risk of death had more than doubled after the 2003 U.S. invasion. The major post-invasion cause of death was violence, which was widespread and attributed mainly to coalition air strikes. Excess deaths were estimated to be at least 100,000, with most victims being women and children. And a national assessment conducted by the new Iraqi government's health ministry reported 5,460 cases of typhoid in the first three months of 2004, according to a 13 October 2004 article published in Nature online. The Iraqi report also said mumps, measles, and other infectious diseases were ravaging the country's children, one-third of whom are chronically malnourished. In fact, the report said, Iraq's once relatively robust overall state of health is now comparable to that of Yemen and Afghanistan, where citizens face very high infant mortality and little access to clean water and sanitation services.
It can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to deliver aid to conflict-ridden regions. In an April 2004 country brief on Sudan, officials with the UN World Food Program (WFP) estimated that food assistance was necessary for 1.18 million Sudanese who were chronically malnourished due to drought, floods, and war. Aid was begun but suspended in mid-October after two Save the Children aid workers were killed by a landmine, and the WFP decided the security situation was too unstable to put its aid workers at further risk.
Babes and arms. (top) At Kibeho camp in Ngara, Tanzania, soldiers keep watch over some of the 1,000 children orphaned in the 1994 massacre of 4,000 Hutus by the Tutsi army of Rwanda. (bottom) Refugee children at the same camp must fetch drinking water from a muddy pond contaminated with fuel. image credits (top to bottom): Paul Lowe/Panos Pictures; Chris Sattlberger/Panos Pictures
Many of these same problems exist in the Chechnya conflict. By 2003 about 260,000 Chechens had set up camps in the adjacent Republic of Ingushetia in farm fields and factory grounds, living in leaky tents with inadequate protection from the cold. Tuberculosis was common.
The New York City-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) has set up or repaired 66 potable water supply points, collected garbage, and serviced latrines in Ingushetia, but Ingush authorities have restricted the amount and type of aid humanitarian groups could provide to refugees in Ingushetia. For example, according to a June 2003 press release by the international medical aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Ingush authorities had just that month suddenly declared an MSF temporary shelter project illegal and barred Chechen refugees from moving in.
Despite this pressure, most Chechen refugees are loath to return to Chechnya, where conditions are very dangerous, housing is almost nonexistent, and services have broken down. To help ease the situation in Chechnya, the IRC has for the last three years been trucking water to 20,000 Chechens in Grozny. And as of 2003 the organization had built 35 water reservoirs to be hooked up to the city's water mains. The IRC also builds and maintains latrines in Grozny, conducts pest control activities, and resurrects homes, including making repairs to electrical and gas lines.
Sea of refugees. During the 1999 war, ethnic Albanian inhabitants of Pristina waited in a field near the Macedonian border at Blace after being forced from their city by Serbian forces. image credit: Andrew Testa/Panos Pictures
Weapons of War I: Landmines Landmines have been in widespread military use since World War II, and the UN estimates there are 60-80 million laid around the world, many in places where conflict has long since ceased. Such landmines can destroy lives and societies for generations. According to the Landmine Monitor Report 2003, a publication of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), there are an estimated 200-215 million landmines currently stockpiled by 78 countries. All but about 10 million of those landmines are in nations that are not parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, an international convention that requires signatories to destroy their stockpiles within 4 years and clear all laid landmines within 10 years. Among these nonsignatories are China (home to an estimated 110 million landmines), Russia (with 50 million), the United States (with 10.4 million), and Pakistan (with 6 million). The Landmine Monitor Report 2003 also states that mines cause 15,000-20,000 new deaths and injuries per year (most victims are male civilians). Landmine conditions are dire and worsening in several countries, such as Chechnya and Nepal.
In more than 80 countries landmines make land unusable and impede the postconflict return to functioning economies and social life. Children who have lost limbs generally need a new prosthesis every year to keep up with their growth. Survivors can have great difficulty working, particularly in rural and agricultural communities. And strained medical systems are easily overwhelmed by victims' need for continuing care.
In Thailand, an area of about 2,557 square miles is contaminated with landmines, affecting half a million people, according to a Kingdom of Thailand Landmine Impact Survey completed in 2001. The densest concentration of landmines lies along the border with Cambodia. Most are distributed in hilly forest areas, preventing traditional uses of the forest, such as food- and wood-gathering, and making decommissioning very difficult.
But ICBL coordinator Liz Bernstein says the general trend is toward a lessening of the scale of devastation, thanks to the Mine Ban Treaty and other ban movements. The treaty has been ratified by 143 countries. More than half the countries where landmines are deployed are at peace, enabling decommissioning to begin. Bernstein says, "When we began [working on the treaty] there were 54 countries producing landmines; today there are about a dozen. Now there's virtually no trade in landmines. The only governments we found last year actively using them on a daily basis were Russia in Chechnya and Burma/Myanmar, where there is a civil war."
Innocent victims. (top) A child landmine victim in Kurdistan waits to be fitted with prostheses at a center for disabled children. (bottom) Congenital birth defects among Iraqi children are believed to be connected to the use of depleted uranium munitions by Allied forces during the first Gulf War. image credits (top to bottom): Giacomo Pirozzi/Panos Pictures; Julia Guest/Panos Pictures
Weapons of War II: Depleted Uranium Probably the most inflammatory war-related environmental health issue is that of depleted uranium (DU), which is the remnant of uranium left after U-235 (the isotope used in nuclear power generation and bomb production) is largely removed. Because of its high density, DU is used both in armor-piercing shells and in tank armor itself. DU ignites upon impact, sending a fine black powder of mixed soluble and insoluble uranium oxides into the air. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the U.S. military fired DU weapons during the 1991 Gulf War and against the Serbs in the Balkan crises of 1994-1995 and 1999. The United States also used DU in the 2003 Iraq war, and the British used small amounts in the Iraq and Kuwait wars in 1991 and in 2003.
Uranium is everywhere in the environment, but generally at low concentrations. Most human exposure is through ingestion via food and water. DU is about 60% as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium, and is chemically toxic as well. If ingested, DU behaves very similarly to ambient natural uranium, which the body clears fairly rapidly through urine and feces. However, the insoluble oxides of DU can become lodged in the body by inhalation or as shrapnel fragments. The radioactivity and chemotoxicity of DU may cause serious health effects in these circumstances. Large doses by any route of exposure can cause kidney and gene damage.
It is not clear how many people were exposed in the Balkans or in Iraq, or how much DU they were exposed to. Dan Fahey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and a DU policy analyst, says, "We don't have good data. The Pentagon once said thousands of people [in the Gulf War] might have been unnecessarily exposed, and then backtracked to about nine hundred people." According to an Army spokeswoman who spoke on condition of anonymity, no estimate of DU exposures in the 2003 Iraq war is available, but DU was used only during the invasion phase when the Iraqis were using tanks. Therefore, the U.S. Army believes exposures to be few in number and low-level.
Since the 1999 Kosovo war, allegations have flown that DU causes cancers such as Hodgkin lymphoma as well as immune, neurological, and reproductive damage. There is not a large body of research on these links. But a number of published in vitro and rodent studies by Alexandra Miller and colleagues at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, (including one published in the August 1998 issue of EHP) suggest that DU can change human cells to a tumor-inducing phenotype and cause oxidative DNA damage. In rodents DU was shown to migrate from the implant site to bone, kidney, muscle, and liver tissue; to alter the hippocampus; to cross the placental barrier; and to enter fetal tissue. Although DU is a weak alpha emitter, the bystander effect--in which untargeted cells surrounding an irradiated cell show damage similar to that of the target cell--may also be part of DU's effects.
Nevertheless, the Army maintains that veterans with embedded DU shrapnel are not at risk for adverse effects. The Army spokeswoman says the government is tracking 70 Gulf War veterans who still carry DU shrapnel. "They have no ill effects from the shrapnel that came from DU rounds," she says. "Depleted uranium has been studied probably more than any other substance used in warfare and has not been demonstrated to have ill effects. There have been thirty-five children born to these veterans, and none has a birth defect."
Because of the dearth of good epidemiological DU studies, Fahey says the government's highest priority should be to track a large number of DU-exposed Gulf War veterans. "If the latency period for DU is ten to thirty years," Fahey says, "now is the time to be monitoring these nine hundred people."
Weapons of War III: Herbicides Herbicides as a weapon first came on to the radar during the Vietnam War, when some 19 million gallons of chemicals were sprayed on Vietnam and Laos to strip away enemy cover and destroy crops. The different herbicide formulations, known collectively today as Agent Orange, were contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, a known human carcinogen. Decades after spraying ended, a quarter of this persistent toxicant remains in the Vietnamese environment, and the NIEHS and the Vietnamese government are working together to fully characterize the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange.
Today, herbicides play a major role in the Colombian drug war, another example of the changed nature of modern war. Several insurgent groups have been battling the Colombian government in a protracted and bloody civil war. The war has provided narcotics growers and processors uncontrolled zones in which they can flourish; insurgents and narcotics cartels have formed alliances. According to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, most of the cocaine and heroin on the U.S. market comes from Colombia. To stop this flood, the U.S. and Colombian governments have jointly developed and implemented the Plan Colombia eradication program.
Crop casualties. Many Colombian farmers believe their crops, like these bananas, are being ruined by drift from herbicide spraying of illegal poppy and coca crops. Many of the ruined crops were planted at the urging of the government as alternatives to the illegal plants. image credit: Witness for Peace
A major component of the plan is aerial spraying of herbicide on coca and poppy plants, which began in 2000. The main ingredient is glyphosate, widely used as a weed killer in several formulations of Monsanto's Roundup and in other products, and the most commonly used commercial herbicide in the world. According to the National Pesticide Telecommunications Network, glyphosate causes mild eye and skin irritation and digestive and respiratory irritation when ingested, and has not been shown to cause reproductive damage or cancer in humans or wildlife.
However, many Colombian farmers in sprayed areas report significant skin problems, headaches, vomiting, miscarriages, and deaths of small children--effects that they attribute to the spraying. Residents of the sprayed areas are not told when spraying will occur for security reasons, so they cannot take any steps to protect themselves, their families, their crops, or their livestock.
The Colombian government and the U.S. embassy have a monitoring program in place to investigate all complaints related to spraying, from reports of planes spraying legitimate crops to glyphosate causing health problems. Half of the nearly 5,000 complaints received to date have been rejected as invalid, because it was determined that spraying did not take place in the areas in question on the dates claimed. Another 1,680 cases are under review by the government/embassy team. Compensation for lost crops has been paid in 12 cases and, according to press officer Paul Watzlavick of the U.S. embassy, there have been no cases where it was determined that spraying caused adverse health effects in humans or animals.
There is some controversy over research being done on effects of the spraying. In 2001 Colombian toxicologist Camilo Uribe led an embassy-funded study of the spray program's health effects in the town of Aponte, which concluded that the observed health problems in the village--mainly skin problems and eye inflammation--were not related to the spray program. In a critique of the study, Rachel Massey, a fellow of the Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies in Amherst, Massachusetts, noted that the study did not follow normal epidemiological protocols, such as indicating the total number of patient records from which the samples were drawn and how cases were selected. Moreover, the Uribe report itself noted that 7 of 10 nearby municipalities reported increases in patients seeking help for symptoms that their community doctors thought might be related to the spraying. One of these towns, San Pablo, had 50 cases of dermatitis, conjunctivitis, respiratory conditions, and digestive problems after nearby spraying.
The U.S. government says the narcotics cartels are responsible for more environmental degradation and toxic chemical exposures than the spraying program is. Says Watzlavick, "The coca growers use tons of pesticides and herbicides on their fields in addition to tons of other chemicals to produce cocaine. These are the chemicals that we see ending up in the water systems." Chemicals used in drug processing include kerosene, sulfuric acid, ammonia, acetone, and others, along with the herbicides paraquat and 2,4-D. Chemicals and waste products are often dumped in water or left on the ground. Activists don't deny the likely drug-related exposures, but believe Colombians are suffering additive effects from both kinds of exposures.
Industrial Pollution: During Conflict and After In the first Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi soldiers set more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells afire. Vast columns of black smoke billowed into the sky for weeks. In an apparent attempt to deter invading forces during this war, Iraq built a 47-inch pipeline into western Kuwait and criss-crossed the area with trenches into which oil was pumped and set afire, according to the Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait, a Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization. Sabotage of Iraq's own oil production facilities and pipelines began with the onset of war in 2003. Potentially toxic components of oil fires include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), metals, sulfur dioxide, ozone, and lead. Health effects from inhaling these components include cancer (from PAHs), asthma and airway inflammation (from ozone), burning of respiratory tissues and airway obstruction (from sulfur dioxide), and high blood pressure and kidney damage (from lead).
Sending the environment up in smoke? Oil fires set during the first Gulf War are alleged to have caused respiratory effects in both soldiers and civilians. image credit: U.S. Department of Defense
A 2000 Department of Defense study of Gulf War soldiers' exposure to oil fires concluded that "except for particulate matter, air contaminants were below levels established [by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] to protect the health of the general population" and that no long-term damage was done, although some veterans blamed the oil fires for worsening their existing asthma and bronchitis, as well as for skin rashes and shortness of breath. According to the report, the Iraq-Kuwait region normally has some of the world's highest levels of suspended particulate matter in the air, partly from the sandstorms common there; 18% of Kuwaiti civilians have respiratory problems, about three times the rate in the United States. Some of the soldiers' symptoms might therefore have resulted from the combination of chemical and particulate exposures.
Breaking the machinery of life. Major industrial sites frequently become prime targets for enemy forces due to the widespread impact of their demolition. One such target was the power station in Obilic, Kosovo, which now routinely fails, cutting off power to much of the country. image credit: Andrew Testa/Panos Pictures
Urban and industrial areas present other serious environmental health risks in wartime. During the 1999 Kosovo war, NATO and U.S. planes repeatedly bombed several sites in Serbia, including the industrial complex at Pancevo, a town of 80,000 located a few miles northeast of Belgrade. The Pancevo complex includes a fertilizer plant, a petrochemical factory, and an oil refinery; wastewater from all the facilities drains into the Danube River through a canal. The joint UNEP/UN Center for Human Settlements Balkan Task Force issued a postwar environmental assessment concluding that although the war had triggered major chemical releases, the industrial sites were already seriously polluted.
The assessment team estimated that about 2,314 tons of the solvent ethylene dichloride and more than 88 tons of metallic mercury leaked out of the petrochemical plant during the war. Ethylene dichloride is a known human carcinogen, according to the National Toxicology Program, while mercury causes neurological and developmental damage. U.S. bombs burned about 500 tons of vinyl chloride monomer--also listed as a carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program--releasing dioxins, carbon monoxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Fearful of further explosions, the fertilizer plant managers released about 275 tons of liquid ammonia into the canal. Though not identified as a carcinogen, ammonia can cause severe tissue burns and even blindness when inhaled or ingested, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Little information is available on disease patterns near the complex, but locals called a common ailment of site workers "Pancevo cancer." Task force analysts think the condition was actually angiosarcoma of the liver resulting from high vinyl chloride monomer exposure.
The Wages of War As the character of modern war has changed--becoming less of a "formal" battle between clearly designated opponents in a specified area and turning more to intermittent yet long-term conflicts among insurgents, militias, and government forces--civilians get caught in the cross-fire more frequently. They turn into refugees and IDPs, vulnerable not only to physical violence, malnutrition, and disease, but to chemical and radioactive exposures as well. Their living environments may remain contaminated with industrial and military chemicals and munitions emitting radionuclides long after conflicts have ceased.
Few military groups track civilian casualties, and those who do generally underestimate them. For example, although the United States does not have an official estimate of civilian casualties, research suggests that the U.S. action in Iraq has led directly to the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Iraqis, mostly women and children. Humanitarian aid systems designed to help people after natural disasters are not able to function properly in combat environments. Thus, in severely war-torn regions, help is often only sporadic as conditions permit, or is simply not available.
There are some encouraging signs of progress to be found in the record of the world's wars. One is the fact that landmines are falling into disuse. The Mine Ban Treaty came about largely because landmine activists, frustrated at the slow pace of UN negotiations, held their own summit in Canada, drafted a convention, and began collecting signatures. The UN has now adopted the convention, and more countries continue to ratify the treaty. Some 31 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed since the campaign began, and the number of countries producing landmines has dropped from 54 to 12. Perhaps the landmine campaign may serve as a model for mitigating other types of war damage and trauma.
Valerie J. Brown
The Price of Preparing for War Located a few miles from Anchorage, Alaska's Eagle River Flats is a coastal saltwater marsh teeming with fish, wildlife--and unexploded mortar and artillery shells. The marsh lies on the Department of Defense's (DOD) 62,000-acre training facility at Fort Richardson, headquarters to the Army's Alaskan command and control units. Since World War II, Eagle River Flats has been Fort Richardson's primary "ordnance impact zone," where soldiers stationed at the fort come to train with live munitions.
Catching flak? The Department of Defense has come under fire for trying to exempt a number of its facilities from environment-protective laws in the name of maintaining optimal military preparedness. image credit: U.S. Department of Defense
Environmental assessments undertaken at the Flats by the Army have revealed high levels of contaminants including heavy metals, explosive compounds, and white phosphorus, a toxic agent used to generate smoke cover on the battlefield. It was this contamination with white phosphorus, which can damage bones and major internal organs, that in 1994 landed Eagle River Flats on the Superfund National Priorities List, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) compilation of the nation's most polluted properties. Since then, the Army has been conducting an EPA-approved effort to clean up the white phosphorus.
But in April 2002 the DOD was sued by a citizens' coalition urging the Army to address remaining contamination problems at the Flats. Among the plaintiffs were the indigenous Chickaloon Indians, who claimed the Army's use of live munitions was polluting traditional hunting and fishing grounds. The suit also charged that unexploded mortar rounds and artillery shells in the area were leaching toxic chemicals that were migrating to nearby Cook Inlet. The plaintiffs' attorney, Scott Allen of the San Francisco, California-based law firm Cox and Moyer, says the suit requested that the Army remove some 10,000 unexploded mortar rounds and artillery shells from the area (the number estimated in the Army's 1998 proposed Superfund cleanup plan), remediate toxic contamination, and abstain from using the range for bombing exercises until a Clean Water Act permit had been obtained for munitions discharges.
When confronted with the lawsuit, the DOD took its case to Congress. There, it argued that the laws on the books were not intended to be applied to operational military ranges in this way, citing long-standing past state and federal regulatory interpretation and practice. The DOD further argued that suits like those brought at Eagle River Flats, if successful, could set a legal precedent whereby environmental litigants could halt military training and thus undermine troop readiness on the battlefield.
Before the 2002 lawsuit even arose, the DOD had proposed new legislation called the Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative (RRPI) to prevent just such lawsuits attempting to use hazardous waste laws to limit training. The RRPI calls for exemptions from a number of environmental laws on more than 8,000 operational DOD training ranges, a land area equal to roughly 24 million acres. Under this proposed new legislation, munitions would not be subject to hazardous waste permitting or cleanup requirements as long as they remain on operational ranges.
Military Readiness and Pollution Preparing for war is a heavily industrialized mission that generates fuel spills, hazardous waste, and air pollution. The DOD owns more than 10% of the 1,240 sites currently on the National Priorities List, and has estimated the cost of cleaning up these sites at approximately $9.7 billion. In addition to lead and a variety of solvents, training facilities release munitions constituents including perchlorate (a thyroid toxicant), RDX (an explosive compound and neurotoxicant), and TNT (an explosive compound linked to anemia and altered liver function).
Nearly 1 in 10 Americans live within 10 miles of a DOD Superfund site--a sometimes perilous proximity. The Massachusetts Military Reservation, for instance, a 34-square-mile multi-use training facility in Cape Cod, is slowly leaching solvents, jet fuel, RDX, and perchlorate into the area's sole aquifer, a drinking water source for up to 500,000 people at the height of tourist season.
Military aircraft from DOD facilities also generate noise and air pollution. For instance, in 1996, the most recent year for which data are available, more than 50,000 military flights contributed to the heavy air traffic over Washington, D.C. According to the Democratic Committee on Energy and Commerce, these flights emitted 75 tons of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which generate smog. In 1999, the Sierra Army Depot, located 55 miles northeast of Reno, was California's leading air polluter, according to the EPA Toxics Release Inventory. The base released some 5.4 million pounds of toxic chemicals that year, including aluminum, copper, and zinc fumes.
As of this publication, Congress has approved legislation requested by the DOD amending the Migratory Bird Protection Act, portions of the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Now, the DOD is seeking changes through the RRPI to certain hazardous waste laws--specifically, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and the Clean Air Act (CAA). The DOD acknowledges that these laws have never been shown to have interfered with specific military training, but says it can't afford to wait until training is shut down before it acts. As evidence of the need to act now, the DOD points to a number of lawsuits and "close calls," including the case at Eagle River Flats and the Navy's 2002 temporary closure of its Farallon de Medinilla live-fire training range in the Pacific. That closure followed a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity alleging that bombing at the range was killing protected migratory birds.
The DOD argues that even the threat of interference by hazardous waste litigation justifies its aims. Joe Willging, an environmental lawyer with the DOD General Counsel's office, says in reference to the Farallon de Medinilla closure, "We don't feel it's wise to wait for that kind of train wreck to see if we are going to lose in litigation. . . . Our job is to send soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into combat environments in the absolute best-prepared way we can. You can't do that if you introduce artificialities into training. We want to maintain the ability to use those ranges in the optimum way based on military readiness considerations, not on other considerations."
Questions of Scope Top environmental officials in nearly every state oppose the RRPI, as do 39 state attorneys general. Their opposition is based on the DOD's historic environmental record and growing reputation among state officials for routinely shirking its environmental responsibility. "The DOD has a consistent track record in litigation going back decades for trying to get out of its environmental requirements," says Daniel Miller, Colorado's assistant attorney general for environment. (DOD officials claim, however, that the department's current compliance with environmental requirements is comparable to that of private industry in almost all environmental programs.)
The main goal of the RRPI is to ensure that both munitions and their constituents are exempt from CERCLA and RCRA hazardous waste classifications as long as they remain on operational ranges. Once the range closes or if the munitions or their constituents migrate offsite or pose an "imminent and substantial danger" to human health or agriculture, then CERCLA and RCRA authority would come into force. At that point, according to the DOD, the relevant environmental agencies would assume jurisdictional authority and impose monitoring requirements and cleanup orders to address the offsite migration at the contamination's source.
Finally, the RRPI seeks a three-year extension in the DOD's obligation to demonstrate compliance with state plans to meet CAA standards for ozone, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter. The DOD claims the extension would provide flexibility in its decisions about where to field and base new weapons and aircraft, noting that military emissions typically are less than 0.5% of state emission quotas.
However, state attorneys general disagree with the DOD's reading, and have expressed concern that the RRPI would effectively mean states could not require the DOD to take any action to address munitions-related contamination on a range--even if that contamination were to migrate offsite and contaminate drinking water supplies--unless regulators could prove imminent and substantial endangerment from the contamination. Further, says Steve Taylor, a national organizer with the Military Toxics Project, an environmental group based in Lewiston, Maine, without their normal authority to order sampling when warranted either offsite or at the source of contamination, regulators cannot possibly demonstrate the imminent and substantial endangerment required to invoke their emergency powers.
Thus, critics argue, the DOD assumes exclusive control over its facilities, assuming an inappropriate level of oversight given the department's history with environmental compliance. The problem with this approach, Taylor emphasizes, is that munitions contamination that spreads offsite is likely to be harder and more expensive to clean up.
DOD officials contend that because neither the EPA nor any states have ever attempted to use these laws to regulate military training on operational ranges, the exemptions merely codify what are already standard practices. (State and EPA officials disagree with this point, arguing that the amendments actually reverse existing policy under which military munitions may become solid waste after they have been used.) Meanwhile, the DOD adds that it is engaged in a broad voluntary effort to gauge the potential for munitions constituents to migrate from any of its facilities, and that it intends to share the results of this effort with regulators and the public. "The reason DOD is undertaking these assessments is because we realize that our ranges must be operated in a sustainable way," Willging says. "If they are not, and [migrating contamination] endangers public health, the proposed RRPI provisions will not apply. Therefore, it's in our best interests to know the condition of our ranges and to respond when contamination threatens to spread."
Opponents argue that the DOD's proposals would actually affect both active and closed ranges. "We've identified over a dozen DOD operational ranges on the National Priorities List," says an EPA official speaking off the record. "One could argue that absent an 'imminent and substantial danger' finding, EPA would have no jurisdiction under CERCLA to force those cleanups."
A broad range of critics--including the National Association of Attorneys General and all major environmental organizations--also oppose the proposed CAA extension, arguing that it would extend public exposure to harmful air quality. Moreover, according to a 2004 fact sheet on DOD CAA provisions prepared by staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, there is no evidence to suggest the CAA has ever adversely affected military readiness.
Culture War? In late October 2004, the DOD settled its Eagle River Flats lawsuit. As part of the settlement, the agency agreed to a number of key provisions, including--among others--that it obtain a Clean Water Act permit for munitions discharges at the Flats, monitor water quality in the area, promptly clean up munitions that fall outside the immediate impact area, and work with outside experts to study the environmental impacts of bombing.
But the DOD is still committed to its RRPI goals, which it maintains are necessary in order to sustain military readiness. Why is the agency seeking environmental exemptions in the face of such broadly focused opposition? There is no easy answer. Some stakeholders suggest a culture war is at play, pointing out that the DOD has never taken kindly to environmental oversight, believing its national security mission elevates it beyond such concerns. The EPA official says there are many in the DOD itself who don't support the RRPI's proposals: "They see it as being driven by operational guys, farther up the chain of command."
The DOD is currently considering its legislative package for fiscal year 2006. Whether the RRPI will be a part of that package is still being considered in the Pentagon. The next opportunity for DOD officials to present the proposal is likely to emerge when the Congress turns to its next appropriations bill.
Charles W. Schmidt Last Updated: November 19, 2004
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Turkey plans to build three nuclear power plants by 2011: minister
ISTANBUL (AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041119154242.xoqfk8s5.html
Turkey plans over the next few years to build three nuclear power plants that should become operative from 2011 to avoid a possible energy shortage, Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said Friday.
Turkey had earlier sought to build a nuclear plant on its southern coast, but shelved the project four years ago amid heavy criticism from environmentalists at home and abroad.
Guler said Turkey faced a possible power shortage after 2010-2011 that could leave it dependent on foreign resources.
"We have plans to build three nuclear power plants and they will come into operation one by one as of 2011," Guler was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.
"We plan to meet eight to 10 percent of the energy demand with nuclear power," he said, adding that the plants would have a total capacity of about 4,500 megawatts.
He said his ministry was primarily considering uranium to fuel the plants but was also looking at thorium as a possibility.
"We have known reserves of 230,000 tonnes of thorium and 9,200 tonnes of uranium, but we are prospecting for more," Guler said.
No date has been set for a tender and no site has so far been chosen for the plants, he said.
The minister said the government would invite the private sector to build the plants, but that the state would step in if that effort fails.
"The energy ministry has made all the required calculations and done the feasibility studies," he said. "We're just waiting for the word to start."
Turkey had previously collected bids from Westinghouse of the United States, AECL of Canada and NPI of France for a nuclear plant near Akkuyu Bay, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.
The project was dropped in July 2000 amid financial difficulties and protests from environmentalists in Turkey and neighbouring Greece and Cyprus.
Opponents of the project argued that the proposed site was only 25 kilometres (15 miles) from a seismic fault line.
Criticism to Akkuyu grew after a strong earthquake, measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, rocked the nearby province of Adana in 1998, killing more than 140 people.
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Iran urges U.N. to ignore nuclear claims by exiles
(Reuters)
By Parisa Hafezi
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=QB3GV4R0DXPAYCRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6867880
TEHRAN - Iran called on the U.N. nuclear watchdog body on Friday to ignore new allegations by a group of opposition exiles that it is trying to build nuclear weapons.
"The IAEA should not damage its prestige by listening to this terrorist group's lies and taking it seriously," Hossein Mousavian, Tehran's chief delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Reuters.
Mousavian said the latest charges by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) that Tehran is purifying uranium at a secret plant in Tehran for weapons, in violation of a pledge it made to both the European Union and United Nations, was an attempt to poison its relations with the agency.
"This piece of information is absolutely baseless. It will harm the good atmosphere created between us and the IAEA," he said. The IAEA meets next week to discuss Iran's atomic plans.
Iran's Foreign Ministry on Friday also rejected claims by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that Tehran had been working on ways to deliver an atomic warhead on a missile.
Powell's assertions came hot on the heels of the NCRI charges. The group said Iran had obtained bomb-grade uranium and a warhead design from Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Pakistan and Iran dismissed the allegations.
Diplomats say it would be hard for the IAEA to ignore the charges. Not all the NCRI's past claims have been accurate, but enough of them have been to give the group a reputation as a key source of information on Tehran's nuclear programme.
An NCRI spokesman said the group would release further details about the alleged secret enrichment plant in Tehran at a news conference in Paris later on Friday.
Iran on Sunday promised France, Germany and Britain it would halt its uranium enrichment programme in a bid to avoid a referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. The freeze is due to take effect on Nov. 22.
EUROPEANS DISTURBED
Diplomats in Vienna have said the EU was disturbed by the new NCRI charges as well as Powell's.
----
Nuclear Disclosures on Iran Unverified
U.S. Officials Checking Evidence Cited by Powell
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61079-2004Nov18?language=printer
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared information with reporters Wednesday about Iran's nuclear program that was classified and based on an unvetted, single source who provided information that two U.S. officials said yesterday was highly significant if true but has not yet been verified.
Powell and other senior Cabinet members were briefed last week on the sensitive intelligence. The material was stamped "No Foreign," meaning it was not to be shared with allies, although President Bush decided that portions could be shared last week with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, officials said.
According to one official with access to the material, a "walk-in" source approached U.S intelligence earlier this month with more than 1,000 pages purported to be Iranian drawings and technical documents, including a nuclear warhead design and modifications to enable Iranian ballistic missiles to deliver an atomic strike. The official agreed to discuss the information on the condition of anonymity and only because Powell had alluded to it publicly.
But U.S. intelligence officials have been combing the information carefully and with a wary eye, mindful of the mistakes made in trusting intelligence information alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Powell, who announced earlier this week that he would not stay on for a second term, presented that intelligence in a February 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council that was meant to convince the world that Saddam Hussein needed to be forcefully removed from power. Much of his presentation turned out to be based on information provided by unreliable sources.
If the information on Iran were confirmed, it would mean the Islamic republic is further along than previously known in developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it. The documents included a specific warhead design based on implosion and adjustments aimed at outfitting the warhead on existing Iranian missile systems.
U.S. intelligence has known since at least 2002 that Iran was capable of enriching uranium, the key ingredient in a nuclear bomb. Iran also has a successful missile program. But U.N. nuclear inspectors who have been investigating Iran for nearly two years have found no evidence that Tehran possesses a nuclear warhead design or is conducting a nuclear weapons program.
The Islamic republic, which on Sunday entered into a new deal with France, Britain and Germany to suspend its nuclear program, has denied it is trying to build atomic weapons and insists its work is part of a budding energy effort.
Western intelligence estimates of Iran's capabilities vary. But U.S. officials believe Iran could be three to five years from completing a bomb if it is successful at constructing and operating thousands of highly sophisticated centrifuge parts for enriching uranium.
The information provided by the source, who was not previously known to U.S. intelligence, does not mention uranium or any other area of Iran's known nuclear program, according to the official with access to the material. It focuses instead on a warhead design and modifications to Iran's long-range Shahab-3 missile and a medium-range missile in its arsenal. The Shahab-3 has a range of 800 miles and is capable of hitting Israel.
The official said the CIA remains unsure about the authenticity of the documents and how they came into the informant's possession. A second official would say only that there are questions about the source of the information.
Officials interviewed by The Washington Post did not know the identity of the source or whether the individual is connected to an Iranian exile group that made fresh accusations about Iran at a news conference Wednesday in Paris. The National Council for Resistance in Iran charged that Iran was enriching uranium and will continue to do so despite the pledge made Sunday to European foreign ministers.
The group also claimed that Iran received blueprints for a Chinese-made bomb in the mid-1990s from the global nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The group, which is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, exposed a secret Iranian enrichment facility in 2002, but many of its claims have been inaccurate.
The lack of certainty about the source who approached U.S. intelligence had kept officials from talking publicly about the information, and Powell's comments caught the small group of informed officials by surprise and angered some of them.
Powell's remarks also drew expressions of concern from European allies who just days earlier had entered into an agreement with Iran to suspend work on its nuclear program. Even if the documents are authentic, Iran's possessing them would not by itself violate international law, officials said. And the information was not enough to stop British officials from signing the agreement with Iran.
Yesterday, in an effort to assuage European concerns, the administration told diplomats from those countries that Powell misspoke in releasing information that had not yet been verified, sources said. During a conversation about Iran with reporters accompanying him on a trip to Chile on Wednesday, Powell said he had "seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems. I'm not talking about uranium or fissile material or the warhead, I'm talking about what one does with a warhead."
Powell's spokesman said yesterday that the secretary stood by those remarks. "The secretary did not misspeak," said State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli, who added that Powell's deputy, Richard L. Armitage, "saw the same information."
Ereli did not elaborate on the nature of Powell's comments at his daily briefing. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said only that "Powell was talking about intelligence that we have seen, that's what he was referring to."
Meanwhile, senior State Department officials traveling with Powell in Santiago, Chile, said yesterday that President Bush will appeal to Asian leaders this weekend to intercede with North Korea to return to deadlocked talks on its nuclear weapons program.
Bush will press allied leaders of China, Japan, South Korea and Russia -- partners with the United States for more than a year in negotiations to disarm Pyongyang -- on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Chile. The Bush administration believes North Korea may be more willing to reconsider rejoining the six-party talks now that the U.S. presidential election is over, the officials said.
With limited alternatives, U.S. officials hope the president's personal intervention will impress allies to try once again to prod North Korea. "Bush's meetings with leaders are going to be quite significant in stating his own commitment to the six-party process," said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy.
The diplomatic effort has been in trouble since Kim Jong Il's government boycotted a planned session of the six-party talks in September. The Bush administration believes North Korea was waiting to see the fate of Democratic candidate John F. Kerry, who had proposed the kind of direct talks the Clinton administration tried in 2000.
Japan and South Korea have offered economic and energy incentives as part of the package to win North Korea's compliance. But North Korea had been holding out for additional incentives, including the prospect of one-on-one talks with the United States, as conditions to resume negotiations.
Staff writers Robin Wright in Santiago, Chile, and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Confronts New Challenge on Issue of Iran
November 19, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/middleeast/19diplo.html?pagewanted=all
SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 18 - While assembling a new national security team, President Bush is confronting what could become the biggest challenge of his second term: how to contain Iran's nuclear program and what some in the administration believe to be Tehran's support of violence in Israel and insurgents in Iraq.
In an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war, hawks in the administration and Congress are trumpeting ominous disclosures about Iran's nuclear capacities to make the case that Iran is a threat that must be confronted, either by economic sanctions, military action, or "regime change."
But Britain, France and Germany are urging diplomacy, placing their hopes in a deal they brokered last week in which Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program in return for discussions about future economic benefits.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell thrust himself into the debate on Wednesday by commenting to reporters that fresh intelligence showed that Iran was "actively working" on a program to enable its missiles to carry nuclear bombs, a development he said "should be of concern to all parties."
The disclosures alluded to by Mr. Powell were seen by hard-liners in the administration as another sign of Iranian perfidy, and by Europeans as little new.
Although Mr. Powell has praised the negotiations between the Europeans and Iran, one administration official said that his comment suggested that there was "a steady tightening of outlook between hawks and doves" that Iran will use the negotiations as a pretext to continue its nuclear program in private.
Leading the charge for a tough line on Iran has been John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security. At the moment, administration officials say there are no prominent members of Mr. Bush's inner circle enthusiastic about the European approach of negotiating with Iran; most of the moderates are lower-level areas specialists in the State Department. But only last week Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded Mr. Bush to endorse the European approach.
Though Mr. Powell will soon leave Mr. Bush's administration, he is about to face a tough choice on Iran - whether to have an extensive conversation with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, or to avoid any contact when the two men attend a conference in Egypt next week.
"The simple fact is the secretary doesn't want to meet with Kharrazi," said an administration official, adding that that he saw little opportunity for dialogue and that Mr. Powell may have been signaling his pessimism when he made the disclosure about Iran's missile capability.
The possible Powell-Kharrazi meeting could occur Tuesday at Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, where European, Middle Eastern and other envoys are attending a conference on the future of Iraq. A top aide to Mr. Powell said the secretary would go with talking points to discuss ways to improve Iranian-American relations, but that it was up to the Iranians whether the conversation would take place.
A European diplomat familiar with the British-French-German initiative said they were also pessimistic that Iran would back off its nuclear ambitions, but that they had no choice but to engage Iran because military options were distasteful or impractical after the troubled invasion and occupation of Iraq.
"America clearly understands that Iran will be one of its greatest threats in the second administration," this diplomat said. "But the Europeans understand that even the greatest threats also present a great opportunity to resolve problems."
Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former policy and planning director under Secretary Powell, said he favored a major effort to offer incentives to moderate Iran's behavior, combined with threats of tough action if it does not.
European leaders say they want the United States to join with them in offering economic incentives to Iran, such as working to get Tehran to join the World Trade Organization - a step that could not occur without active American support.
Mr. Haass said it made no sense for the Europeans to offer incentives and for the United States to make threats. Both must be done together, he said.
The Iranian issue has vexed the Bush administration for so long that plans to produce a major policy paper within the administration simply ground to a halt last year and have not been revived. American contacts with Iran were cut off last May, when Iran was linked to groups that carried out bombings in Saudi Arabia.
Administration officials said there was fresh evidence that Iran supported insurgents in Iraq and had stepped up its support of the militant organization Hezbollah, which Israel now says is helping to subsidize organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad who have carried out suicide bombings there.
Indeed, an administration official said that Americans believed that Iran was supporting suicide bombers and insurgents in response to the pressure over its nuclear program - and specifically to warn Israel not to consider the kind of airstrike on a nuclear reactor that it carried out in Iraq more than two decades ago.
Officially, administration officials say that a military option like the one employed by Israel in 1981 against Iraq, when it bombed a reactor near Baghdad, is unrealistic because the Iranians have buried their most important nuclear facilities and can rebuild anything that is destroyed.
But an administration official said that a military strike or sabotage was not out of the question - "you never take the military option off the table," he said - and that in any case it was "money in the bank" for Iran to be concerned about such an option, because it might be goaded into a more conciliatory approach to the United States.
On the other hand, many in the administration say that Iran is not likely to enter into talks with the United States, as the Europeans want, because the revolutionary clerics who control the government are unalterably opposed to engaging with a country it considers the enemy.
"You can't call yourself a revolutionary regime and also negotiate with the Great Satan," said an administration official.
For months the United States's position has been not to threaten war but to force the issue to the United Nations Security Council, where sanctions - including a ban on oil imports and technology transfers - could be considered. But the European initiative has brought such talk to a halt.
But the thinking among many administration officials is that if the European deal to get Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities falls apart in coming months - if, for example, inspectors are unable to verify compliance - administration hawks will surely enlist others in a campaign to confront Iran with threats.
The decision, said European and American diplomats, will be made by Mr. Bush with his new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who is said by aides to be of two minds about the problem just as Mr. Powell is - willing to try diplomacy, not sure that it will work and ready to look at other possibilities if it does not.
--------
Iran has black market nuclear bomb drawings, still enriches uranium: opposition
(AP) GEORGE JAHN
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041117/w111728.html
VIENNA, Austria - Iran bought blueprints of a nuclear bomb from the same black-market network that gave Libya such diagrams and continues to enrich uranium despite a commitment to suspend the technology that can be used for atomic weapons, an Iranian opposition group said Wednesday.
Farid Soleimani, a senior official for the National Council for Resistance in Iran, said the diagram was provided by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani head of the nuclear network linked to clandestine programs in both Iran and Libya.
"He gave them the same weapons design he gave the Libyans as well as more in terms of weapons design," Soleimani told reporters in Vienna. He said the diagram and related material on how to make nuclear weapons was handed to the Iranians between 1994 and 1996.
Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said the UN nuclear watchdog agency follows up "every solid lead," but that it would otherwise have no further comment on the allegations.
A diplomat familiar with the agency and its investigations into Libya's and Iran's nuclear programs said the IAEA has long feared that Iran might have received bomb-making blueprints from Khan.
Libya bought engineers' drawings of a Chinese-made bomb through the Khan network as part of a covert nuclear program that it renounced last year.
Iran says it does not have such drawings, and no evidence has been found to dispute that claim. Former UN nuclear inspector David Albright earlier this year described the Chinese design that Libya owned up to having as something "that would not take a lot of modifying" to fit it on Iran's successfully tested Shahab-3 ballistic missile.
The opposition group made its claim days after Iran announced it would suspend all activities related to nuclear enrichment as part of an agreement with three European countries aimed at heading off a confrontation over its nuclear program.
Soleimani said centrifuges and other equipment needed to produce enriched uranium had been covertly moved from a facility at Lavizan-Shian to a nearby site within Tehran's city limits.
The opposition group says Lavizan-Shian was home to the Centre for Readiness and New Defence Technology and was part of the covert attempt to develop nuclear weapons.
A report detailing IAEA investigations into Iran's nuclear programs prepared for the agency's Nov. 25 board meeting notes that Iran has failed to produce a trailer that apparently contained nuclear equipment at Lavizan-Shian for IAEA inspection.
The IAEA report also said Iran has "declined to provide a list of equipment used" at Lavizan-Shian, which the government says was home to research on how to reduce casualties in case of nuclear attack.
Referring to the new, secret location, Soleimani said that "as we speak, the site continues to produce (enriched) uranium" and said it "is not the only one that is being kept secret."
Soleimani's organization is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen, or Mujahedeen Khalq, banned in the United States as a terrorist organization. While much of its information has not been confirmed, it was instrumental in 2002 in revealing Iran's enrichment program at Natanz.
Enrichment at low levels generates fuel for nuclear power - and Iran says that is its sole interest. But the United States says it suspects Iran wants to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium for nuclear warheads.
Lavizan-Shian was razed by the Iranian government earlier this year as IAEA inspectors prepared to visit it. The government says it was destroyed to make way for a park. But suspicions remain about the extent of the work done there - including the removal of topsoil, which reduced the effectiveness of environmental samples taken by IAEA inspectors looking for unreported nuclear activity at the site.
The IAEA says it will start monitoring Iran's commitment to halt enrichment activities starting early next week.
The suspension pledge reduced U.S. hopes of having the board refer Iran to the UN Security Council for alleged violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Under the agreement, Tehran is to suspend all uranium enrichment in return for European guarantees that Iran has the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program. The suspension holds only until a comprehensive agreement is sealed, but European diplomats hope the freeze will turn into a long-term arrangement.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called the agreement a "great victory" but said Wednesday that Tehran won't respect its commitment if Europeans fail to support his country at the IAEA board meeting.
"If the IAEA board of governors adopts a correct decision, it will be a step in the direction that will give us more hope that our rights will be exercised," Khatami said.
"If we see that they don't keep their promise, it's natural that we won't fulfil our promise," he said.
-------- japan
Japan eyes plant exports via nuclear technology alliance with US: report
TOKYO (AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118232711.qf9ii324.html
The Japanese government is set to offer technological support in nuclear plant engineering to the United States in a bid to expand Japanese nuclear technology exports, a news report said Friday.
By encouraging joint projects with US firms, Japan hopes to retain its competitive edge in nuclear-related technology and maintain its trained engineers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.
Given that only four plants are now under construction at home, Tokyo believes entering the overseas market is critical to preserving Japan's technological expertise, at least until the 2020s, when existing domestic facilities will require upgrading, the business daily said.
Japan's move will come following Washington's announcement that it planned to resume building nuclear power facilities for the first time in nearly three decades as a way to reduce the nation's reliance on Middle Eastern oil and to increase the use of alternative energy, the Nihon Keizai said.
Following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, the United States froze nuclear power plant construction, and US manufacturers such as General Electric Co. have not been able to uphold their technological expertise in nuclear technology, the newspaper said.
Meanwhile, major Japanese nuclear plant engineers such as Toshiba Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Hitachi Ltd. have acquired nuclear technologies from GE, Westinghouse Electric Co. and other US companies, the Nihon Keizai said.
The Japanese firms have built many nuclear plants at home and now boast top-level engineering technologies for nuclear reactor pressure vessels and steam generators, it said.
Japan formed a council tasked with creating a research and financial structure that will facilitate exports of nuclear-related equipment, the Nihon Keizai said.
Some companies are already preparing for the restart of US nuclear plant construction, with Toshiba and GE launching a joint study to analyze the feasibility of planned projects, the newspaper said.
-------- korea
Powell Presses for Nuclear Talks With North Korea
November 19, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/americas/19powell.html?pagewanted=all
SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 18 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell opened a new drive on Thursday to enlist Russia, China, South Korea and Japan to press North Korea to rejoin talks aimed at ending its nuclear arms program, but American officials said they could not be sure when the talks would resume.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters after Mr. Powell met with the Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, said that recent indications from South Korea and others had been "mildly encouraging" that North Korea was committed to the regional talks but that no date for their resumption was in sight.
The official said he hoped the talks could resume, at least at "working level," by year's end.
The talks have been suspended since September, when North Korea refused to continue. A month ago, North Korea said it would not rejoin the talks until the United States dropped its "hostile attitude" and joined with South Korea and Japan to offer economic incentives in return for an end to its nuclear program.
The United States has taken the position that it is willing to discuss various steps, including possible incentives, but not as preconditions for talks. This week, administration officials said the other parties had agreed not to offer new incentives.
Mr. Powell's meetings on Thursday in Santiago came at the beginning of a meeting of 21 countries and economic entities, like Hong Kong, in the annual session of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. President Bush is to come this weekend. The forum is expected to call for trade liberalization on the Pacific Rim and for greater efforts to combat terrorism, corruption and copyright piracy.
For Mr. Powell, the session is the first of several international forums that he plans to attend in his final weeks as secretary of state. He submitted his resignation on Friday, effective at the will of the president. Aides said that many of his meetings were dominated by foreign envoys wishing Mr. Powell well.
--------
Bush to step up pressure for NKorea to discuss nukes
SANTIAGO (AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041119021005.ncf9zqyr.html
US President George W. Bush will meet with key Asia-Pacific partners to pressure North Korea to buckle on negotiations for an end to the nuclear weapons crisis, a senior State Department official said Thursday.
Bush, arriving at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile on Friday evening, wanted to show his seriousness in dragging Pyongyang back to the six-party talks, the official said.
The US president will meet with heads of the other parties at the talks -- Japan, China, Russia and South Korea -- on the sidelines of the weekend summit. The sixth member, North Korea, is not part of APEC.
"I think we are going through an intense process," the US official said.
"I think the president's meetings with the leaders on this can be quite significant in stating his own commitment to the six-party process and how important he thinks it is," he said.
Ministers of the 21-member APEC forum set the stage for the North Korean crisis to be discussed by their leaders, adopting a joint statement underlining the need to curb nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran.
There was "a general agreement that all of us in the region had to put increasing pressure on the North Koreans to participate in the six-party talks," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
The meetings in Chile would be Bush's first chance to meet his partners in the North Korea talks since being re-elected, he said.
The US goal was that its partners would leave Santiago able to tell North Korea: "We talked to president Bush and he is serious about these talks and we are too," the State Department official said.
Bush may have to be cautious in taking any hard line on North Korea as it may hurt the feelings of its southern neighbor.
South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun warned last week that hard-line tactics on Pyongyang would have "grave repercussions."
"There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue, and a hard-line policy will have grave repercussions and implications for the Korean peninsula," Roh said. "I trust the United States will respect the hard reality facing the Koreans."
The Bush administration's tough policy toward North Korea has put it at odds with South Korea in the past.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell met with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing and discussed the crisis on the Korean peninsula Thursday, the State Department official said.
"We talked about having the six-party talks as soon as possible. There was no specific date. The secretary (of state) noted we had a solid proposal on the table," the State Department official said.
Three rounds of multilateral talks, seeking to persuade Pyongyang to take aid and security guarantees in return for mothballing the nuclear program, have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002.
North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks in September.
"We certainly do not favor setting any preconditions for returning to the talks, or negotiating our proposal of last June (of aid for disarmament) outside of the talks," the US official said.
-------- missile defense
LockMart's PAC-3 Missiles Intercept Two Targets During Flight Test
Dallas TX (SPX)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04zl.html
Lockheed Martin's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missile successfully intercepted two missile targets today during Developmental Test/Operational Test-12 (DT/OT- 12), the most complex flight test scenario to date for PAC-3.
During the initial phase of the test, conducted at White Sands Missile Range, NM, six missiles were in the air simultaneously.
In DT/OT-12, a total of four PAC-3 Missiles were ripple-fired against two separate targets: a Patriot-As-A-Target (PAAT) modified to represent a short- range Tactical Ballistic Missile (TBM) and a medium velocity Storm Maneuvering Tactical Target Vehicle supplied by Orbital Science.
The mission sequence was a two missile ripple-fire against the modified PAAT, closely followed by a two missile ripple-fire against the Storm target. Once the targets were intercepted and destroyed, the two remaining PAC-3s executed a preplanned self-destruct sequence.
Test objectives included demonstrating the system's capability to detect, track, engage and intercept two simultaneously arriving, threat representative TBM targets, and to validate the performance of several components of the PAC- 3 Missile that were part of on-going cost reduction initiatives. Preliminary data indicates that all test objectives were achieved.
Also taking part in today's test was the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) radar. The THAAD radar tracked the two target missiles.
Although not part of the test objectives, the THAAD radar was able to participate and reduce risk as the THAAD system leads up to its own flight testing next year.
"With today's test, we have wrapped up the near-term PAC-3 flight test program to successfully demonstrate the cut-in of cost reduction hardware," said Colonel John Vaughn, U.S. Army Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense project manager.
"We continue to demonstrate the capabilities of the PAC-3 Missile in increasingly taxing scenarios, and it consistently proves to be the most reliable, advanced air defense missile deployed today," said Steve Graham, Lockheed Martin's vice president - PAC-3 Missile program.
"Our goal is to prove that the system is mature and capable of defending soldiers in the field from numerous threats. We are very proud of the PAC-3s performance."
Lockheed Martin is the only provider of proven hit-to-kill missile defense systems capable of defeating weapons of mass destruction, including missiles carrying biological, chemical and nuclear payloads.
The PAC-3 Missile, THAAD and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), which utilizes the PAC-3, are elements of the terminal defense layer of the National Ballistic Missile Defense System.
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control is prime contractor on the PAC-3 Missile Segment upgrade to the Patriot air defense system.
The PAC-3 Missile Segment upgrade consists of the PAC-3 Missile, a highly agile hit-to-kill interceptor, the PAC-3 Missile canisters (in four packs), a Fire Solution Computer and an Enhanced Launcher Electronics System.
The PAC-3 Missile has been selected as the primary interceptor for the multi-national MEADS program. Managed by the NATO MEADS Management Agency (NAMEADSMA), MEADS is a model transatlantic development program focused on the next generation of air and missile defense.
MEADS will focus on risk reduction, application of key technologies and validation of a system design incorporating the PAC-3 Missile as the prime interceptor.
Storm Maneuvering Tactical Target Vehicle
The Storm Maneuvering Tactical Target Vehicle (MTTV) rocket, which performed its mission as planned, was used as a target to test the Patriot missile defense system.
"It has been an extraordinarily busy and successful two-week period for our launch teams, culminating with the successful MTTV launch for the Missile Defense Agency," said Mr. Ron Grabe, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Company's Launch Systems Group.
"We are very proud of our record of supporting MDA's flight test programs with the most reliable target vehicles in the industry. We look forward to our future missions that will help MDA develop, test and deploy effective missile defense systems."
Orbital provided and tested the rocket's guidance and separation systems, performed all vehicle design, production and integration activities and conducted all launch day mission operations.
The MTTV rocket is a single stage vehicle which uses a retired U.S. government rocket engine from the Minuteman ICBM program and a modified Pershing II reentry vehicle.
-------- russia
U.S. Ambassador Calls on Russia to Fully Support Efforts to Restrict Nuclear Technology Transfers
Global Security Newswire
By Mike Nartker
November 19, 2004
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_11_19.html#B5D1EE60
WASHINGTON - U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow called on Russia this week to fully support a Bush administration effort to restrict transfers of nuclear technologies that could be used to produce weapon-grade materials (see GSN, June 23).
During a speech Tuesday at Princeton University in New Jersey, Vershbow said Russia had been "reluctant" to support a Bush administration initiative to restrict transfers of uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies. As first proposed by President George W. Bush in February, the initiative calls for countries to deny such technologies to those countries that do not already possess them (see GSN, Feb. 12).
"We believe this is needed to plug a key loophole in the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty, whereby states have the right to master the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons under false pretenses - that is, by declaring their peaceful intent, while using civilian nuclear programs as cover for weapons development," Vershbow said.
"Our bitter experience with Iran's and North Korea's covert nuclear programs shows why we can no longer give countries the benefit of the doubt," he added.
During this year's summit at Sea Island, Ga., Group of Eight members agreed to a one-year freeze on new exports of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities to countries that do not already possess them. They also called on non-G-8 members to follow their example (see GSN, June 10). Russia is a G-8 member, along with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
"Although we may not agree with Russia on all tactical aspects of the nonproliferation agenda, I'm optimistic that our strategic outlooks will increasingly coincide, since our interests are basically the same," Vershbow said.
He noted Russia's support at this year's G-8 summit for another Bush administration initiative to require countries seeking to import nuclear technologies for civilian programs to first have had signed an Additional Protocol to their International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement. The Additional Protocol gives the agency the authority to conduct more intrusive monitoring of a country's nuclear activities.
Vershbow praised the accomplishments of several joint U.S.-Russian nonproliferation activities, such as efforts to redirect former Soviet WMD scientists to civilian research projects and efforts to eliminate Russian nuclear weapons by removing their fissile material and converting it for use as civilian nuclear power plant fuel (see GSN, Oct. 6). He also praised Russia's decision in May to join the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, which seeks to interdict shipments of WMD-related cargo.
"We look forward to the active engagement of its security and military agencies both in preparing for interdiction operations, and in shutting down proliferation networks once and for all," he said.
In his remarks, Vershbow praised the "increasingly constructive interaction" between the United States and Russia on nonproliferation issues, noting Moscow's growing realization of the need to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
"The Russians showed some ambivalence in the past about the threat posed by Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and about the current regime in Tehran. However, they are increasingly clear-eyed about the danger, and our cooperation is improving," Vershbow said.
The United States has been concerned about Russia's construction of the nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr. Citing the press service of the Russian Security Council, the RIA Novosti news agency reported today that Russia planned to continue its cooperation with Iranian civilian nuclear efforts (see GSN, Oct. 14).
In his remarks, Vershbow also noted a number of recent moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin to centralize political power in the Kremlin, including through an end to popular elections for members of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament; a proposal to eliminate popular elections for regional governors; and increasing state control over Russian media sources.
"It appears that all branches and levels of government are being made more accountable to the president, but less accountable to the public," Vershbow said.
"I don't want to overstate what has happened so far," he added. "I want to be clear about this: Russia's transformation from its repressive, Soviet past has not stopped or been reversed."
The recent political moves in Russia are not likely to weaken cooperation with the United States on nonproliferation issues, Vershbow said.
Even so, he added, "regression toward more authoritarianism and reduced accountability in Russian governance would ... ultimately undermine Russia's evolution into the strong, confident and responsible partner that we will need at our side to help us overcome the global threats we will face in this century: terrorism, proliferation, and regional instability."
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Non-aligned states on nuclear mission to Iran
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 19, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041119145524.r7l7idoc.html
Four ambassadors from non-aligned and G-77 countries in the UN atomic agency were to head to Tehran Friday ahead of talks on whether Iran should face UN sanctions over its nuclear program, Malaysian ambassador Hussein Haniff told AFP.
Haniff said he and the ambassadors of Cuba, South Africa and Algeria "are going to update ourselves about the agreement between the EU and Iran" on Tehran suspending uranium enrichment.
The suspension, which is set to begin on Monday, responds to a resolution adopted by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in September for Iran to halt key parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, Haniff said.
The United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and wants the IAEA to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council, which could impose punishing sanctions.
But Haniff said he saw no reason for such a referral.
"Iran honored the resolution from the last board meeting. When the resolution is honored, why should we refer Iran to the Security Council," he said.
Haniff said the ambassadors would be leaving Friday evening and returning to Vienna early Monday.
The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors will next Thursday begin consideration of the Iranian question.
Malaysia, Cuba and South Africa are the so-called troika leaders of the non-aligned states on the IAEA board. Algeria is chairman at the IAEA of the G-77 group. The Group of 77 is the largest third world coalition in the United Nations.
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-------- nevada
US Congress Keeps Alive Plans For Nev Nuclear Waste Dump
Wall Street Journal,
November 19, 2004
http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_news.asp?cpath=20041119/ACQDJON200411191938DOWJONESDJONLINE001103.htm&
WASHINGTON (AP)--U.S. lawmakers agreed Friday to provide enough money to keep alive plans for a nuclear waste dump in Nevada, but they put off trying to resolve a dispute over radiation protection that could doom the project if not resolved.
The compromise limits funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste program to $577 million this fiscal year, the same as last year but about two-thirds of the $880 million the Energy Department had said it needed to keep the program on track.
The House had approved only $179 million for the project planned for the Nevada desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, an amount that would have essentially shut the program down.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee dealing with Yucca, worked out a compromise with his House counterpart, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, to come up with more money and keep the program going as part of an omnibus budget package.
Congressional leaders hoped to pass the $388 billion spending measure, covering most federal agencies, by Saturday.
While given enough money keep it operating, the Yucca Mountain project faces numerous thorny problems that must be resolved next year. Already a planned 2010 opening of the waste site is growing increasingly unlikely, say program supporters in Congress and the Bush administration.
A federal court ruled this year that the facility's proposed radiation standards failed to follow National Academy of Sciences recommendations as required by Congress. The Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to rework its standards to meet the court's objection.
The White House tried to get language into the budget legislation that would have ended the requirement that EPA follow the Academy's recommendations. But Republicans backed away from the issue both because they feared it would doom the spending compromise and because of the vehement opposition from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Reid, a staunch opponent of the Yucca waste site who will be the Senate's Democratic leader next year, vowed to fight any legislative provision changing the radiation requirements.
The Energy Department had hoped to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year and to develop a transportation plan for moving waste to the site beginning in 2010.
The Yucca repository, dug into a volcanic ridge near the Nevada Test Site, is being built to hold 70,000 tons of used commercial reactor fuel and high-level defense waste that has been accumulating at sites in 39 states.
Web Sites:
Yucca Mountain project:
http://www.ymp.gov
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management:
http://www.state.nv.us/ nucwaste
Nuclear Regulatory Commission:
http://www.nrc.gov
Dow Jones Newswires
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Spending bill includes $577 million for Yucca
Reid aide nominated for nuke commission
Las Vegas Sun
November 19, 2004
By Suzanne Struglinski<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-gov/2004/nov/19/517853131.html
WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders, scrambling to finalize a massive spending bill, agreed on a Yucca Mountain budget after a long night of meetings, ending much political wrangling and behind-the-scenes negotiations.
The nuclear waste project budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 would be $577 million, the same budget as the last fiscal year, said Tessa Hafen, spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The Energy and Water Spending bill is finalized and there is little chance the number would change. The bill does not contain any proposed change to the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation standard.
At the center of the Yucca deal-making were Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a leading pro-Yucca lawmaker, and Reid, who has long battled Yucca and was elected this week to lead the Senate Democrats.
The Energy Department asked for $880 million, and after a fight over how to fund it, the House only approved $131 million. The Energy Department, which is trying to submit its license application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year, has not said how the final budget will affect the project.
Hafen said the $577 million is not ideal for Reid, but when starting at an almost $1 billion request, it is almost half of the amount the department wanted.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, agreed to small across-the-board cuts for all other projects to make up the money needed to fund the Yucca projet, Hafen said.
Back-room debate over Yucca took a leading role this week in a lame-duck session of Congress. Lawmakers have been working feverishly to finalize a $388 billion budget bill for federal agencies and domestic programs, and Yucca was one of a handful of important sticking points.
Reid tried as he does every year to slice the budget. Domenici fought to maintain at least the same level of funding as last year.
Lawmakers are trying to get work done by this evening or Saturday before they leave the Capitol until the new session starts in January.
The giant measure contains extra money for priorities such as veterans and the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan, and likely thousands of projects for lawmakers' home districts.
But the legislation was largely defined by Bush's demands for curbs on domestic spending, with only modest increases for favorites such as education and cuts for some of the president's own initiatives.
"Everybody took hits," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., a chief author of the measure. "There will be members who aren't totally satisfied, but we were committed to stay within the budget number."
In other news, it was unclear today where Reid's nomination to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- one of Reid's top aides, Greg Jaczko -- stood. The commission ultimately would license and regulate Yucca. Domenici and other pro-Yucca lawmakers oppose the nomination.
Reid was working to include Jaczko in a large nominations package under negotiation. The package could contain up to 100 different people awaiting confirmation including nominees for federal judgeships, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, assistant U.S. attorney and other federal positions. Reid has a hold on a number of those nominations, although not judges.
Hafen said Reid is determined to get Jaczko on the commission, so if Domenici wants to hold his nomination up he will bring down the entire nominations package.
"Sen. Reid is very serious about that," Hafen said.
Reid will lift his hold on other nominees as long as Jaczko is in the package, so the ball will be in Domenici's court, Hafen said.
Domenici spokesman Chris Gallegos said he did not know where the situation stood earlier today.
The debate on Jaczko's nomination was held up largely this year by Republicans who said they wanted to consider a Republican nominee and they would wait to move both together.
On Monday the White House nominated Albert Henry Konetzni Jr. of New York for a spot on the commission.
Konetzni retired as a Navy vice admiral in July after 38 years, according to the White House. He was a nuclear submariner.
He served as deputy commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command and U.S. Atlantic Fleet. He received his bachelor's degree from the United States Naval Academy and his master's degree from George Washington University, according to the White House nomination announcement issued Monday.
Mitch Singer, spokesman for the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute, said the group would prefer both Jaczko and Konetzni go through the appropriate hearing process, rather than be pushed through during the final hours of a lame-duck session.
"This thing needs to go through a full confirmation," Singer said. "We'd rather see them not rush it."
The Nuclear Energy Institute and some senators oppose Jaczko's nomination because they see him as possibly biased due to his past work in Reid's office against the proposed nuclear waste storage site planned for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
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NRC EXTENDS COMMENT PERIOD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT ON PROPOSED URAN