NucNews - March 30, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
Bush Administration Kills Nuclear Fallout Study
Downwinders Be Damned
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
March 30, 2005 Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03302005.html
Just as the Bush administration contemplates ordering up a new generation of nuclear weapons, which may in turn spark a new round of nuclear testing in the high deserts of Nevada, the Center for Disease Control, a federal outpost in Atlanta charged with supervising the nation's physical well-being, pulled the plug on a long-term study into the dire health consequences from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s on people living in the American southwest.
The study, which has been underway for seven years, has been tracking the thyroid conditions of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada in 1965, at the height of testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site. The lead researcher, Dr. Joseph L. Lyons, a professor at the University of Utah, was informed via a curtly worded letter on March 21 that funding for the study had been inexplicably yanked.
The letter terminating the research in midstream was written by Michael A. McGeehin, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects. McGeehin claimed the study was killed because of financial considerations. "The CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period," McGeehin wrote. "We recommend that you take measures to close out this study by the end of the current budget period, which will occur on August 31, 2005."
The Utah Thyroid Disease Study hardly seems like a financial burden on the federal purse. In seven years, the investigation into thyroid cancers linked to radioactive fallout has cost the federal treasury only $8,049,988, roughly the amount the Pentagon spends every two hours in Iraq. Or consider this: from 1990 to 1995, the federal government spent more than $90 million in legal fees to fight off claims from downwinders and workers at nuclear weapons plants over the health consequences of bomb-making and testing.
Lyons believes, with good reason, that the study was axed for political reasons. "The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens," Lyons told the Deseret News.
The scientist also said it was an extremely rare occurrence for the CDC to pull funding in the middle of a major study. "I've never know it to happen before," says Lyons, who has been researching the links between cancer and fallout since 1977.
Located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site, established in 1951, sprawls over 1,500 square miles of desert basin and range country. Between 1951 and 1992, the Pentagon and Department of Energy conducted at least 925 nuclear blasts at the site, more than 100 of the explosions were above ground, open-air tests, which cast a radioactive pall over much of the American West. Even the underground tests vented plumes of radiation.
A 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute reported that the fallout from the blasts deposited large amounts of radioactive iodine across the lower-48 states. The report concluded that the contamination was so severe that it may cause as many as 70,000 cases of thyroid cancer alone. By way of comparison, that's 65,000 more casualties than Saddam Hussein is alleged to have caused in his poison gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988.
It was Lyons's groundbreaking study in 1979 for the New England Journal of Medicine which proved that radioactive fallout from the open-air nuclear tests in Nevada had lead to increased incidents of cancer in communities downwind of the blasts. A subsequent study demonstrated that those same downwind communities faced an increased likelihood of leukemia deaths. These two reports prompted Congress to finally enact a fallout compensation measure for downwinders.
In 1993, Lyons and his colleagues began studying the thyroid conditions of former school children who lived downwind of the blasts. That research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the schoolchildren exposed to the highest levels of radiation were 3.4 times more likely to suffer from thyroid tumors than would be expected.
These same students had been monitored by federal researchers until 1970, who, unsurprisingly, claimed not to have found any link between exposure to fallout and thyroid tumors. But Lyons and his colleagues began examining those students as adults and found that 58 of the former downwinders had nodules on their thyroids. Of those, 8 were malignant tumors and 11 were benign tumors.
This initial study buttressed the theory held by Lyons and many other scientists that there is a lifetime risk to fallout exposure and that thyroid problems in particular develop very slowly across a span of decades. These results prompted Lyons to apply for funding from the CDC for a larger study that would examine the thyroid conditions of all 4,000 former schoolchildren in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, who were originally identified in 1965 as being exposed to the most extreme levels of fallout from the blasts. The incidence of thyroid problems in those students was to be compared to a control group in Safford, Arizona.
One of the initial problems Lyons ran into was the realization that the radioactive fallout extended farther than he anticipated, meaning that most of the population of Safford had also been exposed to radiation, though in much smaller doses. Fallout has gone global. When it comes to thermonuclear weapons, we all live downwind.
By the end of last year, the researchers had tracked down more than 90 percent of the former students, most of whom agreed to be examined for the study. "We've already reported that there's an excess of tumors of the thyroid gland," Lyons said. "And we've got pretty strong indications that there are other disease problems that ought to be looked at."
Originally, Lyons planned to have the study completed within five years. But he encountered continual meddling and roadblocks from the CDC that consumed both time and much of the grant money. "The federal government put all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles in our path that were not part of the original agreement," Lyons contends.
The agreement called for Lyons research to be overseen by the University of Utah. Then the CDC said that the study needed to be scrutinized by an institutional review board at the CDC, a requirement that delayed the research by two years. Next the CDC informed Lyons that he had to submit the plans for his study to a panel at the National Academy of Sciences, an inquisition that lasted another two years. Then the CDC called for a yet another review of Lyons's methodology by a three-person panel at the Department of Energy.
When Lyons and his colleagues finally got out into the field and began to get results, the CDC pulled the plug. "Essentially, they said, 'Tough luck, we don't want your study'," said Lyons. "I've been working on this now since 1977. I'm about to retire and I'd really like to finish up this thyroid study and get some definitive answers."
Those answers might prove to be unsettling for the Bush administration as it pursues a new generation of nuclear weapons and grooms the killing grounds of the Nevada Test Site for another go-round of nuclear blasts.
People are getting sick and dying the American Southwest and the Bush administration doesn't want them to learn why.
Downwinders be damned.
For more information on visit: http://www.downwinders.org
-------- accidents and safety
CT: Hope Creek leak is found
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
By BILL GALLO JR.
Staff Writer
http://www.nj.com/news/bridgeton/local/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1112178086167630.xml
LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TWP. -- Operators of the Hope Creek nuclear power plant have discovered the source of a water leak in an area below the reactor, officials said Monday.
A flaw in a weld apparently allowed the water to leak from where a four-inch port is connected to a 28-inch line that is part of the plant's cooling recirculation system, according to Chick Cannon, spokesman for PSEG Nuclear.
The 4-inch port is connected to the larger pipe in case the cooling system pipes would need to be flushed.
Cannon said the plant was powered-down over the weekend and then shut down at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday to allow for the investigation.
The leak is located in an area known as the dry well below the nuclear reactor. All of the slightly radioactive water was collected within the plant. None leaked to the outside.
The leak was first discovered in early February and has gradually increased. When the plant was shut down, water was leaking at the rate of about 0.73 gallons per minute, well below the federal allowable limit of 5 gallons per minute.
Cannon said workers would repair the weld, and conduct an investigation to determine what caused the weld to fail. Other piping at the plant would also be inspected, he said.
Cannon couldn't estimate when the plant would go back on line.
----
Health and Safety Inspectors Sickened by Beryllium
WASHINGTON, DC, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-09.asp#anchor3
The toxic metal beryllium is making inspectors for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sick after they are exposed to it on the job, according to an internal OSHA email released Monday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
According to an internal email sent to OSHA staff on March 24, by Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jonathan Snare, 10 OSHA employees out of 271 have tested positive for beryllium sensitization. Results reported in January found only three positives.
Sensitization to beryllium is the precursor for chronic beryllium disease (CBD), a progressive, potentially fatal lung disease.
Machinists may be sensitized and so may workers in industries such as nuclear weapons production, and production of ceramics and alloys containing beryllium.
The testing was prompted by the public protests of a former top OSHA official who was then transferred,
Dr. Adam Finkel, the former OSHA Administrator for the six state Rocky Mountain Region, revealed that several thousand current and former inspectors were unknowingly exposed to beryllium at concentrations up to several hundred times higher than permissible levels.
"It looks like OSHA is sleeping through yet another wake-up call,” said Dr. Finkel, speaking from his new office at Princeton University. “When I protested the decision not to test or inform our employees, I was concerned that one or two percent of them might be sensitized - but now OSHA admits that nearly four percent are.”
Over Dr. Finkel’s objections, Assistant Labor Secretary John Henshaw decided to deny recommended blood screenings for employees and to not inform individuals of their exposures.
More than 18 months after Dr. Finkel blew the whistle, OSHA began a medical monitoring program in April 2004 but only for a portion of exposed compliance officers.
“OSHA’s actions in this matter belie its stated concern for the health of its own workers,” said PEER Executive Jeff Ruch. “OSHA has taken only small, grudging steps that completely ignore the health risks to its retirees, its state partners and other workers.”
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao did not respond to a January letter by PEER urging six steps to improve the beryllium testing program, including that OSHA disclose the location of facilities visited by inspectors who became sensitized so that state inspectors, EPA inspectors and the workers inside those facilities could make informed decisions about whether to seek medical testing.
Snare sent PEER a letter dated March 24th that avoided any of the suggestions but said, “We value the health of all OSHA employees.”
On the OSHA website, Snare posted a statement March 24 saying, "OSHA is presently evaluating whether changes need to be made to current protections against beryllium exposure. The issue is listed in the Department of Labor's Semiannual Regulatory Agenda (Dec. 13, 2004). The next step in the process is initiating a small business panel (required under the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act) to determine impacts of rulemaking on small businesses."
The beryllium problem may be more extensive that it appears today, say Finkel and Ruch, because inspectors were not informed of their specific exposure levels, so the most seriously exposed may remain to be tested.
Finkel and Ruch say OSHA has ignored the hundreds of former inspectors and state inspectors who may have been similarly exposed. It also appears that OSHA inspectors exposed for only a few hours have sensitization rates equal or greater than those of workers who have spent years in environments laden with beryllium. "This suggests that OSHA inspectors may have been subjected to extremely high exposures," they said.
-------- depleted uranium
US forces' use of depleted uranium weapons is 'illegal'
Sunday Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
March 30, 2003
http://www.sundayherald.com/32522
BRITISH and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction. DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a 'war crime'. A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.
Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - Canada's ABC) http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/
A year after war's end, [Gulf War Vet Jerry] Wheat got startling evidence from his father -- a technician at the famous Los Alamos Nuclear Research Centre, who just out of curiosity tested the shrapnel that came from his son's body and gear. The shrapnel was radioactive. Today, eight years after the Gulf War, that shrapnel still lights up a Geiger counter. He also keeps other pieces.
Jerry's great fear is that whatever he brought back with him from the Gulf is now afflicting his family. His older son Joe was hospitalized with breathing problems the day after Wheat dragged his contaminated gear into the house. Derrick, his youngest son, who was born after the war, suffers strange blisters on his hands. His wife suffered a miscarriage. Jerry himself recently had a tumour removed from his shoulder. He now worries continually about cancer. Jerry says the military has never shown any interest in his shrapnel. The military said Jerry's health problems are due to post traumatic stress.
WHO 'suppressed' scientific study into depleted uranium cancer fears in Iraq Sunday Herald, Feb. 22, 2004 http://www.sundayherald.com/40096
An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq's civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret. The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.
Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year's war, and to clean up afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.
-
For more information, The Christian Science Monitor has a compilation of 16 articles exposing the dangers of depleted uranium at
http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/
BBC also has a webpage listing 10 of their articles both pro and con regarding depleted uranium at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/europe/2001/depleted_uranium/default.stm
See our archive of deep insider emails at http://www.WantToKnow.info/coveruparchive
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-------- iran
Sleepwalking to disaster in Iran
By Scott Ritter
Wednesday 30 March 2005, 3Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1B5FCF4A-FBF6-443A-93A9-5E37C43FDE0B.htm
Late last year, in the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, I was contacted by someone close to the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq.
There was a growing concern inside the Bush administration, this source said, about the direction the occupation wasngoing.
The Bush administration was keen on achieving some semblance of stability in Iraq before June 2005, I was told.
When I asked why that date, the source dropped the bombshell: because that was when the Pentagon was told to be prepared to launch a massive aerial attack against Iran, Iraq's neighbour to the east, in order to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme.
Why June 2005?, I asked. 'The Israelis are concerned that if the Iranians get their nuclear enrichment programme up and running, then there will be no way to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. June 2005 is seen as the decisive date.'
To be clear, the source did not say that President Bush had approved plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, as has been widely reported.
The President had reviewed plans being prepared by the Pentagon to have the military capability in place by June 2005 for such an attack, if the President ordered.
But when Secretary of State Condi Rice told America's European allies in February 2005, in response to press reports about a pending June 2005 American attack against Iran, she said that 'the question [of a military strike] is simply not on the agenda at this point -- we have diplomatic means to do this.'
President Bush himself followed up on Rice's statement by stating that 'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.' He quickly added, 'Having said that, all options are on the table.'
There is always the unspoken 'twist': what if the United States does not fully support European diplomatic initiatives, has no interest in letting IAEA inspections work. In short, both the President and the Secretary of State were being honest, and disingenuous, at the same time.
Truth to be told, there is no American military strike on the agenda; that is, until June 2005.
It was curious that no one in the American media took it upon themselves to confront the President or his Secretary of State about the June 2005 date, or for that matter the October 2004 review by the President of military plans to attack Iran in June 2005.
The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran with all of the incompetence and lack of integrity that it displayed during a similar path trodden during the buildup to our current war with Iraq.
On the surface, there is nothing extraordinary about the news that the President of the United States would order the Pentagon to be prepared to launch military strikes on Iran in June 2005 .
That Iran has been a target of the Bush administration's ideologues is no secret: the President himself placed Iran in the 'axis of evil' back in 2002, and has said that the world would be a better place with the current Iranian government relegated to the trash bin of history.
The Bush administration has also expressed its concern about Iran's nuclear programmes - concerns shared by Israel and the European Union, although to different degrees.
In September 2004, Iran rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency's call for closing down its nuclear fuel production programme (which many in the United States and Israel believe to be linked to a covert nuclear weapons programme).
Iran then test fired a ballistic missile with sufficient range to hit targets in Israel as well as US military installations in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
The Iranian response triggered a serious re-examination of policy by both Israel and the United States.
The Israeli policy review was driven in part by the Iranian actions, and in part by Israel's own intelligence assessment regarding the Iranian nuclear programme, made in August 2004 .
This assessment held that Iran was 'less than a year' away from completing its uranium enrichment programme. If Iran was allowed to reach this benchmark, the assessment went on to say, then it had reached the 'point of no return' for a nuclear weapons programme. The date set for this 'point of no return' was June 2005.
Israel's Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, declared that 'under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession'.
Since October 2003 Israel had a plan in place for a pre-emptive strike against Iran's major nuclear facilities, including the nuclear reactor facility in Busher (scheduled to become active in 2005).
These plans were constantly being updated, something that did not escape the attention of the Bush White House.
The Israeli policy toward Iran, when it comes to stopping the Iranian nuclear programme, has always been for the US to lead the way.
'The way to stop Iran', a senior Israeli official has said, 'is by the leadership of the US, supported by European countries and taking this issue to the UN, and using the diplomatic channel with sanctions as a tool and a very deep inspection regime and full transparency.'
It seems that Tel Aviv and Washington, DC aren't too far removed on their Iranian policy objectives, except that there is always the unspoken 'twist': what if the United States does not fully support European diplomatic initiatives, has no interest in letting IAEA inspections work, and envisions UN sanctions as a permanent means of containment until regime change is accomplished in Tehran, as opposed to a tool designed to compel Iran to cooperate on eliminating its nuclear programme?
Because the fact is, despite recent warm remarks by President Bush and Condi Rice, the US does not fully embrace the EU's Iran diplomacy, viewing it as a programme 'doomed to fail'.
The IAEA has come out with an official report, after extensive inspections of declared Iranian nuclear facilities in November 2004, that says there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme; the Bush administration responded by trying to oust the IAEA's lead inspector, Mohammed al-Baradei.
And the Bush administration's push for UN sanctions shows every intention of making such sanctions deep, painful and long-lasting.
Curiously, the date for the Bush administration's move to call for UN sanctions against Iran is June 2005.
According to a US position paper circulated in Vienna at the end of last month, the US will give the EU-Iran discussions until June 2005 to resolve the Iranian standoff.
'Ultimately only the full cessation and dismantling of Iran's fissile material production efforts can give us any confidence that Iran has abandoned its nuclear weapons ambitions,' the US draft position paper said.
Iran has called such thinking 'hallucinations' on the part of the Bush administration.
The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran
Economic sanctions and military attacks are not one and the same. Unless, of course, the architect of America's Iran policy never intends to give sanctions a chance.
Enter John Bolton, who, as the former US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security for the Bush administration, is responsible for drafting the current US policy towards Iran.
In February 2004, Bolton threw down the gauntlet by stating that Iran had a 'secret nuclear weapons programme' that was unknown to the IAEA. 'There is no doubt that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons production programme', Bolton said, without providing any source to back up his assertions.
This is the same John Bolton who had in the past accused Cuba of having an offensive biological weapons programme, a claim even Bush administration hardliners had to distance themselves from.
John Bolton is the Bush official who declared the European Union's engagement with Iran 'doomed to fail'. He is the Bush administration official who led the charge to remove Muhammad al-Baradai from the IAEA.
And he is the one who, in drafting the US strategy to get the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Iran, asked the Pentagon to be prepared to launch 'robust' military attacks against Iran should the UN fail to agree on sanctions.
Bolton understands better than most the slim chances any US-brokered sanctions regime against Iran has in getting through the Security Council.
The main obstacle is Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council who not only possesses a veto, but also is Iran's main supporter (and supplier) when it comes to its nuclear power programme.
John Bolton has made a career out of alienating the Russians. Bolton was one of the key figures who helped negotiate a May 2002 arms reduction treaty signed by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
This treaty was designed to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both America and Russia by two thirds over a 10 year period.
But that treaty - to Russia's immense displeasure - now appears to have been made mute thanks to a Bolton-inspired legal loophole that the Bush administration had built into the treaty language.
John Bolton knows Russia will not go along with UN sanctions against Iran, which makes the military planning being conducted by the Pentagon all the more relevant.
John Bolton's nomination as the next US Ambassador to the United Nations is as curious as it is worrying. This is the man who, before a panel discussion sponsored by the World Federalist Association in 1994, said 'There is no such thing as the United Nations.'
For the United States to submit to the will of the Security Council, Bolton wrote in a 1999 Weekly Standard article, would mean that 'its discretion in using force to advance its national interests is likely to be inhibited in the future.'
But John Bolton doesn't let treaty obligations, such as those incurred by the United States when it signed and ratified the UN Charter, get in the way. 'Treaties are law only for US domestic purposes', he wrote in a 17 November 1997 Wall Street Journal Op Ed. 'In their international operation, treaties are simply political obligations.'
John Bolton believes that Iran should be isolated by United Nations sanctions and, if Iran will not back down from its nuclear programme, confronted with the threat of military action.
And as the Bush administration has noted in the past, particularly in the case of Iraq, such threat must be real and meaningful, and backed by the will and determination to use it.
And the Bush administration's push for UN sanctions shows every intention of making such sanctions deep, painful and long-lasting. John Bolton and others in the Bush administration contend that, despite the lack of proof, Iran's nuclear intentions are obvious.
In response, the IAEA's Muhammad al-Baradai has pointed out the lack of a 'smoking gun' which would prove Iran's involvement in a nuclear weapons programme. 'We are not God', he said. 'We cannot read intentions.'
But, based upon history, precedent, and personalities, the intent of the United States regarding Iran is crystal clear: the Bush administration intends to bomb Iran.
Whether this attack takes place in June 2005, when the Pentagon has been instructed to be ready, or at a later date, once all other preparations have been made, is really the only question that remains to be answered.
That, and whether the journalists who populate the mainstream American media will continue to sleepwalk on their way to facilitating yet another disaster in the Middle East.
Scott Ritter former UN Chief Weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998 author of 'Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy', published by I.B.
The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.
----
Iran opens secret nuclear plant
Iran insists Natanz is helping to develop nuclear energy, not bombs
Wednesday, 30 March, 2005 (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4394177.stm
Journalists have been allowed to accompany Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on his first official visit to the Natanz nuclear facility. Natanz, some 250km (150 miles) south of Tehran, was a closely-guarded secret until late 2002 when its existence was revealed by an Iranian exile group.
The site holds uranium enrichment facilities which, the US says, could be aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
But Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
In an unusual gesture, Tehran allowed more than 30 local and foreign journalists to accompany President Khatami on a tour of Natanz.
They were taken deep inside a building to a vast empty hall designed to house 50,000 enrichment centrifuges, a Reuters news agency report said.
The enrichment facility was built more than 18m (54ft) below ground because of "security problems", Iranian officials were quoted as saying.
'Frustrated staff'
But defence experts say it could be a precaution against possible aerial attacks from the US and Israel.
Dozens of anti-aircraft placements were also spotted by journalists on the approach to Natanz.
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said the site was being inspected by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
"IAEA inspectors visit this facility at least once a month and also use a monitoring system to check the suspension," he said.
But he said staff were keen to resume enriching uranium, which was frozen while Iran negotiates with the EU over its nuclear programme.
"The people involved in the project are frustrated by the suspension," he said. "They hope there is an agreement with the Europeans so that all activities can be resumed. Enrichment is Iran's right."
----
Poll: Iran not a nuclear threat
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 (CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/30/iran.poll/
LONDON, England -- Almost six out of 10 adults in Britain, France and Germany say that Iran does not pose a nuclear threat to Europe, according to the findings of a new CNN/TIME poll.
Iran says its nuclear program is nothing for the world to fear and will only be used to generate much-needed electricity. But Washington and the EU fear Iran could use its nuclear plants to produce bombs.
In his State of the Union Address in February, U.S. President George W. Bush named Iran as "the world's primary state sponsor of terror."
He said the United States must "confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder," citing Iran and Syria.
In February, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said an attack on Iran over its alleged nuclear program is "not on the agenda at this point."
Adults in France were more likely to think Iran posed a nuclear threat (34 per cent) than in Germany (30 per cent) and Britain (27 per cent.)
Of those adults surveyed who did believe Iran posed a nuclear threat, 59 per cent said diplomacy was the best way to handle the situation.
Just three per cent said using military force alone was the best course of action. Support for military action was highest in Britain (seven percent) and lowest in Germany (zero percent.)
An additional 22 percent across all countries supported the combined approach of using both diplomacy and military force.
Other key findings from the research showed that just 17 percent of adults in key European countries trusted politicians to tell the public the truth about the prospect of potential terrorist attacks.
This compares to some 30 percent who trusted the media and 43 percent who trusted senior police officials for information on terror attacks. International aid agencies were the most trusted information source (51 percent of those surveyed.)
The poll was conducted by TNS, the market information group and the world's largest custom research company.
-------- korea
North Korea says it developed nuclear weapons with its own money
Wednesday March 30, 7:49 PM Associated Press
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050330/ap/d89594ho2.html
North Korea said Wednesday that it paid for its nuclear weapons program entirely on its own, rejecting speculation that it used secret payoffs from South Korea.
North Korea's "development of nukes is based on the powerful independent national economy from A to Z," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said, citing an anonymous spokesman for the North's Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee.
Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung has admitted giving North Korea US$500 million (€387 million) days before his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in 2000. Several prominent officials in the Kim Dae-jung administration were convicted for the payoffs.
The scandal sparked concerns that some of the money might have been used by the North to develop nuclear weapons.
But on Wednesday, the North Korean spokesman said "it is a sheer lie to claim that (North Korea) has built nuclear deterrent with a petty amount of money provided by others."
Efforts to restart international talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear ambitions gained urgency last month after the communist regime claimed it had already developed nuclear weapons and would boycott the disarmament negotiations indefinitely. The talks, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, have been stalled since last June.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan denies access to nuke supplier
March 30, 2005
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050329-115944-5349r.htm
Pakistan will not grant U.S. requests for direct access to pardoned nuclear supplier Abdul Qadeer Khan, but instead offered alternatives for getting information about his covert network, Pakistan's ambassador told the United States yesterday.
"The U.S. and Pakistan have been in continuous contact on this particular issue," Pakistani Ambassador Jehangir Karamat told reporters and editors of The Washington Times. "And in response to the U.S. demand for access to Dr. A.Q. Khan, we have offered alternatives."
Mr. Karamat also said Pakistan agreed to examine Iranian nuclear components believed to have been supplied by the Khan network. The equipment will be sent from Iran and checked for "signatures" to determine if it originated from the Khan network, he said.
The ambassador said that while he has not had access to debriefing reports from Mr. Khan, "we have reached a conclusion that centrifuges, or centrifuge designs or parts" were obtained by Iran from Mr. Khan's supplier network.
Mr. Karamat said Pakistan rejected requests for U.S. intelligence officials to question Mr. Khan directly, based on a plea agreement reached with the technician, who is considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and who enjoys popular support in the country.
"We have explained our point of view, and we have suggested alternatives for meeting every single U.S. requirement for information, which is being met," he said.
In 2003, it was revealed that Mr. Khan headed a covert network that provided nuclear weapons-related technology in places ranging from Malaysia to Pakistan to Germany.
The group provided centrifuge designs and components used in enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. Libya, Iran and North Korea were buyers of Mr. Khan's equipment and technology.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Mr. Khan in February 2004 for illegally selling the nuclear goods. Mr. Karamat said yesterday the pardon was given in exchange for a U.S. requirement that Mr. Khan provide full details and continued cooperation in breaking up the supplier network.
"I think the U.S. has been satisfied generally with every requirement being met by Pakistan on the international network," Mr. Karamat said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the Khan network with Gen. Musharraf during her recent visit to Pakistan, according to a senior Bush administration official who said the United States is "getting all the cooperation we need and have asked for."
CIA Director Porter J. Goss said last month that investigators have learned new information in recent months about the Khan network, but have not "got to the end of the trail" in learning everything.
Mr. Karamat dismissed a March 16 report by Reuters news agency from Vienna, Austria, where the International Atomic Energy Agency has its headquarters, that quoted officials as saying Pakistan has found new illicit channels to support its nuclear program.
"The only comment I can offer is that Pakistan would have to be very unmindful of the environment if it were to continue anything under the present circumstances," he said.
-------- russia
Russian govt urged to provide customs houses with radiation control facilities
30.03.2005, 15.12 (Itar-Tass)
http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=1884463&PageNum=0
MOSCOW, March 30 - Russian defenders of consumers’ rights have urged the government to fully provide customs houses with radiation control facilities.
“We demand, in the first place, the tightening of radiation control over Ukrainian rolled metal, which is often made of the scrap metal coming from the Chernobyl area,” Mikhail Anshakov, chairman of the Public Control Society, which defends the rights of consumers, told Itar-Tass.
According to Anshakov, “metal products, which are dangerous for people’s health and for the natural environment, are imported to Russia from Ukraine across the border, which is more than transparent.”
Under the rules existing in Russia, only scrap metal is subjected to radiation control, which is not extended to finished products, made of radioactive scrap metal, he continued. In the opinion of Anshakov, one of the reasons for it is “a shortage of radiation control equipment at customs houses. The number of control facilities they have is only 55 to 70 per cent of what they really need.”
Anshakov explained that last Monday the Public Control Society brought an action at the Cheryomushki District Court of Moscow, demanding the banning of the import to Russia of metal products, made of Chernobyl scrap metal. Their total amount exceeded 100,000 tons last year alone.
Radioactive beams, angle pieces, channels, pipes and reinforcing bars, marketed mostly in Moscow and the Moscow Region, were used in the construction of apartment houses, cultural facilities, entertainment and sports complexes.
In the opinion of specialists in nuclear and radiation security, “metal products, made of Chernobyl scrap metal, are potentially dangerous for people’s life and health, as well as for the natural environment.” At present specialists do not know about effective methods of fully removing radioactivity from metal products.
According to the information of the Federal Customs Service, Russian customs officers stopped some 300 attempts to illegally transport from Ukraine to Russia the cargoes with radiation higher than the normal level.
-------- terrorism
Agencies Fight Over Report on Sensitive Atomic Wastes
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: March 30, 2005
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/politics/30nuke.html
WASHINGTON, March 29 - A semisecret debate is raging between the National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the vulnerability of nuclear wastes to terrorist attack and about how secret the debate should be.
The academy, under orders from Congress, produced a study last summer about whether the spent-fuel pools at nuclear reactors were vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The pools hold most of the radioactive material ever produced at the reactors, far more than the reactors themselves. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an independent group of scientists published a paper in a Princeton scientific journal asserting that an enemy could drain a pool and set a fire that would be "significantly worse than Chernobyl."
Academy officials say they have hit a roadblock in releasing their report. By law, the academy, which Congress charters, coordinates the work of academic experts from around the country, and it is supposed to make its findings public. In cases like the nuclear waste one, it is supposed to work with the relevant federal agency to develop a version of its report that has no information that would be useful to terrorists.
The academy sent a draft to the regulatory commission in November. But the two have not agreed on what information to release. A commission official said the problem was "aggregation." Although no secret facts appear in the academy version, piecing together the material disclosed would provide useful information.
This month, the academy took the unusual step of sending its version to members of Congress, with classified information removed but still including "safety sensitive information."
A few days later, the commission sent several lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, a rebuttal to the classified report. A spokesman, Eliot Brenner, said this was not a response to the academy, but because Congress wanted to know what actions the commission would take.
According to the commission, the academy panel had "identified some scenarios that are unreasonable."
The rebuttal, sent by Nils J. Diaz, chairman of the commission, said using those situations could "lead to a misinterpretation of the actual risk, and this can cause confusion."
Some ideas put forward by the academy "lacked a sound technical basis," including having reactor operators move more fuel from the pools to dry casks, said the rebuttal, which was sent to Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee on energy and water.
Among engineers, those are fighting words. The rebuttal's characterization is "an incomplete and, consequently, less than accurate description of what our classified report had to say," the executive officer of the academy, E. William Colglazier, said in a telephone interview.
In separate interviews, two of the scientists who provided peer review of the academy study and an author of the study agreed. All three said they could not talk about what the report said because it remained classified at the insistence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
When nuclear fuel is taken out of the reactor, it has to stay in the pool because it generates so much heat. After about five years, it cools enough to be put in a sealed cask of steel and concrete.
The casks are filled with inert gas to prevent rust. The fuel warms the gas, which transfers its heat to the exterior of the cask. Nearly half the reactors in the United States use such casks because they have run out of space in their fuel pools and because the government has not accepted the waste for permanent disposal. Building the casks is expensive, and the power plant operators have constructed them only as needed and not fast enough to lower the inventories in the pools.
The commission has repeatedly said cask storage and pool storage are equally safe. On March 14, Dr. Diaz told reporters at the National Press Club, "I don't see them as a significant radiological risk."
At many plants, the pools are below ground or nearly so, making attacks difficult. But at some reactors, the plants are well above grade. In Mr. Diaz's rebuttal, he refers to a recommendation by the academy that plants be analyzed individually to evaluate their vulnerability and that at some the commission "might determine that earlier movements of spent fuel from pools to dry storage would be prudent."
Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton professor and co-author of the study that brought the issue to prominence, was also brought in as a peer reviewer of the academy study. He said it did not go nearly far enough in urging dry storage.
"I found it peculiar that the N.R.C. said they did," Dr. von Hippel said.
A declassified version might explain the apparent discrepancy. Mr. Brenner, the commission spokesman, said his agency sent a new draft to the academy on Tuesday.
-------- treaties
Jimmy Carter: Non-Proliferation Treaty needs push for renewal
By Jimmy Carter
March 30, 2005 Madison, WI Capital Times
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion//index.php?ntid=34173&ntpid=3
Renewal talks for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are scheduled for May, yet the United States and other nuclear powers seem indifferent to its fate. This is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programs. A recent United Nations report warned starkly: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation."
A group of "middle states" has a simple goal: "To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the non-proliferation treaty in 2005." Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states - including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members - voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution.
So far the preparatory committee for the forthcoming NPT talks has failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the non-nuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal.
The United States is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including anti-ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating "bunker buster" and perhaps some new "small" bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
Some corrective actions are obvious:
• The United States needs to address remaining nuclear issues with Russia, demanding the same standards of transparency and verification of past arms control agreements and dismantling and disposal of decommissioned weapons. With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert status, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War. We could address perhaps the world's greatest proliferation threat by fully securing Russia's stockpiles.
• While all nuclear weapons states should agree to non-first use, the United States, as the sole superpower, should take the lead on this issue.
• NATO needs to de-emphasize the role of its nuclear weapons and consider an end to their deployment in Western Europe. Despite its eastward expansion, NATO is keeping the same stockpiles and policies as when the Iron Curtain divided the continent.
• The comprehensive test ban treaty should be honored, but the United States is moving in the opposite direction. The administration's 2005 budget refers for the first time to a list of test scenarios, and other nations are waiting to take the same action.
• The United States should support a fissile materials treaty to prevent the creation and transport of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.
• The U.S. should curtail development of the infeasible missile defense shield, which is wasting huge resources, while breaking our commitment to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without a working substitute.
• Action should be taken on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, an increasing source of instability in that region. Iran has repeatedly hidden its intentions to enrich uranium while claiming that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. This explanation has been given before, by India, Pakistan and North Korea, and has led to weapons programs in all three states. Iran must be called to account and held to its promises under the NPT. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge how Israel's nuclear status entices Iran, Syria, Egypt and other states to join the community of nuclear weapons states.
These are vital questions, and the world will know the answers during the NPT conference in May.
Former President Jimmy Carter is founder of the Carter Center in Atlanta.
-------- ukraine
Ukraine Thanks Cuba For Chernobyl Children Care
REUTERS CUBA: March 30, 2005
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30132/story.htm
HAVANA - Cuba has treated 18,153 children victims of the radiation fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, Ukraine's Health Minister Nykola Polischuk said on Tuesday.
For 15 years, children from Chernobyl have traveled to Cuba to be treated free of cost by Cuban doctors at the beach resort of Tarara, on the eastern outskirts of Havana.
The pale, sometimes bald, strikingly beautiful children can often be seen playing joyfully on the beach and splashing in the warm Caribbean sea.
They have been treated for cancers, kidney and thyroid ailments, digestive and nervous disorders, and the loss of hair and skin pigmentation.
"At a difficult moment for the people of Ukraine, Cuba was one of the first to extend a helping hand with health care for the children," Polischuk said at a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the Cuban program.
Ukrainian parents and children thanked Cuban President Fidel Castro, danced on a theater stage and recited poems by Cuban independence hero Jose Marti.
Communist Cuba began the program in 1990 and kept it going through its own economic meltdown following the collapse of its international sponsor, the Soviet Union.
Figures have never been released for the cost of the program, which Havana says is part of it international solidarity efforts that have sent tens of thousands of Cuban doctors to work in poor Third World countries.
Polischuk praised the quality of Cuba's medical system and its warm climate, which some specialists say has played a psychological role in the recovery of the children.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush Administration Kills Nuclear Fallout Study Downwinders Be Damned
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, March 30, 2005 Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/stclair03302005.html
Just as the Bush administration contemplates ordering up a new generation of nuclear weapons, which may in turn spark a new round of nuclear testing in the high deserts of Nevada, the Center for Disease Control, a federal outpost in Atlanta charged with supervising the nation's physical well-being, pulled the plug on a long-term study into the dire health consequences from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s on people living in the American southwest.
The study, which has been underway for seven years, has been tracking the thyroid conditions of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada in 1965, at the height of testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site.
The lead researcher, Dr. Joseph L. Lyons, a professor at the University of Utah, was informed via a curtly worded letter on March 21 that funding for the study had been inexplicably yanked.
The letter terminating the research in midstream was written by Michael A. McGeehin, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects. McGeehin claimed the study was killed because of financial considerations.
"The CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period," McGeehin wrote. "We recommend that you take measures to close out this study by the end of the current budget period, which will occur on August 31, 2005."
The Utah Thyroid Disease Study hardly seems like a financial burden on the federal purse. In seven years, the investigation into thyroid cancers linked to radioactive fallout has cost the federal treasury only $8,049,988, roughly the amount the Pentagon spends every two hours in Iraq.
Or consider this: from 1990 to 1995, the federal government spent more than $90 million in legal fees to fight off claims from downwinders and workers at nuclear weapons plants over the health consequences of bomb-making and testing.
Lyons believes, with good reason, that the study was axed for political reasons. "The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens," Lyons told the Deseret News.
The scientist also said it was an extremely rare occurrence for the CDC to pull funding in the middle of a major study. "I've never know it to happen before," says Lyons, who has been researching the links between cancer and fallout since 1977.
Located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site, established in 1951, sprawls over 1,500 square miles of desert basin and range country. Between 1951 and 1992, the Pentagon and Department of Energy conducted at least 925 nuclear blasts at the site, more than 100 of the explosions were above ground, open-air tests, which cast a radioactive pall over much of the American West. Even the underground tests vented plumes of radiation.
A 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute reported that the fallout from the blasts deposited large amounts of radioactive iodine across the lower-48 states. The report concluded that the contamination was so severe that it may cause as many as 70,000 cases of thyroid cancer alone. By way of comparison, that's 65,000 more casualties than Saddam Hussein is alleged to have caused in his poison gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988.
It was Lyons's groundbreaking study in 1979 for the New England Journal of Medicine which proved that radioactive fallout from the open-air nuclear tests in Nevada had lead to increased incidents of cancer in communities downwind of the blasts. A subsequent study demonstrated that those same downwind communities faced an increased likelihood of leukemia deaths. These two reports prompted Congress to finally enact a fallout compensation measure for downwinders.
In 1993, Lyons and his colleagues began studying the thyroid conditions of former school children who lived downwind of the blasts. That research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the schoolchildren exposed to the highest levels of radiation were 3.4 times more likely to suffer from thyroid tumors than would be expected. These same students had been monitored by federal researchers until 1970, who, unsurprisingly, claimed not to have found any link between exposure to fallout and thyroid tumors. But Lyons and his colleagues began examining those students as adults and found that 58 of the former downwinders had nodules on their thyroids. Of those, 8 were malignant tumors and 11 were benign tumors. This initial study buttressed the theory held by Lyons and many other scientists that there is a lifetime risk to fallout exposure and that thyroid problems in particular develop very slowly across a span of decades.
These results prompted Lyons to apply for funding from the CDC for a larger study that would examine the thyroid conditions of all 4,000 former schoolchildren in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, who were originally identified in 1965 as being exposed to the most extreme levels of fallout from the blasts.
The incidence of thyroid problems in those students was to be compared to a control group in Safford, Arizona. One of the initial problems Lyons ran into was the realization that the radioactive fallout extended farther than he anticipated, meaning that most of the population of Safford had also been exposed to radiation, though in much smaller doses. Fallout has gone global. When it comes to thermonuclear weapons, we all live downwind.
By the end of last year, the researchers had tracked down more than 90 percent of the former students, most of whom agreed to be examined for the study. "We've already reported that there's an excess of tumors of the thyroid gland," Lyons said. "And we've got pretty strong indications that there are other disease problems that ought to be looked at." Originally, Lyons planned to have the study completed within five years. But he encountered continual meddling and roadblocks from the CDC that consumed both time and much of the grant money. "The federal government put all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles in our path that were not part of the original agreement," Lyons contends. The agreement called for Lyons research to be overseen by the University of Utah. Then the CDC said that the study needed to be scrutinized by an institutional review board at the CDC, a requirement that delayed the research by two years. Next the CDC informed Lyons that he had to submit the plans for his study to a panel at the National Academy of Sciences, an inquisition that lasted another two years. Then the CDC called for a yet another review of Lyons's methodology by a three-person panel at the Department of Energy. When Lyons and his colleagues finally got out into the field and began to get results, the CDC pulled the plug. "Essentially, they said, 'Tough luck, we don't want your study'," said Lyons. "I've been working on this now since 1977. I'm about to retire and I'd really like to finish up this thyroid study and get some definitive answers." Those answers might prove to be unsettling for the Bush administration as it pursues a new generation of nuclear weapons and grooms the killing grounds of the Nevada Test Site for another go-round of nuclear blasts. People are getting sick and dying the American Southwest and the Bush administration doesn't want them to learn why. Downwinders be damned. For more information on visit: http://www.downwinders.org
----
How Bush Learned To Love the Bomb
NUCLEAR TEST DEBATE
By Leigh Flayton in Mercury, Nevada
March 30, 2005 Der Spiegel
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,348779,00.html
United States President George W. Bush is talking tough about nukes in Iran and North Korea. But critics say by illegally testing and building nuclear weapons, the U.S. is fueling a new arms race.
In a barren stretch of Nevada desert 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a large modular tower and a steel crane, once used for testing nuclear bombs, stand in plain view of anyone passing through the area known to the U.S. government as U6c. They are easily detected by satellites orbiting overhead. Later this year, scientists at the Nevada Test Site will use the structures to conduct an experiment called Unicorn, which will help determine whether the site is prepared to resume full-scale nuclear tests if ordered to do so by the president. Unicorn, which works with plutonium and high explosives, will resemble an old-fashioned underground nuclear test from the Cold War era, when bombs were placed in towers aboveground and lowered beneath the surface by custom-built cranes.
In recent weeks, the Bush administration has focused the world's attention on stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. During his trip to Europe in February, President Bush spoke with urgency about shutting down Iran's nuclear program and securing Russia's aging post-Soviet stockpile. North Korea's declaration last month that it already possesses a handful of nuclear warheads has raised new concerns about tensions in Asia. And most security experts agree that nonproliferation is now critical to stopping the worst nightmare scenario: A terrorist attack on a major city using radioactive material.
Nuclear watchdogs in U.S., however, warn that the Bush administration is fueling a new arms race. They contend the government is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1970 international agreement that states that countries with nuclear weapons must work toward disarmament. The Bush administration, they charge, is pouring money into new nuclear weapons programs and performing nuclear tests, spurring other nations to do the same.
The public "is in the dark about the intentions of this administration in terms of nuclear policy," says Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat, who is an active proponent of nuclear disarmament. "I think they would be more than happy to go back to full-scale testing. At a time when weapons of mass destruction are in the forefront of everyone's mind, this administration has not made the security and dismantlement of weapons, nor the retention of know-how by friendly states, a priority."
Currently, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the Nevada Test Site and is overseen by the Department of Energy, assumes the bulk of the nation's nuclear responsibility. Scientists at the Nevada site work in tandem with those at the country's major nuclear labs: Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia.
Nevada Test Site spokesman Kevin Rohrer says the security administration, which was established in 2000 on the heels of the Wen Ho Lee debacle (the Los Alamos computer scientist charged with mishandling classified information), is following the decree of the Stockpile Stewardship Program. Established in 1994, the program is designed to ensure the safety and readiness of the nation's aging nukes. The United States possesses about 10,000 nuclear weapons.
"Our job is to help make sure that the existing weapons in the stockpile are going to function as designed and remain safe in the stockpile," Rohrer says. The program, he explains, is focused on science and involves only non-nuclear experiments. "We are looking at nuclear material from a physics study perspective: What are the physical material properties of it? What makes plutonium act the way it does, as opposed to studying the phenomena of how do we develop a bomb?"
Walter Dekin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's test director in Nevada, says the experiments at the site are harmless. "It's taking that 1968 Mustang that you parked in the garage and you've never been able to start," he says. "You've never done anything to it, other than you lift the hood, you look at it, you change the spark plugs, you change the oil, but you never run the engine. But when you want to, it's going to start and run just the way you said it would."
Many of the important tests at the Nevada site, including the one named Unicorn, are called "subcritical experiments." In a "subcrit" experiment, plutonium, the explosive ingredient in a nuclear weapon, is detonated with high explosives so scientists can observe how the materials interact and respond to the blast. The experiments take place in the U1a Complex at the site, an underground laboratory composed of roughly a mile of mined tunnels first excavated during the 1960s. In 1997, "Rebound," the first subcrit, was conducted in a 10-by-15-by-30-foot room. Once the scientists capture the blast data with multibillion-dollar, state-of-the-art supercomputers, they seal the radioactive experiment in layers of concrete 960 feet underground, presumably for all eternity.
"Subcritical" refers to the fact that the tests do not reach "criticality"; that is, they don't sustain a nuclear chain reaction, the perpetual explosion of energy that unleashes radioactive destruction. For that reason, subcrits are not banned under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the international agreement that President Clinton signed in 1996. The treaty forbids any nuclear test explosions that cause a chain reaction -- as well as the improvement and development of nuclear weapons.
The Clinton administration began conducting subcritical experiments in 1997, five years after President George H.W. Bush placed a moratorium on all nuclear testing. Although opposed to nuclear testing, Clinton authorized the United States to conduct subcrits as a way to appease pro-nuclear Congress members. At the time, Congress had not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and Clinton figured he could bargain for their votes with the tests.
In 1999, he urged the Senate to ratify the treaty. "Our experts have concluded that we don't need more tests to keep our own nuclear forces strong," he said. "We stopped testing in 1992, and now we are spending $4.5 billion a year to maintain a reliable nuclear force without testing. Since we don't need nuclear tests, it is strongly in our interest to achieve agreement that can help prevent other countries like India, Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran and others from testing and deploying nuclear weapons."
The United States has still not ratified the treaty. And the current activity in the Nevada desert is no aberration of Bush policy: U.S. nuclear labs continue to receive funding -- now approximately $8 billion a year -- for nuclear weapons research, development and testing activities. Among the recent developments is the Nevada Test Site's $100 million Device Assembly Facility, which was designed and built during the days of underground nuclear tests but wasn't functional before the 1992 moratorium. The facility is where plutonium is prepared for use in subcritical experiments, including Unicorn.
Another new device is a "pulsed-power" machine called Atlas, which Joe Meachum, an engineer at the Nevada Test Site, calls "the biggest in the world in its class." Atlas, which will pulverize tuna-can-size, non-nuclear materials like aluminum, copper and tin more quickly and powerfully than any mechanism in the world, was built at Los Alamos, dismantled, then moved to Nevada in 2003. Meachum expects to conduct Atlas' first test at its newly built custom facility in April. Whether testing with Atlas will involve nuclear materials remains to be seen, although Donald Bourcier, an engineer at Los Alamos, says it has been discussed.
"We're not looking at that right now," Bourcier says, "but there's been talk in the hallways of maybe sometime in the future."
Watchdogs charge that these innovations skirt international law. Jackie Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation, a monitor of U.S. nuclear policy, says that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires the United States to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and negotiate the elimination of its nuclear arsenal in good faith. "One could make a very persuasive argument that conducting subcritical tests as part of a broader program to maintain and improve the United States' nuclear weapons capabilities, and train a new generation of nuclear weapons designers, violates Article VI of the treaty," she says.
Mark Twain once opined that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. When it comes to nukes, one person's subcritical experiment is another's nuclear test.
Bob Peurifoy, an engineer for 39 years at New Mexico's Sandia National Laboratory before retiring in 1991, says that subcrits "are perhaps not necessary but are highly desirable" for maintaining the stockpile. Because they can't reach criticality, he says, "these experiments could be conducted in the open air, except for the fear of spreading plutonium around."
To Alice Slater, president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, which works to rid the world of nuclear weapons, subcrits definitely qualify as nuclear tests. "What they're doing is blowing up plutonium with high-explosive chemicals in tunnels 1,000 feet below the desert floor," she says. "The tunnels are contaminated with the plutonium and chemicals from the explosion -- it's radioactive, even if there isn't a 'critical' mushroom cloud."
Critics charge that subcrits drive the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world by provoking countries to keep up with the United States. "Subcritical experiments probably encourage Russia and China to do the same," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "They don't set the best example."
Slater points to the Commission on Disarmament talks in Geneva in 1998, when India protested the United States' conducting of subcrits and threatened not to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The U.S. response amounted to "screw India," says Slater, which prompted India to conduct its own test. That pattern continues today. In November, President Bush's friend and ostensible ally in the war against terrorism, Russian President Vladimir Putin, boasted about his nation's plans for a new kind of nuclear missile. "They will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have," Putin said at a meeting of the Armed Forces leadership, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.
"We're driving it," Slater says. "We started to do subcriticals, and then Russia started to test them. They do every bad thing we do."
In the United States, Cabasso argues that the Bush administration appears to be using the subcrits as "a practice run" in preparation for the resumption of full-scale underground tests. Adds Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico: "The boys in the nuclear weapons complex have never wanted to let go of testing." He acknowledges that in 2004, President Bush ordered the country's nuclear weapons to be cut from 10,000 to 6,000 during the next decade. "They're plenty prepared to talk about the arsenal going down in numbers, even radically so," Coghlan says. "But there is deep cultural and even personal resistance to letting go of full-scale testing."
"What would they have us do?" asks Bourcier, the Los Alamos engineer, of the antinuclear establishment. "Let the stockpiles deteriorate in the bunkers? And if we get attacked, we're defenseless. There are still enemies out there."
The Bush administration has vigorously opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, deeming it ineffective and counter to U.S. security interests. Bush officials regularly point back to the imperative of stockpile maintenance -- but the administration's nuclear posture has in fact been much more forward leaning. In September 2002, it announced a "preemptive strike policy" for its National Security Strategy -- including first use of nuclear weapons against the chemical and biological facilities of states deemed to pose a threat to the United States. In February of this year Bush's new energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, remarked, "A near halt in nuclear weapons modernization over the past decade has taken a toll on our ability to be responsive to changing defense needs." And Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has repeatedly pledged his support for "efforts to revitalize the nuclear weapons infrastructure," including completing the "study" of the new class of so-called bunker-buster weapons.
So far, Congress has kept the Bush administration's nuclear ambitions in check. In November, it denied the president the $27.6 million he wanted for continued research on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or "bunker buster" bombs, and refused Bush's $9 million funding request for "Advanced Concepts" -- research on new weapons designs, which Tauscher calls "one of those terms that means nothing but everything."
But the president remains undaunted. In the 2006 budget submitted to Congress in January, the administration renewed its request for $8.5 million toward "bunker buster" bombs, part of a $6.6 billion overall price tag for weapons programs. The Pentagon stands to get the most funding, with Bush's requesting an increase in its budget of $19 billion to $419 billion. And, with the passage in December of the Intelligence and Terrorism Prevention Act, Rumsfeld -- a staunch advocate of "bunker busters" -- has greater means to implement the programs of his choice.
Some conservative policymakers argue nuclear weapons remain a key deterrent to U.S. enemies, that the strategy that won the Cold War is also necessary -- albeit with a modern makeover -- to winning the war on terrorism.
"Without realistic testing ... we are unable to introduce new designs that would be better suited to countering threats posed by countries like Iran and North Korea than the hugely destructive weapons developed more than 20 years ago to counter targets in the Soviet Union," Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, wrote in mid-February in the Washington Times. "If we are to have any hope of preventing proliferation in the future, the United States must maintain a credible nuclear deterrent -- and undertake the associated testing, developmental and industrial actions."
But as all the world can see, watchdogs argue, today's enemies are of a different breed. Emerging threats from states like North Korea and Iran bear little resemblance to that of the massively armed Soviet Union of the Cold War. And America's continuing to develop its nuclear arsenal means little when it comes to stopping the Osama bin Ladens of the world -- while a new global arms race undoubtedly will make perilous materials more available to them.
"Suicidal terrorists willing to die for their cause," says Global Resource's Slater, "will not be deterred by our weapons."
Later this year, the Nevada Test Site will go ahead with the subcrit experiment, Unicorn. (Its exact date, closely guarded, is revealed only 48 hours in advance.) When it's time, the test materials will be lowered from the tower, beneath the earth's surface, and detonated in a hole 624 feet below ground -- as was done with the last full-scale test, "Divider," in 1992. The plutonium will be subjected to a powerful "back surface shock" using chemical high explosives. The detonation will take place out of sight -- but for the world's aspiring nuclear powers, not out of mind.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Duke Power says nuclear fuel safe despite national report
The Associated Press Mar 30, 2005
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/ncwire_news/story/2264375p-8643792c.html
GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Duke Power says nuclear waste at the company's power plants is protected from attack, despite a national report that questions the safety of storing the spent fuel in pools of water.
The classified report by the National Academy of Sciences recommends speeding up the transfer of spent nuclear fuel assemblies from pool storage at facilities nationwide to dry storage because of the risks of terrorist attacks.
However, officials with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the used radioactive fuel is "better protected than ever."
Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Power, like all commercial reactor operators, stores much of its used nuclear fuel in pools of water that are designed to remove heat from the decaying rods and provide some radiation protection. It also stores spent fuel in dry storage.
The report, commissioned by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, recommends further studies by the government as well as faster transfer of spent fuel at some sites.
The spent rods at Oconee Nuclear Station and other Duke nuclear sites are safe, company spokesman Tim Pettit said.
"This fuel has been safely stored at these plants," he said. "It was safely stored prior to 9-11, and it has a higher margin of safety and security today than it did prior to 9-11."
The utility follows industry practices in making its nuclear plant structures safe and secure, Pettit said. They are well protected because of the design of the pools, their fortified enclosures, plant security systems and the fact that they are totally or partially below ground level, he said.
Pettit said even if the government accepted all of the report's findings, the pools still would be needed for some of the spent fuel because it must cool for three to five years before it can be moved into dry storage.
Storage of spent fuel from commercial nuclear plants has been an issue for years because of the lack of a permanent national repository. Although Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been designated to hold the waste, the project has been beset with problems and delays.
With no national waste site to send the used fuel, commercial operators have filled their pools and dry storage sites with tons of the radioactive assemblies. A Duke spokesman said last year that the Oconee plant had about 1,900 such assemblies in dry storage.
Analysts say the storage issue is one of the concerns brought up in discussions of new nuclear power plants.
Duke Power announced last month that it is considering a new nuclear plant in South Carolina or North Carolina, ending a two-decade drought on new reactors that began after the Three Mile Island disaster.
Pettit said it was too soon to say whether the report by the National Academy of Sciences would impact any plans for a future plant.
Information from: The Greenville News, http://www.greenvillenews.com
-------- california
Don’t drink the water
by Dennis Kyne, March 30, 2005 San Francisco Bay View
http://www.sfbayview.com/033005/dontdrink033005.shtml
From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested atomic and thermonuclear weapons at Bikini in the Marshall Islands. After talking the islanders into leaving their homes, the Navy moved in 240 decommissioned World War II ships and anchored them around the test site to see how they would withstand the bomb blasts. The ships were contaminated with fission products, including strontium 90 and cesium 137, as well as residual plutonium from the bombs.
Something had to be done with the ships; these dead vessels that had now been irradiated needed to be cleansed. The Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) Historical Radiological Assessment (HRA), which is available in San Francisco at the Main Library as well as the Bayview branch library, states very clearly that “the most severely contaminated ships were eventually transferred to HPS for decontamination. Radioactively contaminated marine growth attached to ship hulls was removed with sandblasting.” Fuel contaminated with plutonium and fission products was burned and evaporated into the air, and many materials were welded off and stored or disposed of at the Shipyard.
The radioactive sand from the blasting had to be discarded. Questionable standards for capturing contamination existed during this period, and with certainty we can say the radiation didn’t get separated from the water via a true pollution prevention mechanism. Thus it dropped in the bay or flowed out through broken storm drains.
The HRA states that the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL), operational at the Shipyard until 1969, was responsible for organizing and shipping other radioactive garbage in addition to the sandblast remains. After housing the local community’s radioactive waste at the Shipyard, it was to be dumped offshore near the Farallon Islands.
Along the way, drums containing the waste developed leaks, and whatever records were kept have been lost. Some days the fog wouldn’t let up, and traveling all the way to the Farallon Islands was out of the question. Hidden from witness by the fog, some 55-gallon drums are believed to have been dropped to the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
The May 2004 Community Window on the Hunters Point Shipyard states that many land sites still are contaminated by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from bomb testing and still need to be cleaned. This same document also describes the way containers of radioactive materials were used to calibrate radiation detectors and asserts there may have been leaks in large containers.
Smaller containers used in field studies would be thrown out with ordinary garbage. “Ordinary garbage” does not normally include radioactive elements. As a matter of fact, none of these elements are ordinary; they are manmade.
Here’s the kicker, and an even greater concern if they did dump these barrels into the bay: water isn’t just wet. Water is corrosive. And when it meets metal, it steals the ions and causes rust. If you have a 55-gallon drum eroding from the radiation inside, and the water outside, you have a potentially deadly experiment going on.
This is one good reason to stop the Lennar home building project that is slated to break ground soon on Parcel A at the Shipyard. The need for housing does not outweigh the damage to the health of local people should this turf be razed, liberating an incredible amount of toxic dust and exposing arriving community members to a water table that is nothing less than uranium soup.
First off, if you move human beings into these new homes and than bulldoze surrounding sites and parcels, the strontium and cesium will be liberated and will expose the residents to death. There is no excuse for selling a community on housing when they will end up in their grave.
Government cannot put people in, then clean up the mess later. The entire mess must be cleaned up first. The fact that the mess is there is confirmed by documents available at the library.
If all this isn’t sad enough, Rongalup, an atoll where the inhabitants hadn’t been evacuated, became a study group when it was drenched in the same radioactive ash as the naval carcasses. Jonathan Weisgall, the attorney representing the Bikini Islanders, observes with irony that “we had a pretty nice laboratory of exposed people.”
The same radioactive ash was brought back to Hunters Point. Carl Sagan, on page 322 of “Cosmos,” explains that “Rongalup residents ended up with strontium concentrated in their bones, and radioactive iodine concentrated in their thyroids. Two thirds of the children, and one third of the adults later developed thyroid abnormalities, growth retardation or malignant tumors.”
Not everyone is killed by the flash of a bomb or the meltdown of a reactor or even the fallout. However, the fallout will be around for quite some time as Sagan tells us. Most strontium 90 decays in 96 years and cesium 137 in 100 years.
The ships returned to Hunters Point decades ago, but the metal they left behind is still present. Studies conducted on Rongalup can be cross applied to the current situation in Northern California, where we can say without question that contaminated ships returned to Mare Island and Hunters Point. We know that a nuclear ship sank in Mare Island, and we know that a detonation rocked through nine counties at what is now called the Alameda Naval Station, formerly known as Port Chicago.
There is no place in the world that has higher rates of breast cancer than these areas. It is absolutely imperative that the Hunters Point community take a hard and deep look at the implications of low level radiation on the human being. If two thirds of the children developed an abnormality or retardation in the Rongalup community, what can we expect in Hunters Point, where people were repeatedly exposed to radiation testing, cleaning and research facilities that were not made public knowledge until long after they had discharged deadly poison all over the soil.
It gets worse. Community Window states, “Most sites are contaminated primarily by radio nuclides, ... particularly by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from bomb testing. However, some sites are also contaminated with long-lived radio nuclides such as Ra-226, and so require a very long-term assessment of the potential risk caused by the radioactivity.”
It gets worse, because the more we understand how long these elements stick around, and how horrific they are to the human gene pool, the sooner the developer wants to build new homes alongside the toxic dump sites.
There is a sense of urgency to get this construction going. The most powerful forces at City Hall are saying we have been waiting around too long.
The sense of urgency should be on cleaning the Hunters Point Shipyard, a facility that once collected and analyzed samples of fallout materials from nuclear test sites. Effects of radioactivity on animals were studied at Hunters Point. Mare Island Shipyard was still using berths and drydocks at the Hunters Point Shipyard to repair nuclear powered ships from 1985 to 1989. Surely there are some byproducts in the water table from four years of nuclear fuel being moved around in the area.
The Navy didn’t clean up though, and until they clean it up, you cannot put people in the vicinity of a water table contaminated with cesium 137 and strontium 90 and a drydock area that just two decades ago housed nuclear powered ships. It would be lunacy to accept this as responsible civics. The model of civics this employs is the building model.
The model of civics that should be employed is the maintenance model. Until this area is maintained and brought to 100 percent clearance of radiation and radioactive particles, not one ditch should be dug.
If the leaders of San Francisco choose to dump a housing project onto an area that is exposed to low level radiation, they will be sentencing two thirds of the young children to some form of abnormality based on the short time period covered at Rongalup. Leaders of San Francisco are responsible for the health and welfare of the residents of Hunters Point, both current and future. Responsibility requires these leaders guarantee with certainty that there is no radiation exposure. Anything short of that is negligence.
Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with an emphasis on nuclear proliferation. Email him at d_kyne@hotmail.com and visit his website, www.denniskyne.com.
-------- connecticut
NRC Gives Millstone A Thumbs Up For Safety
Nuclear Power Station Urged To Avoid Complacency
By PATRICIA DADDONA
Day Staff Writer, Waterford
Published on 3/30/2005
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=efa2d7ba-ab78-4ed3-bf1e-80ff9beb7d55
Waterford — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the owner of Millstone Power Station a favorable safety review Tuesday but advised the company to keep improving the way it handles reactor operations.
At an afternoon public meeting at the station, the federal agency discussed its evaluation of how two reactors, Units 2 and 3, functioned during 2004. Unit 2 had seven findings of “very low safety significance,” while Unit 3 had four, NRC officials said.
However, Unit 2 also suffered four “trips” or “scrams” — interruptions in operations — one more than the NRC considers acceptable. In two instances, turbine rotors malfunctioned. The other trips involved feedwater pumps that pass water to the steam generator. The reactor automatically shut down in each case, Dominion spokesman Pete Hyde said.
Some of the seven NRC officials present, including inspectors who oversee the plant year-round, asked Dominion representatives what added safety measures they are putting in place to prevent recurrences.
“We make good decisions about the status of equipment operations,” said Steve Scace, Dominion's director of safety and licensing. “That said, we do at times have an inconsistent threshold for operability and it is not always documented fully.”
Skip Jordan, Dominion's director of engineering, said the company is “methodically looking” for anything that might be wrong with its equipment. Other Dominion officials said they have assigned a group of employees to be accountable for verifying the accuracy of tests; are using new state-of-the-art equipment; and are re-examining when and how to double-check equipment tests.
“You are doing well,” said Randy Blough, the director of NRC's division of reactor projects for Region 1, which covers the Northeast.
“When we look at the issues to discuss with you at this time we have decidedly fewer issues and at a lower level (of concern) than the issues we've talked about in the past. (But) you have to be continuously improving through 2005 to get the same assessment from us” next year, he said.
“If you don't strive for continuous improvement,” warned Paul Krohn, the NRC branch chief for Region 1, “you drift into a sense of complacency.”
At a second public meeting Tuesday, the NRC presented its assessment to the Nuclear Energy Advisory Council. Members who receive inspection reports on Millstone regularly said they were not surprised, but generally pleased, with the findings. One NEAC member, Robert Klancko, wanted a clearer sense of how Dominion's performance rates compared to other reactor owners.
NRC officials said the action Dominion took to correct its safety findings and the way it is addressing the problems with trips at Unit 2 place the company in a category with 77 other reactor owners who are running their plants safely and responsively.
Of the nation's 103 reactors, the NRC has had to impose more oversight on four, and follow up on another 21 where safety concerns did not meet NRC objectives.
“I've got a good feeling that they've come a long way,” said Klancko. “Based on what I've heard tonight, they're in a stable operation mode and diligent attention is being paid.”
One resident, Geri Winslow, who sits on the Unit 1 decommissioning subcommittee, asked how Dominion is addressing concerns raised by employees to the NRC.
Krohn said the industry average is five cases per site, and Dominion had three in 2004.
Winslow also asked the NRC to address a classified National Academy of Science study that questions the security of large, on-site pools of water used to cool radioactive fuel rods heated in the fission process. Dominion has recently added dry storage bunkers and casks to house older spent fuel until it can be taken to a permanent national repository, which remains years away from operation.
“We believe both the pool and dry storage are safe,” said Blough. “That is an area where we need further discussion.”
The NRC is taking steps to make the NAS report public, but not all the information in it can be declassified, he said.
p.daddona@theday.com
-------- nevada
Panel examining e-mails that suggest Yucca data falsified
By Suzanne Struglinski
LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
March 30, 2005
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/30/518525773.html?nuclear
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department and Interior Department gave e-mails to a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday in preparation for next week's hearing on alleged falsified scientific information related to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who is chairman of the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee will conduct a hearing April 5 focusing on the documentation problems now under investigation by both departments.
The Energy Department announced earlier this month that it discovered e-mails by U.S. Geological Survey employees that suggest employees falsified scientific data while studying Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the site to serve as the nation's dump for highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Chad Bungard, the subcommittee's deputy staff director and chief counsel, confirmed the subcommittee received the e-mails Tuesday as well as some other documents Porter requested. He expects the department will make other documents available soon.
"They are just getting into this, too," he said.
Bungard, who is in Nevada meeting with Porter's staff, said the e-mails will be made available Friday. Bungard was scheduled to tour Yucca Mountain today.
In addition to Porter's hearing, another hearing regarding Yucca Mountain is planned for April 7. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is conducting that one to look at the status of the Yucca Mountain project. A witness list had not been completed for that hearing as of this morning, Domenici's staff said. This hearing was planned before the documentation problem was known.
Domenici asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at a committee hearing March 3 to complete a status report on the project. He told Bodman he may be the Energy Secretary that has to look at other options because the Yucca project is taking too long but did not elaborate on his comment.
The Energy Department was supposed to move used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants in 1998 but the Yucca Mountain now is not expected to begin taking the nuclear waste until 2012 at the earliest.
-------- new york
Counties, Groups Oppose Relicensing Indian Point Reactors
GREENBURGH, New York, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-09.asp#anchor5
On Tuesday night, Riverkeeper and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition launched their Fight IP's Relicensing Campaign at Greenburgh Town Hall as an extension of their long running campaign to shut down the nuclear power plant on the Hudson River.
Indian Point’s 40 year licenses will expire in 2013 for Unit 2 and 2015 for Unit 3, but the owner-operator Entergy is expected to begin applying for 20 year license extensions as early as July 2005.
Riverkeeper's Chief Prosecuting Attorney, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., discussed the region's efforts to prevent what he calls "Entergy’s irresponsible plan to continue Indian Point’s operation for an additional 20 years."
"Indian Point is neither safe nor secure and remains vulnerable to a terrorist attack," the Riverkeeper believes. "As the facility continues to age, Indian Point will experience an increasing number of equipment failures. The consequences of a radioactive release from Indian Point – whether triggered by a terrorist attack or accident – pose serious risks to the region’s residents, environment and economy."
Indian Point is located 24 miles north of New York City in Westchester County. This county and three other nearby counties - Rockland, Ulster, and Hudson County, New Jersey - have passed resolutions opposing license renewal for the nuclear power plant.
In addition, 11 towns and villages in southeastern New York and New Jersey, including Greenburgh, have passed similar resolutions.
Those opposed to relicensing of the nuclear plant say it could turn into a "Chernobyl on the Hudson," which is the title of a report produced in September 2004 outlining the terrorist threat to Indian Point and the health and economic consequences of a large release of radiation.
For more information visit: http://riverkeeper.org/campaign.php/indian_point/you_can_do/875
----
Counties, Groups Oppose Relicensing Indian Point Reactors
GREENBURGH, New York, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-09.asp#anchor5
On Tuesday night, Riverkeeper and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition launched their Fight IP's Relicensing Campaign at Greenburgh Town Hall as an extension of their long running campaign to shut down the nuclear power plant on the Hudson River.
Indian Point’s 40 year licenses will expire in 2013 for Unit 2 and 2015 for Unit 3, but the owner-operator Entergy is expected to begin applying for 20 year license extensions as early as July 2005.
Riverkeeper's Chief Prosecuting Attorney, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., discussed the region's efforts to prevent what he calls "Entergy’s irresponsible plan to continue Indian Point’s operation for an additional 20 years."
"Indian Point is neither safe nor secure and remains vulnerable to a terrorist attack," the Riverkeeper believes. "As the facility continues to age, Indian Point will experience an increasing number of equipment failures. The consequences of a radioactive release from Indian Point – whether triggered by a terrorist attack or accident – pose serious risks to the region’s residents, environment and economy."
Indian Point is located 24 miles north of New York City in Westchester County. This county and three other nearby counties - Rockland, Ulster, and Hudson County, New Jersey - have passed resolutions opposing license renewal for the nuclear power plant.
In addition, 11 towns and villages in southeastern New York and New Jersey, including Greenburgh, have passed similar resolutions.
Those opposed to relicensing of the nuclear plant say it could turn into a "Chernobyl on the Hudson," which is the title of a report produced in September 2004 outlining the terrorist threat to Indian Point and the health and economic consequences of a large release of radiation.
For more information visit: http://riverkeeper.org/campaign.php/indian_point/you_can_do/875
-------- south carolina
Nuclear-Plant Questions
Winston-Salem Journal Wednesday, March 30, 2005
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_ColumnistArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781853069&path=!opinion&s=1037645509163
Duke Energy's flirtation with building a new nuclear-power plant in North Carolina would be good news if not for one major detail: The federal government has not settled the issue of where to store spent nuclear-fuel rods.
Duke officials met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently to discuss the process for licensing a new nuclear plant. If the plant were built, it would be the first new nuclear plant put on line in the United States since 1996. Duke would hope to put the plant on line in about 10 years.
There are good reasons to support a new nuclear plant in North Carolina.
With oil prices in the mid-$50 range per barrel, the lure of relatively low-cost nuclear power is stronger than ever. The world's oil supplies are not limitless, and the rising industrialization of both China and India mean that demand is straining supply. Even with Iraqi oil reserves returning to the market, the world simply has more oil customers than oil sellers. Prices will continue to rise.
Oil costs are straining the American economy. American industry became more energy efficient in the last two decades, which means that the high prices have not crippled the economy. But prices are causing difficulties in oil-heavy industries, and more will be hurt as the price continues to rise.
An American economy that generated more electricity from nuclear would relieve some of the pressure for oil. One plant in North Carolina is not going to stop the growth in American consumption of foreign oil, but it would certainly mark a beginning of a good trend.
If the United States could get more of its power from nuclear, the country would be less dependent on the oil-producing states. The geopolitical consequences of energy independence are tremendous.
Nuclear plants are also far cleaner than either oil- or coal-fired plants. They cause little or no air or water pollution.
With 1,000 permanent jobs and a $4 billion construction investment, a Duke Energy plant would also be a boon to North Carolina's economy.
Alas, if the federal government could only settle the issue of where to put spent nuclear rods. A storage facility is under construction at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, but Nevada is opposed to the licensing of that site and may have gotten a legal windfall earlier this month when irregularities were found in some of the research that went into the siting of the facility there.
Nuclear power offers a great many advantages over coal and oil, and a new plant in North Carolina would be great for the state's economy.
But until there is a place to put nuclear waste, a new nuclear-power plant anyplace in the United States is not feasible.
-------- tennessee
Decision on converting nuclear weapons material for TVA upheld
Associated Press
Wed, Mar. 30, 2005
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/11268230.htm
ERWIN, Tenn. - Two administrative judges have upheld a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff decision allowing Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. to convert surplus weapons-grade uranium into fuel for a Tennessee Valley Authority commercial reactor.
"There is simply no basis in the record at hand for a determination on our part that the staff's environmental review failed adequately to consider the possibility of the occurrence of an accident with serious environmental consequences," Judges Alan S. Rosenthal and Richard F. Cole concluded.
They dismissed a petition filed by the Sierra Club seeking a full environmental impact statement on the project. The Sierra Club was the only one of several groups that the judges determined had legal standing to challenge the NRC's action.
The Sierra Club has 15 days to decide if it will appeal to the NRC. Local chairwoman Linda Modica said it would "exhaust all administrative remedies" before heading to court.
The project to "downblend," or dilute, 39 metric tons of highly enriched uranium into low-enriched fuel for TVA, the nation's largest public utility, already is under way and the first shipment has been delivered to TVA's Browns Ferry nuclear station in Alabama.
Most of the uranium comes from the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.
NFS spokesman Tony Treadway hailed the judges' ruling as "really good news for Unicoi County, the region and the taxpayers," noting the project has created 100 jobs at NFS and will save the Department of Energy millions of dollars on storage costs and TVA on fuel purchases.
The Sierra Club, however, said NFS documents show the project "poses significant environmental hazards that must be studied carefully and reported to the public in an environmental impact statement." Hazards include chemical spills, radioactive gas releases, explosions and uncontrolled chain reactions that could hurt employees and nearby residents, the group said.
Treadway said the group "exaggerated their claims far beyond reality." After nine years of reviews by experts and various agencies, he said, "the truth still stands." The project will cause "no significant threat to the public and the environment," he said.
-------- utah
Public Allowed to Hear Skull Valley Nuclear Waste Arguments
ROCKVILLE, Maryland, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-09.asp#anchor6
The state of Utah has succeeded in persuading the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an independent judicial arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to hear oral arguments in public on the state's request to keep waste fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants out of Skull Valley, Utah.
With the approval and participation of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight commercial nuclear utilities, is proposing to transport 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste to be stored in large cylindrical casks at interim storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.
The facility proposed by the Private Fuel Storage consortium would be located on the reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The state of Utah is the principal opponent of the plan. Governor John Huntsman, a Republican, made defeat of the Skull Valley storage facility a pillar of his campaign for the Governor's Mansion.
On February 24, by a 2-1 vote, the Board ruled in favor of Private Fuel Storage and rejected the state’s assertions that there is too high a probability that a radiation release could be caused by the accidental crash of one of the 7,000 flights made down Skull Valley every year by F-16 single-engine jets from Hill Air Force Base.
The evidence before the Board did not deal with deliberate crashes, because the Board has no jurisdiction over terrorism issues.
The Board majority concluded that the probability of a crash into a cask at a speed and angle sufficient to breach one of the internal stainless steel canisters holding spent nuclear fuel was less than one in a million per year.
Under the NRC’s standards, a facility like PFS does not have to be designed against such an unlikely accident.
That decision overturned the Licensing Board’s decision of two years ago, which had upheld the Utah’s argument that the probability of a crash onto the proposed site was too high, leaving it to PFS to attempt to show that such a crash would have no adverse radiological consequences.
The Board will hear arguments on the issue Wednesday, April 6, in Rockville. The session will be open to the public for observation, but participation will be limited to counsel for the state of Utah, PFS and the NRC staff.
All the earlier proceedings leading to the Board’s February 24 decision had been closed to the public because they involved facts and analyses concerning the impact of plane crashes on concrete and steel objects that the Board decided to withhold from the public.
The Board Tuesday directed all counsel to frame their oral arguments to avoid direct reference to the specific facts underlying the issues, so that the session could be an open one.
In the event that this information needs to be discussed explicitly, the Board decided it will hold the discussion at the end of the session after members of the public have been asked to leave the hearing room.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not say why the public was not permitted to hear the expert witnesses and documentary evidence presented during the formal 16-day evidentiary hearing that led to the Board’s decision, only that it "could not be disclosed."
The Board did prepare a publicly available version of its opinion that sets forth only a general summary of those aspects of its reasoning. A copy of that version is available on the NRC’s website at: http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/adjudicatory/pfs-aircraft05.pdf .
The argument will take place in the Board's hearing room on the third floor of the Two White Flint North Building at NRC Headquarters, 11545 Rockville Pike, and will begin at 1 pm.
--------
Utah needs to oppose Yucca, Matheson says
Proximity may make state next target, Matheson says
By Laura Hancock
Deseret Morning News
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600122280,00.html
OREM — Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., incorrectly believe sending nuclear waste to Nevada will keep it out of Utah, says Rep. Jim Matheson said.
And Yucca Mountain's proximity will only prime the Beehive State as a potential waste site in the future, according to Matheson, D-Utah, who spoke Monday at Utah Valley State College.
Matheson, who made the comments during a Town Hall-style meeting, said he opposes all forms of nuclear testing.
Matheson recently introduced a bill that will make it difficult for the federal government to resume military experiments at the Nevada Test Site, where about 1,000 nuclear tests from 1951-1992 released substances into the air that have been attributed to cancer and deaths of people "downwind" from the location, mostly in Utah and northern Arizona.
Matheson's bill will prohibit testing until the government does an environmental-impact statement, he said.
The bill also requires radiation-monitoring equipment throughout the United States.
Testing is set to resume as soon as President Bush OKs it, Matheson said, but his bill will require a vote from Congress, too.
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has introduced a similar bill in the Senate.
"The fight continues, and I will continue to do that as long as it takes. That's sort of my No. 1 issue right now," said Matheson.
Utahns face danger to safety and economic development if the eight utilities that make up Private Fuel Storage successfully obtain licensing to store spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute lands in Tooele County, Matheson said.
The state could intervene by assisting the Goshutes with their economic needs so the tribe would not lease its land to PFS.
Matheson hopes Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will talk with Goshute leaders.
Congress could intervene by designating the Bureau of Land Management terrain in the area as wilderness to prohibit moving anything over it, but Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, tried attaching such a measure on a defense bill, and it failed, Matheson said.
Interior Secretary Gail Norton could intervene as trustee of the Goshute lands, but Matheson does not have much faith she will act unless directed by the White House.
-------- virginia
VA: North Anna receives high marks for safety
Next year, the NRC will conduct only routine inspections at the power plant
BY GREG EDWARDS
RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Mar 30, 2005
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781857747&path=!business&s=1045855934855
Dominion Virginia Power's nuclear-power plant in Louisa County got high marks from federal regulators on its safety inspections last year.
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission official came to the North Anna Nuclear Power Station yesterday to discuss the positive report with managers and the public. The NRC holds plant-safety reviews with the public each year.
"To your credit, North Anna's performance has been in the [top range]," NRC Branch Manager Kerry Landis told the plant's managers.
The NRC maintains two resident inspectors at North Anna who performed 3,500 hours of inspections last year. Inspections include such areas as emergency preparedness, worker radiation protection and operator skill.
The agency ranks nuclear reactors with a color-coded system, ranging from green when a safety issue is the least significant to red for critical issues. All measures for North Anna last year fell in the green range.
The NRC will conduct only routine inspections next year, Landis said. Power plants with poorer records get increased oversight from the agency.
Landis said the NRC will also conduct specialized inspections at North Anna next year not related to the reactor oversight process. They will deal with such things as the plant's independent storage area for spent nuclear fuel.
Last year, 78 of the nation's 103 nuclear reactors had good records similar to the one at North Anna, Landis said, adding that the agency periodically strengthens its inspection standards so no more than three out of four reactors will get the best scores.
Yesterday's meeting did not deal with security inspections at the plant. Since Sept. 11, the results of those in- spections are not made public, Landis said. The agency's security inspections include mock attacks to test the response of the plant's security force.
Abhaya Thiele, a member of the local People's Alliance for Clean Energy, asked Landis about a Washington Post article this week about a secret National Academy of Sciences study that says the storage of spent nuclear fuel at power plants poses a terrorist threat. The NRC, to whom the report was presented, should release the report to the public, Thiele said.
She said she was concerned about the lack of openness at the agency and that public scrutiny is a critical element in keeping the nation's nuclear plants safe. She also asked for results of Federal Emergency Management Agency evaluations of the plant, suggesting that secret information be given to a member of Congress if the public cannot be trusted with it.
Landis told her that in both instances, because of the terrorist threat, she should expect only general information and no details if information is released to the public.
Today, the NRC will hold its annual safety-inspection review for the public and managers of Dominion's Surry Nuclear Power Station at the Surry County Government Center at 2 p.m.
Any ideas? Staff writer Greg Edwards can be reached at (804) 649-6390 or gedwards@timesdispatch.com
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Analysis: EU Lowers Defenses On Arms Market
by Gareth Harding
Chief European Correspondent
Brussels (UPI) Mar 30, 2005
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/industry-05k.html
Chinks are appearing in the European Union's notoriously closed military equipment market as the 25-member bloc attempts to re-equip its armed forces for the post-cold war era and get more bang for taxpayers' euros.
At present, EU states collectively spend $232 billion a year on defense, compared to over $400 billion in the United States.
But defense analysts estimate that Europe's real military capability is 10 percent of America's due to high wage and pension bills, obsolete equipment and lack of integration between EU armed forces.
It is a similarly sorry story with defense procurement, where EU states spend $39 billion a year on new equipment - compared to America's $100 billion - but get a fraction of the return on their investment because of duplication in research and development and national barriers to open competition in the defense sector.
"Taxpayers should get the most out of the investment they make in security," said a recent European Commission paper on the EU defense industry. "There is ample evidence that this is not the case at present and that a European defense equipment market would bring significant savings in costs."
The defense industry is currently one of the few sectors exempt from EU single market rules, with member states citing national security reasons to jealously guard national arms suppliers.
The commission believes lack of competition in the defense industry is pushing up costs for taxpayers, putting European firms at a competitive disadvantage on the world market and hindering the development of an integrated EU defense capability.
The Brussels-based executive body argues this closed shop approach has repercussions for the transatlantic relationship.
"A reinforced European defense and technological industrial basecan provide an important contribution to collective security in the context of NATO and other partnerships," it said in a March 2003 policy paper.
The commission knows that member states will never open up their entire defense industries to competition - the procurement of nuclear missiles, for example, will always remain in the hands of national capitals - but it argues that clear rules are needed for military contracts within the bloc.
EU governments appear to be listening. Last year, they set up a European Defense Agency to promote the joint procurement, research and development of military equipment.
And earlier this month, national armaments directors from 24 EU states - Denmark has opted out of military cooperation - mandated the EDA to draw up a voluntary code of conduct on arms procurement.
In an interview with the Financial Times Tuesday, the agency's head, Nick Witney, said he expected defense ministers to agree the code in the fall.
"We have started a process and I am pretty confident we can get a 'Go' decision," he said.
A spokesperson for the agency said one pilot project might involve "land systems" such as armored vehicles. All EU states are increasingly ditching heavy, slow and cumbersome tanks for lighter, faster and more mobile armed personnel carriers - such as Bradleys - that can be loaded on to C-130 transport planes for quick deployment in combat zones.
Experts estimate that European defense forces will need to order 10,000 such vehicles over the next decade. Witney also believes European countries should cooperate in developing unmanned aerial vehicles and eventually wants "most defense procurements to be advertised properly around Europe."
Pooling research and development costs and opening up procurement to non-national bids would certainly lead to economies of scale, but Tomas Valasek, director of the Center for Defense Information think-tank in Brussels questions whether member states will ever truly loosen their grip over purchasing arms.
"In times of war, no government wants to leave ammunition supplies in the hands of another country."
Valasek says that past experience with cross-border procurement schemes, such as MEADS (Medium Extended Air Defense System) is also likely to weigh on defense ministers' minds when they contemplate pooling resources or opening up closed markets to competition.
"Multinational procurements have tended to go over budget, lag behind schedule and produce something different from what ministries ordered. Instead of getting a horse you end up with a camel because each country wants to add a hump to the design."
Burkard Schmitt, an analyst at the Paris-based EU Institute of Security Studies also believes Witney is "extremely optimistic" about the prospects of defense ministers agreeing to greater competition in the sector by the end of the year.
"Istrongly doubt that a purely inter-governmental agreement will change the behavior of member states. When it comes to procurement, defense ministers are like smokers - they know their actions are unhealthy but they don't know how to stop."
-------- business
Boeing combines robotic unit with its traditional weapons
03/30/2005
By Tim McLaughlin tmclaughlin@post-dispatch.com
St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/1D2C98B44EBAACF386256FD500142BFF?OpenDocument
Boeing Co. has announced a new organization that brings its robotic-airplane program into the same fold as traditional Air Force fighters, bombers and weapons.
Based in St. Louis, it will be called Air Force Systems Global Strike Solutions, the company said Wednesday.
Darryl W. Davis, who has been running Boeing's unmanned combat aircraft program, will lead the new unit, which will have about 3,000 people throughout Boeing Integrated Defense Systems and $3 billion in annual revenue.
Boeing wants a flexible organization that can anticipate and respond to the requirements of the Air Force, Davis said.
Under Davis, Boeing's robotic combat plane, the X-45, has become a leading contender for possible full-scale production. Northrop Grumman Corp. is a chief competitor as the Pentagon and Air Force formulate ways to use robotic planes and traditional fighter jets in combat.
Boeing executives hope they can build dozens of advanced X-45s with the same St. Louis work force that makes F-15s and F/A-18 Super Hornets. Davis said Boeing's military customers are demanding that future airplane and weapons systems be able to communicate with each other through a common operating system.
Just as the Internet lashed together millions of personal computers and created a universal communications system, the Pentagon will spend billions of dollars to link ships, satellites, planes, soldiers and robotic air and land vehicles to create a futuristic fighting force.
"They want all of these things to be interoperable," Davis said.
-------- us
Rumsfeld And the Generals
By David Ignatius
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Washington Post; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11309-2005Mar29?language=printer
Sometime this summer President Bush will pick a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to lead a U.S. military that has been battered by the war in Iraq. When you ask military officers who should get the job, the first thing many say is that the military needs someone who can stand up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The tension between Rumsfeld and the uniformed military has been an open secret in Washington these past four years. It was compounded by the Iraq war, but it began almost from the moment Rumsfeld took over at the Pentagon. The grumbling about his leadership partly reflected the military's resistance to change and its reluctance to challenge a brilliant but headstrong civilian leader. But in Iraq, Rumsfeld has pushed the services -- especially the Army -- near the breaking point. The military is right that the next chairman of the JCS must be someone who can push back.
The process of selecting the next chairman is one of those subterranean Washington political affairs that the public often learns about when it's over. But it is already a subject of lively discussion among current and former officers. Since there's so much at stake in this year's decision, here's a JCS form sheet, based on conversations with current and retired officers and Pentagon civilians:
To appreciate the difficulty of the job, think about the body language when Rumsfeld holds a news conference with the current chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers. Rumsfeld is feisty, irreverent, outspoken; Myers is decorous, upright, respectful. Perhaps that's the way it should be, but some in the military argue that Myers has taken deference too far. His friends counter that working for Rumsfeld isn't easy and that Myers has tried, quietly and behind the scenes, to challenge the secretary when he was over the line.
Iraq has been a delicate dilemma for Myers -- he needs to support the president's policy publicly while also challenging the civilians privately. Critics think Myers sometimes erred in sounding too dutifully supportive, as in comments he made during an April 2004 visit to Iraq. The insurgency had exploded so violently then that there was contingency planning to evacuate the Green Zone. But Myers blandly called the intense fighting "a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq," according to a forthcoming history of the war by The Post's Thomas E. Ricks.
The leading candidate to succeed Myers is the current vice chairman, Marine Gen. Peter Pace. He has served as Myers's deputy since October 2001 and is the image of the solid, square-jawed Marine. His supporters say that after four years of dealing with the White House and Pentagon civilians, he has unique skills, especially in operating at the interface of political and military affairs. Pace's detractors argue that he has been co-opted by Rumsfeld. They complain that he will sometimes pull his punches in meetings with the secretary and avoid criticizing him face to face.
Some observers think Rumsfeld has already decided to recommend Pace, and that he's likely to pick Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani as Pace's vice chairman. Giambastiani is a leading military expert on Rumsfeld's pet topic of high-tech "transformation." A Pace-Giambastiani team might help Rumsfeld lock in his legacy, but at a cost of continued grumbling in the Pentagon corridors.
A second Marine candidate is Gen. James Jones, who's currently the NATO commander. He's smart and sophisticated, with the polish of a corporate CEO. It's said he was considered for chairman last time around but signaled that he wasn't interested, and he was recently on the short list for director of national intelligence. Jones wouldn't be pushed around by anyone, but observers wonder whether he would have the right chemistry with Rumsfeld and Bush.
The third candidate mentioned most frequently is Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of Centcom. He's probably the strongest strategic thinker in the Army. It's said that Rumsfeld was ready to appoint him as Army chief of staff in 2003 but that Abizaid preferred to be in the field. He's tough, smart and outspoken, and is said to have challenged Rumsfeld, quietly but effectively, in the past.
When Bush thinks about picking the next Joint Chiefs chairman, he might recall an unusual gesture by Myers's predecessor, Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, who told his service chiefs to read a book called "Dereliction of Duty." Its subject was how the Joint Chiefs failed to challenge Defense Secretary Robert McNamara adequately during the Vietnam War. It took the Army decades to recover fully from Vietnam; that's a history the next JCS chairman must not repeat.
Rumsfeld won't be defense secretary forever, but a Joint Chiefs chairman who can stand up to him is the right military leader post-Rumsfeld.
davidignatius@washpost.com
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
The Generals Love Napalm
ZMag, by David Cromwell March 30, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7555
"These are the stories that will continue to emerge from the rubble of Fallujah for years. No, for generations..." (Dahr Jamail, independent reporter in Iraq)
Heavily Conditioned Sensitivity
Traditionally, Western journalists give massive emphasis to acts of violence committed by official enemies of the West, while lightly passing over Western responsibility for often far more extreme violence. As Robert Fisk has noted:
"The atrocities of yesterday - the Beslan school massacre, the Bali bombings, the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001, the gassings of Halabja - can still fill us with horror and pity, although that sensitivity is heavily conditioned by the nature of the perpetrators. In an age where war has become a policy option rather than a last resort, where its legitimacy rather than its morality can be summed up on a sheet of A4 paper, we prefer to concentrate on the suffering caused by 'them' rather than 'us'." (Fisk, 'When weeping for religious martyrs leads to the crucifixion of innocents', The Independent, 26 March, 2005)
By contrast, the journalist Dahr Jamail recently interviewed an Iraqi doctor from Fallujah who describes atrocities committed by US forces during their assault on that city last November. The doctor, now a refugee in Jordan and speaking on condition of anonymity, insists his testimony is backed up by video and photographic evidence.
According to the doctor, during the second week of their attack US forces "announced that all the families [had] to leave their homes and meet at an intersection in the street while carrying a white flag. They gave them 72 hours to leave and after that they would be considered an enemy. We documented this story with video - a family of 12, including a relative and his oldest child who was 7 years old. They heard this instruction, so they left with all their food and money they could carry, and white flags. When they reached the intersection where the families were accumulating, they heard someone shouting 'Now!' in English, and shooting started everywhere." (Jamail, 'Stories from Fallujah', 8 February, 2005, http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000196.php)
A surviving eyewitness told the doctor everyone in the family was carrying white flags, as instructed. Nevertheless, the witness watched as his mother was shot in the head and his father was shot through the heart by snipers. His two aunts were also shot, and his brother was shot in the neck. The survivor stated that when he raised himself from the ground to shout for help, he too was shot in the side. The doctor continued: "After some hours he raised his arm for help and they shot his arm. So after a while he raised his hand and they shot his hand."
A six year-old boy was standing over the bodies of his parents, crying, and he too was shot.
"Anyone who raised up was shot," the doctor said, adding that he had photographs of the dead and also of survivors' gunshot wounds.
Grisly Accounts - A Few Questions For The BBC
On 15th February, Media Lens contacted the BBC's director of news, Helen Boaden, and asked whether the BBC was investigating these specific allegations of US atrocities. Her response came via a BBC spokesperson:
"The conduct of coalition forces has been examined at length by BBC programmes, and if justified, that will continue to be the case." (Email from BBC Press Office, 23 February, 2005)
In a follow-up query sent on February 25, we asked which BBC programmes had addressed the conduct of "coalition" forces in Fallujah, including the above evidence of war crimes. Our email was ignored.
Meanwhile, further evidence of US war crimes continued to emerge. Aljazeera reported on March 3:
"Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq's health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah."
The official reported evidence that US forces had "used... substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city."
Fallujah residents described how they had seen "melted" bodies in the city, indicative of usage of napalm, a lethal cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel that incinerates the human body. ('US used banned weapons in Fallujah - Health ministry', 3 March, 2005, http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=7216)
Claims are one thing, but can these allegations be corroborated? American documentary film-maker Mark Manning recently returned from Fallujah after delivering medical supplies to refugees. Manning was able to secretly conduct 25 hours of videotaped interviews with dozens of Iraqi eyewitnesses - men, women and children who had experienced the assault on Fallujah first-hand. In an interview with a local newspaper in the United States, Manning recounted how he:
"... was told grisly accounts of Iraqi mothers killed in front of their sons, brothers in front of sisters, all at the hands of American soldiers. He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops. Manning said he heard numerous reports of the second siege of Falluja that described American forces deploying - in violation of international treaties - napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and 'bunker-busting' shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law."(Nick Welsh, 'Diving into Fallujah", Santa Barbara Independent, 17 March, 2005, http://www.independent.com/cover/Cover956.htm)
We pressed Boaden to explain why the BBC news had devoted so little attention to these repeated allegations of US atrocities, or to the evidence of the use of banned weapons in Fallujah. Boaden responded:
Dear David Cromwell,
Thank you for your latest e-mails to me and my colleagues. Our bureau in Baghdad and our defence correspondent are aware of the particular claims to which you refer. Naturally, independent verification of these reports is vital - and, as you know, our movements within Iraq are severely restricted for security reasons. However, Fallujah is an ongoing issue and our team in Baghdad are constantly talking to contacts about what happened there and are assessing all the information they receive. Our World Current Affairs teams are also looking into a range of related issues.
Regarding the allegation that the Americans used internationally banned weapons during the assault on Fallujah, one of our correspondents who was an "embed" with the US troops in Fallujah said that he saw no evidence of the use of such weapons and that there was never any reference made to them at the confidential pre-assault military briefings he attended. Paul Wood also says: "The character of the fighting that I saw was bloody, old-fashioned clearing of houses and buildings street by street, block by block, the kind of fighting which is done with little more than an M16 and a handful of grenades. It doesn't make sense to use mustard gas, nerve agents, other chemical agents or nuclear devices -- to quote the Al Jazeera story -- in such a small space also occupied by your own forces.
The Americans certainly did possess terrifying weapons, such as 155mm artillery, or M1 A1 Abrams tanks, and I questioned the Marines about the use of such powerful arms in an area which might still contain civilians. But I repeat the point made by my editors, over many weeks of total access to the military operation, at all levels, we did not see banned weapons being used, deployed, or even discussed. We cannot therefore report their use. Of course, we keep an open mind and will always investigate, and report, any hard evidence which comes to light. Yours sincerely, Helen Boaden Director, BBC News (Email to Media Lens, 7 March, 2005)
We replied two days later:
Dear Helen Boaden,
Many thanks for responding; it's much appreciated. I am pleased to hear that the BBC is pursuing vigorously the mounting evidence of US atrocities in Fallujah.
There are a couple of points about your response I would like you to clarify, please. You say that the BBC had "total access to the military operation, at all levels". Would you please justify this claim.
Secondly, you have marked your response as "private, not for publication". What is in it that you do not want brought to public attention?
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
best wishes,
David Cromwell (Email, 9 March, 2005)
Boaden replied:
Thank you for your further email. We treat correspondence as private as a rule and have concerns about distortions arising if we are quoted out of context. If you wish to publish our responses, please go through the BBC's press office.
In response to your query, Paul Wood says that total access meant that he was never stopped from going into any meeting he asked to go into. He was embedded at battalion level but, for instance, he did show up several times (and film) at the colonel's morning meeting with senior staff, where orders were given out.
Paul says, "Most importantly, I also attended the eve of battle briefing for the battalion, at which there were slides and folders with "Top Secret" stamped all over them.
"At this briefing, we were given exactly the same information as the officers who were about to command the Marines in battle. We knew what they knew. There was incredibly sensitive information, such as the latest satellite imagery of the insurgents and the distilled "humint" or human intelligence, such as it was, on the insurgents' movements and strength. We were, of course, covered by the rules of the embed, which were particularly strict about operational security. That meant I couldn't go on air with the battle plan before it started, or at any stage go into details about the exact rules of engagement. Total access also meant access on the ground, going out with individual patrols, hearing the orders as they were given out, seeing how they were implemented."
Paul Wood believes that if the US military were going to use banned weapons the troops would have to be briefed in advance. At the meetings he attended there was no such briefing. Paul stresses that the point about these kinds of banned weapons is that they do not discriminate between friendly and enemy forces. That means you have to make sure your troops know and you have to make sure they have the necessary NBC kit.
Paul says, "We would have seen the Americans in full NBC kit, much as they were when they fought their way up to Baghdad in March 2003. That is why I just don't think it plausible that these weapons were used."
Compellingly, Paul Wood has had meetings with the relevant specialists at Human Rights Watch, who have been very tough on the US military as regards abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Paul asked them specifically about banned weapons in Fallujah. They said they had heard the claims, had made some [sic] investigations, and had found no evidence that such weapons had been used. They also found the idea implausible for the reasons Paul states above. He also says that HRW had seen no evidence of napalm use -- nor the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons claimed [sic] by Al Jazeera and Media Lens.
Yours sincerely, Helen Boaden Director, BBC News (Email, 17 March, 2005)
Media Lens then replied:
Many thanks for your latest email. I appreciate your taking the time and trouble to send it.
Your response does not support your earlier assertion that the BBC "had total access to the military operation, at all levels". I note that you have, in fact, backed down from that claim given that you state that it means simply that Paul Wood "was never stopped from going into any meeting he asked to go into." That is not at all the same thing. Also, Wood says that he "attended the eve of battle briefing for the battalion". What evidence does he have that this was the +only+ such briefing?
Are you aware that US marines have, in fact, already admitted that they have used an upgraded version of napalm? (Andrew Buncombe, 'US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq', The Independent on Sunday, 10 August, 2003). The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was deployed when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad. As Andrew Buncombe reported in the Independent on Sunday:
"We napalmed both those bridge approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there... you could see them in the cockpit video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."
Also, you will be aware that BBC Worldwide Monitoring has picked up multiple media reports of US use of poisonous gas in Falluja. For example, this item dated 2 March in the Lexis-Nexis database:
"Text of report by Abd-al-Hamid Abdallah in Baghdad headlined 'Occupation forces use apple-scented poisonous gas against residents of Al-Fallujah' carried on Saudi newspaper Al-Jazirah web site on 28 February.
"Sources from Iraq's Association of Muslim Scholars who have recently visited Al-Fallujah say the occupation forces used poisonous gas against the inhabitants of the city in the last couple of days."
If BBC Worldwide Monitoring is relaying such reports, why is the BBC not ever referring to them in its news bulletins? You refer to HRW who had "made some investigations". How comprehensive were they? What about the investigations and reports made by Iraqi medical staff and Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq's health ministry? Why have you dismissed those? This would appear to contravene BBC producers' guidelines on balance, fairness, accuracy and impartiality.
Re: atrocities carried out by US forces. Are you aware of a newspaper interview with two men from Falluja - physician Mahammad J. Haded and Mohammad Awad, director of a refugee centre - in the German daily Junge Welt, Week final supplement, Feb 26, 2005? Excerpt:
"I saw in Falluja with own eyes a family that had been shot by U.S. soldiers: The father was in his mid-fifties, his three children between ten and twelve years old. In the refugee camp a teacher told me she had been preparing a meal, when soldiers stormed their dwelling in Falluja. Without preliminary warning they shot her father, her husband and her brother. Then they went right out. From fear the woman remained in the house with the dead bodies. In the evening other soldiers came, who took her and her children and brought them out of the city. Those are only two of many tragedies in Falluja." (International Action Center, "Fallujah was wiped out", http://www.iacenter.org/jc_falluja.htm)
Why are such tragedies given such scant coverage, if any, by BBC news? Would you please retract your assertion that claims of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons use have been made +by+ Media Lens. That is incorrect. We are asking the BBC to report such claims; an entirely different matter.
I am pleased that we are able to undertake a polite, civilized, and rational exchange of views. Could you please explain why this cannot appear on the BBC website - for example on your Newswatch pages? Failing that, Media Lens would be pleased to host this exchange at our own website.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
best wishes,
David Cromwell co-editor Media Lens (Email, 21 March, 2005)
Within four hours we received the following abrupt dismissal:
Dear David Cromwell
Thank you for your further email. However, I do not believe that further dialogue on this matter will serve a useful purpose.
Yours sincerely
Helen Boaden Director, BBC News (Email, 21 March, 2005)
We at Media Lens do not know whether US forces have used banned weapons in their attack on Fallujah. However, it is remarkable that the BBC is, in effect, suppressing repeated and persistent reports of their alleged use. Even more depressing is the failure of the BBC to convey the sheer scale of the horror inflicted upon Iraqi civilians. Dahr Jamail notes:
"The military estimates that 2,000 people in Fallujah were killed, but claims that most of them were fighters. Relief personnel and locals, however, believe the vast majority of the dead were civilians." (Jamail, 'An Eyewitness Account of Fallujah', 16 December, 2004, http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/2004_12_19.php)
A report on Fallujah presented to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the Baghdad-based Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy appeals to the international community:
"What more tragedies are the international bodies waiting for in order to raise their voices demanding to stop the massacres and mass killings of the civilians?"
The report warns that "there are mass graves in the city" and "the medical authorities and the citizens could not find the burial ground of 450 bodies of the citizens of Fallujah that the American occupation forces have photographed and buried in a place that is still unknown." (SCHRD, 'Report on the current situation in Fallujah', 26 March, 2005, http://www.brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lastReportFallujah%20crimes.pdf)
We understand that lack of security means there are severe difficulties in reporting from Iraq. But as independent reporters like Dahr Jamail and Mark Manning have shown, it is possible to obtain detailed testimony relating to possible war crimes in Fallujah - testimony that surely merits discussion. The BBC's grievous omissions highlight, once again, its longstanding complicity in Western mass violence.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. When writing emails to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Helen Boaden, BBC news director: Email: helen.boaden@bbc.co.uk
Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens: Email: editor@medialens.org
Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
-------- us politics
Left and Right vs. the PATRIOT Act
An interview with Bob Barr
by William Fisher (Inter Press Service)
March 30, 2005
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=5376
In a political environment more fractious than Washington has seen in over a decade, there are still signs that Left and Right can find common ground.
A current example is a coalition of conservative interest groups that has joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and similar organizations to press for changes in the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave law enforcement and security agencies sweeping new powers in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
Under the leadership of former Congressman Bob Barr, a conservative Republican from Georgia, the new group, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB), will work to revise the most extreme provisions of the law – like those allowing federal agents to secretly collect medical and library records and to search peoples' homes without any notification, a practice known as "sneak and peek."
The coalition includes Americans for Tax Reform, the American Conservative Union (ACU), the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Policy Center, the Citizens' Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Eagle Forum, and the Second Amendment Foundation.
On March 28, IPS conducted an e-mail interview with Barr in which he explains why these groups may not be such strange bedfellows, after all.
Q: Traditionally, conservatives have favored a more limited role for government. Is this a factor in the coalition's thinking?
A: Yes. A core principle on which the conservative philosophy of governing is based is limited government. This principle is important not only when determining the appropriate levels of government spending, regulation, and interference in the economy, for example, but also when deciding if federal criminal laws give the government too much power.
Thus, in assessing the USA PATRIOT Act, many conservatives have determined the law gives the federal government too much power, in contravention of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, for instance.
Q: At the same time, it seems to many people that the staunchest defenders of civil liberties have not been conservatives, but liberals. Do you think this is true, and if not, why not?
A: At the core, liberals and conservatives alike share an interest in protecting individual liberties, especially those embodied in the Bill of Rights, against government efforts to take them away.
As Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform, and a member of Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, has said, for many years conservatives assumed that liberals, such as the ACLU, would be the people's watchdog for civil liberties; and that when these liberties were threatened, we as conservatives could rely on the ACLU to go to court and to the legislature, to protect us.
No longer can conservatives sit back and rely on liberals to protect our rights; we have to be involved, too. Conservatives, like liberals, must become actively enjoined in the fight to protect civil liberties in the wake of the government's response to the attacks of 9/11. If we do not join together, we will lose the battle.
Q: John Ashcroft made it clear that folks who questioned the PATRIOT Act were aiding and abetting the terrorists What do you think of that position? Do you agree with Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who said Ashcroft will go down in history as America's worst attorney general? What about Mitchell Palmer?
A: Anyone who takes the position that Americans who stand up and fight to retain our civil liberties, including the right to privacy, and who believe that we as Americans do not need to sacrifice our liberty in order to fight terrorists, are aiding and abetting terrorists, is rendering a disservice to our Founding Fathers, and to Americans through the ages who cherish and fight for our God-given liberties.
PRCB is focusing its efforts on reforming federal laws, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, that have given the government too much power in the fight against terrorists. We are not engaged in leveling personal attacks against the former attorney general or anyone else.
Q: On the issue of changing or amending the PATRIOT Act, are there things you think the Democrats in Congress are doing wrong, or not doing? Are you getting any support from them in the coalition activity?
A: Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances is a nonpartisan organization. We will work with Democrats and Republicans alike in both Houses of the Congress, to bring balance back to the fight against terrorists. In the last Congress, efforts to bring that balance back to the USA PATRIOT Act, for example, as set forth in the SAFE (Security and Freedom Ensured) Act, enjoyed bipartisan support; and we expect that Democrats and Republicans in both Houses will support our efforts in this 109th Congress, too.
Q: Are you worried that what some see as the Bush administration's "absolutism" and penchant for excessive secrecy will be an impediment to a healthy national discussion of the Act?
A: For as long as I have been involved in matters involving the federal government – going back to the early 1970s – I have observed that administrations of both major parties seek more secrecy in what they do than the people should consent to. The answer to the question whether the administration's position favoring secrecy, and viewing the debate over the USA PATRIOT Act as black and white, with no room for amendment, makes our job difficult, is yes.
However, I believe that when all is said and done in this debate this year in which the Congress will address the USA PATRIOT Act, we will witness some compromises by the administration.
Q: About the Act: What keeps you awake at night?
A: The provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act that keep me awake at night are those that undermine the basic notions of judicial review of executive branch actions, and which undermine the notion embodied in the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights that the government should not be allowed to gather evidence against a person without at least some reasonable suspicion that the person has violated a law.
If these provisions are allowed to stand and be employed by the government, then the Fourth Amendment will have been rendered essentially meaningless, and with it, the basic notion of privacy in America.
-------- voting
Troubling Russian democracy
March 30, 2005 Washington Times editorial
By Helle Dale
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050329-104539-4607r.htm
The Russian bear is an aging, ailing animal in bad health, but it is still a predator, and it longs for the days when it could dominate its own neck of the woods. From Ukraine to Georgia to Moldova and now Kyrgyzstan, democratic movements are stirring and declaring an end to the old ways. Among the meddlesome strangers in the Russian bear's woods is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an organization that was created through the Helsinki process in the 1970s and whose task it is to monitor elections and borders.
A 55-member international organization with bipartisan credibility, the OSCE has roused the ire of President Vladimir Putin by certifying recent elections in what Russia considers its "near abroad." "The OSCE is under attack," OSCE Chairman Dimitrij Rupel, foreign minister of Slovenia, told members of Congress during his visit to Washington last month.
Specifically, the Russian government has moved to block the 2005 OSCE budget of $240 million, which has to be approved by consensus. Ostensibly, this move is in protest to the lack of even-handedness in the organization's work, which tends to focus on the former Soviet Union and other points east, as opposed to, say, Britain, Canada or the United States. The real problem is that Russia is losing influence in key former Soviet republics, and it doesn't like it one bit.
Now, we are not talking about vast sums of money here. The organization has a budget of some $233 million, three-quarters of which goes to its important fieldwork in trouble spots like the Balkans and Central Asia. Of this budget, Russia contributes about $11 million, which Moscow now says is too much. To put the Russian complaint into relief, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands each pay more.
The simple solution to this unconscionable piece of blackmail by Russia is for the OSCE to operate on the equivalent of a continuing resolution. The European Union is reportedly considering asking its member states to make voluntary contributions to the OSCE budget in order to avoid a financial collapse. This is a sensible solution, that the United States should sign onto. Further, we could surely come up with the money to fill the gap left by Russia withholding its share.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that democracy-promotion is at the heart of the Bush administration's foreign-policy agenda, the approach of the State Department so far seems to give some credence to Russia's demands. The administration has agreed to set up a working group in Vienna to examine standards for election monitoring, which Russia finds not to its liking.
Mr. Putin, of course, believes in a "different kind of democracy," as he told President Bush during the latter's European trip in February. That would also mean a "different" kind of election standard. Interestingly, Ukraine in the last two weeks has opted out of the CIS election-monitoring group, presumably because it doesn't care much for democracy, Russian-style.
Also troubling is the fact that the United States has decided to back a candidate for OSCE secretary-general who may not be the best choice at this time of crisis. He is Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, a diplomatic adviser to the French Ministry of Defense and a former French ambassador to the OSCE. Americans who have worked with Mr. de Brichambaut have found his enthusiasm for American causes and trans-Atlantic organizations like NATO rather underwhelming.
This writer's own experience of Mr. de Brichambaut is based on an admittedly brief meeting in the spring of 2003, when tempers tended to flare hot between Americans and Frenchmen and it would have been hard to find anyone among the leadership of the French government who was friendly.
The selection process, however, is not a done deal, and there is still time to reconsider. Other candidates include Ambassador Gerard Stoudemann of Switzerland, who would be representing a non-aligned country and whose leadership at the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights would seem to give him just the right background. Furthermore, the EU currently fills all the top jobs at the OSCE. Why not introduce a bit of diversity?
Democracy cannot grow without institutions to nourish it, and the OSCE has proven itself both effective and credible. The United States should not compromise on its dedication to those institutions.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Avoid Oil Crisis with Renewables, Security Leaders Advise
WASHINGTON, DC, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-02.asp
Predicting a future crisis over oil supplies, 31 national security leaders are advising President George W. Bush to reduce U.S. consumption of foreign oil through "improved efficiency and the rapid substitution of advanced biomass, alcohol and other available alternative fuels."
In a letter sent to the President and released Monday, the group urges "a major new initiative" that spends $1 billion for alternative fuel production in the next five years, and uses tax incentives to encourage the use of more efficient vehicles, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and flexible fuel vehicles.
The letter states, "We do not know today what form a crisis over oil will take, but we know that a crisis is coming - one that could harm the United States."
The letter and an accompanying report are issued by the Energy Future Coalition, which describes itself as "an ambitious, visionary effort by business, labor, and environmental groups to bridge their differences and identify broadly supported energy policy options..."
The coalition identifies three challenges related to the production and use of energy - the political and economic threat posed by the world's dependence on oil; the risk to the global environment from climate change; and the lack of access of the world's poor to the modern energy services they need for economic advancement.
The Energy Future Coalition says it "seeks to connect those challenges with a vision of the vibrant economic opportunities that will be created by a transition to a new energy economy."
The letter explains that with the U.S. having only two percent of the world's oil reserves but 25 percent of the world's consumption, domestic production alone will not meet America's needs. "To reduce the risk of an oil shock in a global market, we must reduce our use of foreign oil," the letter states.
Signatures on the letter represent a star-studded bipartisan array of high level military and political officials. They include:
* Admiral William T. Crowe, Jr., former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff
* John H. Dalton, former Secretary of the Navy
* Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President & CEO, The Center for Security Policy and columnist for the Washington Times
* C. Boyden Gray, Partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, and former White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush
* Gary Hart, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, former U.S. Senator from Colorado
* Robert McFarlane, Chairman & CEO, Energy & Communications Solutions, and former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan
* Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, USN (Ret.)
* John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton
* Vice Admiral Richard Truly, former astronaut, former NASA administrator, former Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
* Admiral James D. Watkins, Chairman of the Commission on Ocean Policy
* Timothy Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation, and former U.S. Senator from Colorado
* R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence
The signers say they believe that hybrid vehicles and alternative fuels like ethanol can substantially reduce U.S. oil consumption but will require "funding at a level proportionate with other priorities for the defense of the nation."
In a report released Monday and sent to the President, the Energy Future Coalition emphasizes the three challenges mentioned in its letter.
• We must reduce the world’s dependence on oil, helping to free consumers from the economic, political, and environmental risks that it entails.
• We must take steps to control the emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas that are affecting the global climate.
• And we must recognize that helping developing nations to grow can be both a boost for them and in the best interest of the United States. Extending access to modern energy services to poor people around the world can demonstrate American leadership and create new markets at the same time.
One of the most significant barriers to widespread implementation of clean and proven energy-efficient technologies in international markets is the lack of commercially viable and sustainable project financing for energy efficiency projects (EEPs), the report recognizes.
The problem is that energy efficiency projects are unable to access existing funds due to a “disconnect” between traditional asset-based lending to corporations versus cash-flow based project financing to energy efficiency projects.
"No immediate solution is in sight because energy efficiency markets are not developed enough to motivate local banks to invest in setting up an EEP lending infrastructure," the report says.
The coalition proposes the development of an International Energy Efficiency Financing Protocol that becomes the “blue print” for local and regional financial institutions to finance end-use energy efficiency projects in international markets.
A similar problem plagues financing of clean energy projects in both the developing and developed worlds. Projects such as end-use efficiency, large grid-connected renewables, and small-scale distributed generation have high up-front capital costs and high transaction costs, although they offer environmental benefits and relatively low operations and maintenance costs.
To resolve these problems, the coalition suggests that OECD lending guidelines should be revised to acknowledge the public good associated with low carbon and no carbon technologies and their large capital requirements.
"Bring environmental considerations into mainstream decision-making of public and private financial institutions," the coalition recommends, and "encourage public international financial institutions (IFIs) to use the leverage they exert over private financial flows (through their co-financing, risk mitigation, and policy advice) to support environmentally and socially sustainable development."
The financial and political power wielded by members of the Energy Future Coaliton is substantial. Mohamed El-Ashry, CEO of the Global Environment Facility sits on the Advisory Council alongside Chansoo Joung, managing director of Goldman Sachs, and Jamal Saghir, director for energy and water development with the World Bank.
Michael J. Sullivan, general president of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International also sits on the Advisory Council together with Mark Van Putten, president of the National Wildlife Federation.
The Steering Committee includes Frances Beinecke, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Thomas Lovejoy, president of The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and former chief scientist and counselor of the Smithsonian Institution; Susan Eisenhower, president of The Eisenhower Institute; and Maggie Fox, deputy executive director of the Sierra Club as well as many signatories of the letter to President Bush.
The Energy Future Coalition is funded by the Turner Foundation, the Better World Fund, the V. K. Rasmussen Foundation, the Homeland Foundation, the United Nations Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the James M. Cox Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Tides Foundation (Changing Horizons Fund).
For a complete list of participants in the coalition and a copy of their report, log on to: http://www.energyfuturecoalition.org
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Sharp and San Francisco Giants Team Up for Solar Energy
SAN FRANCISCO, California, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-09.asp#anchor7
Solar power signage and a solar demonstration will be featured at the San Francisco Giants' stadium when the 2005 Major League Baseball season officially opens on April 3.
Sharp Electronics Corporation and the San Francisco Giants Baseball Club Tuesday announced a sponsorship to promote solar power as an energy alternative. The partners believe the agreement represents a first in both the solar and sports industries.
Complementing a highly visible Sharp Solar sign in left-center field, Sharp will install a 4.5Kw solar energy system on the roof adjacent to the Giants offices at SBC Park. The system will consist of 27 167-watt Sharp solar modules and is typical of the kind of system used on a standard California residence.
The system will transfer energy into the ballpark's electrical grid. The system's electrical output will be monitored by a multi-media kiosk located in the left field concourse. Utilizing a touch-screen display, fans can access information about the system, learn how solar energy works and its benefits and request additional information about solar from Sharp.
Sharp sponsorship of the Crowd Noise Meter at selected games and other promotional programs will be developed to draw attention to the stadium's solar energy system.
"The Giants are proud of our many first-of-their-kind endeavors which we have incorporated into our operations at SBC Park," said Jorge Costa, San Francisco Giants senior vice president of ballpark operations. "We have been on the cutting edge in adapting technologies and procedures that benefit the fan experience. Our partnership with Sharp enables us to stay on top of important trends and technologies that enhance the SBC Park experience."
"Led by California, more and more states are creating diversified energy portfolios, and this has contributed to the growth of a true domestic solar energy industry," said Toshihiko Fujimoto, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Sharp Electronics Corporation, the U.S. subsidiary of Sharp Corporation, based in Osaka, Japan.
"With the recent announcement of California's one million solar roofs initiative, the timing is right to raise awareness of solar through an association with a major, professional sports franchise," Fujimoto said.
Both parties said the multi-year nature of the sponsorship will enable Sharp and the Giants to discuss development of a solar energy system designed to meet more of the ballpark's energy requirements in the future.
"The Sharp-Giants partnership lets the public know that the choice for reliable, clean, affordable solar power is a home run they can hit today," said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Sharp Electronics is the U.S. subsidiary of Sharp Corporation, Osaka, Japan, the world's leading producer of solar energy and the U.S. market leader. Sharp sponsors more than two dozen professional sports teams in the U.S., and the Giants partnership is the first promoting solar energy.
The 122 year old San Francisco Giants of the National League are one of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball. They moved to San Francisco from New York in 1958 playing a total of 42 years in Seals Stadium and Candlestick Park before moving into their current home at SBC Park in 2000.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Hazwaste Left at Superfund Sites Bothers Senators
WASHINGTON, DC, March 30, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-30-09.asp#anchor4
One in four Americans lives within four miles of a hazardous waste site, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and at many of these sites, the waste is left in place because the agency believes it is impossible, impractical, or too costly to clean up the contaminated property so that it can be used without restriction.
Cleanups at such sites often rely on institutional controls - legal or administrative restrictions on the use of land or water at the site - to limit the public’s exposure to residual contamination.
To find out how effective these institutional control are at protecting the public from hazardous waste, Senators Barbara Boxer of California, a Democrat; Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a Republican; and Jim Jeffords of Vermont, an Independent, asked the investigative branch of Congress to conduct a study.
The results of that investigation, reported by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on January 28, are of concern to Boxer, she said in a statement Tuesday.
The United States has two federal programs to deal with hazardous waste. Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980, which established the Superfund program to clean up the most seriously contaminated of these sites. In addition, in 1984, the Congress amended the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to add a corrective action program to clean up contamination at facilities that treat, store, and dispose of hazardous waste.
Boxer said the GAO report shows that these two programs are not protecting the public from exposure to hazardous waste.
"I am very concerned," she wrote, "that the Environmental Protection Agency is not doing its job of cleaning up these sites in the first place and is relying more and more on land use restrictions. In addition, the Agency is not even following up to see that the public is protected by enforcing these restrictions."
At the vast majority of hazardous waste sites, according to the report, the EPA failed to adequately implement, monitor or enforce remedies necessary to minimize exposure to contamination left on-site after the cleanup was completed.
The GAO report found that the EPA increasingly adopts cleanup remedies that rely on institutional controls, such as ground water use restrictions or local zoning, to minimize future exposure to hazardous waste rather than requiring more expensive cleanups that would enable unrestricted use of the property.
At the overwhelming majority of sites examined, EPA remedy decision documents failed to identify how the institutional controls would be implemented, monitored or enforced.
The GAO found that:
* Two-thirds of the older hazardous waste sites reviewed by the GAO where residual contamination remained in place after cleanup lacked any institutional controls to minimize future exposure.
* 82 of 93 recent Superfund remedy decision documents fail to identify who is responsible for monitoring institutional controls.
* 11 of 15 recent Resource Conservation and Recovery Act remedy decision documents fail to identify who is responsible for enforcing institutional controls.
In his letter to the requesting senators, GAO Natural Resources Director John Stephenson wrote, "We found that controls at the Superfund sites we reviewed were often not implemented before site deletion, as EPA requires. In some cases, institutional controls were implemented after site deletion while, in other cases, controls were not implemented at all."
The GAO recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency cleanup, "clarify its institutional controls guidance."
"We recommend that EPA ensure that adequate consideration is given to the controls’ objectives; the types of controls to be used; the timing of their implementation and their duration; and the party who will be responsible for implementing, monitoring, and enforcing them," Stephenson wrote.
The EPA agreed with many of the report's findings but said, "An increased use of institutional controls should not be misinterpreted to mean that less treatment is occurring at Superfund cleanups or other cleanup programs."
The GAO report, titled “Hazardous Waste: Improved Effectiveness of Controls at Sites Could Better Protect the Public,” can be found at http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-163.
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Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up'
Tim Radford, science editor
Wednesday March 30, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1447921,00.html
The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.
The study contains what its authors call "a stark warning" for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself.
"Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it says.
The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London. It warns that:
· Because of human demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel, more land has been claimed for agriculture in the last 60 years than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined.
· An estimated 24% of the Earth's land surface is now cultivated.
· Water withdrawals from lakes and rivers has doubled in the last 40 years. Humans now use between 40% and 50% of all available freshwater running off the land.
· At least a quarter of all fish stocks are overharvested. In some areas, the catch is now less than a hundredth of that before industrial fishing.
· Since 1980, about 35% of mangroves have been lost, 20% of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed and another 20% badly degraded.
· Deforestation and other changes could increase the risks of malaria and cholera, and open the way for new and so far unknown disease to emerge.
In 1997, a team of biologists and economists tried to put a value on the "business services" provided by nature - the free pollination of crops, the air conditioning provided by wild plants, the recycling of nutrients by the oceans. They came up with an estimate of $33 trillion, almost twice the global gross national product for that year. But after what today's report, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, calls "an unprecedented period of spending Earth's natural bounty" it was time to check the accounts.
"That is what this assessment has done, and it is a sobering statement with much more red than black on the balance sheet," the scientists warn. "In many cases, it is literally a matter of living on borrowed time. By using up supplies of fresh groundwater faster than they can be recharged, for example, we are depleting assets at the expense of our children."
Flow from rivers has been reduced dramatically. For parts of the year, the Yellow River in China, the Nile in Africa and the Colorado in North America dry up before they reach the ocean. An estimated 90% of the total weight of the ocean's large predators - tuna, swordfish and sharks - has disappeared in recent years. An estimated 12% of bird species, 25% of mammals and more than 30% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction within the next century. Some of them are threatened by invaders.
The Baltic Sea is now home to 100 creatures from other parts of the world, a third of them native to the Great Lakes of America. Conversely, a third of the 170 alien species in the Great Lakes are originally from the Baltic.
Invaders can make dramatic changes: the arrival of the American comb jellyfish in the Black Sea led to the destruction of 26 commercially important stocks of fish. Global warming and climate change, could make it increasingly difficult for surviving species to adapt.
A growing proportion of the world lives in cities, exploiting advanced technology. But nature, the scientists warn, is not something to be enjoyed at the weekend. Conservation of natural spaces is not just a luxury.
"These are dangerous illusions that ignore the vast benefits of nature to the lives of 6 billion people on the planet. We may have distanced ourselves from nature, but we rely completely on the services it delivers."