NucNews - December 14, 2004 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Physicist Lauriston S. Taylor Dies; Leader in the Science of Radiation By Joe Holley Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 14, 2004; Page B05 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62410-2004Dec13?language=printer Lauriston S. Taylor, 102, a radiation physicist and a pioneer in the field of radiation safety, died Nov. 26 at the Collington Retirement Center in Mitchellville of Alzheimer's disease. Except for a period of time overseas during World War II, he lived in Bethesda from 1930 to 1990, when he moved to the retirement center. Mr. Taylor joined the National Bureau of Standards in 1927 as the first federal employee to work in the rapidly growing area of X-ray applications in medicine and other sciences. His work led to the establishment of the first national standard for X-ray exposure. For the next seven decades, he studied the health effects of long-term exposure to low levels of radiation and other issues of radiation science. He also was founder and for 48 years president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. "Lauriston Taylor combined a solid physics background with amazing talents as an administrator and politician," Thomas Tenforde, the council's current president, said in a statement released by the Bethesda-based organization. "He was able to attract leading scientists in physics, medicine, biology and public health to work as volunteers on the expert committees that produce [the council's] reports." As a 26-year-old researcher at the National Bureau of Standards, Mr. Taylor found out firsthand about radiation exposure. He was calibrating clinical radiation meters in an X-ray beam and forgot to replace a lead panel, thereby receiving several minutes of full-body exposure to radiation. "He seemed to have suffered no ill effects," his son Nelson Taylor said, noting his father's longevity. He used the mishap to construct a portable battery-operated meter to measure exposure rates. He also used the experience years later as a government witness in a number of court cases involving workers exposed to small amounts of radiation. He argued that small doses were not dangerous. At a time when doctors, nurses and medical technicians were badly burned by overdoses of high-level X-ray radiation, Mr. Taylor became the principal author of the first workplace radiation standards, established by the Bureau of Standards in 1934. "We didn't know anything really about body-organ response to radiation," he told the Boston Globe in a 1994 interview. "The evidence we had wasn't very much." He also organized the U.S. Advisory Committee on X-Ray and Radium Protection in 1929. His work with these groups and with the Council on Radiation Protection was integral to establishing definitive standards for X-ray shielding and for safe X-ray exposure limits for radiation workers and the public. The teams of scientists that created the first atomic bomb used the council's standards, which Mr. Taylor helped develop. Lauriston S. Taylor -- known as Laurie -- was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and grew up in Maplewood, N.J. As a grade school student, he visited Thomas A. Edison at his laboratory in nearby South Orange, N.J. He attended the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., to study engineering but dropped out after a year to earn money for tuition. He then received a bachelor's degree from Cornell University but left shortly before finishing his doctorate in physics to join the Bureau of Standards. In 1940, the National Defense Research Committee commissioned Mr. Taylor to organize a new proximity fuse for antiaircraft ammunition. The British relied on the fuse to defend themselves against German air raids. In 1943, he set up an operations research program for the Army, first with the Army Air Forces' 8th Fighter Command and then with the 9th. Based in England, he was scientific adviser to Lt. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg. As the war ended, he became director of the U.S. Continental Air Command's operations research division. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Medal of Freedom for his work with the military. In 1946, he returned to the National Bureau of Standards as chief of the X-ray section (where he was known for his outlandish bow ties almost as much as his scientific accomplishments). In 1948, he took a year's leave of absence to organize and direct the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's biophysics branch. His projects included early work on the long-range evaluation of strontium 90 from nuclear fallout. In 1962, he became associate director of the Bureau of Standards, retiring in 1965. He then moved to the National Academy of Sciences as special assistant to the president and executive director of the academy's advisory committee on emergency planning. He retired from the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, while continuing as president of the National Council on Radiation Protection until his third retirement, in 1977. He also continued consulting and writing until his late nineties. He wrote about 160 papers and all or part of 20 books, the last one at age 97. -------- australia Australia WMC says suitor Xstrata lowballs uranium Dec 14, 2004 By James Regan (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7093335&pageNumber=1 SYDNEY, Dec 14 - Xstrata Ltd. (XTA.L: Quote, Profile, Research) has underrated the importance of WMC Resources Ltd.'s Australian uranium mining operations with its A$7.5 billion ($5.7 billion) takeover bid, WMC Chief Executive Andrew Michelmore said on Tuesday. Michelmore said Mick Davis, his Xstrata counterpart, "would certainly lowball it" in hopes of cheaply acquiring WMC (WMR.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's third-largest miner of nickel and Australia's second-largest copper miner. The comments at a media briefing come less than a week after Xstrata threatened to abandon its offer if the Australian company goes ahead with a plan to pay investors up to A$1 billion in cash. "If I was in his (Davis') shoes I would want to pick it (WMC) up as cheaply as possible," Michelmore said. Xstrata company officials in Australia were not immediately available to comment. WMC has rejected Xstrata's A$6.35-a-share offer, launched on Oct. 23 at a 24 percent premium to the share price at the time. WMC shares have since traded as high as A$7.39, closing Tuesday at A$7.03. Analysts said Xstrata likely factored uranium mining into its bid, but differed with WMC on the divison's future value, based on projected increases in uranium prices. NOT TO BE IGNORED "Uranium's not something they could just ignore," said one analyst, who asked not to be named. Michelmore earlier told Reuters the company's uranium arm was worth about A$1.6 billion. "That's based on current uranium prices, and our production of 10 million pounds per year," he said, after delivering a presentation to analysts at a uranium conference. Industry heavyweights Rio Tinto Ltd.Plc (RIO.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) (RIO.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , BHP Billiton Ltd./Plc (BHP.X: Quote, Profile, Research) (BLT.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , Anglo American Ltd. (AAL.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Phelps Dodge Corp. (PD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) have been named by analysts as potential countersuitors, though no rival bids have emerged. Xstrata is readying a bidder's statement that will later be matched by a target statement from WMC, providing more precise details of WMC's operations. "If I put my feet in the shoes of a particularly interested party, then I would wait until WMC puts out its target statement," Michelmore said adding that would be late December at the earliest. "Uranium has been totally dismissed as byproduct (to copper), and it's not," Michelmore told Reuters. The uranium unit's annual revenue of around A$110 million is dwarfed by the much larger copper arm, which has revenue of around A$900 million annually. Depletion of the world's stockpiles of uranium, a new generation of safer nuclear power plants and high oil prices were providing a positive outlook for uranium producers after years of depressed conditions, Michelmore said. Spot market prices for the metal had doubled to $20 a pound in the last year, he noted. A further $5 per pound rise in uranium prices would boost the unit's value to $2 billion, Michelmore said. Olympic Dam, in the South Australian outback, was developed at a time of low uranium prices is better known for the 220,000 tonnes or so of copper and 100,000 ounces of gold it yields each year. The concentrate, or ground ore -- also contains uranium, which is segregated from the other metals, processed and shipped out in sealed drums. With no nuclear industry in Australia, WMC exports all of what it mines, mostly to Europe and Asia. -------- china China aims to quadruple nuclear power 27 new reactors by 2020 are planned Reuters Dec. 14, 2004 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5886720/ BEIJING - China has big plans for nuclear power, hoping to build 27 new reactors at a cost of $1 billion each in order to quadruple capacity by 2020. That should take China to 36,000 megawatts, according to Zhang Huazhu, chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority. “It is not easy to realize the target of 36,000 megawatts by 2020. It means we should build 27 nuclear power generators each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts by then,” said Zhang, also vice minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. With nine nuclear power generators in operation, China had a total nuclear power capacity of 7,010 megawatts by the end of July, he said. Capability would reach 9,130 megawatts by the end of 2005 when the Tianwan plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu came online, Zhang said. Pillar 'of the power structure' He said the goal is for nuclear power to account for about 4 percent of China’s total output by 2020 compared with just 1.7 percent at present. The new plants would be concentrated in the thriving but energy-thirsty eastern and southern coastal areas, Zhang said, though inland provinces had also drawn up plans. “Nuclear energy will become one of the pillars of the power structure in the booming coastal areas,” he said. All China’s existing nuclear power plants are along the east and south coast. In July, Beijing approved to two nuclear power projects, the first in over five years. Each plant, one in Zhejiang and one in Guangdong, will have two 1,000 megawatt reactors. Two other plants in the same provinces were in the approval process, Zhang said. Foreign firms would be invited to tender for construction of two of the four plants, while the other two would rely mainly on China’s own technology, he added. China’s government had attached great importance to the safety of nuclear power plants and its safety supervision and management system proved to be effective, Zhang said. “Radiation dosage of employees in our nuclear plants are below one percent, much lower than the government’s limit,” he said. Coal and hydropower Three-quarters of China’s 400,000 megawatts of installed power capacity, the world’s second largest after the United States, are fired by coal. The country has suffered from its worst power crunch in 20 years this summer due to a galloping economy and a coal squeeze. Engineers blocked the Yangtze at the Three Gorges Dam in June last year, filling the reservoir for a $25 billion hydro-electric project, the world’s largest, that is a point of national pride. -------- depleted uranium After $247 Million, What Is There to Show? Chapter 4: The battlefield at home. Daily Press BY BOB EVANS December 14, 2004 http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du4,0,4816042.story?coll=dp-breaking-news For 20 years and two days, Steve Robinson was a soldier. He jumped from airplanes, trained to fight and prepared to die for his country. He was tough and resourceful enough to win the beret of an Army Ranger. Now he fights in Washington, D.C. Often against the same outfit that trained him. For the past few years, Robinson has been executive director of the Gulf War Resource Center Inc., a small-budget nonprofit group devoted to working on issues important to veterans of the 1991 war and active-duty troops in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The center operates out of the offices of the Vietnam Veterans of America organization near Washington. Robinson's last assignment in the Army was at the Pentagon, working for the officials in charge of looking out for the veterans of the 1991 war. He says their willingness to put the Pentagon's public-relations ratings ahead of veterans' health prompted his career switch. For the past few years, he's been one of the most public and persistent critics of the Pentagon's insistence that depleted uranium weapons are not a significant health risk to troops on the battlefield. Robinson says he doesn't know whether depleted uranium weapons should be banned. But he says the Pentagon is so enamored with them and so concerned about its image, officials won't pay attention to the mounting evidence that they might be more harm than good. The ultra-effective anti-tank weapons are crucial aspects of the U.S. arsenal, and Pentagon officials say it would be a huge loss if they were deemed too dangerous. Every time that the weapons hit a hard target, they create thousands of particles of mildly radioactive toxic dust, small enough to be inhaled. A growing number of scientists are finding that the dust - even in small quantities - can cause genetic damage that they think might lead to cancer and other problems. Early research also indicates that the dust can migrate to the brain of rats forced to breathe small quantities of the dust, raising the possibility that some veterans' neurological problems are linked to the weapons. Robinson says one of the most important ways that the Pentagon has tried to sweep the issue out of sight involves its handling of millions of dollars used to investigate the cause of the illnesses suffered by Gulf War vets. Instead of pursuing the cause of the veterans' health problems, he says, Pentagon officials have put the bulk of their efforts and money on studies that would discount the problem or show that the illnesses are mental, not physical. Robinson isn't alone in that criticism. AFTER $247 MILLION, A CAUSE HAS YET TO BE FOUND According to Congress' Government Accountability Office, $247 million has been spent in the past 12 years to research the causes and possible cures of Gulf War vets' illnesses. Most was spent on work that would demonstrate or augment the Pentagon's original theory - that stress and people unable to handle it are the problem, not any of the weapons, pills or chemicals that the Pentagon produced, according to congressional testimony in June. The Pentagon has controlled 74 percent of that $247 million, with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies spending the rest, says the accountability office, commonly known as the GAO. The military and U.S. government also controls the availability of depleted uranium for use in experiments by outside researchers, though there are chemical substitutes that can be used. Pentagon officials have rebuffed attempts to give experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and other agencies a bigger role in researching the possible effects of depleted uranium, even though those agencies are more experienced in that work, according to congressional testimony. Several Nobel Prize winners have told Congress that researchers who might be interested in getting involved have been discouraged by the military's stranglehold over the money to finance the work and the way it controls other information about Gulf War veterans. Some of the $247 million went to explore legitimate theories that proved invalid - a natural and unavoidable result of that kind of work, many researchers say. For instance, government officials in July ended years of research into whether a bacterial infection could be causing the neurological problems the veterans suffer. Other expensive efforts were doomed from the beginning because they were poorly designed or set out to do the impossible, the GAO says. POOR PLANNING, EXECUTION MEANS $13.7 MILLION WASTED One recent example is an investigation into how many troops were possibly exposed to chemical weapons and other dangers as a result of a fire at an Iraqi munitions depot in Khamisiyah in 1991. According to the most recent official government account of the incident, the CIA warned the military before the war that chemical weapons were stored there, but the word never filtered to commanders in the field. Military officials ordered the depot destroyed, and a potentially lethal cloud of debilitating chemicals might have been launched into the air. In 1993, the Pentagon and CIA said no one was exposed. In 1996, after news-media and congressional investigations, they acknowledged that there might be a problem, albeit a small one. At first, the two government agencies said hundreds of troops might be affected and that the amount of chemical poison was so small as to be inconsequential. Then a copy of a classified document was leaked, and the government called a news conference and announced that it was really thousands of troops, congressional testimony said. Finally, in 2000, the government's official estimate was upped to 101,752 troops, the GAO says. But even that number was suspect. So to get a better handle on the facts, the Pentagon paid consultants $13.7 million to develop computer models and do other work. It also spent untold dollars and man-hours on the project with its own staff, so the true cost of this study can't be established, the GAO reported in June. What resulted was a study so poorly conceived and done, it's worthless, the GAO says. Part of the problem is that some of the data necessary to do it right just isn't obtainable because no one was keeping reliable records on weather and wind conditions in Iraq at the time of the explosion. As a result, no one can say how far - or in what direction - the windborne chemicals might have gone. And there's no reliable information on exactly what was in the depot when it was blown up. A similar incident occurred at the Blackhorse Army base in Doha, Kuwait, on July 11, 1991. In that case, more than 7,000 pounds of depleted uranium weapons were destroyed in smoke and flames, along with four Abrams tanks and millions of dollars of other equipment and armaments. The heater for a munitions truck malfunctioned, caught fire and caused a series of explosions and fires in the base motor pool, the Pentagon's report on the incident says. As recently as last year, microscopic bits of depleted uranium could be found in the sand and debris there, other studies found. TROOPS HAD NO WARNING OF DANGER AFTER 1991 FIRE Pentagon records show that within hours of the fire, officers in the chain of command at Doha received the first of several notices about potential health hazards from the burning depleted uranium. The warnings contained specific directions about precautions that should be taken in the cleanup. None of those precautions were taken. The soldiers on the ground weren't told about the problem until 1998. The Army says the commanding officer didn't recall getting the warnings. The Pentagon offered no explanation for why soldiers involved in the four-month cleanup after the fire were allowed to handle materials with their bare hands and no precautions. After 1998, a government-maintained laboratory studied the situation. Despite the lack of adequate data and that "large uncertainties exist," it concluded none of the troops incurred a significant health problem by inhaling the depleted uranium dust created by the fire. That lab used many of the same techniques employed in the Khamisiyah analysis. No GAO examination of Doha has been requested. The Doha base is still used by U.S. troops today, though the site of the fire is a restricted area. Troops from Fort Eustis deployed to the region visit there frequently. Doha is one of the major embarkation points for U.S. troops entering the Iraqi theater of war. It also has an amusement park and post exchange, making it a popular spot for off-duty troops to visit when they have a day off. The Army says the site, which is near a refinery, is safe. BASIC FACT-FINDING WASN'T DONE, EPIDEMIOLOGIST SAYS Critics of the government's efforts to find the cause of Persian Gulf War veterans' health problems say these examples aren't the most important oversights or missteps. Despite all the research spending, the military and government have yet to do a responsible epidemiological study that includes some of the fundamental data necessary to unravel the problem, says Robert Haley, a former CDC official. Haley is now chief of the department of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and author of important studies on Gulf War veterans' health problems. A good epidemiological study would give researchers a handle on how many veterans are ill with undiagnosed problems, where they were during the war, what vaccinations they were given, what they did while deployed and other data, Haley says. It should have been done more than a decade ago as one of the first steps after they realized a problem existed, he says. Haley's criticisms are echoed by a number of scientists, but his background in tracking down the causes of high-profile illnesses sets him apart. At the CDC, he helped lead the investigation into toxic shock syndrome in the late 1970s, showing how women were getting critically ill because of the new generation of tampons they were using. He got involved in looking at Gulf War veterans' illnesses in the mid-1990s, after Texas businessman Ross Perot asked the dean of the Dallas medical center how much money it would take to start looking at reasons for the maladies that so many veterans were suffering. Perot said he'd been hiring former military personnel for years and just wasn't buying the Pentagon's line that these men and women were merely weak of body, will or mind, Haley recalls. The first thing that Haley did was look at the available data on the disease. He says he was surprised to find out that the basics of figuring out an epidemiological puzzle hadn't been done, despite all the money and time the government had spent. Instead of starting by spending a lot of money to prove one or two possible theories for the cause, he says, a good epidemiologist will start gathering some basic facts. Those facts would include who's involved (the sick people and people just like them who aren't sick), what they did during the war, where they were and other factors. That way, the epidemiologist can see what's common among the people who are sick and the people who aren't. Usually, he says, there will be only one or two things that the sick people have in common that turn out to be statistically significant and worth pursuing with research money. EPIDEMIOLOGY 101: THE CASE OF SUSPICIOUS POTATO SALAD A classic example is figuring out why some people got sick at a church picnic, he says. A good epidemiologist would interview the people who went to the picnic (those who got sick and those who didn't). She'd find out what games they played, what food they ate and where they were at the picnic. Then all that data would be compared, and you'd typically find a common thread - for instance, all the sick people ate potato salad and none of the well people ate it. Only then would you spend the money to take the potato salad to the lab to examine it, he says. But the government didn't do that - and still hasn't done it - Haley says. Instead, it did three studies that said the vets weren't really sick or, at least, they were no worse off than most people their age. The only difference it found was a slight increase in accidental deaths among the Gulf War vets. "They were so convinced that they would find nothing that they found nothing and published the data," he says. Haley took the numbers the government-sponsored epidemiologists used in those studies to demonstrate just the opposite. He showed where researchers made questionable assumptions and how the same data could point in the opposite direction if other, more logical assumptions were used. A big mistake here, he says, is the government studies assumed that military personnel deployed for the war were just as healthy as anyone else in the military or the general public. So after the war, when they were found to be just as likely to die or get sick as other people, the government concluded that there was no problem. But the deployed soldiers were probably much healthier than those other groups to start with because they had to pass a rigorous physical exam to be considered for deployment overseas, Haley says. In that war, many troops were deemed not deployable because they were HIV-positive, were injured or otherwise in questionable health. Well before the Gulf War, epidemiologists had a stock phrase to describe this phenomenon: the "healthy warrior effect." The government's researchers should have been familiar with it, Haley says. There were other problems, too. Haley and others noted that the data the government used in claiming only normal rates of death, cancer, infant deformities and other problems among Gulf War veterans came solely from military and VA hospitals. That left out most of the people who'd served in the war, Haley says - people who were reservists or got out of the military and weren't eligible for treatment in government hospitals. It wasn't surprising that data collected about active-duty military personnel using military hospitals showed they weren't sick; the sick ones had been forced out of uniform, Haley says. Members of Congress and others have latched onto that work and similar studies to force changes in the way the Defense Department, VA and other government agencies handle research, Haley and others say. SOME NEW FACES, SOME OLD PROBLEMS In 2002, Haley, Robinson and other critics of the government's handling of the research were appointed to a new panel of experts that advises the head of the VA on the research that should be conducted to find the cause of the vets' illnesses. Haley says he's encouraged that the government is slowly turning around to face the problem. In the past couple of years, he says, meaningful research has begun to trickle in, and the research is becoming better focused. A proper epidemiological study is scheduled to begin in January, he notes. There are still problems from within government agencies that have fought an honest approach to the problem, Haley, Robinson and others on the advisory panel say. Some of the bureaucrats who have thwarted progress are gone or shunted aside, they say, but others remain. The GAO reported in June that the advisory panel was having problems getting reliable information from the Pentagon and even from officials within the VA. Panel members aren't consistently being told about research being considered for financing, so they can help ensure that money is directed to the greatest needs, the GAO said. The panel also wasn't even being told about research when it was finished, the agency said. As of Sept. 23, 2003, about 80 percent of the 240 federally financed medical research projects for Gulf War illnesses had been completed, the GAO said in June. Yet the last time the VA reviewed this research to determine whether there were gaps and where there were opportunities that needed to be pursued was in 2001, the report said. The VA's inaction is important because it's responsible for coordinating the government's Gulf War illness research, even though it's not been given the bulk of the money to do that work. The VA has also been slow to act in other ways. In June, VA officials admitted to Congress that they had allocated only $450,000 of the $20 million budgeted for Gulf War illness research for the year. By then, three-fourths of the budget year was over. VA officials acknowledge that they need to do a better job. The government's Gulf War research coordinating group (a separate panel from the advisory committee) hadn't met since August 2003, the GAO said in its June report. The GAO said that when it checked with the coordinating group in April 2004, it found that there were no plans to meet again. Jim Binns, chairman of the VA secretary's Gulf War advisory committee, told Congress in June that he was concerned that the Defense Department had no plans to spend money on new Gulf War illness research in coming years. He said that meant total government research spending on Gulf War illnesses would drop from $35 million a year to $11 million, just as promising developments in research needed to be followed up. Most of the $11 million will have limited scope, too, because VA administrators can't spend money for research that isn't directly related to VA patients. The work on depleted uranium research that many scientists say is necessary thus isn't eligible. Michael E. Kilpatrick, the Pentagon's deputy director for health issues involving deployed forces, says that doesn't mean the Pentagon is putting a halt to all this research. He says the military will continue to pursue the studies that are underway until they're concluded. With money tight, he says, the Pentagon must use more of its healthcare budget to benefit soldiers fighting current and future wars, not those of the past. RESEARCH MONEY BECOMING HARDER TO FIND THESE DAYS That decision was made in 2002, Kilpatrick says, when only one in six vets of the 1991 war was still in uniform. None of the active-duty troops from the 1991 war have the health problems targeted by Gulf War illness research. With a war on, members of Congress pushing veterans' issues say it will be hard to beef up money for research in the VA or other budgets. VA medical centers are starting to feel the effects of caring for troops from the continued fighting overseas. Binns notes that the VA, even in recent years, hasn't been very good about making sure that the money it has for research in this area is well spent. "As recently as 2003, the VA budget in that year - according to the most recent report to Congress - provided for about $4.1 million in Gulf War illness research. Of that amount, 57 percent went to study stress and other psychological causes, 17 percent went to study things like Web-based training for VA physicians and bioterrorism events," he says. Only 17 percent of the money went to things that the advisory committee thinks are directly linked to the soldiers' suffering, Binns says. Alexandra Miller is a government scientist who's carried out some of the most important research into the health effects of depleted uranium. She says Pentagon money for pursuing the results of that work has started to dry up in recent years. "There's not enough money to complete the research," she says, just as science is close to closing the loop on whether depleted uranium is dangerous. She and Vernon Walker - a cancer biologist in New Mexico who's conducted experiments linking inhaled uranium to cellular mutations in rats - say completing the research would take only $5 million if the right projects were financed. That could truly determine whether, once and for all, inhaled depleted uranium is a hazard on the battlefield, they say. "We could be answering these questions, and we wouldn't have to have these kinds of conversations four years from now," Miller says. Richard Albertini, one of the nation's leading cancer researchers, says access to money isn't the only thing that hampers research. He's one of more than a dozen doctors and scientists involved in a continuing medical study assessing the effect of depleted uranium shrapnel in veterans of the 1991 war. The Pentagon has called this study "the gold standard" of whether adverse health can result from exposure to depleted uranium on the battlefield and frequently points to its findings as support for its arguments that the weapons are safe. In the most recently published version of the study, Albertini says, three veterans showed an increased rate of mutations in a gene that doctors think is a "marker" for cancer. A marker for cancer isn't cancer itself but a warning signal that something might be wrong. In this case, the genes were in the white blood cells of the soldiers. Based on that finding, Walker exposed rats to air with very small particles of depleted uranium, to see whether the same kind of mutations would develop. The rats did develop these mutations, which supports the idea that inhaling depleted uranium dust can cause cancer, Albertini and Walker say. The mutations in the marker become less pronounced over time, Albertini says, so it's important to have blood samples from veterans of the more recent war to see whether these mutations continue and to do more research. So far, he says, the military and VA say samples aren't available, even though obtaining them isn't difficult and costs less than $100 apiece, he says. This isn't an idle academic exercise, Albertini says: Researchers might be close to finding a chemical that can halt the mutations, which might mean development of a pill or drug soldiers could take on the battlefield to reverse or arrest the mutations soon after their exposure. Experiments using chickens have been successful in halting the mutations in a test tube, Albertini says. He and Walker say that work could lead to antidotes to "dirty bombs," - explosives made of low-grade nuclear materials such as depleted uranium. Government officials have repeatedly said the nation's urban areas are vulnerable to such attacks if terrorists can obtain a sufficient quantity of the right radioactive materials. A LEGACY OF MISTRUST FROM PREVIOUS WARS Robinson and other veterans' advocates say they're afraid that the Pentagon's attitude toward soldiers' health and the failure to properly address illnesses from the 1991 Gulf War will be equaled in the new war. They say a pattern has developed that will make it difficult for any veteran to believe what the government says. Soldiers, sailors and civilians were often used as guinea pigs in experiments of how nuclear blasts might affect human beings in the years after World War II. The government never told them what was happening, then denied it - then denied that they were at risk until recently. "It took 40 years for them to get treatment and care, " Robinson says. Then came the Vietnam War and Agent Orange, a chemical used to kill acres and acres of jungle foliage, to make it easier for U.S. troops to find and kill the enemy. The government insisted for years that the chemical wasn't a problem, then finally admitted it was. Documents show that U.S. leaders knew the truth in 1972 - maybe earlier - but continued using it anyway, Robinson says. He says the same thing might be happening with depleted uranium and other possible causes of the Gulf War vets' ill health. Part of the problem of getting to the truth of Gulf War veterans' illnesses is that too many people use the issue for ideological purposes, he says. Critics of the weapon on the left use the radiological properties of depleted uranium "to scare people: Depleted uranium is the holocaust," Robinson says. "Then you have the Department of Defense on the right," saying there's no problem and questioning the motives and patriotism of critics, he says. A week before launching Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Pentagon briefed reporters to reiterate the safety of depleted uranium weapons and note the failure of anyone to conclusively link them to any of the health problems from the Persian Gulf War. Col. James Naughton, then the Army's director of munitions, was brought out to speak. According to a transcript issued by the Pentagon, he talked about how much of a battlefield advantage the weapon is. "So we don't want to give that up," he said, "and that's why we use it." One of the reporters asked him why giving up the weapon was even being raised, if the weapon was so safe. "Well, you need to look at the environment of the context where people are asking us questions - who's asking the question?" Naughton replied. "The Iraqis tell us, 'Terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time.' "Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them - OK?" Later in the briefing, Naughton made it clear he thought that Iraq "and other countries that are not friendly to the United States" were behind criticism of the weapon. With those kinds of extremes, not much has happened in the middle, Robinson says. "In the middle," he says, "is the science that has not been conducted." -------- korea Crucial new year for North Korean nuclear standoff Tue Dec 14, 11:59 PM ET - AFP http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041215/wl_asia_afp/yearnkoreanuclear_041215045907 SEOUL, (AFP) - Pressure will grow for more diplomacy to end the nuclear standoff with Stalinist North Korea (news - web sites) as the dispute enters a third calendar year which experts agree will prove decisive for any settlement. North Korea has said it will take no steps until it is sure what shape US policy will take under the second administration of George W. Bush. Initially they may be pleasantly surprised. Some analysts see a softer US line early in the year as the White House tries to deflect charges that it made no progress whatsoever in 2004 because it was unable to compromise with Pyongyang. That softening may not last, however, and will not fundamentally change Washington's demand for the complete and verifiable scrapping of North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes. "US officials have made it clear that their bottom line, the scrapping of North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes, has not shifted," said Park Soo-Gil, an international relations professor at Seoul National University. But the new flexibility could affect how Washington handles North Korea. Recent signals from the White House, that Washington is not interested in regime change but more interested in "transformation", could be the beginning of its new charm offensive aimed at negotiating away the Stalinist regime's weapons of mass destruction. Analysts say the number one goal of the North Korean leadership is to hold on to power and it fears a US attempt to overthrow the regime more than anything. "Basically, the regime's goal in nuclear negotiations is 99 percent about regime survival," said Kim Taewoo of the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses. Indications are emerging that leader Kim Jong-Il's grip on power may be slipping. These include reports that his portraits have been taken down from some locations and unconfirmed accounts of anti-Kim posters and leaflets appearing in some locations as well of as an exodus of unspecified officials and military officers. The reports are met with scepticism from officials here and in China, who see no substantive changes in the political structure of North Korea. On the nuclear standoff, Pyongyang has scarcely budged since Washington accused it in October 2002 of running a secret programme based on enriched uranium in violation of the Agreed Framework -- a 1994 bilateral accord to control the North's nuclear program. That agreement has since unravelled as North Korea has boasted of producing nuclear weapons in an "unbroken chain" after kicking out international inspectors and pulling out of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. US intelligence estimates say North Korea had enough plutonium for up to two nuclear bombs before the current standoff erupted and may have enough for six more now. North Korea has demanded security assurances from Washington, as well as economic and diplomatic concessions in advance, for scrapping them. But it continues to deny running a uranium enrichment scheme. Three rounds of talks bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have failed to narrow the differences. But at the last round in Beijing in August Washington indicated flexibility by saying it would not oppose North Korea obtaining some benefits before it scrapped its nuclear programmes. North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks scheduled for September. Edward Reed, the Seoul representative of the Asia Foundation, said getting Pyongyang to attend a new round would not be enough now. "If those talks make no real progress, like the last ones, that would be the end of the six-party process," he said. Washington, despite opposition from allies including South Korea (news - web sites), may then feel emboldened to try pressure tactics that could include tightening efforts to isolate the regime and urging the UN Security Council to take action. "If a breakthrough doesn't come in the first part of the year, then the situation can get out of control," said Park, a former UN ambassador. -------- latinamerica Cuba braces for worst, US says no justification for invasion charge HAVANA (AFP) Dec 14, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041214135624.u29i6evx.html Cuba pressed on Tuesday in its biggest military exercises in almost 20 years, with hundreds of thousands of troops and millions of civilians taking part, with the communist government arguing the wargames can help deter a US invasion. "The only way to stop aggression is to make it abundantly clear that, in this case, Cuba will become from one end to the other an enormous wasp's nest that no aggressor, however powerful, will be able to overcome," Defense Minister Raul Castro, number two in the Cuban hierarchy, said as the week-long wargames launched Monday. "In the end, (the aggressor) will have to withdraw, bloodied and defeated, because this would be a war of all of the people," Castro, a younger brother of President Fidel Castro, warned. In Washington Monday, asked about the emphasis on repelling a theoretical invasion, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We don't think there is any justification, or any particular foundation for this kind of charge." "The United States has repeatedly called for a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. We think that's what the Cuban people deserve, and we think they deserve it in a peaceful fashion," Boucher said. These "exercises are just, I would say, one or more of the many things that the Cuban government does to try to distract people from the problems that they face in their daily lives," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. General Leonardo Andollo told reporters on Sunday that MiG-29 jets, anti-aircraft batteries were to be deployed during the weeklong exercises meant to be a warning to Washington that Cuba would vigorously defend itself against US agression. The mass war games started Monday and are due to run through to December 19. Senior military and Communist government officials here warned that the administration of US President George W. Bush should take note of the island's war footing. "The determination of the US administration to destroy the (Cuban) revolution however they can, including militarily, determines the necessity of conducting these exercises," Andollo, the deputy chief of Cuba's Armed Revolutionary Forces (FAR), said. His comments came days after Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's designated successor, warned Washington should closely observe Cuba's military prowess and civil defenses during the manoeuvres. Raul Castro is the head of the Caribbean island's armed forces. Operation "Bastion 2004" will involve about 100,000 soldiers, sailors and air force personnel as well as some 400,000 reservists. Air force MiG-29s, anti-aircraft units and elite troops will also support the operation, billed as Cuba's biggest military exercises since 1986. Officials said the exercises would also involve several million civilians who will participate in two days of civil defense exercises, including a simulated aerial assault. The Communist-run island sits some 90 miles (145 kilometers) off the coast of Florida. -------- u.n. Australian FM will not head UN nuclear watchdog: PM AFP Dec 14, 2004 http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041214/ts_afp/australiausnuclear_041214083137 SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard dismissed talk of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer taking over as head of the UN nuclear watchdog, amid reported US pressure for him to do so. "I have no desire to see Alexander Downer leave his present position, none whatsoever," Howard told national radio. "He's doing an excellent job where he is now." The Washington Post reported that the adminstration of US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) would like Downer to replace Mohamed ElBaradei as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The newspaper said the Bush administration thought ElBaradei had been too soft on Iran's suspected nuclear program and had tapped phone conversations between him and Iranian diplomats in an attempt to gain evidence. However Washington had failed to persuade Downer to run to replace him, the newspaper said. Australia has been one of Bush's closest allies on the war against terror and the war in Iraq (news - web sites). Howard said he did not think Downer would take over the job. "I do know that some people have spoken about the possibility of it but I don't think it's going to come off," he said. Downer's office has refused to comment on the report, which comes weeks after he hosted ElBaradei at a leading conference on nuclear proliferation. On Tuesday Downer flew to Papua New Guinea at the start of a Pacific tour. -------- u.s. nuc weapons American Diplomatic Drive Comes Up Short Associated Press BARRY SCHWEID Dec. 14, 2004 http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/10412006.htm WASHINGTON - Bush administration persistence in using diplomacy to solve a nuclear weapons crisis with North Korea is coming up short as the insular regime bobs and weaves away from resuming negotiations. The faltering effort is having a divisive effect on U.S. relations with South Korea and Japan, which have blamed U.S. inflexibility for North Korea's refusal to halt its atomic weapons program. American diplomats are trying to smooth over those differences, while looking to China to make the case to Pyongyang that it would be wise to denuclearize the Korean peninsula in exchange for security assurances and economic benefits. Rose Gotemoeller, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tends to agree with the criticism from South Korea and Japan. "The way in which the administration has relied on diplomacy is to take a very hard line and stick with it, and not be willing to explore possible avenues of resolution," the former Clinton administration official said Monday. "That's not diplomacy, that's standing tough," she said. An offer by the administration last June of security assurances and economic cooperation in exchange for a total halt to the nuclear weapons program was a "decent starting point," she said, and should now be improved. But Danielle Pletka, vice president for defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, said the impasse is not the fault of the Bush administration. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is not going to agree to complete, verifiable dismantling of his nuclear weapons program and will not negotiate "unless we take steps to prop up his regime, which is anathema to us," Pletka said. The answer, she said, is to convince China that "playing both sides is not in their interest." Accusing China of not being an honest broker, Pletka said: "The Chinese think they can play with fire and it will not come back and burn them. It will." The long-term issue is regime change in Pyongyang, "and we have got to bite the bullet," she said. A third view was offered by Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state for nuclear proliferation issues who is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Having a situation in which the North Koreans can be blamed for not coming back to the negotiating table may suit the Bush administration while it has its hands full, especially in dealing with Iraq," Einhorn said. "The administration may see itself in a decent tactical position for the moment." Negotiations were supposed to have resumed in September, but not even low-level talks are anticipated as the year runs out on what appears to be one of the biggest security issues confronting the Bush administration. The most recent reason North Korea gives for not resuming negotiations with the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia is that the Bush administration is trying to topple Kim Jong Il and his government with a "frantic smear campaign." A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman was quoted Monday by KCNA, the state-run news agency, as saying the campaign was reminiscent of U.S. "aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq." However, from the outset, President Bush has followed a different course with North Korea, even while bracketing it with Iraq and Iran as an "axis of evil." While North Korea generally was understood to have a more vigorous nuclear program than Iraq, the president opted for diplomacy in Korea while going to war against Iraq. He authorized American negotiators to offer security assurances to North Korea and said publicly, "We have no intention of invading North Korea." Even so, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other critics suggested before the war with Iraq that North Korea posed a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad. Writing two years ago, after North Korea had reopened its plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, Christopher said North Korea was within six months of being able to produce sufficient weapons-grade material to generate several nuclear bombs. "Contrast that with Iraq," Christopher said. "Not only is North Korea much further along than Iraq in building nuclear weapons, but by virtue of its longer-range missiles it has a greater delivery capability." On Monday, a U.S. official who keeps close watch on North Korea said it definitely has produced at least two atomic bombs. Some analysts in the administration believe it has made even more. ----- U.S. Presses for New Director of the U.N.'s Atomic Agency The New York Times By STEVEN R. WEISMAN December 14, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/politics/14baradei.html WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - The Bush administration said Monday that it would continue to press for Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei to be replaced next year as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but European diplomats and some administration officials said they could not rule out his staying on if no suitable alternative emerges. Officials at the White House and the State Department repeated in nearly identical language on Monday that the administration adhered to the so-called Geneva rule, named after a group of 14 wealthy countries that subsidize the United Nations, that leaders of international organizations should serve only two terms and then retire. Dr. ElBaradei, an Egyptian lawyer who has tangled with the administration on Iraq and drawn criticism from conservatives for his failure to declare that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, began running the I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency, in 1997. His second four-year term ends next fall, and he has said he would like a third term. "Our view has always been, two terms is enough," said Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, adding that no decision had been made on who might replace Dr. ElBaradei. "With regard to any specific agency, we'll have to see who the candidates are. We'll make our decisions at that time." The administration's comments were prompted by a report in The Washington Post on Sunday that secret negotiations conducted by Dr. ElBaradei with Iran had been intercepted by American intelligence services, but that they did not reveal anything incriminating to strengthen the hand of conservatives in the administration seeking his ouster. Bush administration officials said they could not confirm that his conversations had been monitored, but several said they would not be surprised if that were the case. In August, Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden, head of the National Security Agency, testified before Congress that electronic surveillance was often carried out to give "tactical support to State Department negotiators." Despite the American position that Dr. ElBaradei should not have another term, European and other diplomats said he had proved effective in recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. He repeatedly criticized the Tehran government for failing to disclose all its nuclear-related activities. He has also declared that Iran still needed to dispel doubts about its programs. Last month, Iran acceded to a request by Britain, France and Germany to suspend a major part of its nuclear program in return for discussions on possible future economic incentives. Talks with those countries are to resume this week. Bush administration hard-liners, led by John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, have criticized Dr. ElBaradei's performance publicly and privately, particularly because of his refusal before the Iraq war to endorse the administration's view that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. Since the war and the failure to find evidence of such a program, Dr. ElBaradei has said many times that he has been vindicated by the facts, a statement that, while difficult to deny, rankled many throughout the administration. But others in the administration say Dr. ElBaradei, as a Muslim with a reputation for impartiality, has served American interests well on Iran and might well be the best person to help negotiate a resolution of the dispute over Tehran's nuclear program. "There are a lot of views in this administration, but frankly we could do a lot worse," said an American official, explaining that resentment of the Bush administration might well cause the nations that support the international agency to rally around someone even more skeptical of American claims. A European diplomat said that Dr. ElBaradei, who has called for a negotiated settlement to the Iran impasse, had played a constructive role and that the Geneva rule was "more of a habit than a rule." In addition, both France and Germany, for example, have not endorsed the American call for him to be replaced, officials from those countries said. Another Western diplomat involved in discussions at the United Nations said any overt attempt by the United States to push Dr. ElBaradei out would backfire among countries resentful of the war in Iraq and other American actions. "It's always dangerous for the United States to openly push for someone to get out of a job like this one, unless you're 100 percent sure you've lined up someone who is better," the diplomat said. According to the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency, two-thirds of the agency's members must ratify the selection of a new director. The schedule calls for a decision to be made by next summer. A senior administration official said it was not impossible that Dr. ElBaradei would end up with a new term. "I don't think we've boxed ourselves in," the official said. "We're waiting to see who emerges between now and the time we have to decide." Another senior administration official said the sparring over Dr. ElBaradei was a sideshow, because the real problem in confronting Iran is the lack of support for such an approach by Europeans, Arab nations, Russia and China. Without their support for a tough approach, the administration's demands for an end to Iran's program cannot succeed, he said. ---- The Revolt Against the Bush Administration's Nuclear Double Standard by Lawrence S. Wittner December 14, 2004 Lew Rockwell http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/wittner6.html In late November, when Congress refused to appropriate money to fund so-called "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes," this action represented not only a serious blow to the Bush administration's plan to build new nuclear weapons, but to the administration's overall nuclear arms control and disarmament policy. That policy has been to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by nations the Bush administration considers "evil." The military invasion of Iraq, like the gathering confrontation with Iran and North Korea, reflects, at least in part, the administration's obsession with preventing nations potentially hostile to the United States from acquiring a nuclear capability. This focus upon blocking nuclear weapons development in other countries has some legal justification for, in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, non-nuclear nations agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. But the NPT also calls for nuclear nations to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons they possess. Indeed, in the meetings that fashioned the treaty, the non-nuclear weapons states demanded a commitment to nuclear disarmament by the nuclear powers. And they received it – not only in the form of the treaty's provisions, but in the formal pledges made by the nuclear powers at the periodic treaty review conferences that have been held since the NPT went into effect. It is in this area that the Bush administration has revealed itself as the proponent of a double standard. At the same time that it has assailed selected nations for developing nuclear weapons, it has withdrawn the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, effectively destroyed the START II treaty, and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has also raised the U.S. nuclear weapons budget to new heights and proposed the building of new U.S. nuclear weapons, including the "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes." As Senator Kerry pointed out during the recent presidential campaign, this is not the kind of policy that will encourage other nations to abide by their commitments under the NPT. The surprising congressional move to block the Bush plan for new nuclear weapons is but one of numerous signs that this double standard cannot be sustained. As a special high-level U.N. panel has just warned: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." Nor is the breakaway from the NPT limited to the non-nuclear nations. Just the other day the Russian government announced its development of a new nuclear missile. Appropriately enough, the U.N. panel condemned the nuclear powers for failing to honor their commitments, and called upon them to restart the nuclear disarmament process. Furthermore, of course, terrorists have been actively seeking nuclear weapons, and might well obtain them. Thousands of tactical nuclear weapons – many of them small, portable, and, therefore, ideal for terrorist use – are still maintained by the U.S. and Russian governments. No international agreements have ever been put into place to control or eliminate them. In fact, it remains unclear how many of these tactical nuclear weapons exist or where they are located. In Russia, at least, they are badly guarded and, in the disorderly circumstances of the post-Soviet economy, they seem ripe for sale or theft. The revolt against the Bush administration's double standard could come to a head in May 2005, when an NPT review conference opens at the United Nations, in New York City. Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are sure to exchange sharp barbs about non-compliance with NPT provisions. Furthermore, more than a hundred mayors from the Mayors for Peace Campaign, which has drawn together the top executives from 640 cities around the world, are expected to come to the U.N. to lobby for nuclear disarmament. They will be joined by United for Peace and Justice, the largest peace movement coalition in the United States, and over 2,000 organizations in 96 different countries. Together, they have launched Abolition Now, a campaign calling on heads of state to begin negotiations in 2005 on a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Ultimately, then, the Bush administration might be forced into accepting a single standard for dealing with the threat posed by nuclear weapons – one designed to lead to a nuclear-free world. Certainly, there are plenty of signs that people and nations around the globe believe that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Lawrence S. Wittner [send him mail - mailto:wittner@albany.edu ] is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press). This article originally appeared on the History News Network. Reprinted with permission of the author. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Produce electricity while eliminating nuclear warheads Statesman Journal JOHN C. RINGLE December 14, 2004 http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041214/OPINION/412140301/1049 Nuclear-weapons proliferation is a serious danger. But an incoming missile is not the only threat. Terrorists might not have the capability yet to assemble a crude nuclear weapon and transport it in a suitcase, but that could soon be a reality. Plutonium is the material from which many nuclear weapons are made. Russia's huge nuclear-weapons stockpile contains some 200 tons of plutonium, but only a few pounds are enough to make a crude nuclear bomb. Russia's nuclear-weapons stockpile is kept in poorly secured facilities, and experts say that terrorist groups -- and rogue states -- would like nothing better than to obtain some plutonium on the black market. The best way to make ourselves less susceptible to nuclear terrorism is to eliminate the plutonium altogether. That's already being done with Russia's surplus highly enriched uranium, which is another ingredient of nuclear weapons. In a remarkable development, more than 200 tons of highly enriched uranium that came from the Soviet Union's nuclear warheads no longer can be used as weapons of mass destruction. This fissile material has been diluted into reactor fuel and burned at U.S. nuclear power plants to produce electricity for American families and businesses. So far, the equivalent of 9,000 Soviet warheads -- many of which had been aimed at U.S. population centers -- have been destroyed, preventing the highly enriched uranium from falling into terrorist hands. Amazingly, this has received very little media attention, even though it has been a huge success. It came about as a result of a U.S.-Russia nonproliferation agreement in 1993, which called for the elimination of 500 tons of the weapons-grade uranium over a period of 20 years. To date, 40 percent of the contract goal has been met. Think about it: At a time when preventing another Sept. 11 is uppermost in people's minds, the results of this agreement -- known as the Megatons to Megawatts program -- are very impressive. Nearly every commercial reactor in the United States has been fueled at some point in the past decade with fuel derived from Soviet warheads. The program costs U.S. taxpayers hardly anything because the sale of electricity pays for the highly enriched uranium. More needs to be done, however. Even greater stores of nuclear-weapons materials -- 800 tons of highly enriched uranium and the surplus plutonium -- remain in Russia's stockpile. France, Japan and several other countries with nuclear power programs blend plutonium with uranium to produce a so-called mixed-oxide fuel for nuclear power plants. Here in the United States, we're planning to use some of our own surplus plutonium for electricity production. A small amount of plutonium from the Los Alamos National Laboratory will be blended into mixed-oxide fuel and burned at a nuclear power plant in South Carolina. The U.S.-Russia partnership could be used to destroy both the plutonium and much more of the weapons-grade uranium by burning the fissile materials in a new generation of nuclear plants. These commercial reactors could generate thousands of megawatts of electricity while eliminating thousands of nuclear warheads. It's a goal that should be high on the agenda of the new administration and Congress. John C. Ringle of Corvallis is professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at Oregon State University. He can be reached by e-mail at ringlejc@ne.orst.edu ----- DOE eyes moving plutonium work Los Alamos Monitor ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, December 14, 2004 http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/12/14/headline_news/news01.txt After years of making do with various widely scattered production lines for small, very long lasting nuclear power sources, the Department of Energy is beginning a process to rationalize bringing it all together in one location. Timothy A. Frazier of DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy conducted a public scoping session Monday night at the Los Alamos Golf Course. He sounded out the basic idea and invited public comment in case there is a better alternative than the ones under consideration. The current process requires a total of five transfers of nuclear material that travel 8,000 miles between Savannah River Site, S.C., Oak Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Idaho National Laboratory. The Los Alamos task involves several dozen employees at PF-4 in the Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55, who purify and encapsulate plutonium-238. The heat-producing packets they produce are then used in thermoelectric heating systems known as radioisotope power systems (RPS) that have space and national security applications. The plutonium that is purified and encapsulated at LANL arrives after a circuitous route that begins as neptunium-237 in the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, is turned into targets at Oak Ridge, and then irradiated in Idaho. The targets are backtracked to Oak Ridge for processing into plutonium, before heading to New Mexico. After LANL's input, the encapsulated energy source will now go back to Idaho to be assembled and tested. Clearly, Frazier suggested by the preferred alternative he described, a more effective, safer and less vulnerable alternative would be to focus the whole operation in one place, namely the Idaho National Laboratory, the newly named consolidation of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and the Argonne National Laboratory - West. Although significant radiological releases causing personal injuries occurred in the production process at Los Alamos in 2003 and 2002, Frazier said the new facility contemplated for Idaho would build in lessons learned and corrective actions that have since been adopted at LANL. "The beauty of a new facility," said Doug Outlaw, a contractor with SAIC, who is writing the Environmental Impact Statement, "is that we'd be able to engineer the safety." A driver for the current push is a plan to use an RPS on NASA's New Horizon voyage to Pluto, departing in 2006. The space applications are fairly well known. The Apollo Moon-landing expeditions used an early version of RPS and more advanced designs now power Voyager's exit from the solar system and the Cassini spacecraft's survey of Saturn. A future return to the moon and a manned mission to Mars are also likely to need RPSs. But Frazier was unable to specify the national security uses that are under way or contemplated. He was able to say that these unspecified uses are "by other federal users," and that they are not related to nuclear or space-based weapons or missile defense. Gregg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group objected to the classified aspects of the project "This is a pig in a poke because we don't know the scope," he said. "We don't know the inventory of plutonium-238. We don't know where it is, what alternative missions there are, or how they can be changed." The DOE officials with the Office of Space and Defense Power Systems received initial comments in Idaho and Wyoming last week and will now move on to Tennessee and Washington, D.C. The public has until the end of January 2005 to send comments to: Timothy A. Frazier, EIS Document Manager, Ne-50/Germantown Building, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C. A draft EIS will be issued next and after that a final EIS, with further opportunities for public comment, before a Record of Decision concludes the process. -------- new jersey Closed by Delaware River Oil Spill, Nuclear Reactors Restart NEWARK, New Jersey, December 14, 2004 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2004/2004-12-14-09.asp#anchor1 Operators of the Salem 1 and 2 nuclear reactors Monday began the process of bringing the units back online after they were shut down for more than a week because of fears that a massive oil spill upstream in the Delaware River might disrupt plant operations. Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) Nuclear decided on December 2, that, based on Delaware River conditions and the potential for oil from the Athos I oil tanker spill, to reach its nuclear plant water intake structures, it has decided to take off line both units at the Salem Nuclear Generating Station. Operators began restarting Salem 2 Monday and the company expected to start sending out electricity to the regional power grid late Monday. Salem 1 is set for startup later this week. PSEG Nuclear is continually monitoring river conditions. "Our first ground rule is to ?Be Safe,? and this is the right thing to do to ensure the safety of the stations," said A. Christopher Bakken, PSEG Nuclear president and chief nuclear officer. The Athos I began spilling oil into the Delaware River on November 26. The U.S. Coast Guard found a gash cut into her hull, and several days later, found a 15 foot curved piece of pipe in her path that is believed to have caused the gash. PSEG Nuclear placed booms around the water intake structures at both Salem and Hope Creek nuclear generating stations to protect against the spilled oil. Since the oil spilled in the Delaware was crude oil, it is expected that heavier globs of oil might be suspended in the river at varying depths, making the booms less effective. The ATHOS I is at the Marcus Hook Anchorage awaiting favorable weather conditions for transit to the Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia. Recreational boaters are now allowed to transit the Delaware River at a no-wake speed to their winter moorings and haul-out. The unified command continues oil clean-up and recovery efforts. The incident is still under investigation. The U.S. Coast Guard says that the final results of the investigation could take several months. Oil has impacted approximately 126 miles of shoreline leaving of patches of oil ranging from a very light sheen to tarballs. Currently, 70 miles of the affected shoreline have patches of very light sheen. Experts report 198 captured birds have survived, 126 of which have been cleaned. A total of 129 birds have died. PSEG Nuclear is tracking costs the company may incur associated with the oil spill with full expectation of recovery of those costs from responsible parties, said Bakken. -------- Nuclear reactor's pump generates a safety dispute Hope Creek's operator said the faulty equipment would last till 2006. The state wants it replaced now. Associated Press Posted on Tue, Dec. 14, 2004 http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/state LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK, N.J. - The operator of the Hope Creek nuclear reactor in Salem County wants to put off replacing a problem recirculation pump for 11/2 years despite concerns about its safety. The 18-year-old recirculation pump, one of two that push water through the core of the reactor, has a damaged shaft and a history of premature seal failures, and it vibrates so severely it sounds like a freight train, according to a report prepared last month for plant owner PSEG Nuclear. New Jersey regulators have urged its replacement, but do not have jurisdiction over the plant. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which does, is reviewing the report and plans to meet with PSEG officials before deciding whether to allow the delay. Jill Lipoti, assistant director for radiation protection for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said state officials had urged Hope Creek to replace the pump now. "The shaft is bowed, based on their own independent assessment," Lipoti said yesterday. "It seems prudent to replace it, but we'll rely on the NRC's decision on the matter." PSEG officials say the pump, which dates to the 1986 opening of the plant, is stable enough to continue operating and will not be replaced during Hope Creek's current shutdown. Skip Sindoni, a PSEG Nuclear spokesman, said yesterday that the 62-page report, by consulting engineers Sargent & Lundy, acknowledged the need to replace the recirculation pump, but he said its continued operation was not a safety risk. Sargent & Lundy "came back and said there's vibration issues but that the vibrations are stable, the conditions in the pump are not degrading, and the vibrations are below the vendor limit. This is safe to go for another operating cycle," Sindoni said. Replacement can wait until the reactor's next outage in 18 months, he said. The plant had been scheduled for an outage but was shut down prematurely Oct. 10 after a pipe ruptured, releasing radioactive steam into an area to which workers do not normally have access. No date has been set for Hope Creek to go back online. Diane Screnci, an NRC spokeswoman in King of Prussia, said it would have to wait for federal regulators to weigh in on whether the recirculation pump's replacement could wait. In the meantime, plant operators are installing new sensors to help monitor the vibrations, Sindoni said. Critics want quicker action. In a letter to PSEG Nuclear chief executive A. Christopher Bakken, the Union of Concerned Scientists urged immediate replacement, saying anything else would be "a gamble far larger than anything wagered in Atlantic City." David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Washington-based watchdog organization, told Bakken in the letter that the vibrations from the pump's bent shaft had damaged safety equipment at the plant. A New Jersey group also wants the problem fixed immediately. "It doesn't make any sense to take these kinds of risks for 18 months," said Norm Cohen, coordinator of Unplug Salem, a nuclear watchdog group. "It seems the prudent thing to do is just fix the damn pump." -------- new mexico Senator frustrated Yucca project not moving faster Las Vegas Review-Journal By KEITH ROGERS December 14, 2004 http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Dec-14-Tue-2004/news/25474102.html Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful Republican from New Mexico who wants to get the ball rolling on burying nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, said Monday he's frustrated the project doesn't get more funding, because it leaves expansion of U.S. plants mired while other countries are becoming more reliant on nuclear power. "The frustration is why has it taken so long? Why does it seem elsewhere to be so easy and here to be so tough?" he said before signing copies of his book, "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy." Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee who also chairs the subcommittee that writes funding bills for energy and water projects, attended the book-signing at the Atomic Testing Museum on the Desert Research Institute campus. Earlier in the day, he met for several hours with officials at the Energy Department's Office of Repository Development after first meeting with a group on water desalination in Las Vegas. The senator noted that although the United States relies on nuclear power for 20 percent of its electricity, France has an 80 percent reliance and China has ordered 20 new power reactors. "So my frustration is, `Why not in America?' " he asked. Currently, the $58 billion project to build a maze of tunnels inside Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and entomb highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies there is creeping along at a $577 million annual funding pace. Despite the fact there's $12.6 billion in a ratepayers' fund to finance the effort, the Department of Energy has missed its target to submit a license application for review this year, and it's questionable if plans and methods to begin hauling the waste will be in place by 2010. Among the apparent roadblocks is an appeals court ruling this summer that the Environmental Protection Agency's 10,000-year radiation protection standard needs to be extended to hundreds of thousands of years in the future. Asked if he intends to pass legislation next year to keep the current standard intact, Domenici said, "We're looking very carefully at what that court decision means." He said legislation to skirt the court's ruling might not be needed, but "we'll see." In his book, Domenici urges the United States and other countries to rely more on nuclear power and to follow through on the government's commitment to dispose of spent fuel in a permanent site where it can be retrieved for reprocessing and reduction in the amount of waste as technology permits. In essence, Yucca Mountain is an interim solution to a long-term problem that eventually will be resolved through reprocessing and transforming the waste, he said. "But we're late in the game because of past executive orders by presidents like Carter." -------- vermont NRC probing alert system by Susan Smallheer published Dec 14, 2004 Rutland Herald http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041214/NEWS/41213004/1003Article The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted a formal complaint Monday from New England Coalition alleging that Vermont Yankee?s emergency alert system is close to inoperable and puts the public living around the plant at serious risk. The New England Coalition, a nuclear watchdog group, petitioned the NRC last week on the matter, and the complaint was accepted for further testimony and study, according to NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci. Screnci said the NRC invited the New England Coalition to provide additional information about its allegations that many of the emergency alert radios in private homes surrounding Vermont Yankee are faulty and don?t work reliably, perhaps because of a faulty alert signal. The coalition also has alleged that the current sirens in Brattleboro and Vernon are faulty to a lesser degree. Business and residents in a 10-minute radius of Vermont Yankee are notified during a plant emergency either by sirens or emergency alert radios, which advise residents to tune their radios to local stations broadcasting emergency information. The alert must be completed in 15 minutes of an emergency, according to federal law. The emergency alert system has been a source of problems this year for Entergy Nuclear, the owner of Vermont Yankee. In October, the NRC found that Entergy ?wasn?t making its best effort? to maintain the radio network and had in essence lost control of the radio alert network. Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser for the watchdog group, said that the NRC had rejected his group?s request to shut the plant down until there was a working emergency alert system in place. Entergy Nuclear has ?an extremely poor record in the area of emergency response with wholly inadequate quality assurance, root-cause analysis, and corrective action following procedural, human error and system failures,? the petition stated. Shadis said that Rick Ennis, NRC project manager for Vermont Yankee, called him at the close of business Monday and told him that the petition had been accepted. Shadis said that Ennis told him that the towns surrounding the reactor had agreed to a ?route alert system? where town officials drive the roads and alert residents by loudspeakers that there is an emergency at the plant. Shadis said that Ennis told him that such a method wouldn?t meet the 15-minute rule, but that shutting the plant down wasn?t warranted. Route notification ?relies on volunteers driving door-to-door to spread alarm, saying ?run for it, run for it.? It takes considerably longer than 15 minutes,? Shadis said. Shadis said that radio reception was intermittent, and that there appeared to be a problem with the radios themselves. The newer radios are worse than the older radios,? he said, citing reports from several area residents. Towns that rely on the radios include Guilford, Halifax, Marlboro and Dummerston and a portion of Brattleboro, plus the New Hampshire towns of Chesterfield, Hinsdale, Winchester, Richmond and Swanzey, and the Massachusetts towns of Leyden, Bernardston, Gill, Northfield, Warwick, Colrain and Greenfield. Robert O. Williams, Entergy Nuclear spokesman, said the company had acknowledged that it lost track of who has the 5,000 emergency alert radios it distributed during the past two decades. On Monday, all Williams would say was that the company was ?working on it.? Earlier in the day, before the NRC?s petition review board had accepted the coalition?s petition, Williams said that the coalition was ?free to express their views. Our focus is the task at hand ­ upgrading the notification system.? In addition to the radios, the company is working on improving the sirens? signal strength, he said. ?We?re working with the state and the National Weather Service on the tone alert radios,? Williams said. He said that despite the problems pointed out by the NRC earlier this fall, Vermont Yankee had a ?workable system.? Williams said that Entergy was upgrading its database on which residents had the emergency alert radios. He said the company had sent letters to all the households and businesses in the 10-mile evacuation zone asking for information. Emergency notification information also is included in the annual Vermont Yankee calendar, which is sent to all area households, he said. Screnci, in a telephone interview Monday night, noted that the NRC inspectors had found fault with Entergy?s handling of the emergency alert radios earlier this fall, but that Entergy was taking appropriate actions to fix the problems. In addition to the radio problems, Entergy staff revealed problems during a June transformer fire, when staff abandoned the emergency notification telephones in favor of traditional phones. Also this summer, a linesman for Central Vermont Public Service disconnected part of the emergency alert system by accident when he disconnected the power supply lines. The backup generator ran until it exhausted its fuel supply. Neither problem was detected by Entergy. We believe that the perennial and widespread nature of these many failures would lead any competent reviewer to reasonably conclude that the origin of these failures is systemic,? the petition stated. Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. ---- NRC will consider review of alert system By CAROLYN LORIÉ Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - Brattleboro Reformer Staff http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~2596600,00.html BRATTLEBORO -- The Nu-clear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review a petition on the emergency alert system used by Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. The petition was filed by the New England Coalition, a nuclear power watchdog, on Dec. 9. The advocacy group requested that the NRC require Entergy to correct the problematic system and, if it does not, that the plant be shut down immediately. According to Raymond Shadis, technical advisor to the coalition, of particular concern are the tone alert radios used in the towns within the emergency planning zone. In the event of an emergency at the nuclear power plant, the radios sound an alarm letting people that they should tune to the radio for further instructions. While some towns, such as Brattleboro, have a siren that alerts residents about emergencies, there are parts of town outside of its range. In that case, households are supposed to be equipped with the radios, as are those residents where there is no siren in place. The problem, according to the coalition's petition, is that the radios do not always receive the signal correctly and often times do not work. Also of concern, said Shadis, is that personnel do not appear to be prepared to deal with emergencies, as illustrated with the transformer fire in June. In the petition, Shadis pointed out that personnel at the reactor struggled with the alert system, causing a delay in notifying the state of the situation. Though the NRC accepted the petition for review -- which means that NRC staff will consider the concerns and possibly take action -- regulatory personnel, according to Shadis, did not think it was necessary to shut down the plant while the review was under way. This is not the first time that concerns about the plant's notification system have surfaced. In November, the NRC cited Vermont Yankee for its failure to keep records on the distribution of the radios. The lapse was considered a low to moderate safety threat. In the report, NRC staff wrote that the company was in violation of NRC regulations "because you did not have the means to provide early notification to the entire populace within the plume exposure pathway...." According to Entergy spokesman Rob Williams, the company is addressing the problems. "We are working to upgrade the notification system and that includes the data base for the radio distribution," said Williams. "We offer additional radios to anyone who wants one in the [emergency planning zone]. We are also working to improve the signal strength." Williams added that in addition to the sirens and tone alert radios, emergency personnel from the towns have agreed to use a public address system on emergency vehicles. How an emergency at Vermont Yankee would be handled has been a cause of concern for many residents. In addition to complaints about the tone alert radios not working properly, many feel that the current evacuation plan cannot be implemented. Most of the towns in the planning zone have not approved the plan, including Brattleboro. The Brattleboro Selectboard is in the process of reviewing and updating it, in conjunction with the Vermont Emergency Management Agency. Parents with children in area schools have also voiced their concerns recently that the plan is unclear about evacuating students during school hours. About 50 people attended a November meeting in Brattleboro about the evacuation plan for school children. Once the NRC sends out a formal letter accepting the petition, the regulator will have 120 days to take action. Another coalition petition was filed earlier this year, asking that the NRC require Vermont Yankee personnel to conduct a full inventory of its spent fuel. The petition was in response to fuel rods that were said to be missing from the reactor, although they were later discovered in the spent fuel pool. The petition is still under review. Shadis expressed frustration that the NRC is allowing the nuclear reactor to continue running, while the effectiveness of its emergency alert system is in question. "It is a whopping dangerous mistake to allow an emergency planning system to fall into decay hoping that you won't have an accident," said Shadis. -------- washington 'bulk vitrification' tri-cityherald.com By Annette Cary December 14th, 2004 http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5912673p-5819836c.html A new test facility could be turning radioactive wastes into glass a year from now, using a process that officials hope will save millions of dollars and shave years off Hanford's environmental cleanup. On Monday, the state agreed to allow up to 300,000 gallons of the waste to be vitrified, or turned into glass, to test a new method for stabilizing radioactive waste. Under the permit, the Department of Energy may test so-called "bulk vitrification" at a full-scale pilot plant in central Hanford. The permit allows the test facility to operate for up to 400 days. "The key thing about this is vitrifying actual tank waste by this time next year and collecting the data we'll need to make a decision with the regulators on using this technology, along with the Waste Treatment Plant," said Roy Schepens, director of DOE's Office of River Protection in Richland. Hanford has 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemical wastes now stored in huge underground tanks. The wastes date back to the 1940s and are a legacy of making plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. DOE is building a $5.8 billion vitrification plant to turn much of that waste into glass for permanent burial elsewhere. But the Waste Treatment Plant will be able to treat only up to two-thirds of the waste by a 2028 deadline. DOE wants to test bulk vitrification as one of two alternate methods being investigated for handling the remaining wastes. It might treat up to 26 million gallons of waste, and like the vitrification plant, it would turn radioactive and chemical waste into glass. But while the vitrification plant would produce logs of high-level radioactive waste and logs of low-activity waste, bulk vitrification would be used only for low-activity radioactive waste. In the process, waste would be dried, mixed with silica-rich dirt and packed into insulated boxes up to 24 feet long. Electrodes would be inserted into the mixture to heat and melt it into a huge brick of glass that would be permanently buried -- container, electrodes and all. The state will continue to have substantial regulatory control at the test plant. DOE contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group has subcontracted with AMEC to make up to 50 blocks of glass from waste drawn from one of Hanford's 177 underground tanks, Tank S-109. The process will be varied slightly to produce each block to determine the best way to make the glass. CH2M Hill projects that using bulk vitrification to treat some of the waste would cost about 35 percent less than extending the life of the vitrification plant past the 2028 treatment deadline or expanding the vitrification plant with a second low-activity waste treatment facility. The bulk vitrification project would cost about $1.4 billion. The state must approve each test based on how parameters would be varied and what would be contained in off-gases and secondary waste produced by the tests. If the tests show bulk vitrification cannot safely produce a high-quality glass, other options will be considered. Those could include expanding the Waste Treatment Plant or using the second alternate technology being considered, steam reforming. That would use high-pressure steam to turn a mixture of clay and waste into BB-sized particles. During the public comment period before the bulk vitrification demonstration permit was issued, the state heard concerns about whether gases produced when the waste is heated would be adequately captured. The state is satisfied that the off-gas system has redundancies that will protect the environment, said Suzanne Dahl, tank waste disposal project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology. The state also is satisfied that the proposed method to separate low-activity waste from high-level radioactive waste in Tank S-109 should work well, Dahl said. DOE plans pretreatment within the tanks and then will use a second separation method to remove more high-level waste when the waste is out of the tank. If bulk vitrification is approved after tests are completed as a way to treat large amounts of radioactive waste, the waste would be separated into a low-activity stream at the vitrification plant that's under construction. Construction on the pilot plant will begin in January. By July, AMEC should be ready to do tests with simulated, nonradioactive waste, Schepens said. The first block of glass should be made from actual tank waste in December 2005. Bulk vitrification has been used by others, including a Texas project to treat some commercial waste with low levels of radioactivity contaminated with PCBs. But Hanford's tank waste is chemically different than most forms of waste, requiring a rigorous testing program to determine the ability of the glass to capture waste and prevent it from reaching the environment. "(The state permit) is a significant step in our process to evaluate bulk vitrification," Ed Aromi, president and general manager of CH2M Hill Hanford Group, said in a prepared statement. "This technology holds great promise to safely and effectively treat Hanford tank waste." ----- Hot waste returns tri-cityherald.com By Annette Cary December 14th, 2004 http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5912677p-5819844c.html A shipment of waste from Hanford to a permanent repository in New Mexico was stopped Friday in Colorado because one of the drums of waste may have been too radioactively hot. It's the first time any shipment has had a drum with a radiation reading too high to be accepted at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant -- a permanent underground repository for transuranic waste in the New Mexico desert, said Kerry Watson, the Department of Energy director for the office of characterization and transportation in Carlsbad, N.M. The drum had been measured at Hanford with a combined beta and gamma radiation reading at the surface of the drum of 200 millirems per hour. No neutron radiation reading was detected. But because instruments cannot detect radiation below 0.2 millirems per hour, there could have been a neutron dose of up to 0.2 millirems, Watson said. That would have put the overall radiation dose slightly above the maximum allowed of 200 millirems per hour. "We couldn't say it would. We couldn't say it wouldn't," Watson said. The possible problem was discovered when paperwork was being inspected in New Mexico as the shipment was already en route, Watson said. A truck carrying two shipping containers that hold up to 14 drums each was stopped near Fort Collins, Colo. The truck returned Saturday to Hanford. Another survey of the drum's radiation levels on Sunday again found 200 millirems per hour of beta and gamma radiation and an undetectable level of neutron radiation, said Colleen French, spokeswoman for the Department of Energy in Richland. The drum contains transuranic waste, which typically is used equipment, protective clothing or other debris contaminated with plutonium. The waste in the drum came from the Plutonium Finishing Plant and the PUREX reprocessing plant at Hanford. The PUREX plant was used to extract plutonium from fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors for the nation's nuclear weapons program. The Plutonium Finishing Plant turned the plutonium into metal buttons to ship to the nation's weapons production plants. Officials at Hanford and WIPP, the New Mexico repository, are discussing what to do with the rogue drum and how to prevent the problem from occurring again, French said. The drum may be repacked, or it could be encased in an overpack to reduce the radiation dose at its surface, she said. Before being loaded onto trucks, the drums are packed into a shipping container, called a TRUPACT-II, that has substantial radiation shielding, she said. "There was never any health or safety concern" for the public en route, she said. At the surface of the shipping container, 0.5 millirems per hour of beta and gamma radiation was detected. That's far below the U.S. Department of Transportation limit, which also is 200 millirems per hour. The returned shipping containers are being held at Hanford, awaiting approval to ship them again. Hanford has shipped 3,838 drums in 124 shipments to WIPP since 2000. The returned shipment would have been the 125th. "Two more shipments are scheduled this week, so it's even more important to get this resolved," French said. -------- MILITARY -------- africa Amnesty: Two-thirds of Liberians suffered sexual violence during '99-'03 war Tue Dec 14, 2004 11:37 AM ET Canadian Press http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1856&ncid=723&e=4&u=/cpress/20041214/ca_pr_on_wo/liberia_sexual_violence MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) - Some two-thirds of Liberia's population may have suffered sexual abuse during the west African nation's 1999-2003 civil war, with women and girls the main targets but men and boys also falling prey, a human rights group said Tuesday. Fighters often drugged by their commanders used sexual violence to shame and subjugate communities in Liberia, where rape carries a deep stigma, and Amnesty International estimated that 60 to 70 per cent of Liberia's three million people suffered sexual abuse during the war. "Women and girls have described being repeatedly raped during the same incident. Others have been raped on several different occasions during Liberia's successive - and almost continuous - armed conflicts since December 1989," the London-based rights group said in a report. Amnesty said "findings indicated that some men and boys had also been subjected to sexual violence" in the latest round of fighting, but the group didn't provide any figures. "Rape and other forms of sexual violence have become endemic in Liberia," Amnesty said. Rebels battled ex-president Charles Taylor's forces from 1999 until 2003, when an insurgent siege of the capital, Monrovia, and international pressure forced Taylor from office and paved the way for a peace deal. "While it is impossible to establish with any degree of accuracy the exact numbers of women and girls - of all ages - who have been affected by sexual violence, it has been pervasive throughout the conflict," said Amnesty. Taylor first launched Liberia into conflict in 1989, leading an insurgency that resulted in an eventual stalemate and his 1997 election as president. But civil war broke out again in 1999, when rebels took up arms against Taylor. A peace deal was signed following Taylor's departure in August 2003, and a 15,000-strong UN force now secures the peace. Some 70,000 fighters - including thousands of children - have been disarmed. Elections are set for October 2005, with a postwar government led by a popular businessman, Gyude Bryant, governing until then. -------- business Protecting people or profit? By Max Jourdan BBC Reporter, Private War Tuesday, 14 December, 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4079691.stm America's privatised military machine is at the heart of the war on drugs in Colombia. Defence corporations hired by the US government enjoy extremely lucrative contracts, but who is responsible when something goes wrong? A Colombian journalist was recently allowed access to the hostages Last year, I came across some dramatic footage of three US contractors held hostage by members of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a 17,000 strong, left-wing guerrilla group who live deep in the jungle. Why were these apparent "civilians" kidnapped and held captive for nearly two years? I began my investigation by contacting one of the hostage's mothers, Jo Rosano. She told me about the crash of a tiny single-engine plane, which led to her son Marc's kidnapping. Marc Gonsalves was employed by Northrop Grumman - the fifth biggest multinational defence corporation in the US - to help fight the war on drugs in Colombia. The job involved dangerous aerial cocaine-eradication missions above the jungle, and on 13 February, 2004, the Cessna plane that Marc and four others were in experienced engine failure and crash-landed. Two of the crew were killed and the other three - including Marc - were taken hostage. Unanswered questions Jo Rosano campaigns tirelessly for something to be done for her son Jo Rosano has a mother's rage and wanted answers. She believes more would have been done for her son Marc if he had been a soldier, not just an employee. This is something the US ambassador to Bogota strongly denies. He told me: "The United States has no higher priority than the safe return of the American hostages in a manner consistent with US law and policy." The official US position is that they refuse to negotiate with terrorist organisations like Farc, a group now viewed by the Bush administration on a par with al-Qaeda. I approached Marc's employer, Northrop Grumman, for some answers. They stonewalled me, just as they had done Jo. Outsourcing I did, however, come across some letters written by two disgruntled employees and former pilots working for this company in Colombia. Doug Cockes had 30 years' professional experience flying on drug missions. He was one of the "whistleblowers" who had alerted Northrop Grumman's vice-president to the fact that the single-engine planes used to fly out on the dangerous coca surveillance missions over guerrilla-controlled territory were not adequate. Doug Cockes was accused by Northrop Grumman of having a negative attitude I flew to Colorado to interview him. He told me: "If I could just talk to one of the people that could have made the change from single to twin engine, I would ask them how they sleep at night." He explained that his written warnings of imminent disaster to Northrop Grumman and the US State Department - who had issued the contracts - were ignored. Two months after his prophetic letters were sent, two planes had crashed in the Colombian jungle, resulting in deaths and hostage-taking. So why outsource foreign conflicts to multi-billion dollar private military corporations, if there are concerns about the safety of hardware? Political heavyweights, both in Colombia and the US - including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - suggest that it is more economical to use contractors, rather than regular troops, because the army is stretched beyond capacity. An alternative opinion held by other US politicians is that "corporate soldiers" make it possible for the government to avoid responsibility. Accountability The 40-year narcotic-funded conflict in Colombia between US and Colombian government troops, Farc guerrillas, and more recently, right-wing paramilitaries, is far from simple. Perhaps this is even more reason to stop private companies acting on matters of foreign policy. I met the widow of Tommy Schmidt, a Vietnam war hero and one of the Northrop Grumman pilots killed in the second crash. She is filing a lawsuit against Northrop Grumman and the US Defence Department, accusing them of negligence, gross mismanagement and the death of her husband. "Northrop Grumman offered me $350,000 (£180,000)," Sharon said, "but in taking that money I had to agree not to ask any more questions, and the whole point of all of this is that I want answers to our questions. I refused their offer." Across the US and in Colombia I began to uncover a multi-layered world of military contracts, sub-contracts and brass plate subsidiaries. It seemed that profits, not patriotism, prevail in the business of war. Interviews with US and Colombian politicians, contractors on the ground and big players in the military corporate world made me question whether American taxpayers were getting value for their $1.1bn annual funding for private war. However, UN and US drug officials I spoke to were keen to point out that the cocaine eradication policy is successful, with a drop in production of around 20%. So, should the emphasis be on whether private companies have a place in foreign conflict, or on what can be done to offer them a higher level of protection? I spoke to former Congressman Bob Barr, who advocates a complete ban on contractors, in favour of a massive regular army presence. This view is echoed by Congresswoman Janice Schakowsky. "Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment?" she said. Northrop Grumman refused to be interviewed, but issued a statement saying it regretted the plight of the hostages and the deaths of its employees. And the desperate situation of the men held hostage in the Colombian jungle, continues indefinitely. Private War was broadcast on Tuesday, 14 December, 2004, at 1930 GMT on BBC Two (UK). ---- Eurofighter partners sign contract for second tranche BERLIN (AFP) Dec 14, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041214142419.pfchn1md.html Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain have signed a contract to build a second batch of Eurofighter aircraft, a spokesman for Eurofighter in Germany told AFP on Tuesday. The contract, which was signed in Unterhaching, near Munich, on Tuesday, covered the construction of 235 Eurofighter aircraft, the spokesman said. The aircraft would be ready for delivery from the beginning of 2008. The German airforce alone would receive 68 aircraft. ----- Computer Sciences Sells DynCorp Units Washington Post By Renae Merle December 14, 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62259-2004Dec13.html Computer Sciences Corp. is selling parts of Reston-based DynCorp it acquired last year, saying the units, which provide security to foreign leaders and train international police, do not fit with its information technology focus. Veritas Capital of New York, a private equity group that has bought and sold defense contractors, agreed to pay CSC $775 million in cash and $75 million in preferred stock. CSC will keep DynCorp's information technology business, which links computer systems, builds communication networks and modifies software. The units being sold, DynCorp International, DynMarine, and some DynCorp Technical Services contracts, had $1.6 billion in revenue in the year ended in October, CSC officials said. The units employ about 900 people in the Washington area. They provide primarily low-profit-margin services, and their contracts include protecting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and training Kuwaiti and Iraqi forces. "It's critically important work and while it's a very successful business, it's not a business that we have synergy" with, said Paul M. Cofoni, president of CSC's federal business. "Even at the time of acquisition, many of our customers wondered why we would keep that business." "They were sort of orphaned at CSC [with] not a lot of attention paid to them," said Robert B. McKeon, president of Veritas Capital. "CSC is really an IT company not interested in these types of businesses." One of Veritas's previous investments, Vertex Aerospace, had government contracts to maintain planes and competed with DynCorp. Veritas sold Vertex this year and is comfortable with the market, McKeon said. "It has to be managed very carefully; a lot of controls and discipline have to be in place," he said. Veritas bought the DynCorp units at a discount, something common among services companies, which earn smaller margins and face more competitors, industry analysts said. "The concern was that they would drag down CSC's margins," said Stuart McCutchan, editor of Defense Mergers & Acquisitions. CSC of El Segundo, Calif., bought DynCorp in March 2003 for $950 million but had always questioned whether it would keep the non-IT parts, company officials said. For CSC, the deal will likely mean slower growth in the short term. Operations supporting the military in the Middle East, many of them conducted under DynCorp contracts, are the fastest-growing part of CSC's business, the company has previously acknowledged. The company, which reported revenue of $11.3 billion in fiscal 2003, said yesterday that it would take a $400 million gain related to the deal. The transaction strengthens the company's financial position and gives the firm more financial flexibility, Van B. Honeycutt, CSC'S chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. "This transaction will allow us to continue concentrating on our core competency of providing information technology, engineering and professional services," Honeycutt said. The deal, which still needs regulatory approval, is expected to close in April. CSC stock closed yesterday at $57.25, up 2.7 percent. -------- pakistan / india Pakistan questions Indian arms shopping spree The News International By Mariana Baabar December 14, 2004 http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2004-daily/14-12-2004/main/main1.htm ISLAMABAD: As the second round of expert-level talks on nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs) between Pakistan and India starts today, the government says that the recent statements coming from New Delhi are "disturbing" and sound "paranoid". Islamabad has also expressed apprehensions about India's buying spree from world weapons market. "Statements made by the Indian defence and external affairs ministers are disturbing (regarding Pakistan's efforts to buy conventional weapons). You have to be objective. India has a very ambitious weapon acquiring programme," Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told a weekly briefing here on Monday. New Delhi has sent strong signals to Washington and Islamabad that their defence agreement, which sees Islamabad acquiring conventional weapons, could cloud Indo-US and Indo-Pak relations. Khan pointed to international websites and data available from world institutions, which say that India's shopping list is non-exhaustive as it plans to buy massive weapons with sophisticated technology from world markets. "India is buying weapons from Israel, France, the US and the UK and this buying spree is worth $ 95 billion stretching for the next 15 years. Compare this to Pakistan's modest acquisition which will fill up gaps which emerged in the 90's when huge US sanctions crippled our capability," said the spokesman. He emphasised that Pakistan would not try to match India gun-for-gun as New Delhi's shopping list was non-exhaustive. "We must have symmetry as this would contribute to stability in the region," Khan added. He said the Indian ministers sounded paranoid with their statements about Pakistan and were not grounded in facts. "As far as the F-16s are concerned, India has to sort out its relations with the US and making such statements are misleading their own public and misinforming the international community," said the spokesman. Khan was not apologetic about the new US bill, which has now become law and entitles Pakistan to buy weapons from Washington. "The law has a section on Pakistan and we welcome it as it gives an enabling environment in all areas of defence," he added. The government says that it is optimistic about talks on nuclear CBMs to discuss the draft agreement on advance notification of missile tests. Progress was made in June and efforts would continue to build and expand on the MoU related to this. Khan said both India and Pakistan are nuclear states and they have to be responsible as they are also neighbours. For this a reliable link of communication is essential and if the foreign secretaries have a hot line this would also help in stopping accidental launch of nuclear weapons. Pakistan, he said, was serious about nuclear risk reduction measures. The spokesman shrugged off criticism of both the countries "ambitious plans" to discuss CBMs related to nuclear and conventional weapons and said they were in no way "ambitious". "By meeting we will be trying to understand each others aspects and it is important for nuclear states to be in communication with each other. We will try to see how far we can go. We shall discuss each other's perspectives," he said. Responding to a question, Khan said efforts were under way to raise the staff strength of India and Pakistan's High Commissions to 110, as it existed in 2001. He said appointments were being made but did not specify a date as when it would be completed. The spokesman said there should be no passports for the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service as the LoC was a temporary line and could not be given permanent status. "Passports should be out with India clearing the way for interaction of the people of Kashmir. This is a test for our perseverance," he added. Pakistan is not stating publicly as to how long it will wait for India to respond to its demands for holding talks to solve the Baglihar Dam issue. "I cannot be specific about how long Pakistan will wait before going to a neutral expert. We have shown patience and respected diplomatic norms. We wanted to exhaust all avenues," he added. Agencies add: Masood Khan said Pakistan has said it wants the United States to sort out its disputes with Iran through dialogue and would object to any US assault on Iranian interests. The spokesman said he thought there would be no US strikes against Iran but Pakistan would be in opposition to such moves if they were ever made. He denied that the ongoing dialogue between Pakistan and India had collapsed. He said solution to all the bilateral problems would be found through composite dialogue, for sure. Talking to a television channel, the spokesman underlined the need of further strengthening Pak-China economic, trade and strategic relations. He said with the passage of time Pak-China political and strategic integration would further strengthen. Khan said it would only be possible when Chinese investment in Pakistan increases, joint ventures were undertaken and private sectors of both the countries come nearer. As part of the ongoing composite dialogue process, the defence officials of India and Pakistan will be holding talks on Tuesday (today) in the Ministry of Defence on issues related to Sir Creek. The Pakistani side will be led by Major-General Jamil-ur-Rehman Afridi, Surveyor General of Pakistan, while the Indian side will be headed by Brig Girish Kumar, Deputy Surveyor General of India. The two sides will discuss various modalities regarding the joint survey of the boundary pillars laid in the Sir Creek area in the past. ----- Pakistan turns up no signs of bin Laden Associated Press By Munir Ahmad, December 13, 2004 http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2004/12/13/pakistan_denies_cia_has_bases_on_its_soil/ ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan said Monday there was no evidence Osama bin Laden is hiding in the country, and denied it allowed CIA agents to set up bases along the border to search for the al-Qaida leader. Pakistani and American generals agree the trail for bin Laden has gone cold, more than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said bin Laden had not been seen anywhere, and scoffed at reports he might be hiding in Chitral, in the country's scenic north. "Osama bin Laden has not been sighted in Chitral or in any other part of Pakistan," Khan said, adding, "there are no operations being conducted by U.S. forces inside Pakistan." President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has previously acknowledged that a small number of American experts were working with Pakistani troops in operations against al-Qaida militants. But he has denied that U.S. forces -- deployed in neighboring Afghanistan -- are actively hunting bin Laden in Pakistan. A report in Monday's New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. officials, said the CIA had set up small bases along the border in late 2003, but the operatives were being hampered by uncooperative Pakistani minders. It said the CIA had concluded bin Laden was being sheltered by tribesmen and foreign militants in northwestern Pakistan, and that he could be aiming to launch a "spectacular" attack on the United States. The issue is a sensitive one for Musharraf, who is under pressure at home from hard-liners opposed to his strong ties with Washington. "There are no CIA cells in Pakistan ... in our tribal areas, and there is absolutely no truth in this New York Times report," said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. Some believe bin Laden is hiding along the rugged border. In an interview televised Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said bin Laden was "definitely" in the region, but didn't say where. A senior Pakistani counterterrorism official said Monday U.S. officials had not found intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts, although their information had helped nab some al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan. "Whenever U.S. intelligence and communication experts come up with some specific information, and they need our help, we organize things, act on their tips, but the operations are conducted by our own security forces," he said on condition of anonymity. The Times said Pakistani military officials have strictly supervised the CIA personnel at the alleged bases in Pakistan, limiting their effectiveness. A senior official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency denied the report's claim that militants in tribal regions may be getting help from some its operatives. The agency helped build the Taliban militia before Pakistan switched allegiance to support the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Earlier this month, President Bush met with Musharraf in Washington and defended Pakistan's cooperation in the bin Laden hunt, saying its forces had been "incredibly active and very brave" in the South Waziristan tribal region -- a suspected hiding place of the al-Qaida chief and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri. The forces have killed or arrested hundreds of alleged al-Qaida sympathizers and busted terror training bases. On Monday, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan said he couldn't comment on CIA operations. He said American forces were relentlessly searching for clues to bin Laden's whereabouts. "No matter where he is, whether he is in Afghanistan, whether he is in Pakistan or wherever he is, I think we share President Karzai's sentiment that some day ... he will be brought to justice," Maj. Mark McCann told a press briefing in Kabul. A spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul also said she couldn't speak for the CIA. -------- prisoners of war C.I.A. Order on Detainees Shows Its Role Was Curbed nytimes.com By DOUGLAS JEHL December 14, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/politics/14intel.html WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - Concerns about harsh techniques used by Special Operations forces prompted the Central Intelligence Agency last year to bar its officers in Iraq from taking part in military interrogations where prisoners were subjected to duress, intelligence officials said. A classified directive issued by the agency's headquarters on Aug. 8, 2003, to all its personnel in Iraq advised that "if the military employed any type of techniques beyond questions and answers, we should not participate and should not be present," according to an account provided by a senior intelligence official. In telling C.I.A. personnel to keep away from interrogations where military personnel were using harsh techniques, the directive was more restrictive than was previously known. Officials first disclosed the agency's order last September, saying that it had barred C.I.A. officers from interviewing the military's prisoners unless military officials were present. The new disclosure is the latest sign of longstanding unease in intelligence circles about the military's interrogation techniques in Iraq. Complaints by the Defense Intelligence Agency about the rough treatment of prisoners by the same Special Operations units were made public last week in a document disclosed by the American Civil Liberties Union. But the C.I.A. guidelines imposed for Iraq did not affect interrogations of prisoners in C.I.A. custody, including leaders of Al Qaeda being detained in secret locations around the world, officials said. Legal rulings by the Bush administration have granted the C.I.A. greater flexibility in conducting interrogations of suspected terrorists, including the use of harsh methods. The C.I.A. issued its directive on the military's prisoners in Iraq shortly after the agency's station in Baghdad complained in a July 16, 2003, cable about the use of noise, bright light and other techniques by Special Operations forces who were working in joint teams with C.I.A. personnel. The agency also barred its employees last year from entering a secret interrogation facility in Baghdad used by Special Operations forces. The restrictive C.I.A. guidelines remain in effect, intelligence officials have said. Army documents first obtained by The Denver Post show that an Iraqi prisoner was found dead in June 2003 at the classified interrogation facility used by Special Operations forces in Baghdad after being restrained in a chair for questioning and subjected to physical and psychological stress. An autopsy determined that the prisoner died of a "hard, fast blow" to the head, the newspaper reported last spring. In recent interviews, intelligence officials have declined to say whether the C.I.A. complaints were related to that incident. But one intelligence official did say that the agency had become aware early in the campaign in Iraq, in June 2003, about "a significant incident of abuse involving military personnel of a detainee." The joint military-intelligence teams have operated under various names in Afghanistan and Iraq, including Task Force 121 and Task Force 6-26. Their main focus has been to track down and capture leaders of Al Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle. The Aug. 8, 2003, cable from the C.I.A.'s headquarters noted that all prisoners in Iraq were the responsibility of the military, and that while the C.I.A. might have an interest in questioning them, it should recognize that "we do not own, control or have custody of them," one intelligence official said. Abu Ghraib near Baghdad, the site of the worst known prisoner abuses in Iraq, is run by American military forces. The cable said that the C.I.A. should not suggest, condone or concur in any interrogation techniques beyond questions and answers with prisoners in military custody in Iraq, the intelligence official said. It is not clear how the C.I.A. directive and the complaint a year later by the Defense Intelligence Agency have affected relations between those intelligence services and the Special Operations forces. The C.I.A. continues to take part in the joint military-intelligence task forces in Iraq, but it is unclear if it is taking part in interrogations, one senior government official said. -------- us Army Guard now says its Iraq troops figure was inaccurate By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY 12/14/2004 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-12-13-guard-deaths_x.htm WASHINGTON — The Army National Guard said Monday it had given USA TODAY an inaccurate count of the total number of Guard troops in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003, but still could not provide a precise count. USA TODAY used the inaccurate Guard numbers to construct an analysis that showed part-time troops from the Army National Guard were more likely to die in Iraq than their counterparts in the active-duty Army. Without more precise figures, there is no way to accurately compare death rates between various branches of U.S. military forces during the Iraq war. The Guard said last week that 37,000 Guard troops had set foot in Iraq since the start of the war. On Monday, Guard spokesman Scott Woodham said 90,972 Guard troops had been ordered to Iraq, but he could not say how many had actually gotten there, and how many were in mobilization stations or on their way. Woodham gave two explanations for the error. In a telephone interview with USA TODAY mid-afternoon Monday, Woodham said the National Guard Bureau made "an internal mistake" in compiling the numbers. He said that personnel at Guard headquarters had misread a series of numbers on a spreadsheet and that accounted for the lower figure. In a second conversation about two hours later, Woodham said he "misunderstood the question" when asked how many Army Guard troops had deployed to Iraq since the beginning of the war. On Monday, the active-duty Army also revised one of the numbers it had given USA TODAY. Army spokesman Dov Schwartz said 659 Army soldiers have died in Iraq since the start of the war, up from the 622 the Army cited last week. Battle deaths for part-time troops from the Army Guard and the Army Reserve — who typically drill just a weekend a month and two weeks in the summer unless there is a war — are still significantly higher than for part-time troops in past conflicts, Woodham said. Throughout the 12-year Vietnam War, for example, fewer than 100 Guard troops were killed, compared with the 145 who have died in less than two years in Iraq. Army Guard and Army Reserve soldiers are assigned some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq, including convoy duty and guarding facilities. And Guard and Reserve soldiers are being counted on heavily to support the U.S.-led occupation. Part-time troops now make up about 40% of the U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. Several other military branches told USA TODAY last week that they could not determine how many of their troops had served in Iraq since the war began. The Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force could not provide troop numbers. -------- Skelton urges temporary use of older APCs Tuesday, Dec 14, 2004 Jefferson City News Tribune http://www.newstribune.com/articles/2004/12/14/news_state/1214040016.txt U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton this week asked the Pentagon to provide soldiers in Iraq with some Vietnam era armored vehicles at least until improved humvees can be supplied. The Missouri Democrat is the top minority party member of the House Armed Services Committee. "Armed with multiple machine guns behind gun shields, the M-113 (Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle) proved itself an especially effective vehicle for close combat against enemy forces armed with RPGs and AK-47 rifles," Skelton said in a letter Monday to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I understand that the M-113 may not provide the same level of protection as some other armored vehicles currently in use, but they certainly provide better protection than soft-skinned vehicles." Skelton also noted that some humvees are having problems with the additional weight of the supplemental armored kits being provided for better protection to U.S. forces in Iraq. "As you know," Skelton told Myers, "broken-down up-armored HMMWVs provide no protection at all." Noting reports that about 700 M-113s had been shipped to nearby Kuwait, Skelton asked Myers to see if any of the armored vehicles could be sent to Iraq as a possible "solution to the Army's challenge in supplying armored transportation to protect our soldiers." -------- war crimes Iraq War Crimes Trials to Begin Next Week Associated Press By NICK WADHAMS December 14, 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_TRIALS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Trials against the top figures in Saddam Hussein's ousted regime will begin next week, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday, but Saddam will not be among them. Many of Iraq's former Baath Party members have been in jail for more than a year, and few have been able to meet with counsel. Saddam's Jordan-based lawyers say they have not seen the former dictator, arrested a year ago Monday, and said holding trials so soon would be illegal. "The Iraqi court will be in violation of the basic rights of the defendants, which is to have access to legal counsel while being interrogated and indicted," Ziad al-Khasawneh said. Officials had given conflicting accounts about when the trials before the Iraqi Special Tribunal would begin, and have also suggested that Saddam would not be tried first. The Associated Press learned Tuesday that the proceedings next week would not involve Saddam. "I can now tell you clearly and precisely that, God willing, next week the trials of the symbols of the former regime will start, one by one so that justice can take its path in Iraq," Allawi told the interim National Council, without saying who would be tried. Allawi had previously said they would take place in October or November, while others have said they would begin no earlier than 2006. An Allawi spokesman later said he had no information about who would be tried first and said more details would be released Wednesday. "There is a court process that involves investigative judges and a hearing for some of the former regime officials that is under preparation that we would expect to be held next week," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "At that point, the accused and their attorneys do go to court, although that's not the actual trial." Iraq's human rights minister, Bekhtiar Amin, said from Geneva that work was under way to bring some of Saddam's lieutenants to trial before him. "I don't know for sure when Saddam Hussein in particular will be tried, but the trial is scheduled to start sometime next year, the first quarter of next year," Amin said. "I doubt that Saddam will be the first one to be tried, there are others whom they will start with and the work is ongoing right now." Allawi also announced the arrest of a cousin of Saddam's, Izzi-Din Mohammed Hassan al-Majid. Al-Majid, who fled Iraq in 1995 and was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain in 2000, was arrested in Fallujah and will be put on trial as soon as possible, Allawi said. Government leaders have said recently the Special Tribunal is not yet prepared to begin the trials. They need to train judges and prosecutors, and sort through stacks of evidence, all under the pressure of a deadly insurgency that has been able to strike at will. "The prosecution team, the defense counsel, the investigative judges, the documents are not ready," National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told the AP last week. "It will take time. If you want to get it right, it will take time." But leaders have come under new pressure recently. On Monday, the U.S. military acknowledged that eight of Saddam's 11 top lieutenants went on hunger strikes over the weekend to demand visits in jail from the International Committee of the Red Cross, but they were eating again by Monday. A lawyer for former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said they were protesting the legality o