NucNews - April 18, 2005


<a name="nuclear"></a>

-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- africa

Indonesia gives green light to nuclear power project

Mon Apr 18,12:41 AM ET - AFP

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050418/wl_asia_afp/indonesiaenergynuclear_050418044104

JAKARTA, (AFP) - Indonesian authorities have given the go ahead to build the country's first nuclear power plant on the densely-populated island of Java with the aim of producing electricity by 2016, an official said.

"The project will be tendered in 2008 for start of construction in 2010 and production in 2016," Atomic and Nuclear Energy Agency spokesman Deddy Harsono told AFP.

Harsono said the site of the project, the Muria peninsula on Central Java province's northeast coast, was chosen for its tectonic and volcanic stability -- a major concern in a country that sees regular eruptions and earthquakes.

The project which had been shelved in 1997 in the face of mounting public opposition and the discovery and exploitation of the large Natuna gas field, involved the construction of four plants, each with a 1,000 megawatt capacity.

Under the original plans, 12 nuclear power plants were slated for the northern coast of Java, with a total capacity of 7,000 MegaWatts.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, with more than 214 million people, currently relies on hydro, coal and fuel generated electricity.

But the rapid growth in energy consumption has required Jakarta to double its electricity production over the past 25 years.

Critics of the nuclear project, including legislators, environmentalists and academics, have said that Indonesia has many alternative energy sources and that a decision on whether to build the plants should rest with the people. 


-------- britain

UK's three main parties will not lead on nuclear
Sizewell B was the last station to be built in the UK

Monday, 18 April, 2005 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4449829.stm

None of the UK's three main parties will take the lead in the debate on building new nuclear power stations.

Many energy experts say the issue must be raised soon if Britain is to start construction of new plants to meet its power production and climate targets.

But the parties do not believe the next government will have a responsibility to promote the nuclear argument.

Labour and the Tories say that it is down to industry to make a case - which the Lib Dems think is unwinnable.

"This is about industry coming forward with proposals," said Lord Sainsbury, who has held the science and innovation ministerial brief under Labour.

"We have said we will keep the nuclear option open; we're putting the money in to make certain we have the research and trained people available if there is a change in the situation, but, in the first instance, it is for industry to come forward and then we will have that public debate."

Skills need

He was speaking with his party opposites at a briefing for science journalists ahead of the 5 May general election.

Labour has made great play of a coming climate crisis and intends to make the issue an ever-present one if it is returned to power.

The new government will take up the UK presidency of both the EU and the G8 group of industrial nations, and will be well placed to influence international energy policy.
	
UK NUCLEAR WASTE VOLUMES

High-level waste - 2,000 cubic metres
Intermediate-level waste - 350,000 cubic metres
Low-level waste - 30,000 cubic metres
Spent fuel - 10,000 cubic metres
Plutonium - 4,300 cubic metres
Uranium - 75,000 cubic metres

But Labour's position - shared by the other two parties - is that nuclear is currently off the agenda because the high costs of decommissioning stations (allied to still unresolved questions about what to do with radioactive waste) make new-builds uneconomic.

The 2003 White Paper on energy recognised the urgent need for new sources of power to be developed.

With the move away from coal and the reduction in North Sea oil and gas, the UK will become a big net importer of energy unless it can find alternatives. An aspirational electricity-generation target from renewables of 20% by 2020 has been set - a goal some energy analysts doubt can be met.

Robert Key, the Conservative shadow on science and innovation, says his party is acutely aware of the energy security issue but feels it should not be the government's position to promote nuclear as a solution.

"I am unhappy at the prospect of 60% or more of our electricity generation coming from imported gas over the next 10-20 years, so we have to address this problem of whether we have nuclear or not," Mr Key explained.

"There is also the problem of de-skilling in the nuclear technology workforce. We are hardly going to have enough people to decommission our nuclear stations as they currently exist because the generation that built them is now retiring."

Funding pledge

For the Lib Dems, there is no future for nuclear in the UK's energy portfolio.

"The answer is 'no'; the economic case is not adequate because of the problem of dealing with the waste," said Evan Harries, who sat on the Commons Science and Technology committee in the parliament just ended.

"We're the party most concerned about non-carbon generating forms of energy.

"Our manifesto calls for massive increases in funding for alternative energy, including a form of nuclear energy I want to see get invested in - which is fusion."

The UK, as a member of the European Union, is part of an international effort to build an experimental reactor that would harness atomic energy by fusing nuclei rather than splitting them - as in the current fission reactors.

But although fusion technology is likely to produce substantially less high-level radioactive waste, its commercial application may be many decades away.

Britain's 12 nuclear power stations currently provide a little over 20% of the nation's electricity. The last station to come on stream was Sizewell B in 1994 after one of the biggest public inquiries ever undertaken in Britain.

Unless the ageing stations are replaced with new ones, there are likely to be only three left operating by 2020, producing perhaps just 7% of the country's requirements.

Lord May, the outgoing president of the Royal Society, the UK's academy of science, recently called for a public debate on nuclear new-build, arguing the dangers of climate change demanded an urgent move away from fossil fuels and their carbon dioxide emissions. 


-------- business

Endesa, E.ON, Electrabel, EDF, Enel plan 3 bln eur nuclear reactor - report

Monday April 18, 2005 08:03 AM (AFX)

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/050418/323/fgjou.html

MADRID - Endesa SA (Madrid: ELE.MC - news) , E.ON.AG, Electrabel SA (Brussels: ELCBt.BR - news) and Enel SpA have formed a group to study a 3 bln eur investment in a nuclear reactor headed by EDF, Expansion reported without citing a source.

Expansion cited French energy department head Dominique Maillard as saying that EDF plans to offer energy companies from around Europe to opportunity to participate in its 1,600 megawatt atomic reactor in Flamanvile, in northern France.

Expansion said that foreign companies will be allowed to each hold 5-10 pct of the project, with EDF maintaining a controlling stake, adding that the companies will form a joint venture to manage the project in the next few weeks.



-------- india 

India, Pakistan sign joint statement to give boost to peace process

4/18/2005 6:49 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-04-18-india-pakistan_x.htm

NEW DELHI, India (AP) — The peace process between India and Pakistan is now "irreversible," leaders of the two longtime rival nations said Monday, announcing a series of agreements to increase trade and cross-border travel in Kashmir.

With Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf standing beside him, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the two had agreed to continue talks on the divided region of Kashmir, the heart of decades of disputes, in "a sincere and purposeful manner" until a settlement was found.

Singh, reading from a joint statement, said the two leaders "determined that the peace process was now irreversible."

The two countries agreed to increase the frequency of a cross-Kashmir bus service that started earlier this month and to identify more places along the Kashmir frontier that could be opened to traffic.

They also agreed to revive a joint commission to boost business ties and to open additional consulates by the end of the year. They also vowed not to allow terrorism to thwart the peace process.

After the summit, separatist militants issued a statement accusing Musharraf of abandoning the cause of the Kashmiri people.

"Musharraf has sold out Kashmir for trade and tourism," said the statement signed by a spokesman for four Islamic rebel groups faxed to The Associated Press, adding that Musharraf had "knelt before India."

"We will not give up the holy war, Jihad, until Kashmir becomes free," warned the statement. Its authenticity could not be verified.

At the meeting, the two sides agreed to allow the movement of trucks across their borders, to create a trade group encouraging joint ventures between Indian and Pakistani businesses and to cooperate on meeting both countries' energy needs.

"Enhanced economic and commercial cooperation would contribute to the well-being of the peoples of the two countries," Singh said, reading from the statement, adding the two "leading economies of South Asia should work together for greater prosperity of the region."

Earlier, Musharraf said the talks with the Indian leader were more successful than he had expected but warned that settling the Kashmir dispute would take a long time.

Musharraf said there had been a change in attitude in Pakistan about Kashmir, which is split between the neighbors but claimed in its entirety by both. The two nuclear armed rivals have fought two wars over it.

"Domestically there is a realization that the military option is not the option any more," he told Indian journalists. "The strategy of a coercive diplomacy is no more an option."

"Our achievements on all issues are more than what I expected," Musharraf said. But on Kashmir, he said, "it will need a lot of time and wisdom to arrive at a settlement. Let us go step by step."

Political observers said the talks were a success.

"It is a big push forward," said M.K. Rasgotra, a former Indian diplomat. "Both sides have shown flexibility and displayed pragmatism, especially on the Kashmir issue."

Talat Masood, a former general in the Pakistani army, said Islamabad appeared reconciled to "India's position on the territorial aspect of Kashmir."

The decisions marked a major shift in how India and Pakistan have approached Kashmir, said C. Raja Mohan, a New Delhi-based professor of South Asian studies.

Raja Mohan said the two countries appeared headed for an agreement on tackling regional terrorism.

Musharraf assured Singh that Pakistan won't allow its territory to be used for terrorism against India.

More than a dozen Islamic militant groups are fighting in Indian-controlled Kashmir for the region's independence or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. Most groups are based in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The 15-year insurgency has claimed more than 66,000 lives. 

----

Peace 'Irreversible'; India, Pakistan Soften on Kashmir

By REUTERS
Published: April 18, 2005
Filed at 10:24 a.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-southasia.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Declaring their peace
process irreversible, nuclear rivals India and
Pakistan agreed Monday to open up the militarized
frontier dividing Kashmir, capping a landmark
visit to New Delhi by President Pervez Musharraf.

In a significant coming together, Musharraf and
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said they
would work toward a ``soft border'' in Kashmir,
opening meeting points for divided families and
boosting trade, travel and cooperation across the
frontier.

Reading a joint statement as he stood next to
Musharraf, Singh said the two, ``conscious of the
historic opportunity created by the improved
relations and the overwhelming desire of the
peoples of the two countries for durable
peace...determined that the peace process was now
irreversible.''

Analysts said the focus on building trust,
softening the border and improving the lives of
ordinary Kashmiris marked a major departure from
the past, when the two sides have banged heads
together over their rival territorial claims.

Both Singh and Musharraf suggested this new
approach could eventually lead to a settlement of
their dispute over Kashmir, at the heart of half a
century of hostility and which almost sparked a
fourth war in 2002.

``This is what I call going toward a soft
border,'' Musharraf had said earlier. ``But a soft
border is not a final solution.''

The joint statement said terrorism would not be
allowed to derail peace efforts and clearly warned
Islamic separatists fighting Indian rule that
neither side would tolerate attacks on a
just-launched bus service uniting the divided
Himalayan region.

The two leaders agreed to increase bus services
across the cease-fire line and open the fenced and
heavily guarded frontier, once dubbed the world's
most dangerous flashpoint by the United States, to
freight trucks and pilgrims.

``I think the outcome has been better than I
expected,'' Musharraf, due in Manila later Monday,
told reporters earlier.

The two took no questions after Singh read out the
statement.

The contrast with a failed summit in the Indian
city of Agra in 2001 was dramatic, and highlighted
by Musharraf himself.

``There was tension, now there is friendship,
there is harmony,'' he said. ``We were angry, now
we are happy.''

Singh was reported as telling senior Indian
editors that ``General-sahib'' was a man he could
do business with.

CRICKET DIPLOMACY

The three-day visit by the Delhi-born Musharraf
was originally intended as an informal trip to
watch Pakistan play India in cricket -- Pakistan
won Sunday -- but effectively turned into a summit
with Singh, born in what is now Pakistan.

``I was cautiously optimistic about the peace
process. Now, I am optimistic,'' said Uday
Bhaskar, of the Institute of Defense Studies and
Analyzes and New Delhi.

``The spirit of this round of talks as reflected
in the joint statement showed that neither side is
trying to score brownie points but is cognizant of
the concerns of the other.''

Amid heavy security, Musharraf has received a
hero's welcome since arriving in the northern
Indian city of Ajmer on Saturday to pray for peace
at South Asia's most famous Sufi Muslim shrine.

``Man of the match: Musharraf'' declared the front
page headline in India's The Economic Times.

``Flexibility had to be shown by both sides, but
this is a major departure ... it is an achievement
for common ground, toward a solution and the
original positions on both sides,'' said Ershad
Mahmood, of Islamabad's Institute of Policy
Studies.

``This is the first time... (common ground) has
happened in history. So this is major flexibility
being shown by both sides.''

Sunday, Musharraf met Kashmiri separatist leaders,
who he says must be brought into any peace process
for it to work. The All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom)
Conference leaders are due to meet Singh for the
first time soon, although no date has been set.

But Monday, militants accused him of selling out.

``Musharraf has agreed to a sell out on Kashmir in
return of trade, tourism and devil cultural ties
with India,'' said a joint statement by four
groups who have threatened the bus service.

``Once hero of Kargil, the general has knelt down
before India,'' they said, referring to near war
in Kashmir in 1999.

Tens of thousands of people, many of them
civilians, have died in a 15-year rebellion by
Islamic rebels against Indian rule in Kashmir and
violence continues unabated, despite the new thaw.

South Asia's military giants have fought three
wars since Britain partitioned its Indian empire
in 1947, two over Kashmir.



-------- japan

From: Citizens' Nuclear Information Center <cnic@nifty.com>
Date: Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:12pm
Subject: NPT and Rokkasho 	nucnews
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Call for a Moratorium on the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant

Rokkasho. The name might not be well known outside of the anti-nuclear movement, but we hope it will become better known during the NPT Review Conference.

Rokkasho is the site of a huge reprocessing plant being constructed on the northern tip of Honshu, the largest island in Japan. In December last year it began uranium trials (testing the processes using depleted uranium). Active trials using spent nuclear fuel are scheduled to begin in December this year and the plant is due to start operations in May 2007. It will then become the first commercial-scale reprocessing plant outside of the nuclear weapons states, extracting 8 tons of plutonium per year from the spent fuel produced in Japan's nuclear reactors. That is enough to build 1,000 Nagasaki-type bombs per year. If that isn't reason enough for it to be placed high on the agenda of the NPT Review Conference, what is?

George Bush might not often agree with Mohamed ElBaradei and Kofi Annan, but he agrees that facilities for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and for uranium enrichment present a nuclear proliferation risk. Though the fine points of their proposals differ, over the last year or so all three of them have called for a moratorium on these facilities. They have all also studiously avoided mentioning Rokkasho. George Bush much prefers to talk about Iran and North Korea, but, dangerous though the nuclear developments in those two countries are, he can't expect the world to take him seriously when he ignores Japan's enrichment and reprocessing facilities. If 'non-nuclear weapons state' Japan is allowed to operate Rokkasho, other non-nuclear weapons states will inevitably feel discriminated against if they can't have such facilities too. It sets a bad precedent for would-be proliferators, regardless of whether Japan plans to build nuclear weapons itself. So Rokkasho should be the first candidate for a moratorium.

ElBaradei has said that the moratorium idea will be raised at the NPT Review Conference, but at the moment the proposal doesn't seem to have the support of most of the key players. Japan, the US and Iran have all rejected it on the grounds of narrowly defined 'national interests'. They don't want any of their pet projects to be jeopardized. A broad view of the 'national interests' of these countries would recognize that the unraveling of the non-proliferation regime is about as dangerous a development as could be imagined. Measured against this greater 'national interest', sacrificing new reprocessing and enrichment projects, the benefits of which are highly dubious anyway, shouldn't be too difficult a decision. But lack of vision seems to be a common problem amongst the world's leaders these days, so we don't expect them to shift without some pressure from below.

NGOs must take the lead on this issue. Even though a few national governments are determined to kill the moratorium idea, NGOs must not lose sight of the main issue. The moratorium idea was proposed to respond to a real danger. That danger is that if weapons-usable material continues to be produced, and if more and more countries develop the technology to produce this material, nuclear weapons will be acquired by more and more countries, and the chance of these weapons finding their way into the hands of terrorists increases. If governments won't focus on this danger in a non-discriminatory way, NGOs must continue to bring their attention back to this issue.

We can give credit to Mohamed ElBaradei for putting the issue on the NPT Review Conference agenda, but we can't leave it to him to take the running on the debate. He and his organization, the IAEA, are committed to promoting nuclear energy, so they have linked the moratorium proposal to the perverse idea of internationalizing reprocessing and uranium enrichment services. We must continue to point out the flaws in this proposal.

Let us raise the issue of Rokkasho and other related issues at, among others, the following event:

Thursday, May 5
A moratorium on uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing?
Implications for the NPT
Where: UN Conference Room E
When: 11 am - 1 pm

Philip White
International Liaison Officer
Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (Tokyo)

Aileen Mioko Smith
Director,
Green Action (Kyoto, Japan)

Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
3F Kotobuki Bdg, 1-58-15, Higashi-Nakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo
164-0003
Phone: 81-3-5330-9520
Fax: 81-3-5330-9530
http://cnic.jp/english/


-------- korea

North Korean Reactor Shutdown Raises Plutonium Alarm

By  Kurt Achin
18 April 2005 (VOA)
	
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-04-18-voa10.cfm

Seoul - North Korea apparently has shut down its main nuclear reactor, in a possible prelude to reprocessing spent fuel rods into weapons material.

North Korea's spent nuclear fuel rods that are kept in a cooling pond are seen at the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon in 1996
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official told local media that his government and the United States have verified that North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear power plant has been shut down.

Security experts say the plant may have been shut down to permit North Korea to remove spent plutonium and reprocess into weapons fuel.

Mark Gwozdecky, of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the plant may contain as many as eight thousand spent fuel rods. Experts say that could yield as many as six to eight nuclear weapons. Mr. Gwozdecky says the agency is unsure how quickly Pyongyang could turn the rods into weapons material.

"We don't know the state of readiness of their reprocessing facility … if it's fully operational, then they have a reprocessing capability that can separate the spent plutonium in a matter of months."

Since February, the North Koreans have repeatedly said they have nuclear weapons and intend to make more - despite having signed several agreements in the past to remain nuclear free. Pyongyang has suspended participation in six-nation talks aimed at ending its nuclear programs.

Shin Maeng-ho, a director of South Korea's presidential task force on the North Korean nuclear issue, says they are watching the situation carefully, but they are not drawing any hasty conclusions.

"It is difficult for me to say about the North Korean intention, whether they have the intention to reprocess it or not," he said.

Despite repeated assurances by that Washington does not plan to attack or invade North Korea, Pyongyang says it needs nuclear arms to deter what it says is a hostile attitude by the United States.

U.S. officials say they are still optimistic a peaceful, diplomatic solution can still be reached in the framework of six party talks, which also involve South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia.

---

South Korea: North shuts down nuke reactor

By Soo-Jeong Lee, Associated Press Writer
4/18/2005 5:50 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-04-18-nkorea-plant_x.htm
	
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said Monday it believes a reactor at North Korea's main nuclear complex has been shut down, a possible sign the communist state could be moving to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.

Kim Sook, director-general of North American affairs at South Korea's Foreign Ministry, told KBS Radio that a shutdown of a nuclear reactor at the North's main Yongbyon nuclear complex had been confirmed.

Yongbyon houses a 5-megawatt reactor that generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium, but they must be removed and reprocessed to extract the plutonium for use in an atomic weapon. They can be removed only if the reactor has been shut down.

North Korea restarted the reactor after expelling U.N. monitors at the end of 2002.

"We have to wait and see the intentions and the measures North Korea takes in the future," Kim said.

The New York Times reported Monday that the apparent shutdown of the reactor has raised concern at the White House that North Korea could be preparing to make good on a recent threat to harvest a new load of nuclear fuel, potentially increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal. However, the newspaper said there wasn't any confirmation why the reactor was shut down, and it could have been simply for maintenance or a diplomatic bluff.

A U.S. scholar who recently visited North Korea said earlier this month that officials there told him they were preparing to unload fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor during the next two months, adding to the urgency of resuming nuclear talks.

"They will have more plutonium unless there is a freeze," Selig Harrison, a Washington-based researcher, told reporters in Beijing after his trip.

North Korean officials also said they wouldn't even discuss dismantling their atomic weapons until Washington has normalized relations, Harrison said.

Three rounds of talks on the North's nuclear ambitions have produced no breakthroughs, and Pyongyang claimed in a February announcement that it had developed atomic weapons and would indefinitely boycott the negotiations.

The North's official Rodong Sinmun daily said in a commentary Monday that the country's "nuclear weapons serve as main deterrent to avert a war and ensure peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and the rest of Northeast Asia," according to the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

International experts believe the North has reprocessed enough plutonium to build about a half-dozen nuclear bombs, but it hasn't performed any known atomic tests that would confirm its arsenal.

----

Steps at Reactor in North Korea Worry the U.S.

By DAVID E. SANGER
April 18, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/politics/18nuke.html?pagewanted=print&position=

WASHINGTON, April 17 - The suspected shutdown of a reactor at North Korea's main nuclear weapons complex has raised concern at the White House that the country could be preparing to make good on its recent threat to harvest a new load of nuclear fuel, potentially increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal.

While there is no way to know with any certainty why the reactor might have been shut down, it has been North Korea's main means of obtaining plutonium for weapons. The Central Intelligence Agency has told Congress it estimates that in the last two years the country turned a stockpile of spent fuel from the same reactor into enough bomb-grade material for more than six nuclear weapons.

The White House's concern over the past week arises from two developments. An American scholar with unusual access to North Korea's leaders, Selig S. Harrison, a longtime specialist on North Korea at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said after visiting the country two weeks ago that he was told by a very senior North Korean that there were plans "to unload the reactor to create a situation" to force President Bush to negotiate on terms more favorable to North Korea.

That focused new attention on spy satellite photographs of the reactor, which has been watched intensively in recent months. While American officials would not discuss what the spy satellites had seen, commercial satellite photographs of the plant, taken by DigitalGlobe and interpreted by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, show that the plant was apparently shut down or shifted to a very low power level at least 10 days ago, around the time of Mr. Harrison's visit.

Mr. Harrison's message and the satellite photographs present a mystery that has underscored how difficult it is for intelligence officials to decipher the state of the nuclear program in North Korea. The signs could mean that preparations are beginning to extract fuel rods from the aging five-megawatt reactor, the first step in the elaborate process of reprocessing the rods into weapons-grade plutonium. But there could also be more innocent explanations, among them maintenance - or a diplomatic bluff.

"You can't reach any definitive determination yet," said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who heads the institute. He and other experts note that it is uncertain how many weapons the North could produce if it removed the fuel rods, which have been in the reactor for a little over two years. But it would be likely to obtain enough plutonium for at least two weapons, and maybe more, if it had begun to master the complex art of reprocessing the rods into plutonium.

Though administration officials strike a public pose of little concern about North Korea's threats, the message brought back by Mr. Harrison has seized the attention of senior American officials as they are debating internally whether the diplomatic approach they have taken for the past two years should be declared a failure. White House officials are a bit skeptical of Mr. Harrison, who has been critical of Mr. Bush's refusal to negotiate one on one with North Korea, and who is often warmly received in Pyongyang, the capital.

"It is still too murky to tell exactly what the North Koreans are doing," said one senior administration official who is deeply immersed in the intelligence. The North has repeatedly publicly declared in recent months that it now possesses nuclear weapons. It recently urged the United States to accept that fact and engage in mutual arms reduction talks.

An Asian diplomat deeply involved in the talks said this weekend that "there seems to have been a decision made by the North Koreans that they are going to plunge ahead and hope that everyone comes to the conclusion that they've made so many weapons now that it's too late to reverse things."

Mr. Harrison said that in his meetings the North Koreans said they wanted to use the removal of the reactor fuel to force Mr. Bush to "negotiate a freeze" on new nuclear activity, rather than full dismantlement. "They said they will not make commitments on dismantling their nuclear arms, the ultimate step, until we normalize relations with the North," Mr. Harrison said. Mr. Bush has said dismantlement must come first, and he has rejected a new nuclear freeze, saying that a freeze agreement reached with President Clinton ultimately failed.

Still, another senior official, who is a central player in the continuing internal arguments within the administration over how to handle North Korea's mixture of bluffs and provocation, said Mr. Bush would not be intimidated into changing his strategy even if the North raced to produce more weapons fuel. "We still think a peaceful solution is possible," he said. He added, however, that if North Korea refused to return to serious negotiations about disarming, "or takes additional provocative action, we will need to consult with our four other negotiating parties to consider other measures." Taking North Korea to the United Nations Security Council for the imposition of sanctions - a step China and South Korea are desperately trying to avoid - would be among those options, the official said.

The prospect that North Korea may be about to remove fuel from the reactor may also reinvigorate the long-running argument inside the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council about whether the United States should take some kind of military or covert action to prevent the North from producing more bomb-grade fuel.

The nuclear facilities are particularly vulnerable when the reactor is being unloaded and the fuel is being cooled, a process that can take several months. After that, however, the fuel is relatively easy to move and hide, which is what happened after inspectors were thrown out in 2002. Mr. Bush has said the United States has no interest in attacking North Korea, and any strike at the nuclear plant would carry risks of retaliation.

Still, some Bush administration officials now ruefully recall the advice of Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under President Bush's father, who argued in the early 1990's that the United States should never let the North reprocess its fuel and become a nuclear power. "You could say that Brent correctly predicted exactly the scenario we are in now," one of the current President Bush's strategists on the issue said recently. "The North Koreans have been very smart about how they have gone about this."


-------- missile defense

MDA Plans Competition for Space Test Bed Beginning 2008

Jeremy Singer, Washington
Space News
18 April 2005

http://www.space4peace.org/bmd/mda_sbi_testbed.htm
 
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) intends to spend nearly $675 million from 2008 through 2011 to develop an experimental constellation of space-based missile interceptors that would launch in 2012, according to budget justification documents submitted to Congress in March.

There is no money for the so-called Space Test Bed in the MDA’s 2005 budget or in its spending request for 2006, reflecting a 2003 decision to put such activities on hold. But the documents show the effort roaring back to life starting in 2008 on a budget of $48 million. Program spending would rise to $150 million in 2009 and $248 million in 2010 before slipping back to $230 million in 2011, the charts show.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering, the MDA director, said at an April 11 conference here that there are no firm plans to deploy operational space-based interceptors, which would destroy ballistic missiles by crashing into them. But the potential of space-based interceptors is worth evaluating, he said.

The MDA also has tentative plans for a larger constellation of operational space-based interceptors that would launch starting in 2016, the budget documents show.

The Space Test Bed would draw on previous work including the MDA’s planned Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE), Obering said during a speech here at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ 3rd Annual U.S. Missile Defense Conference. NFIRE, scheduled to launch in 2006 or 2007, is a test of sensors designed to distinguish between a rocket’s hot exhaust plume and the actual hardware.

The MDA plans to release a formal request for proposals for the Space Test Bed in early 2008, and award up to four concept design contracts later in the year, according to the budget justification material. One or more companies would be chosen to continue their design and development work in 2009.

The Space Test Bed would consist of five satellites and would be used for experiments including attempts to destroy medium- and intercontinental-range target missiles by ramming them, the budget documents show.

The program is likely to be controversial. Many on Capitol Hill and in the Washington think tank community oppose the deployment of space-based weapons in general, arguing that doing so would create a new arena for a costly and potentially dangerous arms race.

Among the arguments against space-based missile defenses in particular is that they would create orbital debris that poses a threat to operational satellites, and that an effective shield would require an unaffordable constellation of thousands of interceptors.

U.S. Rep. Terry Everett (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, has said the subcommittee will examine these issues in the course of classified briefings and in a public hearing on space weaponization.

Hugh Brady, a Democratic staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, said during a panel discussion at the conference that congressional debate over the Space Test Bed likely would heat up once MDA begins requesting significant funding for the effort.

Proponents of space-based interceptors dismissed concerns that such systems would do more harm than good.

Among them is David Smith, chief operating officer of the Fairfax, Va.-based National Institute for Public Policy, who represented the United States during discussions with the former Soviet Union on defense and space issues from 1989 to 1991.

During a separate panel discussion, Smith noted that many critics of space-based missile defenses also predicted that there would be massive negative political fallout from the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001. So far, that has not happened, he said.

Steven Lambakis, a senior analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy, acknowledged during the discussion that destroying missile warheads in space might create debris. But space debris is infinitely preferable to having a U.S. city “turned into debris,” he said.

On the question of affordability, the MDA budget documents say the operational space-based system contemplated for 2016 would consist of 50-100 interceptors — far less than the thousands envisioned under the Pentagton’s now-defunct Brilliant Pebbles program. Lambakis said such a system would not break the Pentagon’s bank, especially given recent advances in miniaturization and other technologies.

In his speech, Obering said the space-based interceptors would constitute just one layer of a multi-tiered defense that includes the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system now being deployed and systems like the planned Kinetic Energy Interceptor. A Brilliant Pebbles-type constellation would only be necessary if the United States faced an adversary with a huge ICBM arsenal like the former Soviet Union, he said.

Such arguments did little to sway panel participant and outspoken space-weapons opponent Theresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, a think tank here.

Hitchens cited a July 2003 study by the American Physical Society that found that a constellation of at least 800 to 1,600 interceptors would be needed to provide a limited measure of protection against just Iran and North Korea. The study assumed an attack scenario involving only one ICBM fired at the United States, she said. A far larger constellation would be needed to provide even a limited defense against a salvo of missiles, she said.



-------- terrorism

Sleeper cells in America
'Atomic Iran' explains terrorist threats to U.S. homeland

Posted: April 18, 2005 WorldNet Daily

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43815

Editor's note: Written by the best-selling author of "Unfit for Command," Jerome Corsi, "Atomic Iran," WND Books' latest release, presents clear and convincing evidence of Iran's goal to acquire nuclear weapons and the risk such a scenario poses to the U.S. and the West. In this excerpt from his blockbuster, Corsi explains how easy it is for terrorist sleeper cells to get into and operate within the U.S. and discusses some of the possible weapons they could use against Americans.

Until the moment American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, few people in the United States worried that there might be lethal terrorist sleeper cells living among them. By 9:03:11 a.m., when United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, most people who watched the tragedy unfold on television realized that they were witnessing a terrorist attack, not an airplane accident.

The horrifying sights of the building exploding in fireballs, the smoke billowing miles into the air, people jumping to their deaths from the high floors are images that were burned that morning into the American consciousness like virtually no other image in the country's history.

At 9:37:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, few had any doubt that terrorists had attacked us on our own soil. Then United Airlines Flight 93 went down in a rural field in Somerset County, Pa., at 10:15 a.m., and the country knew to say a prayer that the Capitol or the White House had not been hit.

A major point of this book is that the tragedy of 9-11 might well be small in light of what the terrorists have planned for America. If the mad mullahs can pull it off, the sight of a nuclear cloud roiling over New York or Washington, D.C., would dwarf the glee they derived from our misery over the 9-11 attacks.

Most likely a nuclear terrorist attack in a major U.S. city would come just as 9-11 came – unannounced and unanticipated. A sleeper cell like the 19 terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon may be living with us right now, unseen, below the surface, ready to strike when the order is given. It is frightening to think that people who are living among us now as apparently ordinary citizens are secretly planning when, where and how to explode a nuclear weapon in one of our major cities.

Why sleeper-cell terrorists are hard to find

America has porous borders. One problem is that those borders are so large. Our northern border with Canada stretches more than 4,000 miles; our southern border with Mexico runs about half that length, some 2,000 miles. The second problem is that long stretches of both borders are unpopulated and not regularly patrolled, except possibly by aircraft from above.

Every year, nearly 300,000 immigrants are admitted from Canada, a country that typically does not detain those claiming refuge status. Every year some 10,000 immigrants with questionable backgrounds disappear into Canada's ethnic communities. Government authorities estimate that there are somewhere between 9 million and 12 million illegal aliens living today in the continental United States. In reality, there is no way of knowing the precise number. Most illegal immigrants live quiet lives in ethnic communities where no one knows exactly how they got into the country.

U.S. authorities have no doubt there are terrorist sleeper cells in our midst. In 2002 the FBI concluded in an internal review that somewhere between 50 and 100 Hamas and Hezbollah operatives had infiltrated into America. The FBI believed these operatives "were in America working on fund-raising and logistics, and they had received terrorist and military training from Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East, giving Hamas and Hezbollah the capability of launching terrorist strikes."

In 2004 the FBI suggested that al-Qaida sleeper cells were believed to be operating in 40 states, awaiting orders and funding for new attacks on U.S. soil. The bureau believed that these agents were being funded "by millions of dollars solicited by an extensive network of bogus charities and foundations," with the cells using "Muslim communities as cover and places to raise cash and recruit sympathizers." U.S. law-enforcement authorities claimed to have satellite photos and communications intercepts that documented between 60 and 70 camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and in Pakistan. Still, finding sleeper-cell terrorists is very difficult, especially with the presumption of innocence and extensive legal rights and civil liberties granted suspects under U.S. law.

Scott Wheeler, an investigative reporter writing on the Internet, demonstrated the problems inherent in uncovering terrorist sleeper cells. Wheeler became interested in the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), a group identified as a Muslim think tank based in Springfield, Va. He quoted a George Mason University professor who claimed that the UASR was a "front organization for a terrorist group," a "phony organization" that was part of a "shell game of international terrorism." Wheeler noted that many meetings at the UASR started at midnight, with participants emerging to use their cell phones in the parking lot, as if to avoid government counterterrorism units that may have hidden listening devices inside the building.

As Wheeler probed, he found that the UASR had questionable connections. The group was founded by Mousa Abu Marzook, a Hamas operative discussed in the previous chapter, a Palestinian by birth who is now a fugitive living in Syria under federal indictment for his involvement in the Holy Land Foundation Islamic charity scandal. According to a report in the Washington Post, Marzook participated in a real-estate scheme designed to defraud affluent Muslims into buying development homes in Prince George County, just 10 miles from the White House, with the result that the development company partly owned by Marzook went bankrupt while all proceeds were siphoned off to fund Hamas terrorist activities overseas.

Wheeler was also suspicious that the UASR's current head, Ahmed Yousef, had ties to Hamas. Yousef gave an interview to a Middle Eastern magazine in which he claimed that 9-11 was a Jewish plot: "No one could have captured the pictures [of the 9-11 attacks] so perfectly except for the cameras in the hands of several Mossad agents, who were near the scene of events and succeeded in filming the scene so that it will always serve Zionism to remind the world of the Arabs' and Muslims' crimes against America." Why would Mossad do this? As Yousef explained, Mossad had "a grand scheme – and right-wing forces may have participated in it, and evangelical Christians agreed to it. All of them agreed that this scheme should be carried out in this way to push America into war."

Yet inevitably those suspected of being sleeper-cell terrorists hire attorneys who claim that their clients are being discriminated against simply because they are Muslims. Wheeler had uncovered interesting circumstantial evidence, but he did not have enough proof to support the claim that the UASR was a terrorist front organization.

Even with the extensive tools allowed law-enforcement officials under legislation passed since 9-11, legal barriers still impede law-enforcement efforts to find sleeper-cell terrorists. Consider the case of Dhiren Barot, a suspected al-Qaida operative who spent time in New Jersey in 2000 and 2001. The FBI was trying to track whether any of Barot's associates remained in the area when a federal court ruled that a key investigative tool of the FBI was no longer available. Specifically, the court decided that the use of a special subpoena known as a national security letter was unconstitutional. When the FBI tracked companies that Barot had been involved with through e-mails, the court ruling prohibited the agents from getting key customer information without judicial review.

Nor do the Patriot Act powers solve the problem. Federal terrorist investigators still must play by rules, and the rules as interpreted by the courts still typically specify that the suspect's rights are paramount. Our system of criminal laws is designed to err on the side of presumed innocence.

In a society as open as ours, there are hundreds of mosques in which zealous preaching could convey a message intended to convert or recruit terrorist prospects, as well as hundreds of Muslim charities whose fund-raising purposes may be questioned as illegitimate. Then there are religious and ethnic support organizations whose purposes might be suspect. But after decades of liberal court rulings dealing with civil rights, any attempt at religious or ethnic profiling is an unacceptable practice for law-enforcement officers. Profiling is even frowned upon even when marginally suggested by editorialists or pundits.

During the 2004 presidential campaign Vice President Dick Cheney made comments that suggested the administration was taking the threat of nuclear terrorism seriously: "The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever been used against us – biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind – to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

From a terrorist's point of view, it may still be relatively easy to slip into America unnoticed. Who among us doubts that if the 9-11 terrorists had possessed a nuclear weapon, they would have used it?

Do terrorists have suitcase nuclear bombs?

On Sept. 7, 1997, former Russian National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed created a worldwide sensation when he was interviewed on CBS' "60 Minutes." He claimed that 100 of 250 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs were missing and no longer in the control of the Russian military. The suitcase bombs described by Lebed are small but powerful. Said to measure 24-by-16-by-8 inches, each suitcase bomb was capable of killing up to 100,000 people if detonated in a major U.S. city during business hours. The Russians predictably denied that the suitcase nukes existed. But if the suitcase nukes hypothetically existed, the Russians insisted they were all accounted for.

Then, on Jan. 24, 2000, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., brought a mock-up of a suitcase nuclear bomb to a congressional hearing on Russian espionage. Burton displayed the suitcase bomb to the congressional committee and to the press. The startling photos of the prototype suitcase bomb made headlines around the globe. At the hearing, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., elicited testimony from Stanislav Lunev, an ex-Soviet colonel who defected to the United States in 1992 after he had worked for more than 10 years in the United States as an intelligence operative. Lunev claimed he had collected information on the U.S. president and senior U.S. political and military leaders so they could be targeted for assassination in the event of war. As part of this mission, Lunev claimed to have obtained from the Soviet Union several suitcase nuclear bombs that were prepositioned in the United States and stored in hiding places where they could be concealed until needed.

Subsequent research verified that the Soviet Union did produce suitcase nuclear bombs, just as the United States had developed small tactical nuclear weapons of the Davy Crockett type and what were known as "backpack" nuclear weapons. Typically, these weapons have a relatively small yield, in the range of one kiloton; additionally, the suitcase nuclear bombs had a relatively short life span, with key components required to be replaced approximately every six months.

By 2002 international experts studying suitcase nuclear bombs had examined Soviet records comprehensively. Their conclusion doubted that any of these munitions had been lost: "Thus, the hypothesis that a number of portable nuclear devices remained outside Russia or were stolen during the transfer to Russia does not appear convincing. Both the circumstances of that transfer and the likelihood that reasonably complete records exist (even though they might be divided among several holders) lead to a conclusion that former republics of the Soviet Union are an unlikely source of unaccounted for suitcase nukes."

Still, reports that terrorists have acquired suitcase nukes persist. On March 22, 2004, Osama bin Laden's authorized biographer, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, reasserted to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that al-Qaida had purchased suitcase nuclear bombs. Mir said the claim was made by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, in a November 2001 interview:

"Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri laughed and he said, 'Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available. They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs."

The Russians would like us to believe that all suitcase nukes have been found and are safely accounted for. Probably too there are some in our government who want us to think that suitcase nukes were always low yield and difficult to maintain at operational levels, so there was no need for worry. Yet, thinking cynically, but perhaps realistically, where there is a lot of cash available and where criminals are involved, weapons that exist can usually be purchased, even if they are supposedly safely hidden away.

Moreover, if al-Qaida, or any other terrorist organization for that matter, has a suitcase nuke and is waiting for a good opportunity to use it, the likelihood is that the terrorists could also buy the nuclear talent needed to keep the weapon operational. Since 1997 there has been constant speculation by credible authorities that suitcase nukes exist and that terrorists like al-Qaida are in the market for them. Unfortunately, the only definitive proof we could get that would end the debate would be the same type of catastrophic proof we got on 9-11. As we have noted before, terrorists pursue weapons, and they like to use them when they get them.

How do the mullahs fit into this particular equation? In July 2004 a report surfaced on the Internet that government terrorism officials were privately admitting concerns that Hamas was merging with elements of al-Qaida to carry out military strikes against the United States. While certain philosophical differences may divide Hamas and al-Qaida, the two groups have begun cooperating tactically in the global holy war, operating under the banner "International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," according to the government officials who warned about more attacks on U.S. soil.

Dirty bombs

A dirty bomb is not really a nuclear bomb. Instead, a dirty bomb uses a conventional explosion to disperse deadly radiation. Technically, dirty bombs are considered "radiological dispersion devices." Some designs call for devices that simply emit radiation without requiring an explosion to produce the deadly result. This variation is known as a "radiation emission device." For this discussion, we are going to focus on devices that involve explosions, and we will code-name the device a radiation explosive device (RED).

On Dec. 21, 2004, just four days before Christmas, the United States elevated the terror threat level to orange, and Department of Energy scientists were dispatched to Washington, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Baltimore in response to credible intelligence reports that al-Qaida was planning to launch a dirty-bomb attack in one of those cities. On the same day, the Department of Homeland Security sent out large fixed radiation detectors and hundreds of paper-size radiation detectors to police departments across the nation, including the cities of Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Detroit.

Many sources are available to obtain the radioactive material needed to construct a dirty bomb. One good candidate is cesium-137, a highly radioactive substance that is commonly used in heavy industry. While uranium is at the top of the list of radioactive materials available in illicit trafficking, "cesium-137 is the second-most common with 53 seizures between 1993 and 1998, which contributed to 22.6 percent of all radioactive material seizures." Authorities estimate that there are more than 8,000 sources of industrial radiation available today in America, involving a wide range of different chemicals and an equally wide range of applications from medical technology to food irradiation.

An analysis of half-life and radioactivity, as well as a realistic evaluation of how portable and dispersible a radioactive substance really is, leads to a conclusion that "only a small fraction of the existing millions of sources pose a high security risk." Still, the challenge of protecting radioactive materials is huge, simply because there are tens of thousands of sites worldwide from which terrorists could steal or buy the radioactive materials they would need to make a dirty bomb.

Detonating radioactive material would cause fallout and contamination that would cause radiation sickness in many of those exposed. Serious illness, even death, could result, depending upon the amount and intensity of the radioactive material released and the health or susceptibility to radiation poisoning of those persons exposed to the hazard. Physical areas impacted by the dirty bomb would need to be quarantined and detoxified before they could be used again. The cleanup process could be long and expensive; some structures might be so toxic that destroying them might be the only solution.

A terrorist attack using a RED would produce chaos and fear; however, the number of actual casualties might be relatively small. We can imagine a coordinated attack where a group of terrorists planned simultaneous or near-simultaneous dirty-bomb explosions within one city, with the aim of shutting down the city, at least temporarily, and intensifying the shock-and-fear value of the attack by successfully pulling off multiple coordinated attacks.

Combine the RED with the suicide car-bomb methodology. Five terrorists driving automobiles with a RED in the trunk could effectively shut down a city as large as Manhattan, produce a number of deaths and induce fear that would be felt around the nation for weeks, if not months, simply as a result of the media "feeding frenzy" coverage that would be certain to result. One terrorist could be assigned to explode the RED at a specified time in the Lincoln Tunnel. The second terrorist car bomb could stop on the George Washington Bridge, detonating the RED at or near the center of the bridge. Either of these bombs, if sufficiently large, might also cause significant structural damage to the tunnel or the bridge, causing enough debris to clog the tunnel and enough impact to collapse either the whole bridge or a major section of it.

A third car could explode in the heart of Midtown, at one of the busiest intersections, such as Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. A fourth car-bomb explosion could be targeted for the Wall Street area, perhaps designating the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street as ground zero. The fifth car could be assigned a destination of Times Square, at Forty-second Street. Having five car bombs explode like this on any given day in New York City would bring the town to a sudden halt, kill hundreds of people, contaminate parts of the city for months if not years, and cause massive fear that other attacks could be scheduled to follow either in New York City again or in any other major U.S. metropolis: Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco.

While these scenarios appeal to the terrorist mind, there are practical difficulties. Not only is stealing the required radioactive material difficult, the terrorists handling the substances might become seriously poisoned in the process. Assembling the RED would require technical skills and a safe laboratory environment to prevent further radiation contamination. Last, while the impact of the RED might be psychologically great, the true amount of death and destruction the explosion would produce is relatively small to terrorists who are dreaming of detonating nuclear weapons within our major cities.

For these reasons, the threat of dirty bombs is real, though we should not assume that a dirty bomb would be the weapon of choice, especially not for a group of skilled terrorists who would have the backing of a nuclear-armed rogue state such as Iran. The mad mullahs and their terrorist associates would, if possible, opt for a much more deadly scenario, one that could truly bring the civilized world to its knees in the space of one day. If serious terrorists are going to spend their time devising attacks, the terror masters directing them will move to the most feasible attack that can cause the maximum amount of damage. Why bother with anything less? That's how the terror masters can be expected to think.

Tomorrow: Corsi explains the weapon of choice for terrorists on American soil: the improvised nuclear device.


-------- u.n.

Bolton Often Blocked Information, Officials Say
Iran, IAEA Matters Were Allegedly Kept From Rice, Powell

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A04

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61304-2005Apr17?language=printer

John R. Bolton -- who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations -- often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

In some cases, career officials found back channels to Powell or his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who encouraged assistant secretaries to bring information directly to him. In other cases, the information was delayed for weeks or simply did not get through. The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Two officials described a memo that had been prepared for Powell at the end of October 2003, ahead of a critical international meeting on Iran, informing him that the United States was losing support for efforts to have the U.N. Security Council investigate Iran's nuclear program. Bolton allegedly argued that it would be premature to throw in the towel. "When Armitage's staff asked for information about what other countries were thinking, Bolton said that information couldn't be collected," according to one official with firsthand knowledge of the exchange.

Intra-agency tensions are common in Washington, and as the undersecretary of state in charge of nuclear issues, Bolton had a lot of latitude to decide what needed to go to the secretary. But career officials said they often felt that his decisions, and policy views, left the department's top diplomat uninformed and fed the long-running struggles inside the agency.

Bolton's time at the State Department under Rice has been brief. But authoritative officials said Bolton let her go on her first European trip without knowing about the growing opposition there to Bolton's campaign to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear agency. "She went off without knowing the details of what everybody else was saying about how they were not going to join the campaign," according to a senior official. Bolton has been trying to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is perceived by some within the Bush administration as too soft on Iran.

Publicly, Rice has staunchly defended Bolton's credentials and urged the Senate to quickly confirm him. But privately, officials said, she has kept him out of key discussions on Iran since taking over in January.

Bolton's staff spent the weekend answering dozens of follow-up queries from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is conducting his confirmation hearings. Nominees traditionally refrain from responding to questions outside that process, and the State Department has not directly commented on allegations and testimony in recent weeks from former officials who characterized Bolton as a bully who has sought the removal of intelligence analysts who challenged him on facts and evidence related to weapons of mass destruction.

Bolton's supporters argue that his blunt style and hard-line views make him ideally suited to serve U.S. interests at the United Nations. His opponents argue that Bolton's demeanor and disdain for the United Nations will make it difficult for the White House to achieve its goals there.

Democrats on the foreign relations panel blocked a vote on Bolton last week and are hoping that new information might persuade Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) or others to vote against him.

A vote is scheduled for tomorrow, and Republicans on the committee indicated yesterday that they will support him. But they also expressed deep concern over the charges against Bolton in recent weeks.

Testimony last Tuesday by former State Department intelligence chief Carl W. Ford Jr. had left several of them shaken after he described Bolton as a "serial abuser" who picked on junior officers who dared to challenge him. Chafee had said that Ford's testimony was strong but that it did not show a pattern.

But, yesterday, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said the allegations were beginning to pile up.

"If there's nothing more that comes out, I will vote for Bolton," Hagel told CNN's "Late Edition." But Hagel also said that he was "troubled with more and more allegations, revelations, coming about his style, his method of operation," including charges that Bolton had intimidated a member of Hagel's staff who had worked briefly under Bolton at the State Department's Nonproliferation Bureau.

In February 2003, Bolton reportedly accused the young career official, Rexon Ryu, of concealing information and of insubordination when he failed to produce a copy of a cable he had written about the work of U.N. inspectors in Iraq. Ryu's immediate superiors investigated the charge and found it baseless. But Bolton wanted Ryu removed from his duties, officials said.

Just weeks before the incident, Ryu had been among a small number of State Department officials who accompanied Powell to CIA headquarters to review the presentation Powell would give to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's alleged weapons programs. Officials said Ryu had been instrumental in getting the most controversial allegations out of Powell's speech.

Much of the debate about Bolton has centered on his management style, his staunch criticisms of the United Nations and his hard-line approaches on Iran and North Korea.

But testimony gathered by the Senate panel in preparation for Bolton's confirmation hearings has also detailed a private channel to the CIA and how he sought to stifle career analysts from voicing dissent about the intelligence he was receiving. Bolton's chief of staff, Frederick Fleitz, is on loan to Bolton from the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC. Fleitz told Senate staff members during an April 7 interview that he goes back to the agency's headquarters from time to time and reports to supervisors there and to Bolton.

Neil Silver, who directs the Office for Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told Senate staff members earlier this month that his office was surprised when a CIA analysis on "China's commitment to proliferation" showed up for Bolton in 2002 without a request filed through his office. Silver assumed that Fleitz had heard about the analysis through associates at the CIA because its conclusions had not been agreed to within the intelligence community. Silver's office, which is supposed to provide policymakers with a complete picture of intelligence that could affect directives, attached an alternative view for Bolton to see.

That decision brought immediate complaints from Fleitz, who told Silver that it was "unprofessional" to circulate the dissent.

Thomas Fingar, who runs the State Department's intelligence bureau, which is the official liaison between the department and the rest of the intelligence community, told the Senate committee on April 8 that Fleitz had asked that a clearance request for controversial intelligence on Cuba be made through WINPAC.

Often those requests go through the National Intelligence Council (NIC), but it became public during last week's hearings that Bolton had clashed with the council officer in charge of Latin America.

Bolton came up against resistance from Fingar's bureau and, later, from the national intelligence officer on Latin America over a speech he gave in May 2002 suggesting that Cuba had a biological weapons program.

The former national intelligence officer told the committee that he received an abusive e-mail from Fleitz after he had raised objections with the Senate staff about the Cuba speech. The former officer and his boss then, Stuart Cohen, who ran the NIC in 2002, said Bolton tried to get the officer removed from his job after the incident.

Ford, who ran the State Department's intelligence bureau before Fingar, also said that Bolton had sought the removal of Christian Westermann, the bureau analyst who had also challenged the ambiguous intelligence Bolton wanted to make public about Cuba.

When Westermann shared his dissenting view about the intelligence, he was ordered to Bolton's office and berated, Ford and Westermann said. Ford and Silver said Bolton wanted Westermann removed from his job at the intelligence bureau. Bolton denied that he tried to have anyone fired but said that the national intelligence officer and Westermann had acted inappropriately.


-------- u.s. nuc facilities


-------- california

Why we should shut San Onofre now; unpublished letters to NC Times, NY Times

From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Date: Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:12pm

From: Russell D. Hoffman, Concerned Citizen; Date: April 18th, 2005

(1) List of problems at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station since 2001
(2) This letter was censored by the North County Times
(3) ...And this one was censored by the New York Times
(4) Contact information for the author of this newsletter

==========================================================
(1) List of problems at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station since 2001
==========================================================

Below is a list I have compiled of problems that have occurred at San
Onofre over the past few years, with some related data. Despite anything
some ivory-tower dreamer might claim, or anything some pro-nuker who has
made a living off of other people's misery might say, nuclear power IS a
crime against humanity -- nothing less.

The spent fuel at San Onofre is pushing -- or perhaps has already passed --
4,000,000 pounds. One gram of that would be enough for a dandy "dirty
bomb". Around the country, there are 80,000 tons of used reactors cores,
with NO PLACE TO PUT THEM. Yucca Mountain is a boondoggle, sharply opposed
by people in Nevada and along the transportation routes. This high level
radioactive waste is EXTREMELY deadly, can catch fire spontaneously, and is
kept OUTSIDE the containment domes at each reactor. If there is an
accident, act of nature, or terrorist attack, it will cost society
trillions of dollars and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands,
of lives.

Every part of San Onofre is aging rapidly. There is no reason to believe
SCE's estimate that the steam generator upgrade will save $1 billion
dollars for their customers. I'm sure there are enormous accounting tricks
to come up with any such figure and it is utter garbage. They won't show
us the figures, of course, just their summation. In reality, SCE simply
wants to keep the nuclear facility open at ANY cost, in the expectation
that future generations of nuclear reactors will be more profitable for
them -- in other words, to simply keep the SITE LICENSES GOING because Geo.
Bush & Company has promised BILLIONS AND BILLIONS to restart America's
nuclear program -- and SCE wants a BIG piece of that pie!

Every day we keep the facility open and refuse to switch to renewable
energy solutions we are incurring an additional debt to society which
future generations will curse us for. Steam generator leaks send poisonous
"primary coolant" at 2200 PSI into the secondary coolant loop which is at a
much lower pressure. From there, the radiation is released in dribs and
drabs directly into the environment, as that coolant loop's chemical broth
is changed over time. So this isn't just a matter of money or politics --
nuclear power releases deadly radiation all day, every day.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA


SCE is the second-largest investor-owned electric utility, and subsidiary
of Edison International.

According to the IAEA, the "Annual Time On Line" for Unit 2 was:

2000: 89%
2001: 97.47%
2002: 86.96%
2003: 98.98%
2004: 82.68%

Since beginning operation in 1982, Unit 2 has had 7 years with below 70%
ATOL (through 2004, and not including 1982), and 2 more years with
identical 70.74% ATOLs.

The ATOL for Unit 3 during the same period was:

2000: 100%
2001: 59.02%
2002: 98.84%
2003: 88.37%
2004: 72.22%

Since beginning operation in 1983, Unit 3 has had 3 years below 60% ATOL
(including 1984 and 1985, the first two years of what was supposed to be
full operation), 4 below 70%, and 10 years below 80%.

February 3, 2001:

Just 12 hours after going back "into service" after repairs, Unit 3 was
shut down because of "a fire in an electrical switching room". A
20-year-old circuit breaker "failed to close, creating a 4000-volt arc and
fire that cut power to coolant control systems, drowned emergency switching
valves and shut down emergency oil pumps, destroying the [turbine] shaft.
Currently, 150 identical breakers remain in service at the plant."

Here's the lead paragraph from an "early" SD U-T report. At this point one
assumes they hadn't yet realized the turbine shaft was bent, so their
estimate of the repair time is wildly optimistic:

February 6, 2001:

"A small fire last weekend that triggered the shutdown of one of two
reactors at the nuclear power plant in San Onofre will keep the reactor
shut down for several weeks, a plant spokesman said."

This was no "small fire' and required professional help from the San
Clemente Fire Department to put out (there was an argument about how to put
it out, and the SCFD finally won).

There's a special name for a turbine shaft that runs off it's clamps and
bearings and whatnot that's holding it, and gallops across the land, sort
of like a steamroller gone mad. That almost happened at San Onofre. I
believe one of the turbines would roll towards the control room area, and
the other would head towards the puny little tsunami wall. but I'm not sure
which turns which way.

May 30th. 2001:

Ray Golden, spokesperson for San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station,
accuses the opposition of being "completely misinformed and they don't
understand the laws of physics". That very day, San Onofre drops an 80,000
lb load (a crane) when a strap breaks. This leads to a reported $5,000,000
expense in lift training, strap replacement, etc. etc.. The same month the
crane incident is reported (June, 2001), the EPA approves a power up-rate
for San Onofre Units 2 and 3.

June 6, 2001:

Workers overfill a 300-gallon steel bin with hydrazine, a toxic chemical
used to purify water in the plant's cooling systems, spilling about 20
gallons. (SD U-T)


June 26, 2001:

Flames and smoke shoot suddenly skyward, pieces of silvery material were
fluttering through the air and drifting toward the freeway. Glass falls on
the nearby railroad tracks and on the freeway. When the fireball occurred,
traffic began speeding up. "Everybody sort of saw it and thought, 'Oh my
God, have we just been irradiated or what?' " (SD U-T)

In fact, the explosion was a transformer in the switchyard, which is also
old and poorly maintained, just like the rest of the plant. it was one of
54 similar "potential transformers" which "step down" the voltage to 115
for "sampling". Electricity normally goes out the transmission lines which
cross I-5 (and thus are targets for terrorists!) at 238,000 volts.

In 1994 the same thing happened. "Plant workers discovered that corrosion
caused by ocean air rusted the transformer's carbon-steel casing, allowing
water to enter and contaminate the insulation oil." After the 1994
incident, inspections led to 4 transformers being replaced, and 3 being
repaired.


September 11th, 2001:

San Onofre and the nation's 102 other nuclear power plants are NOT shut
down during the attack that day, despite planes on the loose being smashed
into multiple buildings.


September 26th, 2001:

On the front page of the NC Times, Ray Golden, spokesperson for San Onofre
Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station, says he, "had always been taught that
we were designed specifically for large plane crashes...That was
incorrect." In another paper, he is reported to have said, "The plant was
never designed for the impact from a commercial airplane."

September 26th, 2001:

Breck Henderson of the NRC is quoted saying activists aren't facing
reality. He claims the plants are safe against tsunamis, earthquakes,
tornados and "other natural or man-made disasters". (NC Times)


Letter to NC Times following shutdown October 2001 "for repairs":

Date: October 13th, 2001

Subject: San Onofre nuclear reactor, Unit II, shut down for approx. 20 days
for repairs; x-rays should be done for circular cracks in the reactor vessel

By: Russell D. Hoffman

To The Editor:

Yesterday it was reported that San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating
Station's Unit II reactor has been shut down for repairs lasting about
three weeks.

Last August, San Onofre's operators, Southern California Edison, refused to
shut their two operational reactors down in order to do x-rays of their
reactor vessels for circular cracks around the approximately 100 nozzles
which enter each vessel, choosing to wait, instead, until the regular
repair schedule dictated a shutdown. Circular cracks have been identified
as a potentially catastrophic, inherent design flaw in Pressurized Water
Reactors. The problem has been found in French and Japanese PWRs, and last
spring, in PWRs in two out of three reactors on the Oconee (South Carolina)
generating station.

San Onofre's reactors are about 20% larger than the Oconee reactors (more
heat, more liquid, more vibration, etc.).

I have previously described the circular cracking problem in detail in
several essays and letters to the editor which I posted online here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/nct2001h.htm

Now that the reactor is shut anyway, is San Onofre doing the x-rays? My
guess is no, because I believe if they were, it would have been reported.

The decision not to shut the reactors down in August for an x-ray
inspection was yet another flagrant violation of the spirit of safety which
they claim to have at San Onofre. To not shut them down following the
September 11th attacks is even crazier.

But in any event, if they don't x-ray the welds on the Unit II reactor
vessel while the reactor is shut down right now anyway, it's definitely
nothing less than criminal negligence.

Sincerely,

Russell D. Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA


October 24th, 2001:

"...mock attack teams staged four assaults on the plant, and three were
repelled. During the final drill, the attackers were closing in on a target
when the exercise was suddenly called off. It is far from certain that
plant managers have taken the necessary steps to ensure that a real attack
would be less successful." (SD U-T)

Christmas Day, 2001:

A Cessna 172 crashes into the ocean just south of San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station. First reported to have crashed 3 miles south of the
reactor and 1/2 mile out to sea, in fact it was probably less than 1/4 mile
way.


January 8th, 2002:

San Juan Capistrano (CA) police arrest a man who had threatened to shoot up
the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station and his former coworkers etc. at the
plant.

He had an arsenal of almost 300 weapons, including illegal assault rifles,
5,000 rounds of ammunition, an antitank rocket launcher, four live hand
grenades, tear gas, survivalist material, etc. etc..


February 27, 2002:

Unit 3 goes offline after a backup connection trips. One of the main
electrical connections had been out of service for a week for "maintenance
and repairs to key equipment" when the backup tripped. To prevent an
uncontrollable blackout in the San Diego area, power was cut to over
200,000 SDG&E customers.


June 21-27, 2002:

"Five families of San Onofre workers who have died of rare forms of cancer
have sued SCE for failing to disclose radiation leaks at the plant." About
this time, the U.S. Government begins distributing Iodine (KI) pills within
a pitiful 10-mile radius around the plant." (OC Weekly)


July 4, 2002:

Unit 2 is returned to service, concluding a 43-day "routine" shutdown for
"refueling and maintenance." Operators had intended to start several days
earlier, but a malfunction of steam bypass valves automatically shut the
reactor down shortly after operators had started it. During the outage,
workers repaired 170 tubes and plugged an additional 150 ­ "fewer than they
expected". Edison had hired 1,400 contract workers to supplement the 1,800
regular workers at the plant. (SD U-T)


September 27, 2002:

Its reported in World Net Daily that an airplane flying a standard route
(known as "Victor 23") can fly DIRECTLY over San Onofre at about 17,000
feet. Jets on "V23" could descend at well over 5,000 feet per minute in a
"quick but normal descent" -- much faster if deliberately sent into a
nosedive. Every jet departing San Diego on V23 is, in fact, heading for
San Onofre.

V25 also runs very close, about 15 miles offshore. A jet traveling at 600
miles per hour covers 15 miles in less than two minutes.


February, 2003:

Plans to haul away Unit 1's 900-ton reactor pressure vessel ("as heavy as
two fully loaded Boeing 747s", as one article put it) get so close that a
192-wheel tractor-trailer is expected to haul it away to a barge, which
would then transport the reactor about 20,000 miles, including around Cape
Horn, to Barnwell County, South Carolina. Cape Horn, the most deadly
passage on Earth, is referred to as "the tip of South America" in one AP
report, rather than being named explicitly. Rail shipment and the Panama
Canal had both already been eliminated, the former because it would
"disrupt regular shipping" and the latter because PC officials found it PC
to "not accept" the cargo. They apparently have a "150 ton limit on
radioactive cargo," perhaps not understanding that it's Curie content that
matters, not raw weight. In this case, both (the utility says it's equal
to one dental x-ray per hour if you are right next to it). Travel the long
way around the globe has still not been ruled out as yet another
alternative, but leaving it sit on the beach seems to be the actual plan.


May, 2003:

Don May, the president of California Earth Corp, points out that there is a
major fault line about two miles away from San Onofre that is "overdue for
an earthquake." Mark Massara of the Sierra Club's coastal program
describes San Onofre as: "an unequivocal environmental and economic
disaster with no redeeming features whatsoever." It's reported in local
media that several former employees of the plant who have developed cancer
have sued plant owner Southern California Edison and its suppliers (such as
Bechtel) for exposure to radiation.


September 26 - October 2nd, 2003:

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station ranked THIRD among the U.S.
facilities "most likely to suffer a meltdown" according to the Union of
Concerned Scientists. The risk is in part due to design defects in the
sump pump system, according to the group. There is potential for debris to
clog the screen on the containment-vessel sump. Such a clog could prevent
water from being pumped through the reactor core, causing the reactor’s
fuel rods to overheat and melt down. On August 1st, 2003 the utility
promised to have workers trained by November 30th, 2003 to clean the
drains. Scott Burnell, public affairs officer for the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC), describes the containment sump-pump issue "a credible one".
(OC Weekly)


December 31st, 2003:

SCE's favorable Incremental Cost Incentive Pricing (ICIP) structure ends (a
"generation incentive mechanism").


January 29, 2004:

Reactor (Unit ?) leaks 144 gallons per day for "two or three days"; leak
described as "tiny":

The leak was in a 2-inch-diameter steel pipe that was part of a system of
pipes that "purifies and recycles" water. The "pinhole" leak was to have
been repaired and the reactor brought on line that weekend, and fully
operational by the next week.

The reactor spokesperson said the reactor was shut down at 8 p.m. Saturday,
two or three days after operators first saw the leak.

Note that 3 days X 144 gallons per day = almost 500 gallons of
liquid! .That's no small leak!


March 31st, 2004:

NC Times: "Two failed water temperature sensors have forced operators to
shut down San Onofre's Unit 2 reactor before it could reach full power
after a 45-day refueling and maintenance outage, a plant spokesman said
Wednesday."

Some facts about San Onofre from that article:

Each steam generator is 66 feet tall, 25 feet in diameter, weighs 750 tons
and contains 9,350 metal tubes.

All day every day, 560-degree reactor coolant is pumped through the tubes
under 2,250 pounds of pressure per square inch.

San Onofre's steam generators were designed to last 40 years. However,
inspectors began detecting cracks in the thin coolant tubes only 10 years
after units 2 and 3 came into service in 1983 and 1984.

Edison had to plug 1,899 of Unit 2's tubes and another 534 have been
repaired by inserting protective metal sleeves. All told, 10 percent of
Unit 2's steam generator tubes are out of service.

Unit 3 has a total of 1,227 ---- or 6.5 percent ---- of its tubes plugged.


April 3rd, 2004:

"Incident" at SONWGS Unit II (see below)


Monday, April 12, 2004

A short circuit at the San Onofre Nuclear Generation station Saturday shut
down the plant's Unit 2 reactor just as it was about to reach full power
after a "routine 45-day refueling outage" (NC Times).

Routine? 45 days? Not either!

"Saturday's emergency shutdown was the second since Edison finished a
biannual refueling process that was supposed to last only 45 days. The
refueling outage was scheduled to last until Feb. 25, but operators
detected two faulty coolant temperature sensors that forced a shutdown."
(NC Times)


November. 19, 2004:

From an NC Times report Nov. 23, 2004: An aluminum plate called a
"deionization plate" fell off due to unexpected amounts of vibration from
the nearby turbine shaft (which rotates at 1,800 rpm), caused Unit II to
shut down at 8:07 PM Friday (Nov. 19th, 2004).

Unit II was running "without incident" since April 4th, 2004. Several of
these aluminum plate had just been installed during the refueling outage.

Unit III was out of service at the time for refueling, so there was ZERO
power being generated at the plant during the outage.


December 2, 2004:

At 2200 PSI, there is no such thing as a "tiny" crack: But here's a
typical report, anyway:

Unit 3 to remain shut down through mid-January after tiny cracks are
discovered in two of its water heaters.

Unit 3 was off line since Sept. 26th, 2004 for a 55-day refueling when
microscopic cracks were found in water heater sleeves attached to the
pressurizers. The 30 heaters "regulate the nuclear reactor's coolant to
ensure the water inside the reactor's coil does not boil."


December 26th, 2004:

Tsunami devastates Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Sumatra and other
countries. Waves more than 50 feet high are reported to crash into the
shores. 300,000 people killed. San Onofre claims their 30 foot (possibly
35 foot) sea wall is adequate to contain all possible tsunamis. Tsunamis
caused by underwater earth slides have reached 1,800 feet!


December 29th, 2004:

Tornado touches down 50 miles from San Onofre. The plant is not properly
protected against tornado strikes. Numerous vital portions of the plant
are vulnerable to this and asteroid strikes as well, not to mention
terrorists with Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs).


February 3rd, 2005:

Unit 2 shut itself off for another electrical problem -- this time a
"digital fault recorder" tripped. SCE could not decide if the $50,000
device was working properly or not, so they replaced it. There are three
such devices on site. (SD U-T)


February 7, 2005:

According to AP, "The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station could be forced
to shut down as soon as 2009 unless regulators decide that energy customers
should pay for $829 million in repairs."


February 16, 2005:

"For the third time in three months, a reactor at the San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station has shut down." (Unit 2)

This shutdown was initiated due to a "faulty water valve". The valve was
18 inches in diameter and original equipment (1982). It fed "non-radiated"
water to various pumps for cooling. There are many valves like it (and
just as old) at SONWGS. In July, 1997 another valve's failure to open
properly during "startup testing" caused Unit 3 to remain shut down at
least 5 days longer than originally planned. The "identical valve" in Unit
2 was tested and determined to ALSO need "repairs". My guess is that
"repair" really means "replace".


March 10, 2005:

Environmentalists object to the proposed renewal of a state permit that
allows Southern California Edison to use 2.4 billion gallons of seawater
each day to cool the San Onofre nuclear power plant. (SD U-T)


From an ex-SONWGS worker's email to me:

Another event that could have been prevented was reported to the NRC by LER
(I was the author) when a SONGS technician closed a breaker on an emergency
bus, causing a direct ground through the switch yard. The ground caused
the breaker supplying power to the emergency bus to open and resulted in a
loss of power to the shutdown cooling pumps. The emergency diesel
generators started but could not power the bus because the control power to
the inadvertently closed breaker had been removed. Therefore, [the] breaker
would not open (clearing the bus) during the emergency diesel
sequencing. The reactor, shut down for refueling, was without cooling for
a few minutes before the operators could align another pump. This event
occurred because the technician did not fully understand the operation of
the break he was sent to repair. Present at the time were the System
Engineer and the Operations Supervisor and several other "lookers." I
thought that it was significant that none of the people present realized
the consequences of the technician's plans. Nor did any of them halt the
work because they were not sure what would happen. Also, it was
unrecognized by those planning the work that the temporary ground in the
switch yard would prevent the emergency diesel generators from performing
their intended safety function.


In another email to me, the same ex-San Onofre employee (who still believes
in the dream of nuclear power, by the way), talking about a different LER
(Licensee Event Report), stated:

"I believe the report contained statements that were designed to
deliberately deceive the NRC. Two days after I raised that concern with
the NSC [Nuclear Safety Concerns] office, I was reassigned to other
projects . . . The work environment became so hostile, I retired in August
2003."


UNIT 1 was a failure, too:

And let's not let them forget about how things went with Unit 1, which was
a loosing proposition from DAY ONE and from which we now have enormous
piles of deadly "spent fuel" radioactive reactor cores. Here's an actual
quote from a scholarly report available online:

REACTORS;SEMIMETALS;SHUTDOWNS;THERMAL REACTORS;VAPOR GENERATORS;WATER
COOLED REACTORS;WATER MODERATED REACTORS
Description/
Abstract Few nuclear reactors have been shut down for periods on the order
of several years - and then restarted. Those that have experienced this
type of history are sources of a great deal of information concerning
reactivity changes and in-core power redistributions due to nuclide decay.
This paper discusses the core reactivity changes due to this nuclide decay
and presents actual data illustrating the net effect of these changes on
the critical boron concentration (CBC) rundown curve and the in-core power
distribution at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Unit 1 (SONGS-1).

##

=======================================================
(2) This letter was censored by the North County Times:
=======================================================

To: "Editor, NC Times" <opinion@...>
Subject: 20% is not so hard to find...
Cc: "Gig Conaughton" <gconaughton@...>, "Mary Rowe"
<mrowe@...>, "Phil Diehl" <pdiehl@...>, "Erin Walsh"
<ewalsh@...>, "Paul Sisson" <psisson@...>

April 8th, 2005

To The Editor,

Today's article ("Report Concerns Nuclear Activists") ended with an
unattributed comment stating that it would be difficult to replace San
Onofre's energy. SCE claims "SONWGS" delivers 20% of our local
electricity, but one has to factor in numerous prolonged outages. And you
should also factor in the costs of evacuations, meltdowns, subsequent
permanent loss of real estate, and hundreds of thousands of deaths. What's
THAT going to cost?

Our state government believes we can cut our usage by 20% -- they have
offered us rebates to do it. So why can't we?

In one 14-month period recently, California added 4,000 megawatts of new
generating capacity -- enough to replace all four nukes in the
state. Let's do that again, but this time, add renewable energy and CLOSE
THE NUKES!

Once a nuclear power plant is shut down, the danger begins to
subside. Once the control rods are dropped for the last time, the chance
of a meltdown becomes many orders of magnitude less. Once the fuel has
cooled for 5 years or more, the chance of a catastrophic spent fuel fire
dramatically decreases.

It's still not safe, but it's safer. Shutting the plants is the only
logical thing to do.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA

=================================================
(3) ... And this one was censored by the New York Times:
=================================================

To: "Letters Editor" <letters@...>
Subject: Another New York Times Op_Ed smacks of pronuclear bias...
Cc: "Nicholas D. Kristof'" <nicholas@...>

To The Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof's Op-Ed piece in your paper was absurd, and his
conclusions are illogical. It would have fit perfectly in a Nuclear Energy
Institute publication, but not in the New York Times. Real
environmentalists should be given a chance to respond!

First of all, wind power, which Kristof scoffs at because the wind doesn't
blow all the time (he calls it "one big problem"), works PERFECTLY when
used in conjunction with other renewable energy resources, and is the
cheapest energy source available today. And what about nuclear power's
frequent, sudden, and prolonged outages? Why doesn't he consider THAT "one
big problem"? Not to mention the constant threat of industry-wide
shutdowns due to as-yet undiscovered (or unadmitted) flaws. Sudden
shutdowns of dozens of one type of nuke or another have previously occurred
in Japan, France, and elsewhere.

Similarly, his complaint about solar energy's lack of penetration is
self-serving, not based on science or economics, but on historic corporate
and federal neglect of a useful technology.

Kristof is sure we should rip out all the hydroelectric dams because they
might be impacting some salmon runs. Chernobyl affects the wildlife for
hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of miles around. Hanford, Washington
poisons the Columbia River and way out to sea with its effluent from
nuclear bomb and nuke power plant production work done there during the
past 50 years. The Yucca Mountain project has been found to be full of
fraud, and after 50 years, it is still unworkable, decades away at the
earliest, and Nevadans hate it. The nation's spent fuel pools are
dangerously overfilled and susceptible to an attack or an accident that
would poison more fish in the first day than all the dams in history have
ever killed.

There are far more clean energy choices, none of which are good enough for
Kristof, but he doesn't go into detail about his complaints regarding ocean
thermal energy conversion ("OTEC"), wave power (and all its many
variations), tide power, biomass, geothermal, space-based mirrors, the
benefits of an intercontinental electrical energy grid, or anything
else. He just plugs nukes as the solution to everything.

His entire discussion of the dangers of terrorism consists of telling us
that "there are also risks from terrorist attacks" after mentioning the
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, but without mentioning
Davis-Besse's near-meltdown in 2002 (probably far closer to a catastrophe
than TMI was, in reality), San Onofre's 100 million dollar fire in 2001, or
any of the other numerous nearly-catastrophic failures at nuclear power
plants throughout the world. The truth is, we've been lucky. Nuclear
power's image could easily be a lot more soiled than it already is.

Green energy is possible and necessary. Nuclear power is neither green nor
necessary and by choosing nukes we are giving our enemies a powerful weapon
to use against us.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA

Below are some URLs this author has created which you can visit to learn
more about nuclear power:

How does a nuclear power plant work? (Flash animation based on industry
drawings):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/nukequiz/nukequiz_one/nuke_parts/reactor_parts.swf
or try:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/nukequiz/nukequiz_one/nuke_parts/reactor_parts.html

POISON FIRE USA: An animated history of all major U.S. nuclear activities:
www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf
or try:
www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.html

ONE BAD DAY AT SAN ONOFRE: Southern California Edison memo, December 2004
about this author (sent to all employees of the plant):
http://animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2005/sce_memo/sce_memo_2004.swf
or try:
http://animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2005/sce_memo/sce_memo_2004.html

Internet Glossary of Nuclear Terminology / "The Demon Hot Atom":
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm

List of every nuclear power plant in America, with history, activist orgs,
specs, etc.:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist.htm

List of ~300 books and videos about nuclear issues in my collection
(donations welcome!):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/mybooks.htm

SHUT SAN ONOFRE!:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm

Learn about The Effects of Nuclear War here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm

For affiliation purposes only: The author of the above web sites and of
this letter is also the author of ALL ABOUT PUMPS and co-author of
STATISTICS EXPLAINED and THE HEART: THE ENGINE OF LIFE (educational
software programs). He is the owner and chief programmer for The Animated
Software Company, Carlsbad, CA ( www.animatedsoftware.com ). Contact
information appears below.

=========================================================
(4) Contact information for Russell Hoffman:
=========================================================

** THE ANIMATED SOFTWARE COMPANY
** Russell D. Hoffman, Owner and Chief Programmer
** P.O. Box 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018-1936
** (800) 551-2726
** (760) 720-7261
** Fax: (760) 720-7394
** Visit the world's most eclectic web site:
** http://www.animatedsoftware.com



-------- MILITARY 



-------- asia

A Pipeline to Peace

By GEORGE PERKOVICH and REVATI PRASAD
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
April 18, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/opinion/18perkovich.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Washington — India's foreign minister visited Washington last week and met with President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top officials to discuss a range of mutual interests, from countering China's strategic clout to promoting economic growth and resolving tensions between India and Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's obsession with Iran threatens to block a major initiative that could advance many of those goals.

India and Pakistan are trying to overcome decades of mistrust by cooperating on a pipeline that would bring natural gas from Iran through Pakistan to India. It is the sort of economically necessary, environmentally friendly and security-enhancing initiative that the United States has long advocated. Yet the administration and Congress are so fixated on pressuring Iran that they would threaten sanctions against any foreign entity that participates in this win-win project between two bitter antagonists.

The 1,625-mile pipeline would originate in Iran's South Pars gas field and traverse southwest Pakistan to the Indian border, where India would then construct a line to bring the gas to energy-starved western India. The $4 billion pipeline would be the most economical way to get natural gas from the Persian Gulf to India. No American financing is needed to make it happen.

India is desperate for new sources of energy; its strong economic growth will stall without it. Pakistan would probably reap $600 million to $700 million annually in transit fees from the pipeline, which would also bring jobs to the restive regions of Baluchistan and Sind. For its part, Iran has agreed to provide $200 million for development in Pakistan and to establish a Pakistan-Iran investment company to improve bilateral investment.

Beyond the obvious economic benefits, the pipeline would reduce the risk of conflict between India and Pakistan. As Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, a former Citigroup executive, explained, "If we do this pipeline and it does take off, I sincerely believe India-Pakistan relations will move forward in the right direction." Indian officials, while concerned that Pakistani governments will not always keep the gas flowing, judge the economic and strategic gains to be worth the risk.

The pipeline would also have environmental benefits. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, and a steady supply of it to India would help slow carbon emissions that would otherwise contribute to global warming.

The Bush administration objects because it believes that economic pain can compel Iran to abandon its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and will, ultimately, drive the cleric-led government from power. But 26 years of sanctions and pressure have achieved neither objective; indeed, they may have convinced many Iranians that only nuclear technology can protect their country against American hostility.

Democrats and Republicans alike, especially in Congress, have consistently misdiagnosed Iran's political dynamics. Nationalism has largely supplanted revolutionary religious fervor in Iran, and American pressure only feeds it. Iranians from across the political spectrum are convinced that the United States aims to keep their nation down, as payback for the hostage crisis and the 1979 revolution. Blocking the pipeline would continue that counterproductive trend.

Moreover, Washington can't have it both ways. We can't argue that Iran does not need nuclear energy because it has the world's second largest reserves of natural gas and then block Iran's investments in its gas industry. To wean Iran from its nuclear program, including its pursuit of uranium enrichment facilities that could be used to produce weapons, Washington must convince Iranians that the United States supports their peaceful economic development.

The Bush administration threatens to compound the negative impact of its opposition to the pipeline by supplying India with new nuclear reactors as an alternative - a proposal that would go against existing domestic laws and international nuclear nonproliferation guidelines. Such a unilateral and mercantile move would incense Canada, Germany, Japan and other countries that the United States has pressured not to sell nuclear technology to countries like India that don't accept international safeguards.

In effect, the administration would be trying to block Iran's nuclear ambitions by rewarding India's, thereby undermining the global support needed for tougher nonproliferation rules both now and in the future.

The wisest solution is the simplest one here. All the United States has to do is stay out of the way and let market forces and regional security interests take over. A pipeline that is good for India, Pakistan and - God forbid - Iran will be good for America.

George Perkovich is the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Revati Prasad is a junior fellow there.


-------- business

Lockheed Martin Wins Follow-On Contract To Speed Information To Commanders

Cherry Hill NJ (SPX) Apr 18, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/news/internet-05zg.html

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded Lockheed Martin a two-year, $1.4-million follow-on contract to develop a Distributed Interactive Command Element (DICE).

DICE is an enabling component of the Dynamic Tactical Targeting (DTT) Tactical Exercise and System Testing (TEST) program.

When fully developed, DTT TEST will let geographically dispersed commanders share common sensor resources, define mission-critical information, review tactical targeting plans, and prioritize options for prosecution - all with more speed and accuracy than is currently possible.

As warfare shifts from loosely connected, independent squads of warfighters to highly coordinated and connected network-centric operations, commanders must become a seamless part of a system that optimizes and balances computer automation with their experience and judgment.

The tempo of battle and quantity of information available to commanders have increased dramatically through an integrated network of advanced, automated sensors spread across the battlespace.

As part of DTT TEST, Lockheed Martin will develop DICE so commanders can better deal with the flood of information, improve their quality of information and speed their decision-making processes.

Lockheed Martin will use artificial intelligence and advanced human-computer interaction concepts as enabling, foundational technologies.

The resulting system will automatically resolve conflicting priorities among commanders.

It will enable them to quickly grasp critical battlefield information and allow them to interject decisions - such as abort, revise, clarify, augment, or prioritize - into the information management process.

"DICE will integrate and coordinate diverse sensors to detect, lock, and track multiple targets while simultaneously searching for others," said Celeste Corrado, manager, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories.

"The system will maintain contact and assign appropriate weapons until a commander authorizes engagement. We are developing critical, enabling technologies so our military will have the tools they need to achieve mission success."

The follow-on contract builds on earlier work that used key subject-matter experts to successfully develop an Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance Commander's Interface (ISRCI).

The ISRCI is the initial prototype that will enable commanders to express high-level mission requirements and interact with the large quantity of data available across the battlespace.


-------- us

Combat role for women confused

April 18, 2005
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050418-125223-4270r.htm

The Army chief of staff has raised the stakes in the debate over women in combat with an assertion that women are only barred from serving in support units assigned to infantry when such units are actually in combat.

    This appears to contradict Army and Defense Department policy that specifies that women are not to be assigned to any support unit that is "embedded" with infantry likely to engage the enemy.

    Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker spoke last week at a military forum at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in a speech on the future of the U.S. Army.

    An Army spokesman said the Army is following all policies.

    Opponents of assigning women to combat argue that moving support companies, which the Army calls Forward Support Companies, into units when they are fighting and withdrawing them when they are not fighting, is inefficient and dangerous for women, some of whom have been wounded and maimed in Iraq.

    The debate is renewed as the Army is revamping its combat brigades into what it calls modular "units of actions." To make this system work, skeptics and critics inside and outside the Army say the Army is "collocating," or embedding, mixed-sex Forward Support Companies with infantry units contrary to policy. President Bush himself has said on several occasions, most recently in a January interview with reporters and editors of The Washington Times, that he opposes assigning women to combat.

    If the Army acknowledges changing the policy -- in fact if not in name -- the Army would be required to seek congressional approval. The 3rd Infantry Division, which went to Iraq in January, is the first to deploy with such "units of action."

    Replying to a question at the forum, Gen. Schoomaker said the Army had "added" to the settled policy regarding women in combat. "First of all," he said, "we have a policy, and an [Office of Secretary of Defense] policy, that says that we will not assign females to the infantry armor and Special Forces organizations that are trained, organized and equipped to routinely close with and destroy the enemy. And we have an Army policy that adds to that, not an [Office of Secretary of Defense] policy, but an Army [policy], that adds to that [that] says we will not collocate these women at the time that those units are undergoing those operations."

    The Army's 1992 policy, to which Army Secretary Francis Harvey recently pledged his adherence, does not make such a distinction.

    The policy sets out that the Army "allows women to serve in any officer or enlisted specialty or position except those in battalion-size or smaller units which are assigned a primary mission to engage in direct ground combat or which collocate routinely with units assigned a direct ground combat mission."

    The regulation does not say women can't collocate with units that are "undergoing" combat operations, as Gen. Schoomaker put it. The regulation says they cannot serve with units that are "assigned a direct combat role."

    The general's definition appears to reflect an internal Army "point paper" drafted on Jan. 23 to be submitted to Mr. Harvey. The point paper says that "Army policy (1992) further prohibits the assignment of women to positions or units which routinely collocate with those units conducting an assigned direct ground combat mission."

    The actual policy uses the word "assigned," not "conducting."

    An Army spokesman, after examining a transcript of Gen. Schoomaker's remarks and a reference to the 1992 law, said: "Simply put, the policy has not changed, nor are there any plans to change it. The deployed Army forces are in compliance."

    Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness, which opposes women in combat, disagrees.

    "The question is, in compliance with what?" Mrs. Donnelly asked. "Certainly not with current Defense Department regulations, which clearly and simply exempt women from collocation with units 'assigned a direct ground combat mission.' The Army has presumed to add the words 'undergoing' or 'conducting' a direct ground combat mission to the Defense Department collocation rule, without authorization by the secretary of defense, and without advance notice to Congress, as required by law. Gen. Schoomaker's statement confirms this."

    Mr. Harvey sent letters to congressional leaders in January saying he had reviewed the women-in-combat policies and that "no change to the extant policy is required."

    Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is reviewing the Army's new "units of action" and has not yet decided whether they meet the women's combat exclusion, his spokesman said.

    Gen. Schoomaker's answer on women in combat was part of a lengthy response to a question from the audience. The questioner asked whether, in light of the casualties women have suffered in Iraq, "men have a moral responsibility to be protective of women ... rather than employing them in hostile and dangerous circumstances to be killed and to kill."

    The general replied, in part: "I think we have a moral responsibility to protect the weak regardless of gender, and I do not see this as a gender issue. The fact is that I think we have a moral responsibility to prepare those women that are serving in our armed forces to, No. 1, have the very best chance of surviving by providing them with the warrior skills and tasks that are required, and No. 2, make sure that as we operate that we operate in such a way that reduces the probability that any soldier will be placed in a position to be injured or killed."

    The questioner persisted, and asked whether men who hold the traditional moral commitment to protect women, "as some of us have been trained to understand as youngsters," would disqualify them from serving under his policy. Gen. Schoomaker replied that it was "an interesting question" that he would never have thought about.

    "There are some people that would say, you know, men and women can't even share the same tornado shelter in Oklahoma. I mean, there's quite a wide spectrum here on what all this means. I think that maybe since we're killing 40,000 people a year on the highway, they shouldn't drive. OK. That's very dangerous, too."


-------- OTHER


-------- environment

Oceans Getting Louder; Effects Unclear

April 18, 2005 
By Jay Lindsay, 
Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7554

BOSTON — High-profile whale beachings have been linked to sonar blasts and sparked fierce public debate over the military's use of sound in national defense. But a broader concern for scientists is rising levels of ocean background noise, much of it generated by commercial shipping, and whether it interferes with the way the entire sea has operated for eons.

Based on volume of traffic alone, scientists know the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, which are the busiest, are also the noisiest, said Christopher Clark, a Cornell bioacoustics scientist. The area around Indonesia is heavy too with shipping traffic.

Clark, who monitored Cape Cod Bay with underwater listening devices, found the ocean flat and the winter darkness unbroken by ship lights. But below the bay's surface, Clark found things weren't as serene as they seemed. The bay is saturated with sound.

"It's just a great, big amphitheater," said Clark.

The sound carrying through the bay that evening was part of an ever louder man-made din that's filling the world's oceans, and some say harming marine life.

Hearing is the primary sense for marine life, which uses sound for navigation and communication. Some scientists believe the spreading "acoustic smog" is essentially blinding marine life, affecting feeding, breeding and other crucial activities.

"Their world is just being collapsed," Clark said. "They rely so heavily on sound. They can't see anything."

Despite concerns, evidence is scant of the real effects of sound.

Even with new technology, ocean animals are hard to track, and drawing conclusions about how sound influences their behavior is difficult. No system exists to monitor ocean sounds worldwide, and the data that's collected is often taken from a small number of sites that measure only certain frequencies. Underwater sound also seems to affect different animals in completely different ways.

Businesses and the military are unlikely to make major changes before more is known.

Brandon Southall, an acoustics researcher at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, said better research is urgently needed.

"People are inherently tied to the ocean for food, for cures to diseases, for weather," he said. "We're figuring out things are more interconnected than we ever could have originally envisioned."

Sound, which is created when molecules collide, carries farther and five times faster in water than air because of water's density. Since molecules in water are spaced closer together, they lose less energy before colliding with other molecules and sound is transferred more quickly and efficiently.

Through the ages, marine animals have learned to take advantage of the ocean's natural sound stages. Whales, for instance, talk about basic things like where the best food or breeding is. They even seem to compete to produce the most intricate songs.

Researchers believe animals may use the ocean's natural "sound channels" to communicate over thousands of miles. The channel is created where dropping temperatures, which force sound waves downward, meet increasing water pressure, which forces sound waves upward. At a certain depth, the sound gets caught between the two opposing forces and bounds ahead with little resistance.

Researchers suspect that dumping a cacophony of new noise into this system isn't good. Southall said there's convincing evidence of a phenomenon called "masking," in which the increased ambient noise drowns out natural ocean communications.

Huge increases in commercial shipping have coincided with increased ocean noise. Between 1948 and 1998, the world shipping fleet has increased from 85 million tons worth of ship weight to 550 million tons, according to figures in a 2003 report "Ocean Noise and Marine Mammals," published by the National Academies. Scientists say the background noise in the ocean has increased roughly 15 decibels in that time.

Joel Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said there's evidence marine mammals are changing their sound patterns or rates, which could show their normal communication has been disrupted.

Kathy Metcalf, director of Maritime Affairs at the Chamber of Shipping in America, said she concedes that increasing ocean noise caused by ships will at some point interfere with marine life. Metcalf advocates pre-emptive steps, such as installing quieter propellers in new ships, which would reduce noise and likely benefit the industry by increasing the efficiency with which ships move through water.

But retrofitting current ships to reduce noise would be extremely expensive, and the benefit is uncertain, she said.

"If somebody is going to signal we need to start absorbing these costs when we're not even sure there's a negative impact, that's where we're digging in our heels," she said. "There's a huge issue surrounding the validity of the science on this issue."

Southall acknowledges the mountain of work ahead to come up with real answers about ocean noise. To illustrate the difficulties of applying the science to ocean life, he points to the beluga whale, which flees from ship sounds in the high Arctic, but moves toward certain vessels in Alaska.

He added that sound is perceived by ocean animals so differently than land animals that it's almost like a different sense, making it hard to apply what we know about the effects of certain decibel levels to ocean life.

Still, Southall said he's optimistic that the emerging interest in the topic will lead to breakthroughs.

Reynolds said regulating ocean sound doesn't mean ending all its benefits, whether it's better national defense or the robust trade that comes with heavy shipping.

"We have to treat it like any other form of pollution," Reynolds said. "We have to regulate it to protect other things we care about."

Clark said uncertainties can't be an excuse to do nothing, because the damage might be done by the time the effects of noisy oceans are known.

"It's like global warming," he said. "We're going to get one chance."


-------- health

Health officials rethink alcohol

April 19, 2005 (AP)

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050418-112701-7272r.htm

ATLANTA -- Federal health officials are now warning that a few alcoholic drinks a day may not protect against strokes and heart attacks after all.

    Some studies in recent years have touted the health benefits of moderate drinking. Some have even said that up to four drinks a day can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease in people 40 and older.

    But researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed data from 250,000 Americans who participated in a 2003 telephone survey. They found that the nondrinkers in the survey had many more risks for heart disease -- such as being overweight, inactive, suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes -- than the moderate drinkers.

    Based on those results, the agency could not say that moderate drinking actually was a factor in reducing the risk of heart disease.

    The findings were published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

    "We're feeling the pendulum has swung way too far and Americans are getting sort of the wrong idea" on alcohol, said the study's lead author, Dr. Tim Naimi of the CDC's chronic diseases division. "The science around moderate drinking is very murky."

    Moderate drinkers tended to be in better health, better educated, wealthier and more active than their nondrinking counterparts, and that likely influenced their lower risk of heart disease, the study said.

    "It appears that moderate drinkers have many social and lifestyle characteristics that favor their survival over nondrinkers and few of these differences are likely due to alcohol consumption itself," the study said.

    The CDC has long worried about alcohol abuse in the United States. Studies have shown that drinking excessively -- five or more drinks daily -- can increase the risk of heart disease. The CDC says nearly one in three Americans drinks too much.

    The agency said that Americans should follow dietary guidelines that limit daily consumption to two drinks for men and a single drink for women.

    Other groups -- such as the American Heart Association -- say drinking alcohol increases the dangers of alcoholism, high blood pressure, obesity, stroke, breast cancer, suicide and accidents.

    Dr. Daniel Fisher, a cardiologist with New York University Medical Center, said the CDC's findings should also be treated with caution because the average person interviewed in the phone-based study may not be completely forthcoming about their alcohol consumption. He added that a clinical trial is needed to fully determine whether alcohol drinking provides health benefits.

    Alcohol is the nation's third-leading cause of death, killing 75,000 Americans each year through related injuries or diseases, according to the CDC. 


-------- ACTIVISTS

Anti-war ex-Marine speaks at EMU
Veteran shares anecdotes about Iraq, unethical recruiting practices

By Jason Idalski / Managing Editor of Copy and Content
MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2005

http://www.easternecho.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?11040

"Intense" was the word most students used to describe a speech by anti-war activist Jimmy Massey, a former U.S. Marine who spoke Thursday night at Halle Library Auditorium.

Massey, who spoke about recruiting, the Iraq war and his two "epiphanies" about the Marines that stemmed from each, followed a speech by Pat King, who handled casualty assistance calls, or as he called himself, "the bad news guy."

Massey's first epiphany in the Marines came when he recruited a high school student by the name of Tim Queen, who was later diagnosed with a neurological disorder.

Massey asked his superior how he expected Queen to pass a physical, to which Massey said the superior responded, "It's not your responsibility to judge; it's your responsibility to get bodies in the Marines."

Massey was later investigated for unethical recruiting practices but cleared. He even got an autographed picture of his congressman, which he later showed to angry parents threatening to report his actions.

"This is a systematic abuse that goes all the way to the local congressmen," Massey said.

Even though he was not found responsible of wrongdoing, he developed guilty feelings.

"I grew a conscience so bad, I saw the face of Tim Queen every time I went to sleep," Massey said. "Physically I was paroled, but mentally I was imprisoned."

He also said he had recruits lie on their application about their medical history, drug use and police record.

"I lied, cheated, begged, borrowed and stole," Massey said.

After Massey got out of recruiting duty, he was sent to Iraq.

"We knew we were going into Iraq before you knew," he said. "By the time I finished recruiting duty, it had all been set in stone."

His second epiphany came when he and his men shot at a Red Kia that ignored their signals to stop. The driver, surprisingly unhurt, confronted Massey.

"Why did you kill my brothers?" he asked. "Why did you do this? We're not terrorists."

Later, through an Iraqi woman he met in Boston, Massey found out that his warnings were probably misinterpreted as simple greetings.

"I became belligerent, disgruntled and questioned every authority figure," he said.

He confronted his superior, and when asked by his superior what he thought about the war, he said, "I think we're committing genocide and leaving enough depleted uranium to continue genocide."

When asked for his resignation, Massey said he wanted to see a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and medically discharged Dec. 31, 2003.

The motif of fear was one Massey mentioned often during the speech.

"I was dealing with an organization that likes using fear and intimidation to do its dirty work," Massey said. "It's borderline Nazi Germany, in my opinion."

Before taking questions from the audience, Massey, who takes four types of anti-depressants and an anti-psychotic every day, said: "The reason I do this is because I sold my soul to the Marine Corp. Every day I speak, I get a little bit back." 

----

An American Aid Worker Is Killed in Her Line of Duty

By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: April 18, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/international/middleeast/18american.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 17 - For more than two years, Marla Ruzicka worked to get help for innocent civilians caught in cross-fires here. A 28-year-old Californian with blond hair and an electric smile, she ran a one-woman aid group.

On Saturday afternoon, Ms. Ruzicka became a casualty herself. A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of security contractors that was passing near her car on the airport road in Baghdad, killing her and her Iraqi driver, United States Embassy officials in Baghdad said.
	
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Ms. Ruzicka had worked in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. She took great risks, often traveling to talk to Iraqis without the guards and armored cars that reporters here tend to rely on. She also had an extraordinary gift for promoting her cause, whether in Iraq or Washington.

She worked with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, to get $2.5 million for civilian victims in Afghanistan, and later, $10 million for victims in Iraq. Last week another $10 million was authorized for the Iraq program.

"She was the one that persuaded us," Mr. Leahy said Sunday afternoon in a telephone interview. "Here's someone who at 28 years old did more than most people do in a lifetime."

Ms. Ruzicka was deceptively girlish in person. She often arranged parties for the foreign correspondents here and in Afghanistan. She was in her element, with her distinctive giggle always audible over the music. But she used the occasions to lobby reporters to write about the things that mattered to her.

The evening before she died, she visited this reporter in Baghdad to talk about civilian casualties. She spoke with affection about a 2-year-old girl she was helping, whose parents and other relatives were killed by a missile in 2003.

"She calls me bride Marla because of my hair," she said happily of the girl, Harah.

Ms. Ruzicka had also obtained new numbers on civilian casualties from the American military, which does not normally release them, and was eager to talk.

"Together we could really make a difference," she had written earlier in a typical e-mail message. "You could go home feeling extra good."

Born in Lakeport, Calif., Ms. Ruzicka came to activism early. At the age of 15, she walked into the offices of Global Exchange, a leftist advocacy group in San Francisco, and collected all its brochures. Later, she persuaded an organizer at the group to give a talk at her high school.

In her early 20's she was an angry activist, and was once was hauled off by police after protesting during a speech by George W. Bush, then governor of Texas.

Later, she changed her tactics. In 2002, she attended a Senate hearing where Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testified about Iraq. Afterward, she walked up and shook his hand.

"I didn't scream," she said recently. "I thanked him for testifying. And I started talking about civilian casualties," she said, laughing.

By then she had already spent time in Afghanistan, where she stunned and ultimately impressed many aid workers and journalists with her ability to get help for victims. She came to Iraq in 2003 and founded her organization, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict.

In the past year she moved to New York, but she still spent much of her time in Iraq. She was planning to go home in about a week.

On the day she was killed, Ms. Ruzicka was visiting Iraqi families that had lost relatives to the violence here. She sent a text message to a friend saying the stories had been painful to hear.

An American Army officer who arrived on the scene shortly after the bomber struck said that Ms. Ruzicka's car was engulfed in flames, and that she was still alive and conscious, with burns over 90 percent of her body.

A medic on the scene treated her, said the officer, Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, and heard her last words.

"I'm alive," she said.