NucNews - March 31, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- europe Hungary: Police investigate nuclear 'tampering' March 31, 2005 Budapest Sun http://www.budapestsun.com/full_story.asp?ArticleId=%7bC9261752D9074147A2B08923BD0297F2%7d&From= A CRIMINAL investigation has been launched against five employees of the nation's sole nuclear power plant Paksi Atomeromu Rt (Paks) for illegally "tampering" with radioactive material, according to László Ferenczi, spokesman for the Bács-Kiskun County Police Department in the town of Kecskemet (120km east of Budapest). Ferenczi told The Budapest Sun that the Tolna County (where Paksi is based) Police Department started investigations on July 3, 2003, following an official order to determine what had been the real cause of a serious melt-down of 30 bundles of uranium rods on April 10, 2003. The incident also caused radioactive gas to escape into the atmosphere and was registered number-3 on the seven scale International Nuclear Events Scaled (INES). Ferenczi explained that the investigations were handed over to the Bács-Kiskun County Police Department after fears that the Tolna County Police Department would be biased in the case. "By February 2005, the investigations reached a stage where police found they have gathered enough evidence to interrogate the five key suspects," said Ferenczi. "However, we can only give further details of the case after the supervising prosecutors' office in Tolna County closes the investigations," he explained. Despite rumors that the five suspects had attempted to illegally trade the rods, Ferenczi would not go beyond his comment that the suspects had "abused the handling of radioactive material". István Mittler, spokesman for Paksi, revealed that two years ago MP Zoltán Illés (who is also deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Environment Protection Committee) had reported to police that "unknown suspects" at Paksi had been producing power without a valid license for 20-years (since the plant was first launched in 1982). Officials at the National Energy Office (MEH) and the National Atomic Energy Office (OAI) and the Ministry of Economics and Transport (GKM), which are responsible for issuing licenses for power production in Hungary, were not available for comment when The Budapest Sun went to press. However, a source at the plant said that police have inquired about employees officially still employed by Paksi. In his statement, Mittler stressed, "There are no investigations against Paksi. If police are investigating [individual] employees we can't comment about them." -------- india Indian prime minister welcomes US offers of strategic partnership NEW DELHI (AFP) Mar 31, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050331061155.1sgz5ptt.html India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has welcomed last week's offer from the United States to sell warplanes, nuclear reactors and missile systems, India's media reported Thursday. Singh initially expressed "disappointment" in a telephone call with President George W. Bush on the offer because it included a decision by the United States to resume the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. However, speaking to reporters Wednesday on his way to the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, Singh changed his tone to one of cautious welcome. "India welcomes the development," Singh told reporters covering his state visit. "The fact is that the US has expressed its willingness to engage in matters related to increased cooperation in matters related to nuclear as well as non-nuclear issues." The United States cut all civilian nuclear sales and cooperation to India after the country tested a weapon in the desert state of Rajasthan in 1974. As well, India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty which bars the United States and other countries from selling civilian nuclear reactors to countries that test or acquire nuclear weapons outside of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Despite the restrictions, the United States is committed to finding ways to resume such sales to India to make the country a world power, the US Ambassador to India David Mulford said in an editorial in the Times of India Thursday commenting on last week's visit to the country by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "It is now official," Mulford said in the article. "It is the policy of the United States to help India become a major world power in the 21st century." The Indian Express newspaper noted that since initially expressing his dismay over the US resuming jet fighter sales to Pakistan at a time when the two countries are engaged in delicate peace talks, Singh has now said that India wants to encourage a broader relationship. "It is a fact they (US) want the strategic relationship to grow in depth," Singh told reporters. "We have to find out what they want exactly, what they have in mind." India has had an uneasy relationship with the United States since independence in 1947 as it sought a neutral foreign policy and bought arms from the Soviet Union while Washington supplied Pakistan. The US also placed sanctions on India after a second round of nuclear tests in May 1998, but agreed after the September 11, 2001, attacks to waive those and other sanctions in return for India's support in the war on terrorism. -------- iran US not convinced by Iran's underground nuclear facility Thursday, March 31, 2005 The Hindu http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200503311974.htm Washington, March. 31 (PTI): The US has dismissed Iran's opening up of an underground nuclear facility for media, challenging Tehran to show to the international community that it was serious about being transparent on its nuclear programme. The US is not convinced by the press tour of an Iranian underground facility at Natanz to show that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli, said here yesterday. "We've seen reports about the staged media visit to Natanz. Our response is that if Iran were really serious about demonstrating transparency in its nuclear programme, it should answer all of the International Atomic Energy Agency's outstanding questions." "If Iran were really serious about allaying the concerns of the international community, they would stop denying IAEA full and unrestricted access to suspicious sites like the Parchin high-explosive facility," he said. "...They would stop refusing IAEA requests to interview key officials associated with Iran's nuclear activities... tell the truth about the history of their P-2 -- their advanced P-2 centrifuge programme (and) about their Lavizan facility before they bulldozed it to the ground, talk openly about -- or answer openly questions about past plutonium separation experiments," he said. "There are ways -- there are real, effective, meaningful ways to demonstrate that commitment (against seeking nuclear weapons) beyond a staged media event like is being reported," he added. ---- Iran: U.S. Dismisses Nuclear Tour As 'Staged Media Event' By Ron Synovitz Thursday, 31 March 2005 (RFE/RL) http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/3/A779389B-DDBF-418A-A0F6-1904F01204E6.html Iran's President Mohammad Khatami has taken a group of journalists into an underground nuclear facility that Washington wants dismantled. Until 2002, Tehran had kept the existence of the Natanz facility a secret. Iranian officials continue to deny allegations from the United States that facilities like Natanz are part of a program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. But the U.S. State Department is dismissing yesterday's tour as a "staged media event" that falls short of the openness needed to end the nuclear dispute. When about 30 Iranian and foreign journalists approached the Natanz nuclear facility for their state-sponsored tour, they saw a sprawling complex ringed by mountains and at least 10 anti-aircraft batteries. The existence of the 450-hectare facility was first revealed to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2002 by an Iranian exile group. Yesterday marked the first time reporters have been allowed to photograph Natanz. At its heavily guarded gate, there were no signs to indicate the nature of the work going on inside. Washington and the European Union fear Iran could be using nuclear centrifuges at Natanz and elsewhere to produce heavily enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.Khatami, who accompanied the tour, admitted that Tehran plans to enrich uranium as part of what he calls a "pilot program" at Natanz. But he repeated Tehran's long-held assertion that its nuclear program is only for generating electricity. Khatami, who accompanied the tour, admitted that Tehran plans to enrich uranium as part of what he calls a "pilot program" at Natanz. But he repeated Tehran's long-held assertion that its nuclear program is only for generating electricity. "We will definitely enrich [uranium]. And naturally we will start with a pilot [program]," he said. "I hope that this step will be taken with an agreement -- an understanding and commitment from our European friends and the IAEA regarding our commitments, which we have met." The tour was an unusual gesture of openness by Iran. The journalists were taken deep inside a building where, two levels below ground, they were shown a vast, empty room designed for 50,000 enrichment centrifuges. Iranian officials say the enrichment facility was built more than 18 meters underground because of what they call "security problems." Ian Kemp, a London-based independent defense expert, says it is a precaution against possible aerial attack by the United States or Israel -- which both have vowed to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. "From the Iranian perspective," Kemp says, "they would be justified in taking defensive measures, not only for their nuclear facilities but also for their non-nuclear power generation facilities. They've experienced in the past that Israel has the capability to strike targets inside Iran. And, of course, there was the 2003 campaign [by the United States in Iraq]. So they know that the power infrastructure would be a likely target if the Americans were ever to take military action against Iran." Centrifuges are used to purify uranium fluoride gas into fuel for reactors or bombs by spinning the radioactive material at high speeds. Low-grade enriched uranium is used in nuclear power plants. High-grade "heavily enriched" uranium is needed to make the core of a nuclear bomb. The journalists were not shown any centrifuges. And they were not allowed to visit the pilot enrichment facility at Natanz to inspect dozens of centrifuges that were sealed off by IAEA inspectors in October 2003 pending discussions with the European Union on the future of its nuclear program. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli dismissed the tour of Natanz as a "staged media event" that falls short of the openness needed to end Iran's nuclear dispute with the United States and the European Union. Ereli says if Iran is really serious about transparency in its nuclear program, it should answer all of the IAEA's outstanding questions. He says Iran should stop denying IAEA inspectors full and unrestricted access to sites like the Parchin high-explosives facility about 30 kilometers southwest of Tehran. And he says Tehran should stop refusing IAEA requests to interview key officials associated with Iran's nuclear activities. Kemp believes the U.S. State Department is right to dismiss of the value of the journalists' tour. "I think the State Department is very accurate about the usefulness of journalists -- who have very little understanding of the complexities of nuclear issues or the sort of insight they would be able to bring to an inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities," he says. "This really is something that requires experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Or, indeed, experts that are agreed upon by the parties that are concerned. Because, of course, much of this equipment can be used for dual purposes -- nuclear power for civilian use but also spin-off for military programs." IAEA inspectors first visited Natanz in early 2003. Tehran is currently engaged in talks with a troika of nations from the European Union, which wants Iran to permanently scrap Natanz and other nuclear fuel work in return for assistance with developing nuclear energy and other economic and security cooperation. ---- Exiles: Iran Seeks to Obtain Nuclear Warheads Thu Mar 31, 8:10 AM ET World - Reuters By Kerstin Gehmlich (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050331/wl_nm/iran_nuclear_exiles_dc PARIS - Iran allocated $2.5 billion to obtain three nuclear warheads last year, an exiled opposition group said Thursday, without saying whether Iran had secured any of the warheads. The group, which has given accurate information in the past on some of Iran's nuclear facilities, also said Iran was speeding up work on a reactor south of Tehran which could produce enough plutonium for an atomic bomb by 2007. Iran says its nuclear program will be used only to generate electricity. But Washington and European countries fear Iran could use its nuclear plants to produce bombs. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exile group that wants to oust Iran's clerical rulers, said Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had told the defense minister to take steps to obtain nuclear warheads. "In mid-2004, Khamenei allocated $2.5 billion to obtain three nuclear warheads," Mohammad Mohaddessin of the NCRI told a news conference in Paris. Mohaddessin said he received the news Thursday morning and had no further information on the project. He did not say whether or how the money had been spent. The NCRI said last year that Iran obtained a nuclear bomb design from a Pakistani scientist who has acknowledged selling nuclear secrets abroad. The group has also said Iran was working on large-range missiles capable of hitting European cities. The NCRI is a coalition of exiled opposition groups, which is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization. SPEEDING UP WORK ON REACTOR Mohaddessin said the Iranian regime was speeding up work on a reactor in Arak, 150 miles south of Tehran, which could produce enough plutonium for one atomic bomb per year. "The regime told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the reactor would be operational in 2014, but in reality, they want to start it in 2006 or 2007," he said. A U.S. think-tank said earlier this month that new satellite images showed that a heavy water plant at Arak, intended to supply the research reactor, was nearly complete. Heavy-water reactors can be used to produce significant amounts of bomb-grade plutonium, which can then be extracted from the spent fuel through reprocessing. The NCRI revealed the Arak heavy-water production plant, along with the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, in August 2002, describing it as part of a secret nuclear weapons program. Iran later declared both sites to the IAEA. According to Mohaddessin, Iran's parliament said in a confidential report in February 2004 that the government had not informed it sufficiently about the two sites. "The legislative branch does not clearly know where the budget for these two projects is coming from," Mohaddessin quoted the report by a parliamentary committee as saying. "It neither knows how the project was started and how it was put into place," the report said, according to the NCRI. -------- japan Kansai Electric blasted for lax safety at plant 03/31/2005 The Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200503310168.html Agency says 5 died at Mihama due to blatantly bad management. Sloppy management at Kansai Electric Power Co. was behind the nation's deadliest accident at a nuclear power plant, a government inspection report said Wednesday. The accident occurred last Aug. 9 at Mihama, Fukui Prefecture, when steam spewed from a corroded pipe, killing five and injuring six. The report, drawn up by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), was submitted to an investigation committee of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The agency said it will closely monitor Kansai Electric with on-site inspections to ensure the company is doing its utmost to prevent a recurrence. This switch in tactics signals a change in the government's policy from relying on voluntary company safety measures to actively exerting more control over procedures. The pipe that ruptured was in the turbine building of Mihama's No. 3 reactor; the pipe had corroded from years of hot water and high pressure. In the aftermath of the accident, it became known the pipe had not been inspected since the reactor began operations in 1976. That section of pipe had even been omitted from checklists in 1990, when Kansai Electric ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which was in charge of pipe inspections at that time, to create the checklists. Moreover, the failure was not corrected even after Nihon Arm Co., a subsidiary of Kansai Electric, took over management from Mitsubishi Heavy in 1996. NISA's report fingered Kansai Electric for failing to provide sufficient information concerning the checklists, but it also blamed Mitsubishi Heavy and Nihon Arm for failing to improve what should have been corrected. NISA characterized Kansai Electric's poor pipe management as ``blatant'' and said it had damaged public confidence in the safety of the nation's nuclear facilities. Kansai Electric had long delayed replacing old pipes at its three nuclear power plants in Fukui Prefecture in disregard of the government's safety standards, substituting its own instead. This type of violation was found in 78 cases, ministry officials said. The reasoning behind the delays was that reactors could be kept operating longer if replacements were kept to a minimum, sources said. The NISA report concluded that Mitsubishi Heavy had also been involved in the replacement negligence. The report went so far as to say the companies' actions had resulted in the abdication of social responsibility and that the safety cultures of both companies had decayed. The report also blamed the government for not being involved enough in the power companies' safety management. NISA twice demanded that Kansai Electric's recurrence-prevention plans be redrawn after they were rejected by the government's accident investigation committee. In the latest version, Kansai Electric committed to five safety policies under the name of President Yosaku Fuji, but NISA still regards this as insufficient. As for Fuji, he will step down in late June to assume responsibility for the Mihama accident. -------- korea N Korea changes tack on talks Thursday, 31 March, 2005 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4397747.stm North Korea has announced new preconditions for a resumption of stalled talks aimed at solving the controversy over its nuclear status. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the process should now become a forum in which all participants discussed nuclear disarmament on an equal basis. Pyongyang withdrew indefinitely from the international talks in February. The discussions had aimed to offer Pyongyang incentives in return for abandoning its uranium programme. But the North Korean spokesman said that instead, all parties in the region should work to free it of nuclear weapons. Now that the DPRK has become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, the six-party talks should be disarmament talks where the participating countries negotiate the issue on an equal footing North Korean foreign ministry He repeated Pyongyang's assertion that it has only felt compelled to build its own arsenal because of the threat from the US. "The US keeps many tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea on a permanent basis. And it is ceaselessly shipping nuclear strike means there," the spokesman said. "The US claims that if the DPRK [North Korea] dismantles its nuclear weapons first, it will be given 'collective assurances for security' and get a 'benefit.' This is, however, nothing but a gangster-like logic urging the DPRK to disarm itself and yield to the US domination." He added that the fact that Pyongyang now possessed nuclear weapons, rather than just the means to make them, should also change the talks' emphasis. "Now that the DPRK has become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, the six-party talks should be disarmament talks where the participating countries negotiate the issue on an equal footing," he said. Since 2002, three rounds of discussions involving the US, Russia, the two Koreas, Japan and China have sought to ease tensions on the peninsula, with little success. In February, North Korea said it was pulling out of the process, claiming it was furious that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had branded it an "outpost of tyranny". US reiterates other options possible if North Korean nuclear talks fail HONG KONG (AFP) Thu Mar 31,10:28 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050331/pl_afp/nkoreanuclearchinaus The United States will consider other options if North Korea refuses to return to But Christopher Hill, the new assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, stressed Washington would do all it could to get the talks back on track. "If it doesn't work, obviously we will have to see what other ways (there are)," said Hill, who will head the US delegation to the stalled talks. "One option that is not available to us is to walk away from it," he told reporters. Hill, in Hong Kong at the end of a familiarisation tour, said his top priority was to get North Korea back to the talks. "It is very important to get the process going ... there is absolutely no other format. It's the best format," he said. "North Korea is not a bilateral issue, it's not just the issue of the United States, it's an issue of all the countries in the region. So we try to get everyone on the table." China brokered three rounds of six-party talks, which also involve South Korea, Russia and Japan. But Stalinist North Korea boycotted a fourth round scheduled for last September, citing "hostile" US policy. It declared on February 10 that it has nuclear weapons and that it was indefinitely suspending its participation in the dialogue. Hill said efforts are being made by different countries especially China to get North Korea to rejoin talks, which offer diplomatic and economic rewards in return for nuclear disarmament. "I know the Chinese are asserting a lot of efforts in this regards. Let's see whether those efforts are going to be sufficient," he said. "We all need to keep working on this. I don't think any of us could be satisfied with any efforts until we get this thing going." Earlier this month US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would consider "other options" if the talks fail, but made it clear that a military attack was not one of them. -------- mideast IRAN, PAKISTAN PLAN NAVAL EXERCISES March 31, 2005 Middle East Newsline http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2005/march/03_31_3.html NICOSIA [MENL] -- Iran and Pakistan plan to hold a joint naval exercise. Officials said Iran and Pakistan were preparing to hold a joint naval exercise over the next few weeks. They said the exercise reflected increased defense relations. "The exercise would enhance naval procedures and doctrines," a statement by the Pakistan Navy said. "Such naval exchanges based on goodwill will play an important role in the strengthening of relations and increased military cooperation between the two countries." The Iran Navy plans to deploy at least two vessels -- identified as the Iris Bandar Abbas and the Iris Larak -- to the joint naval exercise. Pakistan has not detailed its contribution to the exercise.... ----- Using Clues From Libya to Study a Nuclear Mystery By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD March 31, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/politics/31nuke.html?pagewanted=print&position= WASHINGTON, March 30 - In the 15 months since Libya turned over to the United States nearly two tons of illicit uranium it had planned to use in atomic weapons, the radioactive material has become a pivotal, if mysterious, piece of evidence for investigators unraveling the nuclear black market. The Bush administration, joined by United Nations inspectors, now say the uranium most likely came from North Korea and helps to build a case that the North has exported dangerous nuclear material to Libya, and perhaps beyond. The officials drew on scientific tests, secret documents and interviews with key players in the black market, which taken together are potentially highly incriminating. But the evidence is also circumstantial. In interviews this week, administration officials and foreign diplomats disclosed that Libyan officials had also surrendered financial ledgers to the United States that provide a guide to the front companies involved in the nuclear network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist. One large payment, American officials contend, was directed to North Korea, presumably for the uranium hexafluoride that arrived in Tripoli in 2001. But American and foreign officials who have seen the financial documents or been briefed on them say they do not prove a direct payment from Libya to the North Korean government. In short, a year into the investigation of the case of the uranium cask, what is still missing, in the words of one senior American official, is "the knockout piece of evidence." And that, in the minds of some critics, has left the Bush administration's case open to continuing doubt, particularly given the intelligence failures before the Iraq war. Those failures were addressed by a presidential commission that is due to report Thursday about the state of American intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. It is expected to be a searing indictment of assumptions made too quickly, of judgments never challenged. But its discussion of North Korea's and Iran's activities and the quality of intelligence in both countries was considered so delicate that the commission published the information only in a classified version of the report. Yet Iraq haunts the American effort to lay out its case on North Korea. In their often-contentious strategy sessions with China and South Korea, American officials have found themselves confronted by the question: why should Washington be trusted now? The tale of the uranium found in Libya is a case study of the trouble in filling in that map of the nuclear world. But it is also a very different story from what happened in Iraq, where there were bitter fights about whether Saddam Hussein was building dangerous stockpiles. Here, the questions are who made the uranium that was found in Libya, who sold it, and is there more? Evidence that North Korea, which has long sold conventional missiles, turned to trading in nuclear material initially sent a chill through Washington, Asia and the offices of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency. Instantly the case became a matter of intense focus for American intelligence officials and nuclear investigators. This account was pieced together from interviews with former and current American officials, allies whom they have briefed, and nuclear investigators from other nations. Last week, for the first time in public, the White House declared that the uranium came from North Korea. "The fact that nuclear material found its way out of North Korea to any destination is a source of serious concern for the United States," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, in a letter to The Washington Post. The letter denied that American officials visiting Asia had focused on the North Korean connection to draw attention from the fact that Mr. Khan's network in Pakistan - an American ally - had acted as a middleman. There are still many questions that allies and others have raised, and the administration has been unable or unwilling to fully answer. Jon B. Wolfsthal, a Korea expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the administration's public case was too weak for outsiders to react to with anything but doubt, given the intelligence failures over Iraq. "This is clearly within the realm of possibility," he said of the uranium sale to Libya. "But there's a big difference between that and saying it happened." A European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A.'s investigation of the uranium shipment said a growing number of clues suggested that the source of the uranium was indeed North Korea. "There is a North Korean connection here," he said. "But what it is exactly is a mystery." The story began in late 2003, when Libya surrendered its nuclear program and led American, British and I.A.E.A. officials to the cask of uranium. It was flown to Washington in early 2004. In February 2004, Malaysia published a report - based on interviews with Buhari Sayed Abu Tahir , the chief operating officer of Mr. Khan's network - that the uranium hexafluoride had been flown to Libya aboard a Pakistani airplane in 2001. The findings of the Malaysian report, and the involvement of the Khan network in the uranium shipment, were widely reported. News of a possible North Korean link to the shipment emerged last spring when European investigators, quoted in The New York Times, said their interviews with members of the Khan network had pointed them in that direction. In late May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Libya's receipt of 1.87 American tons of uranium hexafluoride was a down payment on an order for 20 metric tons, equivalent to 22 American tons. That amount was never delivered because Libya had abandoned its program, but experts said that was roughly enough to make 10 small nuclear warheads. Meanwhile, American officials also began to suspect North Korea was the source, partly because chemical traces on the outside of the cask indicated that it had been at the North's main nuclear site, Yongbyon. The United States had plutonium samples from that site. But as one American official said, "proving the container had been there is different from proving that the uranium inside it" also came from North Korea. Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment, said the traces of plutonium might simply indicate that North Korea shipped an empty canister to Pakistan, and that it was filled there, or someplace else. "If you look hard at these pillars, there are alternative explanations," he said. "They don't disprove the government claims but they raise doubts about their certainty." Similar questions in Washington touched off a months-long scientific study last year at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to determine whether the uranium hexafluoride was truly of North Korean origin. The results of that study are classified, officials say. They are also short of definitive. American officials apparently did not have a sample of North Korean uranium to compare with the uranium from Libya. Instead, through a process of elimination, they ruled out Pakistan as a source and eventually concluded that there was no other logical answer. Some experts have questioned that conclusion, saying it is unclear whether North Korea made the uranium hexafluoride itself, or merely supplied the raw uranium to Pakistan, which then made the highly toxic chemical. It is well known that the North routinely makes a precursor known as uranium tetraflouride at a plant near Yongbyon. Federal experts said converting that to the final product was relatively simple. "It's not a big step for North Korea to make uranium hexafluoride," said a nuclear scientist who regularly consults for intelligence agencies. The Bush administration has charged that North Korea is secretly pursuing a uranium enrichment program. The Chinese have expressed their doubts, perhaps because they really do not believe the evidence, or perhaps to keep the lines of communication with North Korea open. And so far, American officials have not identified for their allies any facility in North Korea that they believe makes uranium hexafluoride. "So if North Korea has a facility, does it really work?" Mr. Cirincione asked. More recently, United States officials have tried to follow the money trail. They argue that Libyan funds made it to companies or banks linked to North Korea. One foreign diplomat said I.A.E.A. investigators were digging through the same financial records that the United States had examined, and traced the money flow through money launderers to Khan front companies and "various bank accounts all over the world." But banking secrecy, he added, had impeded making firm links to North Korea despite "a couple places pointing to the D.P.R.K.," or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but gave no further details. Asked if he thought the United States was exaggerating the financial tie between the shipment and North Korea, he said, "It's not hyping." But he insisted the case was still circumstantial. -------- missile defense Missile Defense Program Beset By Rising Costs, Budget Shortfalls: Audit Washington (AFP) Mar 31, 2005 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-05n.html US missile defense programs are beset by rising costs and budget shortfalls that are likely to grow worse in the coming years, an audit by a congressional agency warned Thursday. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Missile Defense Agency was 370 million dollars over budget last year, which resulted in work being deferred until new funding could be raised this year. "In the future, MDA (Missile Defense Agency) will likely face increased funding risks," it said. Although MDA plans to request 10 billion dollars a year to develop defenses against ballistic missiles, Pentagon weapons programs will likely be competing for a shrinking share of the total federal budget, it said. Moreover, MDA is burdened by unanticipated growth in costs, citing plans this year to spend an additional 1.5 billion dollars to develop a prototype aircraft for its Airborne Laser program. Funding requirements will grow even more as components of the missile defense system are fielded, the report said. The GAO said MDA accomplished what needed to be done to put in place an initial missile defense capability last year. But the system remains "uncertain and unverified" because a number of flight tests were postponed until 2005, and the MDA has not successfully tested the system fully, it said. ---- Missile Defense: Not a Zero-Sum Game Thursday, March 31, 2005 Washington Post; Page A18 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14386-2005Mar30?language=printer In calling for cruise missile defense, David Ignatius lampooned ballistic missile defense ["The Real Missile Defense Gap," op-ed, March 23]. The ballistic missile threat is real: More than 30 nations possess them, and rogue states such as North Korea have no scruples about selling upgraded Scud missiles to the highest bidder. Indeed, North Korea's 1998 test of its medium-range Taepo Dong 1 missile over Japan and its recent decision to end its moratorium on missile tests illuminate the threat from ballistic missiles of all types. A cruise missile defense is necessary. The Navy is pursuing the SM-6 missile for this purpose. The Patriot PAC-3 also has shown anti-cruise-missile capability. The chief difficulty of detecting low-flying cruise missiles is being addressed through upgrades of surveillance and early-warning aircraft. By 2008 the Army plans to deploy an advanced cruise-missile defense system involving airships coupled with missiles. To posit a zero-sum game between cruise missile defense and ballistic missile defense is illogical and foolhardy. Both pose significant threats that must be addressed. In an age of global terrorism and unrest, national defense should not be subjected to an either-or mentality. ANDREW PLIENINGER Executive Research Analyst George C. Marshall Institute Washington • I am glad that David Ignatius is not the coach of the Washington Redskins. If he were, he might figure that opposing teams are much more likely to pass the ball than run the ball and consequently prepare his team to face only the likelier of the two threats. I'm certain the other teams in the league would figure out that weakness quickly. What our country is trying to do with ballistic missile defense is take options away from the enemy. We have no defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles. We will, however, have limited defenses against certain threats in the next few years. Then we at least will be prepared to do something if the enemy decides to run the ball. TROY KIMMEL Olney The writer is a technical director at Anteon Corp., a defense contractor. -------- pakistan Pakistan Test-Fires Short-Range, Nuclear-Capable Missile In this picture taken 23 March 2005, Pakistani spectators watch a Hatf II or Abdali missile, capable of carrying nuclear warheads with a range of 180 kilometers (111 miles), during the National Day parade in Islamabad. Pakistan successfully test fired the short-range, nuclear-capable missile 31 March 2005, as a minister said that fine print was delaying a formal deal with India on giving prior warning of such tests. AFP photo by Jewel Samad/Files Islamabad (AFP) Mar 31, 2005 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-05u.html Pakistan successfully test fired a short-range, nuclear-capable missile on Thursday, as a minister said that fine print was delaying a formal deal with India on giving prior warning of such tests. The launch of the homegrown Hatf II, or Abdali missile, which can hit targets up to 180 kilometres (111 miles) away, came less than two weeks after Pakistan tested its longest-range missile. "All desired technical parameters were validated," a military statement said, adding that the missile could carry all types of warheads. Rivals India and Pakistan, who alarmed the world by conducting back-to-back nuclear detonations in 1998, carry out frequent missile tests despite an ongoing 14-month-old peace process. Islamabad indicated that it had informed its larger and more powerful neighbour in advance of Thursday's test, in accordance with an unwritten 1999 agreement. "As part of the usual confidence-building measures, prior notification of the test had been given to all concerned," it added. However the two countries failed to reach a formal deal on notification of missile tests during talks last December. Such an arrangement is designed to prevent misunderstandings leading to an accidental nuclear exchange. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said in an interview published Thursday that there were still differences with India over sharing sensitive details on launch sites and trajectories. "They wanted more information than we are prepared to give," Kasuri told Japan's Kyodo news service. They were also unable to reach agreement on whether cruise missiles should be included in the formal agreement, Kasuri added. Both had previously blamed the "complex" issues involved for failing to reach a formal deal but until now had not explained the details. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Two were over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which is divided between the two and claimed in full by both. The two countries are currently trying to push forward a peace dialogue begun in January 2004, under which sporting, cultural and transport links have been revived. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is due to watch a one-day international cricket match between the sporting rivals in New Delhi in April and will also meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Next week sees the launch of the first bus service in six decades to cross the military line divding Kashmir, a major boost for families divided by the conflict over the region. However the United States's controversial decision to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan was greeted with anger by New Delhi. Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Monday that the sale could affect the ongoing peace dialogue. "Given Pakistan's track record, we fear such weapons would be directed towards India," the minister said. -------- terrorism Agencies vie over scenario of terror with nuclear waste By Matthew L. Wald The New York Times / International Herald Tribune Thursday, March 31, 2005 http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/30/news/nuke.html WASHINGTON A semisecret debate is raging between two highly technical agencies here, the National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, about the vulnerability of nuclear waste 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 contain most of the radioactive material ever produced at the reactors. 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 off a fire that would be "significantly worse than Chernobyl." Academy officials say they have hit a roadblock. 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 commission in November. But the two have not agreed on what to release. An official of the NRC 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 members of Congress its version, with classified information removed but including "safety sensitive information." Days later, the commission responded by sending members of Congress a rebuttal to the classified report. A spokesman, Eliot Brenner, said this done because Congress wanted to know what actions the commission would take. According to the commission, the academy panel "identified some scenarios that are unreasonable." The rebuttal, sent by Nils Diaz, chairman of the commission, said using those situations could "lead to a misinterpretation of the actual risk." Some ideas put forward by the academy "lacked a sound technical basis," said the rebuttal, sent to Senator Pete Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee on energy and water. Among engineers, those are fighting words. A declassified version might explain the apparent discrepancy. Brenner said his agency sent a new draft to the academy on Tuesday. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Test site invites visitors Saturday Scientist remembers creating, detonating the first atomic bomb at White Sands By Sue Vorenberg Albuquerque Tribune Reporter March 31, 2005 http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_state/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19863_3664515,00.html Hidden under the grass and yucca of the New Mexico desert is a place that altered world history forever. Ben Diven, a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, knows that place - Trinity Site - well. He still remembers the long hours and seven-day workweeks that led up to its creation - when he and other scientists detonated the first atomic bomb at White Sands in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945. "I was up all night, and I was tired, but it was very impressive when it went off," said Diven, 86. "Everyone was elated and cheering. We watched it through welders' goggles from about 15 to 20 miles away, and we were so amazed watching the fireball that we forgot about the aftershock. It came with a very loud bang a few minutes later and took a lot of us by surprise." The site east of San Antonio is open to the public only twice a year - the first Saturdays in April and October - including this Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. "It's the ultimate 20th century test," said Jim Eckles, a spokesman for White Sands Missile Range, which manages the site. "It's one of the most significant events of mankind. When it's open, people get to walk on a nuclear test site. It's a unique experience." The site is still radioactive, but not significantly so, Eckles said. Visitors who spend an hour at the site get the same radiation dose they'd get from cosmic rays flying from New York to New Mexico, he said. "There are places on Earth that have the same amount of radiation as Trinity Site naturally," he added. It doesn't look like much now, but standing in a place where world history changed - and being a part of that - is something Diven says he's proud of. "The idea of being someplace where such an important thing happened is exciting," Diven said. "The whole thing in many ways was the most important part of my life. It changed everything - it changed what I did for a living." Diven joined the Manhattan Project when he was still a physics graduate student at the University of California Berkeley, he said. "Oppenheimer got me to come to Los Alamos," he said. "I thought it would be fun to be a part of history." Diven stayed through the project, then returned to Berkeley to finish his degree. Before the project, he planned on being a high school science teacher, but after the project, and after finishing his Ph.D. he went back to Los Alamos and spent his entire career there, he said. "The lab was the best place to work in the whole country," he said proudly. "Of course during the Manhattan Project we were working round the clock, seven days a week and nights, too. Sometimes we'd have a party for a few hours and relax, but right after that it was always pretty much back to work." Visitors to the site can go to ground zero where the bomb was detonated from a 100-foot steel tower and to the McDonald ranch where the first plutonium core for a bomb was assembled. The public is welcome to bring cameras, and the radiation has no effect on them, Eckles added. Officials also set up booths where they explain the history of the site and teach the public about radiation, Eckles said. ---- Poll: Most in U.S. Oppose Nuclear Weapons By WILL LESTER Associated Press 03/31/05 07:02 EST http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=2612 WASHINGTON (AP) - Most Americans surveyed in a poll say they do not think any country, including the United States, should have nuclear weapons. That sentiment is at odds with current efforts by some nations that are trying to develop the weapons and by terrorists seeking to add them to their arsenal. The only use of an atomic bomb - by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II - provokes sharply different reactions, depending on the age of those asked. Young adults tend to disapprove, while older Americans tend to approve, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Albert Kauzmann, a 57-year-old resident of Norcross, Ga., said using the bomb in 1945 ``was the best way they had of ending'' World War II. Six in 10 people age 65 and older approve of the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II; the same percentage of respondents 18 to 29 disapprove. Even though the Soviet Union is gone, the nuclear fears that fueled the Cold War have not gone away. A majority of people believe it is likely that terrorists or a country will use the weapons within five years. North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons now and is making more. Iran is widely believed to be within five years of developing such weapons. Security for the nuclear material scattered across the countries of the old Soviet Union remains a major concern. Lurking in the background is the threat that worries U.S. officials the most: terrorists' desire to acquire nuclear weapons. All that helps explain why 52 percent of Americans think a nuclear attack by one country against another is somewhat or very likely by 2010. Also, 53 percent think a nuclear attack by terrorists is at least somewhat likely. The Bush administration repeatedly warns about nuclear weapons and is using diplomacy - and force - to try to limit the threat. Two-thirds of respondents say no nation should have nuclear weapons, including the United States. Most of the others surveyed say no more countries should get the weapons. ``I worry about Pakistan and India,'' said Barbara Smith, who lives in a Philadelphia suburb. ``I don't know what's going to happen with Iran, don't know what's going to happen with North Korea.'' Smith said she wants to see the spread of nuclear weapons stopped. ``It's too dangerous, too many things can go wrong,'' she said. About one-third of those in an ABC News-Washington Post poll in the mid-1980s - when the Cold War was hot - thought there would be a nuclear war in the next few years between the two superpowers. The AP-Ipsos poll found 44 percent of those surveyed said they frequently or occasionally worry about a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons, while 55 percent said they rarely or never do. Susan Winter of McLean, Va., says her awareness of the nuclear threat does not cause her to fret constantly. ``I'm concerned, but I don't worry about it,'' Winter said. ``I'm not a nail biter. I don't lose sleep over it.'' People were divided about the use of the atomic bomb in 1945, though they were asked about Hiroshima and Nagasaki after a series of questions on the nuclear threat. Overall, 47 percent of those surveyed approved of dropping the bombs on Japan while 46 percent disapproved, according to the poll of 1,000 conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs from March 21-23 with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The United States, Britain, Russia, France and China have nuclear weapons, and Pakistan and India have also conducted nuclear tests. Many believe Israel has nuclear weapons, but that country has never acknowledged it. North Korea claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons. The threat from nuclear terrorism is greatest, analysts say, because terrorists with nuclear weapons would feel little or no hesitance about using them. That's why those who monitor nuclear proliferation are so concerned about securing weapons stockpiles and dismantling weapons as quickly as possible. ``We're in the race of our lives,'' said Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ``and we're not running fast enough.'' On the Net: Ipsos-Public Affairs: http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com For more information on this press release, please contact: Michael Gross Research Manager Ipsos-Public Affairs Washington, DC 202.463.2147 -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- connecticut Last CT Yankee nuke cask stored By JOSH MROZINSKI, Middletown Press Staff 03/31/2005 http://www.middletownpress.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14255938&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6 HADDAM -- The last cask of radioactive material has been transferred to Connecticut Yankee’s concrete storage pad. Each cask, weighing approximately 125 tons, has a 3.5 inch steel liner and 21 inches of reinforced concrete. The pad, 70 feet by 200 feet, is located three-quarters of a mile from the plant. There are now three casks of greater than Class-C waste, which are pieces of metal from the reactor vessel’s inside, and 40 spent-fuel casks at the pad. Although the completion of this part of the decommissioning is finished, there still is work that the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company and the Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee, or CDAC, must complete. CDAC is starting to work on creating a group to replace it when the process is complete in September 2006, while the fuel still needs transferred to the federal repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Hugh Curley, CDAC chairman, said they are talking with other communities that have gone through the decommissioning process. The two advisory boards that oversaw the decommissioning of the Maine Yankee and Mass.-based Yankee Rowe nuclear power plants have established boards to monitor the fuel’s storage and advocate for its permanent removal. Curley said they will develop a new group over the next six months. Jeff Nelson, who represents U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2, on CDAC, said they have only four meetings left. "That means we have to get serious about that in the next couple of meetings," said Nelson. He said Simmons is willing to play a role only if the community asks for it. The new committee will be monitoring the waste’s storage with 2012 on their minds. "The latest is that the U.S. Department of Energy has now changed the expected date of operation (of Yucca Mountain) from 2010 to 2012," said Kelley Smith, Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman. "Currently there are no options other than storing it at CY or sending it to a permanent repository, such as Yucca Mountain." She said they are watching, though, the Goshute American Tribe in Utah as it tries to work with private companies to provide storage. "We’re monitoring all aspects associated with spent-fuel storage on a national fronts," Smith said. Nelson thinks 2012 is a realistic date. He said they are trying to get the Department of Energy to move Connecticut Yankee up on the fuel transfer list. Currently, the age of the fuel is considered and not whether the plant has decommissioned. Joyce Rossitter, who represents the Greater Middletown League of Women Voters on CDAC, thinks it is safer the casks are on the pad and not in the pool. She thinks the state is not a place to store them, though, for the long-term. Connecticut Yankee, she thinks, has no other options for storage other than Yucca Mountain. The decommissioning process began in 1998. The interior demolition will be done in the next four to five months. So far 120 million pounds of low-radioactive and none radioactive debris has been transferred. Radioactive debris is transported to facilities in Tennessee, Utah and South Caroline while non-radioactive debris is brought to a facility in Bozrah. The company expects to transport a total of 266 million pounds of debris. Smith said they are in the process tearing down the turbine building, which houses a turbine and generator. She said storing the fuel in the pool ne ar the demolition work caused some constraints. "We had stringent security for the spent-fuel pool," Smith said. "We’re still going to have security at the plant site. but the primary focus will now be at the fuel storage facility." To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222 or e-mail jmrozinski@middletownpress.com. -------- nevada FBI steps into Yucca document investigation March 31, 2005 By Suzanne Struglinski LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/31/518532895.html?"yucca%20mountain" WASHINGTON -- The FBI is examining the documents allegedly falsified by government employees working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a federal official says. Chad Bungard, deputy staff director and chief counsel at a House Government Reform subcommittee, said he was told from the beginning of the inspector general investigations at the Interior and Energy departments that the FBI would also be involved. The FBI press office would not confirm the agency's involvement or comment on the matter. The inspector general offices at each department also would not comment due to ongoing investigations. Bungard said this will be pursued as a criminal matter until the Justice Department finds otherwise. "That is why we are only giving our redacted information on Friday. We don't want to compromise anything," Bungard said. The House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee, of which Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is chairman, is to hold a hearing April 5 looking at the department's discovery earlier this month of e-mails sent by U.S. Geological Survey employees that suggest they falsified scientific information on how water moves through the mountain. Water movement is a key issue in determining the proposed repository's safety because it can help radiation move through the mountain and possibly into the groundwater under the mountain. Porter will review the documents today when he returns to Washington. The department handed them over on Tuesday. "My instincts tell me this is the tip of the iceberg," Porter said. The "sound science" argument has been used all along to convince Congress -- and the public -- that the dump plan is safe, but Porter said if the data has been tampered with, it puts the whole project in jeopardy. Porter said that at his hearing he will seek answers to such questions as how long the departments knew about these problems and why changes to data were made. Rep. Shelley Berkely, D-Nev., said that like Porter she suspects the problems unveiled by the Energy Department go beyond what is known right now, which proves arguments for the last two decades that the project should not move forward. She said she believes she knows the motives for the alleged falsification. "When the science didn't match the reality, they used politics to change the science in order to match the reality," she said. She welcomed the FBI's involvement because tampering with scientific data threatens the future health and safety of Nevadans. "That someone or a group of people colluded to falsify the scientific data on which the entire Yucca Mountain project is based is nothing less than criminal and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is no excuse for it," Berkley said, adding that those responsible should be "put away for a good long time." Jack Finn, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Ensign was pleased the FBI was involved, since that is what the senators asked for. Ensign and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller a day after the Energy Department's announcement about the e-mails asking for an investigation and for protection of the documents involved. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., believes the FBI will be an "impartial and unbiased" investigator, said spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer. She said the issue is obviously a serious matter that brings the whole integrity of the project into question. The investigation is the latest stumbling block for Yucca Mountain, which has hit a series of troubles with funding and its planned license application since being approved as the nation's nuclear waste repository. A federal appeals court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not follow the law when determining how long the mountain should hold radiation, a key scientific standard. The EPA is now reworking the standard. --- Porter calls for punishment of falsifiers of Yucca work March 31, 2005 By Cy Ryan LAS VEGAS SUN CAPITAL BUREAU http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/31/518532462.html?"yucca%20mountain" CARSON CITY -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said Wednesday that if federal employees did indeed falsify Yucca Mountain nuclear dump documents they should at least be fired and could also be charged criminally. "If Congress has been lied to, Congress will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure they are penalized to the fullest extent of the law," Porter told reporters after addressing a joint session of the Legislature. Any firing would have to be done by the Bush administration, however, he conceded. In his address, Porter noted that as chairman of a subcommittee that has jurisdiction over all federal agencies, he will ensure that a hearing April 5 in Washington seeks the whole truth regarding the allegedly doctored documents involving water seepage studies at Yucca Mountain. The inspector generals in the Energy and Interior departments are already investigating the matter, and the FBI also has reportedly become involved. Porter said his office has secured all of the documents and he will release them Friday in advance of the hearing next Tuesday. He said he expects further revelations will emerge from the documents but he has not had a chance to review them. "We're going to expose any and all improprieties having to do with the documents that members of Congress have based their decision on," he said. "The scientific data that Congress has used is based on faith and trust in these federal agencies. "If in fact those documents are falsified and have impacted the science and the delivery of information to the federal court and to members of Congress, we will take action regarding the falsification of documents." Congress passed a plan to put the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, based on scientific work done by the government. President Bush signed off on the plan, citing "sound science." Critics of the plan say this is proof that the project isn't based on sound science. In other comments to the Legislature, the second-term congressman from Las Vegas also urged the Legislature to pass all-day kindergarten. "There is no question we need it," he said. He said he knew it was a challenge to find the money for the all-day kindergarten, but he added he is looking for federal grants to help the state. He also told the lawmakers the federal government needs to reduce the unfunded federal mandates on state and local governments. Asked later to name one unfunded federal mandate that has been eliminated, he said there were some, but he could not name them. He said a committee is looking at 150 unfunded mandates for possible elimination. Asked about removing the statue of Sen. Patrick McCarran from the Capitol's National Statuary Hall, Porter said. "That's up to the Nevada Legislature, and if the Legislature thinks it's the right thing to do, we should do it. "The new revelations of the some of the things of his past put into question whether he should remain a statue in statuary hall, but I have confidence in the Legislature," he said. A new biography of McCarran paints him as a vindictive racist who was the man behind Sen. Joe McCarthy's red scare witch hunt . -------- new mexico Groups To Appeal LANL Burn Permits Thursday, March 31, 2005 By Adam Rankin Journal Staff Writer http://www.abqjournal.com/north/330658north_news03-31-05.htm Two local environmental watchdog groups say the state should do a better job regulating Los Alamos National Laboratory's open burning of diesel, high explosives and depleted uranium. They plan to appeal two state permits issued to the lab Tuesday, citing what they say are nonexistent monitoring requirements and other shortcomings. "There are no stacks, there is nothing," Sheri Kotowski, of the Embudo Valley Environmental Monitoring Group, said about the burning conditions at LANL. "All of the emissions are just going out in every which way." Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety and the Embudo Valley group plan to appeal permits the state Environment Department issued LANL that will allow the nuclear weapons laboratory to burn a certain amount of hazardous materials each year. The appeal goes before the state Environmental Improvement Board at its next monthly meeting. The permits, issued by the state's Air Quality Bureau, allow LANL to burn a maximum of 3,717 pounds of high explosives, 1,584 pounds of depleted uranium, 800 gallons of diesel fuel and 91,000 pounds of wood each year as part of its fire and transportation container accident tests. The tests take place at LANL's technical area's 11, 16 and 36. For the past 30 years, LANL has been allowed to burn the materials under the state's general burning rules, which regulated open trash burns. For 30 years before that, the environmental groups say LANL burned the materials without regulation. But this year, a new law goes into effect banning open trash burns because of concerns about hazardous and toxic chemical releases. So the state required LANL to apply for new permits under rules that regulate such industrial processes as oil and gas refineries and power plants. State Environment Department spokesman Jon Goldstein said the agency made the regulatory changes at the request of the groups to increase state oversight. "I think we've done everything we can do through our regulations," he said. But Kotowski said LANL's burn permits don't make use of the state's full regulatory authority. "They give LANL free reign through this permit to do what they want to do," she said. "The source is not a threat to public safety, that is their (LANL's) justification." LANL spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said air emissions from the burns meet all state and federal standards and that the burns are done only rarely, even though the lab is permitted to conduct between five and eight burns a year. "When they do these tests they are under very prescriptive requirements," she said. Joni Arends, director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, said LANL should be required to monitor burn emissions to prove they fall under state limits. Instead, LANL demonstrated it will meet air standards using computer models. "If you don't monitor it, you don't find it— there is no proof," she said. "We have been told, basically, there is an invisible shield and pollutants don't go beyond the boundaries of the lab." -------- south carolina First Nuclear MOX Fuel Factory Gets the Green Light WASHINGTON, DC, March 31, 2005 (ENS) http://ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-31-09.asp#anchor1 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized Duke, Cogema, Stone & Webster (DCS) to construct a facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to manufacture mixed plutonium and uranium oxide (MOX) fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants. The MOX fuel fabrication facility will be the first to be built in the United States, although several exist in Europe. The Savannah River Site is a Department of Energy national laboratory and is close to several major cities, including Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston, South Carolina. The site was constructed during the early 1950s to produce the basic materials used in the fabrication of nuclear weapons. Staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) performed environmental and safety reviews to ensure that the MOX facility’s design will have minimal environmental impacts and will protect the public health and safety. Although in accordance with NRC procedures the staff has issued the construction authorization, the adjudicatory process on certain issues remains open. The facility, which will be owned by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, is part of a bilateral effort between the United States and the Russian Federation to make supplies of surplus weapons-grade plutonium into forms that are more resistant to proliferation. Converting the plutonium into MOX fuel will enable it to be used in commercial reactors to generate electricity. The NRC must authorize reactors to generate power with MOX fuel, but to date no nuclear operating company has applied to use the fuel. A public version of the NRC’s final safety evaluation report for the construction of the MOX fuel fabrication facility is available on the agency’s at: http://www.nrc.gov/site-help/new- content.html. This report addresses regulatory requirements for approval of construction and reflects the NRC staff’s conclusion that DCS’ design bases for the facility "provide reasonable assurance of protection against natural phenomena and the consequences of potential accidents." The NRC’s environmental impact statement on the construction and operation of the proposed facility is available at http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/mox/licensing.html. DCS, which is a contractor for DOE, must still apply for a nuclear materials license before it can take possession of special nuclear material and begin fabricating the MOX fuel. In reviewing that license application, the NRC will conduct additional safety reviews. Although the NRC staff has issued the construction authorization, parties in the adjudicatory hearing before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board still have an opportunity to submit contentions challenging the staff’s safety review. On March 3, NRC granted a license amendment to Duke Energy Corp., allowing it to test four MOX fuel assemblies at its Catawba nuclear plant near Rock Hill, South Carolina. Those test assemblies were manufactured in France using surplus U.S. weapons grade plutonium. ---- MOX plant receives permit but construction still delayed Thu, Mar. 31, 2005 Associated Press http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/11277632.htm AUGUSTA, Ga. - A proposed facility that would convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants has received the go-ahead to begin construction but complications have delayed the project at least until next spring. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a construction permit Wednesday for the $1.6 billion mixed-oxide fuel plant, a key part of the Bush administration's effort to safeguard 34 tons of plutonium no longer needed. Under an agreement with Russia, both nations plan to blend the plutonium with depleted uranium for use in a commercial power reactor, but a liability issue has delayed construction of a facility in Russia. "There is still the impasse, but we're cautiously optimistic that this will be resolved soon," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Safety Administration, which oversees the MOX project. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said recently the plant won't meet a 2009 deadline to begin production, which could trigger a $1 million-a-day fine. Some environmentalists and nuclear nonproliferation advocates are concerned about how roughly 80,000 gallons of highly radioactive waste will be handled after a decision to delay design work on a Waste Solidification Building was made in President Bush's budget request. "They have to resolve that before they can proceed," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International. "This is just a bureaucratic hurdle that's been removed, but they've still got a ways to go." Wilkes said officials are looking into whether an existing nuclear waste disposal system at SRS can handle waste from the MOX plant. In addition to those hurdles, the plant must still receive approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it begins operating. -------- us nuc waste Agencies vie over scenario of terror with nuclear waste Powered by Ultralingua By Matthew L. Wald The New York Times Thursday, March 31, 2005 http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/30/news/nuke.html WASHINGTON A semisecret debate is raging between two highly technical agencies here, the National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, about the vulnerability of nuclear waste 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 contain most of the radioactive material ever produced at the reactors. 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 off a fire that would be "significantly worse than Chernobyl." Academy officials say they have hit a roadblock. 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 commission in November. But the two have not agreed on what to release. An official of the NRC 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 members of Congress its version, with classified information removed but including "safety sensitive information." Days later, the commission responded by sending members of Congress a rebuttal to the classified report. A spokesman, Eliot Brenner, said this done because Congress wanted to know what actions the commission would take. According to the commission, the academy panel "identified some scenarios that are unreasonable." The rebuttal, sent by Nils Diaz, chairman of the commission, said using those situations could "lead to a misinterpretation of the actual risk." Some ideas put forward by the academy "lacked a sound technical basis," said the rebuttal, sent to Senator Pete Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee on energy and water. Among engineers, those are fighting words. A declassified version might explain the apparent discrepancy. Brenner said his agency sent a new draft to the academy on Tuesday. -------- MILITARY -------- russia / chechnya 17,000 Draft Dodgers in Russia — Military Official Created: 31.03.2005 MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/31/draftdodgers.shtml About 17,000 young people in Russia are dodging the military draft, the deputy chief of the Russian General Staff said on Thursday. “Criminal proceedings have been instigated against 420 of them, and documents concerning 6,300 have been sent to the investigation bodies,” Colonel General Vassily Smirnov was quoted by Russian Information Agency Novosti as saying. He added that draftees now also dodge the alternative civil service that was introduced in Russia for those who do not want to serve in the military forces on moral grounds. Smirnov said 72 of the 318 people sent to carry out the alternative service refused to serve. ---- Russian Plant Launches Production of New Sukhoi Tactical Bomber Created: 31.03.2005 MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/31/subombers_.shtml The Novosibirsk Chkalov Aviation Production Association (NAPO) is launching production of the Su-34 bomber, the plant’s general director, Aleksandr Bobryshev, has told Itar-Tass. NAPO has begun implementing a state order for the Russian air force, building the first Su-34 mass-production tactical bomber, Bobryshev explained. “The Su-34’s radio-electronic equipment can be compared to fifth-generation aircraft,” Bobryshev said. The Su-34’s onboard equipment and weapons allow it to destroy precise protected targets in any weather, day or night. “This multipurpose aircraft can make missile strikes against targets on the ground and is also effective in air combat,” Bobryshev said. Bobryshev said that five such tactical strike aircraft would be built in the next two years. The prototype Su-34s, which have successfully undergone tests, were also built at the Novosibirsk plant. The aircraft has a take-off weight of 44.3 tons, a combat payload of 8 tons and a maximum range of 4,000 km. If refuelled once its range extends to 7,000 km. NAPO is part of the Sukhoi holding. ---- -------- spies I Spy a Screw-Up By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST March 31, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html?pagewanted=print&position= WASHINGTON Like the new Woody Allen movie, "Melinda and Melinda," it is possible to view today's big story on the tremendous intelligence failures before the Iraq war as either comedy or tragedy, depending on how you look at it. For instance, on the comic side, The Times reported yesterday that administration officials were relieved that the new report by a presidential commission had "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence." That's hilarious. As necessity is the mother of invention, political pressure was the father of conveniently botched intelligence. Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking. As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case. The Office of Special Plans turned to the con man Ahmad Chalabi to come up with the evidence they needed. The Iraqi National Congress obliged with information that has now been debunked as exaggerated or fabricated. One gem was the hard-drinking relative of a Chalabi aide, a secret source code-named Curveball, who claimed to verify the mobile weapons labs. Mr. Cheney and his "Gestapo office," as Colin Powell called it, then shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam's aluminum tubes, weapons labs, drones and Al Qaeda links into Mr. Powell's U.N. speech. The former secretary of state spent four days and three nights at the C.I.A. before making the presentation, trying to vet the material, because he knew that Mr. Cheney, who had an idée fixe about Saddam, was trying to tap into his credibility and use him as a battering ram. He told Germany's Stern magazine that he was "furious and angry" that he had been given bum information about Iraq's arsenal: "Some of the information was wrong. I did not know this at the time." The vice president and the neocons were in a fever to bypass the C.I.A. and conjure up a case to attack Saddam, even though George Tenet was panting to be of service. When Mr. Tenet put out the new National Intelligence Estimate on Oct. 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution and after our troops and aircraft carriers were getting into position for battle, there was one key change: suddenly the agency agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was pursuing the atomic bomb. Charles Robb, the former senator and governor of Virginia, and Laurence Silberman, a hard-core conservative appeals court judge, headed the commission. Unlike Tom Kean, Judge Silberman held secret meetings; he made sure the unpleasantness wouldn't come up until Mr. Bush had won re-election. It is laughable that the report offers its most scorching criticism of the C.I.A. when the C.I.A. was simply doing what the White House and Pentagon wanted. Isn't that why Mr. Tenet was given the Medal of Freedom? (Freedom from facts.) The hawks don't want to learn any lessons here. If they had to do it again, they'd do it the same way. The imaginary weapons and Osama link were just a marketing tool and shiny distraction, something to keep the public from crying while they went to war for reasons unrelated to any nuclear threat. The 9/11 attacks gave the neocons an opening for their dreams of remaking the Middle East, and they drove the Third Infantry Division through it. The president planned to announce today that he would put into place many of the commission's recommendations, including an interagency center on proliferation designed to play down turf battles among intelligence agencies. As Michael Isikoff and Dan Klaidman reported in Newsweek, in the three and a half years since 9/11, the intelligence agencies still haven't learned how to share what they know. At the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the Homeland Security guy complained he was frozen out by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. Like "Melinda and Melinda," the other side of this wacky saga is deadly serious. There are, after all, more than 1,500 dead American soldiers, Al Qaeda terrorists on the loose and real nuclear-bomb programs in Iran and North Korea that we know nothing about. No laughs there. E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com ---- Bush commission: Spy agencies in dark about nuclear, biological threats By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer Thursday, March 31, 2005 http://news.findlaw.com/ap/p/56/03-31-2005/c42f00368acde9ea.html (AP) - WASHINGTON-A damning report by a presidential commission concluded Thursday that the United States knows "disturbingly little" about nuclear and biological threats from dangerous adversaries, years after the Sept. 11 attacks and the nation's intelligence missteps on Iraqi weapons. Urging dramatic changes in the U.S. spy agencies, the commission called crucial intelligence judgments on Iraq "dead wrong" and said the flaws it found "are still all too common." "Our collection agencies are often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about," the panel concluded in its unsparing report. Though he initially opposed the panel's creation, President George W. Bush promised immediate action at a news conference with retired Judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, and former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb, the commission's co-chairmen. "To win the war on terror, we will correct what needs to be fixed," Bush said. The commission offered 74 recommendations aimed at changing the structure and culture of the nation's 15 spy agencies. It called for more clarity in the powers of the newly created national intelligence director, an overhaul of national security efforts in the Justice Department and dozens of changes in intelligence collection and analysis. "There is no more important intelligence mission than understanding the worst weapons that our enemies possess, and how they intend to use them against us," the commission said. "These are their deepest secrets, and unlocking them must be our highest priority." The report, approved unanimously by the bipartisan nine-member panel, followed the failure of U.S. inspectors in Iraq to turn up any weapons of mass destruction. The existence of weapons stockpiles - detailed in dozens of intelligence reports before the March 2003 invasion - was the administration's leading argument for toppling Saddam Hussein. Numerous blue-ribbon panels since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have investigated intelligence shortfalls. This commission - in the bluntest of terms - provided the most comprehensive look so far. The report painted a picture of a clumsy intelligence apparatus struggling to penetrate Iraqi operations and wrongly concluding that Saddam had weapons capable of causing catastrophic damage. Commissioners found intelligence collectors didn't provide enough information or were deceived by discredited sources and analysts relied on old assumptions about Saddam's intentions and overstated their conclusions. "On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude," said the report, which exceeded 600 pages. Robb and Silberman said they found no evidence that senior Bush administration officials sought to change the prewar intelligence in Iraq. The report was silent on whether the administration manipulated the data for political purposes, as Democrats have contended, with commission members saying they were not empowered to examine that. Underscoring the political divide, Democrats - including Bush's 2004 opponent,Sen. John Kerry - used the findings to demand faster changes and to point fingers. "The investigation will not be complete unless we know how the Bush administration may have used or misused intelligence to pursue its own agenda," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The commission warned John Negroponte, whom Bush nominated to coordinate the spy community, of the intelligence agencies' "almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations." It said the CIA and the Defense Department's intelligence agencies "are some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around - or over" the new director. The commission found the spy community ill-prepared to penetrate adversarial nations and terror groups. It said agencies must do a better job of preventing attacks with biological agents and learning about the spread of nuclear weapons. "Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors," the report said. "In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or ten years ago." The commission saved for a classified report details about U.S. knowledge of weapons programs in Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. But in the unclassified section, the report said, "We found that we have only limited access to critical information about several of these high-priority intelligence targets." Associated Press writers John Lumpkin and Matt Kelley contributed to this report. ---- FBI at crossroads in probe of pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC Justice Department may soon decide who to lay charges against in alleged espionage affair. By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com March 31, 2005, updated 12:30 p.m. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0331/dailyUpdate.html The ongoing investigation into allegations that a Pentagon staffer named Larry Franklin passed on classified government documents to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby group, continues but with several new twists. Over the past weekend, several Israeli papers carried a report by JTA, the Jewish news service, that top officials of the lobby group had appeared in front of a grand jury in "late January or early February," and that the two staff members who had contact with Franklin - Steve Rosen, of AIPAC's research department, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC's deputy director of foreign policy issues - have been placed on paid leave. The same report also said that Mr. Franklin had been "quietly" rehired at the Pentagon over the "FBI's objections." Franklin, however, was not given back his previous position in the Iran section, but instead placed in a "non-sensitive" area which the report didn't specify. The FBI's investigations into Franklin's actions became public last August when CBS reported that a "suspected mole" at the Pentagon had passed along government documents to AIPAC staffers. The "suspected mole" was later revealed to be Mr. Franklin. Time reported last December that government sources said the investigations into AIPAC had been ongoing for about two years, looking into allegations that AIPAC was "obtaining sensitive data and passing it along to the Israeli government." United Press International reported on December 9 that the initial investigations began when the FBI discovered "new, 'massive' Israeli spying operations in the East Coast, including New York and New Jersey." It was later reported in the Jerusalem Post that Franklin had agreed to help in an FBI sting. Ha'aretz reported that Franklin was told to tell the AIPAC staffers that "Iran was planning to attack Israelis operating in the Kurdish region in Iraq." The two men then "rushed to pass it on to Israeli diplomats, thereby falling into the FBI trap." Franklin later stopped cooperating with the FBI, fired his public defender laywer and hired one of Washington's best known defense lawyers. The Washington Times reported that the FBI was "hopping mad" at this turn of events, and this was when the bureau decided to pursue a more agressive policy, including the subpeonas of top AIPAC officials. Some media sources have said the entire Franklin affair illustrates some of the internal battles that have taken place over how the US should deal with Iraq. The document that Franklin is alleged to have given the two AIPAC staffers may have been a draft copy of a National Security Presidential Directive written by Pentagon neocons (who advocate a hard line towards Iran), which contained a proposal to destabilize Iran. The directive had apparently been turned down by the White House. Ha'aretz reported last week that the case has reached a crossroads, where the investigators "must decide on the suspects in the case." Either Franklin would be charged with acting alone, or Franklin and the two AIPAC employees, Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, would be charged, or "whether, on top of those three, the entire AIPAC organization has acted unlawfully." Sources close to the investigation suggested recently that it would end in a plea bargain. would plead to a lesser crime of unauthorized transfer of information, Rosen and Weissman would be charged with receiving classified information unlawfully, and AIPAC would remain unstained. Franklin's lawyer, Plato Cacheris, yesterday denied the reports, stating: "We have not entered any plea of defense with the Justice Department." AIPAC refused to say anything about the possibility of a plea bargain. Ha'aretz also reports that the FBI's larger goal seems to be "an extensive examination of AIPAC itself." Since the investigation began seven months ago, AIPAC, one of the strongest lobbying groups in Washington, has been "struggling in two arenas": trying to resolve the allegations against its staff members, and more important, dealing with the "political change going on in Israel" in its relationship with the Palestinians. 'AIPAC is simply lagging behind developments,' said a congressional staffer close to the issue. According to the staffer, the fact that most of the AIPAC board is hawkish on the Israel-Palestinian conflict makes it difficult for the lobby to accommodate itself to Israel's new policies. -------- us Study Faults Army Vehicle Use of Transport in Iraq Puts Troops at Risk, Internal Report Says By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 31, 2005; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14284-2005Mar30.html The Army has deployed a new troop transport vehicle in Iraq with many defects, putting troops there at unexpected risk from rocket-propelled grenades and raising questions about the vehicle's development and $11 billion cost, according to a detailed critique in a classified Army study obtained by The Washington Post. The vehicle is known as the Stryker, and 311 of the lightly armored, wheeled vehicles have been ferrying U.S. soldiers around northern Iraq since October 2003. The Army has been ebullient about the vehicle's success there, with Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, telling the House Armed Services Committee last month that "we're absolutely enthusiastic about what the Stryker has done." But the Army's Dec. 21 report, drawn from confidential interviews with operators of the vehicle in Iraq in the last quarter of 2004, lists a catalogue of complaints about the vehicle, including design flaws, inoperable gear and maintenance problems that are "getting worse not better." Although many soldiers in the field say they like the vehicle, the Army document, titled "Initial Impressions Report -- Operations in Mosul, Iraq," makes clear that the vehicle's military performance has fallen short. The internal criticism of the vehicle appears likely to fuel new controversy over the Pentagon's decision in 2003 to deploy the Stryker brigade in Iraq just a few months after the end of major combat operations, before the vehicle had been rigorously tested for use across a full spectrum of combat. The report states, for example, that an armoring shield installed on Stryker vehicles to protect against unanticipated attacks by Iraqi insurgents using low-tech weapons works against half the grenades used to assault it. The shield, installed at a base in Kuwait, is so heavy that tire pressure must be checked three times daily. Nine tires a day are changed after failing, the report says; the Army told The Post the current figure is "11 tire and wheel assemblies daily." "The additional weight significantly impacts the handling and performance during the rainy season," says the report, which was prepared for the Center for Army Lessons Learned in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "Mud appeared to cause strain on the engine, the drive shaft and the differentials," none of which was designed to carry the added armor. Commanders' displays aboard the vehicles are poorly designed and do not work; none of the 100 display units in Iraq are being used because of "design and functionality shortfalls," the report states. The vehicle's computers are too slow and overheat in desert temperatures or freeze up at critical moments, such as "when large units are moving at high speeds simultaneously" and overwhelm its sensors. The main weapon system, a $157,000 grenade launcher, fails to hit targets when the vehicle is moving, contrary to its design, the report states. Its laser designator, zoom, sensors, stabilizer and rotating speed all need redesign; it does not work at night; and its console display is in black and white although "a typical warning is to watch for a certain color automobile," the report says. Some crews removed part of the launchers because they can swivel dangerously toward the squad leader's position. The vehicle's seat belts cannot be readily latched when troops are in their armored gear, a circumstance that contributed to the deaths of three soldiers in rollover accidents, according to the report. On the vehicle's outside, some crews have put sand-filled tin cans around a gunner's hatch that the report says is ill-protected. Eric Miller, senior defense investigator at the independent Project on Government Oversight, which obtained a copy of the internal Army report several weeks ago, said the critique shows that "the Pentagon hasn't yet learned that using the battlefield as a testing ground costs lives, not just spiraling dollars." Asked about the report, Army officials who direct the Stryker program said they are working to fix some flaws; they also said they were unaware of some of the defects identified in the critique. "We're very proud of the Stryker team," said Lt. Col. Frederick J. Gellert, chief of the Army's Stryker Brigade Combat Team Integration Branch in Washington, but "it hasn't been something that's problem-divorced." According to the latest Army figures, 17 soldiers in the Stryker combat brigade have died in Iraq in 157 bomb explosions, but no delineation is made for those who perished inside the vehicle and those who were standing outside it; an additional five soldiers have died in two rollovers. No current figure was provided for those who perished in grenade attacks, although one officer said he thought it was fewer than a handful. Neither the lessons-learned report nor more recent Army data state how many soldiers have been wounded while inside the vehicle. The report states that in one case, a soldier was struck by shrapnel that penetrated both the vehicle's armor and his own body armor; in another case, an entire crew escaped with minor injuries after a vehicle sustained nine grenade hits. The criticisms of the Stryker's first performance in combat seem likely to give new arguments to critics of the Army's decision in 1999 to move away from more heavily armored vehicles that move on metal tracks and embrace a generation of lighter, more comfortable vehicles operated at higher speed on rubber tires. Senior Army officers in Iraq, like those at the Pentagon, have been surprised by the intensity of hostilities there since mid-2003, and lately some officers have said they depend on heavy armor to protect their soldiers in urban warfare, even though tanks in Iraq have also suffered unexpected damage. But Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the Army's director of force development, said that when he rode in the Stryker for the first time, he "marveled at how much nicer it was" than riding in a Bradley vehicle or an older troop transport, the M113, which he likened to being inside an aluminum trash can being beaten by a hammer. He said the Stryker was "amazingly smooth" and quiet by comparison. In a report completed at the time of deployment, the Pentagon's operational test and evaluation office rated the Stryker vehicles sent to Iraq "effective and survivable only with limitations for use in small-scale contingencies." Congressional auditors at the General Accounting Office in December 2003 said the first brigade "did not consistently demonstrate its capabilities, indicating both strengths and weaknesses." Independent groups and a loose-knit group of retired Army officers who dislike the Stryker vehicle have alleged that the Stryker's 2003 deployment was motivated partly by the desire of the Army and the manufacturer, General Dynamics, to build congressional support for buying additional brigades. But Speakes said that was nonsense and that the brigade was deployed in Iraq simply because the Army needed it. Researchers Bob Lyford and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Wintry Canada to Use Solar Power to Heat Homes March 31, 2005 By Reuters http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7440 TORONTO — Canada, better known for snow than sun, plans to build a 52-home solar powered community in Alberta that will harvest the sun's rays in summer and use them to heat homes in winter, the government said Wednesday. The Drake Landing development, already under construction in the western province, will be the first of its kind in North America. Officials say it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 260 tonnes a year and supply the homes with more than 90 percent of the heat they need. "This system significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrates the importance of using clean, renewable energy sources," Tommy Banks, a Canadian parliamentarian, said in a release. Under the scheme, solar panels mounted on garage roofs will collect energy from the sun and store it underground. Come winter, the thermal energy will heat homes through a central district heating system. Some C$5.5 million ($4,5 million) has been invested so far in the project, which is jointly funded by the governments of Canada and Alberta and by a number of Canadian companies. ---- GM, Daimlerchrysler in Fuel Cell Deals with US REUTERS USA: May 31, 2005 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30166/story.htm DETROIT - General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler Wednesday said they had entered into multimillion-dollar agreements with the US Department of Energy to further the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for the US market. Under the five-year program GM, the world's largest automaker, said it will spend $44 million to deploy fuel cell demonstration vehicles in Washington D.C., New York, California and Michigan. The Department of Energy will contribute the other half of the investment in the program, under an agreement that expires in September 2009. In a separate commercial agreement, Shell Hydrogen, LLC will support GM by setting up five hydrogen refueling stations in Washington, D.C., New York City, between Washington D.C. and New York and in California. Separately, DaimlerChrysler, the world's fifth-largest automaker, said it would invest over $70 million in a so-called "outreach program" to increase public awareness about fuel cell vehicles and their potential to reduce US dependency on oil. Through the five-year program, backed by the Energy Department and companies including BP DaimlerChrysler said it would place various models from its 100-strong fleet of fuel cell vehicles in customer hands to get feedback about their performance in real-world driving conditions. Fuel cells release energy from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen with a catalyst. Fuel cell vehicles emit only pure water vapor as an exhaust. Analysts say widespread commercial development of the vehicles is still as a long way off, however. And as a fuel-efficient alternative to fuel cells, GM and DaimlerChrysler's US-based Chrysler unit recently announced an agreement to jointly develop gas-electric hybrid vehicles. (Additional reporting by Edward Tobin in New York) -------- OTHER -------- imf / world bank / wto (economics) Europe on Wolfowitz as Banker: Once Chilly, Now Tepid By ELAINE SCIOLINO March 31, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/international/europe/31wolfowitz.html?pagewanted=print&position= PARIS, March 30 - Paul D. Wolfowitz came to Europe on Wednesday as a supplicant for its good will, shedding his image as a unilateralist hawk and entreating his hosts to approve him as the world's banker for the poor. The five-hour visit to Brussels by Mr. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and President Bush's nominee to head the World Bank, was a response to a request by the European Union for a meeting. It was intended to prove that the man who is viewed by many here as an unrelenting neoconservative and leading architect of the invasion of Iraq can shift course and run the global organization that lends money and sets economic policy for much of the developing world. "I understand that I am, putting it mildly, a controversial figure," Mr. Wolfowitz told reporters. "But I hope as people get to know me better they will understand that I really do believe deeply in the mission of the bank." He vowed to create a multinational team to run the bank, without explicitly promising to appoint a European as his deputy. The engagement strategy with Europe, by Mr. Wolfowitz on Wednesday and during visits by President Bush and his security aides last month, seems to be working. The Europeans, who hold 30 percent of the voting shares on the bank's board, could have tried to take revenge for what they see as the unilateralism of the Bush administration, either by rejecting Mr. Wolfowitz outright or delaying his appointment. Instead, leaders have signaled that they are ready to approve him, however grudgingly, when the nomination comes to a vote on Tuesday, the latest sign of a new pragmatism in Europe to repair relations with the United States. Indeed, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, spoke Wednesday as if the nomination had already been approved. "We had a constructive and friendly meeting where European ministers were putting all the questions they wanted to put to the incoming president of the World Bank," Mr. Juncker told reporters. Other European officials seem to have resigned themselves. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, for example, who staunchly opposed the American-led war in Iraq, said last week that Mr. Wolfowitz's nomination "does not lead to an overflow of enthusiasm in Europe," but he pledged, "His nomination will not fail because of Germany." On Wednesday, Mr. Schröder's development aid minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who also had expressed reservations, said she was encouraged by Mr. Wolfowitz's presentation, saying, "This is for him a new beginning, and we judge him according on what he said today." In France, which also opposed the war in Iraq, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier initially told reporters that Mr. Wolfowitz's nomination would be examined "in the context of the personality of the person you mention and perhaps in view of other candidates." Now France has decided to accept the nomination, but wants a Frenchman as his deputy, to elevate France's profile and influence in the World Bank, and to ensure that the Bush administration does not use the bank to promote its own agenda. France is promoting the idea of a European deputy to Mr. Wolfowitz to sit alongside two other deputies, one from poorer nations and one from developing countries like China. It is floating the name of Jean-Pierre Jouyet, 51, chairman of the Paris Club, an international debt-relief agency. The European Union is also seeking American support for its candidate to head the World Trade Organization: Pascal Lamy of France, who was Europe's trade commissioner. Under a tradition going back to the founding of the World Bank 60 years ago, the United States, the bank's largest shareholder, puts forward its own candidate to head the institution. Europeans nominate the head of its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund. Still, suspicion about Mr. Wolfowitz runs deep in Europe, as evidenced by the firestorm of protest of his nomination among political commentators and in much of the European news media. The nomination proved that "Bush did not give a damn about the reaction," a commentator in the German business daily Handelsblatt wrote. "Many will consider Wolfowitz's nomination a provocation." In France, centrist Le Monde last week called the nomination "a new manifestation of America's arrogance" as well as "indifference or even cynicism towards poor countries." The left-leaning Libération even called on Europe to veto the nomination. In Italy, the business-oriented Il Sole 24 Ore said that if Mr. Wolfowitz became president of the bank, "it will not be easy to 'sell' the World Bank as an institution that takes care of the poor in the world." But both Europe and the United States have pledged to heal the political damage caused by the war in Iraq. Blocking the nomination would have been both damaging in terms of trans-Atlantic relations and unlikely to succeed. Earlier this month, the European Union signaled that it was likely to delay a proposal to lift its arms embargo against China after intense American opposition. In recent weeks, the European Union in general and France in particular have worked in lockstep with the Bush administration to press Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. In policy shifts, the United States, for its part, has agreed to support up to a point the European negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and has left open the door for the militant Shiite group Hezbollah to enter Lebanese politics. Katrin Bennhold of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting from Paris for this article, and Graham Bowley, also of The Tribune, contributedfrom Brussels. -------- ACTIVISTS Health, Faith, Labor, Eco Groups Join Against Global Warming TRENTON, New Jersey, March 31, 2005 (ENS) http://ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-31-09.asp#anchor2 More than 100 organizations across the Northeast have partnered in a call for reductions in global warming pollution from power plants. Public health, faith, labor and action groups joined environmental organizations in signing on to a set of principles that support a 25 percent reduction in power plant carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. In a letter to their respective governors Wednesday, the groups called for strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the region’s power plants. “Global warming is a serious problem that requires quick, aggressive action,” said Emily Rusch, Energy Advocate for the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG). “Reducing carbon pollution from power plants is a key strategy in any plan to curb the harmful effects of human induced climate change.” Northeast states, including all of New England, New York, New Jersey and Delaware, are engaged in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to create a precedent setting cap-and-trade program to address carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. “New Jersey, as a densely populated coastal state, will feel the brunt of global warming more than any other state in the union. That is why we have to act,” said Jeff Tittel, New Jersey Sierra Club Chapter director. The coalition issued seven principles that provide a blueprint for a program that relies on a mandatory cap for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants as the primary way to reduce emissions. The principles do not rely on nuclear power as an emission reduction strategy and ensures that the dirtiest power companies, not ratepayers, bear the majority of the costs of shifting to cleaner solutions. "As a coastal and Garden state on the front lines of global warming, New Jersey should be aggressively advocating these seven principles instead of putting up unnecessary road blocks for clean renewable energy like offshore wind. In addition to tackling global warming head on, this is the best way to address a plethora of environmental and economic problems from acid rain, smog, air toxics, and mercury to our over-reliance on foreign oil specifically and fossil fuels more generally," said David Pringle, campaign director for the New Jersey Environmental Federation. Groups lending their support these principles included the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, the New Jersey Environmental Federation, the New Jersey Audubon Society, Green Faith, Delaware Riverkeeper, and Grandmothers, Mothers, and More for Energy Safety. “The Northeast has the opportunity to provide leadership to the rest of the country and the world by supporting an effective program to reduce global warming pollution,” said Rusch. “Following these principles will lead to success.”