NucNews - June 13, 2005


-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- africa

No uranium through Durban, South Africa, say protesters

Carvin Goldstone
June 13 2005 at 08:46AM
page 3 of The Mercury 

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20050613071716471C347602

Up to nine trucks a week could pass through Durban carrying enriched uranium along KwaZulu-Natal roads to Gauteng, protesters heard on Sunday.

Environmentalists protested on Durban's North Beach against a plan by Eskom to transport the uranium from Durban Harbour to Pelindaba, near Pretoria, where it would be used to manufacture fuel for Eskom's pebble bed modular nuclear reactors.

Earthlife Africa eThekwini expressed concern that if the plan to build the reactors went ahead, dangerous enriched uranium, needed for the reactors, would pass through Durban as the port of choice.

The protest comes in the wake of the recent asbestos spill in Durban where emergency personnel were unable to deal efficiently with the spilled cargo.

Earthlife Africa was concerned that the response of emergency services would prove inadequate in the event of a nuclear accident during the transportation of the uranium.

They suspect that, at the height of production, as many as nine trucks would drive through Durban every week.

Earthlife volunteer Vanessa Black said enriched uranium was dangerous when inhaled or swallowed.

"According to recent studies, people who ingest particles are likely to suffer extreme toxic effects in the lungs, digestive system and lymph glands as well as lung cancers," she said.

But an Eskom spokesperson, Tom Ferreira, said South African gold mines produced uranium as a by-product and exported about 1 000 tons a year, compared with the maximum of three tons of enriched uranium a year that would travel from Durban to Pelindaba.

The transportation of the nuclear material would take place in containers tested to meet stringent international safety requirements under a variety of accident scenarios.


-------- australia

Australia's nuclear U-turn
The case against the burning of even more fossil fuel is now considered so strong that even Australia's environmentalists and Green politicians are talking for the need for a 'nuclear debate'

By Ben Sandilands
THE OBSERVER, CANBERRA
Monday, Jun 13, 2005, Taipei Times, Page 9

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/06/13/2003259144

Nuclear power has come in from the cold in Australia almost overnight.

The very suggestion that Australia continue to mine and export uranium, or set up nuclear waste repositories, or even contemplate using it to generate electricity, has been a political taboo for almost 50 years.

Yet in the space of a few months, key environmentalists and political figures are talking up the need for a `nuclear debate.'

No political leader in Australia is greener than the New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.

But Carr, who has quadrupled the national parks of his state, and banned a range of mining and timber ventures on environmental grounds, says: "Nuclear power has to be on the table for new large power plants in New South Wales.

"Our massive coal reserves equal massive greenhouse gas contamination of the atmosphere if we keep building coal burning plants," he says.

"And apart from rising demand for power that has to be met somehow, we need lots of extra electrical energy if we pursue large scale desalination of sea water to help solve a looming crisis in the supply of fresh water," he says.

Government support

On the opposite side of politics from Carr's Labor Party, conservative Prime Minister John Howard, has performed an even more complicated about turn.

Until recently, Howard had sided with US President George W Bush's view that global warming was a myth and the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions "a nonsense."

Howard hasn't changed his mind about Kyoto, but this week he said: "I don't think global warming [from fossil fuel burning] is a myth. I have seen enough scientific evidence ... and while I think some of the extreme manifestations of global warming are mythical, I do think there is a very strong case for controlling greenhouse gas emissions."

His change of heart comes after a period in which his government's condemnation of the Kyoto Protocol as a deliberate handicapping of advanced industrial nations like Australia has been replaced by claims that it doesn't go far enough to address the issue.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer went further, saying: "Technology is the answer to global warming, not the Kyoto protocol, and nuclear energy is part of that answer in the context of global warming."

He also said: "The public seems more persuadable that nuclear power is a safe alternative, and there should be a debate -- a sophisticated debate not a rant -- from the Greens."

In response, the leader of The Greens (CORR) party in Australia, Senator Bob Brown, said it remained implacably opposed to the nuclear option because it was impossible to stop uranium and its deadlier form, plutonium, being diverted into weapons of mass destruction.

"We need to turn off more lights, and use more solar and wind energy," he says.

However even the green movement is divided over uranium. Peter Garrett, the famously anti-American and anti-nuclear industry lead singer of the rock band Midnight Oil and former leader of the Australian Conservation Foundation, says: "We have no option but to look again very carefully at nuclear technology."

Garrett said that soon after he took his seat as a Labor party member in Australia's Federal Parliament, rattling many of its supporters, for whom opposition to nuclear power and the enforced closure or curbing of existing Australian uranium mines had been an unchallenged policy position for decades.

Uranium source

While this was going on, the Australian government confirmed it had been in high level negotiations with China for several months over requests by Beijing for future access to the country's major uranium mines.

Australia has 41 percent of the world's proven reserves of uranium, of which 38 percent is inside the Olympic Dam copper mine in South Australia.

The talks with China are said to be progressing well, with most of the discussion now being related to the safeguards both nations would wish to put in place to prevent the diversion of uranium into the nuclear weapons programs of rogue states or even terrorist organizations.

However the coal industry isn't taking the Australian move toward a nuclear option lightly. It is lobbying politicians on the merits of expanding the export of uranium to boost the national economy, rather than actually using it in Australia in place of coal.

The strategy of the coal industry, supported by research funding from the Australian government, is to extend the economic life of coal far into the future by developing "clean" coal burning processes in which the carbon dioxide emissions are turned into a liquid that can be piped into deep and supposedly stable underground reservoirs instead of allowed to escape into the atmosphere.

But those who are leaning to the nuclear option in turn ask whether unproven clean coal technology will actually prove more costly, and perhaps even more dangerous to the environment, than uranium fired power stations.
	
----

The nuclear power option - expensive, ineffective and unnecessary

June 13, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-nuclear-power-option--expensive-ineffective-and-unnecessary/2005/06/12/1118514925517.html?oneclick=true

There are more than two choices in the debate on how to meet future energy needs, writes Stuart White.

When climate change becomes a hot topic, as it has lately, the argument emerges from the nuclear industry and other sources that nuclear power can save the day. In 1988 the threat of global warming was gaining traction, due in part to public response to an exceptionally hot summer in north-eastern America. To me, there were two events that marked that period. One was the Greenhouse '88 conference held simultaneously in different locations across Australia, organised by the then Commission for the Future and state agencies. The other event was a speaking tour by a US scholar, Dr Bill Keepin, organised by an environmental non-government organisation to respond to the question "Can nuclear power save us from climate change?"

So it is with a sense of deja vu that I observe the comments by the NSW Premier, Bob Carr, and the Prime Minister, John Howard, among others, suggesting nuclear power should be considered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Nuclear power is not the way to achieve the significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that will be required to pass on a stable climate to future generations - it's not effective, it's not cheap and it's not necessary.

First, nuclear power is not, as suggested, such a great performer in terms of greenhouse gas reduction. This is mainly because of the significant energy requirements for mining, milling and, particularly, enrichment of the uranium for the fuel rods. These energy inputs are highly dependent on the concentration, or grade, of the original ore. Even with high-grade ores, it takes seven to 10 years to "pay back" the energy used in the construction and fuelling of a typical reactor; with the lower-grade ores that would need to be accessed if nuclear power was expanded, the net emissions would be greater than for a gas power station.

Second, if there was such a large-scale deployment of nuclear power, the only means by which it could become sustainable in the long term is through the use of breeder reactors, which create their own fuel in the form of plutonium. These reactors have never shown their ability to generate sufficient new fuel. Even if breeders could operate as intended, this would mean that plutonium, a highly hazardous radioactive material, would be transported in increasing quantities around the globe. The potential diversion of even a small fraction of this material would significantly increase the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Third, nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite massive historical government support for the industry globally. The same level of support has not been available for energy efficiency and renewable energy. In countries such as the US and Britain, where it has had recent relative exposure to competition, the nuclear power industry has been in the economic doldrums for the past 20 years.

The cheapest greenhouse gas reduction options include improved energy efficiency, combined cycle gas turbine electricity generation and renewable energy sources including wind energy and solar thermal energy. Australia and NSW already suffer the economic distortion associated with over-investment in energy supply systems and under-investment in lower-cost efficiency improvements. This imbalance is due in part to inadequate regulation.

Nuclear power, with its attendant waste disposal, decommissioning and proliferation risks, can be described as a "problem-multiplying" solution. Energy efficiency, renewables and co-generation reduce green- house gas emissions, provide greater employment and cost less. In this sense they represent "solution-multiplying" solutions.

So, let's debate the issue, for sure. But, as Gavin Gilchrist noted in these pages, let's not debate in terms of coal versus nuclear; that's not the choice we face. We face diverging energy paths. One path takes us to a future which continues business-as-usual, uncritical investment in new supply with a runaway cycle of investment in new fossil-fuelled power stations. The other path incorporates a diverse portfolio of improved efficiency of energy use, and diverse sources of electricity and other energy needs, with an increased focus on renewable energy. This path can provide the kind of greenhouse gas reductions that are needed at lowest cost. In short, it offers a sustainable energy future.

And how should this be debated? On government committees? Industry proponents and non-government organisations arm wrestling, generating more heat than light? Or can we try something different? We could enhance the Greenhouse '88 events, taking into account the recent experience with large-scale processes for public involvement in decision making. This issue is too important to be left to the usual suspects.

One option would be a national conversation on climate change with regional forums designed to engage communities to determine, with advice from all the players, how to respond to this global challenge. One outcome would be an empowered public, deciding its own energy future.

Professor Stuart White is the director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney.


-------- britain

Sellafield radioactive leak to cost £300m

UK nuclear industry in turmoil after closure of vital plant

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Monday June 13, 2005
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1505005,00.html?gusrc=rss

The massive leak at the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria will keep it closed for several more months and cost Britain's clean-up programme at least £300m in lost revenue this year alone, it emerged yesterday.

The crippled £1.8bn flagship of the nuclear industry was supposed to make £2.5bn over five years to help fund the clean-up of past wastes but cannot contribute anything while closed.

In the meantime it is costing millions more, also potentially coming out of the clean-up budget, to make the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) safe.

The subsequent repair, if it proves viable at all, will cost even more, forcing its new owners, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), set up by the government to take over Sellafield's assets on April 1, to consider whether Thorp should ever reopen. The NDA has confirmed that it is already reviewing the future of the plant.

Estimates of how long the plant would take to repair have lengthened considerably since the Guardian first revealed in May that 83 cubic metres of nitric acid containing 22 tonnes of dissolved uranium and plutonium from irradiated fuel had leaked from a fractured pipe into the internal workings of the plant.

The highly dangerous liquid is currently being pumped out of the plant in small batches into storage tanks. The company said this will take another two weeks to complete and then it will have to devise a way of repairing the damaged pipework. This can only be done using robots because the area is so radioactive that any human being entering it would die.

The British Nuclear Group, the company formed from the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels to manage the plant on behalf of the NDA from April 1, has admitted that the leak begun as early as last August but operatives failed to notice it until April 18, when enough liquid to fill half an Olympic swimming pool had already gone missing.

The company blamed a faulty gauge but also conceded that workers at the plant missed opportunities to notice that something had gone badly wrong.

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, the government's safety watchdog, has not yet completed its own investigation, which could lead to prosecution. It has to approve any repair plan on safety grounds both to prevent any danger to workers and to make sure a similar problem does not arise again.

Barry Snelson, managing director of the British Nuclear Group, said last week he regarded the Thorp leak as "a stumble not a fall" and reassured workers fearing job losses that he was sure the plant would reopen.

"I am confident that Thorp will re-open but the decision is not ours, it rests with the NDA and the government," he said.

"Our role is as operators rather than owners is to show that we have the capability to restore Thorp to service safely and also to demonstrate what the economic benefits are."

This is a significant change since the April 1 takeover by the NDA. Even though Sellafield is still effectively government-owned and what happens there is ultimately decided by ministers, the British Nuclear Group cannot spend money without first justifying it to the NDA.

Previously BNFL spent the money and even the most dedicated nuclear watchers were unable to untangle where it had gone from studying the accounts.

Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment has written to Ian Roxbrough, the chief executive of the NDA, asking that Thorp be closed immediately and saying further delay would only add to costs to the taxpayer and delay clean-up.

Dr Roxbrough replied that the NDA was actively reviewing Thorp's future.

Mr Forwood said: "All that Thorp does is produce more and more uranium and plutonium. British Energy, which has the bulk of fuel waiting to be reprocessed, says it has no possible use for this material, There us no logic to this and common sense says Thorp should be shut down now." 

---

Sellafield shutdown to be extended

A leak at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant is likely to keep it closed for longer than was thought.
	
By Nic Fleming
(Filed: 13/06/2005) UK Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/13/nsella13.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/06/13/ixportal.html

Production stopped at the site's Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant in April after 20 tons of uranium and plutonium dissolved in concentrated nitric acid was found to have leaked from a cracked pipe.

At the time it was estimated that the site would have to be closed for three months but Barry Snelson, Sellafield's managing director, said it may remain closed for several more months. An investigation by British Nuclear Group, which runs Sellafield, found the pipe may have begun to fail as early as August 2004.

A BNG spokesman said last night: "We have been in the process of retrieving the liquid for about a fortnight and it is likely to take another couple of weeks. We are also examining options as to how we will bring the plant back to readiness to re-start. It will take several months. No radioactive material has been released to the environment."

Safety regulators have claimed that the discharge could result in criminal charges, the BBC reported.

----

Sellafield leak puts spotlight on spent fuel sites

By Mark Huband
Last updated: June 13 2005 03:00 Financial Times

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5018ca46-dba7-11d9-913a-00000e2511c8.html

The closure of a part of the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria after the discovery of a leak of acid containing uranium and plutonium has led to strong criticism of the management at a time when plans for storing spent nuclear fuel are expected to be announced.

The leak at Sellafield's thermal oxide reprocessing plant, known as Thorp, run by British Nuclear Fuels, is thought to have started last August but was only detected in April....

The rest of this article is for FT.com subscribers only

----

Nuclear talk powers fresh debate

By Neil Leighton
BBC News, Bristol
Monday, 13 June, 2005, 05:32 GMT 06:32 UK

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/4555345.stm

A debate on dealing with nuclear waste raises fears of future power stations in the west of England.

The Oldbury nuclear power station is due to close in 2008

"It feels like we are murderers deciding whether to bury the body," shouted the middle-aged gentleman.

"My concern is that we don't become serial killers."

Feelings were running high in the packed community room in Thornbury, South Gloucestershire.

The public had been invited by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management to discuss what the nation should do with the 80,000 cubic metre legacy of more than 60 years of nuclear power.

The subject may have been waste, but for many there was a more important issue: the possibility of more nuclear power stations being built.

Nuclear power is an emotive subject, nowhere more so than in the West of England where four power stations are either operating or being decommissioned.

While the industry may be in decline, it still employs around 2,000 people and injects £500m into the regional economy.

But with power stations in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Oldbury, South Gloucestershire, and Hinkley Point, Somerset, has come the associated baggage of health scares and safety concerns.

And with reports the government may resurrect the UK's power station building programme, the issue is once again a hot topic across the region.

Of the UK's 14 operating power stations, all but one will be shut by 2023.

The nuclear power industry has argued that if Britain is to meet its future energy needs and targets for tackling climate change, more power stations are needed.

Nuclear Power in the West

Berkeley: Opened 1962. Closed 1989

Hinkley A: Opened 1965. Closed 2000

Hinkley B: Opened 1976. Due to close 2011

Oldbury: Opened 1968. Due to close 2008

The huge start-up costs of building new stations means current sites would probably be preferred if the government decided to build again.

Hinkley Point has been mooted as a favoured location. Hinkley A, the first power station at the site, closed in 2000, and Hinkley B is due to shut in 2011.

Planning permission for a third station was granted in 1990, but the government chose not to proceed.

Although, planning permission has now lapsed, many in the industry believe Hinkley remains a prime location.

"I would think Hinkley is high on the list of new nuclear power stations," says Ian Fells, fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

"Hinkley has already gone through the planning process and that could be revived," he added.

Professor Fells believes Berkeley or Oldbury could also be considered, although other industry insiders think the sites are not suitable for new power stations.

Environmental groups have also highlighted Hinkley as a likely target and are focusing on blocking any moves to build another power station.

'Risks too great'

Somerset-based campaign group Stop Hinkley claims there is a cancer cluster close to the power station.

Spokesman Jim Duffy said people were more aware of the risks of having a power station on their doorstep than they were when many existing stations were built.

"People are very sophisticated in a way which they weren't in the 1950s," Mr Duffy said.

"And they also tend to see ways of (opposition) which weren't there in the 1950s and 1960s."

Referring to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Bristol Green Party spokesman Geoff Collard said the risks were too great.

"Even if there is a fraction of a per cent chance of a leak, the consequences are so horrendous that we can't afford to take the risk," he said.

But South West-based environmentalist James Lovelock believes nuclear power, which produces very little carbon, may hold the key to tackling global warming.

He says radiation emitted from nuclear power stations was less than that which occurs in our natural environment.

He said the opposition to nuclear power was based on "fear and the perception of danger - not reality".

"Everybody was so scared stiff during the Cold War that there would be an all-out nuclear war between the superpowers," Dr Lovelock said

"It was a matter of great concern, it became more extreme and a climate of fear built up.

"We are still paying the price (for that)." 

----

Too risky: Labor stands firm on nuclear power

By Damien Murphy and Anne Davies
June 13, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Too-risky-Labor-stands-firm-on-Npower/2005/06/12/1118514931329.html?oneclick=true

Labor politicians raised the spectre of terrorists using nuclear technology to help reaffirm opposition to a domestic nuclear power industry at yesterday's NSW ALP conference.

The federal Labor parliamentarians Anthony Albanese and Peter Garrett rejected a recent call by the Premier, Bob Carr, for a national debate on the merits of nuclear energy.

But they left Mr Carr room to manoeuvre, noting debate over nuclear energy had occurred over the past half century and "will continue into the future".

At the Queensland Labor conference in Cairns, the Premier, Peter Beattie, also also rejected a nuclear power industry, though for different reasons, arguing it would jeopardise the coal industry and harm state revenues..

Mr Albanese, the Member for Grayndler, said proponents of nuclear energy had been unable to prove their point up to this time and governments should look for cleaner energy alternatives, such gas-fired power, in the face of climate change.

He said the real truth about nuclear power lay in the fact the Prime Minister, John Howard, always promised no nuclear waste dumps in the lead-up to state and federal elections but, as soon as the elections were over, said all options were open.

"The intractable problems associated with nuclear power, such as long life radioactive waste, industrial and community safety, emergency procedures and nuclear weapon proliferation are still there today," Mr Albanese said.

"In the climate of international terrorism the issue of nuclear proliferation is even more extensive than it has ever been."

Mr Garrett, the Member for Kingsford Smith and a former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the problems with nuclear power were obvious, the energy source not only being dangerous but offering the worse value for money for employment and job creation.

It was a choice, Mr Garrett said, between " three people and a computer inside a toxic-producing nuclear waste system as opposed to the greater employment and job opportunities that exist in the alternatives makes nuclear a no-brainer".

In his speech to the conference on Saturday, Mr Carr sought to reinforce his green credentials, announcing a tougher than expected emissions target for 2020 and an aspirational target for 2050, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent.

"We must leave the carbon economy behind," Mr Carr told the conference.

An early version of the Government's electricity white paper, obtained by the Herald, suggested the State Government would require a return to 2002 carbon emission levels only. But Mr Carr intervened to toughen the target.

The real test for Mr Carr will come next month when he unveils his entire electricity plan.

To address future power needs of a growing population, NSW will need to increase its baseload electricity capacity.

Green groups have been urging Mr Carr to rule out a new coal-fired station and opt for cleaner but more expensive gas-fired co-generation, which produces roughly half the greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Carr is expected to leave the choice of technology open and instead impose emissions standards for future plants.

With emissions offsets such as investing in renewables and carbon trading, it may still be possible to build a "clean coal" plant.

At the weekend, Mr Carr announced two new gas-fired power stations, at Tomago in the Hunter valley and Uranquinty near Wagga.

Another three peak load gas-powered stations are also planned.

---

NUKE BOSSES COULD FACE LEAK CHARGES

Published on 13/06/2005 NW Evening Mail (UK)

http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=253118

SELLAFIELD bosses could face criminal charges following the massive radioactive leak at Thorp reprocessing plant.

In April, 83 cubic metres of nitric acid containing 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium poured out of a broken pipe into a sealed container.

Investigators are now focusing, in part, on how long the leak lay undetected and the reliability of monitoring equipment. It has been reported the incident went unnoticed for eight months.

The independent Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is compiling a report into the incident before a decision on prosecutions is taken.

While the clean-up is well under way, with the liquid being pumped out of the radioactive chamber, the plant could be closed for many months.

It has been reported today that the closure of the reprocessing plant could cost upward of £300m in lost revenue.

Profits from reprocessing were to be used for clean-up operations at Sellafield by the site’s new owners the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

Sellafield’s managing director, Barry Snelson, told the BBC the plant may remain closed for months.

He described the incident as “a stumble, not a fall”.

An investigation by British Nuclear Group (formerly BNFL) last month found the pipe may have begun to fail as early as August 2004 and that opportunities were missed between January 2005 and April 19 that would have shown material was leaking. The pipe fractured and discharged nitric acid onto the floor of a concrete-lined cell in the Thorp complex. Any repairs will have to be undertaken by robots because the cell is so radioactive that any human entering it would die.

A secondary containment cell ensured there was no release of radioactivity to the environment. The leak could not have been prevented, but the amount of liquid released could have been reduced, the report found.

The incident has prompted calls for Thorp’s closure by anti-nuke groups because of the uneconomical cost of repairs.

Privately the NDA are also considering the plant’s future.

----

SELLAFIELD FACES CRIMINAL PROSECUTION

Monday, June 13 2005 Whitehaven News, UK

http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/breakingnews/viewarticle.asp?c=669&id=252936

THE GOVERNMENT’S Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is expected to decide this week whether to press for a criminal prosecution, after completing an investigation into a leak at Sellafield’s Thorp plant.

Production at Thorp halted in April after the discovery of a leak from a pipe, which went undetected for eight months.

An internal investigation by British Nuclear Group found the pipe may have begun to fail as early as August 2004.

Opportunities were missed between January and April this year to detect that material was leaking.

The pipe fractured and discharged 83,000 litres of radioactive nitric acid onto the floor of a concrete-lined cell.

A secondary containment cell ensured there was no release of radioactivity to the environment.

Sellafield’s managing director, Barry Snelson, told the BBC at the weekend that the incident was “a stumble, not a fall”.

Maenwhile the new Trade Secretary, Alan Johnson, told a Sunday newspaper that the findings of the official investigation into the leak will have a “very important” bearing on whether the Government gives the go ahead for up to 20 new nuclear power plants.

The Government has promised a decision on new build within this Parliament.

Mr Johnson told the Independent on Sunday: “We have to wait for the report [on the Thorp leak] but it’s one of the issues that militates against rushing too far down the road.

“The issues with nuclear are as fresh as they were in 2003: what do you do with the waste, is it affordable and who is actually going to build these nuclear power stations?

“Which is why I say the priorities must still be renewables.”

Anthorn, Broughton Moor and the former RAF 14MU base at Carlisle were considered as sites to bury nuclear waste in the 1980s, it has been revealed.

A request under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that the Nirex agency drew up a long list of potential sites, which was never published, before compiling a short list of 12, including Sellafield.

Other Cumbrian locations on the long list included the low-level waste dump at Drigg, Eskmeals, DM Longtown, Spadeadam, and a former steel works in Workington.

A new list of potential dumping grounds is being drawn up in 2007 or 2008 but Nirex say the old list would not form a starting point in the search for sites.

However, Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper warned that “despite what ministers might say, Nirex has made it quite clear that each of the sites considered geologically suitable in the past could be considered suitable in the future.”


-------- canada

China shuts out AECL
Second major loss this year for company; Chrétien had lobbied hard to make deal

By SIMON TUCK
Monday, June 13, 2005 Updated at 4:54 AM EDT
From Monday's Toronto Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050613.wxaecl13/BNStory/National/

Ottawa — Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has lost out on a multibillion-dollar nuclear reactor sale in China, a major loss for the Crown corporation in the fast-growing energy market and a setback that comes after the collapse of a Candu deal with a utility in the United States.

AECL had hoped to sell two new Candu reactors to the Qinshan nuclear plant in China's Zhejiang province, where the federally owned atomic technology company sold a pair of reactors in 1997. AECL also hoped that the previous sale and frequent lobbying from former prime minister Jean Chrétien would provide an advantage now that the plant is boosting capacity.

The sale is believed to be worth about $5-billion, one of the industry's biggest deals in years. The contract now appears to be headed to one of three other foreign bidders, all of whom offer pressurized-water technology as opposed to Candu's heavy-water version, which relies on natural uranium.

The deal was considered important because it could have provided AECL with momentum in the burgeoning Chinese power market. The nuclear-power industry, long faced with sluggish sales and an uphill public relations challenge, has been looking to China to drive sales.

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For AECL, however, it looks like Qinshan will not provide that boost.

Patrick Tighe, AECL's vice-president of marketing and business development, acknowledged that the Chinese have said they intend to select a vendor that uses pressurized-water-reactor technology, which is offered by many of AECL's rivals, including Paris-based Areva, the world's largest nuclear reactor builder. Areva has already supplied four of China's nine working nuclear plants. The other key bidders are Britain-based Westinghouse Electric Co. and Russia's AtomStroyExport. A winner is expected to be announced by October.

As with any nuclear-reactor sale, the pending Chinese purchases will almost certainly be based on a mix of business, technology and politics.

But AECL officials say they haven't given up hope that the Chinese authorities will reconsider the Candu.

The Canadians also point optimistically to a memorandum of understanding to work more closely on nuclear energy that was signed this year in the presence of Prime Minister Paul Martin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

"We're optimistic that the situation is still good for us," Mr. Tighe said.

China is a critical market because it is the world's most populous country and its economy -- and energy consumption -- is growing at breathtaking speeds.

The authorities' plan to boost the country's energy supplies relies heavily on nuclear technology, particularly in the eastern and southern coastal regions where the economy is strong but there is a lack of natural energy resources.

There are nine nuclear facilities operating throughout the country, with two others under construction.

China expects the share of its power supplied by nuclear generation to grow to 4 per cent by 2020 from 2.3 per cent today, which is expected to mean the addition of at least 30 new plants.

The bill for those facilities will be an estimated $60-billion.

AECL's setback in China comes after a move in January by a U.S. utility that pulled out of an alliance that AECL had counted on for a breakthrough in the U.S. market.

AECL was looking to utility Dominion Resources of Richmond, Va., to be a flagship customer in the United States, where AECL has never made a sale.

No new nuclear plant has been licensed in that country since before the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, but the Bush government sees nuclear energy as part of the answer to proliferating demand.

The U.S. market is considered important for AECL and others in the industry because it has been dormant for decades and many utilities are considering expansion as older reactors are retired.

Outside of China and the United States, Mr. Tighe said, AECL's key markets are Britain and in Ontario.

AECL had been developing two designs for advanced reactors based on the Candu: the ACR-700 and 1200-MWe ACR.

Most of AECL's customers are more interested in the 1200.

But Dave Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada, says AECL will not be able to find the critical first customer for its latest reactor because liabilities are too high.

"There's no chance of anyone buying an advanced Candu reactor," he said.

"No one will be the guinea pig."

AECL says Candu reactors, which are in operation in Canada, South Korea, China, Argentina and Romania, produce electricity safely and cleanly.

The Candus can also be built more quickly than most of their competitors' products and, according to AECL, the reactors are the industry's leading sellers over the past decade.



<a name="du"></a>

-------- depleted uranium

Bill would tackle uranium contamination

Letter to the editor
June 13, 2005 Santa Cruz Star-Gazette

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., introduced legislation on May 17 calling for studies on U.S. use of depleted uranium munitions in combat zones, including Iraq. The McDermott bill also calls for cleanup of sites in the United States contaminated by depleted uranium, known as DU.

DU weapons release deadly vaporized, radioactive particulate into the environment. Tens of thousands of deaths, birth defects and sickness around the world, including our own men and women in the Armed Forces, are traceable directly to DU radiation, which remains dangerously in the environment for 4.5 billion years.

DU weapons are tested in America, causing irreversible damage here as well. More information can be found at www.barremore.net/ depleted-uranium-kills.html. Urging your representative to vote for the McDermott bill is a way to support the troops.

EILEEN MACERI
Former Elmiran
Santa Cruz, Calif.



-------- japan

Japan’s Nuclear Power Plant Siting: Quelling Resistance

By Daniel P. Aldrich
Japan Focus June 13, 2005
  
http://www.japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=310

Japan's government remains firmly committed to a large scale nuclear power program despite sustained resistance from local communities. Recognizing the concerns of many citizens about nuclear power and its health and property risks, the government instituted tactics to smooth the path for its nation-wide energy agenda undertaken in cooperation with private utilities. The responsible government office, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE, or Shigen enerugi cho), honed a wide variety of strategies designed to quell resistance to nuclear power plant siting. Despite innovative and expensive programs such as awards ceremonies for cooperative local government officials, pro-nuclear curricula for local schools, and extensive subsidies for host communities, the time necessary for siting new plans continues to increase and some plans have been defeated. Local communities and anti-nuclear activists remain resistant to central government inducements and will no doubt seek to block future siting attempts.

Germany, Italy, England, and other Western nations have backed away from initial enthusiastic support for commercial nuclear power, and pro-nuclear forces within the United States remain unable to overcome regulatory ratcheting, local resistance and economic difficulties which mire attempts at building new reactors. Japan, on the other hand, has developed one of the most advanced civilian nuclear energy programs in the world, with further plans for fast breeder and MOX-utilizing reactors, nuclear fuel recycling, and new plants. As of the summer of 2005, Japan has 53 operational nuclear power plants, with an additional 3 under construction and 8 reactors being prepared for construction. Japan is the world's third largest producer of electricity via nuclear power, behind the United States and France. Its production capacity from its plants is larger than nations like Russia, Germany, Korea, and Britain. The only nation ever to have experienced first hand the effects of atomic weapons has developed a nation-wide nuclear program which provides close to forty percent of its generated electricity.

To explain this anomaly, some researchers focused upon the difficulties anti-nuclear groups have in overcoming centralized, exclusionary procedures which block attempts at slowing the plans of government and private industry (Tabusa 1992; Cohen, McCubbins, and Rosenbluth 1995). Others reference Japan's supposedly passive political culture, in which deferential citizens rarely mobilize against state authorities (Nakamura 1975). This article instead illuminates attempts by the central government to overcome anti-nuclear sentiment through a variety of policy tools. I show that the Japanese state not only created new strategies in an attempt to smooth the siting of nuclear power plants, but that it continually upgraded and refined these tools as it learned from its experiences. Here I support previous work which found that bureaucracies and political leaders are rarely swayed by public opinion; instead, they attempt to sway it. Despite attempts at winning "hearts and minds" and a variety of innovative techniques designed to alter local preferences, the Japanese state has been fighting a losing battle.

Like other democracies which have promoted energy plans involving nuclear power, Japan faced increasing resistance to atomic reactors over time (Rosa and Dunlap 1994). Although private utility companies in Japan carry out the siting of nuclear power plants much like private firms in North America, the Japanese government plays a fundamental role in the process. ANRE identified the possible obstacles to its energy plans, primarily fishing cooperatives, local government leaders, youth, and women, and targeted them with programs designed to make them more receptive to nuclear power and hence more likely to host a nuclear reactor in their community or refrain from opposing one elsewhere.

Specific State Strategies

The Japanese central government, like all other nations, has the power to forcibly extract land from local citizens for projects deemed in the public good. The desire to use expropriation was especially strong during the Maki-machi wrangle, when, many years after the siting process of a nuclear power plant had begun, local citizens successfully brought about a referendum (jumin tohyo) which prevented the sale of land to the utility. Internal memos from ANRE officials to their colleagues indicate that all agreed that the plant would fit under the definition of "public enterprise" but that the possible negative reaction combined with the difficulties in convincing the legal authorities that the plant could not have been located in another spot prevented them from using the powers available to them. In interviews ANRE officials stated that they felt that if they had used land expropriation in the Maki case, future mayors who might incline to be pro-facility would respond negatively (Interviews, Fall 2002).

Rather than using force and land expropriation, government officials have sought to smooth the siting process through policy instruments which persuade and entice local citizens. In 1964 the Japanese government decided to promote its plans for nuclear power development by establishing a Nuclear Power Day to be celebrated yearly on 26 October. Since those early days of pro-nuclear public relations campaigns, central government ministires have developed more sophisticated tools in handling potential host communities. For example, in the case of Kaminoseki, as negotiations between land owners, fishermen, and the utility dragged on in the 1980s, ANRE officials visited local citizens and gave pep talks about the need for the plants in the scheme of the overall energy plan (Interviews, November 2002). Bureaucrats began establishing branch offices and "atomic energy centers" in 1972 in possible host localities to show the seriousness of government intent and provide officials more direct access to their "constituents." These centers allowed citizens the rare opportunity to speak directly with local government representatives.

Mayors and other local elected officials feared that anti-nuclear sentiment could cost them future elections if they openly supported plans for nuclear siting. In response, the ANRE and the Prime Minister's office began a program in the early 1980s that celebrated and rewarded local government officials who had contributed to the success of nuclear power plant and other energy facility siting. The Citation Ceremony for Electric Power Sources Siting Promoters (Dengen ricchi sokushin korosha hyosho) occurs yearly in July and provides these officials with the opportunity to appear in national media and gain acclaim for their actions.

Government officials early on recognized the power held by local fishermen's' cooperatives, gyogyo rodo kumiai. Because Japanese utility companies decided to utilize water drawn in from the ocean for cooling down their nuclear reactors, the cooperation of fishing cooperatives became vital to the success of Japan's nuclear power industry. Japanese law requires companies which impinge upon the fishing areas of cooperatives to purchase the rights to those areas, with the fishing cooperative needing a two-thirds majority to approve compensation plans for selling those fishing rights. Without the approval of the local cooperatives, siting cannot continue. Cooperatives have a number of reasons to resist siting, primary among them being the permanent loss of fishing rights to the utility. Beyond that, however, cooperatives have feared the higher temperatures of water discharged by the plants will negatively affect aquatic life and its habitats. Further, utilities were notorious for having discharged polluted and radioactive liquids along with the water back into the ocean, resulting in Minamata disease and other disasters.

Reluctant fishing cooperatives that have refused to strike deals with authorities have forced cancellation or lengthy delays on a number of projects. In Kaminoseki, the fishing cooperative at Iwaishima continues to negotiate with government and business representatives, resulting in the ever lengthening "lead time" necessary for the plant's construction (Interview with local activist, 4 November 2002). To diminish opposition among fishing cooperatives, the government has sponsored job creation through fish farms, published reassuring studies of the effects of nuclear power discharge in fishing magazines, and worked to ensure that fish and other local crops will find markets despite possible concerns over "contamination."

The largest tools in the government's arsenal are the Three Power Source Development Laws, known as the Dengen Sanpo, which provide enormous subsidies for communities hosting nuclear power plants. By 2002, a community accepting a 1.35 million kW reactor could receive as much as 450 billion yen from the government -- an enormous sum for rural local governments which regularly struggle with deficits. Nevertheless, resistance continues to stall new siting plans. The government has been unable to spend the total amount of money collected for the Three Power Source Laws through an "invisible" tax levied on all power consumption.

Conclusions: A Contentious Road Ahead

Hayden Lesbirel's work on nuclear power plant siting in Japan, focusing primarily on private sector bargaining (Lesbirel 1998), looked only indirectly at the role of the state while Samuels' book on Japanese energy markets focused on the reciprocal relations between private utility companies and the central government (Samuels 1987). As a result, many analysts have categorized Japan's nuclear power plant siting environment as a purely "voluntary market", making only occasional reference to the role of the central government. Focusing directly on the activities of the state, this article revealed the wide ranging efforts of the central government to alter the preferences of citizens and smooth the siting of controversial facilities.

Political theorists often utilize normative models of democratic governance in which the goals and values of citizens drive politicians and hence bureaucrats to create new programs and advance the society toward a shared future. In Japan's facility siting environment, this is reversed: non-elected officials, working in conjunction with electric power companies, seek to alter citizen preferences in order to achieve the state's goals of energy independence. The state designed flexible and institutions to overcome resistance rooted in concerns about risk and inequity through the use of payments, public relations, and reassurance. While Japanese political culture and in-place procedures may have reduced resistance among some citizens, ANRE's creation and then improvement of educational, compensatory, and persuasive policy tools have increased barriers to collective action against the state.

Nevertheless, despite years of such programs and hundreds of millions of dollars of expenditure on incentive, capacity, and symbolic policy instruments, citizens have become increasingly immune to such techniques. Progressively more active and organized movements have utilized citizen referenda, mayoral and town council recalls, and information dissemination to combat central government and utility efforts at resistance-free siting. Many citizens no longer accept explanations from central government bureaucrats at face value, and have pushed the state to enact more open and citizen-centered siting procedures. These actions from citizens, combined with fatal management errors and recent cover ups of poor reactor maintenance by private utilities have created a situation in which green-fields siting of new reactors now seems all but impossible and lead times continue to grow. The time necessary for negotiation and construction for nuclear power plants has tripled over the past three decades.

ANRE and other government ministries worked to improve their strategies, increasing the amounts of compensation, broadening their targets, and extending the time period of availability for payments along with providing more accurate mechanisms for citizen feedback and demands. Nonetheless, recent siting rates reveal that these measures have largely failed. Perhaps the most important lesson from this study has been that despite the use of flexible and adaptive institutions in siting processes, even the best designed and improved techniques cannot assure siting success in an era of increasingly active and concerned citizenry.

Sources:

Cohen, Linda, McCubbins, Mathew, and Rosenbluth, Frances. (1995). "The Politics of Nuclear Power in Japan and the United States," in Peter Cowhey and Mathew McCubbins, eds, Structure and Policy in Japan and the United States. Cambridge University Press, pp. 177 -202.

Lesbirel, S. Hayden. (1998). NIMBY Politics in Japan: Energy Siting and the Management of Environmental Conflict. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Nakamura, Kikuo, ed. (1975). Gendai Nihon no Seiji Bunka [Contemporary Japanese Political Culture] Kyoto: Mineruba.

Rosa, Eugene and Dunlap, Riley. (1994). "Poll Trends: Nuclear power: Three decades of opinions," Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 58 Issue 2 pp 295 –324.

Samuels, Richard. (1987). The Business of the Japanese State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Tabusa, Keiko. (1992). Nuclear Politics: Exploring the Nexus between Citizens' Movements and Public Policy in Japan. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University.

Daniel P. Aldrich, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, has published articles in Comparative Politics, Political Psychology, Asian Journal of Political Science, and Social Science Japan. This article, prepared for Japan Focus, draws on and extends a chapter published in an edited volume entitled Managing Conflict in Facility Siting: an international comparison (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar 2005).

----

Business lobby and lawmakers urge PM to bring nuclear reactor to Japan

TOKYO (AFP) Jun 13, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050613094801.8exl0kuk.html

Japan's main business lobby and ruling coalition lawmakers called Monday on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to stand firm on hosting a revolutionary nuclear energy project also sought by France.

France has already said it is virtually certain to be the host of the multi-billion-dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a breakthrough project which aims to emulate the sun's nuclear fusion.

The resolution adopted jointly by business lobby Nippon Keidanren, Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner New Komeito comes ahead of a Group of Eight summit next month that includes Japan and France.

"Now is the time to make a final push. I strongly wish the ITER project will be bought to Japan," Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Nippon Keidanren, said in front of more than 500 people at an auditorium in Tokyo.

"I hope the wish of so many people to bring ITER will be transmitted to Prime Minister Koizumi," said Okuda, who is also chairman of Japan's biggest company Toyota Motor.

Takeo Hiranuma, former minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, added: "I think it is extremely meaningful for this nuclear facility to be brought to Asia, as such a project has never existed in the region."

The audience showed their support with a storm of applause for the resolution that "the Japanese government should do its best until the last moment to win the bid for ITER project."

But local media have reported that Japan is ready to give up on bringing ITER to the northern village of Rokkasho-mura and is trying to ensure it gets as much as possible for dropping its bid.

The United States and South Korea support Japan's bid for ITER, while China and Russia back the European Union bid to locate the project at Cadarache in France.



-------- security

Nuclear plants vulnerable to attack

June 13, 2005 The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15596809%255E1702,00.html

THE US government may have set its security standards for nuclear power plants too low, and guards say they may not be ready to stop a terrorist attack of September 11 magnitude, a US magazine has reported.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) document "raises serious questions about whether the government has set security requirements for nuclear plants too low and allowed nuclear plant operators to provide security on the cheap," Time reported.

Even plant guards worry they would be unable to thwart a big terrorist operation, saying they lack the necessary training and weapons, the magazine said. The plants could also be vulnerable to an attack on foot, it said.

"Our training has increased, but I don't think it's increased enough to deal with that," a veteran guard, who was not named, told Time. Another guard said: "We don't have the weapons or training to stop an attack of that magnitude. ... Everyone feels that way. It's a consensus of opinion."

"I don't think they could handle a 9/11-size attack," David Orrik, a senior NRC official who retired in February after a 20-year career probing power-plant vulnerabilities, was quoted as saying.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the government has spent one billion dollars to boost nuclear power plant security, compared to 20 billion for aviation security, Time reported.

"The NRC and the nuclear power industry are today where the FAA sfr1/8 Federal Aviation Administrationsfr3/8 and airlines were on Sept. 10, 2001," a senior US anti-terrorism official was quoted as saying by the magazine.

NRC-commissioned studies say a plant's concrete and steel infrastructure could withstand a suicide airplane attack, making the risks of a major release of radioactivity low.

But other experts, including a recent National Academy of Sciences panel, say the particular design and vulnerabilities of each plant make such blanket assurances meaningless, Time said. 



-------- treaties

A Palliative for Neo-Crazy Lies

by Gordon Prather, June 13, 2005 Antiwar-com

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6298

Because Bush-Bolton and the neo-crazies have legions of sycophants ensconced at all major media outlets, feeding you a daily diet of lies, misrepresentations, and false innuendo about – among other things – Iran's nuclear programs, you're probably in need of this palliative.

Recall that Iran

    * has been a member state of the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1958

    * has been a signatory to the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons since 1968

    * has had an IAEA Safeguards Agreement in force since 1974.

In 2003, Iran signed an Additional Protocol to its existing Safeguards Agreement, and has since voluntarily cooperated with the IAEA as though the protocol were actually in force – which it is not.

Furthermore, in order to build further confidence that Iran's nuclear programs are strictly peaceful, Iran voluntarily suspended all uranium-conversion, uranium-enrichment, and plutonium-separation activities.

Since Iran had already voluntarily made these activities subject to IAEA Safeguards, the IAEA was notified of this voluntary suspension and invited to verify and monitor it.

Okay?

Now, for the last decade, the neo-crazies and their media sycophants have been charging that Iran has been pursuing a nuclear weapons program – right under the multiple sensors of IAEA inspectors – in violation of the NPT.

Recently, Bush-Rice-Bolton have been demanding that Iran's "violation of the NPT" be brought before the UN Security Council for punitive action.

If that is not done, the neo-crazies have been threatening to preemptively "take out" all facilities they suspect of being associated with that alleged nuclear weapons program, including the IAEA Safeguarded nuclear power plant at Bushehr now nearing completion by the Russians.

Bear in mind that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and his inspectors have been conducting highly intrusive go-anywhere, see-anything inspections in Iran for the past two years and have yet to find any indication that Iran now has, ever had, or intends to have a nuclear weapons program.

Nor, for that matter, has ElBaradei found any indication that Iran has violated its voluntary suspension of its Safeguarded uranium-conversion, uranium-enrichment, and plutonium-separation activities.

Now, contrary to Bush-Rice-Bolton misrepresentations – if not lies – the NPT has no enforcement provision or mechanism.

For example, suppose Libya sought – or accepted – assistance from Pakistan on how to design or produce a nuclear weapon. Libya would be in violation of Article II of the NPT.

But the NPT doesn't even suggest what other NPT signatories could have done about it under the NPT.

Ah, but there's Article III of the NPT, which required Libya and other no-nuke NPT signatories to subject themselves to bilateral IAEA Safeguards agreements "with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons."

If Libya had refused to conclude an IAEA Safeguards agreement, that would have been a violation of Article III of the NPT.

But Libya didn't refuse.

So Libya hasn't violated Article III.

But Article III goes on to say "procedures for the Safeguards required by this article shall be followed."

Aha!

But who decides whether or not those procedures are followed?

And who decides what action to take if they aren't?

Well, according to Article XII of the IAEA Statute, IAEA's staff of inspectors will "determine whether there is compliance with the [statutory] undertaking against use in furtherance of any military purpose."

The IAEA inspectors "shall report any [statutory] noncompliance to the Director General who shall thereupon transmit the report to the Board of Governors."

The IAEA Board "shall report the [statutory] noncompliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations."

So by requiring no-nuke NPT-signatories – such as Libya and Iran – to conclude a bilateral Safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the NPT incorporates the already existing IAEA inspection and verification system, as well as its statutory enforcement mechanism.

In 2003, Libya also signed an Additional Protocol, and IAEA inspectors soon discovered that IAEA-proscribed materials and facilities were being "used in furtherance of" a "military purpose," in violation of the IAEA Statute.

Not the NPT. The IAEA Statute.

But even then, because Libya remedied its statutory noncompliance forthwith, the IAEA Board did not even ask the Security Council to invoke sanctions for violations of the IAEA Statute

So even if Condi succeeds this week in seducing or blackmailing ElBaradei into reporting to the IAEA Board exactly what the neo-crazies dictate, they are unlikely to get UN authorization to "take out" Bushehr and other IAEA-Safeguarded facilities in Iran.

Don't you feel better already?


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

ElBaradei re-elected by consensus as UN nuclear chief

VIENNA (AFP) Jun 13, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050613180134.6owl7ff3.html

The UN atomic agency unanimously re-appointed Mohamed ElBaradei as its chief Monday, a spokeswoman said, after Washington dropped its opposition to a man who had questioned US weapons intelligence on Iraq.

ElBaradei told reporters he was "humbled and awed" at his appointment by consensus to a third term as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said he expected to be able to work well with the United States, which has also criticized him for being too soft on Iran.

ElBaradei said that when he had met in Washington last week with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "We did not discuss the past. We did not discuss my election. We looked together forward. We agreed we have a lot of common objectives."

"We need to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We need to insure the authority of the agency in terms of verification. We need to have better control over the sensitive (nuclear) fuel cycle (in countries worldwide) and we need to have a more efficient compliance mechanism (with safeguards of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)," ElBaradei said.

ElBaradei said his talks with Rice were like those "with every member state."

"I get their input. They hear my views and at the end of the day, I do what I believe to be the objective, impartial, factual way to proceed," ElBaradei said, clearly implying that he was retaining his independence of action.

The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors "has reached consensus and appointed Dr ElBaradei to a third term," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters. The decision is to be confirmed at an IAEA general conference in September.

The vote was held up for some six hours by Japan's objections to making it the first agenda item in a week-long board meeting that opened Monday but once this procedural issue was resolved the consensus decision took place almost immediately.

The United States had set the stage for this when it last week reversed its opposition to ElBaradei and said it was ready to accept a third term for him despite past policy disagreements over both Iraq and Iran.

Washington had in fact no backing from the 34 fellow members of the IAEA board for stopping ElBaradei, who is widely respected as a tireless and fair campaigner for non-proliferation, from continuing in office, diplomats said.

The United States had resisted a new term for ElBaradei, who has run the IAEA since 1997, saying two terms was enough for running an international agency.

But diplomats said ElBaradei had provoked Washington's ire for questioning US intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction under now deposed dictator Saddam Hussein and for not being tough enough on Iran, which Washington accuses of secretly developing nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei, 62, has said the "jury is still out" on Iran's intentions, even if IAEA inspectors have discovered that Iran hid sensitive atomic work for almost two decades until the agency's inspection of its program began in 2003.

ElBaradei said Monday that he will tell the board when he reports to it Tuesday that Iran has "respected its commitment with regard to suspension of the fuel cycle activities."

Iran has since November suspended uranium enrichment activities, the process that makes fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors but what can also be the explosive core of atom bombs, as a confidence-building measure for talks with the European Union on guaranteeing that the Islamic Republic's nuclear intentions are peaceful.

The IAEA is verifying the suspension as well as continuing its now over-two-year-old investigation into US charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei said he would report that "Iran has facilitated access to nuclear material sites."

But he said he would also report that the IAEA needs information "on the issue of the extent and nature of the centrifuge program," referring to Iran's working with sophisticated versions of the machines that enrich uranium.

ElBaradei said that closing the investigation, as Iran wishes, depends on Tehran.

"The ball is very much in Iran's court. The sooner they have provided us the information they need, the sooner we will be able to clarify outstanding issues," ElBaradei said.

ElBaradei said the IAEA was making "progress with regard to the contamination issue".

The agency is working to establish whether highly enriched uraniumits inspectors have found in Iran is from imported equipment, as Tehran claims, or from Iranian manufacture of such potentially weapons-grade nuclear material.

A diplomat close to the IAEA said the tests on centrifuge parts supplied by Pakistan tend so far to support Iran's claim that the contamination was from imported equipment.

But the diplomat said the tests have not been concluded.

----

Japan blocks El Baradei's re-election for procedural reasons

2005-06-13 23:41:13 (Xinhuanet)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-06/13/content_3080914.htm

    VIENNA, June 13 - Japanese ambassador Yukiya Takasu here on Monday unexpectedly blocked the re-election of ElBaradei as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), citing merely procedural reasons.

    The block came as the United Nations nuclear watchdog opened aweek-long meeting which is expected to re-elect Mohamed ElBaradei as its chief after a surprise folding of US opposition to the former Egyptian diplomat.

    Diplomats said that the 35-nation board of governors of the IAEA was forced into a deadlock since unanimous consensus is normally required for the running of the IAEA.

    The IAEA was expected to approve ElBaradei unanimously by consensus before Japan's objection.

    But a Western diplomat said Japan's rejection will not necessarily stop Elbaradei from winning the post as he is ready to accept a third term after the US last week dropped its opposition to the appointment.

    The ballot is technically on the agenda for later in the week. However, Chairwoman of the IAEA, Ingrid Holl from Canada, proposed to cast a vote at the beginning of the board meeting.

    Takasu said he does not oppose the re-election of ElBaradei but the meeting procedure should be respected.

    A Western diplomat said Japan was getting even with Egypt for blocking agenda items at a non-proliferation conference in New York last month, specifically a resolution on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear program which Japan had pushed and which never got out of committee.

    ElBaradei, 62, joined the IAEA in 1984 and held a series of high-level policy positions in the organization before becoming its Director General in 1997.



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

Power shift? Nuclear industry sees resurgence
U.S. market eyed given costs of alternatives and global warming

By H. Josef Hebert
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:38 a.m. ET June 13, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8143079/

Photo Watts Bar
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050613/050613_nuclear_resurg_hmed_7a.hmedium.jpg

Graph and Map
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Interactives/News/Environment/NUCLEAR_RESURGANCE.gif

WASHINGTON - For two months, Ray Ganthner took to the road, visiting a dozen power companies to find out if his bosses should take a $100 million gamble.

Asking executives “eyeball-to-eyeball” about their future generating capacity needs, he wanted to know just how serious utilities were about building a new nuclear power plant in the United States for the first time in three decades.

“I was surprised at the consistency of the answers,” Ganthner, a Lynchburg, Va.-based senior executive for the French reactor manufacturer, Framatome, said in an interview.

Based on what he found, AREVA, Framatome’s parent company, is now investing $100 million on U.S. marketing and to get a design certificate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its newest reactor, one already being built in Finland.

It may be a long shot. Two other manufacturers, Westinghouse and General Electric, have a head start. But the French company’s decision to make it a three-way race demonstrates the resurgent interest in nuclear power in the United States, where no new reactor has been ordered since 1973.

The 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, followed by the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine ended any U.S. interest in more reactors beyond those already under construction.

NuStart for nuclear?

Recently a consortium of eight U.S. utilities, called NuStart, announced potential sites where one or more of its members might put a new reactor. Two other American utilities are pursuing separate licensing efforts.

While no one has yet committed to construction, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman recently told an industry group, “If all goes well, we could see new plants on line by 2014.”

Westinghouse Electric Co., a subsidiary of the British company BNFL, already has approval from the NRC for its new 1,000 megawatt AP1000 reactor design and General Electric will submit an application for its 1,500 megawatt ESBWR reactor later this year.

Both companies are working hard to line up customers, convinced that electricity demand a decade from now will require more large power plants, and that some will be nuclear.

“We think everything is heading in absolutely the right direction,” says Vaughn Gilbert, a Westinghouse spokesman. “Nuclear has to be part of the energy picture. We expect the U.S. market will come back and eventually be robust.”

'Evolutionary' step in reactors

The new reactors are described as “evolutionary” advancements over the 103 now in operation in 31 states. They basically use the same technology, but with fewer valves, pipes and pumps, and — in the case of Westinghouse and GE — passive safety systems that, if needed, can shut the reactor down and pour in cooling water without human intervention. Other modifications such as setting the radioactive fuel lower into the ground were added in response to post-Sept. 11 worries about terrorism.

President Bush has pushed nuclear power as a way to take the pressure off fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal. While the United States gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, France meets 78 percent of its electricity needs with nuclear power.

Even a few environmentalists have abandoned their opposition to nuclear power, arguing it is needed to address climate change because reactors do not produce so-called “greenhouse” gases as do fossil fuels. Most environmentalists, however, are not convinced, citing worries about reactor waste and safety.

At the heart of the resurgent interest in nuclear power are the high cost of competing energy sources and improved reactor efficiency. A University of Chicago study concluded that a new fleet of reactors can be expected to produce power as cheaply as coal and natural gas, given today’s prices.

“People are getting comfortable with nuclear,” Paul Dabber, a vice president for mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan, told a conference on new reactor technology in February. One reason is that existing nuclear power plants have been making profits, he said.

Wall Street has long been skeptical about committing $2 billion or more to a new nuclear reactor and investors still consider such a venture risky unless the government provides tax breaks or other incentives to get the first group of reactors started.

Without some government help, no new reactors are likely to be built before 2025, says the Energy Information Agency, the government’s energy statistical agency.

Taxpayer loan guarantees?

Congress is considering loan guarantees for new-design reactors, and lawmakers are expected to come up with other tax breaks to stoke investor interest. But a Bush proposal to provide “risk insurance” to protect the industry against licensing or legal delays has attracted little interest on Capitol Hill.

No one has yet committed to building a new reactor and despite the optimistic rhetoric, utilities are moving toward that decision cautiously.

A premature pronouncement about a new reactor could rattle investors and depress a utility’s stock, industry experts say. Utilities and investors still remember the pitfalls of long licensing delays that doubled and tripled the cost of many reactors in the 1980s. In one of the biggest cost overruns, the proposed twin-reactor Seabrook plant in New Hampshire was projected to cost $850 million in 1976 and be finished in six years, but ended up costing $7 billion when completed in 1990 even though the second reactor was canceled.

“My company lost $5 billion to $10 billion on the last round of nuclear construction,” Exelon chairman John Rowe said in a recent speech, explaining why he is approaching new reactor investments with caution.

Waste issue

Rowe, whose Chicago-based utility company owns 17 nuclear reactors, more plants than any other utility, also says his company won’t invest in a new plant until there is more progress in dealing with reactor waste. A proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has had a string of setbacks and the date for its completion is optimistically put at 2012.

Still, Exelon and two other utilities, Dominion and Entergy, have separately applied to the NRC for early site permits for reactors with the idea of shortening the licensing process if a decision is made to go ahead with one.

“There is a growing recognition that if we are going to meet our future need for electric energy and also reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases ... we simply must build the next generation of advanced nuclear energy plants,” said Marilyn Kray, an Exelon vice president and head of the NuStart consortium.

In an interview, she said the goal is to preserve the nuclear option by testing the NRC’s streamlined licensing process.

Also testing the water is Duke Energy, based in Charlotte, N.C., which, moving on its own, is talking about possibly having a new reactor operating by 2014. Dominion, based in Virginia, also is making plans to seek an NRC reactor construction permit. Neither company has made a final decision.

Financial help for licensing

The Energy Department is paying half the cost of the various initial licensing efforts, including an expected $46 million next year.

“Adding nuclear capacity ... makes a lot of sense,” says Henry “Brew” Barron, in charge of nuclear operations at Duke Power, a subsidiary of Duke Energy that serves 2 million customers in the Carolinas. By 2014, Duke will need at least one more large power plant to meet demand in one of the country’s fastest growing regions. Many other utilities around the country are facing similar electricity demands.

Once the logjam is broken with the first orders, the U.S. reactor market could become the world’s second largest, after China, given expected growth in U.S. electricity demand and environmental and cost concerns about rival fossil fuels, says Andy White, president of GE Energy’s nuclear business. (GE is the parent of NBC, which is a partner in MSNBC.)

“We’ve probably never had a better situation,” White said in an interview, predicting that 60 or more new reactors may be built in the United States over the next 20 to 30 years with several designs finding customers.

---

Latest reactors offer 'evolutionary' change
They're based on existing light water design

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:38 a.m. ET June 13, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8143086/

WASHINGTON - The new generation nuclear reactors being talked about after a pause of three decades are not much different from those of the past, though the designs should make them safer, more efficient and easier to build.

Two designs likely to be pursued adopt a passive safety system requiring less involvement by operators to shut the system down and ensure that the reactor core doesn’t overheat. A third design would have more redundant and isolated safety systems than current reactors plus a double-walled concrete containment dome better able to withstand an airplane crash.

Still awaiting Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, all three designs are “evolutionary” advancements from the “light-water” reactors in use in the United States and Europe today. These reactors use ordinary water to slow, or moderate, the fission process as well as for emergency cooling if needed. A Generation IV gas-cooled reactor would be the next step in design advancements, probably after 2030, in the United States.

Three main competitors

The three reactor designs attracting the most interest are being developed by Westinghouse, a subsidiary of the British company BNFL; General Electric; and the French conglomerate AREVA, whose Framatome subsidiary designed France’s reactors. All three manufacturers say their new designs have been simplified to increase safety and have fewer moving parts, valves and pumps.

Here are some characteristics of each of the top three light-water reactor designs and a next-generation gas-cooled reactor.

The Westinghouse AP1000:

This would have one-third fewer pumps, half as many valves, and more than 80 percent fewer pipes than current reactors. It can be built using modular units manufactured in a factory and transported to the reactor site, cutting construction time to three years.

It relies on a largely passive safety system. The cooling water for use in event of a buildup of excess heat is above the reactor core and uses gravity and natural circulation for emergency cooling if needed. In current reactors, cooling water must be pumped into the core.

General Electric’s ESBWR:

This has a 1,500 megawatt boiling water design, meaning the cooling water is not under pressure and is allowed to boil with steam passing over the top of the reactor into the turbines.

ESBWR stands for “Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor,” reflecting that its design removes many complexities of current reactors. It has 25 percent fewer pumps, valves, motors, piping and cabling and is designed to respond more quickly to a loss of coolant situation. Modular construction and a smaller plant size allow for faster construction.

AREVA’s EPR:

A 1,500 megawatt pressurized water reactor that’s an evolutionary design based on the French and German reactors designed by Framatome and Siemans. It is a simplified design using existing technologies, with fewer parts.

While it maintains an active rather than passive safety system, the EPR has a number of design improvements, including a double-wall concrete containment dome for greater protection against an aircraft crash. The design also extends the dome over the spent fuel pool and two of the four safety buildings.

If there is a severe accident and meltdown, the reactor vessel is designed to capture the core melt in a cavity below the containment building.

Generation IV reactors

These reactor technologies reflect a “revolutionary” step from the “Generation III” and earlier design light-water reactors. Development for commercial use won’t occur until 2030.

They produce more heat and less waste with different cooling mechanisms than the light water reactors, and would be able to produce hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels to power everything from cars to electric lamps. An international effort has been under way since 2000 to examine various technologies, using a gas such as carbon dioxide, water, liquid metal or even molten salt for cooling.

A gas-cooled reactor known as the pebble bed is being developed in South Africa and was touted for the U.S. market until Exelon, the Chicago-based utility, pulled out of the project. Instead of fuel rods, the pebble bed uses coated graphite pebbles filled with uranium fuel. The decay heat is transferred to helium, an inert gas, that eventually moves to a gas turbine to produce electricity.

The Energy Department is planning a $1.25 billion program to build a gas-cooled Generation IV experimental reactor in Idaho. It would produce both hydrogen and electricity and could become a prototype for future commercial reactors.


-------- new jersey

Hope Creaky still Leaky; shuts down again; groups join forces to oppose PSEG-Exel-not merger

From: "Norm Cohen" <ncohen12@comcast.net>
Date: Wed Jun 15, 2005 8:26am

(UNPLUG Salem opposes the PSEG-Exelon merger)

Interesting that PSEG workers have joined the coalition opposing the merger.

norm

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:09:58 -0400
From: Joseph Malherek <jmalherek@CITIZEN.ORG>
Subject: [CMEP] Public interest groups join labor union to oppose utility mega-merger
To: CMEP@LISTSERVER.CITIZEN.ORG

*** P R E S S    R E L E A S E ***

June 13, 2005

Growing Coalition Opposing Exelon-PSEG Merger Launching Grassroots Lobbying Campaign To Call For Public Hearings

Nation's Largest Union, SEIU, and PSE&G Workers Join Forces with Consumer Groups to "Fight the Power Grab"

TRENTON, NJ (June 13, 2005) - The nation's largest labor union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced today that it will join forces with a growing consumer coalition opposing the proposed buy-out of PSEG by Exelon Corporation of Chicago. The groups announced the launch today of "Fight the Power Grab," a grassroots lobbying campaign to call for open and accountable public hearings by state and federal regulators on the proposed merger.

SEIU, with 28,000 members in the state, and Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 601, which represents 1,350 PSE&G workers, are teaming up with a consumer coalition led by Public Citizen, NJ PIRG Law and Policy Center, and NJ Citizen Action to oppose the proposed merger and call for open hearings.

"We want to pull the plug on the Exelon-PSEG merger to protect our member consumers from higher energy costs," said Kevin Brown, President of SEIU NJ State Council. "SEIU is prepared to aggressively pursue our goal of open and accountable hearings and reliable and affordable energy for New Jersey residents."

"With energy prices seeming to rise almost every day, New Jersey can ill-afford to subsidize the kind of sweetheart deals that corporate executives reap from giant mergers and acquisitions especially when, like this one, there is still no evidence of actual, substantive benefits for ratepayers," said Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, New Jersey Citizen Action's Executive Director. "This PSE&G buy-out is a bad deal for any consumer who has to pay an electric bill, from the person who wants to turn their lights on at home to our small business owners and our largest industries --and should be rejected at FERC and by the BPU."

The coalition is launching a grassroots advocacy campaign that will include:

* lobbying of elected officials at the state and federal level, including the gubernatorial candidates; 

* outreach and education to community members and state organizations; 

* display and online advertising -- display ads ran today in the Newark Star-Ledger and the Trenton Times sponsored by SEIU; 

* direct mail; 

* statewide phone-banking operations; 

* a new website -- http://www.FightthePowerGrab.org; 

* statewide e-mail campaigns calling on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to hold open and accountable hearings and reliable and affordable energy for New Jersey residents; and 

* legal intervention in NJ Board of Public Utility proceedings.

The groups released letters today to the New Jersey congressional delegation and Senators outlining their opposition to the merger and urging the elected officials to weigh in with the regulatory agencies and call for hearings.

"New Jersey's consumers shouldn't buy Exelon's deal to create the largest, most powerful energy company in the nation. If Exelon is allowed to swallow up PSEG, they will have a stranglehold over electricity prices in the region, leading to higher rates for New Jersey consumers. As the voice of New Jersey's electricity consumers, the state Board of Public Utilities should reject Exelon's proposal," said Dena Mottola, Executive Director of NJPIRG Law and Policy Center.

FERC will announce by the end of June whether or not it will hold hearings on the merger. Exelon has pressured regulators to waive a full hearing to expedite closing the $12 billion deal. NJBPU has put out a schedule for hearings later this summer. There is a hearing June 22 by the NJBPU to decide whether or not the companies will be forced to demonstrate a positive benefit to state consumers from the deal. The groups are urging the NJBPU to reject the merger if the companies do not demonstrate a positive benefit for state consumers.

Exelon and PSEG executives met privately with all four Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioners in January of this year, just after the companies publically announced their intent to merge in December 2004. These secret meetings call into question the ability of FERC's unelected government officials to provide sufficient independent oversight and protect the public interest.

"The public is forced to speculate about the content and impact of these secret meetings because the conversations are not part of the public record," said Tyson Slocum, Research Director of Public Citizen's Energy Program. "While the CEOs enjoy private access to government decisionmakers, the public isn't yet assured that FERC will even hold a public hearing. We are here to remind FERC that their first obligation is to serve the public-and not to simply rubber stamp requests by well-connected corporations."

BACKGROUND FOR REPORTERS

New Jersey Citizen Action is the state's largest independent citizen watchdog coalition representing 60,000 family members and more than 100 affiliated labor, tenant, senior citizen, faith-based, environmental and community organizations. NJCA works to protect and expand the rights of individuals and families, and to ensure that government officials respond to the needs of people rather than the interests of those with money and power. (www.njcitizenaction.org)

Public Citizen is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer rights organization based in Washington, DC with over 17,000 dues-paying individual members in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Our Energy Program does extensive work at the federal and state levels to promote energy policies that best protect consumers. (www.citizen.org)

New Jersey PIRG is a non-profit public interest advocacy organization representing with over 26,000 New Jersey residents. NJPIRG's mission is to deliver persistent, result-oriented public interest activism that protects our environment, encourages a fair, sustainable economy, and fosters responsive, democratic government. We uncover threats to public health and well-being and fight to end them, using the time-tested tools of investigative research, media exposés, grassroots organizing, advocacy and litigation. (www.njpirg.org)

The 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is the nation's largest and fastest growing union. Its 28,000 members in New Jersey are city and municipal workers, interns and residents at hospitals, janitors, homecare workers, nursing home workers, and the workers at Parsons who conduct the annual inspections of cars for the state of NJ. (www.seiunj.org)

Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 601 represents 1,350 PSE&G workers, as well as employees of NJ Transit. (www.Local601.org)



-------- north carolina

Officials say MOX fuel use going to plan

By Jason Cato The Rock Hill SC Herald 06/13/05

http://www.heraldonline.com/local/story/4942455p-4522507c.html

Reactor 1 at the Catawba Nuclear Station has been fired up and running with fuel containing weapons-grade plutonium for more than a week, and everything is going according to plan, a company official said.

The reactor was loaded with mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel on June 5 and is now running at 100 percent, said Steve Nesbitt, an engineer with Duke Power, at a meeting last week with the Rock Hill Sierra Club chapter.

"So far, we have seen that the fuel is behaving exactly as expected," Nesbitt said.

The nuclear power plant on Lake Wylie is testing the fuel as part of a program to rid 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium from the U.S. stockpile. The same will be done in Russia.

Four MOX fuel lead test assemblies were shipped to the Catawba plant in May and loaded into the reactor. The assemblies will be tested for approximately three years to determine if the fuel can be used safely and effectively in commercial nuclear reactors.

The four test assemblies produce enough energy to provide power to 20,000 homes, Nesbitt said.

Should the program be successful, Duke plans to apply for a full MOX program that could be up and running by 2012. Under that program, as many as 76 MOX fuel assemblies could be used in each of Catawba's two reactors as well as in the reactors at McGuire Nuclear Station on Lake Norman, north of Charlotte.

The Catawba plant is the only U.S. commercial nuclear reactor using MOX fuel and the only in the world using MOX containing weapons-grade plutonium.

The Henry's Knob group of the S.C. chapter of the Sierra Club questioned Nesbitt as to how Duke Power could be confident in the safety of this type of MOX fuel since it has never been used in a commercial nuclear reactor. A member of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which fought Duke's application to start the program, peppered Nesbitt with accusations that the company was placing the public in greater risk by using MOX fuel.

Nesbitt responded that nuclear power plants cost billions of dollars to build and that Duke Power would not jeopardize one of its plants by using fuel it was not completely confident in. Outside of Duke Power's own assessment of the safety of the MOX program, Nesbitt said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to give its approval before the program began.

As for the safety issues, Nesbitt said one of the missions of Duke Power is to protect residents in areas where it operates power plants. Also, he said he lives within 10 miles of the Catawba plant and would not risk the safety of his family if he were not confident in the MOX program.

The Henry's Knob group is planning to hold a panel discussion on the MOX program in September. They hope to have representative present from the Blue Ridge group as well as Duke Power.

Jason Cato • 329-4071

jcato@heraldonline.com 



-------- south carolina

Group wants reactor for SRS

By Josh Gelinas
Augusta Chronicle Staff Writer
Jun 13, 2005

http://www.aikenonline.com/stories/061205/new_4385566.shtml

AIKEN - A group that includes 16 universities from across the Southeast has submitted a plan to the U.S. Department of Energy to build a nuclear research reactor at Savannah River Site.

In a proposal dated April 27, the group, which includes the Universities of Georgia and South Carolina and the Georgia Institute of Technology, described a modern reactor capable of research beyond what is being done at the existing 26 university reactors in the United States.

The consortium of schools, called SUNRISE, or Southeast Universities Nuclear Reactor Institute for Science and Education, submitted its proposal after the federal agency formally requested new nuclear research ideas earlier this year.

The group also asked for $450,000 to complete its design.

The agency's request for ideas from universities is one of the more significant advances for SUNRISE since the group came together in 2002 with hopes of creating a regional teaching reactor for the Southeast.

There are research reactors close to the Aiken-Augusta area at North Carolina State University, the University of Florida and University of Maryland, but the SUNRISE reactor would service the entire region, the proposal states.

Still, members of the group, which includes the Savannah River and Oak Ridge national laboratories and four corporate partners, the Economic Development Partnership for Aiken and Edgefield counties and Citizens For Nuclear Technology Awareness, say it's premature to talk long-term.

"It's really in what I'd call the embryonic stage at this point," said Dr. Todd Wright, who is the director of Savannah River National Laboratory.

The DOE, which did not immediately respond to requests to identify other groups that expressed interest in new research, hasn't said how it will proceed with proposals.

"I think what (the DOE) is suggesting is that they're interested in this area, and I think it has something to do with increased enrollment" at engineering schools, Dr. Wright said. "I think the demand for trained nuclear engineers is going to go up over the next decade."

In 1998, fewer than 500 students in the United States were enrolled in nuclear engineering classes, down from 1,500 in 1992, according to the DOE.

However, that number has climbed back to 1992 levels, which the DOE attributes to its cooperation with universities to bolster engineering programs.

U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., said the research reactor would be a perfect fit for a proposed energy park at the site, which the DOE is expected to decide on in coming weeks.

Mr. Barrett said he expected "to get a yes" on the park, which ideally would be built near the national lab and could be home to a research reactor, hydrogen research or commercial reactor.

SRS is one of six sites being considered for a commercial reactor by NuStart, a group of four large power companies.

The United States has 103 nuclear reactors, which produce 20 percent of the country's electricity, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

SUNRISE members and industry experts said there was little connection between the possibility of a research reactor at SRS and its chances of landing a commercial reactor, though it wouldn't hurt.

"There is certainly an interest and a demand for new nuclear reactors in the Carolinas," said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. "And it's certainly viable that a new commercial reactor could take advantage, I guess you could say, of surplus of brainpower at a research reactor using next generation technology."

The SUNRISE consortium's proposal isn't limited to SRS. It's a design that could and should be implemented at other universities across the country, members said.

The group's proposal also isn't limited to teaching students how to run a new wave of commercial reactors. The reactor would allow graduate students and private sector researchers to test the strength of materials, welds and even create radioactive isotopes for medical uses.

Though details of the plan, such as cost, might be too far off to calculate, if SRS were selected for a research reactor, the plan would inevitably call for dormitories and additional research laboratories.

"There would be study at a high level, unlike any reactor built in the U.S. to date," Dr. Wright said.

Reach Josh Gelinas at (803) 648-1395, ext. 110, or josh.gelinas@augustachronicle.com.



-------- utah

Huntsman to press N-fight
He'll co-sponsor anti-dump measure at governors meet

By Lisa Riley Roche
Deseret Morning News
Monday, June 13, 2005

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600141129,00.html

      BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will co-sponsor at least two resolutions at the annual meeting here of the Western Governors' Association, including one he hopes furthers his fight against a high-level nuclear waste dump in Utah.

      The resolution, which won't be made public until it is voted on at the end of the three-day meeting Tuesday, asks the federal government to keep the states involved as storage sites are considered.

      Huntsman is opposed to a temporary high-level nuclear storage facility on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County and is raising concerns about the safety of transporting waste as an argument against it.

      The resolution stops short of endorsing an effort by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to force the facilities that generate nuclear waste to store it on site rather than transporting it to Utah or to the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

      Still, Huntsman was pleased with the progress.

      "This really was an attempt to craft something that all the governors could get their arms around," Huntsman said shortly after arriving at this ski resort early Sunday evening. "Even if it's a first step, it's an important one."

      He said President Bush, a former governor himself, will take notice of the resolution because it comes from the WGA. Huntsman should have a chance during the meeting to lobby U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who is scheduled to address the governors Tuesday.

      Another resolution that Huntsman is co-sponsoring deals with economic competitiveness. He declined to provide details Sunday but said his co-sponsor will be a prominent Democrat — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

      Huntsman is attending the meeting without his top economic development adviser, Chris Roybal; and his chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, had already returned to Salt Lake City after several days of staff meetings.

      Huntsman missed Sunday's afternoon session on the Western economy and economic growth. Futurist Joel Kotkin told the three governors at the session that the West must build on its "fundamentally urban" tradition.

      "You have this kind of 'Marlboro Man' image, but the West is very urbanized," Kotkin, a New Yorker who lives in Los Angeles, said. He said the region's cities must be nurtured, in part, through encouraging the sacred.

      He said that meant "things that tie people spiritually to a place," including, but not limited to, churches. After the session, he told a reporter that Salt Lake City, home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a good example.

      "You look at Utah, the whole Mormon corridor, the fact that you've got all those kids who are really well-behaved, who go on missions, all of whom have a high school education if not better, it's an enormous resource," Kotkin said.

      Utah should see itself as "ground zero for on-shoring," he said, referring to what he predicts will be the reversal of the "off-shoring" of jobs to countries like India, where wages are much lower.

      "Companies . . . may find they save a little bit of money going to India at first, but you pay for it" when your customers get upset, he said.

      "Utah needs to really work on this question of on-shoring and to begin to identify that as an area of growth for the economy," Kotkin said in an interview.

      Huntsman said he wasn't sure Utah's religious roots "need to be an overt part of selling the community." And he said the state is focused on creating jobs in emerging industries, such as biotechnology, not on attracting jobs back to the United States from overseas.

      "I'm talking about a whole different level," Utah's governor said.

      The session raised questions about the value of universities to economic development.

      "Universities have done a good job of selling governors," Kotkin said, citing a number of cities, like Boston, that have the greatest concentration of institutions of higher learning but faltering economies.

      He said the focus of education should be on the basics to prepare young people for the work force. Now, though, Kotkin said, "There's much too much touchy-feely, much too much concern about self-esteem" in K-12.

      Another speaker, Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, said job training at the community college level can be key to attracting new jobs. "We have to be very careful thinking there's one magic bullet."

      Creating centers of excellence on Utah campuses is a big part of Huntsman's economic development effort. Lawmakers recently funded a program intended to attract new research to the University of Utah and Utah State University.

      Huntsman said universities provide the research and development that the private sector can't afford. The state's role is in matching up that work with entrepreneurs who can turn research into viable products.

      Protecting the environment is also important to economic development, Luther Propst of the Sonoran Institute told the session. Proximity "to the beauty and the heritage of the West is something we have to capitalize on," Propst said.

      Eight governors from Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, plus the premiers of three western Canadian provinces, are expected to attend the three-day meeting, which ends Tuesday.

      Among the states not represented is California, itself one of the world's leading economies. After the session, Kotkin said without California's participation, it would be difficult to have a serious discussion about the issues facing the region.

      But the head of WGA, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, said serious discussions are taking place among the governors here during informal — and private — meetings.

      Owens said the success of the meeting would not be measured in actions taken but in relationships built among the participants.

      He said the region has a history of working well together on economic and other issues. With $320 billion in exports, Owens said the 18 states in the region make up the third-largest economy the world, behind the United States and Japan.

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com

---

Gov. Huntsman Fights Nuclear Waste Coming to Utah

Gov. Huntsman Fights Nuclear Waste Coming to Utah

Jun. 13, 2005 KSL-TV

http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?sid=211784&nid=8

Governor Huntsman will co-sponsor a proposal to stop nuclear waste from coming to Utah.

Huntsman opposes a temporary nuclear storage facility on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County.

He's also concerned about the safety of transporting the waste through Utah.

His resolution asks the federal government to let the states help decide where waste storage sites should be built.

He's developing the proposal at the annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association. 



-------- MILITARY 



-------- arms 

US warns Israel over China arms

Web posted at: 6/13/2005 2:23:25
Source ::: Agencies; The Qatar Peninsula

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&month=June2005&file=World_News2005061322325.xml

JERUSALEM: A dispute between Israel and Washington over Israeli arms sales  to China is deepening after months of US sanctions on joint military  projects, the Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday. Washington has  demanded that its close ally Israel provide details of more than 60 recent  security deals with China and its arms export trade in general, the  newspaper reported on its front page. In the interim, the United States  has suspended cooperation with the Israeli air force on developing a new  jet in the Joint Strike Fighter project and other high-tech military  equipment used by ground troops. Contact has also been “disrupted” at the  top echelon between the Israeli defence ministry and the Pentagon, with  Israeli phone calls not answered, the newspaper added. The controversy  flared over an Israeli deal to sell its Harpy Killer unmanned drone to  China against Washington’s express wishes. Washington pressured Israel to  scrap the deal to upgrade a consignment of drones which it had sold to China, for fear that advanced US defence technology contained in Israeli equipment could be used against Taiwan.

----

TASER receives $1.4 million order from U.S. military

REUTERS
4:43 a.m. June 13, 2005

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050613-0443-arms-taser.html

NEW YORK – TASER International on Monday said it has received an order to provide its stun guns and other devices to the U.S. military, in a deal valued at over $1.4 million.

The order will ship in the second quarter of 2005, the company said.

TASER shares rose 7 percent to $11.60 in pre-market trade on the Inet electronic brokerage, up from a Friday close of $10.84 on the New York Stock Exchange.



-------- nato

The Puzzling Story of NATO's Secret Armies During the Cold War: Just What Were They Up to?

By Daniele Ganser
6-13-05

http://hnn.us/articles/12253.html

Dr. Daniele Ganser is a historian at the Center for Security Studies ETH in Zurich Switzerland.

After the Cold War had ended, then Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed to the Italian Senate in August 1990 that Italy had had a secret stay-behind army, codenamed Gladio – the sword. A document dated 1 June 1959 from the Italian military secret service, SIFAR, revealed that SIFAR had been running the secret army with the support of NATO and in close collaboration with the US secret service, the CIA. Suggesting that the secret army might have linked up with right-wing organizations such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale to engage in domestic terror, the Italian Senate, amid public protests, decided in 1990 that Gladio was beyond democratic control and therefore had to be closed down.

During the 1990s, research into stay-behind armies progressed only very slowly, due to very limited access to primary documents. It was revealed, however, that stay-behind armies covered all of Western Europe and operated under different code names, such as Gladio in Italy, Absalon in Denmark, P26 in Switzerland, ROC in Norway, I&O in the Netherlands, and SDRA8 in Belgium. The so-called Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) and the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), linked to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), coordinated the stay-behind networks on an international level. The last confirmed ACC meeting took place on 24 October 1990 in Brussels, chaired by the Belgian military secret service, the SGR.

According to the SIFAR documen of 1959 the secret stay-behind armies served a dual purpose during the Cold War: They were to prepare for a communist Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, and – also in the absence of an invasion – for an “emergency situation.” The first purpose was clear: If there had been a Soviet invasion, the secret anti-communist armies would have operated behind enemy lines, strengthening and setting up local resistance movements in enemy held territory, evacuating pilots who had been shot down, and sabotaging supply lines and production centers of the occupation forces.

The second purpose, the preparation for an emergency situation, is more difficult to understand and remains the subject of ongoing research. As this second purpose clearly did not relate to a foreign invasion, the emergency situation referred to is likely to have meant all domestic threats, most of which were of a civilian nature. During the Cold War, the national military secret services in the countries of Western Europe differed greatly in what they perceived to be an emergency situation. But there was agreement between the military secret services of the United States and of Western Europe that communist parties, and to some degree also socialist parties, had a real potential to weaken NATO from within and therefore represented a threat to the alliance. If they gained political strength and entered the executive, or, worse still, gained control of defense ministries, an emergency situation would result. The evidence now available suggests that in some countries the secret stay-behind armies linked up with right-wing terrorists and carried out terror attacks that were later wrongly blamed on the political left in order to discredit the communists and prevent them from assuming top executive positions.

Evidence suggests that recruitment and operations methods differed greatly from country to country. The research project into NATO’s secret armies that is being undertaken by the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, and is headed by myself, has collected and published the available country-specific evidence in the first English-language book on the topic, entitled NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (London and New York: Frank Cass [www.tandf.co.uk/books], 1 January 2005, 300 pages). In a second step, the project is working on gaining access to declassified primary documents, while encouraging discussion among NATO officials, secret services and military officials, and the international research community in order to clarify the strategy, training, and operations of the stay-behind armies. 



-------- spies

Pentagon Analyst Indicted in Info Leak

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Monday, June 13, 2005; 11:34 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/13/AR2005061300738_pf.html

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon analyst has been indicted on charges that he leaked classified military information to employees of a pro-Israel lobbying organization and an Israeli official, federal authorities said Monday.

The six-count indictment charges that Lawrence A. Franklin conspired to disclose national defense and classified information to people not entitled to receive it, including information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.

None of the charges involves espionage. An FBI agent's affidavit that accompanied the criminal complaint against Franklin last month did not suggest that the disclosure endangered U.S. troops, but it said intelligence sources could have been compromised.

Franklin, a 58-year-old Air Force Reserve colonel who once worked for the Pentagon's No. 3 official, pleaded innocent to all counts Monday at a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III set a Sept. 6 trial.

The FBI's long-running investigation has focused on whether Franklin, of Kearneysville, W.Va., passed classified U.S. material on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential main Israeli lobbying organization in Washington, and whether that group in turn passed it on to Israel. Both AIPAC and Israel deny any wrongdoing.

The investigation has included use of sophisticated electronic surveillance techniques, law enforcement officials have said, although they have declined to say how Franklin first came to their attention.

People familiar with the investigation have said AIPAC no longer is a target. But the indictment identifies two unindicted co-conspirators who were employees of a Washington lobbying organization.

Law enforcement officials have previously identified them as Steve Rosen, who was AIPAC's director of research, and Keith Weissman, who was its deputy director of foreign policy issues. Neither still works for the group. The FBI has interviewed both, but neither has been charged.

The indictment includes a description of Franklin's luncheon meeting in June 2003 that law enforcement officials previously said was attended by Rosen and Weissman.

Abbe Lowell, Rosen's lawyer, was at the courthouse Monday. He declined to comment. John Nassikas, Weissman's lawyer, did not immediately provide comment.

The indictment provided a few new details about Franklin's alleged actions, including that the AIPAC officials saw Franklin as a potentially valuable source of information and cultivated him over the course of a year through meals and, on one occasion, tickets to a Baltimore Orioles game.

Franklin's motives may have included advancing his career, the indictment said. Franklin and Rosen at one point discussed Franklin's chances of getting a job on the staff of the National Security Council. Rosen told him such a job would put Franklin "by the elbow of the president," the indictment said.

Franklin asked Rosen "to put in a good word," the indictment said.

Franklin also is alleged to have passed classified information about a Middle Eastern country to a staff member at an embassy in Washington. While not identified in the indictment, the foreign official is Israeli and the country at issue is Iran, a federal law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

The indictment was handed up May 26 but not unsealed until Monday.

Associated Press reporter Matthew Barakat in Alexandria, Va., contributed to this report.

On the Net:

FBI: http://www.fbi.gov


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They Won't Go

By BOB HERBERT, June 13, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/opinion/13herbert.html?ei=5070&en=0a2e37c2d2c4b5a0&ex=1119326400&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

George W. Bush is in no danger of being ranked among the nation's pre-eminent commanders in chief. Not only has he been unable thus far to win the war in Iraq, but on his watch significant sectors of the proud U.S. military have been rapidly deteriorating.

The Army reported on Friday that it had fallen short of its recruitment goals for a fourth consecutive month. The Marines managed to meet their recruitment target for May, but that was their first successful month this year.

Scrambling to fill its ranks, the Army is signing up more high school dropouts and lower-scoring applicants.

With the war in Iraq going badly and allegations of abuse by military personnel widespread, young men and women are increasingly deciding that there's no upside to a career choice in which the most important skills might be ducking bullets and dodging roadside bombs.

The primary reason the U.S. went to an all-volunteer military in 1973 was to ensure that those who did not want to fight wouldn't have to. That option is now being overwhelmingly exercised, discretion being the clear choice over valor. Young people and their parents alike are turning their backs on the military in droves.

The Army is so desperate for even lukewarm bodies that it is reluctant to release even problem soldiers, troops who are seriously out of shape, or pregnant, or abusing alcohol or drugs. And it is lowering standards for admission to the junior officer ranks. For example, minor criminal offenses that previously would have been prohibitive can now be overlooked.

At the same time Army recruiters have been chasing high school kids with such reckless abandon that a backlash is developing among parents who, in many cases, want the recruiters kept out of their children's schools.

"To the extent that we think students are threatened by recruiters, it's our job to intervene," said Amy Hagopian, a co-chair of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at Garfield High School in Seattle. Ms. Hagopian, who has an 18-year-old son, complained that recruiters too often put the hard sell on impressionable high school youngsters without informing them of the potential dangers of a life in the military.

Recruiters with the gift of gab go into the schools with a glamorous pitch, bags full of goodies for the kids (T-shirts, donuts, key chains) and a litany of promises they often can't keep. The kids don't hear much about their chances of being maimed or killed, or the trauma that often results from killing someone else.

(A soldier's job is to kill. I can still hear the drill sergeants in basic training screaming at us decades ago: "What are you? What are you?" And we'd scream back: "Killers! Killers!" And the sergeants would say, "What is your purpose?" And we would shout: "To kill! To kill!")

The Army, frantically searching for solutions, is offering enlistments as short as 15 months and considering bonuses worth up to $40,000. But it may be facing a problem too difficult for any amount of money to overcome. Americans are catching on to the hideousness and apparent futility of the war in Iraq. Five marines were killed in a single bomb attack in western Iraq on Thursday. On Friday, a front-page Washington Post headline described the effort to rebuild the Iraqi military as "Mission Improbable."

A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week found that nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, and 60 percent believe the war was not worth fighting.

There's something frankly embarrassing about a government offering trinkets to children to persuade them to go off and fight - and perhaps die - in a war that their nation should never have started in the first place. It's highly questionable whether most high school kids are equipped to make an informed decision about joining the military, which is exactly why they're targeted. The additional knowledge and maturity gained in the first few years after high school make it easier for a young man or woman to make a wiser, more meaningful choice, pro or con.

The parents of the kids being sought by recruiters to fight this unpopular war are creating a highly vocal and potentially very effective antiwar movement. In effect, they're saying to their own children: hell no, you won't go.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com


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Rumsfeld: Beyond the Point of No Return

by Gerald Rellick
June 13, 2005 Free Press

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/20/2005/1315

There was something unsettling about Donald Rumsfeld recent tough-talk speech in Singapore in which he described his concern over what he viewed as China’s alarming weapons buildup. Rumsfeld speech was the top story next day in the Los Angeles Times, my local paper. And at the nearby Starbuck’s I saw it was also the top story in the New York Times.

The specifics of Rumsfeld’s speech were not very interesting or informative. For that one needs to consult the recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and an article by Jeffrey Lewis, “The Ambiguous Arsenal,” which argues effectively that China’s strategic weapons buildup has not changed significantly over the last decade. Rumsfeld held one trump card however. An updated intelligence estimate on China’s defense programs is “expected to be released soon,” according to mainline media speak. But since the Iraq intelligence debacle, who is going to take that seriously? Thanks to Bush, Condi and Rumsfeld, we now live in a time when the word “intelligence” is a guaranteed laugh-getter for Jay Leno and David Letterman.

In typical Neocon fashion, Rumsfeld’s rhetoric was tough and he got the attention he was looking for. Rumsfeld challenged China’s intentions, saying, "China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, while also expanding its missile capabilities here in the region. Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment?"

Despite his reference to China threatening unnamed countries outside the Pacific region, his real focus was clearly Taiwan, and more specifically, what would the U.S. do if China were to attack Taiwan since the U.S. has a defense pact with Taiwan. This is certainly a legitimate concern. With 150,000 U.S. troops pinned down in Iraq, with military recruitment dwindling, and no military draft in the works, what the hell is the United States going to do if China plays rough on Taiwan?

But my nagging thought as I read the story was: If only this weren’t Donald Rumsfeld speaking. Does anyone really believe anything Rumsfeld says these days? We’re talking here about the most failed secretary of defense in memory, a man who has singlehandedly used and abused the U.S. military for his own experimental aims, leading to the unnecessary deaths of countless American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. He has presided over the most disgraceful period in U.S. military history, with prisoner abuse scandals that just keep coming day after day, shaming the United States.

The only “plan” Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ever had for the Iraq war – aside from doctoring the intelligence to fit their aims-- was to demonstrate to the Muslim world, and particularly the Arabs, that you shouldn’t mess with the United States. And since we can’t catch Osama bin Laden, they reasoned, at least not quickly, the only way to do this is to kill people that look like him. Which is to say, pull off a quick and easy military victory over some opponent in the Middle East that has a tough reputation but is really an over-the-hill palooka with no punch left. After that, everything will fall into place and terrorism will just go away. Dick Cheney assured Rumsfeld not to worry, that Iraq would be a “cakewalk,” so don’t get carried away with planning. Only egghead liberals plan.

And what about General Tommy Franks? Where is he now? There is a lesson here. Franks did what was asked of him—seize the country with the army Rumsfeld gave him. Franks was smart enough to realize that things were getting ugly fast so he quickly retired, got away from Washington, wrote a book, went on a promotional tour, and became a hero and a celebrity.

Rumsfeld wasn’t so savvy. Knowing that George Bush never fires anyone loyal, Rumsfeld decided to stay on for a second term. And now he gets the mockery, derision and scorn he deserves – but which the U.S. military does not deserve, but will continue to get as long as Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense.

If ever a government official had zero credibility, it’s Donald Rumsfeld. He makes Robert McNamara look good. In a recent article titled “The Rumsfeld Stain,” Bob Herbert of the New York Times, asks, “How does Donald Rumsfeld survive as defense secretary?” Herbert writes that, on top of a litany of other malfeasances and abuses in office, under Rumsfeld’s watch, “troops responsible for guarding and interrogating detainees somehow loosed their moorings to humanity, and began behaving as sadists, perverts and criminals.”

Quite a legacy. We are at a point now where it could be decades before Americans traveling abroad can again hold their heads high.

Donald Rumsfeld is indeed a “stain” on America. But unlike Tommy Franks, there is no afterlife for Rumsfeld. He has passed the point of no return. Perhaps you have to give him credit for one thing: he’s decided to go down with the ship.

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Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the defense sector of the aerospace industry for 22 years. He now teaches in the California Community College system.


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Following Years of Protests, U.S. & G8 Nations Agree To Cancel Debt For 18 of the World’s Poorest Countries

Monday, June 13th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/13/1358213

The agreement comes after years of protests by activist groups because the debt has economically crippled dozens of nations in Africa and Latin America. While the Jubilee Debt Campaign praised the move as a needed first step, it said there are more than 40 other nations that need total debt cancellation. [includes rush transcript]

On Saturday, the finance ministers from the Group of 8 industrialized nations agreed to cancel the debt of 18 (eighteen) of the world’s poorest countries. Finance ministers from the U.S, Britain, Japan, Canada, Russia, Germany, Italy and France signed off on the package to cancel $40 billion dollars of debt during a two day meeting in London. The U.S and Britain presented the proposal on the heels of meetings in Washington last week between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

The agreement will scrap 100 percent of the debt owed to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank by 18 countries including Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana and Mali. An additional 20 countries could be eligible if they submit to strict structural adjustment programs mandated by the international financial agencies.

Joining us in our D.C studio is Neil Watkins. He is the national coordinator of Jubilee USA Network.

And in New York is Andre. He is with Indymedia in the UK and has been working with organizers who are planning protests at the upcoming G 8 summit in Scotland.

    * Neil Watkins, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA network
    * Andre, working with organizaitons in the UK to protest the G8 summit in Scotland.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Joining us in our D.C. studio is Neil Watkins. He's the National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network; and in New York, Andre, with Indymedia, in Britain has been working with organizers who are planning major protests at the upcoming G8 summit in Scotland. We begin with Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA. Welcome to Democracy Now!

NEIL WATKINS: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you. Can you talk about your response to the cancellation of debt, what this means?

NEIL WATKINS: Well, Jubilee campaigns around the world really, across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and here in the U.S. have been campaigning for more than decade now for cancellation of debt. And what we have seen so far from G8 leaders has been partial measures, relief of debt, partial relief of debt service payments. For the first time this weekend, under a lot of pressure from movements around the world, the G8 agreed to a principle of 100% debt cancellation, which we think is really an important first step that we want to build on, that it's critical that countries be freed of their burden of debt so that they can spend money that they desperately need to spend for health care, for education, for clean water, and for other basic needs.

AMY GOODMAN: How exactly did this happen? Were you surprised by this? I mean, this is a campaign that has been going on among activists based in Africa, the United States and all over the world for many years.

NEIL WATKINS: That's right. And I think what has changed this year is a couple of things: First, the issue of the Iraq war really played a significant role in that Tony Blair, I think, in response to criticism from citizens across his own country, has been looking to really turn some of his attention to development issues, to issues of Africa. So you have seen strong leadership from the United Kingdom on an agenda for Africa for debt cancellation, for more and better aid, for different changes to trade policy.

And the other thing that's happening, I think, is that there is a really a left/right agreement here in this country about some of the problems with international financial institutions. And surprisingly found that even the U.S. Treasury Department was sympathetic to calls for 100% debt cancellation for different reasons than we have called for debt cancellation. But as a result you saw these two governments coming together and put forward a proposal for 100% cancellation for these 18 countries. And I think the ongoing pressure of global justice movements across the United States, across Europe, across Asia and Africa and Latin America who have been challenging the I.M.F. and World Bank and this debt for several decades has really finally begun to take an important step forward, though our journey is far from over.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Neil Watkins, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network. Now, can you talk about the cancellation of the debt for 18 countries, then an additional 20 countries would be eligible if they abide by strict structural adjustment programs? What exactly does that mean?

NEIL WATKINS: Right. So, the 18 countries that will receive 100% cancellation right away are countries that have already gone through what's called the “heavily indebted poor countries initiative” of the World Bank and I.M.F. And they have reach reached their - what is called their “completion point.” And in order to get there, many of them have gone through six or ten years of economic reforms, of privatization, of removing subsidies, of cutting budgets for social services, etc. So, those countries are now eligible. But in order for additional countries to be eligible, they have to continue to go through those programs. So, you're going to continue to see privatization of water, trade liberalization in order for countries to get to this point of 100% debt cancellation.

And our message is clear that, though we think it's an important first step that the G8 have agreed to 100% cancellation that it is completely, completely unacceptable to force these other 20 nations, and not to mention the nations beyond that that need debt cancellation, to go through these sorts of privatization projects in order to get their debt cancellation. These countries need debt cancellation now without conditions so that they can provide the services that their people need. In Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to kill more than 2 million people every year. And we think all African nations need to see their debts fully canceled to be able to just begin to respond to that pandemic.

AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined in our New York studio by Andre, who is with the Indymedia in Britain. Welcome to Democracy Now!

ANDRE: Hello, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: There is a major meeting coming up of the G8 in Scotland. Can you talk about the preparations for them, and how this latest news of the cancellation of debt fits in?

ANDRE: Well, that's correct. There is actually going to be three major networks, three major mobilizations happening in Scotland in July this year. The first one is by a group called Make Poverty History and they are a large coalition of non-governmental organizations --

AMY GOODMAN: Make Poverty History?

ANDRE: That is correct, non-governmental organizations, charities, and church groups, and other trade unions and so on. There's also a mobilization running under the banner of the G8 Alternatives, which are local Scottish groups as well as organizations such as Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Trident Ploughshares, and some other local Scottish trade unions. And then the final group is the non-hierarchical organization called Dissent, which represents a whole range of groups around the United Kingdom and Europe and around the world. This is an ongoing mobilization, which will continue, as well, past the G8.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are their plans? What are they going to do? The G8 is, what, set to begin July 6?

ANDRE: That's correct. There are a whole range of plans, in fact, going to happen. The summit itself starts on the 6th and runs till the 8th. But demonstrations will be starting in Edinburgh on the 1st of July. There's a bicycle ride that is being actually started from London already and is making its way out there. They're going to end up in a critical mass. There's then going to be two large demonstrations in Edinburgh over the weekend, as well as a counter summit running in Glasgow. Later on that week, there will be blockades happening around the summit itself, as well as demonstrations at Faslane, which is the largest submarine base in the United Kingdom and also the main port where nuclear submarines remain. Other issues -- I mean there are a whole range of issues that are going to be covered by the summit itself, and people have been organizing around these. These are things such as, not just the debts and trade justice, but also climate change, immigration issues, no borders, things like precarity and employment and civil liberties, as well, is definitely going to play a large role. Something else that is apparent, obviously, with the demonstrations against the Faslane base is that there is a major --

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the Faslane?

ANDRE: The Faslane base is the submarine base where the nuclear submarines are kept. There's a major link between --

AMY GOODMAN: In Scotland?

ANDRE: That is correct. There's a major link between poverty and war and the factors that help create poverty help create war, which then go on to create poverty again, and there's an ever-increasing spiral, really. And this is all played into by the policies that are dreamt up by the G8.

AMY GOODMAN: And how is IndyMedia, IndyMedia.org, going to be covering the protests as well as the actual G8 summit?

ANDRE: Well, there’s been plans by, it's actually IndyMedia.org.ukthat is going to be the primary website covering the protests. There are going to be media centers in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as several mobile media centers that will be going out to the campsites, to the demonstrations trying to get people -- to give people the opportunity to upload their news. There is at the same time as the website, there's also going to be online streaming radio, which will be accessible through the websites. There will be video being produced. There's going to be all kinds of exciting things.

AMY GOODMAN: And how does your coverage compare, for example, to the BBC? What do you see will be the major differences?

ANDRE: The major difference is that we allow anybody to publish their news. We're going to be a contemporary outlet for people to write what they feel is happening, and really to give the word from the streets, as opposed to being filtered through a corporation, which essentially the BBC is.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Neil Watkins in Washington, National Coordinator of Jubilee U.S.A. Network, what is the plans of Jubilee, now with this cancellation of debt in 18 countries to what is your presence going to be at the G8 summit?

NEIL WATKINS: Well, we'll certainly be joining with colleagues across the U.K. and around the world at the G8 summit. And our message is that though this is an important first step and an important precedent that was set by the G8 in agreeing to these 18 countries, it must be expanded to include all impoverished countries, that this does not even address the debts of impoverished nations like Nigeria, like Haiti, Jamaica, Bangladesh, just to name a few. So we think it's an important first step, but we are going to be campaigning for years ahead to make sure that impoverished nations, nations is crisis across Asia and Africa and Latin America see their debts cancelled and also see that these economic policies, these structural adjustment policies cannot continue, that we cannot have debt cancellation if it is attached to privatization and forced trade liberalization. And that is the message that we and really hundreds of thousands of others will be bringing to the G8 this summer in Scotland.

AMY GOODMAN: Neil Watkins, I want thank you for being with us, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, and Andre of IndyMedia.org.uk. Thanks very much. 



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