NucNews - May 20, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Spokane Jury Blames Nuclear Plant For Cancer Associated Press Friday, May 20, 2005; A09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051901734_pf.html SPOKANE, Wash., May 19 -- A federal jury awarded a total of more than $500,000 Thursday to two people with thyroid cancer who blamed their disease on radiation from the government's Hanford nuclear installation, which made plutonium for bombs for four decades. The jury deadlocked over whether another plaintiff's thyroid cancer was caused by Hanford radiation, and it ruled against three others with thyroid-related autoimmune diseases. The lawsuit was brought against three government contractors that ran operations at Hanford -- General Electric Co., DuPont and UNC Nuclear Inc. Under law, the government will pay the damages and the costs of defending the contractors. In their lawsuit, the six plaintiffs said they were exposed to radiation during the 1940s when they were children living downwind from Hanford, near Richland, Wash. Both sides claimed victory. "The Department of Energy should take a hard look at this," said plaintiffs' attorney Richard Eymann, who represents about 2,300 people with similar claims. Kevin Van Wart, whose law firm represented the contractors, said the six people in this case were the strongest of the potential plaintiffs. Van Wart also said that the awards -- $227,508 for Steve Stanton and $317,251 for Gloria Wise -- fell far short of the cost of bringing the case to trial. The 560-square-mile Hanford site began with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during World War II. The plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, was made there. Today, work at Hanford centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup that is expected to be finished by 2035. -------- asia Senate Group Warns China Faces Test Over N. Korea By REUTERS May 20, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north-republicans.html?pagewanted=print WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A North Korean nuclear test can still be averted but China must agree to join the United States and other Asian nations in a quarantine of the isolated communist state, according to an analysis by the Bush administration's U.S. Senate allies. The paper, released on Thursday to key staff aides by the Republican Policy Committee that advises the U.S. Senate, predicted that a threatened North Korean nuclear weapons test would have sweeping security ramifications and said resolving this crisis peacefully is a ``clear test for China.'' The paper also anticipated possible regional reactions to a test, including accelerated missile defense cooperation between the United States and its Asian allies and the permanent stationing of additional U.S. forces at sea and on land in the region. The analysis said U.S. ally South Korea might mobilize its forces to defend itself against the North and purchase more advanced U.S.-made arms. But it also suggested Seoul, fearing war, might form ``some kind of confederation with the North'' and ask U.S. troops to leave. The analysis, with its predominant emphasis on China, is the latest reflection of growing dissatisfaction with Beijing, at least in the U.S. Congress. Rep. James Leach, chairman of the House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee on Asia, warned on Tuesday there could be a backlash if China does not put more pressure on Pyongyang to end its nuclear ambitions and join another round of six-party talks. Adding to tensions is a two-year-old Bush administration campaign for China to modify its pegged currency regime. TEST CONCERNS U.S. officials in repeated comments this week acknowledged China could do more on North Korea. But they put most emphasis on Beijing's cooperation with Washington. North Korea announced last week it had removed fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, a potential precursor to building more weapons or testing one. In response, top U.S. officials warned that conducting a nuclear test would force Washington and its regional partners to consider new punitive steps against Pyongyang. Since last fall, U.S. intelligence has seen signs of test preparations. But on Thursday, two senior U.S. officials said Pyongyang's intention -- testing or causing another crisis -- remained unclear. One official told Reuters suspicious activity had leveled off. The Republican paper, written by Dan Fata, the policy committee's director for national security and trade, said: ``It is not too late to avert a North Korean nuclear test.'' But he said Washington ``must demand that (China) make a choice -- either help out or face the possibility of other nuclear neighbors.'' ``Helping the United States would include participating fully in the quarantine of North Korea; tolerating Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese missile defense programs and doing nothing to pressure the South Koreans to agree to a confederation with North Korea,'' the paper said. It argued any North Korean test would raise the question of why China let it happen. ``The answer would be either because it couldn't stop North Korea or because it wouldn't stop North Korea. Either answer would result in a strain in (Sino-American) relations,'' it added. China is North Korea's main ally and benefactor. For the past 10 months, Pyongyang has boycotted China-hosted six-party negotiations aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear programs, which may have produced more than eight weapons. The United States and its partners are pushing Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks, which also includes South Korea, Japan and Russia. ---- North Korea Says Japan Ties Near 'dangerous Phase' By REUTERS May 20, 2005 Filed at 11:43 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-japan.html?pagewanted=print TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday that its relations with Japan were inching toward a ``dangerous phase of explosion'' and reiterated that Tokyo imposing economic sanctions would be tantamount to a declaration of war. Public anger in Japan over Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s combined with concern over its nuclear arms programs have led to calls for sanctions against the reclusive communist state. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, however, has been cautious about Tokyo taking that step unless the United States and other countries also act. ``The DPRK (North Korea) clearly stated more than once that it would regard any sanctions against it as a declaration of war,'' said a commentary in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried by Pyongyang's KCNA news agency. ``Nevertheless, the Japanese reactionaries are contemplating the application of economic sanctions against the DPRK,'' the commentary said. ``The hostile relations between the two countries are now inching close to the dangerous phase of explosion. ``Under this situation the DPRK is left with no option but to take a decisive counter-measure. The army and the people of the DPRK value its sovereignty as their life and soul and will never allow anyone to infringe upon it,'' it added. With concern mounting that Pyongyang may conduct an underground test of a nuclear device, and with six-party talks on its nuclear program stalled for nearly a year, pressure has been increasing on the United States to open dialogue with the North. Washington and Tokyo, for their part, have made clear that patience was wearing thin and that they would consider taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council, a prelude to possible economic sanctions, if Pyongyang continued to drag its feet. The six-party talks comprise the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia. -------- iran IAEA backs Iran-EU crisis talks, still wants more answers from Tehran VIENNA (AFP) May 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050520172733.u5twafzy.html The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday said it supported the EU-Iran nuclear talks, but diplomats warned it was impatient for more information from Tehran and its member states might refer the matter to the UN Security Council if the talks failed. "We do support these negotiations," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told AFP, but declined to comment on the talks because they were taking place "outside our territory." Sources said Friday crisis talks between Tehran and the so-called EU-3 of Britain, France and Germany and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, could take place next week in Geneva rather than Brussels as previously planned. The talks have been prompted by Tehran's recent statements that Iran is set to resume uranium conversion work, a move that would violate a November accord on freezing nuclear fuel work. Diplomats said the IAEA's 35-member state board of governors wants a commitment from the Islamic state that it will give up its plans. If it does, the board will choose to read it as a sign that Tehran can be trusted after failing for years to disclose the full nature of its nuclear programme. The Europeans want a permanent freeze of all nuclear fuel work, and in exchange is offering Iran political and commercial cooperation. They have warned that if Tehran makes good on its threat to resume conversion, they will push for a Security Council referral, something Washington has long favoured. Iran has so far agreed to hold off from resuming uranium conversion -- a precursor to the ultra-sensitive enrichment process -- pending the emergency talks. A diplomat close to the IAEA pointed out Friday that uranium conversion was not the same as uranium enrichment and posed "no immediate threat they they would develop nuclear weapons." But, he said, it was also true that "the conversion of yellowcake to UF6 has value unless to be used in enrichment centrifuges." Depending on the level to which uranium has been enriched, it can be used both for civil or military purposes, though Tehran maintains the sole aim of its nuclear programme is to provide an alternative energy source. Diplomats said the IAEA still wants answers from Tehran on several aspects of the programme, including an explanation for traces of radioactive material found in some of its facilities. Another issue still troubling the UN nuclear watchdog is plans its inspectors found in for a highly sophisticated P-2 nuclear centrifuge found in Iran. Tehran said it had not worked on the centrifuges for seven years, but said a diplomat: "The worry is that they are lying ... that they have been working secretly on more developed centrifuges." Tehran has said its decision to resume activities at Isfahan is "irreversible," and prompted more concern still by refusing IAEA inspectors access to its military site at Parchin. Washington charges that it is trying to build a detonator a nuclear bomb at the site. Diplomats say that if Tehran makes up its mind to resume conversion activities, the Islamic state will signal its final decision by informing the IAEA in a letter that it plans to open the seals the body's inspectors placed on their nuclear sites. If this were to happen and next week's talks were to fail, the Europeans will ask the board of governors to convene immediately, Solana has signalled. The board could then decide to take the matter to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions on Tehran. The IAEA board is due to hold its next meeting here on June 13. Up till now, it has resisted Washington's urging that Tehran be brought before the Council. But British Prime Minister Tony Blair has now joined sounded a threatening note that he would support such a move if Iran breached its commitments. According to diplomats in Vienna, there is a "general belief" at the IAEA headquarters that Iran's nuclear programme has reached the stage where it would take the country "three to 10 years to build a nuclear bomb." ---- Iran Nukes Replace Old Military by Stefan Nicola Washington (UPI) May 20, 2005 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-05r.html File photo of an Iranian Shahab-3 missile launch test. 'Iran's expensive long-range missile program wouldn't be financially feasible "unless you put a nuclear warhead on it,"' Cordesman said. http://www.spacedaily.com/images/missile-shahab-3-test-launch-prep-bg.jpg Iran's military is focusing on asymmetric warfare and nuclear weapons because its conventional armed forces are outdated, a senior Middle East expert said Friday. "Iran's main intents lie in two efforts: one is asymmetric warfare, and the other is weapons of mass destruction," said Anthony Cordesman, strategic analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a public policy think tank in Washington. Cordesman, author of "Iran's Developing Military Capabilities," a CSIS-sponsored report assessing Iran's armed forces, and a former high-ranking Pentagon official, also noted that in light of uncertainties about Iran's nuclear capabilities, a military strike on the Islamic republic would be "disastrous" and so a diplomatic approach is the way to go, even if that might not entirely stop Iran from pursuing a military alternative, he said. Although the United States publicly says it prefers to deal with Iran through diplomacy for now, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a television interview earlier this year, did not rule out the possibility that Israel might hit Iran's nuclear facilities. Cordesman's remarks come just days before foreign ministers from France, Britain and Germany - the so-called European Union 3 - will meet Iranian officials to negotiate a permanent halt to Iran's already-suspended uranium enrichment program. The step is a key part of both civilian and military nuclear programs. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, the United States and much of the international community believe otherwise. Cordesman agreed. "Much of the nuclear tests and development efforts in Iran simply make no sense as peaceful research," he said. "I'm almost certain there is a nuclear weapons program now." Iran's expensive long-range missile program wouldn't be financially feasible "unless you put a nuclear warhead on it," he said. Speculation about Iran's nuclear capabilities often stretches far from reality, Cordesman said. When observing international intelligence, Iran still is "a significant distance from a meaningful missile and a nuclear capability," he added. In light of a lack of a credible threat, diplomacy is probably the best way to go, he added. "If the Europeans' negotiations do nothing more than keep Iran from being overt in deploying and testing, they have accomplished a great deal," Cordesman said. So far, financial incentives for Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program are lacking, he said. "Iran desperately needs industrial development, it needs job creation, and it desperately needs to improve technology for its natural gas and oil industry." The United States supports the European efforts to negotiate with Tehran but has in the past unsuccessfully tried to get the matter referred to the U.N. Security Council. This time around, however, it has said it will block its opposition to Iran's entry into the World Trade Organization and to the sale of airline parts for the Islamic republic's ageing civilian fleet. The question remains, however, whether Iran is ready to accept financial incentives on a political level, Cordesman said. If diplomacy fails, the U.N. Security Council has to step in and use "a very decisive political language combined with economic sanctions on things like transportation and shipping that would have significant economic pressure over time," he added. Although China - a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Security Council - has signaled it will veto drastic sanctions against Iran in absence of a direct threat, the situation might radically change if U.S. intelligence "would find a smoking gun," Cordesman said. So far, there is no clear evidence Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. That's why the U.S. administration should continue to push for intelligence-gathering in Iran, no matter how intrusive that might be, Cordesman said. "If it bothers the Iranians, so be it," he said. "It's a matter of life. It's too important." Asymmetric warfare - featuring highly mobile guerilla troops and hit-and-run attacks - is thought to be the most effective way to attack a superior military power such as the United States. Iran has about 120,000 people in the revolutionary guards, a force that could deploy asymmetrical warfare in the Middle East, Cordesman said. "These are pretty capable forces," Cordesman said. "They could very quickly move large numbers of people to a country like Bahrain." But while Iran's nuclear enrichment programs and its capabilities for asymmetric warfare pose a threat to stability in the Middle East, its conventional military systems in army, navy and air force are "obsolescent," Cordesman said. In the light of slow modernization of planes, tanks and missile system, which are mostly from the mid-1970s, Iran's capability of a conventional military strike is severely limited, Cordesman said. "They have a 340,000-men army, but 220,000 of them are 18-months-conscripts," Cordesman said. "Its artillery is old and worn ... and its 1,600 tanks and about 300 airplanes are outdated even by Middle Eastern standards." Wayne White, a Middle East expert at the Middle East Institute, said Friday in a telephone interview there are incentives for Iran to pursue independent weapon systems. "Most of Iran's conventional weapons were taken away by Iraq in the last stages of the Iran-Iraq war," he said. "Renewing basic military forces is extremely expensive - we're talking billions of dollars." ---- Iran Said to Be Smuggling Nuclear Matter By GEORGE JAHN, ASSOCIATED PRESS May 20, 2005 Filed at 9:06 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Iran.html?pagewanted=print http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050520/ap_on_re_mi_ea/nuclear_iran_4 VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran is circumventing international export bans on sensitive dual-use materials by smuggling graphite and a graphite compound that can be used to make conventional and nuclear weapons, an Iranian dissident and a senior diplomat said Friday. Graphite has many peaceful uses, including steel manufacture, but also can be used as a casing for molten weapons-grade uranium to fit it to nuclear warheads or to shield the cones of conventional missiles from heat. With most countries adhering to international agreements banning the sale of such ''dual-use'' materials to Tehran, Iran has been forced to buy it on the black market, Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh told The Associated Press -- allegations confirmed by a senior diplomat familiar with Iran's covert nuclear activities. ''It is not clear how much governments are involved,'' Jafarzadeh said later in an interview with Associated Press Television News, adding that he believes Iran is ''using front companies to deceive other companies, other entities in foreign countries, and they wouldn't know what the destination would be.'' Phone calls to Iranian diplomats seeking comment were not answered. While with the National Coalition of Resistance of Iran, Jafarzadeh disclosed information about two hidden nuclear sites in Iran in 2002 that helped uncover nearly two decades of covert Iranian atomic activity -- and sparked present fears Tehran wants to build the bomb. Much of the equipment -- including centrifuges for uranium enrichment and other technology with possible weapons applications -- was acquired on the nuclear black market. Those implicated include Henk Slebos, a Dutch businessman who is awaiting trial in the Netherlands on charges of importing banned material -- including 100 pieces of graphite -- as part of disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's clandestine smuggling network. Jafarzadeh, whose organization was banned in the United States for alleged terrorist activity and who now runs the Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting think tank, said Iran was additionally smuggling and trying to manufacture a graphite-based substance called ceramic matrix composite. The highly heat resistance compound is also used in missile technology. He said he learned this from sources of information within Iran. The diplomat, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position, said Iran also may be interested in acquiring specially heat-resistant ''nuclear-grade graphite'' that can be used as moderators to slow down the fission process in reactors generating energy. While Iran does not now have reactors using such moderators, it insists it has the future right to all aspects of peaceful nuclear technology. Neither Jafarzadeh nor the diplomat could say how much graphite Iran had imported and over what period of time. But the diplomat said a graphite-moderated nuclear plant would require a ''huge amount'' of graphite -- as many as 1,000 tons for a 250-megawatt reactor. Crucibles to hold molten uranium metal would need much less graphite -- no more than about 2.2 pounds per nuclear weapon, the diplomat said. He said investigations by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency revealed laboratory experiments by Iran aimed at making nuclear-grade graphite, which later were abandoned. Domestically manufactured Iranian conventional missiles would require dozens of pounds of graphite per missile cone, he said. Jafarzadeh also said a plant now being built near the central town of Ardekan for what Iranian officials say is steel manufacturing will actually be a cover for mastering graphite technology. The revelations came as Iran's top nuclear negotiators prepared to meet early next week with the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany, acting on behalf of the 25-nation European Union, for what could be a last-ditch attempt to convince Tehran to agree to a long-term freeze of uranium enrichment activities. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Friday the talks were ''very fragile.'' He said the talks range over issues including economic, technical and commercial cooperation, Iran's wish to join the World Trade Organization, and political dialogue. The United States wants U.N. Security Council action against Iran for what it says are nuclear weapons ambitions, and the Europeans have threatened to support such U.S. calls if it resumes enrichment programs. Iran says those programs are needed to generate power, but Washington labels them as part of plans to make weapons-grade material. ---- Iran not immune from regional change: Rice WASHINGTON (AFP) May 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050519222056.xb73ufk4.html US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Iran Thursday to engage in more "stabilizing behavior" in the Middle East, warning Tehran that they were not immune to the "major changes" in the region. "The Iranians should not consider themselves immune from the major changes that are going on in the region, and we would hope that they would begin to engage in more stabilizing behavior," said Rice, speaking after a meeting with Kuwaiti's foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed al-Sabah. Rice, who reiterated US concerns over Tehran's nuclear program, described Iran as a "state sponsor of terrorism" that is "out of step with a region that is trying very hard now to move toward a two-state solution," a reference to Israel and the Palestinians. Another senior US official, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, separately told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that Washington would like Iran to help Iraq boost its stability. "What we would hope is the following: that Iran would play a much more positive and productive role in trying to support Iraq, as we are trying to support Iraq. "But our suspicion has been that Iran did not play a constructive role in the many weeks and debates about the formation of the current Iraqi government," Burns said. "And the key to a successful future for a united Iraq is to see this power-sharing agreement among the Shia, and Sunni, and Kurdish elements, and the Iranians don't seem to have spent much time supporting that goal of mult-ethnicity, of shared power," he said. ---- France Calls Iran Nuclear Talks 'Fragile' By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 20, 2005 Filed at 8:32 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-France-Iran-Nuclear.html?pagewanted=print AVALLON, France (AP) -- European-led talks aimed at getting Iran to abandon nuclear activities are ''very fragile,'' with negotiators discussing economic, technical and political cooperation, France's foreign minister said Monday. Michel Barnier would not elaborate on the proposals in an interview with The Associated Press. But he said talks range over issues including economic, technical and commercial cooperation, Iran's wish to join the World Trade Organization and political dialogue. ''We are in negotiations that are very fragile and complex. We are advancing with our eyes open,'' Barnier said. ''European proposals are very serious and should be understood as such'' by Iran. The Europeans have been pressing Tehran to abandon its uranium enrichment activities in exchange for economic aid and technical support. Enriched uranium can be used to produce energy or nuclear weapons. Iran maintains its nuclear activities are meant to generate electricity, but the United States maintains they are part of a weapons program. Officials from France, Britain and Germany, acting on behalf of the 25-nation European Union, are expected to meet with Iranian officials next week. The talks will likely take place Wednesday in Geneva, French officials said. On Tuesday, the State Department's number No. 3 official, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, plans to meet the European diplomats in Brussels for a strategy session. Barnier said an accord reached in November under which Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities is still operational. ''The Iranians know very well the consequences if the accord is not respected,'' he said. ''Iran has much to win'' if the talks to succeed, ''and we want to succeed.'' Barnier's comments came as an Iranian dissident and a senior diplomat said Tehran was circumventing international export bans on sensitive dual-use materials by smuggling graphite and a graphite compound that can be used to make conventional and nuclear weapons. With most countries adhering to international agreements banning the sale of such ''dual-use'' materials to Tehran, Iran has been forced to buy it on the black market, Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh told the AP -- allegations confirmed by a senior diplomat familiar with Iran's covert nuclear activities. Phone calls to Iranian diplomats seeking comment were not answered. Associated Press reporter George Jahn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to this report. ---- Iranian Nukes Called Likely Result of Stalemate Friday, May 20, 2005 Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_5_20.html#92E61DBF Iran is likely to gain nuclear weapons as a result of the current stalemate over the country’s atomic program, an expert said yesterday in testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (see GSN, May 19). “We ought to get used to the idea of thinking about what it would be like to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. U.S. and European officials should not expect to persuade “a proud country of 70 million people with abundant resources” to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, said Geoffrey Kemp, a former National Security Council official. Without “fundamental change in the Iranian leadership, combined with a willingness on the part of the Bush administration to take big risks, the United States is on course for a serious crisis with Iran at some point in the coming months,” Kemp said. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told the committee that there is “no sign Iran has made the necessary strategic decision to abandon its nuclear ambitions.” Iran must “maintain suspension of all nuclear-related activities and negotiate in good faith the eventual cessation and dismantling of all sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities” or European nations currently negotiating with Tehran would refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council, Burns said (Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, May 20). Burns cautioned that “anything could happen” if Iran is referred to the Security Council, USA Today reported today However, Iran’s growing ties with China could make it difficult for the Security Council to take any action, Burns added (Barbara Slavin, USA Today, May 20). Burns also ruled out economic incentives as a way to persuade Iran to drop its nuclear program, the Associated Press reported. “There is no reason to believe that extra incentives offered by the United States at this point would make a real difference,” Burns said. Normal diplomatic and trade relations between Iran and European nations have done little to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he said. Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said economic incentives, regime change, military action and a decision to accept Iran’s nuclear programs are the only options available to the United States (George Gedda, Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle, May 19). Meanwhile, Iran recently proposed sending nuclear materials to Russia for enrichment. This idea is expected to be the focus of next week’s talks between Iran and the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the Financial Times reported today. Russia has been reaching out diplomatically to all parties involved in negotiations (Dombey/Dinmore, Financial Times, May 20). -------- korea North Korea plays a waiting game on nuclear talks By Donald Kirk, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Fri May 20, 4:00 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/csm/20050520/wl_csm/onktalks_1 SEOUL - Talks between senior officials from North and South Korea this week left unanswered an overarching question: whether Pyongyang can be brought into another round of multilateral talks on its nuclear-weapons program, let alone persuaded to give up its nuclear efforts. Since North Korea asserted officially in February that it possessed nuclear warheads and was building more, a sense of impending crisis has deepened. The North's announcement last week that it is planning to extract weapons-grade plutonium rattled the international community, as have questions over whether it intends to conduct a nuclear test. But ongoing disputes over how best to engage Kim Jong Il's regime - and Pyongyang's ability to exploit those differences - have foiled progress on "six-party talks," last held in Beijing a year ago, even as the North continues to press for much-needed humanitarian aid. Participants in the multilateral talks - the US, China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas - have widely divergent views on how to handle Mr. Kim. While the countries are alarmed about a possible test of a nuclear warhead, there is little agreement on how to dissuade the North from proceeding. "The United States is in a dilemma," says Paik Hak Soon, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, a think tank with close ties to Seoul. South Korean officials, who held talks with the North this week, differ sharply with the US in their view of how much pressure to bring to bear on Kim. Experts say South Korea feels obligated to call for an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but appears far more interested in steps toward reconciliation. "The South wants to take advantage of inter-Korean dialogue," says Choi Jin Wook, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification. "That's the springboard. North Korea offers nothing, so what it can do is give political assets, like symbolic talks." US officials confirmed Wednesday that two senior officials met in New York last week with North Korean officials in "working level" talks to promote a return to the six-party effort. It was the first such meeting since December, though it falls short of the direct negotiations that China has urged the US to consider. But in Kaesong, North Korea, where the Korean talks were held this week, negotiators appeared to be talking past each other, as if the meetings were "not designed for any discussion of nuclear issues," says Mr. Paik. The North has been intently focused on continuing aid. "All [North Korea] needs from the South is fertilizer," says Mr. Choi. He notes that Seoul has donated fertilizer for several years to help boost food production in the nation, where famine in the 1990s is thought to have killed at least 1 million people. "The South will give 200,000 tons." Barring any progress on the six-party talks, one recourse for Washington could be sanctions. Those would need the approval of the UN Security Council's five permanent members, including China, North Korea's main benefactor and ally. Analysts doubt that China will want to apply economic sanctions while holding out the prospect of a summit in Pyongyang between President Hu Jintao and Kim. Russia would also not be likely to agree to sanctions - a step that North Korea has said would be tantamount to a "declaration of war" - while pursuing separate economic deals with the North. US negotiators count on cooperation from Japan, but Japan is not a member of the UN Security Council and, in any case, is viewed with hostility by Koreans. Japan, moreover, has shown its own impatience with the process, suggesting multilateral talks that exclude North Korea. Given broad disagreements, "I don't think the US is expecting any kind of breakthrough," says Kim Sung Han of the Institute of Foreign and National Security, affiliated with the South Korean foreign ministry. Still, he says, "If North Korea is rational enough, they wouldn't test nuclear weapons." Rather, experts say, North Korea may find it more expedient to play a waiting game. "They need to continue nuclear ambiguity," he says. "If North Korea tests nuclear weapons, their strategy will have shifted. North Korea will be put in a corner." For now, Mr. Kim says, "North Korea is trying to be seen as a nuclear state - even without a nuclear test." One symbolic concession that's mentioned is a possible meeting between South Korea's unification minister, Chung Dong Young, an outspoken advocate of reconciliation, and his North Korean counterpart. Mr. Chung may lead a delegation of South Korean National Assembly members to Pyongyang for the fifth anniversary on June 15 of a historic North-South summit between Kim Dae Jung, the former South Korean president, and Kim Jong Il. "If North Korea accepts ministerial-level talks," says Mr. Choi, the South "might give more gifts" - including another 200,000 tons of fertilizer, plus rice and other foodstuffs. South Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki Moon, says the South is pressing for a package that contains the makings of a compromise - suggesting an economic deal in return for talks. He says he is "optimistic" that the North will make some gesture toward talks, if not the ones the US says are needed before negotiations can resume in earnest. ---- North Korea warns of "decisive" reprisal for Japanese sanctions TOKYO (AFP) May 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050520132025.j2uyecls.html North Korea warned Friday it would take a "decisive counter-measure" if Japan imposed economic sanctions against the Stalinist state at the height of an international crisis over its nuclear arms programme. North Korea's official media accused Tokyo of considering applying economic sanctions against Pyongyang, "single-handed, independent of the United States," according the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) monitored here. Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the all-powerful Workers Party, said in a commentary Japanese "reactionaries" are contemplating sanctions to pressure Pyongyang on the Cold-War abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents. Japan has been furious about North Korea's refusal to come clean on the kidnappings and its antipathy toward Pyongyang was further fueled in recent weeks by signs of North Korea's preparations for its first nuclear test. Some members of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party have publicly mentioned the possibility of economic sanctions against any North Korean nuclear test. "The DPRK (North Korea) clearly stated more than once that it would regard any sanctions against it as a declaration of war," Rodong Sinmun said. "The hostile relations between the two countries are now inching close to the dangerous phase of explosion," the commentary added. "Under this situation the DPRK is left with no option but to take a decisive counter-measure." "The army and the people of the DPRK value its sovereignty as their life and soul and will never allow anyone to infringe upon it," the party newspaper said. ---- Japan more upbeat on nuclear talks resumption after NKorea-US dialogue TOKYO (AFP) May 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050520025140.i798jt5l.html Japan said Friday it was more optimistic of a resumption of talks to end Pyongyang's nuclear programme after North Korean and US officials met for the first time in nearly half a year. A US delegation, including the special envoy to the stalled six-nation nuclear talks, held talks on May 13 at the North Koreans' United Nations office in New York, the first such contact since December, officials said Thursday. "We know there was contact and it was made with the aim to resume the six-way talks," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, the government spokesman, told a news conference. Asked whether the nuclear negotiations could resume, Hosoda said: "We think the possibility has become greater." North Korea last took part in the talks -- which include the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia -- in June last year, boycotting a round in September citing US hostility. Pyongyang has sent out a series of defiant statements on its nuclear programme and US officials have expressed fears that it is about to carry out an atomic test. After declaring in February it had nuclear weapons to defend itself, North Korea said this month it had unloaded 8,000 spent fuel rods from its reactor, allowing it to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium for more nuclear bombs. According to a South Korean official quoted by the Yonhap news agency, the US delegation told North Korea that Washington recognises Pyongyang as a sovereign state and had no intention of attacking it. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington that the United States had sought the New York meeting. "We try to make sure they understand our whole policy position, including the various aspects, and particularly the need for North Korea to return to talks and be ready to discuss the substantive issues there," Boucher said. North Korea agreed Thursday at a border meeting with South Korea to continue high-level bilateral talks but it did not use the occasion to indicate a preparedness to return to the nuclear dialogue. ---- South Korea Ships Fertilizer to the North By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 20, 2005 Filed at 11:32 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Aid.html?pagewanted=print SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korean trucks delivered fertilizer to impoverished North Korea on Saturday, crossing the world's most heavily armed border as the United States tries to decide whether to provide food assistance this year to the communist country. In Washington, the State Department said Friday it is weighing the North's needs in comparison with other countries' over its decision on food aid this year. The decision will not be affected by political factors, said spokesman Richard Boucher, dismissing concerns that the international standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program may prompt Washington to halt its food aid to the communist state. ''We don't calibrate or decide on food assistance based on political factors and we do want to help the people of North Korea and make sure the people who are in need get the food that they need,'' Boucher said. Last year, 50,000 metric tons of American food were sent to North Korea through the World Food Program. A decision on food assistance to the North is likely by Sept. 30, Boucher said. The South failed during talks this week to persuade the North to return to six-nation negotiations on its nuclear weapons program. But the two sides agreed to hold a follow-up meeting in Seoul in a month. South Korea also agreed to provide the North with 200,000 tons of fertilizer in time for the spring planting season -- an offer endorsed by the State Department. The first batch left for the North Korean border town of Kaesong early Saturday, the Unification Ministry said, with shipment of all 200,000 tons of fertilizer expected to be completed by mid-June. North Korea has been dependent on outside aid since the 1990s, when more than 1 million people are estimated to have died from famine there. The National Intelligence Service, South Korea's top spy agency, has said North Korea can only produce about 30 percent of the total fertilizer it needs annually. Despite the nuclear standoff, South Korea has insisted continuing providing aid on humanitarian grounds. However, it has repeatedly stressed that no major aid will be provided until the nuclear problem has been resolved. The nuclear talks, among the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas, have been stalled for almost a year as the North boycotts the talks, citing what it calls a hostile U.S. policy. -------- mideast [Arnaud de Borchgrave used to head the Washington Times, so this is a very significant editorial.] Iran/Iraq: TKO by axis of evil By Arnaud de Borchgrave UPI Editor at Large Published May 20, 2005 http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050520-123904-7147r WASHINGTON -- Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi visits Iraq for the best part of a week, confers with Iraq's new government in Baghdad's Green Zone while suicide bombers wreak havoc outside, then travels to Najaf for an audience with Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's supreme Shiite leader (who has always declined to meet with U.S. officials), and caps things off with a joint Iran-Iraq pledge to respect each other's sovereignty and independence, and reject any link between Islam and terrorism. Iran and Iraq, now a U.S. ally, also agreed to boost mutual political, security and economic cooperation, and set up a higher joint committee to be headed by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and the First Deputy President of Iran Mohammad Reza Aref. For starters, Iraq acknowledged it started the war on Iran in 1980, a conflict that lasted eight years and took 1 million lives on each side. The joint Iran-Iraq communiqué also made clear the war criminal was Saddam Hussein. Iran suddenly seemed to vindicate those who have long argued the main victor of the U.S. invasion would be Iran, not the United States. Not bad for a charter member of President Bush's axis of evil. Kharrazi, sans helmet and body armor, clearly outshined U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with helmet and body armor. He also had more meetings with Iraqi topsiders than Rice. And this after 12,000 U.S. casualties, including 1,620 killed, and some $200 billion in U.S. treasure. [Visit a blog related to this article. blog.wpherald.com/wphblog/?p=25] The Bush administration has gradually painted itself into a corner in its diplomatic campaign to get Iran to cough up its nuclear ambitions. The trick now would be to leap over the wet paint and alight on a dry spot. But a giant geopolitical leap is required. Acting as the White House's stalking horses in negotiations with Iran, the EU3 -- France, Germany and the United Kingdom -- never made it out of the paddock. The United States offered to lift its economic embargo on spare parts for Iran's U.S.-made civilian aircraft, as well as to facilitate Iran's membership in the World Trade Organization (normally a 10-year process). Unimpressed, the Iranians answered if the EU3 and the United States were really serious about economic incentives, they would have to forget about trinkets and think big. In return for allowing international inspection of every stage of the uranium enrichment process, Tehran expects a major incentives package, which, at the very least, should include "10 nuclear reactors." The package, said Hossein Mousavian, a negotiator for the Supreme National Security Council, must include inducements to enhance Iran's security, political stability and economic development. The U.S. carrot of spare parts for used airplanes was dismissed as a "joke" at the end of three months of negotiations. Iran can get those via the free port of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the most likely candidate to emerge from the June 17 presidential election as Iran's next leader, said he wanted to repair relations with the United States but the Bush administration had to take the first steps to end 25 years of enmity. Considering the alternative, this seemed like the better part of diplomatic valor. Failing a new approach, the EU3 negotiations with Iran will end deadlocked. Then the United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to vote draconian economic sanctions against Iran -- which Russia or China will veto. Russia because it is making good money assisting Iran with its nuclear power project that Moscow says is carefully monitored to prevent weapons-making capability. China because it is counting on Iranian oil to fuel its vertiginous economic expansion. Next? The military option to enforce President Bush's pledge to nip Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions in the bud. Experts estimate Iran is between one and three years from being able to produce a nuclear bomb. Israel gives it a much shorter time line and is ready to launch well-rehearsed bunker-busting air strikes against several nuclear facilities, inflicting enough damage to delay Iran's weapons capabilities by five to 10 years. As Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Bush in their last tête-à-tête at the Crawford ranch in Texas, Israel would rather the United States took the initiative for pre-emptive air strikes against Iran. In the Arab and Muslim worlds, Israeli attacks against Iran would be viewed as authorized by the United States Israeli Defense Forces bombers would have to fly over Iraq and Saudi Arabia and call on aerial gas stations on their way to Iranian targets and on their way back to Israel. The bomb-Iran-now lobby is gathering strength in Washington. The United States must halt Iran's nuclear weapons programs by any means necessary, said the Presidential Study Group, sponsored by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an Israel-leaning think tank whose board of advisers includes three former secretaries of State (Alexander Haig, Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger) and such neo-conservative luminaries as Richard Perle, R. James Woolsey, Martin Peretz, and Mortimer Zuckerman. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, many of the same voices pooh-poohed the notion of an Iraqi insurgency following the liberation of the country from Saddam's despotic rule. Now they tend to dismiss Iran's retaliatory capabilities. They believe air attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities would accelerate "regime change." Yet Iran's counter-attacks could also be devastating. To begin with, Iran, with long common borders with both Iraq and Afghanistan, and assets in both countries, could waste U.S. objectives. Iran also has terrorist assets throughout the Middle East -- and beyond -- that could be activated at short notice. Perhaps we would be better served by acknowledging mistakes in our Iranian policy half a century ago when the CIA greased the skids under the leftwing Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. He was forced out Aug. 19, 1953. His only crime was to nationalize the country's oil industry. The shah, who had fled to Rome during the demonstrations, was brought back after a 10-day absence. The CIA had purchased a massive pro-shah demonstration -- 100,000 people at $1 a head. If Iraq, now under U.S. tutelage, and Iran, two countries that warred for eight years in the 1980s, can smoke a peace pipe, why can't the Bush administration? -------- missile defense Missile defense Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough May 20, 2005 WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm The Japanese government has agreed to spend some $600 million over five years to help the Pentagon upgrade the Standard Missile-3 interceptor, the heart of the Navy's new sea-based missile defense system. According to the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, the Japanese funding of the upgrade, expected to begin in 2007, is viewed as a substantial contribution to the Navy missile defense system in the future. Tokyo has announced its plans to field a sea-based missile defense system on its Aegis battle management-equipped ships in the next six years. It already has bought current SM-3 interceptors, and flight tests of those missiles are scheduled to begin this year near Hawaii. The new, upgraded missile is known as SM-3 Block II and will increase the size from 13.5 inches in diameter to 21 inches, with bigger motors and warheads. It will have increased range for more lethal capability against enemy ballistic missiles, the officials said. The new missile "will result in a greatly expanded defended area, and it will be able to counter long-range missiles," one official told us. The Pentagon at first opposed the upgrade, favoring the smaller-diameter missile for its launch tubes. Japan faces a threat from North Korea and Chinese missiles and is moving ahead with deploying a defensive missile shield. Its sea-based system will be built on four existing Kongo-class guided missile destroyers plus two new warships. The first missile-defense destroyer could be deployed in 2007. Tokyo also plans to purchase U.S. Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems for use on land. A total of 15 U.S. Navy destroyers and three cruisers will be outfitted with sea-based missile defenses between the end of next year and 2009. -------- pacific Polynesians worry about health fallout from French nuclear tests PAPEETE (AFP) May 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050519225004.olipd5dz.html Inhabitants of the Gambier islands in French Polynesia have called for access to defence ministry files on the impact on their health of 30 years of French nuclear tests on Pacific atolls. In the request, Gambier mayor Monique Richeton and several inhabitants of Mangareva island asked "that they be granted access to information and documents to enable them to understand the effects on their health and that of their descendants of the nuclear tests carried out in French Polynesia". Roland Oldham, president of the "Murura e Tatou" (Mururoa and us) association of some 5,000 Polynesians who worked on the two nuclear sites in Polynesia between 1966 and 1996, says "reports stamped 'Secret' from 1966 found whole mention considerable radioactive fallout on the inhabited islands and atolls close to Mururoa, in particular on the island of Mangareva, in the Gambier archipelago". Oldham also recalls the very powerful "Aldebaran" nuclear test carried out in Mururoa from a barge on July 2, 1966 in the presence of then French leader General Charles de Gaulle. "The programme of the presidential visit required that one carried out the launch despite bad atmospheric conditions, and a launch from a barge always causes intense nuclear pollution because the debris is carried up". Oldham added that the fallout was carried by the wind to Gambier, 500 kilometres (310 miles) away. "The United States recognised that fallout could be carried for 700 kilometres around in good weather and that, naturally, one could not control the winds," he said. In Rikitea, the main village on Mangareva, two bunkers were built in 1967 to shelter the population during atmospheric nuclear tests. "A sprinkler system allowed the roof of the bunker to be washed after the test," said islander Tihoni Riesing, "and the population could spend up to 48 hours locked up in the bunker when you did not have the right to leave and where the air was filtered through special apparatus." The French defence ministry on Thursday described as "baseless" allegations by two French dailies that the army knowingly exposed the people of French Polynesia to heightened risks during nuclear tests in the 1990s. "The conditions under which the people of French Polynesia were protected at the time of the atmospheric nuclear tests were strictly the same as those applied to military personnel conducting the tests," defence ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said. For 30 years, French Polynesia provided Paris with a site for nuclear tests on the Pacific atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa, west of the Gambier islands, where a total of 193 tests took place -- 41 atmospheric and 152 underground. The last atmospheric test, under a tethered balloon dubbed "Aquarius", took place on September 14, 1974 and the last underground test was on January 27, 1996 in Fangataufa. ---- URGENT SIGN ON LETTER Dear Friends and Colleagues, From: Carah Ong Date: Fri May 20, 2005 5:52 pm On Wednesday, 25 May, there will be hearings in Washington DC on the legacy of US nuclear testing in the Pacific and the Changed Circumstance Petition for the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The hearings will be held in the House of Representatives Committee on Resources and the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. Below is letter we are asking NGOs to sign onto. The letter calls for granting the Marshallese people the same level of health care, clean-up, and standards for radiation safety as Congress applies to US citizens affected by similar circumstances. If you would like to add your organization as a signer of the letter, please send me your name, title, the name of your organization and state no later than Monday, 23 May. I will fax the final version on 24 May to all members of the Committee. Please also feel free to pass it along to anyone else who may be interested in signing on. For a background on the nuclear legacy in the Marshall Islands, please read a speech delivered on 11 May 2005 to delegates of the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference by Tony de Brum. You can read the entire speech at: http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2005/05/11_brum_indigenous-presentation.htm Thank you for attention and consideration to this matter. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments. In solidarity, Carah Carah Ong Advocacy and Research Director Nuclear Age Peace Foundation DC Office 322 Fourth Street NE Washington, DC 20002 Tel: (202) 543-4100 ext. 105 Cell: (202) 378-3334 Fax: (202) 546-5142 http://www.wagingpeace.org http://www.nuclearfiles.org The Honorable Richard Pombo Chairman Committee on Resources U.S. House of Representatives 1324 Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 The Honorable James A. Leach Chairman Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific U.S. House of Representatives 2170 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 May 16, 2005 Dear Chairman Pombo, Chairman Leach, and Members of the Committee and Subcommittee: The diverse NGO representatives subscribing to this letter represent U.S. citizens from across the nation that recognize the on-going special responsibility that the U.S. Congress has recognized in the Compact of Free Association, as amended by P.L. 108-188 in 2003. We commend your committees for conducting a hearing on the legacy of U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Changed Circumstances Petition that the RMI national government submitted to Congress as authorized under the Compact of Free Association. We note that from 1946 to 1986, the U.S. Government exercised all powers and determined all functions of government in the Marshall Islands. With the exception of the brief period of military rule after liberation of the islands from Japan, from 1947 to 1986 the people of the Marshall Islands had only those legal, political and citizenship rights prescribed pursuant to U.S. federal law. Since the nuclear testing program was conducted at a time when the U.S. governed the Marshall Islands and its people with the same powers of government and responsibility arising from governance of the United States itself, we believe the same standards of care, safety, redress of grievances and justice that Congress has adopted with respect to the effects of nuclear testing in the U.S. mainland should be honored in the case of the Marshallese people. Thus, the purpose of this letter is to respectfully request that your committees adopt as the applicable standard of responsibility and equity for the RMI a policy of parity and/or equivalence in the measures taken to address the legacy of nuclear testing in the RMI. More simply, we believe that the Marshallese people should receive the same level of health care, clean-up, and standards for radiation safety as Congress applies to U.S. citizens affected by similar circumstances. For example, Marshallese should receive the same level of health care as U.S. Downwinders, Atomic Veterans, or Department of Energy workers exposed to radiation. Clean-up and radiation protection standards should mirror locations in the U.S., such as Hanford, Washington. Compensation for personal injuries should also be paid in full as is required for the Downwinders (rather than the pro rata currently used in the RMI due to an insufficiency of funds). The U.S. government must also find the means to compensate private property owners for the damage to their lands as is required in this country. We note, too, several recent studies which Congress should consider at is addresses the nuclear legacy in the RMI. The National Academy of Sciences recently recommended that the universe of exposure and remedial measures regarding the mainland nuclear testing program be redefined and expanded based on updated scientific information about the effects of radiation. In addition to ensuring that the measures taken under Section 177 of the Compact be sustained to ensure that RMI citizens receive the same level of justice as U.S. citizens affected by the mainland tests, if the criteria for defining the universe of affected people and lands in the U.S. changes, the same criteria should be applied in the RMI. We also note a recent study by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) suggesting that more than half of the cancers caused by radiation exposure in the Marshall Islands have yet to appear or be diagnosed. In this regard, we believe Congress has an obligation to help the RMI plan for the treatment of these pending cancer cases by ensuring that the RMI has the capacity to provide adequate healthcare for these individuals. We respectfully urge Congress to respond to the U.S. nuclear legacy in the RMI with moral and legal fairness, and to ensure the Marshallese people receive the same standards of care, compensation, protection and clean-up as American citizens. Again, we appreciate your committees' commitment to responsible stewardship of the U.S. nuclear legacy in the RMI. We would be happy to work with you in any manner to ensure that the U.S. government remembers and responds to the needs of the Marshallese people - people who sacrificed their lands and well-being to help the U.S. become a global superpower. Respectfully, -------- russia Moscow will fight former nuclear chief’s extradition to the United States The Russian Foreign ministry requested this week that Switzerland send the detained former Russian atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov back to Moscow for prosecution and to reject demands to extradite him to the United States, where he is facing charges of diverting $9m in US nuclear aid money to personal businesses, among other accusations. Bellona Foundation By Charles Digges, 2005-05-20 15:56 http://193.71.199.52/en/international/russia/nuke_industry/co-operation/38079.html According to officials with the US department of State, Washington has expressed its dissatisfaction with the way Moscow is proceeding in the case. Adamov was arrested in Bern on May 2 while visiting his daughter to help her sort out problems with a number of banks that has frozen her accounts. Lawyers for former Atomic Power Energy Yevgeny Adamov, 65, who is being held in a Swiss prison on a US Warrant issued by the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Wednesday told Bellona web that they were appealing against his detention on the basis that Switzerland violated his immunity as a former minister. If extradited to the United States and found guilty, Adamov faces up to 60 years in prison and a fine of $1.75 m. Nonetheless, Adamov is "confident that he will soon return to Russia," his Swiss lawyer, Stefan Wehrenberg, said. International law experts in Switzerland confirmed this may well be the case. Former Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Adamov arrested in Switzerland at US request Swiss authorities have arrested Russia's former Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov after a US court accused him of defrauding America to the tune $9m in funding intended to improve safety at Russian nuclear facilities, according to Swiss authorities. The United States has so far not issued an official request for Adamov’s extradition to Swiss authorities, said his lawyers. It has until the end of June to do so. The United States has, however, prepared an indictment, reviewed by Bellona Web, reading several dozen pages detailing Adamov’s private bank transactions through his US accounts and indicting him with conspiracy to transfer stolen money and securities, conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering and tax evasion. The indictment also includes Adamov’s business partner, Russia-born US national Mark Kaushansky. Russia had originally appeared to distance itself from Adamov after his May 2 arrest in Bern, noting he was facing charges in connection with his commercial activities in the early 1990s prior to his appointment as Russian atomic energy minister. But a Moscow court on Thursday—in a possible effort to countermand the as yet unsent US extradition request—issued an extradition request of its own, charging Adamov with fraud in Russia. Money vs. politics and nuclear secrecy At the centre of this tug-of-war are Moscow’s obvious concerns that Russia’s nuclear secrets will fall into the hands of the United States. Adamov was, during his tenure as Russia’s atomic minister from 1998 to 2001, privy to both how US nuclear threat reduction funding was spent as well as classified material pertaining to Russia’s monolithic civilian and military nuclear industrial complex. This threatens to charge the case with international political and security concerns. Seeking to address this threat, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in its Wednesday statement that the accusations against Adamov could relate to his activities as a government minister and that any prosecution should take place in Russia rather than in a foreign criminal jurisdiction. ``We believe that if there are grounds for criminal prosecution of Adamov, this should take place in Russia according to Russian law,'' said the ministry. "The Swiss side has been informed through diplomatic channels of our serious concern over the detainment of Yevgeny Adamov, which was made, we believe, without due regard for certain norms of international law," the statement continues. The Foreign Ministry continued: "We proceed from the assumption that criminal persecution of the former minister and former member of the Government of Russia in the territory of a foreign state and his extradition for this purpose to a third country bears on the national security interests of Russia." According to Russian diplomats interviewed for this article, at least several charges brought against Adamov date back to the time when he was still Russia’s minister of atomic energy. "According to the norms of international law, such actions have immunity to foreign criminal legislation, which rules out the possibility of criminal persecution of Yevgeny Adamov in a foreign state without the agreement of concerned Russian agencies," the Russian Foreign Ministry statement read. A spokesman from the Russian Ministry of Justice, who asked that his name not be used, told Bellona Web that he was not sure that such immunity extends to former members of the Russian government. Some international experts say that Washington is using the charges against to derive valuable information about Russia’s atomic weapons programme. "What’s at stake is not the money that Adamov purportedly stole or embezzled, but the information that he has about Russia’s nuclear programmes," said Andre Liebich, central and east European expert at Geneva’s Graduate Institute for International Studies in an interview this week.. Liebich said the Adamov case represents Washington’s attempt to put pressure on Moscow to come clean about its former and possibly current nuclear programmes, and is another sign of deteriorating relations between the two nuclear powers. "The US has been very keen to see these programmes wound down and the arms decommissioned and has been paying in part for this process. Adamov, of course, is at the very centre of this," Liebich said. Long delays expected Helen Keller, professor of international law at Zurich University, says the whole case could undergo considerable delays. Keller said that once the US sends its formal request for Adamov’s extradition, Swiss authorities will examine whether the US and Russian requests deal with the same offences in order to pass judgement on their "seriousness". "Adamov has the right to make representations," said Keller. "He could, for example, assert that the entire affair is a political process. This would be something the Swiss authorities would have to examine seriously. He can also appeal any decision." Keller said the fact that Russia handed in its request first and that the case involved a Russian citizen was in Moscow’s favour. But she added that the Swiss would also have to take into account the prospects of Adamov receiving a fair trial in Russia. "There are concerns that the Russian courts are not independent, as we’ve seen with the Yukos [oil company] trial," she said. Russia’s Case Adamov has long been a controversial figure within Russian nuclear circles. In 2000, legislation legalising the import of foreign radioactive waste to Russia for storage and eventual reprocessing was ram-rodded though the Duma, despite public opinion polls indicating some 90 percent of the Russia population was against the legislation package. After its passage, many Duma members openly admitted they had taken bribes and other favours from Adamov. Adamov came under increasing fire in connection with the legislative package but he insisted the accusations were in retaliation for his refusal to be corrupted. "Many times I was offered million-dollar bribes," he said in a 2002 interview with The Moscow Times, an English-language daily. "But I always refused." At the same time, the Duma accused Adamov of illegally setting up companies inside and outside Russia, including a consulting firm called Omeka registered in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. the United States government was also investigating the relationship between Adamov's Pittsburgh-based consulting firm and a company that buys down-blended weapons-grade uranium taken from old Russian warheads, and sells it to American nuclear power plants. Since leaving the minister's post, Adamov had officially joined NIKIET and worked on projects to improve safety at Russia's 11 RBMK-1000 reactors still in operation. He nonetheless maintains an unofficial advisory roll with Rosatom, the Ministry of Atomic Energy’s successor, according to Rosatom and international officials interviewed by Bellona Web. The Swiss dilemma The Swiss government has extradition treaties with both Russia and the United States, and under the present complicated circumstances, will take its decision "in consideration of all the circumstances" a government official in Bern said in telephone interview Friday. These include the seriousness and place where the offences were committed, the dates of the extradition requests, the nationality of the person involved and the possibility of subsequent extradition to another state. Swiss authorities expected Russia to exert pressure on them to to ensure Adamov is sent home. "It’s perfectly likely that Moscow would take reprisals against Swiss interests and citizens in Russia," said Liebich. He said this could take the form of finding a Swiss company or official in violation of Russian law. "It’s difficult to do business in Russia without violating one law or another," he said. -------- space Pentagon pushes on with weaponisation of space By Demetri Sevastopulo Published: May 20 2005 02:44 Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a4a4e198-c8cf-11d9-87c9-00000e2511c8.html As Star Wars fans swarm to cinemas to see why Anakin Skywalker went over to the dark side, opponents of “space weaponisation” are accusing the White House of emulating Darth Vader by trying to use new high-technology weapons to control space. President George W. Bush ordered a review of space policy in 2002 after a commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defence, concluded that the US could face a “Space Pearl Harbor”. The White House says space policy, last revised in 1996, must be updated to protect US satellites.... ---- Space Junkyard What goes up - from satellites to shuttles - leaves debris that, for the most part, is still floating in orbit around Earth. By Frank D. Roylance Baltimore Sun Staff May 20, 2005 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-hs.spacejunk20may20,1,3048222.story?coll=bal-health-headlines On Jan. 17, the engine from a Thor rocket launched 31 years ago was soaring southward, 550 miles over the African continent. At the same time, a fragment of a Chinese rocket that blew up five years ago was high over the Pacific Ocean, also headed south. Incredibly, the two chunks of metal flew into the same spot over Antarctica at the same instant. The high-speed collision, reported last month by NASA's Orbital Debris Quarterly News, created even more orbiting space junk. It also drew renewed attention to the litter that surrounds our planet - and efforts to keep the neighborhood from becoming even more cluttered and dangerous. "It's sort of a classic environmental problem, not unlike air pollution or water pollution," said Nicholas L. Johnson, chief scientist and program manager for NASA's orbital debris program. "If you wait until you start seeing negative consequences, then the environment is pretty far gone already, and cleaning it up can be very, very difficult." When the shuttle Discovery is finally launched, most likely in July, it will join more than 13,000 pieces of orbiting hardware that the U.S. military tracks 24 hours a day. Among them are hundreds of working satellites - and thousands of dead ones - along with spent rockets and other odd scraps set loose by decades of breakups, explosions and collisions. The junk pile includes about a ton of radioactive fuel from defunct reactors launched into orbit before the practice ended in 1988, according to a recent report to the Fourth European Conference on Space Debris. Much of the material is concentrated in "low-Earth orbit," which extends to about 1,200 miles and is home to the International Space Station and hundreds of communications, environmental, scientific and spy satellites. A thousand more satellites - about half of them working - cluster in a slender ring, like a bicycle tire, about 22,000 miles above the equator. They orbit once a day, hanging above the same spot on the ground as the Earth spins. These "geosynchronous" orbits are ideal for communications satellites, which must stay in view of fixed dish antennas on the ground. Everything larger than a softball is tracked 24 hours a day by the 1st Space Control Squadron. It's a part of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, tucked deep into the Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, along with the nation's aerospace and ballistic missile warning centers. Satellite tracking began in 1957, with the launch of the Soviets' Sputnik I - the first manmade object ever orbited. Today, data from a worldwide network of 21 telescopes and radars called the Space Surveillance Network stream into powerful computers deep inside the Cheyenne Mountain fortress. The system can register 350,000 contacts per day, according to Michael E. Stringer, the squadron's technical director. Every year, some objects fall back to Earth, while new ones are launched. On average, the squadron logs a net increase of 200 objects per year. Uncounted are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of bits of space litter too small to be seen - ranging from nuts and bolts to paint chips. They may be small, but with closing speeds up to 12 miles per second, Stringer said, they pack tremendous energy. Craft hit by particles Inspections have shown that the space shuttles and the International Space Station are hit routinely by particles too small to track. "We can't determine where it came from, but we can tell if it was titanium or aluminum, or a paint flake or plastic," Johnson said. In 1999, Discovery landed with evidence of 64 impacts, at least 10 caused by manmade debris. So far, nothing bigger than 0.08 of an inch has struck a shuttle. But even such tiny particles can damage thermal tiles and windows. "We wind up replacing the outer panes of at least two windows every mission because of impacts with small debris," Johnson said. It's the big hunks of space junk that really worry NASA. On May 29, 2003, for example, military trackers warned NASA that debris would pass less than a mile from the space station. The station is shielded against objects 1 centimeter wide or smaller, but the heft and trajectory of this one alarmed Houston, and the station moved to a slightly higher orbit. "We do about one maneuver per year on average. But we get lots of warnings; they come in more than once a month," said Johnson. NASA estimates that there are hundreds of near-misses - tracked objects passing within a kilometer of each other - every day. But at least for now, collisions are rare. The first one ever detected occurred July 24, 1996, when the French Cerise spacecraft smacked into a piece of the third stage of a European Ariane rocket that blew up in 1986. A search of historical data recently revealed a previously unnoticed smashup, in late December 1991, between one defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and debris from another. Eventually, most objects in low-Earth orbit disappear when they re-enter the atmosphere, at the rate of three to five a month. And while most of them melt and vaporize on the way down, components with high melting points can survive. Impacts in densely populated areas, while unlikely, do pose a risk of deaths or property damage. Since Jan. 1, 2001, 10 egg-shaped titanium casings from rockets that launched Navstar global positioning satellites have fallen to Earth. At least three of the 110-pound casings struck land - in Saudi Arabia, Argentina and Thailand. In January 1997, a 551-pound stainless-steel propellant tank from a Delta 2 rocket landed near Georgetown, Texas. International problem Understandably, NASA and others would like to clean up Earth's orbiting junkyard. Some have proposed giant "nerf" balls or laser beams to slow speeding debris and bring it down, Johnson said, "but we do not yet have the technology to economically make any substantial improvements." Some limited efforts are afoot, however. NASA will someday send a robot craft to latch onto the Hubble Space Telescope and drag it safely into the ocean. And an international team is developing an "electrodynamic tether" that could be unreeled by satellites at the end of their lives. The wires, tens of kilometers long, would speed the satellites' plunge to Earth. "It would be the most cost-effective way of doing it," Johnson said. A test flight on a Russian spacecraft is in the works. For now, space planners are focusing on prevention. In the 1990s, NASA issued the first comprehensive guidelines for preventing the creation of new debris. Other nations have joined in similar cooperative efforts, and new United Nations guidelines are expected by 2007. Spent rockets have been the biggest problem. Years after launch, they can deteriorate to a point where unused fuel and oxidizers come into contact and explode, spraying debris in all directions. Today, once satellites are deployed, operators are required to burn off any fuel left in their boosters. When satellites in low-Earth orbit are shut down, operators are supposed to release any compressed gases and propel them into orbits that bring them down within 25 years. The strategy is working, he said - except when operators lose control of their aging satellites before they're made safe. "Most of the threats to the shuttle and the International Space Station today arise from the explosions in the '60s, '70s and '80s. That debris is long-lived," Johnson said. Old satellites in geosynchronous orbit are too high to be dumped into the atmosphere. Instead, operators are supposed to push them into a sort of "junkyard" orbit 186 miles higher - ensuring that dead satellites don't clutter up the vital but finite real estate in geosynchronous orbit. But shoving old satellites aside requires keeping fuel in reserve. "To do that, you're giving up an extra few months of a mission, ... a nontrivial penalty," Johnson said. Some operators have simply not followed the rules. Others have lost control of their spacecraft before they could move them. As a result, of 103 satellites that expired between 1997 and 2003, 34 were abandoned in the geosynchronous ring, according to a recent study by Rudiger Jehn, at the European Space Agency. Of those, 24 were Russian. For satellite operators, cooperating should be a simple matter of self-interest. According to a warning in NASA's Orbital Debris Quarterly News, "If future spacecraft and rocket bodies are not removed from [low-Earth orbit] within a moderate amount of time after the end of mission, within 25 years, the rate of accidental collisions will increase markedly later in this century." The current positions of more than 500 Earth satellites can be viewed at http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/. Click on J-Track 3D. -------- treaties Experts Call for Pragmatic Leadership and Positive Action to Strengthen Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: U.S. and Iranian Delegations Have Misused Procedure to Block Progress For Immediate Release: May 20, 2005 Press Contacts: Daryl G. Kimball, (202) 277-3478; Joseph Cirincione (202) 441-9825; Rebecca Johnson (646) 675-1436 http://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2005/20050520_Experts_on_NPT.asp (Washington, D.C.): As a month-long international conference on curbing nuclear weapons dangers moves into its final week, behind-the-scenes maneuvers by a small minority of delegations, including the United States and Iran, have frustrated progress on strengthening the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Today, several leading nuclear and security experts called on member states to seize the chance to produce a strong action plan to update and strengthen the 35 year-old treaty. "The NPT is not broken, but it must be strengthened if past successes are to be preserved and if today's and future proliferation threats are to be rolled back. The NPT's future success depends on universal compliance with tighter rules to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, more effective regional security strategies, and renewed progress toward fulfillment of the nuclear-weapon states' disarmament obligations," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association and co-chair of the Campaign to Strengthen the NPT. "Tragically, practical proposals to strengthen compliance and implementation of the NPT across the board are being stymied because a small number of states have chosen to play procedural games and try to rewrite history, seriously delaying the adoption of the agenda and working groups," said Rebecca Johnson of the London-based Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, presently covering the NPT in New York. "Now very little time is available to seek common agreement on important ideas contained in the substantive working papers that could help the international community strengthen the nuclear test ban, reduce nuclear dangers, and promote further action on nuclear disarmament," said Johnson. During the first two weeks, the conference could not agree on an agenda because the United States sought to block discussion of nuclear disarmament-related commitments and decisions from the 2000 and 1995 NPT Review Conferences. At the same time, Iran has been trying to block discussion and criticism of its advanced uranium enrichment program, which could be used to produce nuclear bomb material. This week, agreement on the organization of working groups for key agenda topics was delayed, in part, by U.S. opposition to proposals from Iran and other non-nuclear-weapon states to discuss assurances against attack or threat of nuclear attack. The conference, which involves representatives from over 160 of the nearly 190 treaty parties, generally operates by consensus. The NPT codifies one of the most important international security bargains of all time: states without nuclear weapons pledge not to acquire them, while nuclear-armed states commit to give them up and move toward disarmament. At the same time, the NPT allows for the peaceful use of nuclear technology under strict and verifiable control. "The U.S. delegation argues that the United States commitment to fulfill its Article VI disarmament commitments is 'unassailable,' but a closer examination of the Bush administration's nuclear stockpile numbers and actions make it clear that it has failed to move beyond Cold War-era nuclear force structure and strategies," noted Kimball. "The administration's selective presentation of its record at the NPT conference does not hide the fact that it has taken actions contrary to U.S. disarmament commitments and obligations established by the NPT and the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences, including its publicly stated opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiations on a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty, its pursuit of new nuclear weapons, and its failure to agree to deeper, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear weapons reductions," Kimball noted. (See http://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2005/20050510_ArmsControl_Gurus.asp for a detailed analysis.) Some U.S. and French officials have even suggested that their 2000 NPT Review Conference commitments on specific disarmament measures are no longer relevant. Former U.S. disarmament Ambassador Robert Grey has called the current U.S. stance "a radical departure from past American practice" that is a dangerous invitation for other states to ignore commitments made at previous review conferences, not the least of which is the indefinite extension of the treaty in 1995. "As a result, the majority of countries do not believe the United States and the other nuclear-weapon states intend to live up to their NPT-related nuclear disarmament commitments, which, in turn, erodes the willingness of other states to fulfill their own treaty obligations, much less take strong action to condemn the transgressions of North Korea and Iran," noted Joseph Cirincione, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-chair of the Campaign to Strengthen the NPT. "Iran for its part, has mischaracterized concern about its advancing nuclear program as an assault on developing states' Article IV 'right' to peaceful nuclear energy production," noted Kimball. "In reality, the right of states to pursue peaceful nuclear technologies must be balanced against the treaty's core mission to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The Review Conference can and should reaffirm the right of all states to energy security, while at the same time agree to freeze construction of new plants capable of producing highly enriched uranium and plutonium, which are needed for weapons but are not necessary for nuclear energy production," Kimball argued. "There is still an opportunity to reach agreement on a balanced and comprehensive plan to strengthen compliance and implementation with the NPT," said Cirincione. A review of the national statements from the first two weeks of the conference reveal that the vast majority support a range of concrete steps that would advance both nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. (See http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/statements.html for the statements.) "The best chance for success would be for the United States and other states to embrace the common European Union (EU) position, which balances the views of the two European nuclear-weapon states, France and the United Kingdom, with the goals of the 23 EU non-nuclear-weapon states. The EU strategy action plan reaffirms the goal of nuclear disarmament, the need for new measures to control the spread of technologies that can be used to produce nuclear weapons material, while also endorsing tougher inspections and new mechanisms to deter and punish states that withdraw from the treaty to build nuclear bombs," Cirincione argued. (The EU strategy is available at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/RevCon05/GDstatements/Luxembourg-EU.pdf.) "The 2005 NPT Review Conference is a vital opportunity for the United States and the international community to recommit to the treaty's goals and agree to a comprehensive program of action to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and reduce the nuclear danger. It is an opportunity that we cannot afford to squander," urged Kimball. For more information and updates on the NPT and the Campaign to Strengthen the NPT, visit: http://www.npt2005.org. For further analysis of key issues, see: http://www.armscontrol.org/pdf/NPTRevConf2005_MajorProposals.pdf and for updates on the conference proceedings, see http://www.acronym.org.uk/npt/index.htm. # # # The Arms Control Association (ACA) is an independent, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. The Campaign to Strengthen the NPT is a joint project of ACA and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. -------- u.s. nuc weapons U.S. Weighs Consolidating Bomb Materials By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 20, 2005 Filed at 4:10 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Uranium-Storage.html?pagewanted=print BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- To guard against terrorists storming a U.S. weapons lab and setting off a crude nuclear device, the Bush administration is considering consolidating much of the nation's plutonium and bomb-grade uranium at a few highly secure sites, including concrete bunkers in Idaho. Currently, the material is scattered at 13 sites around the country. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman is expected to get an advisory board's report next month on the potential cost savings and security improvements from combining the hundreds of tons of weapons fuel. The Energy Department and a federal agency that oversees the nation's nuclear stockpile have been discussing the idea for more than a year, after a series of security lapses during mock terrorist attacks at federal weapons labs. ''The argument is by putting more of the materials in fewer places, you simply reduce security risks and therefore reduce the cost of securing the materials,'' said Anson Franklin, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington. Authorities fear a suicidal terrorist squad could penetrate lab security and trigger a nuclear explosion. The United States no longer manufactures or tests nuclear weapons. But scientists still use small amounts for research, including studying how existing nuclear warheads age and how weapons might be built by terrorists or rogue nations. Then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham last year proposed a series of steps to tighten security, including creating an elite federal force to guard nuclear installations and moving the most sensitive nuclear material from labs that are in populated areas or have security vulnerabilities. But an organization that monitors nuclear security says the department has been slow to follow through because some labs have resisted. ''It's very much like the whole base-closing thing: No one is going to agree to close their own facility, they are all trying to protect their program,'' said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based group that has lobbied for tighter security at Energy Department labs. A new report by the group estimates consolidation of bomb-grade material would save $3 billion over the next three years. The group proposes removing all weapons-grade material from six sites: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.; Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.; the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash.; Savannah River near Aiken, S.C., Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Argonne National Laboratory West near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The material would then be placed with existing stockpiles or in unused bunkers under beefed-up security at seven sites: the Idaho National Laboratory, the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas; Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.; the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas; the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge; the BWXT Nuclear Products Division in Lynchburg, Va., and Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tenn. One of the structures proposed for use at the Idaho National Laboratory is Building 691, a never-used $450 million underground bunker with 5-foot-thick concrete walls. On the Net: Idaho National Laboratory: http://www.inl.gov National Nuclear Security Administration: http://www.nnsa.doe.gov Project on Government Oversight: http://www.pogo.org ---- U.S. Defends Disarmament Stance By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 20, 2005 Filed at 4:28 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Nuclear-Treaty.html?pagewanted=print UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States defended itself Friday against charges that it is moving too slowly toward nuclear disarmament, saying it must balance such steps against ''our obligations to maintain our own security.'' At a monthlong conference reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, states without nuclear weapons dismissed the Americans' recitation of a long history of warhead and missile reductions, and asked instead what Washington has done lately. ''Most of these measures date from before 2000,'' Mexico's Luis Alfonso de Alba complained to delegates, referring to the 2000 treaty conference, when the United States and other nuclear powers committed to ''13 practical steps'' to meet the treaty's goal of eliminating atomic arms. Those steps included, for example, activation of the 1996 treaty banning all nuclear tests, a pact since rejected by the Bush administration. Nonweapons states want the current conference, entering its final week next week, to reaffirm that program. For her part, U.S. delegate Jackie Sanders reminded the conference of current ''alarming examples'' of proliferation, referring to North Korea's declared weapons program and U.S. allegations that Iran also plans to build atomic arms. Confronting such threats -- not focusing on U.S. and other weapons states' actions -- ''must be the primary objective of the 2005 Review Conference,'' the American ambassador said. Under the 35-year-old, 188-nation treaty, which is reviewed every five years, those without nuclear weapons pledge not to pursue them, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear-weapons states -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to negotiate toward getting rid of them. A third ''pillar'' of the treaty is its guarantee that nonweapons states have access to peaceful nuclear technology. Iran cites this as the legal basis for its program to enrich uranium, a process to produce nuclear fuel for civilian energy needs or, if extended, to produce material for nuclear bombs. Tehran rejects Washington's contention it has weapons plans. The treaty review had bogged down for almost three weeks in disputes over its agenda, as arms-control advocates accused both the United States and Iran of obstructionism in pushing their priorities. The delegates finally got down to business in committees on Thursday. Addressing a Friday committee session, Sanders cited 25 disarmament ''accomplishments,'' including reduction of thousands of U.S. and Russian warheads under the START treaty process since 1991. Under the 2002 Moscow Treaty, signed by President Bush, warheads will be reduced to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, she noted. ''The United States balances its obligations under Article VI'' -- the treaty article on eventual disarmament - ''with our obligations to maintain our own security and the security of those who depend on us,'' Sanders said. But Washington ''is in full compliance with Article VI,'' she concluded. Others sounded unconvinced, citing the steps endorsed by the 2000 conference, which also included negotiating a verifiable treaty ending production of nuclear bomb material worldwide, and reducing arms in an ''irreversible'' way. The Bush administration opposes verification of a bomb-material cutoff, and critics note that the Moscow Treaty is reversible, since warheads need not be destroyed, just stored away. ''Unfortunately, today we see that no progress has been made in the area of those practical steps,'' said Algeria's Hamza Khelif. Trying to bridge the gap, the Netherlands, Poland and five other non-nuclear NATO allies presented a draft for a conference final document that would, among other things, encourage global talks on dismantling all nuclear arsenals, and address the Iran situation via steps to better control uranium enrichment. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Six sites finalists for nuclear power plants U.S. consortium's list could be step toward renaissance MSNBC staff and news service reports Updated: 11:15 a.m. ET May 20, 2005 Reuters http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7921287/ Photo: The Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Scottsboro, Ala., was never completed but it might find new life after a consortium placed it on a shortlist for the first nuclear power plants in the United States in two decades. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050520/050520_bellefonte_hmed_7a.hmedium.jpg A nuclear power plant hasn't been built in the United States in two decades, but that could change in the next few years after a consortium announced locations in six states as possible sites for a nuclear renaissance. Nuclear power consortium NuStart Energy on Thursday named the sites from which it will later pick two for which to apply for licenses to build and operate nuclear power plants. Four of the six already house operating nuclear power plants. The sites, by location, are: * Scottsboro, Ala. The Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, an unfinished site owned by the U.S. government's Tennessee Valley Authority. * Port Gibson, Miss. The Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, owned by Entergy. * St. Francisville, La. The River Bend Station, owned by Entergy. * Aiken, S.C. The Savannah River Site, a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons lab. * Lusby, Md. The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant, owned by Constellation Energy. * Oswego, N.Y. The Nine Mile Point plant, owned by Constellation Energy. All six sites chosen by NuStart are owned either by a consortium member or by the Department of Energy. The consortium, which hopes to work on two advanced plant designs, said it expects to name the two finalists by October. Global warming advantage The last license to result in the construction and operation of a new nuclear plant in the United States was issued in 1973. The U.S. nuclear industry has been virtually frozen since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. No company has followed through with plans to build a new nuclear plant since the accident. However, President Bush has backed renewed construction of nuclear plants as part of his energy policy. And, in an indication of a possible shift in public opinion, a few environmentalists have said they are willing to revisit nuclear power because, unlike fossil fuel, it doesn't produce emissions tied to global warming. In addition, designs for new generation plants include smaller reactors that create less radioactive waste. 75 factors to be weighed NuStart President Marilyn Kray said the four sites with operating power plants have the “most comprehensive licensing basis,” and the five sites housing power plants have the benefit of established transmission systems. The consortium will evaluate the sites on 75 factors including seismic activity, availability of water and emergency preparedness issues. It is also sending letters to state and local politicians and development leaders to determine what incentives they might offer to attract the plant. Kray said Nustart is not particularly worried about protests from environmental activists at the local level, but does expect some resistance from environmentalists on the national level. The NuStart consortium consists of nine utilities, including Exelon, Entergy, and Duke Energy, as well as nuclear reactor manufacturers GE Energy, a unit of General Electric, and Westinghouse Electric Co., a unit of BNFL Plc. (GE is a parent in the joint venture that owns MSNBC.) Under the Department of Energy’s Nuclear 2010 program, half of the estimated $520 million cost of the project is being shouldered by the Energy Department and half will be paid by the consortium members. The consortium expects to apply for licenses in 2008. Construction could then begin in 2010 with completion in 2014, NuStart said. ---- Report Expected on U.S. Nuclear Material Consolidation Friday, May 20, 2005 Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_5_20.html#611CC5DD The U.S. Energy Department expects to receive in June an advisory board report on consolidating nuclear materials at a few sites to improve security and cut costs, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, May 9). “The argument is by putting more of the materials in fewer places, you simply reduce security risks and therefore reduce the costs of securing materials,” said National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Anson Franklin. U.S. plutonium and weapon-grade uranium are now housed at 13 facilities across the country (Christopher Smith, Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, May 20). Project on Government Oversight spokeswoman Beth Daley said that a recent report by her organization shows that consolidating nuclear materials into secure bunkers could save $3 billion and improve national security. Additional reports from the government are not needed, she added. “It’s simply time for the Department of Energy to just do it,” Daley said. “There’s simply no reason from a homeland security or budget perspective to keep nuclear materials at these sites. It’s time to get this done.” The POGO report, entitled U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Homeland Security Opportunities, recommends removing nuclear material from the Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories and Hanford Site immediately because of poor security. These materials should be placed in bunkers with adequate security measures, according to the report (David Francis, Global Security Newswire, May 20). ---- Excerpts and a Very Quick Review of the Report accompanying the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, FY2006 May 20, 2005 version, Greg Mello with assistance from Emily Strabbing http://www.lasg.org/ActionAlerts/action/HouseAppropriationsFY06Markup.htm During the week of May 9, the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee completed its markup of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) proposed FY06 nuclear weapons budget. This past week, the full House Appropriations Committee released the Report accompanying its markup. Overall, the committee proposes a 6.8% cut in nuclear weapons (“Weapons Activities”) spending for FY06, or a little over 10% in inflation-corrected dollars. The main themes of interest in this Report are, in rough and cursory form, roughly those shown below. A few key passages from the text are also supplied under each theme. A table summarizing the funding levels proposed in relation to FY05 funding and to FY06 funds requested is available separately. The Committee’s views are obviously not, in this exact form, those of Congress as a whole. Financially, they must be reconciled with a corresponding markup from Senator Domenici’s Energy and Water Subcommittee (which has not yet happened). In terms of program authorization, these proposals must be reconciled to some extent with the views of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Still, there is little doubt that the report expresses the views of many House members active on these issues, both Democrats and Republicans, and these ideas are a very important contribution not just to congressional deliberations but to national and international debate as well. These comments are unusual in that the Committee, frustrated for many years with the poor direction, poor management, and gross wastefulness that defines much of the nuclear weapons complex, is proposing to re-ground the nuclear weapons program on what they perceive as a more pragmatic and responsible footing. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, these comments are quite intelligent. Little of comparable substance has come from Congress regarding nuclear weapons in many years. In some ways the most interesting aspects of this Report are its relationship to, and implications for, civil society initiatives, and to society’s moral and legal norms affecting nuclear weapons. This is not the place to discuss these matters in any depth, but I (Greg) want to suggest one thesis: there is a latent and fruitful common ground in both Congress and society regarding nuclear weapons policy, and the intellectual, moral, and political exploration of this common ground is being neglected by most politicians and most non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academics working in this field in the U.S. This common ground involves, in the words of the Committee, a “dramatically smaller nuclear stockpile in the near future.” It is premised on the idea that nuclear weapons have a limited, or perhaps a very limited, utility. [1] 1. A new paradigm is proposed for the nuclear weapons program, revolving around the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), which is to be the centerpiece of a new “Sustainable Stockpile Initiative” (SSI). The narrative of “science-based stockpile stewardship” is left behind. Integral with this redirection, the Committee calls for a consolidated and more efficient nuclear weapons complex to decrease costs and provide for better security. The Committee begins by saying that much of the funding provided under the Weapons Activities budget line is ill-spent. The budget request for direct stockpile support by weapon tail number is only ten percent of the total Weapons Activities request. Too much of the remaining 90 percent of the budget request support a residual Cold War capacity within the weapons complex which is not needed for the long term sustainable stockpile. (p. 127) What follows is the first clear congressional or executive branch articulation of an alternative paradigm for U.S. nuclear weapons programs and facilities in a more than a decade. The Committee is supportive of the Administration taking an accelerated approach to implement a new nuclear weapons paradigm that ensures the continued moratorium on nuclear testing and results in a dramatically smaller nuclear weapons stockpile in the near future. The RRW weapons will be designed for ease of manufacturing, maintenance, dismantlement, and certification without nuclear testing, allowing the NNSA to transition the weapons complex away from a large expensive Cold War relic into a smaller, more efficient modern complex. A more reliable replacement warhead will allow long-term savings by phasing out the multiple redundant Cold War warhead designs that require maintaining multiple obsolete production technologies to maintain the older warheads. The committee’s qualified endorsement of the RRW initiative is based on the assumption that a replacement weapon will be designed only as a re-engineered and remanufactured warhead of an existing weapon system in the stockpile. The committee does not endorse the RRW concept as the beginning of a new production program intended to produce new warhead designs or produce new weapons for any military mission beyond the current deterrent requirements. The committee’s support of the RRW concept is contingent on the intent of the program being solely to meet the current military characteristics and requirements of the existing stockpile. Sustainable Stockpile Initiative.- The Committee views the RRW initiative as part of a larger Sustainable Stockpile Initiative. The end of the Cold War left the DOE [Department of Energy] production complex awash in special nuclear material and excess weapons and weapons parts with no additional mission requirement. The post-9/11 threat environment has made providing safeguards and security for these old warheads and excess materials a serious security liability and a seemingly unlimited budget liability. The Committee expects the Department to develop an integrated RRW implementation plan that challenges the complex to produce a RRW certifiable design while implementing an accelerated warhead dismantlement program and an infrastructure reconfiguration proposal that maximizes special nuclear material consolidation. The Committee recognizes all of these program initiatives implemented together with the SEAB [Secretary of Energy Advisory Board] Infrastructure Task Force recommendations as the beginning of a responsible infrastructure for maintaining the future nuclear stockpile. The Committee directs the Secretary of Energy to establish a Federal Advisory committee on the Reliable Replacement Warhead initiative and to advise on implementation of recommendations stemming from Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Study. (p. 128) One of several reasons for this change is that, in the Committee’s view, Stockpile Stewardship, invented in 1994 and funded since in 1995, isn’t working. (Many of us predicted its denouement ten years ago along more or less the lines it has been failing since then. If the current direction is continued, there is much more failure and scandal still ahead, unless the failures can be kept effectively secret. Much failure and scandal are already publicly known but not publicly reported, so there is no accountability and the problems continue.) “…Congressional testimony by NNSA officials is beginning to erode the confidence of the committee that the Science-based Stockpile Stewardship is performing as advertised. (p. 133) The Committee recommendation recognizes the Department’s inability to achieve the promises of the Stockpile Stewardship effort and redirects ASCI [Advanced Simulation and Computing] funding to maintain current life extension production capabilities pending the initiation of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. (pp. 133-134) The weapons complex is replete with derelict and often contaminated facilities that are being left for later disposition, and the Committee seems to imply – if this is not reading too much into the language used – that the funds provided for disposition of these facilities ($50 million last year) are not being used for actual physical removal of these hazards. The Committee directs that not less than $30,000,000 of the facilities and infrastructure funding in fiscal year 2006 be used to dispose of excess facilities. (pp. 136-137) 2. The Committee requests that significantly greater sums be applied to increasing the physical security of the nuclear weapons complex in the short run, with consolidation of facilities and nuclear materials the key to lowering costs in the long run. Much could be said about the lack of physical security of the weapons complex, and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has done an admirable job of doing so (see: http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/ho-050301-consolidation.html). The Committee takes these problems seriously because they are real. They recommend a two-phase solution: first apply more manpower in critical areas and meanwhile consolidate facilities and materials to save money in the outyears. Additional manpower is only a stopgap solution to address the security concerns throughout the weapons complex if the Department hopes to have any resources remaining to execute the program. (p. 137) 3. The Committee wants a “dramatically smaller nuclear stockpile in the near future” and requests that the savings appear immediately in the Stockpile Life Extension and related programs. The above quote was cited earlier, from p. 128. The next page explains how this goal is meant to affect FY06 funding. The committee expects a rebaselined [stockpile] life extension program plan by weapons type, a Reliable Replacement Warhead program plan, and a Warhead Dismantlement plan that, taken together, will provide reliable nuclear deterrence with post-2025 stockpile significantly smaller that the 2012 Nuclear Stockpile levels committed to in the Moscow Treaty and specified in the revised Nuclear Stockpile Plan. The current Life Extension Plans will be scoped back to lower levels and the resources will be redeployed to support the Sustainable Stockpile Initiative. (p. 129) 4. The Committee does not want new nuclear military warhead capability, including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). The Committee says RNEP detracts from efforts to meet the management challenges facing the nuclear weapons complex. The committee recommendation provides no funding for RNEP. The Committee continues to oppose the diversion of resources and intellectual capital away from the more serious issues that confront the management of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, primarily the transformation of the cold War nuclear weapons complex and existing stockpile into a sustainable enterprise. The committee has been disappointed at the bureaucracy’s adherence to an initiative that threatens Congressional and public support for sustainable stockpile initiatives that will actually provide long-term security and deterrent value for the Nation. (p. 131) 5. The Committee takes several steps to correct fiscal and management issues across the complex and throughout the nuclear weapons program. In several ways the Committee attempts to exert clearer fiscal and management control over specific programs and over reprogramming authority between programs. They want to end the practice of multi-hundred-million-dollar, open-ended “campaigns” with no clear goals, cost estimates, completion dates, or interim milestones. They want to end “Special Projects,” a small ($6.6 million) but intentionally unaccountable funding pool. They want at least 60% of the money which is being appropriated for programs in Russia to be spent in Russia, rather than in the DOE national labs. 6. The RRW is offered as a potent reason not to decrease the time necessary to conduct a nuclear test. The initiation of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program designed to provide for the continuance of the existing moratorium on underground nuclear testing by insuring the long term reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile obviates any reason to move to a provocative 18-month test readiness posture. In other words, if the RRW is supposed to be reliable, why must the U.S. pay the diplomatic and financial costs of an aggressive pre-nuclear testing posture? One cannot have it both ways – one cannot sell a new common nuclear weapon primary to Congress on the grounds that it is not going to require nuclear testing, and then turn around and ask for money for a possible nuclear test. 7. Any commitment to the large-scale production of plutonium pits is delayed, even as the gradual acquisition of interim manufacturing capacity at LANL is supported. The Committee commends the Los Alamos National Laboratory for its work restoring the pit production capability to the nuclear weapons production complex. The Committee continues to oppose the Department’s accelerated efforts to site and begin construction activities on a modern pit facility and urges the Department to continue to concentrate its management attention on meeting the fiscal year 2007 schedule for a certified pit ready for the stockpile. (p. 134) The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility Replacement (CMRR) project at LANL has been sold to the public as a mere “replacement” of another facility – which has not, however, been much used in many years. Apparently the CMRR is viewed, or has been briefed to the Committee, as adding to the “production capability” of LANL. The Committee would zero out funding for this project – just as a similar plutonium facility proposed for the exact same location, for the exact same purpose, with the exact same sales pitch, was cancelled in 1990. Project 04-D-125, Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility Replacement (CMRR), LANL. The Committee recommends no funding for the CMRR project, a decrease of $55,000,000 from the budget request. Construction at the CMRR facility should be delayed until the Department determines the long-term plan for developing the responsive infrastructure required to maintain the nation’s existing nuclear stockpile and support replacement production anticipated for the RRW initiative. The Committee’s recommendation does not prejudge the outcome of the Secretary’s SEAB subcommittee’s assessment of the NNSA weapons complex. However, the production capabilities proposed in the CMRR will be best located at whatever future production complex configuration the Department determines necessary to support the long term stockpile program. (p. 136) 8. The Mixed Oxide (MOX) nuclear reactor fuel plant is proposed to be put on hold pending resolution of liability issues. The latest financial data from the Department shows an available prior year balance of over $650,000,000 in the Mixed oxide (MOS) construction project. The fiscal year 2006 budget request would increase those balances to over $1,000,000,000, yet no nuclear nonproliferation or national security benefits have been realized due to continued program delays. (p. 142) 9. The proposed transfer of environmental “cleanup” responsibilities to NNSA is to be put on hold, and the funding transfer returned to DOE’s Environmental Management (EM) program. Neither is it clear to me what this accomplishes, except provide a backdoor subsidy to Weapons Activities. In the mid-1990s, cleanup funds were raided by the nuclear weapons program at LANL; despite protestations from the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, nothing was done. As currently proposed, the transfer has the potential for unintentional adverse outcomes for both the weapons mission and cleanup programs. The Committee will consider future transfer requests when the Department has provided a more extensive, thoughtful justification. (p. 145) 10. The Committee lashes DOE for not following up on congressional requirements to study the cost-effectiveness of its on-site nuclear waste disposal. Low-level radioactive waste disposal costs.- The Energy and Water-Development Appropriations Act, 2002, directed the Department to prepare analysis of life-cycle costs of disposing of low-level radioactive waste and mixed low-level radioactive waste (LLW/MLLW). The conference committee was concerned with DOE’s practices for disposal of LLW. These concerns centered on DOE’s use of federal versus commercial disposal facilities and the life-cycle costs of each option. The House Committee on Appropriations noted that (1) DOE’s was relying too heavily on its on-site and off-site disposal facilities, inhibiting development of a viable and competitive commercial disposal industry, and (2) commercial disposal facilities may offer DOE the lowest life-cycle cost for waste disposal. DOE responded with a July 2002 life-cycle cost report to Congress, which specified actions it would take to ensure that sites use life-cycle cost analyses, including justification for expansion or new construction of on-site disposal facilities. DOE issued guidance in July 2002 directing its field offices to use full “cradle to grave” lifecycle costs and analysis of options in making LLW disposal decisions. The Committee requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review the Department’s implementation of using life-cycle analyses to evaluate LLW/MLLW disposal options. GAO found that DOE sites do not consistently use life-cycle analyses to evaluate LLW/MLLW disposal options, which may be caused by DOE’s ineffective communication and implementation of life cycle cost analysis guidance, and lack of oversight. GAO found that sites may conduct cost analyses of disposal options for major waste streams or projects, but most analyses did not include all life-cycle cost elements; some sites pursue waste disposal without fully considering alternatives; and DOE sites do not always use life-cycle analyses to evaluate on-site versus off-site disposal options. The Committee is most concerned with the Department’s response to GAO that rather than relying on life-cycle cost analyses, DOE is relying increasingly on incentive-based contracts to ensure cost-effective decision making. The Committee could not disagree more. (pp. 145-146) [1] The breadth of the field on which common ground can be found is created by long-standing and permanent political, moral, legal, technical, and economic realities, to name only the most obvious. Politically, support for a “dramatically smaller” stockpile is based on public opinion, which would prefer such a policy by a strong supermajority. This is an inference, but it is a very safe one, drawn from the fact that many polls have shown that a large majority of Americans would prefer complete mutual nuclear disarmament when given a choice of policies, and by the fact that it is U.S. policy, not that of any other country, which has held back mutual nuclear disarmament since 1992. This U.S. popular opinion persists despite decades of contrary practice and virtually no media attention to such a policy option. Morally, support for deep cuts in the nuclear arsenal comes from the inherent incompatibility of nuclear threat and use with all moral systems – not to put too fine a point on the matter. Legally, permanent nuclear possession is likewise insupportable – under the NPT, for starters, but in fact any nuclear possession can only be for the conjoined purposes of nuclear threat and use, both of which have been declared generally illegal by the International Court of Justice in their landmark 1996 decision, and not positively declared legal under any circumstance. U.S. military manuals blandly assert the conditional legality of nuclear use, while at the same time they tutor officers in widely-accepted laws which would render all realistic nuclear use illegal. Technically, we might mention only the matter of physical security, the provision of which is a kind of bottomless well at some kinds of nuclear facilities. For security reasons alone, given the evolution and dispersion of advanced military equipment and tactics, certain activities such as plutonium pit production, if conducted at all, should be most prudently conducted underground. Provision and operation of underground facilities is expensive. The cost of a large nuclear stockpile – deployed, perhaps $30 billion per year overall currently; historically, about $100 million per warhead – obviously competes with many other military and domestic initiatives. To cut the argument short, there is, in other words, a very large political, intellectual, legal and moral space which is being almost entirely neglected in elite U.S. nuclear policy discussions – and because of this, in the U.S. media. For a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, limitations on the subjects of legitimate debate have been flowing from the capital outward, which serves the parochial interests of those who wish to limit debate on nuclear weapons – that is, those who want to keep them in large numbers and “improve” them as fast as practicable. Broadening and deepening the debate, not narrowing it, is of crucial importance. The present Report, written by a Republican-dominated committee, is one intelligent foray into this largely-unused, largely-uncontested and in many ways incontestable space. Let us hope that Democrats, we in the NGO community, academics, and journalists can find ways to widen and deepen the nuclear policy debate as well as Republicans have done in this Report. To do so we must find ways to introduce absent-but-relevant facts and laws, and collectively remind ourselves of long-standing moral norms and traditions transcending us, instead of attempting to narrow legitimate discussion to anyone’s or any group’s notion du-jour of what is relevant. Los Alamos Study Group 2901 Summit Place NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 Phone: 505-265-1200, Fax: 505-265-1207 ---- Nustart Picks 6 Finalist Sites for Nuclear Licenses Story by Michael Erman REUTERS USA: May 20, 2005 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30898/story.htm NEW YORK - Nuclear power consortium NuStart Energy Thursday named six locations from which it will later this year pick two sites to apply for licenses to build and operate new nuclear power plants. The last license to result in the construction and operation of a new nuclear plant in the United States was issued in 1973. NuStart, which was formed to apply for the licenses that could allow new nuclear plants to be built in the United States, said it is looking at sites in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland and New York. The consortium said it expects to name the final two sites by October. The US nuclear industry has been virtually frozen since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the worst nuclear accident in US history. No company has followed through with plans to build a new nuclear plant since the accident. However, President Bush has backed renewed construction of nuclear plants as part of his energy policy. And in an indication of a possible shift in public opinion, some prominent environmentalists have said they now support nuclear power because the plants produce hardly any greenhouse gas emissions. All six sites chosen by NuStart are owned either by a consortium member or by the Department of Energy. Four of the six already house operating nuclear power plants. Of the other two sites, the one in Aiken, South Carolina, holds a Department of Energy facility and the one in northeast Alabama has two partly completed nuclear units that never went into operation. NuStart President Marilyn Kray said the four sites with operating power plants have the "most comprehensive licensing basis," and the five sites housing power plants have the benefit of established transmission systems. The consortium will evaluate the sites on 75 factors including seismic activity, availability of water and emergency preparedness issues. It is also sending letters to state and local politicians and development leaders to determine what incentives they might offer to attract the plant. While some environmentalists have begun to support nuclear power, many others are still wary of the technology. Kray said Nustart is not particularly worried about protests from environmental activists at the local level, but does expect some resistance from environmentalists on the national level. The NuStart consortium consists of nine utilities, including Exelon , Entergy , and Duke Energy , as well as nuclear reactor manufacturers GE Energy, a unit of General Electric , and Westinghouse Electric Co., a unit of BNFL Plc. Under the Department of Energy's Nuclear 2010 program, half of the estimated $520 million cost of the project is being shouldered by the DOE and half will be paid by the consortium members. ---- Nuclear Power: Solution or Problem? (5 Letters) May 20, 2005 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/opinion/l20nuke.html?pagewanted=print To the Editor: Re "Old Foes Soften to New Reactors" (front page, May 15): Nuclear energy can stabilize the climate, some argue. But if we are to safely and securely exit the carbon age, we must perform environmental and health impact assessments of our options. We've learned that exploring for oil, as well as drilling, transporting, refining, burning and securing it, carries unsustainable local and global costs. Generating nuclear power means that we must mine, mill, transport, process and store uranium. Each step is hazardous for workers, communities and countries because of the potential for groundwater contamination, accidents, theft and attack. We will spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to clean up the radioactive waste already generated. We need the proper incentives for conservation and noncentralized power generation through tidal, geothermal, wind, solar, fuel-cell, hybrid, energy-efficient and "smart" technologies, along with "green buildings," smart growth and rational public transportation systems. The clean energy transition can provide the engine of growth for the 21st century. Paul R. Epstein, M.D. Richard Clapp Boston, May 16, 2005 The writers are, respectively, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School; and a professor at Boston University School of Public Health. • To the Editor: There is no solution to the twin problems of the world's energy needs and carbon dioxide emissions that does not include a nuclear component. But that does not necessarily mean that we must accept the waste and dangers of proliferation inherent in current reactor technologies, which would require more and more Yucca Mountains for waste storage. The nation must invest in research in technologies that can turn existing waste, as well as weapons-grade materials, into energy and ensure that the reactors of the future will leave behind much smaller quantities of much less dangerous waste. These technologies are within reach, and the Department of Energy's national laboratories are poised to demonstrate them, given the necessary resources. Don M. Randel Chicago, May 16, 2005 The writer is president of the University of Chicago. • To the Editor: Nuclear power's embrace by President Bush and some environmental leaders is misguided and dangerous. At a time when the United States is pressing hard on countries like Iran and North Korea to curb their nuclear appetites, increasing our own nuclear dependence smacks of foolhardy arrogance. Aside from weapons proliferation, nuclear plants are all-too-tempting targets for terrorists. Just last week, a small plane's suspicious flight path had the White House, Capitol and Supreme Court employees fleeing in panic. This is a reminder of how hard it is to keep vulnerable sites safe from aerial attack. The United States lags far behind other countries in developing safer energy sources like wind and solar. We should focus on regaining that lost ground rather than grasping at the nuclear panacea. Philip Warburg President Conservation Law Foundation Boston, May 16, 2005 • To the Editor: John Tierney is right about the benefits of taxing carbon emissions (" 'No Nukes,' No More," column, May 17). But given that emissions from motor vehicles are also a major contributor to global warming, these should be taxed as well. The way to do this is by increasing substantially the tax on gasoline, as most other industrialized nations have done. Raising taxes so that gasoline costs $4 or more per gallon would drastically reduce consumption, with the dual benefits of reducing pollution and reducing oil imports. To moderate the economic impact of higher gasoline prices, the increase in taxes should be gradual. Zvi J. Doron Pittsburgh, May 17, 2005 • To the Editor: The main reason nuclear power has been in eclipse is that the utilities that own nuclear power plants have done a lousy job of running them. Shaun D. Mullen Newark, Del., May 17, 2005 -------- new mexico Bidding Opens for Managing Los Alamos Contract Worth up to $79 Million a Year By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 20, 2005; A06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051901722_pf.html The government released its proposal yesterday for bids to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory amid concerns among some members of Congress that new management could lead to resignations of senior scientists at what is considered the nation's premier scientific research complex. The final proposal released by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) offers a fixed seven-year contract with an option for an additional 13 years and the potential for making as much as $79 million yearly. That is almost 10 times the fee now received by the University of California, which has managed the facility since 1943, during the Manhattan Project. Tyler Przybylek, chairman of the NNSA board that will evaluate the proposals, told reporters yesterday, "We think that this contract has the opportunity to be transformational in nature in that there can be improvements . . . operational efficiencies, business efficiencies, that can be brought in that can enable our scientists to do more research easier." Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), whose state is home to Los Alamos, said he was "concerned . . . senior scientists will decide to retire and that there will be vastly different pensions for employees" than the current pensions under the university's retirement program. Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said the final proposal "is not everything I would have wanted," but said he was "hopeful that the end result will be right for the lab." Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), after noting that the proposal calls for a stand-alone pension plan for lab employees, said, "I remain concerned that altering the pension plan . . . could alarm workers throughout the complex of nuclear weapon facilities," including those at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in her district. The decision to hold the first-ever competition to run Los Alamos stemmed in good part from security and other problems that have dogged the facility, which has a worldwide reputation for its nuclear weapons but also is home to a wide range of basic scientific research programs. The scope of its activities listed in the proposal includes research and development "that enable safe nuclear explosive operations," helping "deter, detect and respond to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," advancing "science, mathematics and engineering education," and performing "technology transfer and work for others, including programs to enhance national competitiveness in the global economy." The bids are due July 19, and the contract is to be awarded by Dec. 1. Three bidders are expected to participate: Lockheed Martin, which runs the Sandia National Laboratories, will head one team, with the University of Texas as a partner; Northrop Grumman, with an academic institution, will be another; and UC, teamed with Bechtel Corp., will be the third. "Whichever team is selected," Domenici said, "I firmly believe that [Los Alamos] will continue to be a premier laboratory for science." Przybylek tried to reassure lab personnel, telling reporters: "The overriding concern of the board must be that we get a management and operating contract that promotes excellence in science and technology. That's the reason the lab is there." ---- Defense Industry may have edge on Los Alamos Final bid directive adds stand-alone pension, higher fees Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer Friday, May 20, 2005 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/20/MNGSTCS1VL1.DTL Federal officials issued their final specifications Thursday for the forthcoming competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory -- and at least one California lawmaker suggested the document might favor a defense industry bid over one from the University of California, which has run the nuclear complex for six decades. UC officials and other competitors said Thursday that they were still reading the thick "Request for Proposals" document and would not comment on it for several days. Bids must be submitted by July 19, and the winner of the competition is scheduled to be announced Dec. 1. A first reading of the document -- which was issued by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a quasi-independent agency that runs the nuclear weapons complex for the U.S. Department of Energy -- revealed two potentially controversial provisions: a requirement that lab employees be covered by a stand-alone pension plan, and a huge increase in the annual payment to the contractor running the lab. According to the document, the promised annual payment cap is $79 million -- about 10 times the average annual payment to UC in recent years. But in a statement Thursday, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, criticized that increase, saying it will pass on unnecessary costs to the taxpayer. Moreover, she continued, "I want to warn the DOE about what appears to be a warming toward bids offered by defense industry companies. Our national labs have a long and proud history of being run by academic institutions with an unquestionable commitment to the highest standards of science. I want to caution the DOE and urge officials to carefully guard against the corporatization of science." UC officials have traditionally depicted their management of Los Alamos and two other national labs as public services that generate relatively little revenue for the university. The increase in the management fee could conceivably make bidding for the contract more attractive to profit-making corporations such as giant military contractors. UC has joined arms with Bechtel National, BWX Technologies Inc. and Washington Group to fight for the contract. Its announced competitors include the giant University of Texas and aerospace titan Lockheed Martin, which have formed a partnership to submit a bid, and Northrop Grumman, which joined the competition April 25 and is expected to name a collaborator possibly as early as today. However, the UC regents have yet to vote on whether to join the competition. A terse statement from Michael R. Anastasio, leader of the fight to keep Los Alamos in UC hands, said that decision is expected to be made soon. Anastasio is also director of Los Alamos' sister lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Tauscher, whose district includes the Lawrence Livermore lab, also said she was disappointed by the decision to require a stand-alone pension, which she said would be less attractive to lab staffers because they would no longer be covered by UC's retirement plan. The university's generous pension plans are seen as having helped attract the best and brightest employees. Officials with the Texas-Lockheed team, which is headed by C. Paul Robinson, former president and director of Sandia National Laboratories, are "going through (the request for proposals) to see what has changed" since earlier drafts, said their spokesman, Don Carson. "Unless there's something dramatically different, we're counting on competing and winning," Carson added. Some UC backers fear that the Energy Department would like to kick UC out of Los Alamos. At a congressional hearing in March, longtime UC ally Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., accused the Energy Department of writing the specifications in a way that would make it "very, very hard for the University of California to get the bid." The text of the RFP is at www.doeal.gov/lanlcontractrecompete/E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. ---- Los Alamos Laboratory Beset With Turmoil By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 20, 2005 Filed at 2:02 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Los-Alamos-Lab.html?pagewanted=print LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- The Wen Ho Lee case. Confusion over the whereabouts of classified computer disks. Workers buying camping and hunting gear on the government's dime. Disgruntled scientists posting complaints on a blog. A potential brain drain among the weapons experts. Los Alamos, the government lab that built the atomic bomb during World War II, is beset with turmoil and uncertainty, and there could be more to come. To clean up the place and run it more efficiently, the U.S. government is putting the contract to operate Los Alamos up for bid for the first time since the lab was created in 1943 as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. The University of California, which has run Los Alamos from the beginning, could be out. A defense contractor with a more bottom-line outlook could be in. And that worries some. The government's request for bids appears to be ''skewed toward a corporate structure, rather than a not-for-profit entity,'' said Democratic Rep. Tom Udall of New Mexico. ''I hope this requirement does not affect the science at the lab -- or result in an exodus of employees -- as many have feared.'' Tyler Przybylek of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department agency that plans to award the new contract by Dec. 1, gave assurances Thursday that Los Alamos would continue to be a world-class scientific institution. ''I think that what people will see over time is good operations and good business aren't the enemies of great science; they enable it,'' Przybylek said. Los Alamos, with about 8,000 University of California employees and 3,000 contract workers, is one of the nation's three chief installations responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear arsenal and manufacturing weapons components. The lab also conducts research on a host of topics of national interest, including miniaturized technology, genetics, computing, the environment and health. In 1999, in a case that proved a major embarrassment for the government and the lab, Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee was jailed amid an investigation into possible Chinese espionage. The case proved to be weak, and Lee pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information and was released with an apology from a federal judge. The lab was rocked by other security lapses, as well as credit card abuses, theft of equipment and other instances of mismanagement. Pete Nanos, a former Navy admiral, was brought in as director two years ago to ''drain the swamp,'' as he put it, and credited by the Energy Department earlier this month, when he stepped down, with instituting some sound business practices. But he also made enemies with his brusque management style, calling scientists who flouted the rules ''cowboys'' and ''buttheads.'' Last summer, Nanos suspended nearly all work for weeks and turned the place upside-down in a search for two missing computer disks that never even existed; there was merely a paperwork error. Some workers responded with a blog site that ridiculed their boss. On Thursday, the government released its request for proposals from businesses or institutions interested in running Los Alamos, offering to pay up to $79 million a year to a contractor -- nearly 10 times the amount the University of California now makes for a job it essentially regards as a nonprofit venture. The University of Texas plans to team up with Lockheed Martin and bid on the contract. The University of California has joined forces with Bechtel but has yet to decide for certain whether it will compete. Northrop Grumman also plans to bid. Charles Mansfield, who heads a group of retired lab employees, said uncertainty over the lab's future and poor morale have led key scientists to consider retiring early. ''From the nation's standpoint it's turning out to be a terrible debacle,'' he said. Roughly 200 people since Oct. 1 have indicated they are considering retirement, with more than half from the weapons and physics, weapons engineering and manufacturing and threat-reduction divisions, lab spokesman James Rickman said. ''Those people are critical to the core mission of the laboratory,'' Rickman said. ''We're trying to work as an institution to make sure that we capture and retain the very critical, sometimes esoteric, knowledge that these people have. It's absolutely critical to the security and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile.'' Associated Press Writer Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this story. On the Net: Los Alamos National Laboratory: www.lanl.gov ---- Los Alamos: The end of an era From: Greg Mello Date: Fri May 20, 2005 5:49pm 1. Good news! The House Appropriations Committee demands a dramatically smaller” nuclear stockpile supported by a smaller nuclear weapons complex. Last week, the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee completed its markup of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) proposed FY06 nuclear weapons budget. This week, the full House Appropriations Committee released the Report accompanying its markup, which arrived in our office today. A summary will be posted tomorrow athttp://www.lasg.org. Overall, the committee proposes a 5% cut in nuclear weapons spending for FY06, or roughly 8% in inflation-corrected dollars. This is only part of the good news, however. The Committee more or less demands that the DOE and its nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), implement a “new nuclear weapons paradigm” that results in a “dramatically smaller nuclear weapons stockpile in the near future.” The Committee reaches deep into NNSA’s nuclear weapons programs to make sure this happens, and demands that NNSA replace the current nuclear weapons complex of labs and production plants, which it calls a “large, expensive Cold War relic,” with a “smaller, more efficient, modern complex.” “Smaller” is a step in the right direction; “more efficient” is not. This is not the place to summarize or analyze the Committee’s work in detail. In any case it will be reconciled with a corresponding markup from Senator Domenici’s Energy and Water Subcommittee, so the House views are still far from being law. But there is little doubt the report expresses the views of many active House members, not just members of its Energy and Water Subcommittee or just those of its chairman David Hobson (R-OH). While generally supporting the idea of pit production and “the expanding TA-55 pit production capacity at the Los Alamos National Laboratory” in particular, the Committee recommends no funding for the Modern Pit Facility (MPF), NNSA’s proposed 125 - 450 pit/year factory. It also recommends no funding for the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility Replacement (CMRR) Facility at LANL, a new plutonium facility expected to cost up to $975 million, now in final design. The Committee believes this facility is premature, and reading between the lines, notes that the “production capabilities” proposed in the CMRR may or may not be at LANL – or if at LANL, in the proposed CMRR as it is now conceived. The Committee also directs DOE to rapidly undertake a critical review of the true costs of its on-site nuclear waste disposal operations – including those at Area G at Los Alamos. 2. Bad news: Is Los Alamos focusing its mission on plutonium bomb core (“pit”) manufacturing? Despite the careful caveat noted above in the House Appropriations markup as regards the CMRR, a number of new and enduring factors make it likely that LANL’s mission will change significantly toward manufacturing of plutonium “pits” and certain other nuclear weapon components (e.g. detonators, a mission already resident). If this happens, it means a relative de-emphasis on “science” – including “science-based stockpile stewardship,” which the House Appropriations Committee, to pick one important actor, regards as rather a failure. Congress appears to be turning toward a new paradigm for funding the nuclear weapons complex. House appropriators call it the “Sustainable Stockpile Initiative” (SSI). No matter what it is called, the new approach will likely pivot to a greater or lesser degree around the “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW). RRW is a funded program to produce new warhead designs. At LANL, the RRW program has already been given pre-production money (in the “Pit Manufacturing Capability” budget line). Production is expected to begin in about 2012. More could be said about the RRW and somewhat more about the brand-new House-proposed SSI, but both are still new and evolving. What is certain, however, is that Congress is settling into a new nuclear weapons pragmatism. Whatever else specific members of Congress may want, as a body they want more deliverables, more accountability, milestones, efficiency, better security, and an end to the scandals. The details of the likely transition to more pit production at LANL are complicated and have been evolving rapidly since late last year. There are a variety of forces behind this possible shift. In regrettably vague terms, here are some of them. • Key members of the House think nuclear weapons are not all that useful, at least relative to other expenditures, especially in quantity. Representative Hobson has openly said as much, but he is not alone. A useful barometer of this overall mood is the level of nuclear weapons spending appropriated. This year, for the first time in a decade, there is a slight inflation-corrected decline in “Weapons Activities” spending, accompanied by a legal requirement to study ways to eliminate redundant, insecure, and outsized facilities and programs. As noted above, last week the House proposed an 8% real cut for next year. • Although implementation lags, the DOE wants to consolidate nuclear materials in fewer and more secure facilities in order to lower their rapidly-increasing security costs and meet newly-recognized threats. Today (5/19) the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) released yet another report on the (in)security of the weapons complex (See http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/ho-050301-consolidation.html ) and the huge savings (according to POGO, about $1 billion/year) that could be realized if nuclear materials were consolidated. • Current “conventional” weapons commitments by the Pentagon are anticipated to cost a lot of money (between one and two trillion dollars!), far more than is likely to be available. Nuclear weapons compete directly or indirectly with “conventional” military expenses. • More than this, the annual federal budget deficit is very large. Most of our new debt is being purchased by foreign creditors. The dollar is weak, oil prices high and heading higher. These and other factors are producing serious economic and political concerns and constraining policy options across the board. It’s getting dangerous to just print more money. • There is a widespread perception in Congress, especially in the House, that LANL is a very troubled institution badly in need of a clear, results-oriented (“accountable”) focus – such as pit production. Some members of Congress are asking what LANL’s unique value might be. The answer, unfortunately, may lie in its relatively-remote location. • The nuclear weapons complex as a whole is understood to be a poorly-managed and wasteful enterprise, ripe for consolidation and refocusing. • As we are seeing today, there is a desire on the part of many in NNSA and Congress to change the vague and wasteful “stockpile stewardship” paradigm to a more pragmatic, product-oriented program as a means of a) fixing management problems, b) preserving the nuclear stockpile, c) avoiding nuclear testing, d) producing new or modified weapons, e) saving money, or f) all of the above. • Between now and at least 2021 (if not also after that), LANL has the only operational pit production facility in the U.S., so if any new pits are to be built at all during this period, either for existing weapons, for the RRW, or for the new weapons so strongly desired by the current civilian Pentagon leadership, they will be built at LANL. The RRW, it must be said, is likely to be an enabling program for these new weapons. To be more specific, it is possible, even likely, that the RRW will be a rugged primary that is capable of an earth-penetrating mission. If so, it could provide a way to circumvent congressional reluctance to fund the proposed “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) while also providing for the long-term rebuilding and upgrading of existing weapons. • Key actors at LANL, NNSA, STRATCOM, and elsewhere have long pursued a “small build” approach to novelty and diversity in the stockpile for a variety of reasons. Production of pits and some other components at LANL is a key part of this plan. • Some liberals in Congress and in the arms control community optimistically hope that a radical increase in pit production capacity at LANL will prevent construction of any (other!) large pit production facility, such as the Modern Pit Facility (MPF). • LANL has now under final design a new production-oriented plutonium facility, the CMRR mentioned above, which is to have a 6 metric ton vault for plutonium and/or highly-enriched uranium. This, if built, would triple the existing vault capacity at TA-55, LANL’s plutonium-oriented technical area. House appropriators propose to halt funding for this facility, but their voice is not the only one. There are also senators Domenici and Bingaman and the rest of the New Mexico delegation. • LANL has an on-site nuclear waste disposal site (TA-54, Area G) which requires no shipments by public highway, involves no external regulation, permit, or commitment to remediate; and is indefinitely expansible at LANL both within TA-54 and at TA-67. • New Mexico is a politically-compliant and dependent state in which nuclear weapons are, after oil and gas extraction, the largest industry in dollar terms. New Mexico now has a Governor ambitious for higher national office who has proven unwilling to make political sacrifices to fight NNSA and its contractors, who are also large political donors. • Competing the LANL contract – the request for proposals (RFP) was released today – has given NNSA a process to require (and substantially reward) a deeper commitment to (and capability for) pit manufacturing than UC has historically provided. • The technical and political risk of any “MPF-only” strategy for making pits has made expanded pit production at LANL a key priority since the late 1990s – and sporadically even prior to that time, since 1989 when Rocky Flats closed. Some of the recent indications LANL’s mission might be about to change include: • Denial late last year of some funding for the MPF in favor of increased funding ($16 million over the request, despite a proposed $14 million cut by the House) for the CMRR project at LANL, along with a hefty $181.4 million for pit production and certification activities based at LANL. In-house Study Group analysis suggests that even if the MPF is built, NNSA's investment in that facility will not begin to equal its post-1994 investment in pit production at LANL until some time after 2020, if ever. • A new congressionally-mandated in-depth review of the entire nuclear weapons complex and programs (originally due April 30, 2005 and now expected in draft public form circa June 15). The terms of reference for this review are at http://www.seab.energy.gov/publications/NWCITF_Terms%20.pdf. • Frank comments by Senator Domenici on April 18 objecting to this report’s proposal to, as he put it, “focus” LANL’s mission on pit production and other weapons manufacturing. • The sudden internal announcement by NNSA headquarters staff to the NNSA Los Alamos Site Office (LASO) on April 28, announced publicly on May 3, that reversed prior policy and committed NNSA to write a new LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS). The reason stated was that LANL’s mission would be changing – specifically, because LANL’s proposed rate of pit production would be doubling from the most recent levels proposed (i.e. from 20 to 40 pits/yr). • Increasing endorsement of “small builds” in a number of official sources, including testimony by NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks on April 4 to the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee. There are other indications as well, but the above list, sent to you without active hyperlinks, will have to do for now. By the weekend some of the background documents involved should be posted at http://www.lasg.org. The situation is rapidly evolving and we will try to keep you abreast of events. 3. Is this bad news after all? This is really an emergency – a crisis and an opportunity. New Mexicans have defeated proposals to increase plutonium pit manufacturing twice before, and we can defeat this proposal now, whether or not it comes openly, wrapped in a bow, as it were. What would victory look like? The status quo at LANL, with a large pit factory in the works somewhere else? (More than likely this would be the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.) This isn’t the goal for most of us. We aren’t gearing up for a NIMBY battle merely, and neither are the people we’ve spoken to in recent meetings. We at the Study Group and the more than 110 organizations now loosely working with us seek to stigmatize and defeat nuclear weapons per se: to defeat what these weapons stand for, and to restore what they are taking from us. In New Mexico, no environmental protection program, no social justice initiative, no human or constitutional rights project, even no fiscal or tax reform project can go very far as long as nuclear weapons are accepted by our political leadership. Why? To succeed, all such initiatives require a politics based on mutual responsibility, on the dignity of human beings and the protection of the living landscape – a politics, in other words, oriented towards the protection of life and not towards mass murder on demand. Most New Mexicans long for a much better educational system, universal health care, much better mass transit, just to name three initiatives which are either economically or politically incompatible with a commitment to nuclear weapons. To the degree we fail to replace a bogus “national security” with real human security, New Mexico will continue to remain poor and without meaningful economic opportunity for a significant fraction of its citizens. As long as nuclear weapons remain in the catbird seat as the most lucrative industry in urban New Mexico, we can kiss off any serious progress in dealing with New Mexico’s problems. They will only get worse. So let’s welcome the struggle over pit production. We didn’t choose it, that’s for sure, but it has come to us and if we care about each other, the planet, and all that’s holy it’s our duty to oppose it. This pit production scheme recapitulates and encapsulates the entire nuclear project – the “original child bomb,” in Thomas Merton’s words. This time, we can choose to reject it. “No one knows your name,” said Rumi, “until you draw your last breath.” In the same way, the meaning of history isn’t final, but rather subject to our own collective actions today. New Mexico may have said “yes” to the bomb in Act I, and lived with the consequences in Acts II and III, but the play isn’t over and all may yet be set right. Sixty years ago, two bombs built at Los Alamos killed more than 210,000 people, inaugurating an era of terror in which we still find ourselves, and all that human beings strive toward, suspended over an abyss. Today, the sheer stupidity and immorality of nuclear weapons, expressed directly and indirectly in a thousand ways, are blocking every avenue for producing plutonium pits in the U.S. except one. The chosen site happens to be in our back yard. Greg Mello, for the Study Group staff, board, and volunteers ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Los Alamos Study Group 2901 Summit Place NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 505-265-1200 voice 505-265-1207 fax 505-577-8563 cell (signal very weak in the office; messages on cell phone may not be received promptly) gmello@lasg.org http://www.lasg.org -------- vermont Panel approves VY dry cask deal By CAROLYN LORIÉ Brattleboro Reformer Staff Friday, May 20, 2005 http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~2879486,00.html MONTPELIER -- On Thursday, the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee approved a bill that allows spent nuclear fuel at Vermont Yankee to be stored in concrete containers in exchange for a $4 million annual payment to the state. The funds collected from Entergy Nuclear, the Louisiana-based company that owns the plant, will go into a renewable energy fund. The Department of Public Service will administer it. "This is a very important bill for Vermont's energy future," said Rep. Steve Darrow, D-Putney. In the bill, legislators wrote that the uncertainty of how long the fuel will be in the state creates a need for "intergenerational equity to help balance the burdens and benefits of nuclear power between succeeding generations of Vermont electricity consumers." The company will be expected to pay the annual charge as long as the fuel is there, even after the plant shuts down. Also in the bill are specific instructions for the Vermont Public Service Board on environmental matters concerning dry cask storage. Entergy is expected to file for a certificate of public good from the board as soon as the Legislature passes the final bill. The bill limits the number of dry casks to that necessary to allow the plant to operate until 2012 and further stipulates that the company must seek legislative approval to extend its license. The Ways and Means Committee, as well as Appropriations, must still approve the bill, before it can be considered by the full House and eventually the Senate. "We put a lot of work into this bill. We've put a lot of important things in it," said Darrow. "I hope to see the Senate pass it and get it on the governor's desk this year." Negotiations between the state and Entergy continue, meaning if a memorandum of understanding is reached, the bill could be radically altered to reflect that agreement. Company officials, the Department of Public Service and three representatives from the Natural Resources and Energy Committee met throughout the day on Thursday. According to committee chairman Robert Dostis, D-Waterbury, the talks are moving in a "positive direction." He declined to comment further on the substance of the negotiations, citing an agreement by all sides to not discuss the matter publicly until a deal in finalized. Entergy officials had no comment on Thursday's vote by the committee. Though company officials have argued that a fee would create a financial hardship, testimony provided by Richard Cowart, consultant to the committee from the Regulatory Assistance Project, showed that the company stood to make an additional $40 million to $50 million a year, if the bid to increase power by 20 percent is approved. At its peak, the company could make as much as $83 million a year. The figures, however, are estimates based on data revealed during the sale of the plant in 2002. Entergy officials have not released the company's actual earnings, claiming the information is proprietary. While the bill calls for the company to pay $4 million a year, there is a provision that would allow the Department of Public Service to develop a system whereby Entergy would be given credit for investing in renewable energy in the state. The credit would go toward reducing the annual charge. Another provision authorizes the Public Service Board to make a determination about whether the charge would be a financial hardship for the company. In addition to an annual fee for the right to store the fuel in dry casks, the bill also calls for imposing a $25 per year charge per kilowatt-hour for generating plants that produce more than 510 megawatts. Vermont Yankee will meet that criterion if its bid to increase power by 20 percent is approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Spent nuclear fuel at Vermont Yankee is currently stored in a pool in the reactor building. Like all nuclear plants, however, the pool was designed only as temporary storage. Initially, fuel was to be shipped out to be reprocessed and then, when reprocessing was stopped, it was supposed to get sent to a national repository. The federal government, however, has yet to open Yucca Mountain and there is some uncertainty about whether it will ever open. In the meantime, nuclear plants around the country are running out of storage space for the spent fuel and turning to dry casks as a way of creating more room in the spent fuel pool. Vermont Yankee officials expect to run out of room by 2008 or 2007 if the power boost is approved. The issue of allowing dry casks to be installed at the plant site has been a contentious one, with environmental groups lobbying for heavy restrictions and Entergy resisting the imposition of any charge. After Thursday's vote, Peter Alexander, executive director of the New England Coalition, lauded aspects of the bill, but said that an agreement between Entergy and the state would be preferable. "It looks like that will only happen if the Legislature threatens to fail to pass this bill," he said. -------- washington WASHINGTON: AWARDS IN HANFORD SUIT May 20, 2005 (AP) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/national/20brfs.html?pagewanted=print A federal jury awarded more than $500,000 to two thyroid cancer sufferers who attributed their diseases to radiation from the Hanford nuclear installation, which made plutonium for bombs for four decades. The jury deadlocked over whether another plaintiff's thyroid cancer was caused by radiation from Hanford, and it ruled against three others with thyroid-related autoimmune diseases. Three contractors that ran operations at Hanford - the General Electric Company, the DuPont Company and UNC Nuclear Inc. - were ordered to pay the damages. (AP) -------- MILITARY -------- biological weapons Russian spies targeted West's bio-defenses By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Published May 20, 2005 http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050520-120045-7343r MOSCOW -- Russian spies may still be targeting bio-defence laboratories in the West, a former Soviet agent says. Dozens of such labs in North America, Britain, France, Germany and Israel were -- and may still be -- prime targets for Russian spies out to win the global war for deadly germs and viruses, former KGB operative Alexander Kouzminov said, Mosnews reported Friday. Kouzminov, who now lives in New Zealand, worked at the highly secretive Department 12 of Directorate S -- the special operations branch of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and its forerunner, the Soviet KGB -- for about 10 years, Mosnews said. In a new book, Kouzminov wrote that about 60 special agents and friendly sources who carried out Department 12's tasks overseas in the 1990s, "and possibly as many still do today," Mosnews said His book says by the end of the 1980s, it became apparent the West did not have a genuine offensive biological warfare program, unlike the Soviet Union, which had begun the mass production and storage of "highly effective" weapons. -------- iraq A Divided Iraq May 20, 2005 NY TIMES Opinion http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/opinion/20fri1.html?pagewanted=print The Bush administration has finally awakened to the grave dangers Iraq's new government is courting by failing to reach out convincingly to credible representatives of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority. Washington's concern helped prompt Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's urgent mission to Baghdad earlier this week. Unless her pleas for greater inclusiveness are heeded, the new government will not be able to establish the nationwide legitimacy it needs to draw significant numbers of Sunnis away from the continuing insurgency. The implications of that are clear. As senior American military commanders now acknowledge, Iraqi forces aren't militarily strong enough to prevail over the insurgency and will not be for a long time. If Baghdad continues to shun a serious political strategy to draw away Sunni support from the insurgents, large numbers of American troops will be stuck fighting a prolonged and bloody counterinsurgency war in much of northern and western Iraq. Such a sorry comedown from the high hopes of January's election would be tragic for Iraq. It would also be very bad for the United States. The one country it would serve quite nicely is Iran. Tehran is not eager to see a successful, broadly based Shiite democracy, which might lead Iran's discontented millions to wonder why they put up with a corrupt, repressive and economically benighted Islamic dictatorship. Tehran is also understandably distrustful of Iraq's Sunni nationalists, having fought a long and costly war against Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980's. And as the Iranian authorities test the world's patience with their nuclear programs, they can only be relieved to see the bulk of American ground forces tied down indefinitely in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. Iran is already reinforcing its ties to Iraq's new Shiite leadership. Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, flew into Baghdad two days after Ms. Rice departed, and left yesterday brandishing a joint communiqué that blamed Saddam Hussein for that 1980's war. Moreover, the Iraqi party that has been most resistant to a more inclusive approach toward the Sunnis is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, the Iraqi Shiite party with the closest ties to the Iranian ayatollahs. Sciri is just one of several parties in the current government coalition. But none of the others, including the Dawa Shiite religious party and the two secular Kurdish parties, have done much to resist Sciri's exclusionary views and vetoes of prospective Sunni nominees. As a result, qualified and representative Sunnis have been kept out of key positions in the new security forces, the cabinet and now the constitution-drafting process. Shockingly, only two Sunni Arabs were chosen to sit on the 55-member parliamentary panel named to draft Iraq's new constitution. It is understandable that Iraq's Shiites and Kurds, who suffered so much under Saddam Hussein, are uncomfortable about letting people who served his predominantly Sunni regime back into positions of power. But unless lower- and middle-echelon Baathists are allowed to serve, much of the Sunni professional class will remain excluded from government and sympathetic to the insurgents. Millions of Shiites and Kurds risked their lives to vote in January because they wanted to help build a better, more democratic Iraq. The intervening months have been hugely disillusioning, with polls now showing a stunning 40-percentage-point drop in public confidence since January, as politicians have squabbled, insurgent attacks have soared and public services have further deteriorated. The dream of a new Iraq will ebb away unless leaders of the ruling Shiite and Kurdish coalition reach out boldly and bravely to their Sunni neighbors. -------- space Pentagon asks Bush for new types of Star Wars weapons IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent, May 20 2005 UK Herald http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/39618-print.shtml THE US Air Force is seeking White House permission to develop and deploy space-based weapons which could strike targets anywhere in the world within 90 minutes of receiving orders to open fire. The Pentagon admitted yesterday that a programme – nicknamed "Rods from God" – exists and is aimed at establishing an orbital squadron of robotic space vehicles which could launch metre-long solid slugs of tungsten, titanium or depleted uranium towards the surface of the planet at speeds of up to 7200mph. The metals, some of the hardest known to science, would hit with the force of a small nuclear weapon or meteor and would be capable of vaporising even hardened underground bunkers without the penalty of nuclear fallout from an atomic warhead. A second plan, code-named Global Strike, calls for a fleet of shuttle-type craft armed with precision-guided conventional missiles which could be directed against anything from tank formations to terrorist leaders hundreds of miles below. The air force has had an experimental laser-beam platform known as the XSS-11 in orbit since last month. The microsatellite is believed to be tasked with disrupting hostile nations' reconnaissance and communications satellites by blinding their sensors. General James Cartwright, head of the US strategic command, said that the goal of developing space weaponry was to allow attacks to be delivered quickly anywhere on the face of the earth. His remarks were supported by General Lance Lord, the senior officer in the air force's space command, who said the US needed the capability to ensure the nation had "freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack in space." In September last year, General Lord told an air force conference that "space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny. Space supremacy is our vision for the future." Major Karen Finn, a spokeswoman for the US Air Force, said yesterday that the focus of the strategy was "not putting weapons into space, but in ensuring free access to space". She added that the draft directive submitted to the White House did not call for militarisation of space. Critics of any policy which might trigger an arms' race beyond the atmosphere say that the use of even tungsten hyper-velocity slugs might be mistaken for a nuclear attack and could accidentally spark an atomic war. Any deployment of the attack systems would face diplomatic, financial and technological hurdles, but the only treaties or international agreements in existence involve bans on nuclear warheads in space. Richard Garwin, one of the most respected experts in US weapons science, said: "Cost will be a determining factor. It costs about £400,000 to hit a target with a Tomahawk cruise missile launched from a submarine, aircraft or surface warship. A space-based laser would send the price of that hit up to £50m." The White House is expected to make a decision and issue a national security directive before the end of June. -------- us Pacific carrier Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough May 20, 2005 WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm Pentagon force structure planners are still working on where to "forward deploy" a second aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific. As part of the global military force posture review, the Pentagon has decided it needs a second carrier group closer to hot spots such as the Taiwan Strait and North Korea. The United States has the USS Kitty Hawk carrier battle group based in Yokosuka, Japan, near Tokyo. Defense officials say the choices for deploying the second carrier are Honolulu and the western Pacific island of Guam. Pentagon officials say Hawaii is a choice because it already has a well-developed port and other infrastructure. It also is home to the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command. Guam, however, is more strategically located and would allow U.S. power to reach Asia more quickly, a key element of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's goal for military force restructuring. Defense officials say unsettling conflict scenarios related to China's rapid military buildup — primarily Beijing's new warships, submarines and aircraft designed specifically to attack U.S. warships — are lending support to deploying the carrier at Guam, where up to eight U.S. attack submarines also are being deployed. On the other hand, China's development and purchase of precision strike cruise and ballistic missiles have some strategists in the Pentagon saying that a second carrier should be stationed safely at Honolulu. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals Short list begins for Supreme Court May 20, 2005 By Joseph Curl THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050520-121231-2088r.htm Preparations are already well under way within the White House to fill an expected vacancy on the Supreme Court, with at least one conservative legal organization having submitted its recommendations on who should sit on the nation's top court. The White House is keeping mum about the early preparations — several top administration officials will not even acknowledge that preliminary work has begun, despite the serious health issues that kept Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, off the bench for much of this year. But others with close White House connections say a short list is well into development. "There's a normal process that the White House has definitely been pursuing for at least six months where they are soliciting views and recommendations," said Samuel B. Casey, executive director of the Christian Legal Society (CLS). "We have submitted our views." Said one top Republican official with close ties to the White House: "The same four or five or six names keep coming up. I'm sure they have a short list already." Top administration and White House officials — including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Solicitor General Theodore Olson and White House Counsel Harriet Miers, President Bush's longtime adviser and former personal lawyer — are involved in the early process, according to several sources close to the White House. Having seen President Reagan's ill-fated nomination of Robert H. Bork to the top court — which dragged on for months and allowed opposition to mobilize against him — the Bush administration is not uttering a word about who may be considered. "They're very careful at the White House, so I don't know whose views besides ours that they're soliciting," Mr. Casey said. The Christian Legal Society, he said, has "made it known to the White House who we believe are our top three most qualified candidates consistent with the president's stated views that he is looking for judges who faithfully interpret the law, not legislate from the bench." Judge Michael W. McConnell on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is top of the list for CLS, a 42-year-old, 3,400-member nonprofit group that says its mission is "to do justice with the love of God." Second is Judge Edith Hollan Jones, who practiced law in Texas and now sits on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The third candidate is Samuel Alito, a 3rd U.S. Circuit judge from Philadelphia. The solicitation of potential names for the Supreme Court comes as the Republican-controlled Senate is locked in contentious debate over the "nuclear option," which would ban filibusters of judicial nominees and let Republicans approve a Bush pick with a simple majority vote. Many Supreme Court observers say the current battle will be dwarfed by what happens should Justice Rehnquist announce his retirement at the end of June, when the court finishes its session. The last nomination by a Republican president was Justice Clarence Thomas. Liberals trying to defeat him announced public searches for anyone who could remember discussing abortion with him and delayed his confirmation with nationally televised hearings on Anita Hill's decade-old charges of sexual harassment. Not since 1823 has the nation gone 10 years without a vacancy on the Supreme Court — the last appointment to the high court was 11 years ago. Actuarial tables alone suggest that Mr. Bush would be able to name at least two new justices, and perhaps as many as four. Justice Rehnquist, 80, suffers from thyroid cancer. Justices John Paul Stevens, 85, Sandra Day O'Connor, 75, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 72, also have been treated for cancer. Only Justice Thomas is younger than 65. Some court analysts see Judge McConnell, 50, as a prime candidate for the Supreme Court. He is a former law professor who was confirmed easily by the Senate in 2001 for his Circuit Court position. He stated during his confirmation hearings that while he sees flaws in Roe v. Wade, it is settled law. David Schultz, a professor in Minnesota's Hamline University law school and author of a new book "Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court," also sees Judge McConnell as a front-runner. "He's probably the most confirmable of the names I've heard," Mr. Schultz said. "He doesn't have a lightning-bolt record. ... McConnell doesn't really have that smoking-gun decision." There are several others mentioned often as candidates for the high court, including: •J. Michael Luttig of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered one of the most conservative judges on the federal bench. •J. Harvie Wilkinson III, also on the 4th Circuit, who is considered more moderate than Judge Luttig but could be opposed by liberals over his opposition of affirmative action. •Emilio Garza of the 5th Circuit, who would give Mr. Bush the chance to name the first Hispanic justice, but whose conservative views on abortion could prompt liberal outcry. -------- homeland security / national intelligence U.S. to Court Europe on “Security Envelopes” By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire Friday, May 20, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_5_20.html#02203107 WASHINGTON — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff plans next week to ask European governments for help in speeding the movement of trusted travelers and cargo while better identifying terrorism risks in transit, he said here yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 28, 2004). Confronting a global network of terrorists requires a parallel network of cooperation among the world’s governments, said Chertoff, who is slated to tour European countries next week on his first trip overseas since he took his post in March. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he outlined a set of initial priorities for international cooperation on weeding out high-risk from low-risk travelers and cargo. “We need to have a world that is banded with security envelopes, meaning secure environments through which people and cargo can move rapidly, efficiently and safely without sacrificing security,” Chertoff said. “In that kind of a world,” he said, “it would be possible — with the proper security vetting, with the proper technology, with the proper travel documents, with the proper tracking of cargo — to move relatively freely from point to point all across the globe, with the understanding that those within the security envelope, we have a high confidence and trust about, so that they don’t have to be stopped at every point mechanically and revetted and rechecked, and those outside the envelope would be those on which we could focus our resources in terms of the kind of in-depth analysis and the kind of in-depth vetting that is necessary to make sure bad people can’t come in to do bad things.” Chertoff said such an approach would “maximize” both freedom and security. He said he planned to discuss three specific elements of the approach with his European counterparts: better sharing of traveler and cargo information, made possible in part by finding a “congruence” of countries’ varying ideas about information and privacy; better and more compatible technology for screening people and cargo; and better intelligence sharing and law-enforcement cooperation among countries. The secretary said the globalized nature of al-Qaeda — the Sept. 11 attackers, for example, were drawn from several countries and planned, trained and secured resources in various parts of the world — demands a parallel response from the United States and its allies. “If we’re going to challenge the kind of interdependence that a terrorist network thrives upon, we have to be able to confront the network everywhere it operates, and that means we have to be able to function internationally and do it in partnership with overseas allies,” Chertoff said. Heritage Foundation national security expert James Carafano said today that the approach Chertoff outlined amounts to “repackaging” — “but actually, I think it’s repackaging the right way.” Where oft-used phrases such as “pushing out the borders” have at times disturbed countries that saw such language as implying they could be held responsible for U.S. security, Carafano said, Chertoff is offering “a better articulation of what we’re trying to do.” “This really should be mutual security,” Carafano said. Carafano supported Chertoff’s contention that more routine government access to existing personal information as a way of including travelers in, or excluding them from, “security envelopes” could reduce privacy invasion over time. “This is pretty gutsy and definitely something I’d agree with,” he said. Screening for entry into “security envelopes” would never be perfect, Carafano said, but it is only one part of a “multilayered” approach to security that also includes counterterrorism strikes and other “proactive” efforts. In any case, he said, it may be time to scale back some of the broader post-Sept. 11 restrictions in order to direct resources to areas of greatest risk. “In a sense, we are trying to go back to a pre-9/11 world where we’re worried less about things that cross the borders from places that we’re less concerned about,” Carafano said. Chertoff Sees Common U.S., European Goal; Praises Ridge Asked about differences in U.S. and European assumptions in combating global terror, particularly with respect to the concept of a “war” against terrorism, Chertoff said he believes a war against al-Qaeda is under way but that conceptual differences among allies should not hinder cooperation. “I think, at the end of the day, even if there are different ways of talking about this in Europe and other parts of the world, we can get beyond that, because I think we all want to achieve the same result,” the secretary said. The effort is a “multidisciplinary” one, he added, in which the “first line of defense” is military action but other “tools” —law enforcement, technology, action against terrorist finances and diplomacy, for example — must also be used. The secretary also took the opportunity to praise his predecessor, Tom Ridge, who was frequently under fire as he struggled to cobble together the massive new department. Chertoff said his initiation upon taking office of an overall departmental review does not indicate Ridge did a poor job. “Although we are currently engaging in a review, looking to making some adjustments in terms of maybe organization and mission, the fact that we can be in a position to take this kind of review two years into it is a testament to the very fine foundational work that was done that leads us up to this point,” Chertoff said. -------- OTHER -------- health Koreans Report Ease in Cloning for Stem Cells By GINA KOLATA May 20, 2005 NY TIMES Opinion http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/science/20clone.html?pagewanted=print South Korean researchers are reporting today that they have developed a highly efficient recipe for producing human embryos through cloning, and then extracting their stem cells. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers, led by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, said they used their method to produce 11 human stem cell lines that were genetic matches of patients who ranged in age from 2 to 56. The method, called therapeutic cloning, is one of the great hopes of the stem cell field. It produces stem cells, universal cells that are extracted from embryos, killing the embryos in the process, and that, in theory, can be directed to grow into any of the body's cell types. Because the stem cells come from embryos that are clones of individuals, they would be exact genetic matches and less likely to be rejected by a patient's immune system. Scientists want to obtain such stem cells from patients with certain disorders and illnesses to study the origin of diseases and to develop replacement cells that would be identical to those a patient has lost in a disease like Parkinson's. Dr. Hwang said he had no intention of using the method to produce babies that were clones. "Our proposal is limited to finding a way to cure disease," he said. "That is our proposal and our research goal." Previously, the same group produced a single stem cell line from a cloned embryo, but the process was so onerous that many scientists said it was not worth trying to repeat it, and some doubted that the South Koreans' report was even correct. Things have changed. The new finding buoyed researchers who had wanted to use such stem cells to study diseases but had thought it would be years, if ever, before it would be practical to obtain them. "It is a tremendous advance," said Dr. Leonard Zon, a stem cell researcher at Harvard Medical School and the president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, who was not involved in the research. But the report raised concerns among others, who said it was a step down the slippery slope leading to cloned babies. Richard Doerflinger, whose title is director of pro-life activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: "Up until now, people were beginning to wonder whether human cloning for any purpose was feasible at all. This development makes it feasible enough to be a clear and present danger." The Korean report will influence the political debate over embryonic stem cell research, which is unfolding on Capitol Hill. The House is expected to vote as early as next week on a measure that would expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell studies. The measure, which has created deep divisions among Republicans, does not address therapeutic cloning. But a second bill, introduced by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, would permit taxpayer financing of therapeutic cloning studies, while prohibiting cloning for reproduction. In their new work, the South Korean researchers produced stem cells that were exact matches for 9 of 11 patients, including 8 adults with spinal cord injuries and 3 children - a 10-year-old boy with a spinal cord injury, a 6-year-old girl with diabetes and a 2-year-old boy with congenital hypogammaglobulinemia, a genetic disorder of the immune system. Dr. Zon cautioned that "it will take a lot of work" before stem cells fulfill their promises in medicine, but he said the new finding would bring scientists significantly closer to the goals. Dr. Hwang said he had been flooded by requests from researchers who wanted to visit and study his methods, including Dr. Ian Wilmut, the researcher in Scotland who created the first cloned mammal, a sheep named Dolly, in 1996, astonishing scientists who had thought cloning was biologically impossible. Dr. Wilmut visited the laboratory in Seoul, and this week Dr. Hwang went to Dr. Wilmut's laboratory at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh to help him in his quest to produce human embryos by cloning and to extract their stem cells. Others are trying too. In England, the International Center for Life, in Newcastle upon Tyne, announced it had produced a human embryo by cloning, although it did not say it had extracted stem cells or gone through the many detailed steps to prove that they were stem cells and that they were from a clone, as the South Koreans had done. Until now, scientists had been studying human embryonic stem cells extracted from embryos created for that purpose and did not involve cloning cells from specific patients. They had also obtained stem cells from embryos created at fertility clinics and donated by couples who no longer needed them. In addition, scientists are studying mouse stem cells, working on the difficult task of directing the cells to develop into specific tissue types. But researchers wanted embryos that were genetic matches of patients. The only way to do that was to use embryos that were clones of patients, and human cloning had seemed all but impossible. To produce a clone, scientists slip the genetic material from a patient's cell into an unfertilized egg from another person whose genetic material has been removed. The genes from the patient's cell take over, directing the egg to divide and develop into an embryo that is genetically identical to the patient. About five days later, when the cloned embryo contains about 100 cells and is about 0.08 inch in diameter, it changes its form, looking like a ball of cells encased in a sphere. That ball of cells, when removed and grown in the laboratory, becomes the embryonic stem cells. The process, however, fails more often than it succeeds, and, in humans, it seemed to fail almost all the time. In a previous report, published last February, Dr. Hwang and Dr. Moon used 248 human eggs to produce a single embryonic stem cell line, a group of cells that came from one embryonic cell and could grow on a petri dish. But this time, with a handful of technical improvements that mostly involved methods for growing cells and breaking open embryos, they used an average of 17 eggs per stem cell line and could almost guarantee success with the eggs of just one woman obtained in a single month. It did not matter whether the patient whose cells were being cloned was young or middle-aged, male or female, sick or well - the process worked. "You almost have no reason not to do it," said Dr. Davor Solter, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg, Germany. He added that it seemed more efficient to clone and obtain human stem cells than to do the same experiment in animals, although no one knows why. Seven states ban any type of human cloning and 11 have laws that prevent embryonic stem cell research, said Lori B. Andrews, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and federal money is restricted to research using stem cell lines approved by the Bush administration in 2001. Where such work is legal, however, increasing numbers of scientists, including Dr. Zon, say they have private financing and plan to go forward using cloning to produce stem cells. Dr. John Gearhart, a stem cell researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said the new paper would provide an impetus. "I think you will see more people in the game," he said. Not everyone is excited. Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, commented in an e-mail message that "whatever its technical merit, this research is morally troubling: it creates human embryos solely for research, makes it much easier to produce cloned babies, and exploits women as egg donors not for their benefit." The South Korean government, which paid for the new study, has made it a crime to implant a cloned embryo into a woman's uterus, Dr. Hwang said. "It should be banned throughout the world," he added. The study included 18 women who provided eggs. The South Korean scientists worked hard, said Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who visited their laboratory and helped the scientists, whose English is limited, write their paper. "They work 365 days a year except for leap year, when they work 366 days," Dr. Schatten said. "They have lab meetings at 6:30 every morning except Sunday, when they have them at 8." Few would venture into the cloning arena if the science was not so promising, researchers say. Of course, they say, there is a long way to go from stem cells to therapy. "It's going to take a lot of work," said Dr. Ronald McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health. "But we want this to work - it's not a theory. My technical and professional judgment tells me this is really important." Dr. Kass, however, says that cloning and extracting stem cells from the embryos is not the only way to do such work. A majority of the President's Council on Bioethics called for a moratorium on cloning for research, he said, and the council recently suggested other ways of getting stem cells that could develop into the desired tissue types and that would match a patient's own cells "without these violations and moral hazards." Opinion polls have had varied results, often depending on the words that are used to describe the work. In a recent Gallup poll, just 38 percent of respondents approved of cloning embryos for research. Another poll, which used the term "somatic cell nuclear transfer" instead of "cloning," found that 72 percent approved. Dr. Hwang's paper goes a step further, using "S.C.N.T." instead of "somatic cell nuclear transfer." Dr. Ruth Faden, the executive director of the bioethics center at Johns Hopkins, said the moral debate would change if the research led to new treatments with dramatic benefits for some patients. "That could really shake it up," she said. But Dr. Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics and religious liberty commission, said his group would not be assuaged. "We believe a cloned embryo is a human being," Dr. Land said. "We should not be the kind of society that kills our tiniest human beings in order to seek a treatment for older and bigger human beings." Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington for this article. -------- ACTIVISTS Thousands Rally in Chechnya to Protest After Russia Acquits Troops of Murdering Civilians 20.05.2005 MosNews http://mosnews.com/news/2005/05/20/ulmanrally.shtml Thousands of people gathered in the Chechen capital Friday to protest the acquittal of a Russian officer who killed six civilians in the republic, agencies report. A jury found a group of special purpose troops commanded by Captain Eduard Ulman not guilty on Thursday of murdering six civilians in mnuser=chechnya>Chechnya. The organizers of the sanctioned rally estimate several thousand will gather in the centre of Grozny, among them students and teachers of high schools, citizens of Grozny and Chechen villages. Captain Ulman’s unit killed a civilian and subsequently extra-judicially executed five more in an incident in January 2002. In April 2004, they were acquitted by a jury, although they did not deny killing the civilians. They said they had been following orders. The case is currently being retried with sentencing expected to take place later this month.