NucNews - February 24, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Study: Quake impact on nuclear treatment plant may be greater than thought The federal government's largest construction project could be in danger if it was hit by a large earthquake. 2/24/2005 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-24-quake-plant_x.htm http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Hanford%20Earthquake%20Danger&searchdiff=1&searchpagefrom=1 YAKIMA, Wash. — The impact of a severe earthquake on a radioactive waste treatment plant under construction at the Hanford nuclear reservation is almost 40% greater than previously estimated, according to a new study. The nearly $6 billion plant — the federal government's largest construction project — is being built to treat millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste left from Cold War-era nuclear weapons production. Construction is already about 35% complete at the south-central Washington site. Work has been slowed or shifted to other parts of the plant while engineers re-evaluate its design. The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages the site cleanup, and the contractor hired to build the plant stressed the chances of a severe earthquake at the site are slim. In addition, some construction work that already has been re-evaluated — the concrete walls at the plant, for instance — meet the new seismic requirements and will not have to be changed. "Earthquakes, No. 1, don't happen a lot in this area, and if they do happen, we are building a very robust plant to handle it," Roy Schepens, manager of the Energy Department's Office of River Protection, said Thursday. In 2002, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised concerns that the Energy Department had failed to adequately investigate the impact a severe earthquake might have on the plant. The agency had gathered seismic data from the entire 586-square-mile Hanford reservation to determine the impact, but did not conduct a seismic investigation of the plant site itself. The agency conducted a more thorough evaluation in 2004; the data were sent to a federal science laboratory for review. The results of that review — released first to The Associated Press this week — found the force of the ground movements at the plant site during a worst-case-scenario earthquake would be 38% greater than previously estimated. Engineers now are working to apply that new number to the plant's design; the process could take four to six months, Schepens said. "In the near term, we will develop very conservative design criteria that will allow us to advance the design and construction activities," he said. Whether the new data will affect the cost and schedule of the work has not yet been determined, Schepens said. For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035. About 1,700 people have been working to build the plant, which will stand 12 stories tall and be about the size of four football fields. -------- canada Canada refuses further role in missile defence By OLIVER MOORE Thursday, February 24, 2005 Updated at 2:35 PM EST Toronto Globe and Mail Update http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050224.w2miss0223/BNStory/National/ The formal announcement Thursday that Canada will refuse any further participation in the controversial U.S. missile-defence shield was met with an immediate warning that Canada had given up its sovereignty. Although Prime Minister Paul Martin said Canada would “insist” on maintaining control of its airspace, U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci warned that Washington would not be constrained. “We will deploy. We will defend North America,” he said. “We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up its sovereignty – its seat at the table – to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada.” Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew made the Canadian decision public after months of equivocating by the Liberal government and days of denials that a decision had been made. “After careful consideration of the issue, we have decided that Canada will not participate in the U.S. ballistic missile defence system,” Mr. Pettigrew said in the chamber of the House of Commons. He insisted that the decision – which has reportedly left the Bush administration nonplussed – will not “in any way” hurt ties with the United States. “We will carefully examine all options and pursue our priorities vigorously,” he said. The announcement came only days after Frank McKenna, the next ambassador to the United States, set off a political storm by saying that Canada is already participating in the missile shield. He said that an amendment to NORAD, the continental joint air-defence pact, meant that Canada's de facto participation had begun. Mr. McKenna made his comments on Tuesday, about the time, Mr. Martin has now acknowledged, that the United States received the formal refusal from Canada. “The official Canadian position was conveyed by Foreign Minister Pettigrew to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at our meetings in Brussels,” he told reporters. “Since then, I have discussed it with ambassador Cellucci, Mr. Graham has discussed it with [Deputy Defence Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz in the United States and I would expect to be discussing it again, with President Bush, hopefully today or in the very near future.” Mr. Martin's timeline contradicts comments from government MPs this week in the House of Commons, where opposition politicians were told that they would be informed “when a decision is made.” On both Tuesday and Wednesday, Defence Minister Bill Graham insisted that nothing had changed on the missile-defence file and that a decision was forthcoming. The minority Liberals could have lost if missile defence had come to a vote in the House of Commons. A number of senior government sources have recently told reporters in The Globe and Mail's Ottawa bureau that the federal government felt that the deep unpopularity of missile defence among Canadians made further participation a non-starter. Mr. Pettigrew said that Canada will continue to contribute to the security of the continent through the expanded mandate of NORAD, the joint continental defence pact that will track incoming missiles, and an integrated response to maritime threats “We will enhance the protection of North America,” he said. “...We will work closely to build the success of [border agreements] and engage Mexico to trilateralize, to better align our roles, priorities and interests.” Mr. Martin said in his comments, moments later, that the Liberal's military priorities are “the ones that we set out yesterday” in the budget, primarily borders, Arctic sovereignty, coastal defence, intelligence-gathering and increasing the size of the army. With a report from Canadian Press -------- china China announces plans to build four more nuclear power plants Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:30 AM ET, (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050224/wl_asia_afp/chinanuclearenergy_050224083046 BEIJING - Two Chinese provinces have announced plans to build four multi-billion dollar nuclear power plants in the coming years to meet rampant energy demand and reduce the country's heavy reliance on coal, state press said. Eastern Shandong is planning to build three plants while northeastern Jilin would construct one, the China Daily reported. The plans are part of the nation's ambitious efforts to increase its nuclear generating capacity from the current 8,700 megawatts to 36,000 megawatts by 2020. To achieve this, one 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor would need to be built each year over the next 16 years. Jilin was considering a 40 billion yuan (4.8 billion dollar) 4,000 megawatt plant with investment coming from the China Electric Power Investment Corporation, the report said. It is currently in its preliminary stages, but no timetable was given for its completion. Shandong hopes to build three nuclear power stations by 2010, with each expecting to cost between 40 billion yuan and 80 billion yuan, the paper said. None of the plants have yet to get final government approval. The Haiyang Nuclear Power Station would be built in Shangdong's coastal city of Yantai, while the Rushan Nuclear Power Station and the Rongcheng Nuclear Power Station would be built in neighboring Weihai, it said. The plants are aimed at fulfilling current and projected electricity demand, the paper said, with Shandong especially eager to overcome its dependency on coal imported from other regions. Earlier reports said that one of the two Weihai plants would be a 195-megawatt gas-cooled experimental reactor using China's revolutionary homegrown "pebble-bed" reactor technology, which could make plants both meltdown- and proliferation-proof. It would be the first radically new reactor design for decades, putting China at the forefront in nuclear energy research that offers an alternative to conventional nuclear power stations, experts said. "Pebble bed" reactors are fueled by thousands of small graphite balls with minute uranium cores which provide the fuel for the nuclear reaction. The consortium building the reactor includes electricity producer Huaneng Power International Inc, Beijing's Tsinghua University and China Nuclear Engineering and Construction. China's need for clean, non-fossil fuel based energy, is expected to make the nation the largest constructor of nuclear power plants in the coming decades. Tenders for four 1,000 megawatt reactors for two plants in southern Guangdong and eastern Zhejiang provinces are expected to be delivered on Monday, state press reported earlier. Late last year, southwestern Sichuan province announced three sites for future nuclear plants and was also awaiting final approval. China currently has nine nuclear power reactors in operation, with two 1,000 megawatt Russian reactors expected to go on-line soon. -------- depleted uranium Former Los Alamos Chief Urges Tighter Global Security for Nuclear Materials News Archives - AAAS Science - Lonnie Shekhtman --- 24 February 2005 http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/0224nuke.shtml Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's foremost experts on nuclear weapons, warned that terrorists could steal or purchase sufficient weapons-usable materials to build a crude nuclear weapon and devastate a large city. Speaking at a AAAS lecture, he listed the most likely sources of such nuclear materials as Pakistan, followed by North Korea; highly enriched uranium-fueled research reactors around the world; Russia; Kazakhstan; and Iran. International cooperation, especially with Russia, is required to tighten security of fissile materials around the world to prevent them from getting into the hands of terrorists, said the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "The likelihood of terrorists getting hold of such materials is not great, but it's not zero," Hecker said in comments after the talk. "And since the consequences are so devastating, each country that possesses fissile materials must do everything to secure them." The highest-probability nuclear threat posed by terrorists is the detonation of a radiological or "dirty bomb," he said. The radioactive materials for creating such a weapon are ubiquitous and are typically used for scientific, medical, agricultural and industrial purposes. But there would be no mushroom cloud—the dispersal would be limited and the radiation might not be lethal on a massive scale. A dirty bomb is "a weapon of mass disruption, not destruction," he said at the 3 February talk organized by the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy. Still, he said, it could cause "severe" fear, panic and economic disruption. Even as homeland security officials and scientists work to thwart the terrorists, Hecker said, they could do much to prepare the public and the news media for the possibility of such an attack. Though intelligence experts have warned that terrorists are likely seeking to obtain a nuclear device, such a bomb would be difficult to obtain and difficult to detonate. But a "dirty bomb" is much different. It would typically combine a conventional explosive with readily available radioactive material, with the blast used to disperse that material. While it may not contain enough of a concentrated radiation dose to kill many people or make them sick, it could contaminate an area of perhaps several square blocks of a city. Hecker said the U.S. could counter the threat by doing more to protect the sources and reduce the supply of low-grade radioactive materials around the world. He stressed that it is critical to prepare the public and media for one of these events, "which will happen," by educating them that radiological threat is very different than a nuclear bomb. Hecker explained the evolution of the changing nuclear threat as having begun with the devastating bombing of Japan near the close of World War II. The magnitude of the destruction in Japan showed the world that the use of nuclear weapons could end civilization as we know it. Thus, in the ensuing decades, the U.S. has used its nuclear capabilities as a deterrent in containing the expansion of the former Soviet Union, which had developed its own nuclear program. Since the Soviet collapse, the United States has been working to help secure the materials and the nuclear know-how in chaotic Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union. Today, the goal of such activity is to prevent a nuclear weapon or related materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. He believes that the terrorists who unleashed the havoc of 9/11 would show no restraint should they acquire nuclear weapons or the materials necessary for their manufacture. "The key is to keep weapons-usable materials out of the hands of terrorists," he said. Hecker has long been concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. As the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and now a senior fellow at the lab, he is recognized as one of the world's experts on plutonium. He was the last U.S. scientist able to visit North Korea's nuclear program in 2004. North Korea is one of nine countries — the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel are the others — that currently possess, or are suspected of possessing, nuclear weapons. Hecker explained that the proliferation of nuclear materials was a natural consequence of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, initiated in 1953. Eisenhower saw the potential dangers of nuclear weapons and tried to strike the bargain of having countries forego the development of these weapons in return for help in developing peaceful uses of atomic energy, such as energy production, medicine and research. Although much good has come out of the program, such as having almost 20 percent of the world's electricity provided by clean nuclear power, Hecker said, "the United States and Russia put many nuclear facilities and reactors in places in the world that today we wish we wouldn't have." Though catastrophe and full-blown chaos have largely been avoided following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said, Russia's large and inadequately secured stock of weapons-usable materials — plutonium and highly enriched uranium — poses a "clear and present danger." But Hecker said that U.S. nonproliferation efforts continue to be focused in making sure that places where nuclear materials exist are well protected and secure. "Dr. Hecker's experience with U.S. nuclear weapons and the U.S. weapons program is invaluable in helping the U.S. address nonproliferation challenges as varied as those presented by the states of the former Soviet Union and North Korea," said physicist Benn Tannenbaum, senior program associate at the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy. The Center was created by AAAS in 2004 with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation's Science, Technology and Security Initiative. The center acts as a two-way portal that facilitates communication between academic centers, policy institutes, and policymakers, with a goal of encouraging the integration of science and public policy for enhanced national and international security. -------- iran Iran Nuclear Program Creates a Furor Likely to Be Futile by Stephen Zunes Thursday, February 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0224-24.htm Having already successfully fooled most of Congress and the American public into believing that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration is now claiming that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. If we decide to once again believe such claims, do we risk being drawn into another disastrous military confrontation based upon false allegations? Or, if we reject such claims, will we -- like the villagers in the famous fable of the boy who cried, “Wolf!” -- find out too late that the alarm this time was for real? With the acumen of an experienced trader in a Persian bazaar, the Iranians have -- for the time being -- been able to avert a crisis through negotiations with representatives of the European Union. Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment and processing programs until a permanent deal is reached, which the Iranians hope would include political and economic concessions from the Europeans. The Bush administration has not been supportive of the European negotiating efforts and has instead advocated a more confrontational approach, which would include U.N. sanctions for Iran’s apparent earlier violations of agreements with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Such American efforts have not received much support, however, in part because of U.S. double standards: The United States has blocked enforcement of previous U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under an IAEA trusteeship as well as resolutions calling on Pakistan and India to eliminate their nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Indeed, whatever the extent of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and whatever the outcome of the ongoing talks, the United States is in a poor position to take much leadership in the cause of nonproliferation. Throughout the 1970s, the U.S. government encouraged American companies to sell nuclear reactors to the Iranian government, then under the dictatorial rule of the shah. Even more so than the mullahs now in power, the shah’s megalomania led many to fear his ambitions to divert the technology for military purposes. Despite the subsequent rise of an anti-American regime in that country, the United States is still obligated under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to allow signatory states in good standing to have access to peaceful nuclear technology. At the same time, given Iran’s enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, valid questions can be raised as to why it would need a nuclear energy program, particularly given the enormous expense and serious environmental risks of such technology. Even if we are to assume that Iran desires nuclear weapons, however, it would be a mistake to assume that the Islamic Republic would use them for aggressive designs. Indeed, the Iranians may have good reasons to desire a nuclear deterrent: In early 2002, Iran was among three countries -- the others being Iraq and North Korea -- labeled by President George W. Bush as part of “the axis of evil.” Iraq, which had given up its nuclear program over a decade earlier and later allowed IAEA inspectors back in, was invaded and occupied by the United States. By contrast, North Korea, which reneged on its agreement and has apparently resumed production of nuclear weapons, has not been invaded. The Iranians may see a lesson in that. In addition, soon after coming to office, the Bush administration decided to unfreeze its nuclear weapons production and launch a program to develop smaller tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. It is important to remember that the only country to actually use nuclear weapons in combat is the United States, in the 1945 bombings of two Japanese cities, a decision that most American political leaders defend to this day. Furthermore, the U.S. government is allied with Pakistan, which borders Iran on the east, and possesses nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems. The United States is also a strong ally of Israel, located just 600 miles to the west, which has the capability of launching a nuclear strike against Iran with its long-range missiles in a matter of minutes. This is not to say that a nuclear-armed Iran would not be a matter of concern. Over two decades ago, America’s Catholic bishops recognized that possessing nuclear weapons, even for the sake of deterrence, was immoral. Many Islamic scholars have reached similar conclusions. It is important to note, however, that Iran has called for the establishment of a nuclear-free zone for the entire Middle East, where all nations of the region would be required to give up their nuclear weapons and weapons programs and open up to strict international inspections. They have been joined in that effort by Syria as well as by U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt. The Bush administration has rejected such a call, however, insisting that the United States has the right to decide which countries get to have such weapons and which ones do not, effectively demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid. Not only are such double standards unethical, they are ineffective: Any effort to impose a regime of haves and have-nots from the outside will simply make the have-nots try even harder. The only realistic means of curbing the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is to establish a region-wide program for disarmament in which all countries -- regardless of their relations with the United States -- must be a part. And, ultimately, the only way to make the world completely safe from the threat of nuclear weapons is the establishment of a nuclear-free planet, for which the United States, as the largest nuclear power, must take the lead. Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. ---- http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran-usa.html? Iran Says Does Not Want U.S. to Join Nuclear Talks By REUTERS Published: February 24, 2005 Filed at 4:16 a.m. ET TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Thursday it did not want the United States to become more involved in negotiations Tehran is holding with the European Union over its nuclear program. European leaders, including French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder, urged President Bush this week to join the EU approach of offering incentives to Iran in return for scrapping some atomic work. Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley, said on Wednesday Bush would consider the use of incentives such as the membership of the World Trade Organization and the sale of civilian aircraft to Iran, when he returns to Washington. But Iran, which strongly denies U.S. accusations it is secretly building nuclear arms, said it did not want Washington to join the nuclear talks with Britain, France and Germany. ``The Islamic Republic of Iran does not see any reason why the United States should join the negotiations between the three European countries and Iran on its nuclear program,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. ``America's strategy is clear and it revolves around Israel. If America joins these negotiations they wouldn't make it any better, more like it would be worse,'' the official IRNA news agency quoted Asefi as saying. ``I hope the European countries continue to act independently in the negotiations,'' he added. European diplomats privately acknowledge that talks with Iran are unlikely to succeed unless Washington throws its full weight behind them since many of the possible incentives for Iran would need U.S. backing. Iran has frozen uranium enrichment, which can be used to make bomb-grade fuel, while the EU talks go on. But it has said it will review the freeze in mid-March and refuses to contemplate scrapping enrichment for good as the EU and Washington want. ---- Russia Set to Sign Nuclear Deal with Iran, Irk U.S. Thu Feb 24, 2005 07:39 AM ET (Reuters) By Maria Golovnina http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7726680 http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-russia-iran.html MOSCOW - Russia, ignoring U.S. concerns, is set to sign a deal with Tehran this weekend that will pave the way for the start-up of Iran's first nuclear power plant. President Vladimir Putin last week cleared the way for the $1 billion Russian-built Bushehr reactor project to go ahead when he said he was sure that Tehran -- branded part of an "axis of evil" by Washington -- had no plans to make atomic arms. His nuclear energy chief, Alexander Rumyantsev, was finally due to visit Iran to sign the deal Saturday, crowning years of tense politicking in which Moscow has defended the lucrative project in the face of strong pressure from Washington. The United States says it fears the 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant in southern Iran could be used as a cover by Tehran to build atomic weapons. Tehran has denied this. "Moscow is really keen to get on with this project," said Vladimir Yevseyev, a non-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow. "Abandoning the Bushehr project would immediately destroy diplomatic relations with Iran and hurt Russia's standing in the region." Moscow's decision to press ahead with Bushehr has not been easy for Putin, given the value he attaches to his personal friendship with President Bush. The two men were meeting Thursday in the Slovak capital with Iran a top item on their agenda. A key part of the agreement due to be signed addresses itself to U.S. concerns, obliging Tehran to repatriate all spent nuclear fuel from the Bushehr reactor back to Russia. Moscow hopes this will alleviate U.S. fears that Iran may use the spent fuel -- which contains potentially weapons-grade materials -- to develop arms. Oil-rich Iran denies it is developing nuclear arms and says its program is solely for generating electricity. The Bushehr plant, where hundreds of Russian engineers and scientists work, is due to go on line later this year and reach full capacity in 2006. RIVALS Diplomats in Moscow said last year's offer by the European Union's "Big Three" to help Tehran with peaceful atomic energy may have spurred Russia into getting going with the plant to avoid losing a key market in the Middle East to EU rivals. "Bushehr is a huge economic incentive for Russia. It will raise revenues and create jobs for Russian specialists," said one diplomat. "But a lot of questions still remain unresolved over Iran's nuclear program. And any cooperation in that field can be problematic for as long as that is the case." Carnegie's Yevseyev said: "By pressing ahead with Bushehr, Russia wants to prove that it's not only got a lot of natural resources for export, but that it is also one of the world's most advanced nuclear powers." Under the deal, Russia could start fuel shipments to Iran as early as in the next two months. The fuel will be used to generate electricity. After about a decade of use, Iran will have to repatriate the material back to a storage facility in Siberia. A Russian Atomic Energy Agency official said Moscow will receive around $20 million from shipping the fuel to Iran and another $10 million from its repatriation -- but revenues may rise considerably over years. "Construction of another reactor there cannot be ruled out either," he said. "There are good opportunities for us there, so we are determined to expand our relationship with Iran." ---- Bush to Mull European Idea of Incentives for Iran By REUTERS Published: February 24, 2005 Filed at 2:44 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-iran.html BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (Reuters) - President Bush said Thursday he and European leaders were ``on the same page'' when it comes to keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons and he would consider their suggestions for economic incentives. This could mark a change of course for his administration, which accuses Tehran of aiming to build such weapons and which, instead of incentives for Iran, was pushing to bring the dispute to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. ``The most effective way to achieve that goal is to have our partners -- Great Britain and France and Germany -- represent not only the EU, not only NATO, but the United States,'' he said after talks with Slovak leaders in Bratislava, rebuffing suggestions Washington join directly in the nuclear talks. Wrapping up a fence-mending trip to Europe eager to stress transatlantic cooperation after bitter differences over the Iraq war, Bush said that for the first time he would consider European proposals to offer incentives to Iran in return for scrapping some atomic work. ``I was listening very carefully to the different ideas on negotiating strategies,'' Bush told reporters about his talks this week with European leaders about Iran. ``I'm going to go back and think about the suggestions I've heard and the ways forward.'' These inducements could include providing an Airbus plane and the prospect of further aircraft deliveries if the talks were successfully concluded. Another possible inducement would be talks on Iran joining the World Trade Organization. Iran said Thursday it did not want the United States to become more involved in negotiations Tehran is holding with the European Union over its nuclear program. Bush, who has not ruled out military action, said on Thursday he hoped to find a diplomatic solution to the dispute. ``We're more likely to do so when we're all on the same page. And I know we're on the same page on this issue when it comes to a common goal,'' he said, noting that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac ``all said loud and clear that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon. ``We have a common objective, which is to convince the ayatollahs not to have a nuclear weapon,'' Bush added. Washington says Iran's public program to develop nuclear energy technology is a cover for a secret plan to build a nuclear bomb. Iran denies U.S. accusations it is secretly building nuclear arms, and says it program is peaceful and within its international rights. European diplomats privately acknowledge that talks with Iran are unlikely to succeed unless Washington throws its full weight behind them since many of the possible incentives for Iran would need U.S. backing. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said on Wednesday that Bush and European leaders have been discussing whether there should be ``a mix of carrots and sticks, and who should the carrots come from and what should they be.'' Administration officials had rebuffed using incentives in the past, though Bush and Hadley were non-committal on whether they would support offering economic incentives after a review in Washington. Iran has frozen uranium enrichment, which can be used to make weapons-grade uranium, while the EU talks go on. But it has said it will review the freeze in mid-March and refuses to contemplate scrapping enrichment for good as the EU and Washington want. ---- Iranian negotiator predicts 'new dynamism' in nuclear negotiations Thu Feb 24, 2:49 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050224/wl_mideast_afp/irannuclearfranceeu_050224194943 PARIS - Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, predicted a "new dynamism" in negotiations with Europe on Tehran's nuclear program, following talks with French President Jacques Chirac. "We believe that our talks with President Chirac will allow us to bring a new dynamism to the negotiations," Rowhani told journalists after a 75-minute meeting with Chirac and Foreign Minister Michel Barnier at the presidential Elysee Palace. Rowhani said Chirac had not given him any message from US President George W. Bush, who said in Bratislava Thursday he was hopeful a diplomatic solution can be reached over Iran's nuclear program "However we talked about a certain number of points which had been raised between President Chirac and Mr Bush," he said. Washington has alleged that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, a charge that Tehran vehemently denies, saying that its nuclear program is completely peaceful. Rowhani emphasized that "until now our main partners are the three European countries in the negotiating group. Earlier Tehran rejected the idea that the United States be associated with the negotiations with Europe. EU nations led by France, Britain and Germany have been pursuing the carrot rather than the stick approach, by seeking to persuade Iran to comply with its international obligations in return for a lucrative package of trade deals. Chirac's spokesperson Jerome Bonnafont said: "Iran must give objective guarantees assuring that its nuclear program has no military purpose." "We hope to achieve this result through global dialogue with Iran," he added. All Europeans "approve of the choice of dialogue and negotiation," said Bonnafont, adding that the negotiations had been conducted "in total transparence with the United States in liaison with China and Russia." "If these objective guarantees were given, Iran could benefit on the one hand from a cooperation in the area of nuclear energy for civilian purposes and on the other from an economic and commercial co-operation and finally a political dialogue and safety." Chirac had called on Tuesday for a sign to be sent to Iran as part of the negotiations, focusing for example on its desire to join the World Trade Organisation or to obtain civilian aircraft engines. After Paris, Rowhani is to travel on to Berlin and London, to meet the other key players in the European Union's ongoing negotiations aimed at convincing Tehran to definitively abandon its uranium enrichment program, which can be a key step to developing nuclear weapons. -------- korea Chinese Envoy Returns From North Korea Saying It Is Open to Talks February 24, 2005 By CHRIS BUCKLEY The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/asia/24korea.html BEIJING, Feb. 23 - China and the United States have agreed that multiparty talks aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear weapons program should resume as early as possible, and North Korea is open to the negotiations, Chinese officials said Wednesday. China's foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed to work toward an early resumption of negotiations during a telephone call on Tuesday night, according to an announcement on the Foreign Ministry's Web site. The brief announcement said Mr. Li and Ms. Rice, who is visiting Europe with President Bush, had had a "thorough exchange of views" about North Korea, but it offered no details. A Chinese official who visited Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, said Wednesday that North Korea was willing to return to negotiations. The statement on the ministry Web site and Mr. Li's phone call to Ms. Rice appear to be the latest steps in China's efforts to ease tensions over North Korea's nuclear ambitions by emphasizing hopes of renewed talks and highlighting points of agreement, however tenuous, among the parties. On Feb. 10, North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons and said it would no longer join in six-nation talks in which it, South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia had been meeting from August 2003 until June of last year, when the negotiations stalled. The United States has demanded that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program as a precondition for further cooperation and aid. On Tuesday, a Chinese envoy, Wang Jiarui, ended a four-day visit to Pyongyang aimed at coaxing North Korea back to the negotiating table. In an interview on Chinese television on Wednesday, Mr. Wang said the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, was open to negotiation despite the Feb. 10 announcement. "The North Korean side never opposed the six-party talks, and the D.P.R.K. is willing to return to the six-party talks at an early date," Mr. Wang said of Mr. Kim's position in their meeting, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that the United States and North Korea should both work harder to revive the talks. "Every side should demonstrate its sincerity and show flexibility," the spokesman, Kong Quan, said in a regular news briefing. "The crucial key," he later added, "is that the most important parties - North Korea and the United States - should make greater efforts." Washington has said that it is willing to resume the six-nation negotiations and that only North Korea's recalcitrance stands in the way. "All of the other five parties - the United States, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia - are in fact ready to return to the table at an early date and without preconditions," the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said Tuesday. Mr. Boucher confirmed that Ms. Rice had spoken with Mr. Li. "We expect to have further follow-up and exchanges on the subject of the visit," he said, referring to the trip to Pyongyang by the Chinese official. Mr. Kim told China's visiting envoy, Mr. Wang, that North Korea would rejoin the talks if conditions were right and if the United States demonstrated "trustworthy sincerity," the North Korean news media reported on Tuesday. On Saturday, South Korean, American and Japanese officials in charge of negotiating with North Korea will meet in Seoul to discuss their response to North Korea's moves, the South Korean Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday. ---- US demand for return of seized spy ship adds twist to Korean nuclear saga Thu Feb 24, 9:27 AM ET (AFP) http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&ncid=1278&e=1&u=/afp/20050224/pl_afp/usnkoreanavy WASHINGTON - As diplomatic efforts to end a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang make little headway, a resolution has been introduced in the US Senate demanding North Korea return an American intelligence ship seized by the hardline communist state 37 years ago. The attack on the USS Pueblo by North Korean naval vessels and MiG jets on January 23, 1968, left one American dead and several more wounded while 82 surviving crew members were captured, held prisoner and tortured for a year. The Senate resolution demands the return of the vessel, believed still in North Korean hands. "North Koreas inhumane treatment of our sailors, and the refusal of Pyongyang to return this vessel should not be forgotten," said Senator Wayne Allard, who filed the resolution this month after the Stalinist state stunned the world by publicly boasting about its nuclear weapons arsenal. The Republican senator from Colorado said although it had been more than three decades since the "disgraceful episode" occurred, "the United States government should demand the return of the USS Pueblo to the US Navy without further delay." Washington has been quite reluctant to demand its return because of the embarassment caused by the incident. It had to apologize to North Korea for the spying mission before receiving the surviving crew. The US Navy had publicly termed the mission a research ship conducting oceanographic studies but North Korean officials shared the secrets they unearthed from the vessel, including codes and cipher machines that enabled the Soviets to decipher many of the restricted American documents, according to reports. It was the first US Navy ship to be hijacked on the high seas by a foreign military force in over 150 years. Senator Allard said he would press for passage of his resolution during the current session of the Congress and work with the veterans of the USS Pueblo and their respective groups to "take positive steps" towards getting the vessel back. The ship was named after the city of Pueblo in the senator's constituency, where some residents plan to convert it into a "theme park" on its return. Fred Carriere, executive director of The Korea Society and an experienced Korea hand, said he visited the ship last year during a trip to Pyongyang with the society's chairman and ex-ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg. "It was docked in the Tedong River and is still impressive and seaworthy," he told AFP. "From the Korean point of view it is an educational exhibit and one of the most sacred trophies aimed at making the point of history about American invasions of Korea," he said. Carriere said the ship was docked at the same spot where the Koreans sank a US merchant ship called General Sherman, among the first American vessels that sailed into Pyongyang in the 1860's in an apparent bid to "open up" the Korean peninsula to the outside world. It is believed that North Korea had given serious consideration to returning the USS Pueblo to the United States in the spring of 2002 as part of a "confidence building measure," just months before a nuclear standoff flared up in the fall of that year, an Asian diplomat close to Pyongyang told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. The standoff was triggered by US accusations that Pyongyang was operating a nuclear weapons program based on highly enriched uranium, violating a 1994 agreement. North Korea attended three round of talks designed to end its nuclear weapons program but this month, while claiming it had nuclear weapons, said it was boycotting the meeting due to "hostile" US policies. ---- Clinton says he believes North Korean nuclear dispute can be resolved peacefully Thursday February 24, 2005 (AP) http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050224/ap/d88eubao2.html Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Thursday expressed optimism that an international standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs can be resolved peacefully. Clinton made the comments during a dinner in Seoul hosted by the publisher of the Korean edition of his best-selling memoir, "My Life." "I still support a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, I still believe there can be a peaceful resolution of the Korean crisis," Clinton said. "I hope that China and all friends of the Korean people will make it succeed," he said, according to a pool report. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, also attending the dinner, praised Clinton, saying "he successfully overcame the nuclear crisis in 1994." Clinton's administration forged a 1994 agreement with North Korea that obligated the communist state to freeze its nuclear activities in return for free oil and other benefits. A new nuclear dispute erupted in 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of flouting the 1994 deal by running a secret uranium-enrichment program. ADVERTISEMENT "If only President Clinton had had one more year, the issue of nuclear weapons would have been resolved," Kim Dae-jung said. Efforts to restart stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions took on a new urgency earlier this month when Pyongyang made an unconfirmed claim that it has nuclear weapons. -------- missile defense US: Missile Shield Intercept Successful (AFP) Feb 24, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/bmdo-05j.html Washington - A US navy missile over the Pacific intercepted a target missile, which the military on Thursday said was the fifth successful test of a system to shield North America. The navy said the Standard Missile 3 interceptor is designed to destroy medium- to long-range missiles on the fly. The navy launched the target missile from the Hawaiian island of Kauai and launched the Standard Missile 3 from the USS Lake Erie about 160 kilometers (100 miles) away, according to a statement. The Aegis missiles collided, using the same technology as a ground-based system designed to destroy long-range missiles and used by army's Patriot system. Also Thursday, Canada announced that it would not participate in the US system because of broad domestic opposition. Ottawa had been mulling its stand on the US missile defense program for more than a year, and political analysts expected the decision. The Pentagon is seeking a 20 percent boost in funding for the program, from 7.7 billion dollars this year to 9.2 billion dollars in 2005. Plans calls for deploying 20 ground-based interceptor missiles and up to 10 sea-based missiles by the end of fiscal 2005. ---- Canada Says It Won't Join Missile Shield With the U.S. February 24, 2005 By CLIFFORD KRAUSS The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/americas/24canada.html TORONTO, Feb. 23 - The Canadian government has refused to take part in a planned North America missile defense system despite personal lobbying by President Bush here last November, United States diplomatic officials said Wednesday. The long-awaited decision from Prime Minister Paul Martin was a symbolic setback for the Bush administration when it is trying to heal rifts with allies that emerged from the invasion of Iraq. It was conveyed privately to senior United States officials this week in Ottawa and at the NATO summit meeting in Brussels, United States diplomats said. Asked about the issue on Wednesday in Parliament, Mr. Martin would not confirm that a decision had been made, but according to newspaper reports here quoting anonymous sources, an official announcement will be made this week. Bush administration officials said the Pentagon had long expected that Canada would not sign on to the missile defense system, adding that the decision would not deter the United States. Before he became Liberal Party leader in 2003, Mr. Martin repeatedly said Canada should participate in a missile defense program with Washington. In recent months, his defense minister, Bill Graham, also publicly voiced his support for the program repeatedly. But Mr. Martin reversed his position amid strong opposition from backbench Liberal Party members in the House of Commons, and polls have shown the system to be unpopular with the public particularly in Quebec, where Liberals hope to make a comeback in the next parliamentary elections. It was never made clear what Washington hoped to gain from Canada's support, although Canadian military specialists speculated that warning stations and cables might be placed on Canadian territory. Ottawa signed an agreement with Washington last summer to expand the mission of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, to allow the transmission of satellite and radar data about incoming missiles to the United States Northern Command, which will operate the missile defense system. When Mr. Bush visited Ottawa last year, he privately urged Mr. Martin to join the system and said at two public appearances that it was important to the continent's security. The Canadian position has been confusing at times, with critics noting that it is one of several issues in which Prime Minister Martin seemed to drift until pressed to decide by one interest group or another. Speaking of missile defense on Tuesday, Frank McKenna, the designated Canadian ambassador to the United States, told reporters in Ottawa, "We are part of it now, and the question is what more do we need to do?" But in trying to clarify the government's position shortly after, Mr. Graham said: "Norad evaluates a threat. Making a decision to launch a missile is a whole other story." The mixed message led opposition leaders to harshly criticize Mr. Martin and the Liberal cabinet for being indecisive on the floor of the House of Commons two days in a row. "They are trying to have it both ways," Bill Blaikie, a leader of the New Democratic Party, said Wednesday. "When is the prime minister going to put himself out of his misery?" While American officials were disappointed by Mr. Martin's decision, they expressed satisfaction that the government announced a considerable increase in defense spending in the budget released Wednesday - something Bush administration officials have pressed for since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The government announced that it would raise military spending by $9.8 billion over the next five years, in the biggest investment in the military in two decades. The money will be used to recruit 5,000 troops and 3,000 reservists. More than $2 billion will go for helicopters that can be deployed in Afghanistan, Bosnia and other trouble spots where Canadian troops are deployed. An administration official said the United States was pleased by the budget announcement but still hoped that Canada would finance the acquisition of large transport planes to move troops quickly in a crisis. ---- Canada won't formally join U.S. missile defense shield (AP) 2/24/2005 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-24-canada-missiles_x.htm TORONTO — Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would opt out of the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a move that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race. Martin, ending nearly two years of debate over whether Canada should participate in the development or operation of the multibillion-dollar program, said Ottawa would remain a close ally of Washington in the fight against global terrorism and continental security. He said he intended to talk to President Bush later Thursday and that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been informed of the decision earlier this week. A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States had been informed beforehand of the decision, adding that Washington expects that cooperation with Canada will continue on a wide variety of issues. Talking to reporters several minutes after his foreign minister first announced the move in the House of Commons, Martin said Canada would instead focus on strengthening its own military and defense in proposals laid out Wednesday in the federal budget. "Canada recognizes the enormous burden that the United States shoulders, when it comes to international peace and security," Martin said. "The substantial increases made yesterday to our defense budget are a tangible indication that Canada intends to carry its full share of that responsibility." The federal budget presented to the House of Commons calls for $10.5 billion in the next five years to increase the country's beleaguered armed forces — including an additional 5,000 soldiers and 3,000 reservists — the largest commitment to defense in two decades. It also called for another $807,950 to improve Canada's anti-terrorism efforts and security along the unarmed, 4,000-mile border with the United States. When Bush visited Canada in December, he surprised Ottawa by making several unsolicited pitches for support of the defense shield, which is in the midst of testing interceptors capable of destroying incoming missiles targeted at North America. Martin, who leads a tenuous minority government, has said Ottawa would not support what he called the "weaponization of space." Though he initially supported joining the program when he was a candidate for the Liberal leadership, Martin has retreated, since polls indicate that a majority of Canadians oppose it. Many believe that the umbrella, when fully implemented, could lead to an international arms race. The Bush administration has tried to make a public show of understanding that Martin heads up a minority government that could fall over such a contentious debate. But U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci told reporters Wednesday that he was perplexed over Canada's apparent decision to allow Washington to make the decision if a missile was headed toward its territory. "Why would you want to give up sovereignty?" he said. "We don't get it. We think Canada would want to be in the room deciding what to do about an incoming missile that might be heading toward Canada." -------- russia Russia Plans 3 Nuclear Reactors by 2010 Thu Feb 24, 4:33 PM ET By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050224/ap_on_re_eu/russia_nuclear_1 MOSCOW - Russia plans to launch three new commercial nuclear reactors over the next five years and upgrade existing ones to higher standards, including stronger protection from possible terror attacks, top nuclear officials said Thursday. U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about the dangers of poor security at Russia's nuclear plants and other facilities — and the possibility of international terrorists either getting their hands on weapons material or staging an attack at a poorly guarded facility. In December, Russia started up its 31st nuclear reactor, at the Kalinin nuclear power plant in western Russia. By 2010, the nation will have 34 reactors, said Oleg Sarayev, the head of the state-controlled Rosenergoatom consortium in charge of Russia's nuclear power plants. "We aren't going to take any of the currently operating reactors off duty during that period, and work has already started to modernize the reactors approaching the end of their designated lifetime," Sarayev said at a news conference. During recent years, Russia has overcome a public backlash against nuclear power that followed the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and supported an ambitious program to develop its nuclear industry. Sarayev said the two latest nuclear reactors put on line since 2001 have upgraded security systems for stronger protection against possible terror attacks and other risks. He said security at other reactors would also be tightened. "We are paying increased attention to strengthening the physical protection of our plants," Sarayev said. "New threats have emerged, which made that necessary." Sarayev said Russia's security services have conducted regular exercises imitating terror attacks on nuclear power plants that helped enhance their security. "That doesn't mean that we have such a level of protection that completely satisfies us. We will continue to make improvements," Sarayev said. He said living conditions have been improved for the Interior Ministry troops guarding the Rostov nuclear power plant in southern Russia, about 300 miles north of Chechnya. The U.S. Nunn-Lugar program has spent billions of dollars to improve security at weapons storage sites in Russia and other former Soviet republics, but U.S. officials say many of Russia's nuclear sites still don't have sufficient safeguards in place. -------- terrorism Nuclear Terror at Home New Mexico Key to Military Strategy Threatening Species Survival IRC Editorial Opinion By Noam Chomsky | February 24, 2005 (Silver City, NM: International Relations Center). http://www.irc-online.org/content/chomsky/0502nuclear.php If you can imagine some rational observers from Mars looking at this curious species down here, I don’t think they’d put very high odds on survival—another generation or two. In fact, it’s kind of miraculous that we’ve come along this far. The world has come extremely close to total destruction just in recent years from nuclear war. New Mexico plays an important role in this. There’s case after case where a nuclear war was prevented almost by a miracle. And the threat is increasing as a consequence of policies that the administration is very consciously pursuing. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld understands perfectly well that these policies are increasing the threat of destruction. As you know, it’s not a high probability event, but if a low probability event keeps happening over and over, there’s a high probability that sooner or later it will take place. If you want to rank issues in terms of significance, there are some issues that are literally issues of survival of the species, and they’re imminent. Nuclear war is an issue of species survival, and the threats have been severe for a long time. It’s come to the point where you can read in the most sober respectable journals warnings by the leading strategic analysts that the current American posture—transformation of the military—is raising the prospect of what they call “ultimate doom” and not very far away. That’s because it leads to an action-reaction cycle in which others respond. That leads us to be closer and more reliant on hair-trigger mechanisms, which are massively destructive. Militarization of space could very well doom the species. It’s being pushed very hard. That’s one issue that really requires major work and that’s a huge one in New Mexico. New Mexico is one of the centers where this potential destruction of the species is taking place. There’s a document called The Essentials of Post Cold War Deterrence that was released during the Clinton years by the Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear weapons. It’s one of the most horrifying documents I’ve ever read. People haven’t paid attention to it. The Strategic Command report asks how we should reconstruct our nuclear and other forces for the post-Cold War period. And the conclusions are that we have to rely primarily on nuclear weapons because unlike other weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological, the effects of nuclear weapons are immediate, devastating, overwhelming—not only destructive but terrifying. So they have to be the core of what’s called deterrence. Everything means the opposite of what it says. Deterrence means our offensive stance should primarily be based on nuclear weapons because they’re so destructive and terrifying. And furthermore just the possession of massive nuclear forces casts a shadow over any international conflict, like people are frightened of us because we have this overwhelming force. We have to have a national persona of irrationality with forces out of control, so we really terrify everybody, and then we can get what we want. And furthermore they’re right to be terrified because we’re going to have these nuclear weapons right in front of us, which will blow them all up—in fact, blow us all up if they get out of control. If you read the vision for 2020 published by the Space Administration, it talks about how the new frontier is space—and that we have to take control of space for military purposes and make sure that we have no competitors. That means the space-based instruments of sudden mass destruction. There was an outer space treaty in 1967, which doesn’t have any teeth in it but it does call for preserving space for peaceful purposes. And there have been efforts at the U.N. General Assembly Disarmament Committee to strengthen it. But they’ve been blocked unilaterally by the United States. The United States alone refuses to vote for the General Assembly resolution, and it’s been tied up since the year 2000. The Chinese are the ones who are pushing to expand it. That’s not reported in the United States. In the year 2000 it was only reported in one newspaper, a small newspaper in Utah. The whole world is supposed to be covered with—probably is—with sophisticated surveillance devices and the whole range of complex, lethal, destructive weaponry designed to be able to attack anything from space. This means nuclear weapons in space—nuclear energy sources in space—which can get out of control and blow up and who knows what will happen. When the Bush administration took over they just made it more extreme. They moved from the Clinton doctrine of control of space to what they call ownership of space, meaning—their words—“instant engagement anywhere” or unannounced destruction of any place on earth. These are remarks Noam Chomsky made on Jan. 25 at events in Santa Fe, NM, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center (IRC), online at www.irc-online.org. Chomsky is a member of the IRC’s board of directors. For more information: www.irc-online.org Noam Chomsky is the author of Hegemony or Survival. Noam has been an IRC board member for fifteen years and a steadfast supporter of IRC’s mission and programs. Read what Chomsky wrote about IRC in support of our 25th anniversary and why you should generously support IRC, as he does. -------- california PG&E suspects 'missing' nuclear fuel rods never left Carl T. Hall, San Francisco Chronicle Science Writer Thursday, February 24, 2005 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/24/BAG2PBG2T61.DTL After a seven-month search, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Wednesday that no one is completely sure what happened to three missing fuel rods at the old Humboldt Bay Power Plant near Eureka -- but that there is every reason to believe they were right where they were supposed to be all along. An interim report to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission detailed "reasonable, but not conclusive, evidence" that deteriorated fragments recovered from the bottom of a used-fuel storage pool at the defunct plant in fact were the remains of the missing fuel rods. The search began in June when PG&E found a discrepancy in records used to keep track of radioactive material. One record indicated the three 18-inch rods were dumped into the storage pool in 1968. Another record showed they were shipped to an outside waste site a year later. Nuclear power watchdog groups said this revealed dangerous holes in the system -- and raised the possibility that neither of the recorded scenarios was correct. In fact, officials couldn't rule out such remote possibilities as theft and coverup. That prompted a full-scale search and analysis, including interviews with former employees and meticulous inspections of the entire plant site. An independent contractor, ATI Consulting, was hired to study the 40-year-old fuel rod fragments that were located. A final report is expected by May. The total cost of the effort, PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis said Wednesday, is likely to be about $1 million, which he said will be borne by shareholders, rather than by the utility's ratepayers. In a summary of the interim report issued Wednesday, PG&E said officials are confident the effort was worthwhile, because it "established an accurate inventory for all special nuclear material onsite, and developed solid controls for storing and accounting for these materials." The analysis also effectively ruled out any terrorist plot, Lewis said, other than a plot that would have had no point: Not only was there no evidence of theft or attempted theft found, but the missing rods were "of insufficient quality and quantity" to make a weapon of mass destruction or even a low-grade "dirty bomb" capable of spreading radioactive material through a populated area. E-mail Carl T. Hall at chall@sfchronicle.com. -------- nevada Yucca meetings held secretly, Nevadans allege By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Thursday, February 24, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Feb-24-Thu-2005/news/25930936.html WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials charged Wednesday that government managers have met behind closed doors to discuss a court ruling ordering a new radiation safety standard for Yucca Mountain. Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency who are rewriting the standard attended meetings and had phone conversations with counterparts from the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nevada attorneys said, based on documents they obtained. Martin Malsch, one of Nevada's nuclear waste lawyers, said the contacts do not appear to break any laws. A federal spokeswoman and two people outside the government said the sessions they were familiar with were proper and not out of the ordinary. But Nevada officials said private talks at least raise questions about government openness and at worst hint that federal officials might be collaborating to make it easier to build a nuclear waste repository in the state. Malsch raised the issue during a presentation Wednesday before the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, a branch of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "It appears that NRC, DOE and EPA have been discussing with each other how to respond" to the court's ruling, Malsch told the committee. "However, rather than being open with it, the agencies have drawn an iron curtain of secrecy around their deliberations," he said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in July voided an EPA 10,000-year radiation standard for the repository. The EPA has said it might propose a new standard this summer, but the project has been delayed in the meantime. Malsch said Nevada has asked the EPA to issue an "advance notice of rule-making" that would require the agency to conduct public meetings, but has received no answer. Malsch later said the state, through the federal Freedom of Information Act, obtained date books for EPA officials, meeting notes and e-mails indicating that meetings and telephone conversations involving the three agencies took place shortly after the court's ruling in July. Sue Gagner, an NRC spokeswoman, said the agency's discussions with EPA are appropriate because NRC's licensing regulations for Yucca Mountain must be harmonized with the safety rules that EPA is writing. -------- utah Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Site Recommended for Licensing Thursday February 24, 5:13 pm ET /PRNewswire/ Source: Dairyland Power Cooperative http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050224/cgth057_1.html LA CROSSE, Wis., Feb. 24-- The Atomic Safety & Licensing Board (ASLB) of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) today recommended that an operating license be granted to Private Fuel Storage LLC (PFS). The license would allow the construction and operation of a temporary spent nuclear fuel storage site on the Skull Valley reservation of the Goshute Indians in central Utah. Dairyland Power Cooperative, La Crosse, Wis., is one of eight utilities comprising PFS. PFS Chairman of the Board and CEO John Parkyn said, "This action, the first in nearly a decade, is a great advancement for the nuclear industry in America. More than two-thirds of the emission-free electrical generation in this country comes from nuclear power plants. American energy independence is critical in this time of national challenge, and maintaining the nuclear option is enhanced by this decision. This facility, which complements the proposed permanent facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., will allow the industry to move forward with a centralized, safe, secure facility and will provide an important alternative to spent fuel storage at 72 separate locations across the United States." Today's decision comes nearly eight years after the licensing process began. PFS had reviewed the feasibility of such a facility and prospective locations for several years before submitting its license application in 1997. The licensing process included NRC staff evaluation of the license application and extensive public input. Public hearings on the application were held in 2000 and 2002. They provided opportunities for public comment on the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which was issued in 2001 and the Final Safety Evaluation Report, issued in 2002. The ASLB recommendation will be reviewed by the NRC Commissioners. If the Commissioners concur with the recommendation, they will direct the NRC staff to issue a license. Private Fuel Storage is owned by a group of eight utilities, one of which is Dairyland Power, that applied for a license from the NRC in 1997. The utilities seek a safe, temporary site for spent fuel storage until the federal facility is available. The Department of Energy is developing a license application for a federal repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. With headquarters in La Crosse, Wis., Dairyland provides wholesale electricity to 25 member distribution cooperatives and 20 municipal utilities. Dairyland's service area encompasses 62 counties in four states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois). Dairyland has provided low-cost, reliable electrical energy and related services to its customers in the upper Midwest for over 63 years. ---- Board backs nuclear waste dump in Utah By TRAVIS REED ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER Thursday, February 24, 2005 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Utah%20Nuclear%20Waste SALT LAKE CITY -- A federal licensing board approved a proposed nuclear waste dump Thursday, reversing an earlier ruling that there was too much risk of a plane crash from a nearby air base. The 2-1 vote by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board sent the proposal to the full Nuclear Regulatory Commission for final approval. The approval was a blow to state officials, who have long fought the plans to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods at the facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City and near the sprawling Utah Test and Training Range. The Air Force flies thousands of training missions each year from Hill Air Force Base, and in stalling dump construction in March 2003, the board had cited the possibility that a fighter jet could crash into the facility. Regulatory standards forbid the project if the probability of a radiation breech from a crash is more than one in a million per year. The board had initially accepted an analysis that the probability was four times that. But the board said Thursday that further analysis showed that even if an F-16 did crash into the site, it would be unlikely to cause "cask and canister damage resulting in radiological release" unless the plane were traveling at a particular speed and angle. The waste is expected to end up at a proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. The state contended that rods could end up permanently in Utah because the Energy Department isn't obligated to transport them to Nevada, but the licensing board rejected the argument Thursday, saying the state didn't have enough facts to support its stance. Assistant Utah Attorney General Denise Chancellor said her office will continue to fight the facility, either through another appeal to the board, in court or before the regulatory commission. The issue has wound its way through the courts since Skull Valley Band Tribal Chairman Leon Bear signed a lease in 1997 allowing Private Fuel Storage to store the fuel on Goshute land. The site is barren desert, and the storage plan would bring the small impoverished tribe a fortune - possibly as much as $3 billion. PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said the consortium was pleased with the ruling, and remained undeterred by the state's opposition. "I can't think of any nuclear facility that has been welcomed with open arms. ... But once the facility is there and operating safely, it becomes part of the community, and the opinions and attitudes change," she said. As planned, the storage pad would hold up to 4,000 casks filled with depleted nuclear fuel - about 10 million rods - across 100 acres of the Skull Valley. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants. On the Net: Licensing board: http://www.nrc.gov/who-we-are/organization/aslbpfuncdesc.html -------- washington Quake had more impact on Wash. nuke plant By SHANNON DININNY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER Thursday, February 24, 2005 · Last updated 6:08 p.m. PT http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Hanford%20Earthquake%20Danger YAKIMA, Wash. -- The impact of a severe earthquake on a radioactive waste treatment plant under construction at the Hanford nuclear reservation is almost 40 percent greater than previously estimated, according to a new study. The nearly $6 billion plant - the federal government's largest construction project - is being built to treat millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste left from Cold War-era nuclear weapons production. Construction is already about 35 percent complete at the south-central Washington site. Work has been slowed or shifted to other parts of the plant while engineers re-evaluate its design. The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages the site cleanup, and the contractor hired to build the plant stressed the chances of a severe earthquake at the site are slim. In addition, some construction work that already has been re-evaluated - the concrete walls at the plant, for instance - meet the new seismic requirements and will not have to be changed. "Earthquakes, No. 1, don't happen a lot in this area, and if they do happen, we are building a very robust plant to handle it," Roy Schepens, manager of the Energy Department's Office of River Protection, said Thursday. In 2002, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised concerns that the Energy Department had failed to adequately investigate the impact a severe earthquake might have on the plant. The agency had gathered seismic data from the entire 586-square-mile Hanford reservation to determine the impact, but did not conduct a seismic investigation of the plant site itself. The agency conducted a more thorough evaluation in 2004; the data were sent to a federal science laboratory for review. The results of that review - released first to The Associated Press this week - found the force of the ground movements at the plant site during a worst-case-scenario earthquake would be 38 percent greater than previously estimated. Engineers now are working to apply that new number to the plant's design; the process could take four to six months, Schepens said. "In the near term, we will develop very conservative design criteria that will allow us to advance the design and construction activities," he said. Whether the new data will affect the cost and schedule of the work has not yet been determined, Schepens said. For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035. About 1,700 people have been working to build the plant, which will stand 12 stories tall and be about the size of four football fields. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Is EU choosing China over US? Plan to lift China arms ban hits sour note on Bush's harmony-building trip. February 24, 2005 By Matthew Clark | csmonitor.com Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0224/dailyUpdate.html US President George Bush's first diplomatic trip to Europe since being reelected has been widely considered a success. The transatlantic rift exacerbated by different Iraq strategies – which has been trumpeted by media on both sides of ocean for the last three years – was smoothed over by a show of unity between Bush and European leaders. All 26 countries in NATO pledged money, equipment, or personnel to train Iraqi security forces, and the European Union and the United States agreed to jointly host a conference to coordinate international aid to Iraq. But, another sticking point arose: China. Bush and European leaders "plunged into a troublesome new dispute ... over the lifting of an arms embargo against China," The Associated Press reported Tuesday. The China quarrel was a jarring note on an otherwise upbeat day of reconciliation, handshakes and hopes for better relations. According to The New York Times the disagreement injected "a discordant note into [Bush's] otherwise harmonious tour." Bush said lifting the arms embargo, imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, "would change the balance of relations between China and Taiwan and that's of concern." He also warned that the US Congress might retaliate if Europe revokes the ban. But French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the embargo should be lifted, reports AP. "It will happen," Mr. Schroeder said. "Europe intends to remove the last obstacles to its relations with this important country," Chirac said Tuesday, after Bush expressed "deep concern" about such a move. According to the Times, "European leaders seem determined to act soon, perhaps as early as June, though they promise to scrutinize the sales to keep particularly advanced technology out of Chinese hands." In keeping with its strategy in nonmilitary industries, China would probably seek to form joint development projects with the Europeans. That would give it faster access to their technology, which is precisely the development most feared by strategic planners at the Pentagon. The Economist also points out that some US politicians stress that the rationale for the embargo – Chinese human-rights abuses, such as the detention of dissidents – still exists. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan maintained Tuesday that the EU's plan to lift its arms embargo on China won't infringe upon the interest of third parties, and that the lifting of the embargo is "irrelevant" to "the present situation of the Asia Pacific region." But the Times reports that the EU's plan to lift the weapons ban has much more to do with economics than it does with military ties. "Much more is at stake in Europe's decision than whether it sells French fighter jets or German submarines to Beijing - namely broader commercial ties and some genuine diplomacy." As if to underscore that point, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson arrived in Beijing Wednesday for a four-day visit – his first official visit – to the People's Republic of China. According to a press release published on the EU's website Europa: Commissioner Mandelson's visit is intended to stress the need to create a new strategic partnership between the EU and China, based on discussion and negotiation on a wide range of issues both economic and political. The press release also attempts to explain the importance of the trip. Europe is China's largest trading partner and China is Europe's second largest trading partner. China has enormous further potential as a market for European companies. At the EU-China summit last December, leaders agreed to actively explore the feasibility of a new framework agreement covering the EU's relations with China. The European Commission believes that among other things this should include ambitious provisions on trade and Investment. Speaking before his departure Commissioner Mandelson said: "I see no greater strategic challenge for Europe than to understand the dramatic rise of China and to forge ties with it." Mandelson also said Monday that the US would be "wrong to pick a fight" with Europe over the issue, reports Agence France-Presse. From the US point of view, the "looming transatlantic row over China," as the Economist calls it, comes down to Taiwan. The possibility that American and Chinese forces might one day clash over Taiwan cannot be discounted. So the idea that America's NATO allies in Europe might actually aid the Chinese arms build-up seems abhorrent to Washington. The Economist also offers its take on France's motivation for lifting the embargo and increasing trade ties with China. It's not just about the money. For the French, wider ideological issues come into play. Mr Chirac is the strongest proponent of replacing American hegemony with a "multipolar world". On a visit to Beijing last October he declared that France and China shared "a common vision of the world – a multipolar world." Lifting the embargo would "mark a significant milestone: a moment when Europe had to make a choice between the strategic interests of America and China – and chose China." ---- Russia, Brazil arms deals called defensive move By Sharon Behn THE WASHINGTON TIMES February 24, 2005 Venezuela's foreign minister yesterday denied his country was a destabilizing influence in the region and defended weapons deals with Russia and Brazil as purely defensive in nature. "We are not buying intercontinental ballistic missiles, and we are not even dreaming about weapons of mass destruction research," Ali Rodriguez Araque told reporters. "We have bought some weapons in order to have the necessary equipment for our troops," he said, adding that the Venezuelan military was relying on weapons that were more than 50 years old. Caracas has purchased 100,000 AK-47 rifles from Russia, and is negotiating for 24 Super Tucano multipurpose combat aircraft from Brazil. Moscow also might supply MiG-29 fighters and attack helicopters. "We are not thinking of attacking anybody, but if we are attacked we want to be prepared," Mr. Rodriguez said during a one-day stop in Washington to speak at the Organization of American States. U.S. officials are concerned the weapons deals could be used to help militant left-wing groups in Latin America, such as the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels. Rhetoric between Washington and Caracas has become heated, with leftist President Hugo Chavez threatening that Venezuela would pull the plug on oil exports to the United States if he were assassinated. Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the United States and the fifth-largest producer worldwide. Mr. Rodriguez insisted that economic relations between the two countries are good and that the oil flow would not be suspended. He added, however, that Venezuela intended to diversify its export markets. "Venezuela is the best supplier of oil, the paramount supplier of oil to the United States," the minister said. "If the United States wants to enhance the good relations with our country, the decision is in the hands of the government of the United States. "We are ready to discuss and exchange our views and positions. It is possible to overcome the difficulties we are facing at this moment," Mr. Rodriguez said. "We need respect -- that is the key word," he said. In a speech to the Organization of American States, Mr. Rodriguez implied that the United States was meddling in its affairs and warned that an assassination of Mr. Chavez would cause regionwide upheaval. Mr. Rodriguez said his government's intelligence services had reported learning of attempts to "physically liquidate" the pro-Castro leader. He declined to provide details and stopped short of accusing Washington of any involvement. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has denied the accusations. "These allegations are ridiculous and untrue, and the idea that we were out to get the president of Venezuela is just plain wrong," he said Tuesday. Mr. Rodriguez shot back, saying, "Past experiences indicated that sooner or later, there would be an attack. "That's what happened with the push for a coup in April 2002, and with the attack against the oil industry and the economy in December that same year," the minister said. Washington was slow to condemn the coup but denied any involvement. "The same happened with Allende," said Mr. Rodriguez, apparently referring to CIA efforts in 1970 to instigate a coup to prevent Chile's democratically elected left-wing President Salvador Allende from taking office. -------- asia Animosity toward Japan is again the rage in China By David J. Lynch, USA TODAY, 2/23/2005 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-23-china-japan_x.htm BEIJING — Lu Yunfei is a young, technology-savvy executive at an Internet company in Beijing. But it's what he does in his spare time that makes him of interest beyond China's shores. A protester shouts slogans in Beijing against the Japanese. Peter Parks, AFP Over the past five years, Lu, 29, has emerged as a leader of China's increasingly vociferous and predominantly anti-Japanese nationalist movement. As the head of the 80,000-member Patriots' Alliance, Lu created the country's most popular nationalist Web site, staged protests outside the Japanese Embassy and organized provocative trips to a cluster of islands in the East China Sea occupied by Japan but claimed by China. With his trim, camel-colored jacket and stylish haircut, Lu doesn't look like a political zealot. But his cool demeanor belies the heat of his anti-Japanese views. Once a fan of Japanese movies and cartoons, Lu now says that by confronting China in recent incidents and refusing to apologize for its aggression in World War II, Tokyo is headed down "a fascist road." Lu's uncompromising views are shared by many Chinese. They help explain why relations between China and Japan have plummeted to their lowest point in years. "We should teach the Japanese a good lesson and let them know how tough the Chinese people are," says Li Jin, 28, a freelance writer. "Maybe we should nuke them once and for all." No one expects the ill will to lead to war. But for the United States, unchecked animosity between the countries carries real dangers. The United States shares with Japan a desire to profit from China's enormous market. But both governments remain wary of Beijing's ongoing military modernization and growing regional influence. Escalating disputes between China and Japan risk contaminating U.S.-China ties at a time when the United States hopes China can help thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions. "I think the Americans have the wrong friend. Japan is like a mad dog, and sooner or later, it'll cause the U.S. great trouble," says Zhang Yihua, 32, an advertising designer. On Saturday in Washington, the United States and Japan issued a joint document that advocated the "peaceful resolution" of the status of Taiwan, the island that Beijing regards as a renegade province. Within days, a commentary in the state-run China Daily newspaper blasted that mild statement as "an irresponsible and reckless move that will have grave consequences." "The Chinese are debating U.S. and Japanese intentions. There's a strong argument within the Chinese leadership that the U.S. wants to use Japan to constrain China," says Wenran Jiang, a political scientist and expert on East Asian politics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In the 1990s, as the appeal of communist ideology waned, the Chinese government began using nationalism to shore up its public support. But fearing such fervor could boomerang, the party has been cautious. Last fall, the government closed Lu's Web site after he launched a petition protesting a contract awarded to a Japanese firm for construction of a high-speed Beijing-to-Shanghai rail line. "The Chinese government is clear: Nationalism is a double-edged sword," says Suisheng Zhao, a University of Denver professor and author of a recent book on Chinese nationalism. Sometimes, nationalist ire is directed at the United States. Much more often, however, it emerges as anti-Japanese feeling. "It's extremely widespread," says Edward Friedman, a political scientist and author on Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The roots of anti-Japanese sentiment lie in Japan's brutal occupation of northeast China from 1931 to 1945. Japanese forces employed indiscriminate violence, used chemical weapons and conducted medical experiments on civilians. Chinese government media say 35 million Chinese died in the war. "There was an atrocious quality to the Japanese occupation that most people in the rest of the world are unaware of," Friedman says. Today's democratic Japan, whose military is constitutionally limited to self-defense, bears little resemblance to the empire that ravaged Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. But Friedman says the Chinese have "blinded themselves to this reality." Even those too young to have experienced the war are bitter. "Japan brought a lot of harm and pain to the Chinese people. Millions of people died," Lu says. "This is history that nobody can erase." Xu Yong, 55, a professor at Beijing University, spent a year as a visiting scholar in Japan and says he counts many Japanese as friends. But he castigates their "very dangerous and evil" government and worries about "the thirst for blood in the Japanese culture." Nevertheless, economic ties between the two countries are growing stronger. Last year, China replaced the United States as Japan's top trading partner. Since 1979, Japan has funneled $30 billion in development aid to its former wartime adversary. In recent months, however, political relations have steadily soured. In August, following China's loss to Japan in a soccer match, fans attacked a Japanese diplomat's car, chanted angry slogans and threw bottles at the Japanese team bus. In November, Japan protested when a Chinese submarine strayed into its waters south of Okinawa. The following month, Japan for the first time officially singled out China as a potential enemy. Days later, Beijing was livid when Tokyo granted a visa to former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui. The recurrent sniping culminated this month in Tokyo's takeover of a lighthouse on the disputed island chain — known to China as Diaoyu and Japan as Senkaku — in the East China Sea. Japanese nationalists erected the 18-foot tall structure several years ago and formally transferred ownership to their government this month. Denouncing the move as "illegal," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan called the islands an "inalienable part of Chinese territory." In March 2004, Lu organized a seaborne protest that landed seven Chinese nationalists on the islands. Japanese authorities arrested and deported the Chinese activists. Lu says he's ready to organize more trips and would "do anything" to protect the islands. But he says he's not spoiling for a fight and doesn't think his government wants one, either. "All things can be solved through dialogue," he says. -------- business Private, vulnerable `armies' deploy for modern-day wars BY KIRSTEN SCHARNBERG Chicago Tribune Thu, Feb. 24, 2005 http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/nation/10979898.htm ASTORIA, Ore. - (KRT) - Having no idea the significance of his delivery, the FedEx driver hurriedly tossed five massive boxes containing everything Anthony Stramiello had possessed in Iraq onto his widow's front porch. Roberta Stramiello was jolted from the living room sofa by the thuds. "I'd better go see what's going on out there," she said apprehensively. The last time strangers had been milling about her front porch - on the frigid evening of Dec. 21 - they had been there to tell her that her husband was dead. It is perhaps revealing that the personal effects of Anthony Stramiello, a 61-year-old construction contractor who had been working in the Iraqi city of Mosul at the time of his death, were returned to the United States with so little ceremony on a recent February morning. In the nearly two years since the war began in Iraq, at least 232 civilians working on U.S. military and reconstruction contracts have been killed there, many in violent but largely overlooked slayings, according to a report issued to Congress several weeks ago. Because of difficulties in accounting for this virtual army of private contactors in Iraq - many of whom are working in supply, logistics and even combat roles integral to the military's mission - the death toll actually could be far higher. "The number of civilian contractors who have been killed in Iraq is far greater than any other group over there other than the U.S. military itself," said Peter Singer, an expert on national security and Iraq military contracts at the Brookings Institution. He went on to point out that the number of private contractors in Iraq - estimated to be between 20,000 and 30,000 - surpasses the number of soldiers there from all the United States' allies combined. Yet aside from brief moments of attention after high-profile kidnappings, beheadings or bloody ambushes caught on videotape, the public's focus rarely has been on these at-risk civilian workers. Few Americans seem aware these contractors are dying at a rate never before seen in American military history, and the bulk of the public's support and sympathy remains directed toward the families of the more than 1,400 military personnel killed on duty in Iraq. "Contractors' deaths are not well reported or well documented, and they don't seem to carry nearly the same weight with the public as the deaths of soldiers do," Singer said. "Their stories don't make the front pages - they barely even make Page 28 sometimes." Shortly after her husband's death - Anthony Stramiello was one of 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers, killed by a suicide bomber in a military mess hall in Mosul - Roberta Stramiello received from a friend a newspaper article describing the deaths of private citizens in Iraq as "death without honors." "(Contractors) don't come home to funerals with full military honors or flag-draped coffins or bugles playing Taps. Their families don't get letters from the president," she said. "I guess I didn't feel that way personally - for me my husband is gone either way - but I can understand how others might feel the sting of that." While the list of American military deaths is kept so carefully the public knew exactly when the toll had surpassed the symbolic 1,000-person mark, the number of contractors killed is almost certainly incomplete. The best method the U.S. Department of Labor has for tracking the number of contractors killed in Iraq is to monitor how many insurance claims are made under the Defense Base Act, a law that requires employees who work on national or international government contracts to be provided insurance, including compensation benefits in the event of their deaths. But some families may not know they are entitled to such benefits and never officially report their family member's death. "I would caution against thinking that these are exact numbers," said James Mitchell, a spokesman for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the entity that submitted the Jan. 30 report to Congress that highlighted the number of contractor deaths. Adding to the difficulty of monitoring how many contractors die in Iraq is the fact that there is no organization keeping an official tally of the number of civilians working there. Such an accounting would be difficult because the workers come from dozens of different countries despite the fact they all are employed by companies that have been awarded U.S. military and reconstruction contracts. A Nepalese woman may be serving food in a military mess hall; a South African man may be working as a private security guard for high-ranking U.S. dignitaries. Despite their relative anonymity in the nation on whose behalf they are working, these contract workers have become indispensable in the past two years. Contractors built one of the largest American military bases in Kuwait that was used for the troop build-up before the war; they loaded bombs onto attack helicopters; they manned the missile defense batteries onboard U.S. Navy ships. Many of these contractors specialize in operating high-tech weapons systems that the military depends on but that it cannot set up, use or repair on its own. The U.S. Army War College, recognizing the military's increasing reliance on private workers, issued a report titled, "Contractors on the Battlefield: What Have We Signed Up For?" Its finding was conclusive: that the Army had grown so dependent on civilian contractors it could no longer function in a war zone without extensive technical and logistic help from private firms. Each contractor who makes the weighty decision to take a job in Iraq, one of the most dangerous places in the world today, has a motivation. Some go for the exorbitant paychecks that can equate to several thousand dollars per day; some go for the adventure; some are running from problems at home. Stramiello, a well-to-do businessman who had always regretted not serving in the Army as a younger man, was planning to work there for a year or two because he thought it was a way to help rebuild that country. Whatever the disparate individual reasons that propel civilians to Iraq, the contracting jobs there are plentiful, and the explanation for that phenomenon is a multi-layered hodgepodge of military history, modern politics and long-building trends of globalization, privatization and international instability. Iraq's battlefield actually was shaped most pivotally by one event of the previous century. After the end of the Cold War, militaries around the world began to downsize. But at the same time, the world began to change - and destabilize in some places. Whole regions of the world were becoming so volatile that their governments were looking to hire professionals to protect them from violent separatists. Globalization was bringing Western companies into these same unsettled parts of the world, and they, too, needed security consultants and protection. And Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism were increasing to the degree that some peacekeepers and humanitarian aid groups soon found themselves in need of private guards. What developed to fill all these needs is what Singer has dubbed "privatized military firms." "PMFs are business providers of professional services intricately linked to warfare - in other words, the corporate evolution of the age-old practice of mercenaries," Singer, who is considered the nation's foremost expert on the topic, writes in an upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. The war in Iraq took the use of civilian contractors to a new level, one never seen before in the history of warfare, according to military experts. In 2002, as it became clear the country was headed toward war, a number of factors all but guaranteed that an unprecedented number of civilian workers would be required to pull it off, Singer said. The war would be more politically palatable if fewer troops were deemed necessary to deploy, he argued. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, in fact, was pressed into retirement from his job after he predicted that an invasion of Iraq would require "several hundred thousand" troops, not the less than 150,000 the U.S. eventually used. Even more, it was going to be a high-tech war, using the kinds of weaponry that required the civilian specialists on whom the military had grown so reliant. When the war began in March 2003, civilian contractors filled any gap between bodies deployed and bodies needed. But outsourcing this work to private workers did not come cheaply - or without risk. Where once a low-paid private first class might be assigned to serve food in the mess hall, now civilian contractors could demand high wages to take those jobs. Where soldiers could be court-martialed for refusing to carry out an order, civilian contractors could refuse to take missions - delivering fuel or ammunition, for example - if they believed they were too dangerous. "I think there is a significant question as to whether very heavy use of civilian contractors is cost effective," said Scott Silliman, the executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University. "In addition to that there is the loss of control. But it does accomplish the objective of allowing the personnel in uniform to be assigned to the combat-specific, trigger-pull roles instead of using them for logistics and support." Silliman, a former Air Force judge advocate who supervised deployment of all Air Force attorneys to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, worries even more about the legal issues that may result from the presence of civilian contractors in Iraq. "There are two important things to consider," he said. "The vulnerability of these civilians and the accountability of these civilians. If they are hurt or killed there, what legal protections are afforded them? If they commit crimes, can they be prosecuted?" Two cases may well set precedent on both counts. In one, the families of four contractors brutally killed in a March 2004 ambush in Fallujah are suing the men's employer, North Carolina-based Blackwater Security Consulting, alleging fraud and wrongful death. The suit, the first to ever be filed against a private military contractor for a wartime death, alleges that the men were not properly armed or trained to go into one of the most restive regions of Iraq. The second case deals with whether contractors can be punished for crimes committed in foreign war zones. David Passaro, a CIA contractor, has been charged in federal court with assaulting a prisoner in an Afghan detention facility in 2002. Prosecutors say the prisoner, Abdul Wali, died two days after interrogations and beatings by Passaro, 38. Passaro is awaiting trial in North Carolina, and his attorneys argued earlier this month that the charges be dropped because the incident occurred outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Risks aside, the use of civilian contractors in Iraq and elsewhere in the world shows little likihood of changing anytime soon. Even before the Iraq war, Gary Mauro, Stramiello's younger cousin, had spent years working as a private contractor overseas, largely building new U.S. embassies. Maruo's work in places like Afghanistan and, more recently, Baghdad is what inspired Stramiello to apply to do the same. Mauro, 43, who has not returned to Iraq since Stramiello's funeral, feels guilty now that his cousin died working a job Mauro helped him secure. Mauro's family - including Roberta Stramiello - has begged him not to return to Baghdad. "I can't imagine going back to Iraq now," he said. "But I've got a lead on an embassy job in Algeria. I might end up doing that." Back at the Victorian mansion she and her husband had been painstakingly rehabbing before he went to Iraq, Roberta Stramiello spends little time in the rooms the couple already had finished, instead wandering through the ones that remain torn apart. She constantly points out what still needs to be done. "I've done everything I can in this room," she says sadly, "the rest of the work I need Tony to do." After the FedEx driver left on that recent morning, Roberta Stramiello made her way outside to begin the painful process of unpacking her dead husband's things. The five black trunks waited on the front porch Anthony Stramiello had built. -------- iraq Iraqi Army Adds National Guard to Its Ranks February 24, 2005 By ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/middleeast/24guard.html TAJI, Iraq - In a ceremony at this sprawling Iraqi Army base in early January that drew virtually no attention abroad, the Iraqi military took what American officials say was a pivotal step and a calculated gamble in the effort to defeat the insurgency. As nearly 100 Iraqi tanks, gun trucks and armored personnel carriers rumbled by a reviewing stand filled with ribbon-bedecked Iraqi and American generals, the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and top Iraqi officers made an announcement: Iraq's national guard, a regional civil defense force formed less than two years ago, would be merged into the relatively small national army. What at first glance appeared to be a symbolic shift of command and set of new uniforms is now coming to be seen as an important example of finding new ways to train and equip Iraq's fledgling security forces to defend the country and to allow 150,000 American troops to leave, senior American and Iraqi officers say. The 38,000 national guard troops will swell the regular army's ranks to nearly 50,000 soldiers, creating a unified ground force that will have common pay, uniforms and standards. Being part of the army will make the former national guard soldiers more available for missions away from their home bases. Most guard units now conduct patrols and operations only in their region, often in tandem with American troops in places like Baghdad and Mosul. Gen. Babakir al-Zibari, chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces, said incorporating the national guard into the army would "ensure unity of command and effort to meet the security challenges we currently face." The Iraqi Army is trained and equipped at higher standards than the national guard, whose heavier weaponry will now be significantly increased. Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American officer in charge of training the Iraqi forces, said that in many of the 42 national guard battalions, the number of heavy machine guns has increased to 32 from 8 per battalion. More radios, vehicles and other equipment are also flowing in as the transition takes place. Those changes come at a cost. The Pentagon recently asked Congress for $5.7 billion in additional money to help finance the training effort this year, and it is spending that will not give immediate results. "In the near term we won't see much change," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who until recently commanded American forces in northern Iraq. "Longer term, I think there is goodness that can come from having more units trained and equipped to the same standards across the nation." Important Iraqi political and cultural considerations are also at work, some of which reflect Iraqi officials' desire to exert more control since the elections held on Jan. 30, American and Iraqi officials said. While the national guard has relied heavily on American and other allied forces in Iraq, the regular army has more direct ties - and answers more directly - to the Iraqi government. Perhaps most important, the Iraqi Army is a highly respected institution in the country, largely untainted from the three-decade rule of Saddam Hussein, who never trusted the army and created special military and intelligence units, like the Special Republican Guard, to preserve his power. It was no coincidence, for example, that Dr. Allawi and top Iraqi officers chose Jan. 6, the 84th anniversary of the creation of the modern Iraqi Army in 1921, to announce the merger of the national guard into nine new Iraqi Army divisions, officials said. The national guard, originally called the Iraqi civil defense corps, had none of that institutional loyalty or history. "Civil defense" connoted the fire department and emergency services, not military fighters, American commanders said. Incorporating the national guard into the army has given those units legitimacy in the eyes of many Iraqis and has bolstered morale, commanders say. "It's a significant move for them to be part of the regular army," said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., a retired commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent two tours in Iraq. "It's like saying, 'You're a real warrior again.' " But training and equipping the national guard is fraught with challenges, and converting its units into army forces is a calculated gamble, some American officials say. While some national guard units have performed well, particularly in securing the elections, others are still battling high absentee rates. Some American advisers expressed concern that the Iraqi Army's command and control structure was not ready for the sudden integration of the national guard. If that is not built up quickly, it will pose a major hurdle to the Pentagon's plan to withdraw from Iraq. Dispatching national guard units to trouble spots across the country can also pose steep challenges. "There are likely to be some concerns from former national guard units that may not want to leave their home areas," General Ham said. "I haven't seen that manifested yet, but I feel it may be likely." Disbanded in the spring of 2003 by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq at the time, the Iraqi military has been slowly reconstituted in several distinct units, along with separate police forces. The original concept of the national guard was to have a modest military ability, largely to help at a local level, without adding those formations to a regular army that might become tempted to carry out a coup. But in fighting the current insurgency, the level of force that even a well-trained guard unit can deliver is inadequate in the view of some field commanders and some Iraqi officials who are pressing for a greatly increased military ability. Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, said bringing the guard units' capacity up would be a consuming task. "The long-term goal is to get them all the same," he said. "That's where the Ministry of Defense has work to do." In a national security strategy paper issued on Jan. 15, Dr. Allawi said the goal of training 100,000 Iraqi soldiers by July would be increased to 150,000 "fully qualified" soldiers by the end of the year. Over all, according to the Pentagon, Iraq will have 270,000 trained soldiers and police officers by next year. -------- israel / palestine In a Lift for Abbas, Fatah Backs a New Palestinian Cabinet February 24, 2005 By ALAN COWELL The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/middleeast/24mideast.html RAMALLAH, West Bank, Feb. 23 - After three days of political impasse, the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, secured support within his Fatah party late Wednesday for a new cabinet composed largely of professionals and technocrats supposed to institute changes in Palestinian political life, Palestinian legislators said. The agreement was depicted by legislators as a breakthrough strengthening the hand of President Mahmoud Abbas as he presses for reforms sought by Palestinians, the United States and Israel after the death in November of Yasir Arafat. The new cabinet list is now set to go before the full Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council, on Thursday, according to Hatem Abdul Kader, a Fatah legislator. The Fatah movement, which has dominated Palestinian politics for four decades, accounts for about three-quarters of the parliament's 84 members; Mr. Qurei needs 43 votes to win approval. The list of 24 cabinet members was approved at a late-night meeting between Mr. Qurei and the parliamentary group of Fatah. The parliament had initially been expected to vote on Wednesday on a new cabinet list, but the ballot was postponed less than an hour before it was to take place, deepening a sense of crisis and raising questions about Mr. Qurei's political future. The creation of a new government is seen as important for President Abbas, who has promised to clean up the corruption-stained Palestinian Authority and revamp its security services as he seeks to deepen a two-week-old truce with Israel. "This is an attempt to send a message to the Palestinian people that there is a real change on the ground," Mr. Kader, the legislator, said. "It shows the insistence of the legislative council to continue with policies of reform and change in order to avoid reform being a slogan without content." The crisis began on Monday when Mr. Qurei presented a cabinet list stacked with an old guard of ministers from the Arafat era. Lawmakers complaining of corruption and mismanagement vetoed the plan and demanded a new list made up mostly of technocrats. According to Mr. Kader, the new list includes leading figures, including Salam Fayyad as finance minister and Nasser Yousef as minister of the interior and national security. Mr. Yousef has a reputation from the 1990's of being tough on Islamic militants. The new list also includes Muhammad Dahlan, a former head of preventative security in Gaza, as minister of civil affairs, he said. The proposed new foreign minister was Nasser al-Kidwa, a former Palestinian representative at the United Nations, Mr. Kader said. The list was not formally made public. While the list was billed as representing a break with the past, some of its members rose to prominence under Mr. Arafat. But Mr. Kader said the cabinet included "new faces that people have never heard of before." Apart from Mr. Qurei, the new list includes only one lawmaker - Nabil Shaath, the foreign minister, who will now be promoted to deputy prime minister, according to Mr. Kader. Before his death last November, Mr. Arafat exercised tight control over legislators from Fatah. But since then, they have felt freer to challenge party discipline and the leadership of Mr. Qurei, an Arafat appointee who is not credited with commanding broad popular support. Many legislators also seem to be using the current crisis to cast themselves in the mold of opponents of a corrupt old guard in advance of parliamentary elections set for July - the first of their kind in nine years. Muhammad Hourani, a Fatah legislator, spoke on Wednesday of "the vacuum left by Yasir Arafat that we are all feeling," suggesting that Fatah was sharply divided over the composition of a new cabinet. He called the discussions "difficult, tough and bitter." One prominent figure, Saeb Erakat, a leading Palestinian negotiator who had been associated with Mr. Arafat for years, told reporters he had been one of two legislators included in the latest cabinet list but had withdrawn his name because "there should be no exceptions." The other person mentioned as a holdover from the previous government was Mr. Shaath. Indeed, some legislators went further, calling for Mr. Qurei to be replaced. Ali Abu Alrish, an opposition legislator from Hebron, said one of his conditions for endorsing a cabinet leader would be that it represented "a new government with a new head." Mr. Qurei and Mr. Abbas, who was elected last month as Mr. Arafat's successor, are veteran Fatah leaders, but are not seen as particularly close. Mr. Abbas played a low-key public role in the crisis, but intervened in Fatah's private deliberations in support of a new reform-minded government contrary to Mr. Qurei's initial proposals. In Israel, meanwhile, the state prosecutor, Eran Shendar, responded on Wednesday to a ruling last July by the International Court of Justice at The Hague that most of Israel's separation barrier violated international law because it was built on West Bank land. The Israeli government rejected the international court's advisory ruling last July. But it agreed to revise the planned path of the barrier in an attempt to comply with an Israeli Supreme Court ruling a few days earlier calling for the barrier to be less burdensome on Palestinians. The new route, taking up less West Bank land, was approved by Israel's cabinet last Sunday. The state prosecutor said Wednesday that the international ruling was based on faulty evidence and failed to take account of the changes demanded by Israel's own supreme court. -------- nato NATO Wants to Work With Israel Military By PETER ENAV Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 24, 9:01 AM ET http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=7&u=/ap/20050224/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_nato TEL AVIV, Israel - NATO (news - web sites) wants to increase its military cooperation with Israel, especially in the areas of sharing intelligence and fighting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the alliance's secretary general said Thursday. But in an interview published in Israel's Haaretz daily on Thursday, Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was quoted as saying that NATO's recent focus on the Mediterranean Dialogue, a forum of Israel and six Arab countries, is not "designed as a first step to a future membership." In recent months, Israel has expressed an interest in joining the 26-member alliance, but Arab countries would not look favorably upon such a partnership without an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. NATO's talks with Israel and other Mideast countries are carefully balanced, "given the sensitivities in the region," de Hoop Scheffer told Haaretz. Israel currently participates in several NATO forums and in recent months participated for the first time in joint military exercises. The cooperation also includes intelligence-sharing and consultancy on security issues. De Hoop Scheffer told Haaretz his arrival in Israel late Wednesday and meetings Thursday with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom are intended to enhance "the political and practical dimensions" of NATO's dialogue with Mideast countries. Israel is interested in "moving from a relation of dialogue to a relation of partnership," Shalom said after meeting de Hoop Scheffer in Tel Aviv. "Israel has given NATO a proposal for an operative program, a varied program in the diplomatic and military areas," Shalom said. NATO is "looking favorably" at an Israeli proposal to upgrade relations, de Hoop Scheffer said. In a commentary in The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Ron Prosor, the Foreign Ministry's director-general, said Israel's inclusion in NATO "is not on the table at the moment." De Hoop Scheffer repeated an earlier statement that NATO would consider sending peacekeeping troops to guarantee a treaty if Israel and the Palestinians were to request their presence after reaching a peace agreement. Such a troop presence would require a U.N. mandate and agreement by both parties, he added. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals Russia 'committed Chechnya abuse' Steven Eke BBC Russia analyst Thursday, 24 February 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4295249.stm The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russia committed serious abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killing, in Chechnya. The ruling came after the Strasbourg-based court heard claims brought by six Chechens. The judges, who included one Russian, were unanimous in a ruling that is likely to anger the Kremlin. Russia accuses the West of hypocrisy and double standards in its criticism of Russia's conduct in Chechnya. It is the first time an international court has found Moscow guilty of serious violations in Chechnya. The judges said Moscow had breached an article of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing the right to life. The Chechen plaintiffs had also been denied their right to a full hearing in domestic courts, the judges said. In one case, they ruled, Russia had breached a clause on the protection of property. And in two others, the court found that Russia had violated the ban on torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. The court ordered the Russian government to pay about 136,000 euros ($180,000; £94,000) in compensation to the six plaintiffs. But the Kremlin is now likely to use its right of appeal, to have the case referred to the court's grand chamber within the next three months. Good news for rights defenders Some 120 cases brought by Chechens alleging Russia had violated their rights are pending before the court. And Thursday's ruling will hearten the Russian and international human rights groups that have worked to publicise what they say are ongoing Russian abuses in Chechnya. Moscow is under pressure from the international community to negotiate with Chechen rebels, and to account for alleged human rights violations. But there is little appetite in Moscow to listen to foreign criticism of its hard-line policies. Indeed, following the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandals involving American and British troops, Moscow has simply brushed foreign criticism aside, saying it results from ignorance and anti-Russian prejudice. Russia started its war against separatists in the breakaway republic in 1994. It pulled out the troops following a truce in 1996, but renewed the war in 1999 after incursions by Chechen guerrillas in neighbouring Dagestan. -------- prisons / prisoners Iraq War Objector May Face Court-Martial From LA Times Wire Reports February 24, 2005 http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes541.html An Army hearing officer has recommended a court-martial for a soldier charged with desertion after he refused to deploy to Iraq. In a Feb. 16 report just released, Lt. Col. Linda Taylor recommended that Sgt. Kevin Benderman face a general court-martial, the most serious type. The procedure requires approval from Ft. Stewart's General Court-Martial Convening Authority. Benderman, 40, an Army mechanic, refused to accompany his unit Jan. 7 for a second tour in Iraq, 10 days after he gave notice that he was seeking a discharge as a conscientious objector. He said he became opposed to war after serving in 2003. He is charged with desertion and missing movement. ---- Race and Imprisonment in Texas: The Disparate Incarceration of Latinos and African Americans in the Lone Star State Democracy Now Thursday, February 24th, 2005 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/24/155222 A newly-released study from the Justice Policy Institute called "Race and Imprisonment in Texas" finds, in part, that finds that African-Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites in Texas and that Latinos are incarcerated nearly twice as much as whites." We speak with the author of the report. [includes rush transcript] The Justice Policy Institute is releasing a report today called "Race and Imprisonment in Texas; The disparate incarceration of Latinos and African Americans in the Lone Star State." The report finds that African-Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites in Texas and that Latinos are incarcerated nearly twice as much as whites. The study also estimates that lost economic productivity due to the imprisonment of African-Americans in Texas is more than $1 billion dollars. * Jason Ziedenberg, Executive Director, Justice Policy Institute. He is Co-Author of the report "Race and Imprisonment in Texas: The disparate incarceration of Latinos and African Americans in the Lone Star State." JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined by -- in Washington by the author of the report, Jason Ziedenberg. He is the executive director of the Justice Policy Institute. Welcome to Democracy Now! JASON ZIEDENBERG: Good morning. How you are? JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, could you tell us a little bit about the major findings of your new report? JASON ZIEDENBERG: Yeah. In the major findings, as this basically localizes what we know to be true in the rest of the country, that African Americans, Latinos and other non-white citizens bear the brunt of our choice to expand the use of prison in this country. The report shows that while Latinos and African Americans make up about four out of ten Texans, they represent more than seven out of ten Texans in prison. This is of interest to us in the United States, because one out of ten people locked up in the entire country are locked up in Texas. The report also shows that most of the growth in the drug prisoner population in the state was made up by incarcerating African American people, and that over the time that the Texas drug incarcerated population grew 12-fold, eight out of ten new drug prisoners were African American. So, these findings are consistent with what we see in the rest of the country. This is just the picture in Texas where it's been a very controversial prison system, because it's so large and because there has been questions about the fairness in the use of justice policies in that state. JUAN GONZALEZ: Astoundingly, as I saw the summary of the report, you indicate that there was a 360% increase in the number of African Americans sent to jail for drug offenses, while there was a 9% decrease in the number of whites sent to jail for drug offenses. Any idea why that enormous disparity? JASON ZIEDENBERG: I think basically what it is it’s an enormous disparity. I think that we have spent so much resources in this country and in Texas on ways to detain, incarcerate and put people behind bars for drug offenses that you see just these rapid and large numbers, as it affects the communities that are most impacted by these policies, and it's a major investment in resources to arrest, detain and incarcerate that many people. So, it might mean that resources are not spent the same way in policing or incarcerating others. JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the comparison to the efforts to educate the various populations? You also raise that in your report. JASON ZIEDENBERG: Yeah. The report shows that there is more African American men of all ages in the prison and jail system in Texas than there are African American men of all ages in the higher education system in Texas. That's from a piece that we did in the year 2000. I think much more importantly than that was the finding from Princeton University which showed that nationwide, African American men in their 30s were more likely to have a prison record than they were to have a bachelor's degree. That's based on the work of a Princeton academic. And this is based on our policy choices. We have chosen to build more prisons in this country. W we have chosen to elect officials that have decided that's the way our financial resources are going to be spent, and we have got to hold them accountable to what we want to be better choices about how our resources should be spent, and how we want to treat people that end up in our systems. AMY GOODMAN: What about young people in the prisons of Texas? JASON ZIEDENBERG: I think what you find in Texas was what you would find in the rest of the country, that the majority of people in prison in the state are younger people in their 20s and 30s to mid-30s. I think what you find -- what would you find in the rest of the country is that largest impact of the growing use of prisons has been under for young African American men. There was a study done in the late 1990s that showed something like one in four young African American men in Texas were under some form of criminal justice control. That's generally consistent with what we have seen in the rest of the country, except in the rest of the country, policies are being done to possibly amend what's going on in our prison system. You're seeing sentencing changes. You're seeing spending on drug treatment instead of incarceration in some states. And we have to be hopeful that Texas will make those choices, too. AMY GOODMAN: What about the 15 to 29-year-olds, and what about them being put in jail as opposed to drug treatment, and what kind of drug treatment is available? JASON ZIEDENBERG: I think if you had talked to people in Texas, you would hear the same thing that you hear in the rest of the country: There are some drug treatment resources available, but it's not the quality that you need to keep people from ending up in the criminal justice system. One of the most interesting debates going on in Texas right now is about its probation system. There's about 240,000 people on probation in the state, and 53,000 people leave probation every year. Half of those end up back in prison. There's debate now about whether they should expand more drug treatment options for those people, and for the cost of having 4,000 more drug treatment beds in the state, that costs about 20 days to run the entire Texas prison system. So, there's choices that can be made to change these statistics. We just have to make them. JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, your organization has been putting these reports out now for the better part of a decade, that I know of, at least. Are you seeing any change in -- any substantive change in some of these mandatory sentencing laws around the country, either in Texas or nationwide? JASON ZIEDENBERG: Yeah. We are. I think it's a bad news/good news story. The bad news is the state budget crisis of the early part of this decade caused a lot of states to really rethink how much they were spending on prison and, to some degree, compelled them to do some level of sentencing reform. That said, we haven't built up either the drug treatment or the mental health treatment or the education infrastructure, the vocational infrastructure in this country to be able to deal with people coming back from prison. There's about 600,000 people that come back from prison every year to our communities. And we really need to invest more than that. In Texas, I think what's really interesting is that while the legislative budget board has said that something like five more prisons may have to be built in the next six years, they are having a real substantive policy debate about what to do with their probation system. And we're hopeful that by giving people a glimpse of what's happened in the past, they might choose a different future. AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jason Ziedenberg, I want to thank you very much for being with us, of the Justice Policy Institute. Just come out with a new report, “Race and Imprisonment in Texas: The Disparate Incarceration of Latinos and African Americans in the Lone Star State.” African Americans and Latinos, four out of ten Texans, seven out of ten prisoners. Thank you for being with us. -------- OTHER -------- health Bacteria Frozen for 32,000 Years Comes to Life HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, February 24, 2005 (ENS) http://ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-24-05.asp An undiscovered species of bacteria that was frozen in the Alaskan ice for 32,000 years came to life in a laboratory when thawed out, NASA scientists reported Wednesday. The new organism was found in an ice core taken five years ago from a research tunnel near Fox, Alaska, just north of Fairbanks by NASA astrobiologist Dr. Richard Hoover. The bacterium - the first fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice - is NASA’s latest discovery of a "psychrotolerant" organism, one capable of enduring deep cold that resumes normal activity when temperatures rise. NASA and its partner organizations study the life forms found in environmentally extremes zones to help prepare robotic probes and, eventually, human explorers to search other planets for signs of life. In 1999 and 2000, Hoover, a researcher at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, took ice samples from the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) tunnel. The research site was excavated in the mid-1960s to enable scientists to study permafrost in preparation for construction of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline. Dr. Richard Hoover, a NASA astrobiologist, and Dr. Elena Pikuta, a University of Alabama scientist, lead a team of researchers who discovered the new bacterium. (Photo courtesy NASA) When Hoover returned with the samples to Alabama, he and collaborator, microbiologist Dr. Elena Pikuta of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, studied the samples at the National Space Science and Technology Center, the research consortium operated by NASA and Alabama universities. They found the samples contained anaerobic bacteria that grew on sugars and proteins in total absence of oxygen. The bacteria had frozen near the end of the Pleistocene Age, which extended from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,000 years ago. It is named after its origin in that Age - Carnobacterium pleistocenium. "Astrobiologists ask, 'Is life strictly terrestrial in origin, or is it a cosmic imperative, an undeniable, universal biological truth?' That possibility is central to our desire to explore the universe," Hoover said. "The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests - but does not promise - that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa." There are some 7,000 described species of bacteria, though many more are believed to exist. The vast majority are harmless to humans, Hoover says. Less than one percent of all known species are dangerous. Carnobacterium pleistocenium, active once again after 32,000 years on ice. (Photo courtesy NASA) Many bacteria, Hoover observed, are valuable to human life - culturing wine, dairy products and other foods; assisting in the biological extraction of gold and other precious metals from ore wastes; and aiding production of valuable proteins and lifesaving drugs. Carnobacterium pleistocenium could offer new medical breakthroughs. "The enzymes and proteins it possesses, which give it the ability to spring to life after such long periods of dormancy, might hold the key to long-term, cryogenic - or very low temperature - storage of living cells, tissues and perhaps even complex life forms," Hoover said. "Life is far more diverse, and far more resistant to conditions we consider hostile, than was thought possible only a decade or two ago," he adds. "Studying these organisms helps us understand that life may be far more widespread in the cosmos than we previously imagined." Living cultures of the new bacterium have been deposited in the American Type Culture Collection, in the Microbial Collection at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and in the Japan Collection of Microorganisms in Saitama, Japan. Hoover and Pikuta have discovered other microscopic forms of life in extreme environments such as the bacterium Spirochaeta americana in California's Mono Lake, and ancient, still unnamed microorganisms at the South Pole. -------- poverty Archbishop Desmond Tutu on South Africa, Poverty and Militarism Democracy Now Thursday, February 24th, 2005 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/24/155216 Nobel Peace prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks after receiving an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Fordham University. He says, "South Africa, improbably, divinely amusingly, has become a beacon of hope. If peace could come to South Africa, then peace could come any- and everywhere." [includes rush transcript] We turn now to the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was one of the leading figures in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and served as chair of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A Nobel Peace laureate, Tutu has been a longtime campaigner for human rights and the eradication of poverty across the globe. On Wednesday, he received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Fordham University in New York City. After receiving the award, he spoke in the University Church about South Africa, global poverty and militarism. * Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking in New York City, February 23, 2005. JUAN GONZALEZ: After receiving the award, he spoke in the University Church about South Africa, global poverty and militarism. ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: South Africa has become a beacon of hope for those lands racked by conflict and blood-letting. Now, who in their right mind would have wanted to set up South Africa? South Africa as a beacon of hope as an example to other lands, if it was not to have been an example of the most ghastly awfulness? Only someone with a huge sense of humor, with a hypersensitive funny bone in their makeup. I can well imagine someone earnest and upright saying to God, “God, I mean, you can't – you can’t really be serious. South Africa?” And God saying, “Uh-huh.” “God, they were not even virtuous, man! I mean, they maintained their vicious policy of apartheid for all of those many years!” And God retorts, “Uh-huh.” “God, they were not even bright.” They tell the story of two South Africans, one white, one black, who come visiting New York, and they get into trouble and are found guilty of a capital offense, so they are sentenced to death, but they're allowed to choose either the electric chair or the rope. And the white South African goes in first to be executed, and he chooses the electric chair. And they strap him into the chair, and then they throw the switch, and nothing happens. And this is repeated three times. So, they say to him, he's reprieved. And they unloosen him and tell him to go. As he goes out, the next in line for execution is his black compatriot. And so the white South African who has just been reprieved walks past and says to this man, “Choose the rope. This damn thing doesn't work.” Yes, the unlikely thing has happened. South Africa has indeed become a beacon of hope, an example to other parts of the world. South Africa has become a beacon of hope to a world plagued by violence and conflict, a world riddled with injustice and oppression, with the abuse of women and children, where the poor carry a heavy, unbearable burden of unpayable debt, where in order to service the debt, they spend infinitely more on that interest than they could ever be able to spend on health care, on education in their own countries. South Africa is a beacon of hope to a world where we spend what can only be described as obscene amounts -- and we call them “defense budgets,” when we know that a minute fraction of those budgets of death would insure that God's children, now our sisters and brothers everywhere, would have enough to eat, would have clean water to drink, would have adequate health care, would have good education, would have a safe environment. South Africa has become, improbably, a beacon of hope, where the world is riddled by alienation and disharmony, hatred and hostility between peoples of different faiths, people of different cultures. South Africa has become a beacon of hope, because South Africa was helped so wonderfully by the international community that supported us in our struggle against that horrendous system of apartheid. We were prayed for. People were prepared to go to prison on our behalf. People were ready to boycott South African goods on our behalf. And when we overcame apartheid, that victory was not just our victory, it was a victory that belonged also to the world. And one of the great privileges one has is going around to places where we used to come and say, “Please, help us in our struggle.” To go back to those places and say, “We asked for help, you gave it, and today, we are free. We are free. “ And it is just a tremendous, tremendous thing to be able to come back and to say, “Thank you, thank you. Thank you for helping us to become free.” Now, I know, I know, I know that you are very reserved. You are very shy. So, I discovered -- I discovered a few years ago that I actually have a wonderful magic wand. When I wave it over people, hey, presto! They become instant South Africans. So, I wave it over you, and so now I can say: Fellow South Africans, how about giving these people a real humdinger, eh? Yes. Thank you. Oh, yes, no, and I wave my wand and you revert to your normal shy selves. God is saying to the world through us, “Look at them. They had a nightmare called apartheid. It has ended. Your nightmare, Northern Ireland, Middle East, Sri Lanka, D.R.C., Burma, Rwanda, Darfur, Chechnya, et al., that nightmare, your nightmare, will end.” They used to have what many thought was an intractable problem. It has been solved. Nowhere can they ever again say, “Ours is an intractable problem.” South Africa improbably, divinely, amusingly, has become a beacon of hope. If peace could come to South Africa, then peace can come any and everywhere. If an equitable settlement could be achieved in South Africa, then this must be possible any and everywhere. And god says, “Yeah. Peace is possible. Yeah.” They will beat their swords into plowshares. They will turn their spears into pruning hooks. Yeah, the lion will lie down again with the lamb, for God dreams. God dreams for when you and I and all of us are going to realize, “Hey, we belong together.” We -- each one of us -- are members of God's family, a family in which there are no outsiders. All, all, all, all are insiders. This incredible Jesus we worship speaking about his coming deaths says, “I, I, if I be lifted up, will draw…” -- he didn’t say, I will draw some. He says, “I will draw all.” All, all, all -- black and white, rich and poor, beautiful, not so beautiful, clever, not so clever, Arab, Jew, Sharon, Abbas, Bush, bin Laden. Incredible. Incredible, the family of God. The family of God, which will be held in this incredible, divine embrace that allows no one, no one to step outside. All, all, all belong. God says, “Ah, it's beginning to happen in South Africa. It's going to happen everywhere.” Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has just been awarded an honorary degree at Fordham University in New York. -------- ACTIVISTS ALERT! NRC LICENSING BOARD TODAY RULED IN FAVOR OF GRANTING A LICENSE TO THE PRIVATE FUEL STORAGE DUMP ON NATIVE LAND IN UTAH. SIGN ON TO OPPOSE THIS PROJECT! Culminating a seven-year process, an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board today (February 24, 2005) ruled in favor of granting a license to the proposed Private Fuel Storage (PFS) high-level radioactive waste dump in Utah. Opening of this dump would initiate the transportation of thousands of casks of high-level radioactive waste across the nation, putting millions of people in jeopardy of a Mobile Chernobyl from an accident or terrorist attack. The letter below, urging the NRC Commissioners to reject the PFS license application, will be sent to the NRC Commissioners in early March. Please sign on to this letter, by sending your name, organization, city and state to kevin@nirs.org by 5 pm, Thursday, March 3. Thanks for your help! Nuclear Information and Resource Service * Public Citizen * Shundahai Network March, 2005 Re: Private Fuel Storage, LLC application for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel "interim" storage site at the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah Dear Commissioners Diaz, Jaczko, Lyons, McGaffigan and Merrifield, As national, regional, and local environmental and public interest organizations, we urge you not to approve the license application by Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) to open an "interim storage site" for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah. The need for PFS is far from clear, given approvals for on-site dry cask storage at a growing number of reactors, and the fact that true consolidation of waste is not possible as long as nuclear utilities continue to produce it. The proposal is also plagued by many problems, and its location poses unacceptable risks. The facility has no contingency plan for faulty containers, the storage/transport containers are of questionable structural integrity, and there is an increasing risk that PFS could well become de facto permanent storage. The plan also raises serious transportation safety concerns, and is beset with environmental justice violations. In short, the proposal is neither safe, sound, nor just. Skull Valley is not an appropriate site for storing irradiated nuclear fuel. The adjacent complex of Hill Air Force Base and the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) represents one of the biggest and busiest bombing ranges in the country, with thousands of over-flights annually posing the risk of accidental crashes into PFS. The stray missile which struck the scientific research station on the reservation in the 1990's, and the Genesis satellite crash into the UTTR last September, for instance, show the potential dangers of storing 44,000 tons of highly radioactive waste next to such active military facilities. PFS also plans no pool or hot cell on-site, and thus would lack any waste repacking capability in the event of an emergency. If storage casks fail for any reason - human error during shipping or handling, natural disaster, accident, act of sabotage, faulty casks, or gradual corrosion - it would be difficult to adequately address the problem and prevent radioactivity from leaking into the soil, water, and air. Oscar Shirani, former Commonwealth Edison/Exelon lead quality assurance inspector and nuclear safety whistleblower, has questioned the structural integrity of the Holtec casks proposed for PFS. He cites numerous major quality assurance violations in the manufacture of the storage/transport containers. Cask defects would not only raise the risk of irradiated fuel degradation and increased container vulnerability during storage at Skull Valley, but also of a potentially catastrophic radioactivity release during transport due to a severe accident or terrorist attack. As it is, PFS's transportation plan, or lack thereof, is very disconcerting. PFS would dramatically increase unnecessary transportation and handling of high-level waste. Despite PFS's assurances that it is only "interim" storage, its lack of waste repackaging contingencies and DOE's reluctance to accept PFS wastes at Yucca Mountain, as discussed below, all combine to raise the specter of irradiated nuclear fuel eventually being sent back thousands of miles to the reactors from which it originated. This would multiply the distances high-level waste is shipped, and escalate the risks of public and worker exposure, severe accidents, and terrorist attacks. It would also increase further stress and damage to the irradiated nuclear fuel, making future handling, transport, and long term isolation from the environment much more troublesome. It is ironic that NRC would consider granting PFS an operating license, and thus permission to begin shipments, even before its Package Performance Study (PPS) is completed, a point raised by a number of our organizations during the public comment period on the PPS. Rushing the process, and using casks with only minimal testing and planning, is of concern to many communities along the transportation routes. John Parkyn, PFS chairman and CEO, has publicly stated that PFS would train emergency responders along the routes to Skull Valley, however, PFS has not yet demonstrated the financial or technical capability to deliver on that promise. On February 7, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fiscal Year 2006 budget unveiling, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management director Margaret Chu stated that Nuclear Waste Policy Act section 180(c) funding to states for emergency response preparation would not even begin until five years before high-level radioactive waste shipments to Yucca Mountain. If the U.S. federal government requires such a long advance time, how could PFS privately provide such training before shipments would begin as early as 2007? Given the withdrawal from the PFS consortium by member companies such as American Electric Power/Indiana-Michigan Power, and the reduced investment by Southern California Edison, it is unlikely PFS could meet its basic commitments, let alone pay for emergency responder training and equipment all across the U.S. The "interim" nature of the project is also questionable. Assurances have been given by PFS (and NRC staff in the proposal's Environmental Impact Statement) that irradiated fuel would remain at Skull Valley for no more than 40 years before transfer to Nevada for permanent burial. Last October, however, U.S. Energy Department Yucca Mountain Project transport director Gary Lanthrum told the Salt Lake Tribune that the Yucca Mountain Project would simply not accept irradiated nuclear fuel from PFS, as that would violate the terms of DOE's Standard Contract for Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel, which requires DOE to only accept uncanistered fuel directly from nuclear utilities at reactor sites. Since PFS would not meet these requirements, it could very well lead to de facto permanent "disposal" of 4,000 casks of high-level radioactive waste above ground in Skull Valley. For NRC to approve PFS at this time by assuming that Yucca Mountain would take the wastes after 40 years contradicts Gary Lanthum's statement, and also suggests that NRC is predisposed to approve DOE's Yucca Mountain license application even before the proceedings have begun. This is very troubling and ignores ongoing, serious uncertainties surrounding the Yucca Mountain Project's future. In addition, even if the Yucca Mountain repository does open, it is technically and legally limited to 63,000 metric tons of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel. DOE projects that the total amount of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel generated in the U.S. will double to over 105,000 metric tons in the decades to come. This means that even if Yucca Mountain opens, PFS could very well turn into the de facto permanent overflow zone for excess waste. Finally, on its face, the storage or disposal of highly radioactive waste on a tiny, poverty-stricken Native American community that did not even benefit from the nuclear generated electricity also raises significant environmental justice concerns. The existing leadership crisis at Skull Valley only exacerbates such concerns. There is a long-running dispute over the legitimacy of the tribal leadership that supports PFS. The disputed Tribal Chairman, Leon Bear -- the primary proponent for PFS -- has been indicted on federal charges of embezzlement of tribal funds as well as tax evasion. Tribal members who oppose PFS claim they have been severely intimidated and harassed, and allege that irregularities such as bribery and extortion have been used to secure support for PFS within the tribe. These are very shaky foundations upon which to build dry cask storage for 44,000 tons of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, nearly 80% of what currently exists in the U.S. The Skull Valley Goshute Indian community seems to have suffered significantly from the PFS proposal long before the first shipment of irradiated nuclear fuel has even arrived. We urge you to deny the PFS license request. Storing irradiated nuclear fuel at the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation is not a safe, sound, nor just solution to our country's high-level radioactive waste problem. Sincerely, Michael Mariotte, Executive Director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Washington, D.C. Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, Washington, D.C. Pete Litster, Executive Director, The Shundahai Network, Salt Lake City, Utah ----- Help Stop the Senate Energy Bill! Sign the Petition for a Sustainable Energy Future! Members of the Senate Energy Committee are meeting behind the scenes to write a new energy bill, to be released this Spring. We don't know the details of it yet, but we do know it will seek to provide billions of your dollars as subsidies for new nuclear reactor construction and for the coal and oil industries. There is a better way. You can act now by signing the Petition for a Sustainable Energy Future at http://www.nirs.org Thank you! -- This is the NIRS E-Mail Alert list. You are on this list because you signed up on our website, at a NIRS table at a concert, on a petition, or directly to NIRS. Your name and address are never sold, rented, or traded with anyone for any reason. For address changes or to unsubscribe, just send an e-mail to nirsnet@nirs.org. If you have friends or colleagues who would like to be on this list, have them send a note to nirsnet@nirs.org