NucNews - April 5, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR Nobel Laureates, Organizations Appeal for Removal of Nuclear Weapons From “Hair-Trigger” Status Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_5.html More than 30 Nobel laureates have joined hundreds of organizations and lawmakers in signing a statement to be released today calling for all strategic nuclear weapons to be taken off “hair-trigger” and “launch on warning” alerts (see GSN, June 22, 2004). The statement is to be released in Melbourne, Geneva, Hiroshima, San Francisco, London and the United Nations in New York, according to the Association of World Citizens, one of the organizations coordinating the project. Signatories include the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), several members of the British and Australian parliaments, and other lawmakers and organizations from around the world. The European Parliament and Australian Senate also approved resolutions endorsing the statement, the Association of World Citizens said in a press release. A RAND Corp. report found that the United States and Russia have 4,000 warheads on hair-trigger alert that could be launched within minutes, the association said. The Statement of Endorsement calls on all known or suspected nuclear weapons powers “to support and implement steps to lower the operational status of nuclear weapons systems in order to reduce the risk of nuclear catastrophe.” The United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea should also “implement in good faith their obligations under international law to accomplish the total and unequivocal elimination of their nuclear arsenals,” according to the statement. Non-nuclear nations are encouraged to push for nuclear disarmament through international forums (Association of World Citizens release, April 5). -------- accidents and safety Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report (2005) Board on Radioactive Waste Management (BRWM) http://www.nap.edu/books/0309096472/html/ -------- canada Bruce Power's Ontario Bruce 5 nuke back in service Tue Apr 5, 2005 07:56 AM ET (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8088408 NEW YORK, April 5 - Ontario-based Bruce Power's 840-megawatt unit 5 at the Bruce B nuclear power station in Ontario returned to service on April 4 after a five-day outage to perform minor maintenance on its primary heat transport pump, the company said in a release. The 6,660 MW Bruce station is located in Tiverton on the shores of Lake Huron, about 155 miles (249 km) northwest of Toronto. There are four 825 MW units 1-4 at the A station and four 840 MW units 5-8 at the B station. Units 6, 7 and 8, meanwhile, continued to operate at high power. Unit 3 shut on April 2 to repair a valve in one of the reactor regulating systems. Unit 4 shut on March 12 for planned maintenance expected to last about two months. During the outage, crews will inspect the boilers, change some low-pressure turbine rotors and perform spacer location and repositioning work to optimize the location of springs that separate the unit's pressure and calandria tubes. One MW powers about 1,000 homes, according to the North American average. Separately, Bruce Power announced in March it reached a tentative agreement with a provincial negotiator for the potential restart of units 1 and 2. The government is considering the terms of the agreement. Bruce Power's board of directors have already approved of the agreement. The former province-owned energy company Ontario Hydro shut units 1 and 2 in 1997 and 1995, respectively, because they needed extensive upgrades. The units entered service in 1977. The return of units 1 and 2 will replace about 20 percent of the province's 7,500 MW of coal-fired generation, which the government wants to shut by the end of 2007 for pollution and health-related reasons. Bruce Power is a partnership owned by uranium miner Cameco Corp. (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (31.6 percent), energy company TransCanada Corp. (TRP.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (31.6 percent), BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, established by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (31.6 percent), the Power Workers' Union (4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (1.2 percent). ---- Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb The Legacy of C.D. Howe by Kim Petersen, April 05, 2005 The Dominion (Canada) http://dominionpaper.ca/original_peoples/2005/04/05/canada_rac.html It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe. -- William Lyon Mackenzie King (uncensored diaries) Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) is the ninth largest lake in the world, famed for its record-size lake trout and Arctic graylings. The Sahtugot'ine (Dene First Nation of Sahtu) have traditionally carried out a subsistence livelihood following their food, mainly caribou and the fish, seasonally around Sahtu. A thriving community of 650 has settled in Deline. Previously called Fort Franklin after an English explorer, Deline means, "Where the water flows," in the Slavey language. The uranium mine was developed by the Canadian government to satisfy US needs for the World War II effort to construct an atomic bomb. From 1942 to 1960, the Sahtugot'ine worked at the mine in Port Radium, unknowingly polluting their massive freshwater resource and irradiating themselves. In the early 1960s, the danger became apparent. The Sahtugot'ine workers started to die from lung, colon, and kidney cancers -- diseases previously unknown to them. Cindy Kenny-Gilday is a Sahtugot'ine who has worked on the issue of uranium contamination of lands and people around Sahtu. About the lethal legacy of uranium mining, she stated in 1998: Deline is practically a village of widows, most of the men who worked as laborers have died of some form of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women were left to raise their families with no breadwinners, supporters. They were left to depend on welfare and other young men for their traditional food source. This village of young men are the first generation of men in the history of Dene on this lake to grow up without guidance from their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This cultural, economic, spiritual, emotional deprivation impact on the community is a threat to the survival of the one and only tribe on Great Bear Lake. Declassified documents reveal that the danger from uranium was known during the mining operation. However, neither the Canadian nor US governments saw fit to make known the health dangers. The Sahtugot'ine were sacrificed for an effort that ultimately slaughtered hundreds of thousands. "In my mind, it's a war crime that has been well hidden," said Kenny-Gilday. "We were the first civilian victims of the war." Canada and the Bomb In 1930, Gilbert LaBine discovered uranium near Sahtu, but he shut down the mine at the outbreak of World War II. In 1942, Minister of Munitions and Supply C.D. Howe told LaBine to reopen the mine and instructed him: "Get together the most trustworthy people you can find. The Canadian government will give you whatever money is required. ... And for God's sake don't even tell your wife what you're doing." Hundreds of Canadian scientists collaborated with allied scientists on the atomic bomb program, for which Canada supplied the uranium and heavy water. Canada also had representation on the Combined Policy Committee that administered the atomic bomb program. Canada's Howe was among the committee members who approved the use of the bomb on Japan. On 6 August 1945, B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped Fat Man on Hiroshima, a city of 343,000, killing 100,000 people immediately and leveling the city. In 1998, six members of the Sahtugot'ine went to Japan to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an atrocity that some Sahtugot'ine unwittingly had a hand in, a role they now regret. Canadian Genocide Machine On 22 March 1998, community evidence was presented to the Canadian government alleging "prior knowledge and ongoing complicity in the environmental crime" suffered by the Dene First Nation of Deline. Chief Raymond Tutcho said: We, the Dene, have been subjected to over 60 years of horrible injustice because of apparent national interests. Our people have paid for this with our lives and the health of our community, lands, and waters. We have set out a 'Plan for Essential Response and Necessary Redress.' The six-point plan called for immediate crisis assistance, a comprehensive environmental and social assessment, full public disclosure, clean-ups and monitoring, acknowledgment of government responsibility, and community healing and cultural regeneration. Tutcho's call saw the formation of the Canada-Deline Uranium Table (CDUT) in 1999, which was charged in 2002 with putting together an action plan "to describe, scope and recommend studies and activities that, when completed, will provide information necessary to enable the CDUT to make informed decisions about long-term management of Port Radium site and any ongoing health requirement ..." Cathy Mackeinzo, manager of the CDUT, stated that "the community, leaders and community, had agreed to work with the federal government to address joint issues." "At that time people thought it was a good process," she said. "It's working out to date." A final report, due for completion in March 2005, has since been extended to June. Danny Gaudet, chief negotiator of the CDUT confirmed that no special treatment of radiation-afflicted people been undertaken "other than developing assessments of high risk patients." In response to the over "60 years of horrible injustice," without compensation, without health treatment, and without an environmental cleanup, Mackeinzo admitted that there was "a lot of outstanding grieving" in the community and that she was only speaking in her managerial capacity. The Deline Uranium Team's November 2004 newsletter suggests frivolity. The newsletter detailed how 15 Deline community members and four CDUT staffers flew over for a tour of the mine, had a cup of tea, enjoyed the view from above, and felt "tired but satisfied" afterwards. While some speak of action, the noxious environmental and health risks linger. Howe is eponymously memorialized by a right-wing think tank, but his name is also linked to enormous suffering. -------- iran Iranian president says he expects headway in upcoming nuclear talks PARIS (AFP) Apr 05, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050405195228.7563rlbq.html Visiting Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said here Tuesday he expected "significant" headway at a meeting of Iranian and European negotiators on his country's controversial nuclear program late this month. "I think we have made positive steps. Iran has proposed a global plan to settle this issue," Khatami told a press conference following 90 minutes of talks with his French counterpart Jacques Chirac at the Elysee palace. "The European reaction, particularly that of France, has been very open." "I hope that during the next meeting on April 29, thanks to French support but also to the reception given to this global plan, we will be able to make even more significant headway," he noted. "We are today closer to a solution than some time ago." Talks remain deadlocked over Iran's insistence that it maintain the right to make its own nuclear fuel. There are widespread fears that the technology could be used to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. The European Union is currently considering, ahead of a meeting next week with Iranian negotiators in Geneva, a proposal by Tehran to allow it to produce low enriched uranium, and on a small scale. The meeting in Geneva will be of experts from the two sides, while the meeting on April 29, which could be in London, will be at a higher level of foreign ministry political directors to review progress in the EU-Iran talks, which began in December, diplomats said. Iran made the proposal to be allowed to run a pilot centrifuge project for uranium enrichment at a meeting in Paris last month with EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany, according to a European official who asked not to be named. The pilot plant would have a relatively small number of centrifuges, the machines arranged successively in order to refine out enriched uranium. Earlier Khatami told the French daily Le Figaro that his country could not agree to give up the peaceful use of atomic power and retained the right to resume "nuclear activities." "We are ready to consider any reasonable solution, but we reject the definitive suspension of our activities," he told Le Figaro at the start of a 24-hour visit to Paris. Iran is negotiating with Britain, France and Germany to win trade, security and technology rewards in return for giving guarantees that it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons. Khatami, a moderate who is expected to leave power in June, had earlier addressed a conference at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). More than a thousand demonstrators, according to police, took to the streets of Paris to protest Khatami's visit, many shouting "Shame on France" and accusing Tehran of human rights abuses and denouncing its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi meanwhile held a meeting with his French counterpart Michel Barnier on the nuclear issue. A French spokesman described it as "constructive." The United States is threatening to take Iran to the United Nations Security Council if it fails to abandon for good its programme of uranium enrichment -- the process which makes fuel for civilian reactors but also what can be the explosive core of atomic bombs. ---- Iran Seeks To Obtain Nuclear Warheads For Soviet X-55 Missiles Source: Worldtribune.com Tuesday, April 05, 2005 http://www.texaspanhandleplains.com/newspaper/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1183&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 LONDON - Iran allocated $2.5 billion to obtain three nuclear warheads in 2005, according to a report cited by an opposition official. The Iranian opposition said the Islamic leadership in Teheran approved a project to procure nuclear warheads meant to be deployed on Shihab-class intermediate-range missiles produced by Iran. The opposition said that nearly a year ago Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei ordered Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani to procure the warheads, Middle East Newsline reported. "In mid-2004, Khamenei allocated $2.5 billion to obtain three nuclear warheads by their own means [production] or buy them abroad," National Council of Resistance of Iran foreign affairs committee chairman Mohammad Mohaddessin told a news conference in Paris on Thursday. Mohaddessin did not say whether the money has already been spent, but stressed that Teheran wanted to acquire the warheads in 2005. He said he received this report hours earlier and had no further information on the project. Last month, Ukraine acknowledged that 12 Soviet-origin cruise missiles meant to deliver nuclear weapons were sold to Iran in 2001. The Kiev government said the X-55 missiles were sold by criminal elements and delivered to Iran without full systems and instructions. In 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran disclosed the existence of two major nuclear facilities Arak and Natanz concealed from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Since then, the opposition group reported on other secret nuclear facilities later confirmed by the IAEA. At the news conference, Mohaddessin disclosed an Iranian project to develop a nuclear reactor at Arak, about 240 kilometers south of Teheran. He said the reactor would be able to produce 10 kilograms of plutonium, sufficient for an atomic bomb, by 2007. "The regime told the International Atomic Energy Agency the reactor would be operational in 2014," Mohaddessin said. "But in reality, they want to start it in 2006 or 2007." Commercial satellite images released by a U.S. institute in February pointed to the near completion of a heavy water plant at Arak. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said the plant would contain a nuclear reactor that could eventually produce plutonium for one atomic bomb per year. Later, institute president David Albright said the satellite images indicate that Iran has been testing the Arak plant. He said the images showed steam coming out of the facility. On Thursday, the institute released a report that asserted that Iran has established a facility to manufacture gas centrifuges, required for uranium enrichment. The report said the facility, termed Kalaye Electric, was established in 1995 and inspected by the IAEA in 2003. The Iranian opposition said Teheran's nuclear program has been kept secret from much of the government and parliament. Mohaddessin quoted from what he termed a classified report by parliament in February 2004 that complained of a lack of government information on Arak as well as the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. "The legislative branch does not clearly know where the budget for these two projects is coming from," the parliamentary report was quoted as saying. "It neither knows how the project was started and how it was put into place." In Washington, a leading U.S. expert said Iran appears to be developing what he termed "latent" nuclear weapons capability. The expert said Iran has not yet assembled complete bombs or openly violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "They absolutely want to stay within the existing rules of the NPT and regime and they will do everything they can to play by the rules," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace vice president George Perkovich said. "The rules allow you and in their argument give you the right, which I dispute to acquire a capability to enrich uranium or to separate plutonium." Perkovich said Iran has sought to follow the Japanese model. He said Japan maintains large stockpiles of plutonium without international recrimination. "What we have learned is that some technologies, in particular uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology, are just too inherently dual use, they have too many inherent weapons applications to be allowed to proliferate to new countries," Perkovich said. -------- korea Kadhafi's son says world must give NKorea incentives to reach nuclear deal TOKYO (AFP) Apr 05, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050405093452.fehzrz1p.html The son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said Tuesday the international community must give North Korea economic and political incentives before asking Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. "It's not fair all the time just to press and push North Korea," Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, who holds no official position but is seen as a representative of his father, told a news conference in Tokyo. "You have to give them political and economic incentives," said Kadhafi, whose country struck a deal with the United States and Britain in December 2003 not to dismantle its nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs. The United States accuses North Korea of operating a secret uranium-enrichment program in a standoff that erupted in 2002. Little progress has been made since China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States entered talks with North Korea in August 2003. The isolated communist state has suspended talks over Washington's "hostile" attitude and sought promises that it will not invade. Seif al-Islam Kadhafi met Monday with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, whose government is also embroiled in a row with North Korea over its kidnappings of Japanese citizens. Citing the Libyan experience, Kadhafi said the international community must offer "attractive" deals to North Korea to make it give up its weapons program. "If you take Libya for an example, we made that decision according to promises and incentives from the United States and Britain, which made the initiative quite an attactive deal for Libya," he said. "It's a package deal," he said, adding: "We have to guarantee (to North Korea) that there is no hidden agenda and there is no trap behind the whole game." Following Libya's announcement, the United States lifted most sanctions against the country and there is now a permanent US diplomatic presence in Tripoli for the first time since the early 1980s. But US sanctions related to Libya's alleged support for terrorist groups are still intact as the country remains designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism". Kadhafi will Wednesday visit the World Exposition, a showcase of technology and innovation with exhibits from more than 120 countries in central Aichi prefecture, to promote the Libyan pavilion, which includes his own paintings. ---- North Korean envoys in China for N-talks ‘Beijing confident on new six-way dialogue’ Tuesday April 05, 2005 News International, Pakistan http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2005-daily/05-04-2005/world/w1.htm SEOUL: Two senior North Korean officials were in China for discussions on resuming stalled six-party talks to end Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, South Korean media reported on Monday quoting diplomatic sources in Beijing. First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, both involved in the six-party talks, arrived in Beijing on Saturday, according to separate reports by Dong-a Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo newspapers. It was not clear whether the two officials were travelling together, they said. Dong-a Ilbo said Kang was meeting Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei for consultations on resuming the talks, which involves the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China. Kang is believed to be a key architect of North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy and a close confidant of leader Kim Jong-il. Chosun Ilbo said Kim was also meeting with Wu. Three rounds of the talks produced little progress and Pyongyang has refused to meet for a fourth round. North Korea has said the United States must first drop what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy against it and agree to turn the talks into comprehensive disarmament negotiations that also address US nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. The official US policy is it does not have nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. China, which is the North’s largest benefactor, is pressing for the resumption of the talks. Meanwhile South Korea’s defence chief, back from a trip to Beijing, said on Monday China was "confident" about resuming six-way talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons programmes. But Defence Minster Yoon Kwang-Ung, in China last week for military talks, said Beijing was concerned about impatience building in Seoul and Washington. "Chinese officials I met in Beiing were all very confident about resuming six-way nuclear talks," Yoon was quoted by a defence ministry spokesman as saying. "They said South Korea and the United States were hurrying too much. They said it would take time to resolve the nuclear issue just like a piece of ice neither freezes nor melts all at once." There have been three rounds of talks, which include the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, to resolve the nuclear standoff that flared up in 2002, but little progress has been reported. After the last round in June last year, North Korea failed to show up for a fourth round, scheduled for September 2004. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while visiting Japan, South Korea and China last month, warned that US patience was wearing thin and said Washington was considering "other options" if Pyongyang continued staying away from talks. Yoon was quoted as saying China, the North’s key ally and host of the six-way talks, was making "lots of efforts" to revive the stalled negotiations. During his five-day trip, Yoon met his Chinese counterpart Cao Gangchuan and other top Chinese military leaders. The Chinese foreign ministry said last month President Hu Jintao was considering a trip to North Korea for talks with reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il as the deadlock continues. South Korea’s unification ministry said on Sunday Hu’s planned visit to North Korea would be closely linked to the resuming of six-way talks. North Korea, which declared itself a nuclear power in February, said last week it wants to broaden six-way negotiations into regional disarmament talks, an offer rejected by Washington. North Korea has one or two crude nuclear devices and may have reprocessed enough plutonium for around six more, according to US intelligence. -------- missile defense Major milestone' reached in missile defense system By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES April 05, 2005 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050404-112517-2532r.htm The Pentagon announced yesterday the completion of a new high-powered radar that is a key element of the U.S. ground-based missile defense system. Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the joining of the 2,000-ton Sea Based X-Band radar and its oceangoing platform -- ultimately destined for the island of Adak off the coast of Alaska -- on Sunday is a "major milestone" in the evolving U.S. missile defense system. "It gives us the capability of dramatically expanding our testing ... and by porting it in Adak it also gives us an operational capability from a North Korean [missile] threat," Gen. Obering said in an interview. -------- pakistan Pakistan's Military Policies April 5, 2005 NY Times Letters http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/l05pakistan.html?pagewanted=print&position= To the Editor: Re "Fuel for South Asia's Arms Race" (editorial, March 29): Your fear of an arms race is overblown. Pakistan's modest and much-needed defense acquisitions would not tilt the balance in favor of Pakistan. India's military, equipped with the most sophisticated armaments, is the third largest in the world. Moreover, Pakistan has entered a new era of democracy. Parliament is functioning freely; the media are unfettered and fearless. Pakistan is not a nuclear-weapons proliferator by any means. The country's command and control of its nuclear weapons, new legislation on proliferation and elaborate compartmentalization of the processes ensure the safety of our strategic assets and guard against accidents. Dr. A. Q. Khan is under house arrest, and the government has fully cooperated with the international community to eliminate the black market in nuclear technology. Talat Waseem Press Minister Embassy of Pakistan Washington, March 31, 2005 -------- treaties U.S. to Promote NPT Compliance at Review Conference Global Security Newswire Tuesday, April 5, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_5.html#B16913BC The United States will press for international compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the May review conference for the pact, U.S. envoy Jackie Sanders said in a March article (see GSN, Feb. 24). “We will discuss actions that NPT parties should take to implement [treaty] obligations and describe activities that send a warning signal of possible noncompliance with these undertakings,” Sanders said in her article, “How to Strengthen the NPT.” “The United States believes, for example, that nuclear-weapon states should establish and implement effective export controls in order to ensure rigorous compliance with their Article 1 obligation not “in any way” to assist any non-nuclear-weapon state to manufacture nuclear weapons,” said Sanders, U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation. “They should cut off nuclear assistance to any non-nuclear-weapon state in violation of its NPT nonproliferation obligations and seek a halt in the use of any previously supplied nuclear items.” Sanders singled out Iran and North Korea as nations the United States believes to be operating nuclear weapons programs in violation of the treaty. U.S. officials will push for approval of several measures at the conference, which is scheduled from May 2-27 at the United Nations in New York. Proposed measures include: adoption of halts to nuclear cooperation and other measures to discourage treaty noncompliance; use of controls to ensure treaty compliance; boosting export controls for nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technology; and universal adherence to NPT safeguards agreements and to the Additional Protocol. “The Review Conference should reinforce the goal of universal NPT adherence and reaffirm that India, Israel and Pakistan may join the NPT only as non-nuclear-weapon states,” Sanders said. “Just as South Africa and Ukraine did in the early 1990s, these states would have to forswear nuclear weapons and accept [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards on all nuclear activities to join the treaty” (Jackie Sanders, U.S. State Department eJournal USA, April 4). ---- Former High-Level Officials Push for Stronger NPT Wednesday, April 6, 2005 By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_6.html#CE8679DC WASHINGTON — Twenty-one prominent former policy-makers called yesterday on countries to recommit themselves to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to strengthen implementation of the pact (see GSN, April 5). In a statement ahead of a treaty review conference set for next month in New York, the ex-officials called for agreement on a program of action including expanded U.N. powers to monitor treaty compliance, faster disarmament efforts by nuclear weapon countries and better security for nuclear material around the world. Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball, an organizer of the effort, expressed doubts about U.S. support for the agenda even as he called for its implementation. Washington focuses on proliferation elsewhere, rejects calls for quicker disarmament and “apparently is not likely to help build agreement on such a program of action,” Kimball said as he presented the statement to the press yesterday at the National Press Club here. “The 2005 review conference is shaping up to be a lost opportunity,” he said. The international group, whose U.S. members included former secretaries of state and defense and directors of the former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said countries should also “clarify” the pact to prevent parties from withdrawing — as North Korea has done — after setting up civilian nuclear programs with military potential. “Today’s security environment requires an even more comprehensive and robust global nonproliferation strategy,” they wrote in the statement. “The NPT’s future success depends on universal compliance with tighter rules to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, more effective regional security strategies and renewed progress toward fulfillment of the nuclear weapon states’ NPT disarmament obligations.” Cases such as North Korea and Iran, new terrorism and wars, the nuclear network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, inadequate stockpile security, and concerns on nuclear weapon states’ commitment to disarmament have created “rising doubts about the sustainability of the nonproliferation regime,” the ex-officials said. Next month’s review meeting is “an essential opportunity,” they said, “for the parties to demonstrate their political will to make further tangible progress to meet all of the treaty’s objectives.” U.S. Bipartisan Security Group Director Robert Grey, a signatory of the statement, expressed concerns at yesterday’s event about a failure of “American leadership” on nonproliferation and disarmament. “What we’re facing here,” Grey said, referring to U.S. stances ahead of the review conference, “is a radical departure from past American practice.” Other signatories included former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and defense secretaries Robert McNamara and William Perry; former U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency General Counsel George Bunn, who represented Washington in the original treaty negotiations, and two former agency directors, Ralph Earle and John Holum; former Russian State Duma Deputy Alexei Arbatov; U.S. Sept. 11 commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton; and the secretary general of the international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Henrik Salander. U.S. Representatives Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and John Spratt (D-S.C.) plan to sponsor a resolution this week espousing goals similar to those laid out in the ex-officials’ statement. “The NPT embodies one of the best security bargains ever struck,” Spratt said at the Press Club event. “The NPT marshals the world — 186 countries — against nuclear weapons with a collective force that the United States could not muster on its own and provides a framework and forum for handling the problems that continually arise. The United States has plenty of nonproliferation programs. We need nonproliferation partners, and the NPT helps supply them.” -------- u.n. Unlikely Allies Oppose Proposed IAEA Moratorium on Fissile Material Production Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Global Security Newswire http://www.nuclearthreatinitiative.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_5.html Several key countries have rejected a proposal by International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei for a five-year international suspension of development of new uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, March 21). Opponents include declared nuclear-weapon states France and the United States, along with Iran and Japan, according to diplomats. “The moratorium is going nowhere,” said one diplomat in Vienna. Washington wants to expand its nuclear power industry, which would not be possible if halted work on those technologies, the Times reported. The Bush administration had agreed to back the moratorium, however, if the United States could be exempted, according to the diplomat. The U.S. State Department would not comment on the matter, according to the Times. Iran has said it needs such technology for a civilian nuclear program to generate electricity. The proposed moratorium and alternative plans are to be discussed next month at a review conference in New York for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Differences of the moratorium are an example of tensions between NPT members that are leading the conference to a “train wreck,” according to one senior U.N. official (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, April 5). ---- U.S. and Iran oppose IAEA nuclear moratorium By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Published April 5, 2005 http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050405-125851-2142r VIENNA -- Washington and Tehran both reject a proposed International Atomic Energy Agency ban on building uranium enrichment and reprocessing plutonium facilities. The head of the IAEA is calling for a five-year global moratorium on constructing any such new facilities, the Financial Times said Tuesday. But a month before a conference to review the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty, the United States and Iran are both opposing the suggestion by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. ElBaradei says the world has more than enough capacity to fuel its nuclear power plants and research facilities. France and Japan also oppose ElBaradei's proposal. ---- U.N. Nuclear Agency to Talk Leader's Run Tue Apr 5,11:30 PM ET Europe - AP By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050406/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_agency_elbaradei_2 VIENNA, Austria - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency Tuesday set a special meeting for later this month to vote whether its director can run for a third term despite U.S. objections. At least a third of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors must vote against Director General Mohamed ElBaradei for a third term. Diplomats said the United States was alone in its total opposition to ElBaradei but could try to swing traditional allies behind it ahead of the meeting. The April 27 meeting was called by request of developing nations on the 35-nation board of governors, which support ElBaradei's reappointment. The Americans, and some allies, are opposed. But diplomats accredited to the agency and familiar with the U.S. view said it was not immediately clear how strongly Washington would lobby for ElBaradei's ouster at the special meeting. The diplomats, who demanded anonymity, suggested the developing nations had called for the meeting now because they hoped their cause would benefit from changes in the U.S. State Department that have left a key position temporarily in flux. Former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a key ElBaradei critic, is waiting for U.S. Senate confirmation as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His designated successor, Bob Joseph, also has to be approved by the Senate. Washington wants someone who shares its view of which countries represent nuclear threats and what to do about them. ElBaradei has challenged those views — particularly over Iran and prewar Iraq, both labeled part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea by President Bush. ElBaradei first disputed U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program — claims that remain unproven. He then refused to endorse assertions by Washington that Iran was working to make nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is for generating electricity. A direct U.S. attempt to unseat ElBaradei fizzled, with the Americans unable to find anyone to challenge him for a third term by the Dec. 31 deadline, shortly after the Bush administration called on him to step down after completing a second term last summer. ---- UN to decide fate of nuclear chief opposed by U.S. 05 Apr 2005 19:13:12 GMT Source: Reuters By Louis Charbonneau http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05572586.htm VIENNA, April 5 (Reuters) - The governing body of the U.N. nuclear watchdog will meet later this month to decide whether Mohamed ElBaradei will remain for a third term at the agency's helm despite fierce opposition by the United States. An internal document circulated among the 35 members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors, obtained by Reuters, said the closed-door meeting would take place on April 27. ElBaradei, an Egyptian lawyer with decades of experience as a U.N. diplomat, has been the director general of the IAEA since 1997, when he took over from Sweden's Hans Blix, who later became the head of the U.N. arms inspection body UNMOVIC. "The U.S. is still opposed to the appointment of ElBaradei and will do its best to see that someone else runs the agency," a Western diplomat familiar with U.S. thinking told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Several diplomats on the board said ElBaradei enjoyed broad support among a majority of the 35 board members and would most likely win his re-election bid. However, they said Washington, which provides about 25 percent of the IAEA's budget, needed only 12 votes to block ElBaradei. Diplomats familiar with the IAEA board's voting procedures said the board preferred to appoint the agency's chief without a vote by consensus. However, if the board's Canadian chairwoman decided no consensus could be reached, the election could be done by secret ballot. A secret ballot could tip the balance in the favour of the Americans, because the European Union would likely split and several Asian and African countries might also vote against ElBaradei, two European diplomats said. "Those who say ElBaradei's third term is already secured may be guilty of wishful of thinking," a non-U.S. diplomat said. Diplomats said there were several possible replacements for ElBaradei but said they would only become known if Washington was able to successfully block ElBaradei's re-election. "The idea is that if ElBaradei would lose, there would be widespread shock and indignation, and then quickly several countries would pull out the names of fresh candidates," a Western diplomat said. Officially, the United States says it opposes a third term for the IAEA chief because it believes heads of U.N. agencies should have a maximum of two terms. Privately, U.S. officials say it is because of Iraq. Washington's problems with ElBaradei began in the run-up to the March 2003 Iraq war. Despite U.S. insistence that Saddam Hussein had revived his dismantled nuclear weapons programme, ElBaradei repeatedly declared the IAEA found no proof of this. No proof was ever found that Saddam revived his atom bomb programme and the IAEA's position has been confirmed as correct. Later Washington accused ElBaradei of soft-pedalling his reports on inspections in Iran, which the United States accuses of developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Iran denies wanting weapons. ElBaradei has said that more than two years of inspections have produced no hard proof that Tehran wants nuclear weapons, though he has refused to rule out that possibility. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Bush Administration Seeks New U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Tuesday, April 5, 2005 By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_5.html#61E2325F WASHINGTON — A senior Bush administration official disclosed to Congress yesterday an ambitious 20-year goal to replace the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal with a new, smaller stockpile that provides new military capabilities, including lower yield and bunker-busting weapons (see GSN, April 4). National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks did not say in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee that there are specific threats, safety problems or reliability concerns requiring the replacement of the current arsenal, estimated by independent experts at 10,000 strategic warheads and projected to shrink nearly in half by 2012 as ordered by President George W. Bush last year. “I’m confident that today’s stockpile is safe and reliable and I’m confident that there is no near-term requirement for nuclear tests,” he told the sole subcommittee member present, Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). The ranking Democrat, Senator Bill Nelson (Fla.), appeared briefly at the beginning of the hearing but left to attend a presentation of the Medal of Honor at the White House. In presenting what he called the administration’s “emerging vision,” Brooks argued that the present arsenal is not ideal from a military and political standpoint, is costly to maintain, and could be exchanged for a smaller and more useful and reliable set of weapons. “If we were to build that stockpile today, we would probably take a different approach than we took during the Cold War,” he said. Brooks said the current arsenal may not be well suited to the types of threats the country could face in the future. He said a January 2002 review found that the explosive yields of the weapons are too high and “we have no capability against hardened and deeply buried targets.” That report also said that current weapons “do not lend themselves to reduced collateral damage and are unsuited for defeat of biological and chemical munitions,” Brooks said in his written testimony. They also were not designed for “small strikes or flexibility in command and control and delivery,” he said. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in testimony yesterday that hardened and deeply buried facilities are “a very real target set, and one that is growing.” “Today’s stockpile may not be the one you want to have 20 years from now,” Brooks said. Costs Uncertain The administration in previous years set aside funds for studies of technologies to provide some new capabilities, but until yesterday had not asked Congress to view such pursuits in a consolidated plan. Led by a skeptical Republican in the House of Representatives, Congress last year canceled funding for the Energy Department’s new capabilities research, including studies of a new nuclear earth-penetrating weapon and armaments for destroying chemical and biological agents. Brooks yesterday described a potential part of the administration’s vision, a new effort funded by Congress last year called the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program. He said the program could lead to a new weapon that could be more easily certified as safe and reliable, in part because it would be designed to have less stringent performance requirements, such as seeking to maximize a warhead’s explosive yield. Using more readily available and environmentally friendly materials, such a weapon also could be manufactured and maintained less expensively than current weapons, he said. With better mission-tailored capabilities and more reliable warheads, he said, the United States could shrink its future arsenal beyond the undisclosed, reduced level set for 2012 by Bush in a classified document last year. Brooks acknowledged that the administration’s vision could be costly. “No one will suggest that rebuilding nuclear weapons will be cheap,” he said. He did not provide estimates. Nelson raised questions about the potential cost and purposes of the administration’s earth penetrator and Reliable Replacement Warhead plans. “Is it an opportunity to have a serious review and discussion of nuclear weapons and nuclear policy? Or is it just an excuse to develop a new nuclear weapon and to return to nuclear weapons testing?” he said. Brooks said the replacement warhead would not require explosive testing to develop and would help avoid the need to test other warhead designs in the future. “I hope the committee finds our vision both coherent and compelling,” he said. ---- New Nuclear Warhead Proposed to Congress Funds Sought for Feasibility Study By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26386-2005Apr4?language=printer The head of the nation's nuclear weapons programs proposed yesterday that Congress approve funds to study the feasibility of building a new, more reliable nuclear warhead that could be deployed without nuclear testing in less than 10 years. Saying that the current Cold War stockpile is inadequate technically and militarily, Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, "We want to explore whether there is a better way to sustain existing military capabilities in our stockpile absent nuclear testing." Recognizing that such a proposal could be highly controversial, Brooks emphasized that a new nuclear warhead is "still just a vision, nothing more," and that even planning for a feasibility study is "at the very early stages of development." But he insisted that the yields of most of the nuclear warheads in the current stockpiles, built to attack Soviet hard targets, "are probably too high." Because their casings were not designed to penetrate earth, "we have no capability against hardened, deeply buried targets." He also described the current stockpile as "unsuited for some specialized missions" caused by post-Cold War situations. "Today's stockpile may not be the stockpile you want to have 20 years from now," Brooks concluded. Although Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) had to leave the afternoon session early to attend the White House ceremony awarding the Medal of Honor to a Floridian, he gave an indication of the questions that others will raise in discussing the new warhead feasibility study. "Is it an opportunity to have a serious review and discussion of nuclear weapons and nuclear policy?" Nelson asked before he departed. "Or is it just an excuse to develop a new nuclear weapon and to return to nuclear weapons testing?" After Nelson had left and following his prepared testimony, Brooks said that the warheads would be designed to be less sensitive to aging and would be easier to certify as safe and reliable. "They would reduce the possibility that the United States would ever need to conduct a nuclear test in order to diagnose or remedy a reliability problem," he said. Brooks said money for the feasibility study would be taken from what Congress approved last year to initiate a so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program that was originally proposed to study replacement parts for current warheads, designed almost 30 years ago and now being updated. Those funds and new ones added in the proposed fiscal 2006 budget would be used "to begin concept and feasibility studies on replacement warheads or warhead components that provide comparable military capabilities to existing warheads," Brooks said. If those studies produced a feasible program, he added, by 2012 to 2015 "we should be able to demonstrate through a small build of warheads that a reliable replacement warhead can be manufactured and certified without nuclear testing." Brooks also said that the new warheads would reduce the need to keep nondeployed warheads from the Cold War stockpiled in case aging problems occur with deployed weapons. "Right now, the only way you can maintain those hedges is to maintain a large number of nondeployed weapons," he said. ---- New Nuclear Warhead Proposed to Congress Funds Sought for Feasibility Study By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26386-2005Apr4.html The head of the nation's nuclear weapons programs proposed yesterday that Congress approve funds to study the feasibility of building a new, more reliable nuclear warhead that could be deployed without nuclear testing in less than 10 years. Saying that the current Cold War stockpile is inadequate technically and militarily, Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, "We want to explore whether there is a better way to sustain existing military capabilities in our stockpile absent nuclear testing." Recognizing that such a proposal could be highly controversial, Brooks emphasized that a new nuclear warhead is "still just a vision, nothing more," and that even planning for a feasibility study is "at the very early stages of development." But he insisted that the yields of most of the nuclear warheads in the current stockpiles, built to attack Soviet hard targets, "are probably too high." Because their casings were not designed to penetrate earth, "we have no capability against hardened, deeply buried targets." He also described the current stockpile as "unsuited for some specialized missions" caused by post-Cold War situations. "Today's stockpile may not be the stockpile you want to have 20 years from now," Brooks concluded. Although Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) had to leave the afternoon session early to attend the White House ceremony awarding the Medal of Honor to a Floridian, he gave an indication of the questions that others will raise in discussing the new warhead feasibility study. "Is it an opportunity to have a serious review and discussion of nuclear weapons and nuclear policy?" Nelson asked before he departed. "Or is it just an excuse to develop a new nuclear weapon and to return to nuclear weapons testing?" After Nelson had left and following his prepared testimony, Brooks said that the warheads would be designed to be less sensitive to aging and would be easier to certify as safe and reliable. "They would reduce the possibility that the United States would ever need to conduct a nuclear test in order to diagnose or remedy a reliability problem," he said. Brooks said money for the feasibility study would be taken from what Congress approved last year to initiate a so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program that was originally proposed to study replacement parts for current warheads, designed almost 30 years ago and now being updated. Those funds and new ones added in the proposed fiscal 2006 budget would be used "to begin concept and feasibility studies on replacement warheads or warhead components that provide comparable military capabilities to existing warheads," Brooks said. If those studies produced a feasible program, he added, by 2012 to 2015 "we should be able to demonstrate through a small build of warheads that a reliable replacement warhead can be manufactured and certified without nuclear testing." Brooks also said that the new warheads would reduce the need to keep nondeployed warheads from the Cold War stockpiled in case aging problems occur with deployed weapons. "Right now, the only way you can maintain those hedges is to maintain a large number of nondeployed weapons," he said. -------- california CA: Don’t drink the water or Buy A House Near San Francisco Bay By Dennis Kyne Apr 5, 2005, 20:54 http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16665.shtml http://www.sfbayview.com/033005/dontdrink033005.shtml >From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested atomic and thermonuclear weapons at Bikini in the Marshall Islands. After talking the islanders into leaving their homes, the Navy moved in 240 decommissioned World War II ships and anchored them around the test site to see how they would withstand the bomb blasts. The ships were contaminated with fission products, including strontium 90 and cesium 137, as well as residual plutonium from the bombs. Something had to be done with the ships; these dead vessels that had now been irradiated needed to be cleansed. The Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) Historical Radiological Assessment (HRA), which is available in San Francisco at the Main Library as well as the Bayview branch library, states very clearly that “the most severely contaminated ships were eventually transferred to HPS for decontamination. Radioactively contaminated marine growth attached to ship hulls was removed with sandblasting.” Fuel contaminated with plutonium and fission products was burned and evaporated into the air, and many materials were welded off and stored or disposed of at the Shipyard. The radioactive sand from the blasting had to be discarded. Questionable standards for capturing contamination existed during this period, and with certainty we can say the radiation didn’t get separated from the water via a true pollution prevention mechanism. Thus it dropped in the bay or flowed out through broken storm drains. The HRA states that the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL), operational at the Shipyard until 1969, was responsible for organizing and shipping other radioactive garbage in addition to the sandblast remains. After housing the local community’s radioactive waste at the Shipyard, it was to be dumped offshore near the Farallon Islands. Along the way, drums containing the waste developed leaks, and whatever records were kept have been lost. Some days the fog wouldn’t let up, and traveling all the way to the Farallon Islands was out of the question. Hidden from witness by the fog, some 55-gallon drums are believed to have been dropped to the bottom of San Francisco Bay. The May 2004 Community Window on the Hunters Point Shipyard states that many land sites still are contaminated by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from bomb testing and still need to be cleaned. This same document also describes the way containers of radioactive materials were used to calibrate radiation detectors and asserts there may have been leaks in large containers. Smaller containers used in field studies would be thrown out with ordinary garbage. “Ordinary garbage” does not normally include radioactive elements. As a matter of fact, none of these elements are ordinary; they are manmade. Here’s the kicker, and an even greater concern if they did dump these barrels into the bay: water isn’t just wet. Water is corrosive. And when it meets metal, it steals the ions and causes rust. If you have a 55-gallon drum eroding from the radiation inside, and the water outside, you have a potentially deadly experiment going on. This is one good reason to stop the Lennar home building project that is slated to break ground soon on Parcel A at the Shipyard. The need for housing does not outweigh the damage to the health of local people should this turf be razed, liberating an incredible amount of toxic dust and exposing arriving community members to a water table that is nothing less than uranium soup. First off, if you move human beings into these new homes and than bulldoze surrounding sites and parcels, the strontium and cesium will be liberated and will expose the residents to death. There is no excuse for selling a community on housing when they will end up in their grave. Government cannot put people in, then clean up the mess later. The entire mess must be cleaned up first. The fact that the mess is there is confirmed by documents available at the library. If all this isn’t sad enough, Rongalup, an atoll where the inhabitants hadn’t been evacuated, became a study group when it was drenched in the same radioactive ash as the naval carcasses. Jonathan Weisgall, the attorney representing the Bikini Islanders, observes with irony that “we had a pretty nice laboratory of exposed people.” The same radioactive ash was brought back to Hunters Point. Carl Sagan, on page 322 of “Cosmos,” explains that “Rongalup residents ended up with strontium concentrated in their bones, and radioactive iodine concentrated in their thyroids. Two thirds of the children, and one third of the adults later developed thyroid abnormalities, growth retardation or malignant tumors.” Not everyone is killed by the flash of a bomb or the meltdown of a reactor or even the fallout. However, the fallout will be around for quite some time as Sagan tells us. Most strontium 90 decays in 96 years and cesium 137 in 100 years. The ships returned to Hunters Point decades ago, but the metal they left behind is still present. Studies conducted on Rongalup can be cross applied to the current situation in Northern California, where we can say without question that contaminated ships returned to Mare Island and Hunters Point. We know that a nuclear ship sank in Mare Island, and we know that a detonation rocked through nine counties at what is now called the Alameda Naval Station, formerly known as Port Chicago. There is no place in the world that has higher rates of breast cancer than these areas. It is absolutely imperative that the Hunters Point community take a hard and deep look at the implications of low level radiation on the human being. If two thirds of the children developed an abnormality or retardation in the Rongalup community, what can we expect in Hunters Point, where people were repeatedly exposed to radiation testing, cleaning and research facilities that were not made public knowledge until long after they had discharged deadly poison all over the soil. It gets worse. Community Window states, “Most sites are contaminated primarily by radio nuclides, ... particularly by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from bomb testing. However, some sites are also contaminated with long-lived radio nuclides such as Ra-226, and so require a very long-term assessment of the potential risk caused by the radioactivity.” It gets worse, because the more we understand how long these elements stick around, and how horrific they are to the human gene pool, the sooner the developer wants to build new homes alongside the toxic dump sites. There is a sense of urgency to get this construction going. The most powerful forces at City Hall are saying we have been waiting around too long. The sense of urgency should be on cleaning the Hunters Point Shipyard, a facility that once collected and analyzed samples of fallout materials from nuclear test sites. Effects of radioactivity on animals were studied at Hunters Point. Mare Island Shipyard was still using berths and drydocks at the Hunters Point Shipyard to repair nuclear powered ships from 1985 to 1989. Surely there are some byproducts in the water table from four years of nuclear fuel being moved around in the area. The Navy didn’t clean up though, and until they clean it up, you cannot put people in the vicinity of a water table contaminated with cesium 137 and strontium 90 and a drydock area that just two decades ago housed nuclear powered ships. It would be lunacy to accept this as responsible civics. The model of civics this employs is the building model. The model of civics that should be employed is the maintenance model. Until this area is maintained and brought to 100 percent clearance of radiation and radioactive particles, not one ditch should be dug. If the leaders of San Francisco choose to dump a housing project onto an area that is exposed to low level radiation, they will be sentencing two thirds of the young children to some form of abnormality based on the short time period covered at Rongalup. Leaders of San Francisco are responsible for the health and welfare of the residents of Hunters Point, both current and future. Responsibility requires these leaders guarantee with certainty that there is no radiation exposure. Anything short of that is negligence. Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with an emphasis on nuclear proliferation. Email him at d_kyne@hotmail.com and visit his website, www.denniskyne.com. http://www.sfbayview.com/033005/dontdrink033005.shtml -------- nevada Yucca Mountain E-mails Not Likely to Discredit Project, DOE Concluded April 05, 2005 — By Erica Werner, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7468 WASHINGTON — Energy Department officials concluded last month that e-mails by Yucca Mountain workers talking about making up data "are not likely to discredit or bring into question" key scientific conclusions about the proposed nuclear waste dump site, according to internal department documents. The memos, released Monday by a congressional committee, also indicate department officials learned about the problem in early December -- more than three months before making it public in mid-March. And while saying that "the potential for significant technical impacts is believed to be low," one memo dated March 15, the day before the problem was made public, acknowledges that "the credibility and defensibility of the (U.S. Geological Survey) technical work supporting the project is brought into question." The names of authors and recipients and some proper nouns and sections of text were blacked out by the subcommittee staff to avoid compromising ongoing investigations by the FBI and the inspectors general at the departments of Interior and Energy. At issue are dozens of e-mails written between 1998 and 2000, mainly by two USGS field workers studying how water moves through the proposed waste dump site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev. The USGS validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape. The e-mails, portions of which were released last Friday, show the workers discussing concocting facts and keeping two sets of figures, one for themselves and one to show quality assurance officers. "If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff," one message said. The House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Work Force and Agency Organization, chaired by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is holding a hearing on the issue Tuesday. Late Monday the subcommittee released some Department of Energy memos -- written around the time the e-mails surfaced -- about what they meant and "talking points" about how to respond. The newly released memos show officials deeply concerned about the effect of the e-mails on the project -- but also insistent about sticking to the message that no real harm to the underlying science was done. "Depending on the current status of the work to which he contributed, these e-mails may create a substantial vulnerability for the program," says a second memo, apparently referring to the principle author of the e-mails. The page that includes that assessment is almost entirely blacked out. A third memo has a section entitled "key points for your discussion with the secretary." Among those points: "We do not believe that the questionable data has any meaningful effect on the results supporting the site recommendation." An Energy Department spokeswoman declined comment because of the continuing investigations. The memos show that the individuals named in the e-mails created 150 or more reports and data sets. They were producing data used to estimate how much precipitation that falls on Yucca reaches the depths of the proposed underground waste repository. But the memos say that because large uncertainty factors are assumed in an overall program assessment, the potentially manipulated records probably didn't change outcomes. Yucca Mountain, approved by Congress in 2002, is planned as the nation's repository for 77,000 tons of radioactive defense waste and used reactor fuel from commercial power plants. The material is supposed to be buried for at least 10,000 years beneath the Nevada desert. The e-mails were only the latest setback for the program, which has also suffered from a shortage of money and an appeals court decision last summer that is forcing revision of radiation exposure limits for the site. A planned completion date of 2010 was recently abandoned by Department of Energy officials. They have yet to set a new date. ---- Official: U.S. May Not Build Waste Dump By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: April 5, 2005 Filed at 4:31 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html? WASHINGTON (AP) -- The planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada won't be built unless the Energy Department is confident of the supporting science after investigating e-mails that showed workers discussing fabricating data, an official said Tuesday. Under angry questioning from Nevada lawmakers, deputy director Theodore Garrish said the department was preparing to apply for a license to run the dump, but ``we have not made a final decision yet as to when or whether to file those documents, and some of that will be based on this investigation.'' ``I can assure you we will not go forward unless we can have the feeling ourselves first that this repository will be safe,'' said Garrish. Reassurances from Garrish and Charles Groat, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, didn't satisfy the Nevadans. They have seized on the e-mails, written by USGS employees, as the latest reason to kill the dump planned for 90 miles north of Las Vegas. Officials from Gov. Kenny Guinn on down expressed outrage Tuesday during a House Government Reform subcommittee hearing. ``The fact that data may have been intentionally fabricated in service of shoring up predetermined and politically driven conclusions calls into question the very legitimacy of this entire program,'' Guinn said. The Energy Department disclosed March 16 that e-mails written between 1998 and 2000, principally by two USGS scientists, suggested the workers might have falsified documents. Porter's committee has released redacted versions of dozens of the e-mails that show workers discussing concocting facts and keeping two sets of figures, one for themselves and one to show quality assurance officers. In one e-mail a USGS scientist wrote: ``I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names. ... This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff.'' The workers were studying how water moved through the desert site where the government wants to store 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste for at least 10,000 years. The USGS validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape. In written testimony, Garrish downplayed the significance of the e-mails. ``This appears to be a lapse in quality assurance protocol and, at this time, we have no evidence that the underlying science was affected,'' his written testimony said. He seemed to soften his position when he addressed the subcommittee, suggesting more study was needed. ``The impact of this issue is yet to be determined, and yes, we are concerned about the integrity of the data, and what was done was inexcusable,'' Garrish said. The inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments are conducting criminal investigations with help from the FBI, and the Energy Department is studying the impact on the scientific underpinnings of the planned waste dump site. But Nevada lawmakers called Tuesday for additional reviews. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who chaired Tuesday's hearing, said he wanted an independent commission similar to the presidential commission that investigated the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. Porter also said he was summoning the two main USGS workers who wrote the e-mails to testify at a hearing next week. Their identities have not been released. Groat said Tuesday they are no longer on the Yucca project but are still employed by USGS. John Mitchell Jr., president and general manager of Bechtel SAIC, the Energy Department's managing contractor on the Yucca project, also testified Tuesday. He said the e-mails were originally discovered by Bechtel workers in early December and were discussed by high-ranking company officials, but weren't turned over to the Energy Department until March. Porter was the only member of the House Government Reform federal work force and agency organization subcommittee to attend Tuesday's panel. He invited Nevada's other two House members, Republican Jim Gibbons and Democrat Shelley Berkley, to join him in questioning witnesses. That turned the three-hour hearing into a face-off between Nevadans adamantly opposed to Yucca and government officials committed to it, and there was little budging on either side. A planned completion date of 2010 for the Yucca project was recently abandoned by Energy Department officials. A new date has not yet been set. On the Net: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ymp.gov Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov --- EDITORIAL: Yucca 'science' Apr. 05, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-05-Tue-2005/opinion/1050441.html When Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., presides over a congressional hearing today on the fabrication of quality assurance data for the Yucca Mountain Project, there will be much gnashing of teeth about the science behind the federal government's effort to bury nuclear waste northwest of Las Vegas. But when Department of Energy and U.S. Geological Survey officials testify about the damning e-mails that effectively destroy the integrity of their scientific models, they might as well adapt the line made famous by Alfonso Bedoya's bandit in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre": "Science? We ain't got no science. We don't need no science. I don't have to show you any stinking science!" The arrogance of the message is as astounding as the falsifications. "I've made up the dates and names. ... If they need more proof I will be happy to make up more stuff," one e-mail message said. Members of the House subcommittee on federal work force and agency organization will learn today what Nevadans have known for two decades: the Yucca Mountain Project has never been about science. How could it be when, by federal edict, there exists no alternative to the multibillion-dollar drive to entomb tons of waste inside a ridge? Geologists, hydrologists and engineers have toiled in tunnels at the Nevada Test Site for years knowing they work not to answer crucial questions about the mountain's suitability, but to support a predetermined outcome. Such an environment can't possibly yield "good" science. Rather, it's the perfect petri dish for fraud -- a word we've heard plenty of times before at Yucca Mountain. ---- Nevada Officials Call for Halt to Work at Yucca Mountain WASHINGTON, DC, April 5, 2005, (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-05-05.asp Nevada elected officials of both parties told the House Government Reform Subcommittee today that the apparent falsification of data used to support licensing the Yucca Mountain Project in Nevada is reason enough to stop development of the nuclear waste repository. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced in March that emails between federal employees raised suspicions that documents and models about water infiltration at Yucca Mountain have been falsified. Isolation of the 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain for the required 10,000 years depends upon keeping the containers in which it will be stored dry so that they do not corrode and leak. The site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas has been selected by Congress and the President for underground disposal of used nuclear fuel from power plants and high-level waste from U.S. defense programs. The DOE is in the process of seeking licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain. Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, a Republican who has consistently opposed the Yucca Mountain Project, told the subcommittee today that it is time to "find a way to make this fraudulent, bankrupt and unnecessary project stop, not only for the sake of the of the people and environment in my state, but in the best interests of the country as a whole." Guinn told the subcommittee that less than a month after he was elected governor in 1999, he co-authored a letter with then-governor Bob Miller to then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson urging that Yucca Mountain be immediately disqualified as a repository site, citing "strong and compelling scientific evidence indicating the site was incapable of safely isolating deadly radioactive waste." "One of the main points raised in that letter was, ironically, the existence of very rapid groundwater pathways and evidence showing that rapid water movement through the site would expedite the corrosion of waste disposal containers underground at Yucca Mountain and very quickly transport radioactive materials to the aquifer and from there to water sources used by people and communities," Guinn said. Guinn said it is probable that the information Richardson relied on in denying his request was based on "fabricated data," since the data believed to have been falsified involved U.S. Geological Survey studies of groundwater movement at Yucca Mountain. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced March 16, “During the document review process associated with the Licensing Support Network preparation for the Yucca Mountain project, DOE contractors discovered multiple emails written between May 1998 and March 2000, in which a USGS employee indicated that he had fabricated documentation of his work." "It is certainly suspicious, if not outright incriminating," Guinn said today, "that those USGS studies were ordered by DOE in an attempt to contradict earlier DOE and state of Nevada research findings that were not to DOE’s liking." “In 2002, when President [George W.] Bush, acting on Secretary Abraham’s advice, recommended that Congress endorse continuing the Yucca Mountain program, he was likely also acting on information that was grounded in falsified data," said Guinn. "The President personally told me that he would base his decision on sound science." Governor Guinn was permitted a veto of the Yucca Mountain Project, and he did veto it, but Congress overrode his veto to allow the nuclear waste repository to proceed. “I wonder how many of you in Congress, who voted in the summer of 2002 to override my veto of the project, would have done so if you had known that a fundamental underpinning of the Yucca Mountain project was based on fraudulent and intentionally falsified data," the governor said today. Before becoming Nevada’s governor, Guinn was the CEO for the largest utility company in Nevada, Southwest Gas, and for more than a year he was the acting president at University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV). "If any scientists or engineers working for me were found to have fabricated or otherwise misrepresented information regarding academic work at UNLV or any Southwest Gas project, they would have been dealt with swiftly and harshly," Guinn said today. “Yet, here we sit today, three weeks since Secretary Bodman disclosed the existence of falsified Yucca Mountain data, and no one has been permitted to see the emails in question or interview the scientists involved. What we get from DOE is obfuscating and damage control." Nevada Senator John Ensign, a Republican, has seen several of the emails. "I’m stunned by the number of references to deleting and destroying emails, fudging information and not telling anyone how something was done," Ensign said on Friday. "From ‘I will be happy to make up more stuff’ to ‘Science by peer pressure is dangerous but sometime [sic] it is necessary,’ the emails are proof that the only thing necessary at this point is that we get to the truth," Ensign said. "It seems that Yucca Mountain’s destiny is that of a mountain of lies and nothing else.” In his testimony to the subcommittee today, Ensign warned that the emails refer to fabricating information about an essential element of safety at Yucca Mountain. "The fact that the alleged fraud deals with the issue of water infiltration is critical because it impacts the corrosion of casks and the containment of radioactivity," he said. “We’re not talking about how realistic this scenario would be for a science fiction novel or a movie script," Ensign said. "The corrosion of casks and the containment of radioactivity are frightening realities that Nevadans and all Americans face should this project proceed based on fraudulent science.” Ensign and Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat who serves as Senate Minority Leader, have jointly demanded that the DOE and all contractors suspend all work related to the license application for Yucca Mountain project. "The Department should wait until the investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, the Inspector Generals at the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior into the falsified documents is completed," Reid told the subcommittee today. "It is clear that scientific malpractice has occurred and fundamental questions about the quality, validity and integrity of the scientific review and quality assurance processes associated with the project must first be answered," he said. "I do not believe Yucca Mountain will ever open," Reid said, "and Nevada and our nation will be safer for our successful efforts to stop the project." Reid listed for the subcommittee the obstacles that have been placed in the path of the Yucca Mountain Project during the past 12 months as support for his position that the federal government should take responsibility for the nuclear waste at the reactor sites where it was generated. "This is the right thing to do," said Reid. "I believe nuclear waste should be transferred from spent nuclear fuel pools into dry storage casks and the Department of Energy to take title and responsibility for the waste." Reid pointed out that the DOE has not studied the transportation issues and there are no assurances that DOE can undertake safely the transport of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from 126 sites in 39 states by rail and road to Yucca Mountain. "I do not understand how DOE can consider beginning a licensing process for the repository when you do not even know how you would transport all this waste or if you can even do this safely. There is no way to guarantee the health and safety of Nevadans or any other Americans," said Reid. "It should be obvious to everyone now that Yucca Mountain isn't going anywhere," he said. "It is abundantly clear that there is no such thing as sound science at Yucca Mountain." Federal officials said investigations are underway into the allegations of fraudulent data, and they will take steps to ensure the science that underlies Yucca Mountain is sound. Bodman said, "The Department of Energy has initiated a scientific investigation of the data and documentation that was part of this modeling activity. If in the course of that review any work is found to be deficient, it will be replaced or supplemented with analysis and documentation that meets appropriate quality assurance standards to ensure that the scientific basis of the project is sound. We are conducting a thorough review of all work completed by the identified individuals to ensure that other work was not affected. " USGS Director Chip Groat said March 16, "Serious questions have been raised about quality assurance practices performed in 1998-2000 by USGS scientists on the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project for the Department of Energy. Two actions are underway to investigate these issues. First, I have referred the matter to the Inspector General for action. Second, I have initiated an internal review of the allegations. Once the facts are known, appropriate actions will be taken. USGS remains committed to maintaining scientific excellence." Roadblocks on the way to opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository over the past 12 months as listed by Senator Reid today are: On April 30, 2004, the Government Accountability Office issued a report on the quality assurance problems with the project, finding that the DOE “have not solved the quality assurance problems or corrected management weaknesses, and that future actions are needed . . . and the quality assurance problems could delay the licensing process.” On July 9, 2004 the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the people of Nevada in an argument to stop the Yucca Mountain project. The court decided that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's radiation standard for the site is not stringent enough to protect the public from the significant risks associated with nuclear waste and failed to follow the recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences. On August 31, 2004 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected DOE’s Yucca Mountain document database, saying it had failed to make public many of the documents that it had in its possession. The Licensing Board said, “Given the 15 years that DOE had to gather, review, and produce its documents and the fact that the date of production, and the incompleteness of its privilege review, it is clear to us that DOE did not meet its obligation, in good faith, to make all reasonable efforts to make all documentary materials available.” On October 4, 2004, the DOE Inspector General found that DOE gave away more than $500,000 worth of Yucca Mountain construction equipment in 2003. Half a million dollars in most people’s lives is a lot of money. On November 22, 2004 the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said the DOE does not have a plan for safely transporting nuclear waste to the proposed repository. On February 7, 2005 Dr. Margaret Chu, most recently the director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Nuclear Waste, said the project would be delayed until 2012 and DOE’s license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would not be filed until December, a year after the application was expected to have been filed. On February 8, 2005 the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board called for hearings in May to review concerns over the corrosion of the titanium drip shields that are intended to keep water from leaking into casks inside Yucca Mountain. On February 28, 2005, a DOE official said the proposed Yucca Mountain repository may not open until 2017. ---- Official: U.S. May Not Build Waste Dump Tue Apr 5, 4:29 PM ET By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050405/ap_on_go_co/yucca_mountain_4 WASHINGTON - The planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada won't be built unless the Energy Department is confident of the supporting science after investigating e-mails that showed workers discussing fabricating data, an official said Tuesday. Under angry questioning from Nevada lawmakers, deputy director Theodore Garrish said the department was preparing to apply for a license to run the dump, but "we have not made a final decision yet as to when or whether to file those documents, and some of that will be based on this investigation." "I can assure you we will not go forward unless we can have the feeling ourselves first that this repository will be safe," said Garrish. Reassurances from Garrish and Charles Groat, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, didn't satisfy the Nevadans. They have seized on the e-mails, written by USGS employees, as the latest reason to kill the dump planned for 90 miles north of Las Vegas. Officials from Gov. Kenny Guinn on down expressed outrage Tuesday during a House Government Reform subcommittee hearing. "The fact that data may have been intentionally fabricated in service of shoring up predetermined and politically driven conclusions calls into question the very legitimacy of this entire program," Guinn said. The Energy Department disclosed March 16 that e-mails written between 1998 and 2000, principally by two USGS scientists, suggested the workers might have falsified documents. Porter's committee has released redacted versions of dozens of the e-mails that show workers discussing concocting facts and keeping two sets of figures, one for themselves and one to show quality assurance officers. In one e-mail a USGS scientist wrote: "I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names. ... This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." The workers were studying how water moved through the desert site where the government wants to store 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste for at least 10,000 years. The USGS validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape. In written testimony, Garrish downplayed the significance of the e-mails. "This appears to be a lapse in quality assurance protocol and, at this time, we have no evidence that the underlying science was affected," his written testimony said. He seemed to soften his position when he addressed the subcommittee, suggesting more study was needed. "The impact of this issue is yet to be determined, and yes, we are concerned about the integrity of the data, and what was done was inexcusable," Garrish said. The inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments are conducting criminal investigations with help from the FBI, and the Energy Department is studying the impact on the scientific underpinnings of the planned waste dump site. But Nevada lawmakers called Tuesday for additional reviews. Rep. Jon Porter (news, bio, voting record), R-Nev., who chaired Tuesday's hearing, said he wanted an independent commission similar to the presidential commission that investigated the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. Porter also said he was summoning the two main USGS workers who wrote the e-mails to testify at a hearing next week. Their identities have not been released. Groat said Tuesday they are no longer on the Yucca project but are still employed by USGS. John Mitchell Jr., president and general manager of Bechtel SAIC, the Energy Department's managing contractor on the Yucca project, also testified Tuesday. He said the e-mails were originally discovered by Bechtel workers in early December and were discussed by high-ranking company officials, but weren't turned over to the Energy Department until March. Porter was the only member of the House Government Reform federal work force and agency organization subcommittee to attend Tuesday's panel. He invited Nevada's other two House members, Republican Jim Gibbons and Democrat Shelley Berkley, to join him in questioning witnesses. That turned the three-hour hearing into a face-off between Nevadans adamantly opposed to Yucca and government officials committed to it, and there was little budging on either side. A planned completion date of 2010 for the Yucca project was recently abandoned by Energy Department officials. A new date has not yet been set. On the Net: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ymp.gov Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov ---- Agency pursued damage control Documents show how DOE coped with e-mails about Yucca Mountain By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Tuesday, April 05, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-05-Tue-2005/news/26222791.html WASHINGTON -- Although they were bracing for a big black eye, Energy Department officials believed initially that reports of possibly falsified documents would not affect the science supporting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, documents made public on Monday show. Three dozen pages of newly released memos and other internal documents show how federal officials scrambled to weigh the effect after discovering a cache of e-mail messages in which scientists discussed using "fudge factors" and fabricating quality assurance of computer models used for climate and water studies. The e-mails were brought to the department's attention on March 11 and were announced on March 16. In the days between their discovery and the announcement, officials dissected the e-mail messages written between May 18, 1998, and March 20, 2000. They prepared an initial assessment and talking points to be discussed with Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and used in public disclosures, memos show. According to a memo prepared by a Yucca manager in Las Vegas, Bodman was to be told the information in the e-mails "does not impact the (Yucca) site recommendation, and we do not believe that the questionable data has any meaningful effect" on the science supporting the site as a nuclear waste repository. During the same period, officials started a more detailed investigation, the documents show. They also show the Energy Department was sensitive to how the disclosures would reflect on the Yucca Mountain Project, which has been criticized for its quality controls and has met other legal and budget setbacks. "Depending on the current status of the work to which he contributed, these e-mails may create a substantial vulnerability for the program," said a document that discussed the messages written by one scientist. DOE spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton said internal reviews continue. "If in the course of the ongoing review any work is found to be deficient, it will be replaced or supplemented with analysis and documentation that meets appropriate quality assurance standards," she said. The redacted e-mail documents were made public by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who leads a House subcommittee that at a hearing today will examine the fraud allegations. Porter's subcommittee Friday released a set of e-mail messages in which federal workers discussed making up dates and names and taking other shortcuts in their disgruntlement over quality assurance rules. Among the documents the Energy Department gave the subcommittee to support its initial conclusions about the e-mails were parts of a June 2002 radiation dose study. The study compared water infiltration data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey with "worst case" estimates of rainfall at the site. "The result of that study showed that repository performance was not significantly affected," according to one document. The study was cited several times in the released material. The documents provide a possible preview of how federal officials will respond when questioned about the e-mails at today's subcommittee hearing. Officials representing the Energy Department and the U.S. Geological Survey are scheduled to testify before the House Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization. Inspectors from DOE and the Interior Department who have started an investigation of the e-mails also will testify, with John Garrick, chairman of the independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which monitors Yucca Mountain science matters. Porter said Monday he does not accept government statements that downplay the potential damages to the repository from the e-mails. "Of course they are going to say that," said Porter, who, with most other Nevada elected leaders, has battled Yucca Mountain. "This is the fox guarding the henhouse. "These internal documents are saying there was a deliberate failure of quality assurance," Porter said. "I think they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and they are now trying to come up with excuses." Porter said the subcommittee is scheduling a follow-up hearing on April 13 in which he plans to invite the e-mails' authors to testify. The documents made public Friday suggested the most provocative messages were exchanged among a handful of U.S. Geological Survey scientists. Porter said the panel has not yet worked out details in connection with the workers, who have not been publicly identified and who are the subject of an investigation that involves the FBI. "We need to know how far and how high this goes," Porter said. The Government Accountability Office, which has been critical of Yucca Mountain quality assurance in several reports, also will be invited, he said. Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Nevada's senators are scheduled to testify today. They are expected to urge Congress to shut down the Yucca program until multiple investigations run their course. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a letter to Bodman on Monday that the fraud allegations amount to "scientific malpractice." "Fundamental questions about the quality, validity and integrity of the scientific review and quality assurance processes associated with the Yucca Mountain Project must first be answered" before work is resumed, the senators said. -------- new mexico LANL Sets Off Mock Warhead By John Fleck Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer Tuesday, April 5, 2005 http://www.abqjournal.com/santafe/334155north_news04-05-05.htm?splashtop Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists set off a mock nuclear warhead Friday, a key step in the refurbishment of the aging weapon. With inert material substituted for the warhead's plutonium, the experiment allowed the scientists to get an x-ray at the instant of the weapon's detonation without any resulting nuclear yield. Kevin Jones, head of the lab's experimental division, described the test as "a long pregnant pause with about a second of excitement." The weapon, the W76 submarine-launched missile warhead, is scheduled for renovation, beginning in 2007. The test was conducted at the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility at Los Alamos, which contaions a a machine capable of generating the world's most powerful x-ray flashes. That allows scientists to x-ray the dense metal of a mock nuclear weapon as it is being detonated, to study how the materials inside it behave. Full-scale nuclear weapon tests have been prohibited by U.S. government policy since 1992, so scientists substitute other materials for the weapon's plutonium. Real weapons-grade plutonium generates a nuclear chain reaction when squeezed by the warhead's high explosives. Jones would not say what plutonium substitute was used. The exploding device was contained within a nylon tent that was filled with a foam to contain radioactive materials used in the test. "We do use some nuclear material, and that's the purpose of the foam, so we don't eject it into the enviroment," Jones said. The W76 is the backbone of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, with an estimated 2,300 in service. Designed in the 1970s at Los Alamos, the warhead has recently been the subject of controversy. A handful of scientists within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex contend a design flaw could cause the W76 to explode with substantially less explosive force than it was designed it unleash. Officials at Los Alamos and the National Nuclear Security Administration deny the charge. A lab spokesman said Friday's test was unrelated to the alleged problem. Jones said an initial look at the data collected Friday indicates the test was a success. The test is part of the NNSA's Stockpile Life Extension Program, which involves refurbishing aging nuclear weapons by replacing some components. In order to do that, testing is required to ensure that the new parts will work the same way as the old ones. In a recent interview, Los Alamos weapons program chief John Immele said the W76 program is on schedule. -------- ohio NRC: Ohio nuclear plant must do more Perry remains under scrutiny despite being operated safely, regulators say By: Justin Maynor Staff Writer 04/05/2005 http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14284169&BRD=1698&PAG=461&dept_id=21849&rfi=6 The Perry Nuclear Power Plant continues to operate safely, say Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials, but more needs to be done to improve plant performance and decrease the level of regulatory scrutiny. Representatives from the NRC met Monday with FirstEnergy officials for the plant's annual end-of-cycle performance evaluation - the first such meeting since the plant was moved into the NRC's second-highest category of scrutiny in August 2004. "Perry operated safely, but they have some performance problems that they have to address before they can move out of column four," said Steven Reynolds, NRC oversight manager for the plant in North Perry Village and the Davis-Besse plant in Oak Harbor. Its place in the five-column classification system means the NRC is effectively doubling the number of inspection hours for the plant this year, said NRC Senior Public Affairs Officer Jan Strasma. Baseline inspections amount to 2,100-2,200 hours a year, and additional inspections of 1,800-2,000 hours will be conducted in 2005. Perry is one of only two plants in the country under the NRC's column-four classification. Perry Vice President Richard Anderson assured the commission that safety remains the plant's top priority, but acknowledged there is much work to be done to improve performance. Equipment problems from 2002 to 2004 were the primary factor leading to increased NRC oversight, and FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said the plant has already addressed seven of the plant's top 10 equipment issues. First Energy Nuclear Operating Co. President Gary Leidich said the company put an additional $10 million into facility improvements at Perry in 2004, and will double that amount this year. This amount is in addition to the plant's normal operating budget of just less than $100 million, Leidich said. The plant is currently in a refueling state, and Schneider said improvements to the plant's emergency service water system, feedwater digital control system and more than 80 electrical circuit breakers will improve operation reliability when the plant goes back online. The NRC also cited concerns of failure to follow procedures and inattention to detail by plant staff. Anderson said FirstEnergy has not yet done enough to avoid "consequential errors," and that staff need to better understand underlying reasons for procedures to ensure that they're followed at all times. NRC and FirstEnergy officials agreed that the plant has a long way to go in addressing issues raised by recent inspections, and in the meantime, Perry will remain a plant of "national focus," NRC Regional Administrator James Caldwell said. The NRC is in the final phase of a five-month inspection period to be completed in May, which officials say will mark the end of the beginning of getting Perry back to where it needs to be. The NRC will issue a report once the inspection is complete, and another public meeting will be held at that time to address the results. -------- utah Foes of Goshute nuclear waste plan take case to D.C. By Jerry Spangler Deseret Morning News Tuesday, April 5, 2005 http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600123719,00.html WASHINGTON — Having thus far failed to make their case in the courts, opponents of storing 40,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County took their cause to the nation's capital Monday, calling the proposal "environmental racism" and "nuclear colonialism." Environmental organizations and Native American environmental justice organizations called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject a license application by Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of nuclear power utilities, to store the waste in canisters above ground on lands owned by the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes. "Locating high-level radioactive waste facilities on Indian lands violates the trust responsibility of the U.S. government, federal laws and treaties, and is an extreme example of the continuing environmental racist policies against Indian people," said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network. "PFS must be stopped." Environmental justice issues, such as the impacts of the waste facility on traditional tribal values, were not considered by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board when it voted 2-1 to recommend the NRC grant PFS a license. But those issues will certainly be the focus of litigation should the NRC grant the license, participants said. Margene Bullcreek, who has spearheaded Goshute opposition in Utah through her group Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness, said the issue for Goshutes is not about how much money the 130 band members would get from the deal, but "who we are" as Native Americans. "This waste will destroy who we are," she said. Anne Sward Hansen, a Utahn with the Environmental Justice Foundation, called for congressional oversight of Goshute tribal officials and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who all approved the PFS lease in a deal that Hansen and others now say was fraught with corruption and illegalities. "The merits of this case need to be heard in some judicial or oversight venue before the NRC commissioners grant approval for a PFS license," Hansen said. If the issues are not addressed, she added, "the NRC decision could become historically the greatest act of environmental racism and injustice in America." According to opponents, tribal members have never voted on the proposal, and tribal chairman Leon Bear, who negotiated the PFS deal, has thwarted such attempts and changed tribal election rules to remain in power after his term expired last November, Bullcreek said. Goshutes opposed to PFS, led by Bullcreek, have been fighting for years to have Bear removed from office, but their case has been rejected by the courts, which ordered the matter resolved by the BIA and the tribe. Even if Bear were to be removed from office, the band would probably be legally bound to the PFS deal under terms of the contract, and it could take years and years of litigation to resolve any attempt to pull out, Goldtooth said. PFS opponents are trying to raise public awareness of the PFS proposal in light of a hearing scheduled Wednesday on an appeal by the state of Utah of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board's decision. The full NRC will then make a decision on whether to accept or reject the recommendations of the board. Utah officials have been fighting the PFS proposal for years, but so far all attempts to challenge the project in court have failed and the state's contentions before nuclear waste regulators that the project posed insurmountable risks were rejected by the licensing board, a quasi-judicial body within the NRC that advises the commissioners. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is continuing the opposition efforts, and last week he sent a letter to the organizers of Monday's event, saying "your unified message on behalf of the millions of people your collective organizations represent is both heartwarming and overwhelming." Some 350 different organizations have now signed on to a letter to the NRC opposing the PFS license. "Shipping nuclear waste to Utah does not eliminate terrorism or radiological risks at operating nuclear power plants, but extrapolates those serious risks to the Skull Valley band of Goshute Indians, residents of Utah and communities along the transportation route," Huntsman wrote. If that fails and PFS is licensed, Kevin Kamps with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service predicted an outpouring of nonviolent civil disobedience as tens of thousands of Americans seek to stop the shipments of waste through thousands of communities — just as 20,000 Germans turned out to block waste shipments there. Kamps predicted people "will be doing everything in their power" to stop the waste shipments. E-mail: spang@desnews.com -------- washington Protest filed in river cleanup contract Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald staff writer http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/6349410p-6226720c.html A protest against the newly awarded $1.9 billion contract for cleaning up Hanford's river corridor stopped the transition of the project to a new contractor Tuesday afternoon. Losing bidder Fluor Corp. filed the protest with the Government Accountability Office, said Todd Nelson, spokesman for Washington Closure. Washington Closure, led by Washington Group International, was awarded the new seven-year contract March 23. The GAO has 100 days to rule on the protest, and no work on a transition may be done while the decision is pending. Work will continue to be done by Bechtel Hanford, which already has had 10 short-term contract extensions while the Department of Energy worked to award a contract. In April 2003, DOE awarded the contract, but the decision was overturned by the end of the year in a successful protest, and Bechtel Hanford kept doing the work. "Obviously, we're disappointed," Nelson said. "We're ready to go. We hope it's a short protest." The project includes placing the four remaining plutonium production reactors in safe storage, or cocooning them; cleaning up waste sites and burial grounds near the Columbia River; tearing down contaminated facilities and operating a huge landfill for radioactive waste in central Hanford. No information was available late Tuesday on Fluor's grounds for the protest. Many of the companies forming teams to bid on the current river corridor contract also bid two years ago. But the teams have shuffled players. Two years ago, Fluor was on the team that was awarded the river corridor contract. Washington Group at the time teamed with Fluor Federal Services and Earth Tech to submit the bid. It was successfully challenged by a team of Bechtel National and CH2M Hill on the grounds that it was based on unrealistic cost calculations. When DOE put out a new request for proposals, Washington Group formed a limited liability corporation with the team that had challenged the previous bid award, Bechtel National and CH2M Hill. Protests of major contract awards by DOE at Hanford have become routine. DOE is planning to issue a new request for proposals this month after its award of a small-business contract for shutting down Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility was successfully challenged. An award to operate the 222-S Laboratory at Hanford recently was upheld by the GAO. ---- U.S. plan for Hanford reactor questioned Energy's approach may not be most effective, report says By SHANNON DININNY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tuesday, April 5, 2005 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/218833_hanford05.html YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy should reevaluate its plans for deactivating and decontaminating a one-of-a-kind reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the agency's inspector general said in a report released yesterday. The report centered on the federal government's plans for closing the Fast Flux Test Facility, the last remaining sodium-cooled reactor in the United States. Built to test advanced nuclear fuels, the reactor was used for research, to produce medical and industrial isotopes, and to make tritium from 1982 until 1992. After much debate about its future, the reactor was finally ordered closed in December 2001. The Energy Department awarded a $235 million small business contract to Knoxville, Tenn.-based SEC Closure Alliance last September to perform some of the closure work. Another bidder challenged that contract. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, upheld the challenge, saying the Energy Department did not evaluate bids fairly. The Energy Department's existing project plan may not be the most effective approach to shutting down the reactor, the inspector general said. The final end state of the reactor remains uncertain, in part because a required environmental impact statement has not been completed. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Washington have repeatedly argued that money for deactivating the reactor could be better spent on cleaning up other Hanford projects that pose a greater risk to the environment. Those issues should be thoroughly examined as part of a comprehensive reevaluation of the Energy Department's future plans to deactivate, decontaminate and decommission the reactor, the report said. A spokesman for the Energy Department in Washington, D.C., said yesterday that there had been no change in policy regarding the shutdown and dismantling of the reactor. In a letter last month to the GAO, the Energy Department said it would again open the contract for bids. The letter said the agency will negotiate with the EPA and the state over their concerns and will evaluate new budget information that could change the cleanup plans. -------- us nuc waste New Alloy Contains Spent Nuclear Fuel More Safely BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania, April 5, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-05-09.asp#anchor7 A new alloy developed and patented by researchers at Lehigh University, Sandia National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory could help the U.S. dispose more safely of its stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel. Currently, 50,000 tons of spent fuel are stored at 125 sites in 39 states. A nickel-based alloy with added gadolinium showed far greater ability than any other alloy to absorb the deadly radioactive neutrons emitted by nuclear waste, according to John DuPont, professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh and principal investigator on the project. Unveiled in the December 2004 issue of the American Welding Society's "Welding Journal," the discovery is the result of a four year study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Spent Nuclear Fuel Program. The article, titled "Physical and Welding Metallurgy of Gadolinium-enriched Austenitic Alloys for Spent Nuclear Fuel Applications - Part II," won the society's Warren F. Savage Award for advancing the understanding of welding metallurgy. The research group, which includes DuPont at Lehigh and scientists from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and the Idaho National Laboratory, conducted laboratory tests to determine the optimum amount of gadolinium to add to the nickel-based alloy. Gadolinium is a silvery-white metal that occurs naturally in several different minerals. The researchers demonstrated that gadolinium can be added to specific nickel alloys and retain its malleability and ductility, as well as its ability to be heat-treated, shaped and fabricated readily into a desired shape. Most important, says DuPont, is the fact that gadolinium absorbs neutrons, at a rate more than 60 times greater than the next best material, boron. Borated stainless steel is the material commonly used in conventional nuclear-waste containers. However, borated stainless steel is not capable of housing some of the nation's highly radioactive spent fuel. The higher neutron absorption capacity of gadolinium, says DuPont, means that highly radioactive fuel can now be safely transported to and stored at a permanent facility. The tests involved mixing the constituent elements of the alloy, heating and melting the mixture, and allowing it to cool and solidify. The alloy was then heated and rolled into half-inch-thick sheets, and subjected to strength and ductility tests. "We designed and developed various alloys to determine the quantity of gadolinium that could be added while still maintaining the desired properties," says DuPont. "We needed to be able to heat-treat the final material, weld it and fabricate it." A specification has been approved for the alloy by the American Society of Testing Materials, which sets technical standards for materials, products, systems and services. The alloy is being reviewed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which also sets standards for the use of new products. Neutron absorption tests on the alloy were performed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The research team was awarded a U.S. patent for the gadolinium-nickel alloy last year. The researchers spent a year investigating gadolinium enriched stainless steel alloys for spent nuclear fuel storage applications before hitting major obstacles to the production of those alloys using conventional hot working techniques. The article comes amidst a controversy over plans by the Bush administration and Congress to transport the nation's spent nuclear fuel to Nevada and deposit it inside Yucca Mountain about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In 2002, over the objections of Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed into law a resolution approving Yucca Mountain as the geologic repository for the nation's spent nuclear fuel. DOE's application for a license to build the project is pending before the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The state of Nevada, contending that the Yucca Mountain project is environmentally and geologically unsafe, has filed lawsuits against DOE, NRC, President Bush and former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. -------- http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/05/518554147.html?nuclear April 05, 2005 Opposition to Utah site growing By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Opposition to the proposed Private Fuel Storage nuclear waste site in Utah grows stronger as its critics fear a temporary agreement will turn into a permanent one. The nation's nuclear waste is supposed to end up at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but as recent allegations of falsified documents have made that permanent dump's fate even more uncertain, attention could shift to a proposed storage site in Skull Valley, Utah. "Yucca Mountain's future becomes cloudier every day," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program. Hauter called the recently revealed e-mails that indicate work had been falsified "one more nail in the coffin of Yucca Mountain." Work continues on the Yucca Mountain dump and its supporters have said they will not comment on the e-mails' potential effect due to ongoing investigations by the FBI and the inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments. Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight nuclear utilities, aims to construct the above-ground temporary storage site at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. It is up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to grant a license for the consortium to be able to receive and store waste in up to 4,000 storage containers. The site would store up to 44,000 tons of waste for 20 years, with an option to extend the license by an additional 20 years. Utah residents and members of the Goshute tribe are protesting how the site was selected. They are warning about the dangers of moving waste across the country to Utah and are concerned about the potential health and safety risks involved with storing the waste, from radiation exposure to terrorism. Those objections and concerns mirror Nevada's arguments against the Yucca Mountain dump. "Our reservation is not desolate, nor is it barren," said tribe member Margene Bullcreek at a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday. Bullcreek heads an organization called Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia, which is Goshute for Timber Setting Community. "The waste storage will bring devastation to our people and future generations. The future generations do not have any part in today's decisions." Bullcreek said because the Yucca repository may never open, the waste would just be left in Skull Valley without a permanent storage option. "There should be no temporary site because it will become permanent," she said. The Skull Valley debate also involves allegations of bribery and corruption surrounding the tribe's leader Leon Bear. Bullcreek and others claim they have never seen the agreement between the tribe and PFS to use the reservation land and that Bear continues to serve as the tribe's leader even though his term has expired. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman sent a letter to Public Citizen and other critics of the site Friday thanking them for their work against the project. "Nuclear waste should be stored onsite at the facility that generated the waste until a permanent facility is available," Huntsman wrote. "Shipping nuclear waste to Utah does not eliminate terrorism or radiological risks to the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, residents of Utah and communities along the transportation corridors." Critics are pointing to problems with the plan in advance of a hearing at the NRC on Wednesday. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an NRC administrative panel, granted the state of Utah's request for an appeal to the panel's Feb. 24 decision that allowed the Private Fuel Storage project to move to a commission vote. The board found that the consortium had adequately made its case that the chance of an aircraft crash occurring in which a waste container was damaged -- and radioactivity was released -- was less than one in a million per year. But Utah disagrees. The three-hour hearing, which will take place at NRC's headquarters in Rockville, Md., will be open to the public -- a significant change in a process that has largely been conducted behind closed doors due to the amount of safeguarded information involved. ---- http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/05/518554619.html?nuclear April 05, 2005 DOE had knowledge of Yucca e-mails in December Porter conducting hearing on alleged data falsification By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU DOE Documents a.. "DOE is having some sticker shock for the price of the program," April 5,' 2000 a.. "I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass here, but from what I've seen, ev' ryone has to cover their own asses, while at the same time work hard at being ' eam players and making sure the job gets done," Jan. 20, 1999 a.. "I'm sure the public would love to see how YMP (Yucca Mountain Project) s' ends resources trying to figure out whether or not the mountain is safe," Apri' , 28, 1999. a.. "Perhaps DOE (Energy Department) should be honest with the NRC (Nuclear R' gulatory Commission) and tell them they are not funding an infiltration map th' s year." Nov. 18, 1998. WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department knew about e-mails detailing possibly falsified work on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in December, according to internal department memos released Monday. The department developed talking points and fact sheets before announcing the problem in March. Department officials had contrasting opinions about the potential impact of the e-mails and the alleged falsification, with one writer doubting it had any meaning and another finding potential "vulnerabilities" with what appeared to be "deliberate failures" in the process to back up the science of the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump. The new documents were released Monday by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., as a follow-up to Friday's release of 93 pages of partially redacted e-mails. Porter is conducting a hearing today into the alleged falsification of work on the dump. Among those expected to testify are Ted Garrish, the Energy Department's top Yucca Mountain official, Charles "Chip" Groat, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, and the inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments. Monday's documents included the e-mails, several previously unreleased messages and internal memos compiled as the department learned about the situation. One memo says the first knowledge of the e-mails occurred in December 2004 while the department was reviewing documents for License Support Network. Meetings took place but "no specific action resulted." Instead, "a conversation about other e-mail issues" brought the matter up again on March 9. An undated memo between unamed Radioactive Waste Management employees said a memo was sent March 11 "describing potential program vulnerabilities resulting from what appear to be deliberate failures to follow quality assurance procedures and possible falsification of data committed by a USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) employee" between May 18, 1998, and March 20, 2000. That memo also includes a June 2002 report using plans developed by the department and the U.S. Geological Survey to determine radiation doses that may include the data allegedly falsified by the employee. The report concluded water infiltration in the mountain would not disqualify it from being recommended as the site to store nuclear waste. The memo gives the recipient five "key points for your discussion with the Secretary," including "the implication of the information contained in the e-mails does not impact the site recommendation and we do not believe that the questionable data has any meaningful effect on the results supporting the site recommendation," according to the memo. But also in the new document set, a separate, heavily redacted memo with a recommended course of action for the still unnamed employee says, "Depending on the current status of the work to which he contributed, these e-mails may create a substantial vulnerability for the program." Monday's documents include a detailed list of 53 e-mails in question. Names and other identifying information has been redacted but the department summarized the suspicious language in each. Other memos give more information about the people involved. One document says the technical staff involved worked on "planning and fielding an extensive shallow drilling program (over 75 boreholes) that produced the data used to estimate how much of the precipitation that falls at Yucca Mountain has a potential to infiltrate and potentially reach repository depths." Water is an important concern at the dump site because it can carry radiation through the rock and eventually down into the groundwater. Another memo says one of the people involved worked for five months in 2000 as a data verification engineer using his Nuclear Regulatory Commission background and knowledge of the commission's auditing procedures. He left the project in August 2000 but returned in July 2003 as a senior licensing engineer. The memos say work discussed in the e-mails affects two current Analysis and Model Reports but the people named in the e-mails worked on more than 150 reports or data sets. All the memos discuss an investigation into the matter and a review of the data in question. One document said review will take four to eight weeks. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Monday demanding that work at Yucca Mountain stop until investigations into the alleged data falsification are complete. "It is clear that scientific malpractice has occurred and fundamental questions about the quality, validity and integrity of the scientific review and quality assurance processes associated with the YMP (Yucca Mountain project) must first be answered about the project," the senators wrote. "Given the magnitude of human health and safety implications of the Yucca Mountain project, we hope that you will act immediately on this request." But work on the project will continue. "The department is thoroughly investigating the alleged falsifications of the quality assurance documents and related work while aggressively moving forward with the license application," said department spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton. "If in the course of the ongoing investigations if any work is found to be deficient, it will be replaced or supplemented with analysis and documentation that meet appropriate Quality Assurance standards." ---- Top Yucca scientist opts for early retirement By Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN April 05, 2005 http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/05/518554159.html?nuclear A top scientist who had worked for years on the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump effort took early retirement on March 29. Michael Voegele, the lead Yucca Mountain scientist with Bechtel-SAIC, the company hired by the government to build the nuclear dump, took advantage of an opportunity to retire early, Bechtel-SAIC spokesman Jason Bohne said Monday. "The timing was right for him personally," Bohne of Las Vegas said. Voegele had been overseeing technical work prepared for a licensing application to allow the Energy Department to build the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Voegele could not be reached for comment Monday. Bohne said Voegele's retirement after two decades with the company had nothing to do with the federal investigations into alleged falsification of documents related to the dump. At least two U.S. Geological Survey scientists have suggested falsifications of data on water flow rates, a key issue in isolating radioactive wastes, as well as potential climate changes. The e-mails were circulated between 1998 and 2000 among other scientists studying Yucca Mountain. Voegele was chief scientist for Bechtel-SAIC when the Yucca Mountain contractor sent 6 million pages of information about the mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in July 2004, a first step in applying for a license. At the time the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were struggling with 293 key technical issues, areas both the department and the commission agreed needed more answers. Voegele said at the time that 101 issues had been reviewed and accepted by the commission. -------- MILITARY -------- afghanistan Afghanistan likely to have permanent US military By Peter Spiegel in London Published: April 5 2005 21:47 Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c09c7152-a612-11d9-b67b-00000e2511c8.html Afghanistan's defence minister on Tuesday gave one of the clearest signs yet that Kabul is open to permanent basing of US forces in the country, saying his government was in discussions with the US that could include air bases in Afghanistan after the current nation-building process ends. General Abdul Rahim Wardak said the details of what would constitute a long-term US presence were still under discussion. But he signalled Kabul was eager for “enduring arrangements” that could include permanent air bases or “pre-positioned” military equipment that would be used by rapidly deployed US forces in a crisis. “We will certainly seek enduring relations and partnerships with our international friends,” Gen Wardak told a gathering of military analysts in London. “This will prevent the repetition of the catastrophic disengagement of the international community from Afghanistan in the 1990s, which cost us all so dearly.” The discussions have been under way for several months, but both US and Afghan officials have been reluctant to discuss the issue given geopolitical sensitivities in the region, particularly in neighbouring Iran. Senator John McCain, an influential Republican on defence issues, first hinted at such a possibility in February, when after a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, he said it was his “personal view” that permanent joint bases should be established. Last month, General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, acknowledged during a trip to Afghanistan that the US was considering such a move. Such comments come as the US continues to expand its capabilities at its main air base in Bagram, a Soviet-era facility north of Kabul, where it is building a new runway. Bagram would be the most likely location of a permanent US presence. Gen Wardak sought to assuage concerns of neighbouring countries of a permanent US presence, saying any agreement with the US would come at the same time Kabul attempted to secure security pacts with regional powers. He dismissed reports that the US was using Afghanistan as a staging base to conduct reconnaissance operations in Iran. “The US has enough electronic capability to do it from anywhere else. They don't need to do it from Afghanistan.” The US military is due this week to hand control of a civil-military unit based in the western city of Herat, close to the Iranian border, to Nato. The handover is part of a scheduled expansion of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, but may help quell rumours that the US was using the unit as a figleaf for a military build-up near Afghanistan's neighbour. Additional reporting by Victoria Burnett in Islamabad -------- biological weapons Bioterror Plans Inadequate, GAO Says Government Has Yet to Develop Certified Anthrax Test Procedures, Study Shows By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26608-2005Apr4.html Despite the nation's deadly 2001 experience with anthrax in the mail, federal scientists have not agreed on a method to determine whether workplaces, postal facilities or other sites that might have been exposed are free of contamination, according to a congressional study. The lack of certified anthrax sampling procedures means "there can be little confidence in negative results," the Government Accountability Office reported. Nor can U.S. environmental and health experts answer with confidence what GAO investigators called the basic question: "Is this building contaminated?" The report is the latest in a series of government reviews that have questioned the effectiveness of the country's bioterrorism response plans. The Washington area has experienced several false alarms prompted by new biological agent detection systems. They include last month's incident at two Pentagon-related mail facilities; a February 2004 report of the toxin ricin in a Senate office building; and a November 2003 alarm at a Navy mail processing center in Anacostia. A separate draft report that examined the response by local governments to March 14 incidents at two Defense Department mail facilities concluded that uncertainty over testing "muddied the communications flow" and confused the public. During the incidents, defense officials shut down Pentagon mail delivery and placed 900 workers on preventive antibiotics. Authorities later blamed "quality control problems" at a contract testing laboratory for contaminating a key sample. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, which requested the GAO study, said its findings expose a risk to homeland security. "Every false positive brings multiple federal agencies stumbling to the scene with no real plan, and every false negative risks complacency in the face of a lethal threat," Shays said. "Without validated detection protocols, we risk terrorizing ourselves with false positives that put people on antibiotics needlessly and false negatives that breed a false sense of security." In its report, the GAO recommends that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff coordinate anthrax response and testing. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed in a written response to the GAO that coordinated, improved testing methods are needed. But she noted that scientifically "validated" standards were not available in 2001. Gerberding said developing a testing protocol that would cover "every possible scenario" is impractical given the technical challenges, time and cost involved. She said "scientific judgment and evaluation" should be relied upon instead. A CDC representative will testify at a hearing today before Shay's panel, along with officials from Virginia, the defense department, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Postal Service, American Postal Workers Union and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. The GAO report says that 23 of 286 facilities tested by federal agencies in 2001 returned positive results for anthrax bacteria. But at two of the 23 facilities, test results were initially negative, and at one facility -- in Wallingford, Conn. -- it was not until the fourth testing that a positive hit was recorded. The U.S. Postal Service reported in August that no further testing was warranted, and no additional postal workers have reported anthrax disease. The GAO agreed that postal workers were at little risk but added, "We cannot rely on the argument that no one has become sick to answer the question of whether facilities are contaminated." The Department of Homeland Security and EPA have been ordered by Congress to reach agreement by August on crisis management responsibilities, the report says. -------- iraq Zarqawi Said to Be Behind Iraq Raid Assault on Abu Ghraib May Signal New Tactics By Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24808-2005Apr4?language=printer BAGHDAD, April 4 -- Insurgent groups led by foreigners and Iraqis asserted Monday that guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi's organization was responsible for a major assault on Abu Ghraib prison Saturday that U.S. officers called one of the most sophisticated attacks of the insurgency. Rocket barrages forced Marine guards to abandon a prison watchtower at the height of the precision-timed offensive, which employed mortars, rockets, ground assaults and a car bomb, a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, said Monday. U.S. rapid-response troops, backed by Apache helicopters and artillery, fired small arms and grenades to help the guards drive attackers back from prison walls, Rudisill said. The battle wounded 44 American troops and 13 of the more than 3,000 detainees held at the prison. "It was one of the more concerted attacks that we've seen," said Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman. Asked if there had been any other insurgent attack that surpassed it, Boylan said, "Not that I'm aware of." In an interview, Iraqi insurgent leaders said the assault was carried out by Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq. The claim was also made in the name of the group on a radical Islamic Web site. The group's numerous attacks had until now largely involved suicide bombings, car bombings and kidnappings rather than direct confrontations with U.S. forces. U.S. authorities said they had not yet determined the veracity of the claims. Boylan said it was "too early to say whether this is a new trend or a new strategy'' for the insurgency, which in March inflicted fewer casualties on U.S. forces than in any month since February 2004. Insurgent commanders said Monday that the prison assault represented a shift in tactics and that more attacks on U.S. installations would follow. "These operations will be different from the old ones, the car bombs, the IEDs,'' said Abu Jalal, a top commander in the extremist group Mohammed's Army, using the common abbreviation for improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs. Mohammed's Army is one of dozens of home-grown armed groups believed to be fighting the U.S. occupation in Iraq. "We are going to use the same method that they used when they attacked Iraq," said Abu Jalal, who uses a nom de guerre and described himself as a former general in the Iraqi military during Saddam Hussein's rule. "The old military officers know very well that the attacks on the bases of the enemy army weaken the morale of the soldiers and frighten them. The soldier feels safe when he goes back to his base. If he is attacked in the place that feels safe, that place is really hell," Abu Jalal said. If Zarqawi was behind the attack, it was unclear where or when his movement acquired the tactical expertise to directly confront U.S. Marines. Abu Jalal denied that former military officers in Mohammed's Army had served as advisers, saying, "It was 100 percent Zarqawi." The statement on the radical Web site said "sources with the enemy" had helped provide information to plot the attack. Abu Jalal said the attack had been launched to free a commander of Zarqawi's group and associates held at Abu Ghraib. The prison complex at Abu Ghraib, about 20 miles west of Baghdad, became notorious for torture under Hussein. After the U.S. invasion toppled Hussein, Abu Ghraib was taken over by the U.S. military and became the focus of widely publicized abuses of detainees by American forces. U.S. officials decided this year to eventually close the prison, in part because it is located in an area heavily populated by insurgents and their supporters. The raid Saturday was launched at dusk and appeared to involve at least 40 to 50 men, U.S. officers said. The insurgents opened the attack with barrages of 81mm and 120mm mortar rounds, followed by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. military said. Arab media reports said some of the projectiles landed inside the prison, causing the injuries among detainees. At least one rocket-propelled grenade hit a corner watchtower, wounding Marine guards inside. The explosion forced the guard team to abandon the tower, Rudisill said. The heaviest damage was caused by a mortar round that destroyed a refrigerator truck, he said. Ground fighters among the insurgents advanced only after the mortar and rocket assault had ended and attacked the prison from two directions simultaneously. The smaller of the thrusts was apparently a feint to divert attention from the main attack, Rudisill said, who cited both tactics as evidence of sophisticated planning. Arab media said the attackers withdrew under covering fire. The U.S. military reported one rebel killed and dozens wounded. Authorities declined to say whether any insurgents had been captured. Rudisill said the prison's walls were not breached and that no inmates escaped. U.S. forces were able to blow up a vehicle bomb before it reached the prison walls, he said. Rudisill said he believed there was no evidence that a tractor-mounted bomb that exploded near Abu Ghraib on Monday was meant for the prison, saying the explosion was too far away for prison guards to see. Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report. -------- russia / chechnya Attacks on new Bolshoi opera revive Russia's memories of Stalinism By Arkady Ostrovsky Published: April 5 2005 03:00 http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8dc84736-a56f-11d9-8616-00000e2511c8.html As the Bolshoi Theatre was preparing last month to premiere its first modern opera in almost 30 years, the main action was unfolding outside Russia's most important stage. In front of the former imperial theatre, the activists of the pro-Putin youth party, Moving Together, were protesting against the staging of Rosenthal's Children, a new opera based on a libretto by Vladimir Sorokin, one of Russia's most controversial postmodernist writers. "Banish pornographer and excrement-eater from the Bolshoi Theatre" read one banner. "Deputies, protect the main stage of the country from pornographers," said another. The protesters may have been few in number, but they were part of a rising tide of intolerance and witch-hunting in Russian cultural and political life. Last week a Moscow court convicted two human rights campaigners for organising an art exhibition that the Russian Orthodox Church found offensive. Comments from state politicians, generals and clerics about what should be performed, published and broadcast, or not, are becoming more audible - reminiscent, some say, of 1930s Stalinist rhetoric. "We must cleanse Russian culture of the parasites like Sorokin who have stuck to it during the so-called democratic years of Yeltsin's government. This will be the first step towards reviving great Russian culture. There is no place for pornography at the Bolshoi," says Boris Yakimenko, initiator of the protests. In fact, there is nothing pornographic or indecent in the witty opera composed by Leonid Desyatnikov and staged by a Lithuanian director, Eimuntas Nyakroshus. At the centre of the plot is Alex Rosenthal, a German expert on cloning who flees Nazi Germany and comes to the Soviet Union to clone Stakhanovites - efficient workers. Instead he produces clones of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Mussorgsky and Verdi. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the laboratory closes for lack of funding and the homeless composers are forced to live in a Moscow railway station among tramps and prostitutes. In any other European country it would have been the subject of a lively debate among opera fans and critics, but in Russia it entered the political realm. The Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, decided to launch an inquiry into the content of the opera. Sergei Neverov, a member of the pro-Putin United Russia party, said: "We can't allow Sorokin's vulgar plays to be staged at the theatre deemed to be the pride of Russian culture, and this pornography to be shown and then discussed by the whole country." The criticism aimed at Rosenthal's Children resembled the Stalin-era rhetoric directed against Dmitri Shostakovich's legendary opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, famously labelled by Pravda in 1936 as "a cacophony instead of music". Anatoly Smelyansky, Russia's leading theatre historian, says that unlike in the 1930s, however, when the persecution of artists was directed by Stalin, today's attacks are part of a broader wave of nationalism: "These protests are extremely dangerous because they are harnessing the worst instincts in Russian people." While President Vladimir Putin has not endorsed the outbursts of intolerance and nationalism, he has done little to stop them. In one of the more alarming cases, a Moscow court convicted the organisers of an art exhibition of inciting religious hatred while letting the people who ransacked it go free. The case, initiated by pro-Kremlin deputies, related to an art exhibition exploring attitudes towards religion, called: "Caution, Religion!" The exhibition contained blasphemous imagery, including a portrait of Christ on a Coca-Cola advert with the words, "This is my blood". Andrei Zorin, a prominent Russian cultural historian, says: "Whatever one thinks of this exhibition, the court ruling has effectively legitimised the attacks by acquitting the hooligans who vandalised it and revealed its inquisitional nature by punishing the organisers of the show." This case disturbed many Russian liberals, not because they liked the exhibition - most of them did not - but because they saw in it confirmation of a dangerous alliance between the darker side of the Russian Orthodox Church and nationalistic political parties. -------- space National space-control policy April 05, 2005 Washington Times By Rep. Terry Everett, Alabama Republican, chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces House Armed Services Committee http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050404-084700-4985r.htm To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com The 21st century has brought more technology into the lives of Americans than Buck Rogers could have ever imagined. And not surprisingly, much of our electronic advancement is linked to space. While it is recognized that all nations have a right to utilize space for their benefit, this does not mean that we must sacrifice our ability to protect our valuable assets. It is clear that we must develop a balanced space- control policy that reflects our need for uncompromised space assets as well as promoting the safety of a civilian space-related infrastructure. Today, as never before, the United States depends greatly on activities conducted hundreds of miles over our heads through constellations of satellites and their ground stations back on earth. Yet, for all their sophistication, these cutting-edge systems, which make our lives much easier and our country safer, are also vulnerable to enemy attack. It is time for the nation to recognize this threat and take action to prevent chaos at home and on the high-tech battlefield. Consider, for example, the havoc and costs that several computer-based viruses have wreaked on millions of unsuspecting individuals and businesses in the last few years. The ability to compromise satellite delivery and data is even more alarming. It's well known that our military, especially our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, depends on space every moment of the day. Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites guide munitions, aircraft and vehicles through the theater of battle. Other satellite systems enable our war fighters with real-time communications, intelligence and weather-monitoring capabilities. Our space assets provide national policy-makers critical intelligence necessary for ensuring compliance with arms-control treaties, tracking weapons- proliferation activities and monitoring disaster-relief operations. But few recognize that a routine task like making a call from a cellular phone or withdrawing cash from an ATM has space connections. Moreover, other essential civilian activities rely on space assets and involve critical operations like air-traffic control, harbor security and storm tracking. Even production agriculture has become reliant on GPS to precisely apply seed, fertilizer and herbicides for more efficient and safer farming methods. Not only do these space systems allow America to enjoy the cheapest food supply in the world, but they also make farming much more environmentally friendly. These space assets are a seamless and integral part of our day-to-day lives and as a nation we must take action to protect this national investment. It's the responsibility and obligation of the federal government to protect and defend our space-based technology much in the same way we protect and defend our assets in the air, at sea or on the ground. As such, the need for a clear and concise national space-control policy is more important than ever. A range of options exist for our national space-control policy. These options run the gamut of depending on situational awareness in space to the physical destruction of adversarial targets that pose a threat. This policy should address three key components: 1) susceptibility of our assets in space, 2) the vulnerability of space assets on the ground (like our mission control stations) and 3) the integrity of data passed through these assets. At a minimum, the national policy must include the development of a comprehensive capability that will alleviate our current state of blindness to even small objects in space. The Department of Defense and industry must work together to develop and employ engineering solutions that will increase the protection of our nation's military and civilian space-related infrastructure. Additionally, the nation must develop a strategy and advance capabilities to render attacks against our space systems useless and inflict painful ramifications to any threatening adversary. Given our dependence on this vast resource, it is clear that we must safeguard and protect it. It is also clear, however, that we cannot jeopardize the security of our men and women in uniform by allowing our space-based communications systems to be vulnerable to attack. Development of a well-thought space-control policy is the right and responsible action. This year the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces will grapple with this important issue in an attempt to bring to light the realities of today's space-reliant environment. The goal will be to inform the nation of this challenge and articulate a legislative solution to the development of a national space control policy. The time is at hand to unify divergent strategies to protect our national interests. I welcome all those with good ideas and a willingness to work together to develop a national space-control policy for the benefit and security of our country. ---- Don’t use space for war, protesters say By PAM ZUBECK THE GAZETTE The Gazette; Date:Apr 5, 2005 http://daily.gazette.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VGhlR2F6ZXR0ZS8yMDA1LzA0LzA1I0FyMDEyMDI=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom The 21st National Space Symposium isn’t a gathering of scientists, corporate giants and military officers. It’s a convention of designers of weapons of mass destruction. That’s the view of a band of protesters who picketed Monday at the Broadmoor International Center on the opening day of the symposium. Spearheaded by the Citizens for Peace in Space, a Colorado Springsbased group, the peaceful protest involved about 20 people and attempted to raise the issue of waging war in space. “This is nothing more than the military-industrial complex looking for a new market for warfare,” said Bruce Gagnon of Portland, Maine, who heads the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. “They realize if they can move warfare into the heavens they stand to make the most incredible profits in the history of the planet,” he said. The group, formed in 1992, waved posters that said, “Space Domination, Group Think = War” and other slogans opposing space exploration with the goal of military dominance. Gagnon said opposition to space warfare is growing and that 175 groups affiliated with the Global Network are working to stop weapons in space. He noted the Pentagon is over budget on an array of space-based projects. To pay for such extravagances, Gagnon said, the government wants to cut social programs, including health care for the poor and elderly, education and libraries. He blamed the “corporate dominated” media for not informing Americans of the military push into space and its consequences. Kelly Dougherty of Colorado Springs said she saw firsthand as a National Guard soldier serving in Iraq the devastation space-aided weapons can inflict. Dougherty, who belongs to the 200-member Iraq Veterans Against the War, said untold numbers of Iraqi men, women and children have been killed by “smart bombs” and other weapons. Symposiumgoers largely ignored the protesters, with some shaking their heads in disapproval. Asked to comment on the protesters’ claims, Steve Eisenhart, spokesman for the symposium’s sponsor, the Colorado Springsbased Space Foundation, said, “They are certainly welcome to acknowledge their concerns and so forth. We think this conference focuses on the positive aspects of space, the ways it benefits society, national security, medical benefits.” The symposium continues through Thursday. CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or zubeck@gazette.com -------- spies A Failure of Policy, Not Spying By Ashton B. Carter Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Washington Post; Page A23 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26524-2005Apr4?language=printer President Bush praised the Robb-Silberman commission report for its scathing and perceptive analysis of "intelligence failures" in the "axis of evil" states of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Indeed, the report contains many useful recommendations for improving intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. But the fallacy in the administration's appointment of a commission to study intelligence failures is that there is almost never such a thing as a pure intelligence failure. Intelligence failure is usually linked to policy failure. Let's take the case of North Korea. While the commission's chapters on North Korea's nuclear program are rightly classified, the unclassified summary suggests that spies and satellites have yielded very little information about that country's nuclear weapons efforts. But what does it matter? North Korea has admitted, indeed boasted, of its growing nuclear arsenal, and the United States has done nothing to stop it. How could a few more details provided by the CIA make a difference? If you don't have a policy, intelligence is irrelevant. North Korea's runaway nuclear program is a policy failure, not an intelligence failure. What's worse, policy failure has actually caused intelligence failure in North Korea. From 1994 to 2003 North Korea's plutonium was at a known location, Yongbyon, where it was measured, handled and surveilled by international (including American) inspectors. We could inspect it -- or bomb it -- at any time. But when North Korea threw the inspectors out and threatened to truck the plutonium away to a hidden location, the United States did nothing. In due course the North Koreans made good on their threat and took the plutonium away. Are we now supposed to believe that it is an "intelligence failure" that we don't know where it is? A second member of the axis of evil, Iran, demonstrates the same point. Iran, unlike North Korea, denies it has a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration firmly contends that it does and is almost surely right, even though the intelligence is apparently not a "slam dunk." But since the United States apparently does not plan either to attack Iran's nuclear sites or to try to negotiate them away (the Europeans are supposed to be trying the negotiation route), it hardly matters whether we know all the details. The "intelligence failure" that prompted the creation of the Robb-Silberman commission was, of course, Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction. Here there surely was a policy -- full-scale invasion, no less -- and no one can accuse the United States of inaction. Knowing what we thought we knew, invasion was absolutely the right decision. WMD are too dangerous to take chances. But Bush has since made it clear that even if he knew then what we know now -- that the information on Hussein's weapons was "nearly worthless," in the words of the Robb-Silberman commission -- he would have invaded anyway. There were other reasons for his policy -- Hussein's mistreatment of his population and the wider implications for the Middle East of his continued rule in Iraq. Future historians will decide, we all hope favorably, whether his policy was a success or a failure, but they will know from his own testimony that the CIA's "intelligence failure" was not the determining factor. It therefore is a fact that in the three most important cases studied by the commission -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- the intelligence failures the commission so carefully identifies and makes recommendations to correct made no difference to policy success or failure. The commission's recommendations focus on improving intelligence on classical proliferation targets -- rogue regimes such as the three axis-of-evil states and Libya. But in the post-Sept. 11 world, we have to fear WMD not just in the hands of national governments but in the hands of terrorists. The nation's failure to prevent Sept. 11 was less one of intelligence gaps than inaction in the face of clear threat. With WMD terrorism, the policy-intelligence mismatch is also evident. Osama bin Laden has declared it a "sacred duty" of jihadists to get nuclear weapons. We hardly need more intelligence on his intentions. But to make a bomb, bin Laden's followers must get either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. U.S. efforts to safeguard these materials worldwide, even after Sept. 11, have been halfhearted. The tremendous success of the Nunn-Lugar program in denuclearizing the former Soviet Union in the 1990s has not been replicated in the post-Cold War era of terrorism. If the United States had such a vigorous set of policies to combat nuclear terrorism, it would need good intelligence to implement those policies. But until we get the policy right, it hardly matters that the intelligence is imperfect. Without a comprehensive policy to combat WMD, better intelligence alone will not improve U.S. security. Bush was right to say that keeping the worst weapons out of the hands of the worst people is a U.S. president's highest national security priority. Since Sept. 11, under his leadership, we have scored many successes against the worst people. With the nation at last taking action against terrorists, intelligence has improved to support the new activism, according to the Robb-Silberman commission. But U.S. policy toward the worst weapons is still in a pre-Sept. 11 state. Indeed, since Sept. 11 the United States has suffered greater setbacks in counterproliferation than at any time since the 1980s, when Pakistan went nuclear. Until this changes, preventing intelligence failures will not matter. The writer is co-director of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project and was assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration. He testified before the Robb-Silberman commission. This article appeared in the early edition of the Sunday Post, but dropped out of later editions to make way for commentary on the death of Pope John Paul II. -------- us They're Talking Up Arms Military recruiters are fortifying their outposts at high schools, hoping a chummy familiarity will entice students to enlist. Some decry the tactics. By Erika Hayasaki Times Staff Writer April 5, 2005 http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes586.html Marine Sgt. Rick Carloss is as familiar to students as some teachers at Downey High School. He does push-ups with students during PE classes and plays in faculty basketball games. During lunch, he hands out key chains, T-shirts and posters that proclaim: "Think of Me As Your New Guidance Counselor." On a recent morning, Carloss drove his silver 1996 Mercedes-Benz from his recruiting station to the school two blocks away. A parking attendant waved him into the lot, saying, "Hi, dear." Inside the attendance office, Carloss kissed two secretaries on their foreheads. "I need you to summon a young man out of class for me," he told one. "OK," she replied. "What's his name?" The young man, Gilbert Rodriguez, was an 18-year-old senior. He was enlisting in the Marines the next day. Carloss needed go over paperwork with him. Walking through corridors, Carloss pounded a student's fist in greeting, chatted with another about a novel she was reading, shook hands with administrators. The sergeant entered the library and a student shouted: "Hey, Carloss!" Such familiarity is what the Marines and Army believe they need if they are to keep their ranks replenished. As the conflict in Iraq entered its third year, the Marines missed their monthly recruiting goals in January through March for the first time in a decade, and the Army and the National Guard also fell short of their needs. This year, the Army and the Marines plan not only to increase the number of recruiters, but also to penetrate high schools more deeply, especially those least likely to send graduates to college. For Carloss and other recruiters, part of the way has been cleared by the No Child Left Behind education law of 2002, which provides the military with students' home addresses and telephone numbers. It also guarantees that any school that allows college or job recruiters on campus must make the same provision for the military. Once in the door, lining up enlistees means becoming part of the school culture. Carloss spent seven weeks in recruiting classes to hone his marketing and communication skills. His techniques are similar to those in the Army's "School Recruiting Program Handbook," published last year. The guide instructs recruiters to deliver doughnuts and coffee for the school staff once a month; attend faculty and parent meetings; chaperon dances; participate in Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month events; meet with the student government, newspaper editors and athletes; and lead the football team in calisthenics. It lays out a month-by-month plan to make recruiters "indispensable" on campus. The booklet states: "Be so helpful and so much a part of the school scene that you are in constant demand." It advises recruiters to get to know young leaders because "some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist." Some teachers, parents and students are complaining about what they consider to be overly aggressive recruitment tactics, especially at schools with low-income and minority students. That criticism has prompted some schools, such as Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights, to curb military recruiting. But at others, like Downey, which serves mostly Latino students from working-class families, recruiters like Carloss are welcomed. Carloss, 33, one of the Marines' best recruiters, has the kind of charm and outgoing personality that enables him to relate to students. After graduating from Dorsey High School in South Los Angeles, he studied radio broadcasting at Santa Monica College for two years. In 1991, he joined the Marines because he wanted leadership skills and to earn money for college. The military paid for his education at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Inside a lunch room, Carloss sat with Rodriguez and another Marine recruit, Matthew Tovar, an 18-year-old senior who will leave for boot camp in July. Rodriguez had planned to attend Rio Hondo College's police academy in Whittier, but several months ago he learned after talking to Carloss that he could receive training in the Marines to prepare him for his dream career as a police detective. At Rio Hondo, "the training they were going to give him is something he has to pay for," Carloss said. "This option will be better for the future," said Rodriguez, who has spent much of his life supporting himself. While attending Downey High, he worked full time as a store manager. Sitting in the lunch room, Carloss told both young men that with money he earned in the military, he bought a motorcycle and a house, in addition to his Mercedes. His cellphone rang. It played a 50 Cent rap tune. The sergeant took off his Rolex watch and handed it to Tovar. Tovar examined it and smiled: "That could be me one day." Tovar relates to Carloss. Both like nice cars and Sean John clothing. Both lost best friends in shootings, in neighborhoods where they were both "at the wrong place at the wrong time." Both chose the Marines over the streets of South Los Angeles. "He's a very good role model," said Tovar, who wanted to be a Marine even before meeting Carloss. "He knows how the kids are." Carloss professes not to pay attention to recruiting quotas. "Do I really look at this as a numbers game?" he said. "I don't. The kids are going to come [to the military] regardless of how I carry myself." But Allen Kanner, a Berkeley child psychologist and the author of "Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World," who has tracked military recruitment in schools, said teenagers are easily influenced. "They are less sophisticated in terms of analyzing the purpose of an advertisement, and the strategies and manipulation being used to convince them to buy into joining the Army," Kanner said. University High School student Jose Dubon recently wrote an editorial for the campus newspaper in which he stated: "The Army managed to get a Hummer rolling on 24-inch dubs, blasting rap, lined with flames on the side, outside of Room C161." He continued: "Dressed in Army uniforms, recruiters stood outside telling people that if they signed up, they [would] receive a T-shirt that said, in Spanish, "YO SOY EL ARMY." Karen Magee, who has taught history for 22 years at the Downtown Business Magnet School, said her students have complained that recruiters have offered to buy their prom tickets if they sign up for information about enlisting. Recruiters have attended dances and faculty meetings, she said, and offered to take students to dinner. In December, recruiters approached her in the hall and asked if they could visit her classroom, Magee said. She refused. Other teachers did not. At Sylmar High School, which has mostly low-income Latino students, recruiters walk around in groups of two or three during lunch and approach students at bus stops, said Erika Herran, 16. She added: "I can't even remember a time when I have seen a college recruiter on campus." At Bell High School, parents and students wanted to know why administrators recently required 500 juniors to take the 3 1/2 -hour Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test. The test is designed by the Department of Defense as a prime recruitment tool providing the military with "pre-qualified" leads, according to the Army handbook. Recruiters pitch the test to principals and counselors as a "career exploration and assessment exam." Yesenia Mojarro, career counselor at Bell, said the school gave the test to the junior class for the first time this year to assess career strengths. She said proctors told students that if they were not interested in a military career, they could withhold their home address or phone number. Itzuri Villa, 16, a junior at Bell, said that when a teacher told her that it had not been not mandatory, she said students began yelling: " 'What?' Everyone was bothered. Why were we testing? Most of us didn't want to test because we were afraid they were going to try to recruit us." Her father, Gustavo Villa, said the school never asked for permission to give the test. Recruiters call his daughter weekly, Villa said. Like many parents, he did not know that under No Child Left Behind, his daughter could "opt out" of providing contact information to military recruiters. In the Downey Marine office, five recruiters spend about two to three hours a day calling students. Those they cannot reach by phone they sometimes visit at home. Master Sgt. John Bertolette, the Marine recruiting director in Downey, said his staffers know their limits. "We know not everyone is cut out to be a Marine," he said. "We don't get on the phone and badger or beat the issue." Inside the office, a white board on the wall lists 25 "target" high schools. For each campus, recruiters had listed the number of male students, visits to the campus and total signed contracts for 2005. Dave Griesmer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said the military seeks diverse candidates, regardless of income level. But he added: "You're not going to waste your resources if you're in sales in a market that is not going to produce. "We certainly don't discount any school," he said. "But if 95% of kids in that area go on to college, a recruiter is going to decide where the best market is. Recruiters need to prioritize." At San Marino High School, in an affluent San Gabriel Valley neighborhood, career center director Shanna Soltis said she has seen one military recruiter so far this school year. They rarely stop by, she said, because about 98% of San Marino graduates attend college. A group called the Coalition Against Militarism in Schools, composed of Los Angeles teachers, recently began keeping track of recruiting on high school campuses. The group has joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to file public records requests to gain access to recruiters' records and information they distribute to students. In the East Los Angeles Army office, recruiters sense the backlash. Two of the recruiters, both sergeants, recently arrived during lunch hour at Jefferson High in South-Central L.A., checking in at the front office. The school does not allow them to wander the halls or make pitches to students passing by. Instead, they are required to stay in the career center or the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps classroom. "Two years ago, we could walk around on campus and say, 'Hi, I'm with the military,' " said Sgt. Eldhen Fajardo. "Now we can't do that." On the way to JROTC, they passed students on the basketball court and the football field. Some stared. One laughed at their uniforms. Another called Fajardo a derogatory name. He brushed it off, saying: "They want to make you mad." Later, they visited the career center. Two Air Force recruiters were already sitting at a table, pamphlets spread out. The four recruiters spent the rest of the lunch period there. No students showed up to meet them. Meanwhile, during lunch at Downey High on a recent afternoon, Carloss and another Marine recruiter presided over a festive scene. They set up a metal exercise bar on the quad and put up poster boards decorated with colorful pictures and slogans. They challenged students to a pull-up contest, offering freebies to those who participated. Carloss solicited students like a game booth vendor. A crowd of curious youths gathered around him. They shouted and laughed, cheering on students who accepted the pull-up challenge. Students held pamphlets and key chains from an Army recruiting table several yards away. They picked up T-shirts and hats from the Marines. Carloss asked them to fill out cards with their name, address, phone number, age and grade. Students must be at least 17 to enlist. Those younger than 18 need parental consent. "Are you scared?" Carloss said jokingly to one boy. Carloss waved down a girl: "Go to one of these boys over here who you think is cute and tell him to do it." "Who?" she replied. "I don't care," Carloss said, "as long as he's 17." ---- Recruiters Shift Focus To Parents USA TODAY April 5, 2005 http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_recruiters_040505,00.html WASHINGTON - Faced with wilting recruitment and ongoing violence in Iraq, Army and Marine Corps recruiters are turning their attention to those most likely to oppose them: parents. The two branches are shifting from a strategy that focused first on wooing potential recruits to one aimed at gaining the trust and attention of their parents by using grass-roots initiatives and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns. The public relations push comes as the Army and Marines, which absorb the brunt of the casualties in Iraq, encounter one of their worst periods in recruitment. Among their initiatives: - Four new "influencer" TV ads by the Army, aimed at moms, dads, coaches and ministers. The ads air this month. - A decision to pair Army recruiters with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on visits to the homes of potential recruits. The idea: Tell parents "the Army story," says Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart. - A nine-minute video, "Parents Speak," in which parents of Marines say the Corps has been good for their children. - A direct-mail campaign by the Marines to parents of high school juniors and seniors. The Marines highlight the benefits of joining and ask for an opportunity to talk to the students' parents about a military career. Studies for the Army show parents are the top obstacles to recruiting. "Opposition to . . . military service is increasing significantly among both moms and dads," says a study of 1,200 potential recruits by the firm Millward Brown. Thinking about Serving? Get the information you need to decide if a military career is right for you. No obligation -- just free information from the branches of service that interest you. Get $1004 a Month! Your service may have earned you great education benefits. Get up to $1004 per month to pay for your undergraduate, graduate or technical degree. Find out about military-friendly schools today. Another look at potential recruits, by GfK Custom Research, found that the biggest influences in candidates' decisions to join were mothers, named by 81% of respondents, followed by fathers, at 70%. "Reach the parents with the Army's new message, particularly moms," the study urges. Both branches are trying to convince parents their children will be instilled with integrity and job skills and that service in Iraq is not a death sentence. Still, recruitment numbers sag. In February, the Army missed its recruiting goal for the first time in nearly five years. The Army missed its March goal by 32%. ---- U.S. Drones Crowd Iraq's Skies to Fight Insurgents By ERIC SCHMITT April 5, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/international/middleeast/05predator.html?pagewanted=print&position= NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev., March 30 - In the skies over Iraq, the number of remotely piloted aircraft - increasingly crucial tools in tracking insurgents, foiling roadside bombings, protecting convoys and launching missile attacks - has shot up to more than 700 now from just a handful four years ago, military officials say. As the American military continues to shift its emphasis to counterinsurgency and antiterrorism missions, the aircraft are in such demand that the Pentagon is poised to spend more than $13 billion on them through the end of the decade. The aircraft are being put into service so quickly that the various military and intelligence branches are struggling to keep pace with the increased number of operators required and with the lack of common policy and strategy on how to use them. There are nearly a dozen varieties in service now, from the 4.5-pound Ravens that patrol 100 feet off the ground to the giant Global Hawks that can soar at 60,000 feet and take on sophisticated reconnaissance missions. And while much of the appeal of the aircraft is that they keep aircrews out of the line of fire, there are now so many of them buzzing around combat zones that, in fact, the airspace can get dangerously crowded. In November, for example, a tiny Army Raven surveillance aircraft plowed into a Kiowa scout helicopter, causing no injuries or serious damage, but raising safety concerns. Army officials insist that it was an isolated case, and cite tighter flight procedures and the addition of strobe lights to smaller aircraft since then. But other military officials have noted several near misses. "What it shows is we've got to make sure the lack of control of the airspace and the separation of these things doesn't contribute to disasters of these things hitting one another," Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said about the November accident in an interview. Never before has the American military used so many remotely piloted aircraft in such diverse missions, and many officers call them the wave of the future. At a command hub spread among a half dozen dimly lit trailers at this air base just off the Las Vegas Strip, the future is now. Small teams of remote-control warriors nudge joysticks to fly armed Predator aircraft 7,500 miles away. Once the Predators take off in Iraq or Afghanistan for missions, the air crews here take over. The Predator, which can carry Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, is the best-known of the remotely piloted fleet. It is an ungainly, propeller-driven craft that flies as slowly as 80 miles per hour, and can loiter continuously for 24 hours or more at 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the battlefield. In each trailer, a pilot and co-pilot , who operate the Predator's zoom lens, radar and infrared sensors, sit side-by-side before an array of consoles and computer screens that let them see what the Predator sees while they talk to troops on the ground by radio or e-mail. Soldiers and ground spotters can receive live video images from the Predator on specially equipped laptop computers. "I can watch the rear of a building for a bad guy escaping when troops go in the front, and flash an infrared beam on the guy that our troops can see with their night-vision goggles," said Maj. John Erickson, 33, an F-16 fighter pilot who has spent 18 months in a stationary cockpit here. Commanders say the aircraft have played a pivotal role recently by attacking insurgent mortar positions and warning convoys of suspicious roadblocks that could be ambushes. To bury roadside bombs, insurgents often douse the street with gasoline, ignite it, and dig up the heat-softened asphalt to lay the explosive. The Predator heat sensors detect the hot strips, and warn nearby troops, military officials said. Predators are also a weapon of choice for the Central Intelligence Agency. Hellfire missiles launched from a Predator three years ago destroyed a car in Yemen, killing an operative of Al Qaeda and five other occupants inside. Last August, the United States secretly deployed a new version, a bigger, faster and more heavily armed model called Predator B, for the C.I.A. to use in the Middle East, administration officials said. With every commander clamoring for a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, the 24-hour operations are putting strains on the aircraft and their operators. In just the past week, two $5 million Predators crashed near their base north of Baghdad, bringing to 25 the number that have been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan to storms, pilot error, enemy fire or mechanical failure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Air Force said. The Air Force is steadily training new Predator pilots and sensor operators at a desert base 45 miles northwest of here. But Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Goldfein, the air warfare center commander here, said he has only about half the Predator pilots he needs, and he worries about the stresses that the eight-hour-a-day, six-day-a week job puts on them. Moreover, the Air Force announced last month that it was adding 15 new Predator squadrons to the three existing ones. In Washington, a fierce competition has erupted among the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force over which will take the lead in coordinating the military's policy and strategy involving unmanned aircraft. The Joint Chiefs of Staff met twice in the last week to discuss these sensitive decisions and to underscore the need to set aside rivalries and streamline the flow of information to troops. A new report by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, warns that planning in the Defense Department has failed to keep pace with the rapid development and fielding of remotely piloted aircraft. "D.O.D. still lacks a viable strategic plan and oversight body to guide U.A.V. development efforts and related investment decisions," said the report, issued on March 9. It said a Pentagon task force created to address these issues has limited authority and no enforcement power over programs. Between 750 and 800 remotely piloted aircraft are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a vast majority in Iraq, two military officials said. About two dozen of the Air Force's 58 Predators are flying in the two countries, officials said. In the battle of Falluja and surrounding areas last November, Predators fired about 40 Hellfire missiles. One Global Hawk operates in the Persian Gulf region. In addition to these aircraft, the Marine Corps is flying 100 aerial vehicles in Iraq, including Pioneers and Dragon Eyes. The Army is flying hundreds of Ravens, as well as larger Shadow, Hunter and I-Gnat aircraft. "We're flying the wings off it," Lt. Col. Stephen K. Iwicki, a senior Army intelligence officer, said of the Hunter, which will soon be armed with a small, laster-guided explosive called viper strike. While some pilots in Iraq express concern over sharing airspace with the remotely piloted aircraft, they are proving popular with ground troops. Sgt. Rowe Stayton, who just finished a stint as an infantry fire-team leader in northern Baghdad, is a booster for the Raven, in particular. He recalled one incident where the aircraft tracked some suspected insurgents after they had dug up something and put it into a vehicle. Troops later seized the vehicle and found it full of mortar tubes and rounds. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence Gonzales to Defend Patriot Act Renewal Tuesday, April 5, 2005 By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/04/04/national/w125249D23.DTL Critics of the USA Patriot Act want the kind of real debate they were denied when the sweeping anti-terrorism law was passed 45 days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he's willing to accommodate them, but he wants all the law's expiring provisions to be renewed. Gonzales was headed to Capitol Hill on Tuesday no less determined than his predecessor to defend the Patriot Act against arguments that it intrudes into people's lives. But Gonzales is employing a softer tone than John Ashcroft while making the point that the law has helped prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "The attorney general has said before that if there are suggestions that can add to the government's ability to root out terrorists and aid us in the war on terror, he will certainly work with Congress to do that," Gonzales spokesman Kevin Madden said. "He looks forward to a healthy discussion about those provisions." Gonzales was invited to testify Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee and before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. FBI Director Robert Mueller, who also wants full reauthorization of the Patriot Act, was to join Gonzales for his Senate appearance. The Patriot Act is the post-Sept. 11 law that expanded the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers. Most of the law is permanent, but 15 provisions will expire in December unless renewed by Congress. On the same day Gonzales was to speak to the Senate committee, Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., planned to reintroduce legislation designed to curb major parts of the Patriot Act that they say went too far. "Cooler heads can now see that the Patriot Act went too far, too fast and that it must be brought back in line with the Constitution," said Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office. The ACLU is part of an unusual coalition of liberal and conservative groups, including the American Conservative Union, that have come together in a joint effort to lobby Congress to repeal key provisions of the Patriot Act. Among the controverisal provisions is a section permitting secret warrants for "books, records, papers, documents and other items" from businesses, hospitals and other organizations. That section is known as the "library provision" by its critics. While it does not specifically mention bookstores or libraries, critics say the government could use it to subpoena library and bookstore records and snoop into the reading habits of innocent Americans. The Bush administration has acknowledged using it only once. But the criticism has led five states and 375 communities in 43 states to pass anti-Patriot Act resolutions, the ACLU says. Even some Republicans are concerned. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has suggested it should be tougher for federal officials to use that provision. Gonzales already has agreed to two minor changes to the provision, and was expected to address those Tuesday, a Justice Department official said on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt Gonzales' testimony. He will support giving someone who receives a secret warrant under the provision the right to consult a lawyer and challenge the warrant in court, and will back slightly tightening the standard for issuing subpoenas, the official said. Neither change addresses the central concern of opponents, which is that it allows the government to seize records of people who are not suspected terrorists or spies. Critics say the law allows the government to target certain groups, but the Justice Department counters that no Patriot Act-related civil rights abuses have been proven. Just in case, Craig and Durbin want Congress to curb both expiring and nonexpiring parts of the Patriot Act, including the expiring "library" provision and "sneak and peek" or delayed notification warrants. Those warrants — which will not expire in December — allow federal officials to search suspects' homes without telling them until later. The Justice Department said federal prosecutors have asked for 155 such warrants since 2001. Gonzales also notes that the law has been used in non-terrorism cases. For example, federal officials used it to track over the Internet a woman who ultimately confessed to strangling an 8-months-pregnant woman and cutting the fetus from her womb. ---- TOPOFF 3 Drill Begins Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_5.html#2601D52F The largest ever U.S. antiterror drill began yesterday in Connecticut and New Jersey with a hose spraying a fake biological agent from a sport utility vehicle, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 18). The $16 million, five-day TOPOFF 3 exercise will test the ability of emergency personnel in the two states to respond to a WMD attack. “I want to make it clear that we are going to push our plans and our systems to the very limit,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “So we expect failure because we’re actually going to be seeking to push to failure, and that is, in our judgment, the best way to get a ‘lessons learned’ from what we do here.” The New Jersey drill began at 9 a.m. yesterday when a vehicle involved in a collision was found to be carrying a commercial sprayer authorities believe was used to disperse a mock biological agent. Investigators and first responders were called to the scene, wearing hazardous materials suits and using a camera-carrying robot to look into the suspect vehicle. Meanwhile, “victims” of the attack began to show up at hospitals. “Everything seems to be working well so far, both medically and law enforcement,” said acting New Jersey Governor Richard Codey. “Nothing’s breaking down so far.” The focus on the New Jersey drill is expected to move today to medical care with the appearance of numerous additional victims, AP reported. In Connecticut, buses were overturned and volunteer “victims” appeared to be horribly injured following a fake 1:30 p.m. chemical weapons explosion in New London, according to AP (Wayne Parry, Associated Press/PhillyBurbs.com, April 5). While officials said the response to the drill was going well, they noted some problems in the dissemination of information between agencies. New London City Manager Richard Brown said city emergency personnel were not told that an emergency center had opened in Hartford or that a state of emergency had been declared. State officials also refused to release information on mustard gas, he said. “I think it flows from the bottom up pretty well,” Brown said. “I’m not so sure about from the state down” (Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press/SouthCoastToday.com, April 5). -------- justice FBI seeks expanded search powers Justice Dept. also wants expiring Patriot Act provisions renewed NBC News and news services Updated: 12:16 p.m. ET April 5, 2005 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7388717/ WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday asked lawmakers to expand the bureau’s ability to obtain records without first asking a judge, and he joined Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in seeking that every temporary provision of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act be renewed. “Now is not the time for us to be engaging in unilateral disarmament” on the legal weapons now available for fighting terrorism, Gonzales, for his part, told senators. He said that some of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act have proven invaluable in fighting terrorism and aiding other investigations. “It’s important that these authorities remain available,” Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mueller said sections of the law that allow intelligence and law enforcement agencies to share information are especially important. “Experience has taught the FBI that there are no neat dividing lines that distinguish criminal, terrorist and foreign intelligence activity,” Mueller said in his prepared testimony. He also asked Congress to expand the FBI’s administrative subpoena powers, which allow the bureau to obtain records without approval or a judge or grand jury. "For many years, the FBI has had administrative subpoena authority for investigations of crimes ranging from drug trafficking to health care fraud to child exploitation," he stated. "Yet, when it comes to terrorism investigations, the FBI has no such authority." 15 provisions at stake The Patriot Act is the post-Sept. 11 law that expanded the government’s surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers. Most of the law is permanent, but 15 provisions will expire in December unless renewed by Congress. On the same day Gonzales was speaking to the Senate committee, Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., planned to reintroduce legislation designed to curb major parts of the Patriot Act that they say went too far. “Cooler heads can now see that the Patriot Act went too far, too fast and that it must be brought back in line with the Constitution,” said Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office. The ACLU is part of an unusual coalition of liberal and conservative groups, including the American Conservative Union, that have come together in a joint effort to lobby Congress to repeal key provisions of the Patriot Act. 'Library provision' is controversial Among the controversial provisions is a section permitting secret warrants for “books, records, papers, documents and other items” from businesses, hospitals and other organizations. That section is known as the “library provision” by its critics. While it does not specifically mention bookstores or libraries, critics say the government could use it to subpoena library and bookstore records and snoop into the reading habits of innocent Americans. Gonzales told lawmakers Tuesday the provision has been used 35 times, but never to obtain library, bookstore, medical or gun sale records. But the criticism has led five states and 375 communities in 43 states to pass anti-Patriot Act resolutions, the ACLU says. Even some Republicans are concerned. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has suggested it should be tougher for federal officials to use that provision. Gonzales already has agreed to two minor changes to the provision, and was expected to support giving someone who receives a secret warrant under the provision the right to consult a lawyer and challenge the warrant in court. He was expected to also back slightly tightening the standard for issuing subpoenas. Bigger concerns Neither change addresses the central concern of opponents, which is that it allows the government to seize records of people who are not suspected terrorists or spies. Critics say the law allows the government to target certain groups, but the Justice Department counters that no Patriot Act-related civil rights abuses have been proven. Just in case, Craig and Durbin want Congress to curb both expiring and nonexpiring parts of the Patriot Act, including the expiring “library” provision and “sneak and peek” or delayed notification warrants. Those warrants — which will not expire in December — allow federal officials to search suspects’ homes without telling them until later. The Justice Department said federal prosecutors have asked for 155 such warrants since 2001. That's just two-tenths of one percent of all search warrants, but their use is growing. The warrants were sought 47 times between the time the law was passed and April of 2003. Since then, it's been invoked 108 times. Gonzales also notes that the law has been used in non-terrorism cases. For example, federal officials used it to track over the Internet a woman who ultimately confessed to strangling a pregnant woman and cutting the fetus from her womb. And such searches have been allowed for years in drug and organized crime cases. The Associated Press and NBC's Pete Williams contributed to this report. ---- Patriot Act Changes to Be Proposed Gonzales Will Seek to Respond to Critics, Get Law Renewed By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A21 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26235-2005Apr4?language=printer Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will propose some "technical modifications" to the controversial USA Patriot Act today in an effort to address the concerns of critics and ensure that the anti-terrorism legislation is renewed by Congress later this year, according to a Justice Department official. In an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales will support changes in the law concerning secret warrants for financial documents, library data and other business records, according to the Justice official. The changes would clearly limit the use of such warrants to national security investigations and would allow targets to mount legal challenges to the search, the official said. The proposal marks a significant shift for the Justice Department, which under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft had refused to entertain proposed changes to the legislation. It also marks an acknowledgment of the growing clout of critics of the law, who come from both the political left and right, and have persuaded scores of communities around the country to pass resolutions condemning the act. The law, approved overwhelmingly in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, dramatically increased the government's power to conduct clandestine searches and surveillance in a range of criminal cases. But about a dozen of its major provisions -- including the records provision that Gonzales has agreed to change -- are set to expire later this year unless Congress acts to renew them. That has laid the groundwork for a series of hearings in both the House and the Senate in coming weeks over the use of the Patriot Act in the past three years. The Justice Department has argued vigorously in favor of renewing the law, saying that the act gives investigators crucial tools to combat shadowy terrorist organizations and prevent future attacks. Much of the law, including aspects that allow criminal and intelligence investigators to better share information, is not in widespread dispute. But other parts have come under increasing attack from an unusual alliance of civil liberties groups and politicians, including some conservative organizations and Republican lawmakers. For example, even as Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III defend the law in the Senate today, Sens. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) have scheduled a news conference to introduce joint legislation aimed at scaling back parts of the law. The event will also be attended by representatives of Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, an ad hoc alliance that includes groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Conservative Union. The group was formed last month in an effort to seek changes in the Patriot Act. Critics of the law say they hope that by pulling together representatives of both parties, they will be able to convince Republican majorities in Congress that parts of the law should not be renewed or should be changed. "It's extremely important for people to see that this is not simply a Republican or Democratic or right or left concern, but that it cuts across the political spectrum," said former congressman Bob Barr of Georgia, who chairs the Checks and Balances group. "I hope it gives members and senators more comfort and some cover so it's not simply that they're supporting the ACLU or the far right." In addition to the provision on business records, critics are likely to focus on measures that loosened standards for secret intelligence warrants and on a permanent provision that allows delayed notification of searches -- known by critics as "sneak-and-peek warrants." In the latter case, the Justice Department released statistics yesterday showing that investigators have used such warrants 155 times since October 2001. Justice officials argue that the number is relatively small given the thousands of warrants executed by law enforcement officials. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Rice Warns of Nuclear Weapons Threats Tue Apr 5, 5:41 PM ET By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050405/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice_interview_3 WASHINGTON - The world may never know precise details about nuclear efforts in Iran and North Korea but must not "under-react" because of incomplete intelligence, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. In her first public remarks about last week's scathing report by a presidential commission studying U.S. spy agencies, Rice said she could not guarantee that U.S. intelligence was on the mark now, as the Bush administration seeks international cooperation to end suspected or declared nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea. "There are no guarantees where intelligence is concerned," Rice said, "particularly when you're dealing with opaque and difficult societies like the ones that tend to want weapons of mass destruction undercover." The report blamed intelligence agencies for knowing "disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors." In a wide-ranging interview, Rice also said that: _ The United States will move cautiously in releasing terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because of the risk that they may do further harm. _ The presence of U.S, troops in Iraq is not itself the cause of continuing violence. The notion that attackers are motivated only by anger at the United States "just isn't right." _ Syria must go beyond its stated intention to withdraw troops and security forces from Lebanon, and remove "undeclared" security forces as well. _ The government of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has turned away from Islamic extremism. _ Tighter control of the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico is justified to "help you to prevent people who are trying to come in to hurt us." Rice declined to say whether anyone should be fired as a result of the intelligence panel's findings. As President Bush's national security adviser, she relied on flawed intelligence about Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction to help make the administration's case for an invasion two years ago. She succeeded Colin Powell as America's top diplomat in January. "We have very good intelligence analysts who were doing their best, but obviously the president's intelligence has to be better than what we got on Iraq," she said Tuesday. International suspicions about Iran and North Korea go far beyond what U.S. intelligence may have found, Rice suggested. North Korea has announced it already has nuclear weapons, and it has refused to return to international arms talks. Iran says it is not hiding a weapons program behind a legitimate drive for civilian nuclear energy, "but they've been caught in a number of suspicious activities," Rice said. "I don't think that there's any doubt worldwide that there is a lot of concern about the nuclear weapons capabilities of these states. And while we may never know the exact nature of any of these programs, we also have to be very careful not to under-react to the fact that you have closed societies that are ambitious in their policies, that are trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction." On the Guantanamo detainees, Rice said that in a few cases where prisoners were released, "we met them again on the battlefield." The Bush administration initially classified all the more 600 foreign-born men it held at Guantanamo as "enemy combatants" ineligible for full protection as prisoners of war and outside the ordinary civil liberties guarantees of U.S. criminal law. The Pentagon has conducted military tribunals to review the circumstances of each Guantanamo detainee's capture and to determine whether the person was properly held. It says that of the roughly 200 already released, at least a dozen have returned to the battlefield. More than 300 additional cases are still being reviewed. At the same time, Rice said, "if there is a case to release them, we don't just want to permanently imprison people either." On Iraq, Rice rejected the idea that continuing attacks on U.S.-led forces were due to American troops' presence in the country two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled. As democracy spreads in Iraq, she said, "you will see more and more, these are very violent people. They are very ruthless people. They are clearly able to wreak chaos but they actually don't have a political platform." Rice credited Pakistan with making a shift of "150 degrees" from almost four years ago when it was one of three countries that recognized the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Pakistan and India were on the verge of open conflict. "It's really night and day," she said. "The Musharraf government has done a lot." The Bush administration announced last month that it will sell sophisticated F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan over India's objections. On the Net: State Department: http://www.state.gov -------- ENERGY -------- energy Western US States Plan Major Power System USA: April 5, 2005 REUTERS http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30240/story.htm SAN FRANCISCO - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the governors of Nevada, Utah and Wyoming have agreed to build an estimated $20 billion electricity transmission system to meet rising demand for power, Wyoming's governor said Monday. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal said on a conference call the "Frontier Line" system would supply electricity-hungry California -- where power demand is growing at about 4 percent annually, or double the national average -- with power from nearby energy-producing states. Fast-growing Las Vegas, Nevada and Salt Lake City, Utah also would be served by the system, which is expected to need up to $5 billion in transmission lines and facilities and up to $15 billion in power plants. "We are prepared to move forward," Freudenthal said. "It is our expectation that this effort will lead to benefits for all of the states involved." Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said his state may join the effort, which would build infrastructure across the western United States to deliver 12,000 megawatts of power, or enough electricity for up to 12 million homes. Coal-fired plants would provide half that amount and wind power the remainder. Officials said they are forming a committee that would develop feasibility and financing plans for the project. Third-party developers would build the system, which could be operating by 2011, with California as its biggest customer. Demand for electricity in California hit record highs on seven occasions last summer, peaking at nearly 46,000 megawatts on Sept. 8. The state was forced to order blackouts during its energy emergency in 2000-2001. In the latest sign of the need for more power, Southern California may have to take aggressive conservation steps to avoid electricity shortages should the coming summer be unusually hot, the operator of the state's power grid said last week. The system operator said a prolonged heat wave in Southern California could leave the region with "critically thin operating margins" and a shortfall of up to about 1,700 megawatts, which could affect about 1.7 million homes. Southern California still needs transmission upgrades and new power plants to meet rising demand with adequate reserves, despite some recent upgrades. Although a transmission corridor -- Path 15 -- connecting Northern and Southern California has been expanded, congestion remains on the corridor farther south -- Path 26 -- limiting the delivery of surplus electricity from north to south. Western states are connected now by big transmission corridors like the north-south Pacific Intertie running from Washington state to California and east-west lines, but power planners have been working to build new pathways to serve the region's growth. (Additional reporting by Leonard Anderson) -------- OTHER -------- environment A Toxic Case in Court Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Washington Post; Page A22 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26530-2005Apr4?language=printer IN PASSING legislation in February restricting most toxic chemicals from being shipped within 2.2 miles of the Capitol, the District of Columbia acted out of a legitimate concern that a terrorist attack on a train carrying dangerous material such as chlorine gas along the city's 37 miles of rails could kill as many as 100,000 people. But instead of moving swiftly to address a life-threatening situation in the national capital region, the federal government chose to wage a legal fight with D.C. leaders. For that reason, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan held a closed session yesterday to hear the federal government's lawsuit against the city. Rail operators, joined by the Justice Department, claim that the District's law exceeds the council's authority, is unconstitutional, and thus should be prevented from taking effect next Monday. But Judge Sullivan correctly decided to use yesterday's hearing to look beyond the plaintiff's pleadings to determine whether the federal government does, in fact, have a security plan to protect the nation's capital if trains carrying hazardous materials through the city are subject to terrorist attack. That question has not been answered to the city's satisfaction. Now the obstinate feds must satisfy the court. The hearing was held behind closed doors because the federal government and the railroad companies contend that security plans should not be discussed in public, which is understandable. But local governments, such as the District, ought to know when highly toxic materials are moving through their jurisdictions as well as how the hazardous cargo will be secured. The District, which plays host to Congress, the White House and the federal judiciary, is a high-risk area, as Sept. 11 will attest. The federal government should be as interested in protecting the District from deadly chemicals as local officials. The public record suggests that squelching the District is the greater priority. If there is any question about the legitimacy of the city's worries, look no farther than January's freight train derailment in South Carolina in which a chlorine leak left nine people dead, more than 200 injured, and caused about 5,400 residents to be evacuated from their homes. Next, there was the train loaded with anhydrous hydrogen fluoride that got derailed in Pennsylvania three weeks later. Mixed with water, that chemical becomes a corrosive acid. Acts of terrorism? No, and that's the point. Trains carrying deadly materials are themselves deadly when wrecked, whether deliberately or by accident. The government has a legitimate concern that successful action by the District may spawn similar local bans on rail shipments across the country. But railing against the District is not the answer. The nation needs better federal oversight and regulation of toxic chemical shipments to render them less vulnerable to attack and accident. That could mean tighter rail security. It certainly shouldn't be reason for the federal government to seek showdowns with local communities. -------- imf / world bank / wto (economics) Bush agrees to help Ukraine join WTO Tuesday April 05, 2005 The News International, Pakistan http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2005-daily/05-04-2005/world/w6.htm WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush said on Monday that he would back Ukraine’s push to joint he World Trade Organisation and would urge the US Congress to lift restrictions on trade with the country. "We agree with your desire to join the WTO, and we’ll work with your government to join the WTO," Bush said at a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. Bush also said he would work with the Congress to lift so-called Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions on Ukraine "that were created in a different era. "Yushchenko told Bush that Ukraine hoped to join the WTO by the end of 2005. Bush also said he would work with the Congress to lift so-called Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions on Ukraine "that were created in a different era. "Yushchenko told Bush that Ukraine hoped to join the WTO by the end of 2005.-Retures The US president downplayed Yushchenko’s move to pull out the last of Ukraine’s 1,600-strong force in Iraq by later this year, which comes as other nations that backed the March 2003 invasion have also brought troops home. "He campaigned on the idea of bringing some troops out. He’s fulfilling a campaign pledge. I fully understand that," Bush said, adding that there was no doubt that the United States will fill any gaps left by such withdrawals. "The fundamental question is: Is it worth it? And the answer is, absolutely it’s worth it for a free Iraq to emerge," he said. "We’re going to continue to press forward with a strategy that supports the elected government of Iraq. "Bush, who frequently cites the pro-western "Orange Revolution" that swept Yushchenko to power, promised US help as Ukraine fights corruption, promotes free-market reforms and seeks acceptance in international organisations. -------- poverty Slum Dwellers Seen Tripling to 3 Billion by 2050 - UN KENYA: April 5, 2005 REUTERS http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30234/story.htm NAIROBI - The number of people living in slums could triple to 3 billion over the next 45 years if nothing is done to stem the spread, a senior UN official said on Monday. Migration from rural areas to urban slums was exacerbating population growth rates in the world's shanty towns, said Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-Habitat, the UN Human Settlements Programme. Tibaijuka called for the projected surge to be reflected in the UN Millennium Development Goals, which currently aims to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. "We need to improve the lives of not just 5 million slum dwellers per year until 2020, but more than 30 million per year if we are to reverse the developing world's headlong plunge into urban poverty," she told the opening ceremony of a week-long conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The number of slum dwellers had increased by 50 million since 2003, Tibaijuka said, adding that this would be equivalent to a slum twice the size of metropolitan Tokyo. The slums, where the natural environment was completely degraded and most people lived on less than a dollar a day, were breeding grounds for HIV/AIDS, she said. Women and children living in the slums suffer abnormally high maternity and child mortality rates there. The UN's Millennium Development Goals aim to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger, combat malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability for 100 million people by 2020.