NucNews - June 15, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Wall emitting radiation Rutland Herald Jun 15, 2005 http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050615/NEWS/506150393/1003&template=printart READSBORO ­ A 250-foot retaining wall behind the Readsboro General Store was built with low-level radioactive concrete blocks from the now-closed Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant. Tests of the retaining wall, conducted in February by the Vermont Department of Health about four years after it was built, show it is contaminated with the radioactive isotope tritium. State and federal officials said, however, the wall poses no health risk. The tritium has a half-life, or remains radioactive, for 12.3 years. The retaining wall was built along the West Branch of the Deerfield River behind the store, located on Route 100. It was built with 35 large, interlocking concrete blocks taken from the reactor building of the nearby nuclear plant in Rowe, Mass., about three miles from the small southern Vermont town of Readsboro in Bennington County. The blocks were once part of a concrete shield around the reactor core. The blocks were taken from the site ­ with the company's permission ­ by an employee, Tom Dente of Readsboro, who owns the Readsboro General Store with his wife, Brenda. "It made a beautiful retaining wall; it was the cheapest thing I could build," Dente said. He has worked at Yankee Rowe for most of the past 20 years, the last 13 years for a subcontractor at the plant in the shipping department. The reactor's owner, Yankee Atomic Electric Co., conducted initial tests on the blocks in 1999 as part of a decommissioning and demolition process that is only now almost complete. After intensive sand-blasting and cleaning, tests used at the time showed the blocks were free from radioactivity, according to the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. More sensitive and detailed tests were done at the Rowe site in 2004, as the company wanted to crush the waste concrete and use it as fill in the company's plan to return the reactor site to a green field by the end of 2005. The new tests surprised plant officials, they said, because this time the tests showed the concrete contained tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear fission process. Tritium, which is water based, normally isn't absorbed by concrete. Those tests at Yankee Rowe prompted the tests in February 2005 at the retaining wall in Readsboro. Yankee Atomic spokeswoman Kelley Smith said the company has asked the NRC for a waiver of federal regulations, which would allow the wall to stay in Vermont, rather than be dismantled and shipped to a low-level radioactive waste facility. Smith said the company did not feel it had to release information about the wall to the public because it did not pose a health risk. If there was a danger, she said, the company would have informed the public. She said as far as she knew, the retaining wall was the only case of recycled building material from the reactor building at Yankee Rowe being released to the public. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the commission was investigating whether the handling of the waste material was a violation of federal policies. "We are still looking at the situation to determine if any enforcement action is warranted," he said. "If we did issue a Notice of Violation for this, it would most likely be a low-level one since there was no real safety significance." The tests in Readsboro in February showed the wall was releasing one millirem of radioactivity a year above normal background levels of radioactivity exposure, which is estimated at 360 millirems a year, Sheehan said. For comparison, a chest X-ray adds 20 millirems of radioactivity a year to normal background levels; a cross-country airplane ride adds 4 millirem. A millirem is one-thousandth of a rem, which is a measure of biological damage caused by radiation. Dente said he learned of the concrete shield blocks sometime in 1999 and asked for permission to use them to build the retaining wall behind his new store in Vermont. Dente said Tuesday the blocks were cleaned, sandblasted and screened for radioactivity by his employer before he had them moved a couple of miles to his store in Vermont. He said he didn't pay for the blocks, but paid for them to be moved to his site and built into a wall. Dente said he trusted Yankee Atomic and the people who worked there, and he said he was confident the wall posed no health problem to the public or to the river running behind his store. "Yankee turned themselves in on the testing on the tritium," he said. "The radiation protection people surveyed them. I think they're on the up and up." Tritium is water-soluble and poses a health risk only through drinking water containing high levels of tritium, according to both the company and the NRC. Smith, Yankee Atomic's spokeswoman, said the company estimated someone would have to eat 700 pounds of the concrete blocks to receive a dangerous dose of tritium. Sheehan of the NRC said the tritium contamination was uncovered because of the NRC's "changing decommissioning expectations for the plant." "The federal government sets a standard that if the site is to be released for unrestricted use following decommissioning, a member of the public cannot be exposed to any more than 25 millirems per year from residual radioactivity at the facility," he said. The state of Massachusetts, however, would like those levels for Yankee Rowe to be lower, Sheehan said. The company has been negotiating these levels with the state in recent years. "To demonstrate compliance with the new, lower levels, Yankee Rowe recently tested the remaining shield blocks and other items (at the Rowe site) at a more sensitive threshold," Sheehan said. "That led to the realization that there was some tritium contamination and that the blocks in Readsboro should be tested, too." Robert Stirewalt, programs and policy coordinator for the Vermont Department of Health, said the state conducted water and soil tests, as well as core sampling of the concrete blocks this February. He said the tests showed a safe level of radiation. "One millirem does not pose a radiological health risk," Stirewalt said. Jonathan Bloch, a Putney attorney who represents the Citizen Awareness Network, an anti-nuclear group based near Yankee Rowe, said he was not surprised about the tritium problem. "We are of course outraged, but not surprised," he said. "This material was put in a public place and the public was exposed to it. What else is out there? Perhaps something more dangerous? This happened in 1999 and they're telling us now?" Bloch said that while the company, the state and the NRC all say only 1 millirem of radioactivity is coming from the wall, any increase is unnecessary. "Why should this state be a dumping ground for Massachusetts's radioactive waste?" Bloch said. A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Health did not return telephone calls asking for comment about the tritium problem. Yankee Atomic was owned by a consortium of New England utilities, including Central Vermont Public Service Corp. The consortium decided to shut down the reactor permanently in 1998 rather than fix problems related to aging. Yankee Atomic has no financial connection to Vermont Yankee reactor in Vernon, which is now owned by Entergy Nuclear of Jackson, Miss. Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. -------- australia Greenpeace's Gerd Leipold argues against nuclear power Australia Broadcasting "PM" - Wednesday, 15 June, 2005 18:34:00 Reporter: Mark Colvin http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1393179.htm] MARK COLVIN: For the first time in decades, the possibility of nuclear reactors providing power to the Australian electricity grid has been seriously on the political agenda in the last couple of weeks. It's partly echoed a debate overseas where environmentalists, such as the originator of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, have said that nuclear power may be the only solution to the power and climate change crisis the world now faces. Last week on this program, we heard proponents of nuclear power pushing it as a response to the global warming caused by coal-burning power stations. But of course, nuclear power also has its long-standing opponents. Gerd Leipold is International Executive Director of Greenpeace, and he's in Australia at the moment. I asked Dr Leipold why Greenpeace was still against the nuclear option. GERD LEIPOLD: First of all let's not forget that electricity contributes only to about 22 per cent to global warming. Electricity is where nuclear power could make some impact, so we're talking about an important but nevertheless a part of the climate change contributors. MARK COLVIN: Certainly a growing part isn't it because one of the big growth areas of power use is air conditioners? GERD LEIPOLD: That is true but if we look really at growth, then we should look at transport and then we should really look at aviation, which I think is the most worrying trend at the moment, both because of its growth rates but also because of the release of CO2 and other gases in high altitudes has more effect on greenhouse effects than if you do it near the surface of the Earth. MARK COLVIN: I'm assuming you flew here? GERD LEIPOLD: Yes. Unfortunately coming to Australia it's very difficult if you're pressed for time to use any other means of transportation. MARK COLVIN: So you would see that Australians would get a bit nervous about any suggestion that we should cut down on air travel. GERD LEIPOLD: Absolutely. Absolutely. I can understand that and no-one is suggesting that we have to abolish air travel. However, the growth rates are still worrying. If you look at the growth of cheap airlines in Europe, for example, where it's perfectly feasible that for 20 pounds you can fly from London to Verona, then it's very clear that these prices do not express the real cost to the environment. On the contrary. MARK COLVIN: But what about nuclear power itself? What are the arguments against? GERD LEIPOLD: Well all the arguments which have been used in the past are still valid. The unresolved waste issue, which also has the element that if we use nuclear power now we still leave it to our children to deal with the waste without getting any benefit from it. MARK COLVIN: And you don't see SYNROC (synthetic rock) and such like developments of locking up the waste as providing the potential to solve that in the near future? GERD LEIPOLD: Well, I read a scenario from a Princeton scholar the other day. He said if we would produce 75 per cent of all electricity worldwide by nuclear, then what we would achieve is 25 per cent reduction in carbon emission. That is substantial. I am not saying that. But that would mean we would need 20, maybe 40 times as many reactors as we have now, we would be talking about 10,000 to 20,000 nuclear reactors, we would be talking to a yearly production of 600 tonnes of plutonium, we would be talking to a need of half a million tonnes of uranium annually. If we think that these nuclear reactors were all over the world, just imagine Indonesia would become a country with a large use of nuclear reactors. Would anyone really want, a country that's unstable, would anyone want that country to have nuclear power and the possibility to have plutonium, the possibility eventually to develop nuclear weapons? I cannot see that. MARK COLVIN: But what about the problem that we have, which is that we are simply, as it were, running out of power, or that the demand is outstripping the supply? GERD LEIPOLD: Well, if you take especially Australia and compare Australia to other developed nations then I think it has a very bad record in terms of energy efficiency. If it would achieve the energy efficiency of Japan, which is not the leading light in industrial nations, but if it would achieve that it could easily switch off quite a number of coal stations which are operating right now. MARK COLVIN: How? GERD LEIPOLD: There's plenty of measures in there. It starts from solar heating of water to better insulation of houses, to energy efficiency in the industrial sector and many of these things can be achieved through policy measures. Through a tax system, through regulation. MARK COLVIN: Greenpeace has developed in some conservative circles a reputation as a very radical, some even see it as an extreme organisation. We have a conservative government here. Do you expect to be listened to here? GERD LEIPOLD: Well I hope so very much because a) we see enough signs of global warming. My experience is that Australians are very concerned about global warming because they observed the drought, they observe the changes in weather patterns and I would think that climate change is not so much a question of conservative or progressive politics. The best and most surprising policy announcement in recent weeks came from Arnold Schwarzenegger who committed California to a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions. So he would, has set a target that by 2050 the emissions will be 20 per cent of what they were in 1990. That's an example of a conservative politician who goes against his conservative president, an example also that we should not only rely to global solutions, not only to national solutions, but also that on a state level a lot can be done. MARK COLVIN: Greenpeace International Executive Director, Dr Gerd Leipold. -------- britain Britain leaving nuclear options open Australia Broadcasting "PM" - Wednesday, 15 June, 2005 18:44:41 Reporter: Rafael Epstein http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1393180.htm] MARK COLVIN: The pro and anti nuclear energy camps draw different lessons from the nuclear experience in countries like Britain. The UK faces a dilemma. One fifth of its power comes from nuclear plants but all bar one are due to close in the next decade. Britain has just 12 months to decide whether it will build new nuclear plants, an option that the Blair Labour Government is leaving open. Rafael Epstein reports. RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Britain has endured the nuclear debate for decades and a government white paper has very deliberately left the issue of nuclear power open. The Blair Government is determined to make an impact on climate change. Britain went some way towards meeting its Kyoto greenhouse reduction targets on the back of a switch in power generation from oil to natural gas. But it's not enough, and now the Government appears to be preparing the public to embrace more nuclear power stations. John Loughhead is from the UK's Energy Research Centre. JOHN LOUGHHEAD: The main dilemma is that today 22 per cent of the electricity consumed in the UK comes from its nuclear power stations and over the next 15 years all but one of those will need to be closed because they will have come to the end of their engineering design life and so it's not considered safe to continue operating them, like you wouldn't drive around in an old car. And if we look at when we're going to take the existing plants out of service, those decisions have got to be made within the next year or so at the most. RAFAEL EPSTEIN: The issue is hampered now by problems at one of Britain's best-known nuclear facilities, Sellafield in Scotland. The plant was used to make the nuclear material used in Britain's weapons arsenal. Currently the focus is on a reprocessing facility that was supposed to make money out of one of the industry's biggest problems, disposing of spent fuel. But it emerged recently that an internal leak in the plant went unnoticed for eight months. Twenty-two tonnes of dissolved uranium and plutonium seeped unmonitored into the internal workings of the plant and the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to clean it up could see the plant closed down. Anti nuclear campaigners hope the latest problem will kill the idea of revamping nuclear power. PM spoke to the local anti nuclear campaigner, Martin Forwood, as he stood at the Sellafield complex after a day long tour of the facility. MARTIN FORWOOD: I think the experience we've had here is we've had 50 years of failure, if you like, in that it has never lived up to the reputation that it was first born with and of course the famous quote that goes with that is, "electricity too cheap to meter". Consequently we've found out that in fact it is pretty much more expensive than the other four energy forms we have at the moment, especially when you take into account the cost of dealing with the fuel from those reactors, the nuclear waste and so on. RAFAEL EPSTEIN: You're standing outside the Sellafield plant now. MARTIN FORWOOD: Right. RAFAEL EPSTEIN: You've just been in there for about eight hours to see for yourself the results of the internal leak at that reprocessing plant. MARTIN FORWOOD: It has always been a lame duck unless you put it out of its misery now. RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Do you think the British people are ready for the building of more nuclear power plants? It looks to some as though the Government's preparing the ground to replace the plants that are winding down with new ones. MARTIN FORWOOD: There's no doubt that the nuclear industry would like to go down that line and all the opinion polls in the last few months have shown that people in the UK are not in favour of new nuclear power. They would rather try some of the other renewable energy sources, the clean, self-sustaining energy sources. They take too long to build. I think the earliest date we're likely to get new power stations, if that's what the Government decides, is about 2020. Well, that's far too late in terms of meeting, for example, the 2010 or even the 2020 Kyoto targets. We just can't do it. We've got to do something else. RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Green campaigners say nuclear power is too expensive and too dangerous and the answer is alternative forms of renewable energy and a reduction in energy use. John Loughhead says new energy sources and a reduction in demand are both unlikely. Costs, on the other hand, he says, depend on who you talk to. JOHN LOUGHHEAD: Nuclear power traditionally has been subject to a lot of analysis looking at all of these consequences of clean-up and everything else and it is right that we should do that. However, if you're going to do that for nuclear power, we need to make sure that we apply the same criteria to the other forms of power. So, for instance, for coal power-fired power stations should we be including the cost of closing and maintaining safe coalmines? Should we be including the cost of paying the health benefits of people who've suffered as a result of working in coalmines? MARK COLVIN: We'll leave that story for now because of a major breaking story tonight. ---- Business Analysis: BNFL leak leaves Tony Blair's nuclear ambitions in disarray By Katherine Griffiths in New York and Marie Woolf 15 June 2005 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/story.jsp?story=646982 For the world's nuclear industry, next month's G8 meeting at Gleneagles in Scotland will be crucial. On the agenda for world leaders attending the three-day summit will be how to tackle the global warming crisis facing the environment. -------- china The ambiguous arsenal Recent reports warn that China is aggressively building up its nuclear forces. Don't believe the hype. By Jeffrey Lewis May/June 2005 pp. 52-59 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists http://www.thebulletin.org/print.php?art_ofn=mj05lewis If you read the Washington Times, in addition to believing that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are hidden somewhere in Syria, you might believe that "China's aggressive strategic nuclear-modernization program" was proceeding apace. [1] If munching on freedom fries at a Heritage Foundation luncheon is your thing, you might worry that "even marginal improvements to [China's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)] derived from U.S. technical know-how" threaten the United States. [2] So, it may come as a shock to learn that China's nuclear arsenal is about the same size it was a decade ago, and that the missile that prompted the Washington Times article has been under development since the mid-1980s. Perhaps your anxiety about "marginal improvements" to China's missile force would recede as you learned that China's 18 ICBMs, sitting unfueled in their silos, their nuclear warheads in storage, are essentially the same as they were the day China began deploying them in 1981. In fact, contrary to reports you might have recently read that Chinese nukes number in the hundreds--if not the thousands--the true size of the country's operationally deployed arsenal is probably about 80 nuclear weapons. Estimating the size, configuration, and capability of China's nuclear weapons inventory is not just an exercise in abstract accounting. The specter of a robust Chinese arsenal has been cited by the Bush administration as a rationale for not making deeper cuts in U.S. nuclear deployments. Likewise, opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) point to China in making the case for maintaining U.S. deterrent capabilities. Others portray China's modernization program as evidence of the country's increasingly hostile posture toward Taiwan--adding a sense of urgency to developing missile defenses. And, more recently, these concerns have raised the temperature in transatlantic relations as the European Union contemplates lifting the arms embargo imposed on China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The true scope of China's nuclear capabilities are hidden in plain sight, among the myriad declassified assessments produced by the U.S. intelligence community. Yet, such analyses have run afoul of conservative legislators, who express dismay when threat assessments don't conform to their perceptions of reality. Congressional Republicans, for instance, in 2000 created the China Futures Panel, chaired by former Gen. John Tilelli, to examine charges of bias in the CIA assessments of China. In 2002, Bob Schaffer, a Republican congressman from Colorado, complained about the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of foreign ballistic missile development in a letter to CIA director George Tenet: "The lack of attention to the pronounced and growing danger caused by China's ballistic missile buildup, and its aggressive strategy for using its ballistic missiles cannot go unchallenged. The report is misleading, and, because it understates the magnitude of threat, is profoundly dangerous." Consequently, many defense analysts simply ignore what the intelligence community has to say. For example, two scholars in a peer-reviewed international security journal cited Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems to suggest that China's future submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)--the Giant Wave, or Julang-2 (JL-2)--may carry "three to eight multiple independent reentry vehicles." They failed to mention the consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Chinese warheads are so large that it is impossible to place more than one on the JL-2. In another instance, a student from the National University of Singapore posted an essay on a web site claiming that China had more than 2,000 warheads. His figure was based on amateurish fissile material production estimates that incorrectly identified several Chinese fissile material facilities. [3] (Classified estimates by the Energy Department, leaked to the press, estimate the Chinese plutonium stockpile at 1.7-2.8 tons. [4] Assuming 3-4 kilograms of plutonium per warhead, China could deploy, at most, a nuclear force of 400-900 weapons.) Despite such obvious mistakes, experts from the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies all cited the Singapore essay to suggest that China might have substantially more nuclear warheads than widely believed. [5] David Tanks, then with the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, called the essay "convincingly argued." Iraq debacle or not, the estimates of the U.S. intelligence community are still a better place to start than, say, some college kid's essay posted on the internet. These analysts have unparalleled access to the full array of information-gathering technology available to the federal government. For example, the intelligence community monitors ballistic missile tests with satellite images to detect test preparations, signals intelligence sensors to intercept telemetry data, and radars to track missile launches and collect signature data on warheads and decoys. No comparable unclassified source of such data exists, unless it is released by the government conducting the test. Moreover, the intelligence community employs well-known methods that can be evaluated for gaps or bias. Although intelligence estimates are sometimes politicized or agenda driven, systematic bias is often evident and can be observed by comparing estimates over time. For example, the intelligence community has tended to exaggerate future Chinese ballistic missile deployments, in part because Chinese industrial capacity has tended to exceed production. This information is useful when considering estimates about future Chinese deployments. Establishing a baseline consensus estimate about the size and composition of Chinese nuclear forces would allow analysts to lodge specific objections to intelligence community judgments. More broadly, a deeper understanding of the true scope of China's arsenal and its modernization efforts provides a clearer picture of Beijing's strategic intentions. Minimum means of reprisal Beijing doesn't publish detailed information about the size and composition of its nuclear forces. With a very small nuclear arsenal relative to the United States and Russia, China seems intent on letting ambiguity enhance the deterrent effect of its nuclear forces. Chinese force deployments suggest that Beijing's leadership believes that even a very small, unsophisticated force will deter nuclear attacks by larger, more sophisticated nuclear forces. While some Western analysts spent the Cold War fretting about the "delicate balance of terror," the Chinese leadership appears to have concluded that technical details such as the size, configuration, and readiness of nuclear forces are largely irrelevant. China's declaration that it would "not be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances" reflects the idea that nuclear weapons are not much good, except to deter other nuclear weapons. In deciding what sort of nuclear arsenal to build, China settled on what Marshal Nie Rongzhen, the first head of China's nuclear weapons program, called "the minimum means of reprisal." [6] China's reluctance to provide numerical information about its nuclear forces relaxed a bit this past spring, when its foreign ministry released an April 2004 statement that, "Among the nuclear weapon states, China . . . possesses the smallest nuclear arsenal." That statement suggests China possesses fewer than 200 nuclear weapons, the generally accepted size of the British nuclear arsenal. The intelligence community does not publish a single, detailed assessment of China's nuclear arsenal. Instead, these estimates are scattered across multiple documents, including the 2001 edition of the Defense Department's Proliferation: Threat and Response and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center's (NASIC) 2003 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat. Some information, such as the National Intelligence Council's Tracking the Dragon series, has been released through the natural process of declassification. But much more information was released--or leaked--during the 1990s amid debates over allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage, ballistic missile defenses, and the CTBT. Based upon these various assessments, a realistic estimate of China's nuclear arsenal is a total force of 30 nuclear warheads operationally deployed on ICBMs and another 50-100 on medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), for a total force of 80-130 nuclear weapons. (See "China's Arsenal, by the Numbers,") Estimates provided by many nongovernmental organizations--such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)--are much higher (albeit, not as high as their more zealous conservative counterparts). They typically describe the People's Republic of China as the world's third largest nuclear power, ahead of Britain and France, with 400 or so warheads. [7] Such estimates often assume deployment of three other categories of nuclear weapons--aircraft-delivered weapons, SLBMs, and tactical nuclear weapons. Yet, in the 1980s, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found no evidence that China had deployed nuclear bombs to airfields and, based on the antiquity of the aircraft, concluded that China did not assign nuclear missions to any of its planes--a conclusion reiterated in a declassified 1993 National Security Council report. The most recent edition of the Pentagon's Chinese Military Power suggests that China has yet to deploy the Julang-1 (JL-1) ballistic missile on its solitary ballistic missile submarine. And, in 1984, the DIA acknowledged that it had "no evidence confirming production or deployment" of tactical nuclear weapons. To the contrary, Chinese Military Power notes that the country's short-range ballistic missiles are conventionally armed, thereby freeing Beijing from "the political and practical constraints associated with the use of nuclear-armed missiles." Room for expansion? Over the next 15 years, the intelligence community expects China's ICBM force to expand from 18 to 75-100 strategic nuclear warheads targeted primarily against the United States and from 12 shorter-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching parts of the United States to "two dozen." [8] Beijing's modernization plan centers on a mobile, solid-fueled ballistic missile under development since the mid-1980s called the Dong Feng (DF)-31. The intelligence community believes the DF-31 could be deployed during the next few years. Since 2002, IISS has cited "reports" that the DF-31 is deployed, but that assessment appears based on a pair of 2001 news stories in the Taipei Times and Washington Times, neither of which actually claims the missile is deployed. [9] The intelligence community believes China is also developing follow-on versions of the DF-31: the extended-range DF-31A to replace the DF-5 (currently its longest-range ICBM) and a submarine-launched version (JL-2). The DF-31A may have a range of 12,000 kilometers and could be deployed before 2010. China is also designing a new nuclear ballistic missile submarine to carry the JL-2, which is expected to have a range of more than 8,000 kilometers. China will likely develop and test the JL-2 and the new sub (Type 094) later this decade. [10] One senior intelligence official described the 75-100 warhead estimate to the New York Times: "[China would] add new warheads to their old 18 [DF-5s], transforming them from single-warhead missiles into four-warhead missiles," or "double the size of their projected land-based mobile missiles." [11] The estimate of 75 warheads assumes that China will supplement its existing ballistic missile force with the DF-31 ICBMs; the estimate of 100 warheads is based on the assumption that China would build half as many DF-31 ballistic missiles, but place multiple warheads on existing DF-5 ICBMs. China has not placed multiple warheads on its silo-based ICBMs and has not begun to deploy the DF-31. Therefore, these predictions are little more than informed speculation, based on how the intelligence community imagines China might respond to missile defense and other changes in U.S. nuclear posture. Past intelligence community estimates, however, have overstated future Chinese ICBM deployments. The number of Chinese strategic ballistic missiles has actually declined, from 145 in 1984 to 80 today. China tested its smallest nuclear warhead from 1992-1996. [12] Developed for China's DF-31 ICBM, NASIC estimated that the reentry vehicle has a mass of 470 kilograms--too heavy to place more than one on any of China's solid-fueled ballistic missiles. [13] Placing multiple warheads on China's solid-fueled ballistic missiles would probably require Beijing to design and test a new warhead, which is currently prohibited by China's signature on the CTBT. [14] Dangerous incentives So, let's review: China deploys just 30 ICBMs, kept unfueled and without warheads, and another 50-100 MRBMs, sitting unarmed in their garrisons. Conventional wisdom suggests this posture is vulnerable and invites preemptive attack during a crisis. This minimal arsenal is clearly a matter of choice: China stopped fissile material production in 1990 and has long had the capacity to produce a much larger number of ballistic missiles. [15] The simplest explanation for this choice is that the Chinese leadership worries less about its vulnerability to a disarming first strike than the costs of an arms race or what some Second Artillery officer might do with a fully armed nuclear weapon. In a strange way, Beijing placed more faith in Washington and Moscow than in its own military officers. Washington has never reciprocated that trust. Instead, the United States has embarked on a major transformation of its strategic forces that is, in part, driven by concern about the modernization of China's strategic forces. President Bill Clinton reportedly directed U.S. Strategic Command in 1998 to include plans for strikes against China in the U.S. nuclear weapons targeting plan. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) identified China as one of seven countries "that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency" with nuclear weapons. [16] Chinese strategic forces are increasingly supplanting Russia as the primary benchmark for determining the size and capabilities of U.S. strategic forces--at least in administration rhetoric. China's nuclear arsenal is reflected in the 2001 NPR in two ways. First, the review recommends reducing the 6,000 deployed U.S. nuclear weapons to no less than 1,700-2,200. In response to criticism that these cuts didn't go low enough, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that further reductions might encourage China to attempt what he termed a "sprint to parity"--a rapid increase in nuclear forces to reach numerical parity with the United States. [17] Second, the 2001 NPR recommends the addition of ballistic missile defenses and non-nuclear strike capabilities to help improve the ability of the United States to extend nuclear deterrence to its allies. [18] Here too, concern over China's arsenal lurked in the background. Shortly before he was nominated as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy (with responsibility for overseeing the NPR), Keith Payne argued that the United States, in a crisis with China over Taiwan, must possess the capability to disarm China with a first strike if U.S. deterrence is to be credible. Despite overwhelming U.S. nuclear superiority, he has argued, "China's leadership may not be susceptible to U.S. deterrence threats, regardless of their severity, largely because denying Taiwan independence would be a near-absolute goal for Chinese leaders." Thus, the United States "would have to make blatantly clear its will and capability to defeat Chinese conventional and [weapons of mass destruction] attacks against Taiwan and against its own power projection forces." [19] Yet, if the United States were truly interested in discouraging a Chinese sprint to parity or the development of a Chinese ballistic missile force that could undertake coercive operations, the president would disavow the vision for nuclear forces outlined in the NPR. The Chinese leadership chose their arsenal in part on the belief that the United States would not be foolish enough to use nuclear weapons against China in a conflict. By asserting that Washington may be that foolish, and by attempting to exploit the weaknesses inherent in China's decision to rely on a small vulnerable force, the NPR creates incentives for Beijing to increase the size, readiness, and usability of its nuclear forces. Larger, more ready Chinese nuclear forces would not be in the best interests of the United States. In the midst of a crisis, any attempt by Beijing to ready its ballistic missiles for a first strike against the United States, let alone to actually fire one, would be suicide. The only risk that China's current nuclear arsenal poses to the United States is an unauthorized nuclear launch--something the intelligence community has concluded "is highly unlikely" under China's current operational practices. That might change, however, if China were to adopt the "hair trigger" nuclear postures that the United States and Russia maintain even today to demonstrate the "credibility" of their nuclear deterrents. China might also increase its strategic forces or deploy theater nuclear forces that could be used early in a conflict--developments that might alarm India, with predictable secondary effects on Pakistan. So far, none of this has happened. Chinese nuclear forces today look remarkably like they have for decades. The picture of the Chinese nuclear arsenal that emerges from U.S. intelligence assessments suggests a country that--at least in the nuclear field--is deploying a smaller, less ready arsenal than is within its capabilities. That reflects a choice to rely on a minimum deterrent that sacrifices offensive capability in exchange for maximizing political control and minimizing economic cost--a decision that seems eminently sensible. The great mystery is not that Beijing chose such an arsenal, but that the Bush administration would be eager to change it. 1. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Inside the Ring: Failed DF-31 Test," Washington Times, January 4, 2002, p. 9. 2. Richard D. Fisher Jr., "Commercial Space Cooperation Should Not Harm National Security," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1198, June 26, 1998. 3. Yang Zheng, China's Nuclear Arsenal, March 16, 1996 (www.kimsoft.com/korea/ch-war.htm). 4. David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund, "A History of China's Plutonium Production," pp. 61-80; see also David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 126-130. 5. See: Fisher, "Commercial Space Cooperation Should Not Harm National Security"; Richard D. Fisher Jr. and Baker Spring, "China's Nuclear and Missile Espionage Heightens the Need for Missile Defense," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1303, July 2, 1999; David R. Markov and Andrew W. Hull, "The Changing Nature of Chinese Nuclear Strategy," Institute for Defense Analyses, January 1997; David R. Tanks, "Exploring U.S. Missile Defense Requirements in 2010: What Are the Policy and Technology Challenges?" Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, April 1997; and "Size of China's Ballistic Missile Force," Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, no author, no date. 6. Nie Rongzhen, Inside the Red Star: The Memoirs of Marshal Nie Rongzhen, Zhong Rongyi, translator (Beijing: New World Press, 1988). See also: Nie Rongzhen, "How China Develops Its Nuclear Weapons," Beijing Review, April 29, 1985, pp. 15-18. 7. Such estimates are often based on two comments in the open literature: In 1979, a senior Defense Department official described the nuclear forces deployed by China, France, and Britain as "more or less comparable with China perhaps being the leader of the three. So it is possible that China might be the third nuclear power in the world." See: Defense Department, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for FY80; Part 1: Defense Posture; Budget Priorities and Management Issues; Strategic Nuclear Posture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office (GPO), 1979), p. 357. See also John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 253. A "senior Chinese military officer" purportedly told Lewis and Xue that China maintained "a nuclear weapons inventory greater than that of the French and British strategic forces combined." 8. Unless otherwise noted, this estimate is derived from: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat through 2015, Senate Hearing 107-467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002. 9. Bill Gertz, "China Ready to Deploy its First Mobile ICBMs," Washington Times, September 6, 2001. 10. Senate Committee on Intelligence, Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States, Senate Hearing 107-597, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2001, p. 79. 11. Michael R. Gordon and Steven Lee Myers, "Risk of Arms Race Seen in U.S. Design of Missile Defense," New York Times, May 28, 2000, p. A1. An earlier National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) estimate, however, suggested that the DF-5A (CSS-4) might carry up to three 470-kilogram DF-31 (CSS-X-10)-type reentry vehicles--although one assumption of this analysis was that a "minimum number of changes" were made to modify a Smart Dispenser upper stage for use as a post-boost vehicle. See Bill Gertz, Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999), p. 252. 12. Defense Department, Future Military Capabilities of the People's Republic of China, Report to Congress Pursuant to Section 1226 of the FY98 National Defense Authorization Act (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1998), p. 5. 13. The NAIC estimate is found in NAIC-1442-0629-97 (no title), December 10, 1996, cited in Gertz, Betrayal, pp. 251-252. 14. John M. Shalikashvili, Findings and Recommendations Concerning the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001). 15. Defense Department, Chinese Military Power 1997, p. 4. 16. Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-60 (1998) returned China to the Single Integrated Operational Plan after a reported 16-year absence. Although classified, the Washington Post reported that PDD-60 directed "the military to plan attacks against a wider spectrum of targets in China, including the country's growing military-industrial complex and its improved conventional forces." See: R. Jeffrey Smith, "Clinton Directive Changes Strategy on Nuclear Arms Centering on Deterrence, Officials Drop Terms for Long Atomic War," Washington Post, December 7, 1997, p. A1; and Hans M. Kristensen, The Matrix of Deterrence: U.S. Strategic Command Force Structure Studies (Berkeley: Nautilus Institute, 2001), pp. 14-15. The revelation produced a confidential State Department memorandum, now partially declassified, concerning targeting policy. See: State Department, Targeting Policy, March 17, 1998 (SEA-23820.9). 17. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reduction: The Moscow Treaty, Senate Hearing 107-622, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, pp. 81, 111. 18. These quotations are drawn from the unclassified cover letter that accompanied the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. See: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Foreword, Nuclear Posture Review Report, January 2002 (www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/d20020109npr.pdf). 19. Keith B. Payne, "Post-Cold War Deterrence and a Taiwan Crisis," China Brief, vol. 1, no. 5, September 12, 2001. Jeffrey Lewis is a research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy in College Park, Maryland. May/June 2005 pp. 52-59 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Sidebar: China's arsenal, by the numbers Why 80-130 operationally deployed weapons is the best estimate for China's nuclear forces • 18 DF-5 (NATO designation: CSS-4) ICBMs. The liquid-fueled Dong Feng (DF)-5 ICBM ("East Wind") is the only Chinese missile capable of striking targets throughout the entire United States. With the greatest throw weight among Chinese ballistic missiles, the DF-5 is likely equipped with China's largest nuclear warhead, with an estimated yield of 4-5 megatons. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) estimates that China has "about 20" DF-5s. [1] In congressional testimony, Gen. Eugene Habiger, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, was more specific, revealing that China had 18 DF-5s, all of which are silo-based. [2] • 12 DF-4 (CSS-3) ICBMs. Although NASIC lists the DF-4 as an ICBM, the DF-4 is not capable of reaching the continental United States. In 1993, the U.S. intelligence community estimated that of China's approximately ten DF-4 ICBMs, "two of the DF-4s are based in silos but most are stored in caves and must be rolled out to adjacent launch pads for firing." [3] The DF-4 reportedly is loaded with the same 2,000-kilogram, 3-megaton reentry vehicle as the DF-3. [4] NASIC estimates that China has "fewer than 25" DF-4 ICBMs. [5] The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missile threats is more specific, stating that China maintains "about a dozen [DF-4] ICBMs that are almost certainly intended as a retaliatory deterrent against targets in Russia and Asia." [6] • 50-100 DF-3 (CSS-2) and DF-21 (CSS-5) medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs). China's nuclear-capable "theater" ballistic missile force comprises DF-3 and DF-21 ballistic missiles. The DF-3 is a land-based derivative of the naval Julang-1 (CSS-NX-3). China is upgrading the DF-21 to replace the much older DF-3 and converting an unspecified number of DF-21 ballistic missiles to conduct conventional missions. During normal peacetime operations, DF-3 and DF-21 launchers probably remain in their garrisons, where the principle method of protecting deployments is extensive tunneling. [7] In 1972, U.S. intelligence assessed that the DF-3 was equipped with China's earliest 3-megaton thermonuclear warhead. [8] Unofficial reports indicate that China planned a 600-kilogram warhead for the DF-21 with a yield of 400 or more kilotons, although the delayed deployment of the DF-21 in the late 1990s may have allowed China to use DF-31 type warheads tested between 1992 and 1996. [9] Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat estimates the number of launchers for the DF-3, DF-21 "Mod 1" and DF-21 "Mod 2" MRBMs as "less than fifty" each, implying as many as 150 total MRBM launchers. [10] Intelligence documents leaked to the press, however, suggest that there are fewer than 50 total MRBM launchers of all types. [11] The entire MRBM force (DF-3 and DF-21), then, comprises either 50 or 100 missiles, depending on whether 1 or 2 missiles are assigned to each launcher. Jeffrey Lewis 1. National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, August 2003, p. 16. 2. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Ballistic Missiles: Threat and Response, Senate Hearings 106-339, 106th Cong., 2nd sess., 1999, p. 165. See also: Defense Department, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China ("Chinese Military Power"), June 2000. Chinese Military Power notes that "China reportedly has built 18 CSS-4 [DF-5] silos." 3. National Security Council, Report to Congress on Status of China, India and Pakistan Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Programs, 1993 (www.fas.org/irp/threat/930728-wmd.htm). 4. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Soviet and People's Republic of China Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy, March 1972, (page number redacted). See tables 5 and 6. 5. NASIC, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, p. 16. 6. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments, Senate Hearing 107-467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, p. 32. 7. On peacetime DF-3 (CSS-2) operations, including tunneling efforts, see: DIA, Intelligence Appraisal China: Nuclear Missile Strategy, March 1981, pp. 4-5 (DIAIAPPR 34-81). 8. DIA, Soviet and People's Republic of China Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy. 9. John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China's Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 177. 10. NASIC, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, p. 10. 11. A 1996 National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) report on the program to replace the DF-3 (CSS-2) with the DF-21 (CSS-5) suggested that China had approximately 40 DF-3 launchers and implied that the DF-21 was replacing the DF-3 on a one-to-one basis. NAIC, China Incrementally Downsizing CSS-2 IRBM Force, November 1996 (NAIC-1030-098B-96), cited in Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), pp. 233-34. -------- europe Delays in closing Lithuanian nuclear plant pose safety risks: regulator VILNIUS (AFP) Jun 15, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050615095847.nksyy3lk.html Lithuania's nuclear safety inspectorate said Wednesday that a project to shut down the Chernobyl-style Ignalina nuclear power plant was behind schedule, posing potential safety risks. "Most of the projects related to the shutdown of the first unit are behind schedule, and such a situation is not good," Saulius Kutas of the state-sponsored nuclear regulator told AFP. "It does not mean that we already have direct safety problems, but this creates some tensions and may have a negative impact on safety in the future," Kutas said. Lithuania halted the reactor in one of the two units at Ignalina on December 31, in line with a pledge made to the EU during membership talks. The Baltic state, which joined the EU in May 2004, also pledged to completely close the Ignalina nuclear power plant by 2010, with the EU helping to fund the costly closure. Kutas said finances from the EU for shutting down the plant were also delayed. "Some 40 million litas are needed every year to maintain the first unit after its closure. The money for this purpose should have come from the international Ignalina closure fund, but has not reached the plant yet", Kutas said. "Ignalina was forced to use its own money and this means that some other projects were delayed," he added. Another problem mentioned by Kutas was the delay of a tender for a nuclear waste storage site and a new boiler to be built, both of which he said were key in ensuring safety at the facility in the event of a reactor malfunction. "All this may not be very bad from a technical and economic point of view, as it is important to choose the best offers in tenders. However, it is bad if we speak about the human factor, and it is very important when we speak about safety," Kutas said. The Ignalina plant has two RBMK reactors - the same type as those used at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear plant, which exploded in 1986 in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster. The EU has promised to finance the closure of Ignalina, estimated at between two and three billion euros (2.5-3.75 billion dollars) over 30 years. More than 200 million euros have already been allocated to decomission the first unit. The Lithuanian government has said it wants to continue using nuclear energy after the closure of Ignalina and has opened consultations with EU energy companies and international experts on the issue. -------- iran Iran Changes Story on Plutonium Experiments - U.N. By REUTERS Published: June 15, 2005 Filed at 4:47 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html? VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has admitted to experimenting with producing plutonium, which can be used to fuel atomic bombs, much more recently than it originally told the U.N. nuclear watchdog, according to a draft U.N. speech. Iran had first told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that its last experiments with the reprocessing of plutonium took place in 1993 but revised that date to 1998, according to a draft speech deputy IAEA chief Pierre Goldschmidt is due to make to the agency's board of governors on Thursday. The speech, obtained by Reuters, said the IAEA had asked Iran to confirm that one bottle of a solution containing plutonium ``had been processed in 1995 while the solution in the second one had been purified in 1998.'' It added that Iran had confirmed this in a letter dated May 26, 2005. This revelation will likely add fuel to Washington's belief that Iran's nuclear energy program is a cover to develop the bomb. Iran denies the accusation, insisting its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity. Diplomats on the IAEA board said this was another breach of Iran's obligation to provide a full and accurate declaration of all sensitive nuclear materials in the country as required by the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). ``This is nuclear material and, yet again, when Iran's backed into a corner the story changes,'' a Western diplomat said. Goldschmidt's speech said Iran had not provided all documentation related to shipments of equipment used to enrichment uranium sold to Iran by black marketeers. Also, some of the documents Tehran did provide contradicted previous information it had given the IAEA, the speech said. Access to these documents ``is essential for verifying the completeness of Iran's declarations concerning such (uranium enrichment) equipment,'' the speech said. It was unclear whether the draft speech would be revised before delivery. IRAN: NO SURPRISES IN SPEECH The head of Iran's delegation, Sirus Naseri, had little to say about the report. ``It is an attempt to be informative,'' he said. ``I think it is very difficult to try to find any surprises in this.'' Regarding the requested shipment documentation he said, ``We will make every effort to provide it to them.'' Goldschmidt's three-page speech, marked ``highly confidential,'' cataloged a number of other failures by Iran to hand over information that the agency had requested. One example involves a 1987 meeting in Dubai between Iran and people linked to the disgraced father of Pakistan's atom bomb program, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Diplomats familiar with the IAEA's 2-year probe of Iran say this meeting is significant because it took place during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. ``The agency has repeatedly ... asked to have access and copies of the original documentation reflecting the 1987 offer'' of uranium enrichment centrifuge technology, the speech said. According to diplomats close to the IAEA, the agency has strong reason to think that there was more to the offer than a single-page summary. But Iran has told the IAEA that the ``one-page document provided to the agency is the only existing one.'' Earlier this week, IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei praised Iran for providing access to sites in the country and suspending its uranium enrichment program, which can be used to make fuel for atomic power plants or weapons. However, he urged Iran to allow IAEA experts to return to ``areas of interest'' at military site called Parchin, which they inspected once but have since been barred from visiting. Parchin, the center of Iran's munitions industry, is among the sites where the United States suspects Iranian scientists have conducted research related to nuclear bomb-making. ---- Iran admits to processing plutonium in 1998: IAEA VIENNA (AFP) Jun 15, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050615194946.jbvxkeb6.html Iran has admitted to processing plutonium, a potential material for atomic bombs, more recently than it originally reported, according to a UN draft report obtained by AFP and which diplomats claim shows the Islamic Republic is still hiding crucial nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has been pursuing with Iran the dates of its plutonium separation experiments" and Iran has admitted to purifying plutonium in 1998, the three-page IAEA text said. This was a revision of Iran's statements since 2003 "that the experiments were completed in 1993," according to the draft for a speech to be delivered to the IAEA's board of governors on Thursday by deputy director for safeguards Pierre Goldschmidt. But Iran's head delegate to the board meeting Cyrus Nasseri told AFP that Tehran disagrees with the UN atomic agency's conclusions on the plutonium and that there will be talks on this "in the coming week." A diplomat close to the IAEA said the agency "wants to know whether Iran is still processing plutonium." "If they lied, then the IAEA knows this has implications. The agency wants to know if they're telling the truth and not making a firecracker," that is, a nuclear bomb, the diplomat said. Another diplomat said "sadly a revelation should be shocking but considering the past history of Iranian cooperation with the agency and the endless revision of their official statements I am not surprised." The draft of Goldschmidt's speech, which IAEA officials had wanted to keep confidential, outlines areas in which the IAEA is still trying to pin down Iran's nuclear activities in an investigation that began in February 2003. The IAEA began its probe after discovering that Iran had hidden sensitive nuclear activities for over two decades and amid US charges that Tehran was using its civilian atomic energy program as a cover for weapons development. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday said Iran had not yet given "sufficient" information on key points and urged it to accelerate its cooperation with the agency in order to bring the investigation to a close. Nasseri said he did not "think the report is negative" as its listing of open areas of inquiry "shows that matters are moving towards finalization." "I believe any reasonable reading of the report would indicate that matters are narrowing down to a few points which should be on the verge of final clarification," Nasseri said. The draft outlines IAEA efforts to discover connections to international smuggling in nuclear materials and designs arising from a meeting in 1987 between Iranian officials from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iranand a "foreign intermediary" who was offering "centrifuge-related design, technology and sample components." Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium, which along with plutonium is a raw material for atom bombs. "The agency has repeatedly, most recently in a letter dated 14 April 2005, asked to have access to, and copies of, the original documentation reflecting the 1987 offer," the draft text said. The Iranians said the AEOI had turned down a uranium re-conversion unit but IAEA inspectors were wondering why "contacts (continued to take) . . . place during the period 1987 through 1993 between Iran and the intermediaries," with "design documents on P-1 centrifuges" being delivered again in connection with a new offer in 1994, according to the text. The IAEA wants to be sure "there has been no other development or acquisition of enrichment design, technology or components by Iran," the text said. Nasseri said a problem in tracing the black market is that "the type of deals that were made do not contain much written reporting." The IAEA is also having trouble making progess in determining why Iran claims to have done no work on sophisticated P-2 centrifuges before 2002, although it had had blueprints for these advanced machines for some seven years. Iran has not provided "sufficient assurance that no related activities were carried out during that period," Goldschmidt's draft speech said. The IAEA is also investigating why the Gchine uranium mine was idle from An intelligence source told AFP that Gchine was in fact a military controlled mine, and the IAEA draft report said the agency "has requested that the original contract between the AEOI and the engineering company that constructed the mill at Gchine be made available for the agency's review." The IAEA had already made this request in March. Nasseri denied that the mine was military-controlled. In positive news, Goldschmidt is to say that the IAEA has verified that Iran has apparently indicated correctly how much uranium gas it had made for enrichment from 37 tons of uranium ore it had processed at a conversion facility in Isfahan. The analysis has yet to be finalized. ---- Iran Admits Expanded Nuke Work VIENNA, Austria, June 15, 2005 By George Jahn http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/15/world/printable702166.shtml Iran has acknowledged working with small amounts of plutonium, a possible nuclear arms component, for years longer than it had originally admitted to the U.N. atomic watchdog agency, according to a confidential report made available Wednesday to The Associated Press. The report, to be delivered as early as Thursday to a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said Tehran received sensitive technology that can be used as part of a weapons program earlier than it originally said it did. The document said that while Iran had stated its plutonium separation experiments were conducted in 1993 "and that no plutonium had been separated since then," Iranian officials revealed two months ago that there had been linked experiments in 1995 and 1998. The United States insists nearly two decades of clandestine activities revealed only three years ago indicate attempts by Iran to make weapons. Tehran has acknowledged purchasing much of its nuclear technology on the black market, but it insists its nuclear ambitions do not go beyond generating power. Marked "highly confidential," the report to the U.N. nuclear monitor was made available by a diplomat accredited to the agency who demanded anonymity because he is not authorized to release such information to the media. The three-page report took stock of the present stage of a two-year inquiry of Iran's nuclear activities. It suggested that some of the investigations were stalled, saying the IAEA "still needs to understand" the nature, dates and number of contacts between Iranian officials and nuclear black market intermediaries that supplied Tehran with much of its advanced technology - including centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Asked about Tehran's nuclear program in an interview with BBC television, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said it was "possible that, at times, Iran has not reported its activities." "But from the time Iran decided to make such reports, it has made everything transparent," said Rafsanjani, who is a candidate in Friday's presidential election in Iran. Rafsanjani said if he is elected president, he would make sure Iran lived up to all its obligations to the IAEA, but that he expected others to abide by the regulations as well. The IAEA first revealed that Iran produced small amounts of plutonium as part of covert nuclear activities in November 2003, more than a year after revelations that Iran had run a secret atomic program led the agency to start investigating the country. The agency has not linked the laboratory-scale experiments to weapons activity, nor has it said that any other parts of the program - including ambitious efforts to be able to enrich uranium - constituted evidence that Tehran has been trying to make weapons. But at the time, it criticized Tehran for not voluntarily revealing its plutonium work and other activities that could be linked to interest in making nuclear arms. Plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons but it also has uses in peaceful programs to generate power. Focusing on shipments of equipment for uranium enrichment - another technology that can be used in making weapons - the report said Tehran earlier this year provided documents showing that in at least two instances some components arrived in 1994 and 1995. Those dates "deviate from information provided earlier by Iran," said the report, adding that one particular delivery had earlier been said to have reached the country in 1997. Such discrepancies are important in agency investigations trying to establish how long Iran has been trying to assemble a program for enrichment, which can generate both fuel for power and weapons-grade uranium. The report also outlined discrepancies about when Iranian officials said the first meetings with nuclear black marketeers were. It said clearing up inconsistencies about the shipments were essential to ensure "that there has been no other development or acquisition of enrichment design, technology or components by Iran. While few other countries are as outspoken as Washington, dozens of nations - including some near Iran - are worried about Tehran's ultimate aims. A confidential European Union briefing note made available to the AP cited the Saudi deputy foreign affairs minister, Prince Turki bin Mohammed bin Saud al-Kabira, as telling European envoys on the weekend that "Iran should cooperate for the safety of the whole region" in ensuring its nuclear aims were peaceful. Much of Iran's nuclear program came from the network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, including the initial technology used in uranium enrichment. Iran froze enrichment late last year as it started talks with France, Britain and Germany meant to reduce concerns about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The IAEA is pushing Iran to cooperate more with nuclear investigators, and agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told board members Tuesday that more information was needed about Iran's uranium enrichment program. The report revealed Wednesday is to be delivered by one of his deputies, Pierre Goldschmidt. The IAEA became concerned with Iran in 2003, when revelations of nearly two decades of secret nuclear activities surfaced. The work included uranium enrichment. The meeting also will urge North Korea, the other key international proliferation concern, to return to six-nation talks meant to entice it away from making nuclear threats in exchange for economic and political concessions, the diplomats said. Ahead of the meeting, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said Monday he was certain international nuclear talks with North Korea would resume and called for more flexibility in offering incentives to persuade Pyongyang to disarm. Saudi Arabia is a relatively recent issue for the agency. The country has negotiated a now-outmoded deal with the IAEA that effectively excludes it from nuclear inspections in exchange for its pledge not to have anything worth inspecting. After formal requests from the European Union, the United States and Australia to agree to an outside inquiry by agency inspectors, the Saudis will be under pressure to show some compromise at the meeting, said the diplomats. In Riyadh on Sunday, the Saudi news agency cited an unidentified official as saying Saudi Arabia is willing to cooperate with the IAEA. But the Saudi official didn't mention inspection in his remarks. ---- Iran says trying to cooperate in resolving nuclear black market questions VIENNA (AFP) Jun 15, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050615115353.uvnjhhq5.html Iran is doing its best to help the UN answer key questions about an international black market which gave the Islamic Republic sensitive nuclear technology, a senior Iranian negotiator said Wednesday, in response to charges that Tehran has not supplied enough information. Iran is working to be as cooperative as possible with the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) investigation of its nuclear program, particularly in unraveling the workings of the smuggling network run by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, Cyrus Nasseri told AFP. Reacting to criticism from IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei here on Tuesday that Iran has not supplied "sufficient" information on "offers of equipment made to Iran," Nasseri said Tehran was "looking to help the IAEA close that issue." His comments came with IAEA deputy director general for safeguards Pierre Goldschmit set to give a report on Iran's nuclear program, which the United States claims hides covert weapons development, to an IAEA board of governors meeting this week in Vienna. A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said Goldschmidt would address the agency's difficulties in figuring out just how and how much Iran profited from the Khan network, with particular interest in what happened at a meeting Iran held with Khan representatives in 1987. Goldschmidt had told the IAEA board in March that Iran got an offer for "centrifuge technology acquisition," believed to relate to sophisticated P-2 centrifuges used in enriching uranium, a process that makes fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors but what can also be the raw material for atom bombs. Nasseri said that since the beginning of the agency's investigation in 2003, "Iran has tried to be as cooperative as we could be" and had in fact been the first to tell the IAEA about its links to the smuggling network. He said a problem in tracing the black market is that "the type of deals that were made do not contain much written reporting." He also said that Western nations cannot expect to stop such illicit deals if they do not allow the free flow of peaceful nuclear technology. ElBaradei said Tuesday that the IAEA's investigation of Iran will have to continue as Iran has failed to provide "sufficient" information on crucial questions concerning centrifuges and nuclear smuggling. "Iran has provided some additional documentation and information, which are not yet sufficient to answer several remaining questions," ElBaradei said. IAEA investigators are trying to trace how and when Iran obtained plans and parts for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges. ElBaradei had said in a report last November that the IAEA still does not understand how Iran could have received blueprints for P-2's in 1995 "from foreign sources" and say it did not do any work towards making the machines before 2002. Iran says it has only made about seven P-2 centrifuges and has had problems gettting the magnets and special steel needed for them. ElBaradei said the IAEA is looking for "additional documentation regarding offers of equipment made to Iran, as well as for information on associated technical discussions between Iran and intermediaries in the procurement network." His comments come as Iran seeks to have the IAEA's over-two-year-old investigation of its nuclear program closed, especially since it is negotiating with the European Union to guarantee it is not secretly developing atomic weapons and to win trade, security and technology benefits. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and designed to generate electricity. "Whatever we find we will give them," Nasseri said of the IAEA investigation. ---- Iran issues nuclear black market warning Wed Jun 15, 2005 05:32 PM ET (Reuters) By Francois Murphy http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8805269 VIENNA - There is no way to stamp out the nuclear black market that supplied Iran and Libya with equipment usable in bomb-making if limits on sales of atomic technology are not eased, a senior Iranian official said on Wednesday. States seeking nuclear technology will turn to underground sources like the network set up by the disgraced father of Pakistan's atom bomb if the world's nuclear suppliers do not loosen their sales restrictions, Sirus Naseri, head of Iran's delegation to the IAEA board of governors, told reporters. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 44-nation alliance of top nuclear exporters that polices global sales of materials and equipment that could be used in atomic weapons, bars exports to states considered proliferation risks, such as North Korea and Iran. "What the Nuclear Suppliers Group does, for instance, there are a lot of restrictions applied to many countries to have access to nuclear technology," Naseri said. "If any country needs to have access to technology (and) they cannot get it from the correct sources, they are bound to respond to any other sources that have approached them and that is the key," he said. Iran hid its uranium enrichment programme from U.N. inspectors for nearly two decades before officially declaring it in October 2003. Enrichment is the process of purifying uranium for use as fuel for power plants or in bombs. Tehran vehemently denies U.S. accusations that its nuclear programme is aimed at developing atomic weapons, saying it only wants to generate electricity. The Islamic republic says it was forced to conceal and supply its programme by shopping on the black market due to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and sanctions imposed against Iran. That network, set up by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, suffered a severe blow when Libya abandoned its nuclear weapons programme in December 2003 and threw open its doors to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Khan's network supplied Libya with centrifuges -- machines that enrich uranium -- and a Chinese nuclear bomb design, IAEA officials say. Information obtained in Libya enabled the IAEA to uncover many of the black market's tentacles, which have since been shut down, but the network is still showing signs of life. In March, diplomats and nuclear experts said Pakistan had developed new illicit channels to upgrade its nuclear weapons programme, despite efforts by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to shut it down. SOVEREIGN RIGHT Although Iran has frozen enrichment activities during negotiations with the European Union, which wants it to abandon enrichment in exchange for economic and political incentives, Tehran says it has the sovereign right to enrich uranium. "If the international community doesn't want these sorts of clandestine networks to be there anymore, there has to be a free flow of technology, equipment and material as it is the lawful position of states to be able to have access to them," Naseri said. Although the Europeans are negotiating with Iran about possibly easing trade restrictions, those restrictions remain in place and customs officials in Germany and elsewhere still seize restricted items bound for Iran. "If you restrict countries, individuals and others from what they should be having and you do not allow them to have, things are bound to go underground again," Naseri said. (Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau) -------- japan Learn Hiroshima's lessons, pleads nuclear blast survivor MADRID (AFP) Jun 15, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050615073506.xt7e7n1b.html The September 11 attacks in the United States have produced a "might makes right" culture manifested in an aggressive US foreign policy that has heightened the nuclear threat, a leading Japanese anti-nuclear campaigner warns. "Everything has changed since September 11, since when the US has looked to follow a more aggressive policy culminating in preventative attacks, such as the war in Iraq. "Such actions heighten the nuclear risk," asserts Eiji Nakanishi, at 63 the youngest known survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb and campaigner for Hidankyo, Japan's federation of atomic bomb survivors. Embarking on a tour of Spain late Tuesday, Nakanishi pleaded for nuclear powers to learn the lessons of 60 years ago and embrace peace by disarming. He was two months short of his fourth birthday when the US bomber Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" from the skies above his home in Hiroshima in southwestern Japan. "Of course I don't have a clear memory of that day. But my parents' house was only three kilometres (two miles) away from the blast and it was virtually destroyed. Yet, by some miracle, we survived," the slightly built Nakanishi told AFP. His elder sister Chieko and parents Tatsuzo and Michiko were all spared by the blast which killed some 140,000 people, including an uncle and nephew. "Thousands were slaughtered all around. My aunt's husband died calling for help as the house collapsed." Nakanishi says the slaughter was senseless and random, even if US calculations estimated that a land invasion of Japan would cost around a million lives. "The US government said it was necessary to hit military installations and troops, but in reality they massacred civilians in what was a crime against humanity comparable to Auschwitz." Nakanishi moved in his teens to the Kita ward of Tokyo and became a journalist. When it came to starting a family the spectre of "Little Boy" arose once again. "I was going to marry a girl but her parents said 'you can't marry a Hibakusha (nuclear blast survivor). Your children could be deformed.' "I married another and had two sons. I spoke to my wife night after night before the first was born. We were afraid they would be deformed because of radioactivity." But firstborn Sukuro, now 34, was fine, and so was Motomo, who arrived five years later. "I counted Sukuro's toes one by one, just to make sure," Nakanishi recalled. The International Peace Bureau nominated Hidankyo in 1994 for the Nobel Peace prize for its campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons and forced several laws to be passed in Japan recognising the needs of survivors, while collecting more than 20 million anti-nuclear signatures. Nakanishi insists survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bombed three days later to finally bring Japan to its knees in August 1945, have a unique duty to warn of the risk of renewed nuclear conflict. "What we want is for our victims to be the last. I have an obligation to tell upcoming generations of the trauma and the suffering which the older folk related to me as my own memories are not so clear." Nakanishi, invited to Spain by the Spanish branch of Greenpeace, says the world has learned little from 60 years ago. Citing the Korean War, Vietnam, the Iran-Iraq war and Afghanistan as conflicts which could easily have mushroomed in scope, he says no one can rule out an apocalyptic conflict with the nuclear club growing. "The big nuclear powers hold the whip hand, but other countries are now asking 'what if?' "We live in a world of proliferation, but surely it is crazy not to learn from the past," says Nakanishi, who called for negotiation from within the region, rather than US sabre-rattling, to calm fears over North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Hiroshima, the indelible mark on his psyche, drives him on. "Nowadays, when I go back, I go to where our house stood and reflect on my childhood. At the same time I reinforce my convictions that there must be nuclear disarmament," says Nakanishi, who in his 20s grew to love Schubert song cycles and the sonnets of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Pointing to pictures of charred bodies lying near the blast hypocenter, Nakanishi's voice wavers as he observes: "Rilke wrote about the right to live and die with dignity. But where was the dignity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" -------- korea US Policy on North Korea Incoherent, Expert Says By Reuben Staines rjs@koreatimes.co.kr 06-15-2005 19:07 http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200506/kt2005061519051753460.htm U.S. President George W. Bush’s policy toward North Korea is ``incoherent’’ and the nuclear crisis is unlikely to be solved as long as he remains in the White House, an American expert on Korean history said. Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago history professor and author of ``North Korea: Another Country,’’ said the Bush administration has failed to come to terms with the nuclear problem. ``I think the basic failure is that the administration is divided internally,’’ he told students at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Administration on Tuesday. Some factions in Washington are still hoping the communist government in Pyongyang will collapse, while others favor a diplomatic approach, Cumings said. ``Bush has not stepped in to stop the quarrelling and get a coherent policy toward North Korea.’’ He described the first Bush administration as ``a comic opera where everyone seemed to have their own policy toward North Korea while the president was calling Kim Jong-il a pygmy.’’ Bush has refused to negotiate directly with North Korea, preferring the multilateral talks hosted by China to tackle the nuclear crisis. However, those six-nation negotiations have been stalled for nearly a year, with North Korea saying it will not negotiate with the U.S. until it drops its ``hostile’’ attitude toward the regime. Cumings, who was in Seoul to participate in an international conference on Korean reunification, believed that even if the North returned to the six-party talks, no progress would result. He criticized Bush for leaving on the table a missile control deal with North Korea that was negotiated but not signed at the end of former President Bill Clinton’s term in 2000. ``If we somehow get into another conflict with North Korea and a lot of people die, historians are going to look at that agreement and ask why it was left hanging,’’ said Cumings, a frequent dissenter to mainstream U.S. perceptions of the North. ``The Bush administration has kicked the can down the road for five years while North Korea looks like it is arming itself with more nuclear weapons.’’ Cumings said the best-case scenario is that the current stalemate will continue until the next U.S. president is inaugurated and revives Clinton’s diplomatic approach. But he expressed concern about the renewed talk in Washington of a preemptive strike on North Korea’s Yongbyon plutonium reactor. During the first nuclear crisis in 1994, the Clinton administration actively considered a strike on the facility. It eventually scrapped the plan after concluding it would likely trigger a North Korean counterattack resulting in hundreds of thousands of U.S. and South Korean deaths. ``It’s highly unlikely there will be a preemptive strike but it’s unnerving that this same issue comes up 11 years after it was first rejected,’’ Cumings said during the lecture. He also cast doubt on the U.S. assertion that it would seek South Korean consent before carrying out such a strike, noting that former President Kim Young-sam was not kept informed of planning in 1994. ``My impression is that if Kim Young-sam had said no, it would not have made any difference,’’ Cumings said. ``Today we have a similar situation with an administration in South Korea that the Bush administration doesn’t like.’’ ---- US cannot accept "partial solution" to nuclear crisis Updated: 2005-06-15 08:53 China Daily (Agencies) http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-06/15/content_451642.htm The United States said it would not settle for any piecemeal resolution to the nuclear crisis gripping the Korean peninsula, calling for the dismantlement of "all" North Korean atomic programs. "We cannot accept a partial solution that does not deal with the entirety of the problem, allowing North Korea to threaten others continually with a revival of its nuclear program," said Christopher Hill, US President George W. Bush's chief negotiator to six-party talks aimed at ending the crisis. The United States sought "the dismantlement, verifiably and irreversibly, of all DPRK nuclear programs -- nothing less," Hill told a Senate hearing on "Dealing with North Korea's nuclear program." DPRK is North Korea's official name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Hill is the US leader to the negotiations among North Korea, South Korea, US, Japan, Russia and host China designed to woo North Korea to give up its nuclear arms in return for aid and security guarantees. North Korea has refused to participate in the talks after attending three rounds, citing US "hostility." It also rejected a US-led aid-for-disarmament plan. Under the plan, North Korea would be given, among other rewards, multilateral security guarantees and energy aid by its neighbors if it agrees to end its nuclear weapons program. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, stressed that Washington would not reward North Korea for coming into compliance with any "past obligations." "It has obligations. It was rewarded for those obligations. It can't then get out of compliance and then come back and expect to be paid twice for the same obligations," he said. The US-North Korea nuclear standoff dates back to the last decade when Pyongyang agreed in 1994 to freeze its nuclear program in return for the construction of safe nuclear reactors for the impoverished country. The pact fell through in October 2002 when Washington said North Korea, while freezing its plutonium-based program, had admitted secretly using a different route to nuclear weapons, helped by Pakistan. The United States charged that North Korea began seeking nuclear weapons fuel through uranium enrichment while the ink was still wet on the 1994 accord. Hill questioned North Korea's seriousness in wanting to end its nuclear weapons program. "The North has cited a variety of pretexts for refusing to rejoin the talks, even as it restates its commitment to the six-party process and the goal of a denuclearized Korean peninsula," he said. "That casts increasing doubts on how serious the DPRK really is about ending its nuclear ambitions," he said. "Frankly, we don't at this point know the answers," he said but added that "certainly, the developments we have seen on the part of the North Koreans have not been encouraging." Hill cited Pyongyang's failure to abide by its commitment to another round of the six-party talks as well as its persistent boasts of its nuclear weapons capability. Just last week, Pyongyang announced it had enough nuclear weapons to defend itself against an attack by the United States and was building more. ---- N Korea resumes construction of 2 nuclear reactors Wednesday, June 15, 2005 at 14:10 JST (Kyodo News) http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=7&id=340407 WASHINGTON — North Korea told a visiting U.S. scholar late last month that it has resumed the construction of two nuclear reactors frozen under a 1994 accord with the United States, information already conveyed to the U.S. government, administration sources said Tuesday. The 50-megawatt and 200-megawatt reactors located in the Yongbyon nuclear complex would be capable of producing about 280 kilograms of plutonium, or enough to manufacture about 50 nuclear bombs, if they are completed and begin operations, according to U.S. nuclear experts. -------- latinamerica Brazil Divided Over Building Third Nuclear Power Plant RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, June 15, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-15-03.asp The president of the Latin American section of the American Nuclear Energy Society (LAS), Zieli Dutra, says he is in favor of expanding the Brazilian nuclear power generating program. He says the country should build a third nuclear power plant, Angra 3, so as to reduce its dependence on foreign petroleum and gas. Critics warn of the danger of radioactive waste and the possibility of accidents or terrorist threats. Speaking at the opening ceremonies of the annual LAS meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Dutra declared that Brazil should take advantage of its ability to manufacture and enrich uranium, something that puts it in a better position than many other countries, according to the state-run news agency Agęncia Brasil. "Nuclear energy has many uses. It can generate electricity. It has important uses in medicine. It can also substitute the natural gas we import from Bolivia to run thermoelectric power plants," said Dutra. Pointing out that LAS does not interfere in domestic politics, but can recommend certain types of nuclear alternatives, Dutra said that, "LAS can show that nuclear energy is safe, especially the PWR-type reactors that are used in Brazil. They would never cause accidents like the one in Chernobyl." A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is the most common type of nuclear power reactor in the world. In a PWR reactor, the primary coolant loop is pressurized so the water does not boil, and steam generators are used to transmit heat to a secondary coolant which is allowed to boil to produce steam for electricity generation. In having this secondary loop the PWR differs from boiling water reactors, in which the primary coolant is allowed to boil in the reactor core and drive a turbine directly With regard to the construction of Angra 3, Dutra said that currently it is being analyzed by the National Energy Policy Council at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, but would probably be approved this year. The LAS meeting ends Thursday. It is attended by representatives from the four Latin American nations that have nuclear technology: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. The main topic of discussion is the maintenance and expansion of nuclear programs in Latin America. Around the world, nuclear capable countries are supporting a renewed focus on nuclear power as an alternative to coal, oil and natural gas, which produce greenhouse gas emissions when burned. Critics point to the lack of safe disposal facilities for spent nuclear fuel, and the danger of catastrophic explosions and radiation leaks. They warn that if nuclear technology spreads, it would increase the danger of terrorists and rogue states acquiring the material to make nuclear weapons and dirty bombs. In Brazil, nuclear power generation got off to a shaky start in 1985 when the commercial startup of the Angra 1 reactor was plagued with technical problems. Then in the early 1990s, the U.S. State Department blocked the supply of the fuel elements for the Westinghouse designed reactor. Radioactive leaks resulted from substitute fuel rods that were used instead. The country's second nuclear power plant Angra 2 began producing power on a commercial basis in July 2000, but not before a fight between the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association and Greenpeace Brazil turned ugly. Greenpeace campaigns against nuclear power and weapons throughout the world. The international organization started a Brazilian chapter in 1993, and one of its first campaign objectives was to limit the Brazilian nuclear industry. Their initial goal was to collect 500,000 signatures on a petition calling for shutting down the Angra 1 plant, and an immediate halt to construction of Angra 2. Guilherme Camargo, then director of the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association, launched a campaign to discredit Greenpeace. "I said, we have to wipe out these guys. It was like a Western movie, a kind of 'Gunfight at OK Corral.' You kill or you die. And we destroyed these guys," Camargo told "21st Century Science & Technology" magazine in a 2001 interview. "The Greenpeace anti-nuclear manifesto was a disastrous failure." For awhile Greenpeace Brazil focused its campaigns on issues of whaling, illegal logging and transgenic crops. But last month, the organization mounted another campaign against the resurgence of nuclear power in Brazil. Greenpeace Brazil took its anti-nuclear tour to 18 cities in 10 states and chose Săo Paulo's Ibirapuera Park to end the first phase of its campaign against Angra 3 and the renewal of the Brazilian nuclear program. From now on, the Greenpeace campaign will be focused on monitoring the federal government and mobilizing organizations of the civil society against Angra 3. The minister of the Civil House, Jose Dirceu, has announced that he will present a new report favorable to the construction of Angra 3. Greenpeace Brazil says the government is ignoring the concern of Environment Minister Marina Silva over the question of radioactive waste, and that the Ministry of Energy and Mines is also opposed to further nuclear development. Marcelo Furtado, Greenpeace campaign director said in Ibirapuera Park that the organization will wait and hope that common sense prevails and the risks of nuclear development are not brushed aside. In a recent poll by the Institute of Religious Studies, 80 percent of the Brazilians interviewed said they are against starting another nuclear project. -------- russia Russian atomic chief heads for talks in Washington 12:14 2005-06-15 Pravda.RU http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2005/06/15/60315.html Russia's atomic energy chief was heading to Washington Wednesday for talks on nuclear security and stopping the spread of nuclear materials, the Russian nuclear agency said. Alexander Rumyantsev was expected to meet with U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement. The two officials were slated to meet under the auspices of the Russian-U.S. High-Confidence Group, a committee set up during the Slovakia summit in February at which presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin embraced new measures to combat nuclear terrorism and better safeguard atomic weapons arsenals. Washington wants to increase security at Russian research facilities and other sites where radioactive materials are stored, but the effort has been stymied by disputes over contractors and funding and Moscow's wariness about U.S. access to sensitive sites. Last month, during a trip to Moscow, Bodman said the two nations had made "good progress" in cooperating on nuclear security. The U.S. secretary also said that the two countries were close to agreement on a program to use plutonium from nuclear weapons to make a fuel called MOX, which has been held up by a dispute over liability of American contractors. -------- space Lab Eyes Plutonium-Powered Spacecraft The project would provide voltage on the far side of Mercury. In addition, the batteries could run surveillance equipment in more remote -- but still earthly -- locations where access may be limited for long periods of time. Posted June 15, 2005 5:28PM Associated Press, Sci-Tech Today http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=36450 http://www.rednova.com/news/space/156185/inl_eyes_plutonium_for_powering_spacecraft/ The Idaho National Laboratory is waiting for a green light to begin producing plutonium that would supply battery power for NASA spacecraft . Later this month the Department of Energy is expected to release an environmental study on a plan to consolidate plutonium-238 production across the nation at the Idaho site. The project has other applications besides providing voltage on the far side of Mercury. The batteries could run surveillance equipment in more remote -- but still earthly -- locations where access may be limited for long periods of time. Also this summer, the INL will hear whether the Naval Reactors Facility will be selected to design and eventually manufacturing small nuclear reactors that could propel spacecraft -- not just supply on-board electricity. The manned mission to Mars may even be in Idaho's future, said Harold McFarlane, an INL deputy associate laboratory director, at a news conference last week. The changes are coming quickly after the Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle Energy Alliance took over operations at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in February. Battelle was awarded the 10-year, $4.8 billion contract in 2004 when the organization outbid Bechtel and three other bidders. Battelle's first priority has been to combine the INL and Argonne laboratory programs into a world-class nuclear energy research and development effort. The site is designated as the government's lead institution for nuclear energy research. Meanwhile, the INL is attracting other programs to eastern Idaho. The Center for Space Research is a university-organized group that will be affiliated with INL and its new Center for Advanced Energy Studies. And the Department of Energy also wants to move its plutonium pellet manufacturing program from Los Alamos, Calif., to INL into a proposed $200 million-plus facility. Planning for the new programs have raised local concerns about the potential for exposure to plutonium-238 and nuclear waste materials. The Centers for Disease Control found elevated levels of plutonium around the Los Alamos laboratory and in non-employees living nearby. John Kotek, deputy manager of the DOE-Idaho office, said the department is looking at those incidents. "We think this is well within our experience to operate safely," Kotek said. But in addition to health risks, Jeremy Maxand, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, a watchdog group, is concerned about the missions from a national security perspective. He said plutonium is still available from Russia for use in non-national security missions, he said. But if the INL produces it for military use, it could become a target. "People in Idaho do not want the site tied to these missions," Maxand said. On the Net: Idaho National Laboratory - http://www.inel.gov/ -------- ukraine Pripyat Journal; New Sight in Chernobyl's Dead Zone: Tourists By C.J. CHIVERS June 15, 2005 NY TIMES http://travel2.nytimes.com/mem/travel/article-printpage.html?res=9902EEDD163BF936A25755C0A9639C8B63 Sometime after visiting the ruins of the Polissia Hotel, the darkened Energetic theater and the idled Ferris wheel, the minivans stopped again. Doors slid open. Six young Finnish men stepped out and followed their guide through a patch of temperate jungle that once was an urban courtyard. Branches draped down. Mud squished underfoot. A cloud of mosquitoes rose to the feast. The men stepped past discarded gas-mask filters to the entrance of a ghostly kindergarten. They fanned out with cameras, to work. Much was as the children and their teachers had left it 19 years ago. Tiny shoes littered the classroom floor. Dolls and wooden blocks remained on shelves. Soviet slogans exhorted children to study, to exercise, to prepare for a life of work. Much had also changed. Now there is rot, broken windows, rusting bed frames and paint falling away in great blisters and peels. And now there are tourists, participating in what may be the strangest vacation excursion available in the former Soviet space: the packaged tour of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, scene of the worst civilian disaster of the nuclear age. A 19-mile radius around the infamous power plant, the zone has largely been closed to the world since Chernobyl's Reactor No.4 exploded on April 26, 1986, sending people to flight and exposing the Communist Party as an institution wormy with hypocrisy and lies. For nearly 20 years it has been a dark symbol of Soviet rule. Its name conjures memories of incompetence, horror, contamination, escape and sickness, as well as the party elite's disdain for Soviet citizens, who were called to parade in fallout on May Day while the leaders' families secretly fled. Now it is a destination, luring people in. ''It is amazing,'' said Ilkka Jahnukainen, 22, as he wandered the empty city here that housed the plant's workers and families, roughly 45,000 people in all. ''So dreamlike and silent.'' The word Chernobyl also long ago became a dreary, shopworn joke, shorthand for contaminated wasteland. But Chernobylinterinform, the zone's information agency, says its chaperoned tours do not carry health risks. This is because, the agency says, radiation levels here have always been uneven. And most of the zone is far cleaner than it was in 1986, when radiation levels were strong enough in places to kill even trees. A lethal exposure of radiation ranges from 300 to 500 roentgens an hour; levels in the tour areas vary from 15 to several hundred microroentgens an hour. A microroentgen is one-millionth of a roentgen. Dangers at these levels, the agency says, lie in long-term exposure. Still, the zone in northern Ukraine has much more radioactive spots than those where tourists typically go. So there are rules, which Yuriy Tatarchuk, a government interpreter who served as the Finns' guide, listed. Don't stray. Stay on concrete and asphalt, where exposure risks are lower than on soil. Don't touch anything. (This one proved impossible. Tours involve climbing cluttered staircases and stepping through debris. Handholds are inevitable.) No matter its inconveniences or potential for medical worry, the zone possesses the allure of the forbidden and a promise of rare, personal insights into history. Its popularity as a destination is increasing. Few tourists came in 2002, the year it opened for such visits, according to Marina Polyakova, of Chernobylinterinform. In 2004 about 870 arrived, she said, a pace tourists are matching this year. Tourists cannot wander the zone on their own. One-day group excursions cost $200 to $400, including transportation and a meal. The tour on Saturday began with a drive through meadows, marshes and forest, belts of green broken by glimpses of gap-roofed houses and crumbling barns. It is what Mary Mycio, a Ukrainian-American lawyer in Kiev and author of a soon-to-be released book, ''Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl,'' calls a ''radioactive wilderness,'' an accidental sanctuary populated by wolves, boars and endangered birds. Its beauty cannot be overstated. Soon reminders of the grim history appeared. The tour stopped at a graveyard of vehicles and helicopters used to fight Chernobyl's fires. Roughly 2,000 radioactive machines are parked here -- fire trucks, ambulances, armored vehicles, trucks, aircraft. Two tourists slipped through the barbed wire and wandered the junkyard, taking pictures for a Web site they plan to make of the trip. The rest roamed the edge, awed. ''I cannot find words,'' said Juha Vaittinen, 22. The minivans then headed to Chernobyl proper for a briefing on the accident. Next stop: the nuclear plant and ''sarcophagus,'' the concrete-and-steel shell built to contain Reactor No.4's radioactive spew. Mr. Tatarchuk held up a radiation detector -- 470 microroentgens per hour. The Finns posed for a group shot. Motivations for coming here are many. The Finnish tourists, all in their 20's, said they had an affinity for lonely, abandoned places, and the zone so far exceeded the forgotten homes, farms or industrial spaces in Finland that its draw became irresistible. They flew to Kiev from Helsinki solely for the trip. Mr. Tatarchuk said others had turned up because they were curious about the disaster, or wished to enter an accidental preserve of Soviet life. Bird-watchers have visited to catalogue the zone's resurgent life. One group came for a hoax. About two years ago, Mr. Tatarchuk said, a Ukrainian woman booked a tour, wore a leather biker jacket and posed for pictures. Soon there appeared a Web site in which the woman, using the name Elena, claimed that she had been given an unlimited pass by her father, a nuclear physicist and Chernobyl researcher (''Thank you, Daddy!'' she wrote) and now roamed the ruins at will on her Kawasaki Big Ninja. The site, www.kiddofspeed.com, billed as a tale ''where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog,'' was a sensation, duping uncountable viewers before being discredited. The Finns said they had seen the Web site, and hoped their planned site would be as popular. On the day of their tour, the most haunting destination came last: Pripyat, a city left behind. ''Heralded as the world's youngest city when it opened its doors in the mid-1970's,'' Ms. Mycio writes, ''Pripyat also turned out to be its shortest lived.'' The city was encased on this day in a silence broken by breezes sighing through rustling trees. A heavier hush resided in buildings, where drops of water plopped loudly into puddles, and glass squeaked as it broke underfoot. Built on marshes, the place smelled of peat. At the amusement park, near idled bumper cars, Mr. Tatarchuk's monitor registered 144 microroentgens an hour. He moved four feet away, to a mat of damp green moss. It read 823. ''Stay off the moss,'' he said. The moss is all around. Pripyat, both a time capsule of the Soviet Union and a monument to its folly and pain, is being consumed. What looters have not sacked or stolen succumbs now to the elements and time. A cafe patio atop the Polissia Hotel, offering views to the reactor that ruined this place, has been colonized by birch trees. One stands roughly seven feet tall, climbing skyward from a crack in the high-rise's tiles. Fine views of Pripyat are available from among these misplaced trees, including one in the direction of the reactor that reveals an empty clinic bearing an enormous sign. ''The health of the people,'' it reads, ''is the wealth of the country.'' Mr. Tatarchuk, looking down over buckling rooftops, repeated those words in Russian, then allowed himself a knowing, head-shaking smile. ---- IAEA begins safety inspection of Rovno NPP in Ukraine 15.06.2005, 12.38 (Itar-Tass) http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2135762&PageNum=0 LVOV, June 15 - An expert brigade of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) begins on Wednesday a safety check of the Rovno nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The information centre of the Rovno NPP told Itar-Tass the inspection’s aim is to verify the compliance of the exploitation level of the NPP, which is the closest to the Western Europe frontiers, with international requirements. The history of the NPP business cooperation with the IAEA began in 1988. Then the Rovno NPP was the first in the USSR to undergo an international experts examination. During the years of Ukraine’s independence two out of the country’s four operating NPPs have already been inspected, including the Rovno NPP. Two years ago, 11 experts from eight countries conducted a complex inspection of the NPP in such spheres as exploitation, organisation of management, technical support, training of personnel, technical maintenance, repairs, chemical regime, radiation protection and emergency prevention work. By the results of the two-year inspection, during which a number of remarks were made, the current one is conducted to check the implementation of these IAEA recommendations and remarks. The IAEA expert group’s inspection of the Rovno NPP will last till June 20. -------- u.n. UN to assess Georgia amid atomic security concerns 15 Jun 2005 23:10:28 GMT Source: Reuters By Louis Charbonneau http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L15670615.htm VIENNA, June 15 (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday it was sending inspectors to the former Soviet republic of Georgia and diplomats said the team hoped to track down bomb-grade atomic materials feared lost in the country. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also trying to set up a mission to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region to find any weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium that may have gone missing from a nuclear institute in rebel-controlled Abkhazia, diplomats close to the IAEA said on condition of anonymity. "There will be a trip to Georgia with senior safeguards inspectors," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said. "It will be the first meeting with the new government and will focus on implementation of safeguards and the Additional Protocol in all of Georgia," she said. While this technically includes Abkhazia, diplomats said going into the unstable breakaway region would require special security arrangements the IAEA was still trying to organise. Georgia, whose President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power after a pro-Western "Rose Revolution" in 2003, ratified the Additional Protocol in that year. The Additional Protocol is an agreement that gives IAEA inspectors the right to conduct more intrusive, short-notice inspections than standard safeguards checks under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A Western diplomat from a country on the IAEA's board of governors told Reuters that the inspectors would arrive in Georgia "in the coming weeks", though he gave no date. Like many states in the former Soviet Union, Georgia has had problems with the disappearance of dangerous radioactive materials that could be used in a so-called "dirty bomb", when an explosive like dynamite is laced with radioactive substances to spread them over a wide area. RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS In addition to incidents of trafficking of radioactive materials in Abkhazia, there are also concerns the most precious of nuclear materials -- weapons-grade highly enriched uranium and plutonium -- have gone missing, diplomats said. Georgia lies in the Caucasus mountains and is racked by conflicts over the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Shortly after insurgents captured the Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi in 1993, Georgian scientists fled from an atomic physics institute there and its nuclear stocks vanished. One U.N. diplomat said there were concerns "about 9 kg of plutonium" -- enough for at least one bomb -- may be missing. "The Russians did an inspection at Sukhumi and found traces of plutonium there," a diplomat said, declining to give details. David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of a U.S.-based think-tank, said this was deeply worrying. "Nine kilos of plutonium is enough for two nuclear weapons. I don't understand why there's not more concern. This should be investigated," he said. Diplomats in Vienna said about 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of weapons-grade enriched uranium is also believed to be lost, though a Russian government official denied this. It takes about 25 kg (55 pounds) of highly enriched uranium to make a standard atomic bomb. (Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze and Niko Mchedlishvili in Tbilisi and Maria Golovnina in Moscow) -------- u.s. nuc facilities Environmental concerns generate new interest in nuclear power By James Kuhnhenn and Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers Wed Jun 15, 4:40 PM ET http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/krwashbureau/20050615/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_nuclear_energy_wa_1 WASHINGTON - Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Yucca Mountain. For the past 25 years, a nuclear industry already saddled with prohibitive costs and radioactive waste struggled in the face of the worst fears about nuclear power. But the atom is rebounding. The Senate this week is debating energy legislation that includes tax incentives, loan guarantees and federal liability protection for new reactors. The Senate bill also would authorize $1.3 billion for cutting-edge nuclear-hydrogen projects. An industry saddled with high reactor-construction costs and expensive disposal of nuclear waste now is inching toward competitiveness as a cleaner, though still distrusted, alternative to coal as the electric-power source of the future. No less a skeptic than Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., this week touted the pro-nuke provisions before Congress. "You're going to see a movement toward nuclear power," he said. "If it's done right, we believe it will protect the environment." Even a handful of environmentalists - a group that long viewed fission with suspicion - say they could tolerate new nuclear power because it doesn't cause global warming, the top environmental problem to many. "Climate change is such a serious issue ... that we have to examine all low-carbon and especially zero-carbon solutions," said Judi Greenwald of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, an environmentalist think tank. Yes, after almost 30 years of cooling interest, nuclear is getting hot. But it may never reach critical mass. Wall Street, which has to finance new multibillion-dollar reactors, hasn't joined the nuclear chorus. Bankers and investors want to see something built first, creating a chicken-and-an-egg scenario, says one top economist who studies nuclear-power finance. "There's a lot of focus on Congress and what Congress wants to do and the subsidies," said Geoff Rothwell, an economist at Stanford University who's advised the Department of Energy on nuclear-power economics. "But it all depends on Wall Street and whether or not Wall Street wants to be involved in financing nuclear power. At this point they're not interested." Or, as Jason Grumet, the executive director of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, said: "The interest in nuclear power is necessary, but not sufficient to rejuvenate the industry." Still, "the momentum gained in the past six or eight months is palpable," said Mike Wallace, the president of Constellation Generation, which has 34 power plants, including five nuclear ones. The industry's spending in new nuclear planning "is at a level we haven't seen in 25 years." Wallace acknowledged that Wall Street isn't willing to risk financing nuclear projects that could be caught up in regulatory delays. That's why federal aid is needed to build the first three or four plants to demonstrate nuclear's new feasibility, he said. Nuclear is climbing out of a deep hole. The partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 resulted in tighter government regulations but transformed the public's abstract apprehension into real fear. The 1986 accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which killed 30 people, forced massive evacuations and left a legacy of thyroid cancer among its survivors, turned fear of nuclear-plant disasters into horror. Over the past two decades, however, reactor technology has improved, global warming has emerged as the most profound environmental worry and the energy industry has realized that coal, which accounts for 52 percent of electricity production in this country, would require expensive technology to reduce pollution. "It really doesn't make a lot of sense to be building just conventional coal plants if that commits us to 30, 40 years of high emissions or, alternatively, to very high costs of fixing that," said M. Granger Morgan, head of the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. That's not to say Congress is backing away from coal. The House of Representatives' version of energy legislation, which already passed, would authorize $200 million annually over five years to develop "clean coal" technologies. The Senate bill has a similar provision. The House bill provides $8.1 billion over 11 years in energy-related tax cuts for producers and consumers. The Senate bill would double that amount and sets a goal of reducing U.S. demand for oil by 1 million barrels a day. Overall, the Senate bill would cost nearly $36 billion over the next five years. Final legislation will face its toughest test when the House and Senate reconcile their bills. Next week, senators will vote on a key amendment by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. They aim to reduce greenhouse gases by placing strict limits on carbon-dioxide emissions. A similar amendment failed in 2003, but McCain and Lieberman have sweetened the pot by adding a series of subsidies for clean fuels, especially for nuclear power. "Nuclear has to be part of any equation that would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," McCain said. "I'm all for wind, solar, tide, biomass, all those things, but they don't have - at least in this stage of development - that significant an impact on our energy needs." Reid, once an ardent foe of nuclear power, now says it's time to consider the benefits of nuclear power. Reid's opposition was based on the government's desire to store nuclear waste beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Reid, like most Nevadans, had no desire to make his state a burial ground for spent but still radioactive nuclear fuel. But the Yucca Mountain proposal has been set back by the discovery of U.S. Geological Survey e-mails that suggest some documents related to the site were falsified. And a federal appeals court rejected anti-radiation plans for the storage facility, delaying its completion until at least 2012. "Yucca Mountain certainly isn't dead, but it's on a breathing machine," Reid said. He thinks each nuclear plant will have to develop the capability to store waste on site indefinitely. Still, not everyone is jumping on the nuclear bandwagon. Many environmentalists and some members of Congress believe the no-fault insurance coverage the federal government provides to the nuclear industry amounts to an unfair and expensive subsidy. Others aren't as satisfied about the fate of nuclear waste. "Why aren't we putting more money into research, into safety processing?" asked Sen. Richard Durbin (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois, the second-ranking Democratic leader in the Senate. "That is the most hopeful way to deal with nuclear waste. If there is a way to reprocess that waste without leading to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, that's the answer to our prayers." No electrical utility has built a nuclear plant in the United States since the 1970s. Right now, 104 plants operate at near full capacity. Experts predict that more plants will be required if nuclear is to sustain its 20 percent share of U.S. electricity production. The Department of Energy predicts that, with increasing demand for electricity, nuclear power will account for only 14 percent of electrical power production by 2025. "Just to continue to provide 20 percent of our U.S. electrical supply, we will need to build 50 new 1,000-megawatt nuclear plants between today and 2030," said Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and head of a business coalition monitoring energy legislation. "We're not talking about increasing nuclear, we're just looking at projected demand." ---- Nukes in, Cash Out in Softened G8 Climate Text By REUTERS Published: June 15, 2005 Filed at 2:59 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-group-climate.html LONDON (Reuters) - A new draft communique on climate change for next month's Group of Eight summit has removed plans to fund research and put into question top scientists' warnings that global warming is already under way. Skip to next paragraph The text seen by Reuters, titled Gleneagles Plan of Action and dated June 14, has been watered down from a previous draft which itself had no specific targets or timetables for action. The latest draft also explicitly endorses the use of ``zero-carbon'' nuclear power -- another development that will dismay many environmentalists three weeks before the summit of the world's eight richest nations at Gleneagles in Scotland. ``The text is getting weaker and weaker. There are no targets, no timetables, no standards -- and even the money is gone,'' a source close to the negotiations told Reuters on condition of anonymity. ``You are looking at a very, very serious problem for Blair,'' the source added. Prime Minister Tony Blair has pledged to put the fight against climate change at the heart of Britain's year-long presidency of the G8. He visited three G8 leaders in two days this week to drum up support for his priorities. The leaders of the G8 and major developing nations South Africa, Brazil, India, Mexico and China will meet at the heavily guarded Gleneagles countryside hotel, 40 miles northwest of the Scottish capital Edinburgh, from July 6-8. But the United States, questioning the scientific basis for global warming, refuses to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol that finally came into force in February aimed cutting emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The new draft starkly illustrates the weakening process that has gone on in just six weeks. An introductory paragraph has moved the statement ``our world is warming'' into square brackets and has given the same treatment to a statement from the world's top scientists that climate change is already under way and demands urgent action. RESEARCH FUNDING DISAPPEARS All references in a draft dated May 3 to unspecified dollar funds for research and development into new, clean technology and fuels have been excised from the latest version. References in the May 3 draft to ``setting ambitious targets and timetables'' for cutting carbon emissions from buildings has completely disappeared from the June 14 text. Even a suggestion that the developed world has a duty of leadership in combatting global warming is given the square bracket brush off. A section on managing the impacts of climate change which previously talked about global warming happening and bringing with it more floods, droughts, crop failures and rising sea levels now contains just one reference to the global crisis. And even that is in square brackets, indicating that there is deep disagreement over its inclusion. Scientists have warned that the planet could warm by at least two degrees centigrade this century, bringing with it more gales and floods and rising sea levels, threatening coastal communities and disrupting food supplies. Most also agree that the change is already happening, is due in part to human activities like burning coal and oil, and will continue for some time whatever is done now. But President Bush and his scientific advisers question the scope and scale of the problem and do not agree that people are a serious contributor to it. -------- new jersey Hope Creek restarts only to spring another leak By JEROME MONTES Staff Writer, (856) 794-5115 June 15, 2005 http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/cumberland/061505RESTART61405.cfm The Hope Creek nuclear reactor began restart procedures Monday, nearly one week after a radioactive leak shut it down. On Tuesday, it sprang another leak, forcing yet another shutdown. Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Tuesday the latest leak originated from a "main steam isolation valve packing leak-off line" and contained very low amounts of radiation that posed no threat to employees or the public. But federal officials say this is the fourth time since October that a leak has caused an unplanned shutdown, and the second in as many weeks. The latest leak sprang from an isolation valve in a "packing area" - similar to a nut on a garden hose - in the reactor's steam lines. Steam from Hope Creek's boiling water reactor is used to power the facility's turbine, which generates electricity. The isolation valves are in place to ensure that the highly pressurized steam can be isolated within the lines in case of an emergency. A spokesman for the Public Service Enterprise Group, which owns Hope Creek and two other reactors at the Salem Nuclear Generating Station, said the problem would be solved by eliminating an outmoded leak-off line associated with the valve. No precise timetable was given for the current shutdown, although Sheehan estimated the shutdown would be brief. Sheehan said a June 7 shutdown had been caused by a malfunctioning indicator that controlled a valve on the reactor's residual heat removal system. He said the problem had been solved without any major complications. But the leak came one day before a public meeting at which the NRC discussed its safety assessment of the Salem station. The 292-acre facility contains three of New Jersey's four nuclear reactors and is under heightened federal scrutiny for equipment problems, operational mishaps and work environment issues. At the meeting, NRC officials said the Salem station was making slow progress, but that the June 7 leak indicated the facility still faced performance problems. The NRC also criticized PSEG for its dismissal of eight employees without referring the actions to the facility's executive review board. Kymn Harvin, the facility's former organizational manager, has said PSEG terminated her for raising safety concerns. The NRC concluded Harvin's termination was not retaliatory, but she has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against PSEG in a New Jersey court. The executive review board was created to ensure any future personnel actions would not be retaliatory. Newark-based PSEG is in the midst of a merger with Chicago-based Exelon that, if approved, would place all four of New Jersey's nuclear reactors in the hands of one entity. Exelon, which is currently providing management services at the Salem station, operates Ocean County's Oyster Creek nuclear reactor through a subsidiary. To e-mail Jerome Montes at The Press: JMontes@pressofac.com -------- new york Voluntary Indian Point closing sought By GREG CLARY gclary@thejournalnews.com THE WESTCHESTER NY JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: June 15, 2005) http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050615/NEWS02/506150332/1018 WHITE PLAINS — Westchester officials will try to negotiate with the owners of Indian Point to voluntarily close the nuclear power plants by 2015, after a yearlong study released yesterday said a county takeover of the operation would be too risky and expensive. The study estimated it would cost nearly $3 billion for the county to take the site through eminent domain and run the operation until it could be closed. "Based on this report, the county is certainly not going to consider condemnation," County Executive Andrew Spano said at a news conference at the Westchester County Center. "It's too expensive, and there's no way we can ask the people of Westchester County to go through that," Spano said. "We certainly don't want to be in the energy business. ... It's not our business." Last May, when Spano commissioned the study by Levitan & Associates of Boston, the idea of the county's running the plants in Buchanan was a possibility. Officials from Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plants' owner, yesterday said the plants were not for sale but were glad the study showed how valuable the asset was, to the company and as a source of local electricity. Though it took 13 months instead of the expected five months to finish, the report leaves much of the decommissioning decision to Entergy. Spano said he would call top Entergy officials in a matter of days to begin working on what county officials called a "consensual agreement to retire Indian Point voluntarily." County officials said they hoped to head off the company's application for federal permits to operate at the site through 2035. "We're going to use a carrot-and-stick approach," Spano said. "The voluntary option ... is certainly viable. There's enough time to do it. It just amounts to having some goodwill on the part of many different people." The carrot would be between $500 million and $1.4 billion, paid with county, state and federal tax dollars to Entergy as compensation for a voluntary shutdown. Under that scenario, the disposal of nuclear waste still would be Entergy's responsibility. The report also estimated Entergy could save about $1 billion in relicensing costs, a number the company disputes. The stick is the county's continued petitioning of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change the way the agency renews nuclear plants' licenses, in the hope of making relicensing a difficult enough venture that Entergy might want to sell and walk away. One key question is whether the plants would have to spend about $1 billion to build new cooling towers, which the county believes is required for renewal, but Entergy officials said has not been established. The company's licenses to operate Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 run out in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The company has not said if it will seek another 20-year operating license for each unit when the 40-year permits expire. Indian Point 1 was deactivated in 1974. Spano said the county just learned from the NRC that its petition had been accepted for public comment, a step he called important. A top NRC regulations official, however, called the acceptance routine. The earliest something would be decided on such a request for rule changes would be 2 1/2 years, according to Michael Lesar, chief of the NRC's rules and directives branch in Maryland. Lesar said acceptance of the petition doesn't indicate anything about whether it would be approved or rejected. Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman, said the company would listen to Spano's overtures, but added that officials were surprised at his interest in negotiating a deal after publicly and relentlessly campaigning for Indian Point's shutdown. "Despite the fact that the county executive hasn't exactly created the best foundation for negotiations, we'll take his call and be glad to speak to him," Steets said. "He's been adversarial. It seems he's been more attentive to the political implications associated with operating Indian Point than he has to the importance of it." Steets said the plants provide between 20 and 40 percent of the electricity used in New York City and Westchester. In case of a closing before 2015, local utility bills for an average home in Westchester County could rise between $1.50 and $2 per month because of increased price pressure from lower supplies of energy, he said. County Legislator Rob Astorino, Spano's Republican opponent in November's county executive election, said in a statement that the county shouldn't have spent taxpayer money to find out something that was obvious. "I don't understand why Andy Spano needed an outside consultant to tell him it would cost the county billions of dollars to go into the energy business," Astorino said. "What's more, I don't know why he had to wait for the Levitan report to agree that the county lacks the expertise to either run or decommission a nuclear power plant." The 225-page study, according to county Republicans, cost $543,000, but Spano's staff estimated the price tag between $400,000 and $500,000. Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said he would like to see the nuclear plants close as soon as possible and the 18 percent of Rockland County's power that they supply come from other suppliers, specifically upstate hydroelectrical plants. "We have for a long time believed that alternative production of electricity ought to replace nuclear energy for the region, and specifically for Rockland County," Vanderhoef said. "So we support Andy in his efforts in Westchester to get Entergy to work with him to voluntarily close the plant early." Some of the area's congressional representatives agreed with Spano's strategy. "The Indian Point nuclear facility could never be built on that site today, among a population of some 20 million people," said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx. "In this age of terror, it is a natural target for those who seek to destroy our way of life. Indian Point should be closed. Its energy can be replaced by another type of generating facility at that site." Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, who secured $1 million in federal money for a National Academy of Sciences study on how to replace Indian Point's power if the plants close, said the Levitan study helped quantify the local options. The NAS study has not been completed. "The county is absolutely right to search for solutions to this dilemma, and the report from Levitan provides us with data we can use to plan for the plant's closure," Lowey said. Report highlights • The county has two options: Condemn the site and take over operations until the plant closes or negotiate a voluntary shutdown with Indian Point's owner. • Depending on the option, federal, state and county taxpayers would foot the bill, ranging from $500 million to about $3 billion. • Biggest positive effect of closing the plant would be the improved health of Hudson River fisheries, locally as well as out of the area. • Closing before 2015 could raise electricity costs in the short term. • The Buchanan site would be a good location to build another power generation plant from scratch. -------- north carolina Catawba 1 at 100% on MOX 15 June 2005 Nuclear Engineering International http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=132&storyCode=2029291 MOX fuel made from surplus plutonium from the US nuclear arsenal helped Catawba 1 reach full power this month. Operator Duke Power reported that Catawba 1, a 1200MWe PWR, had been running at 100% power for over a week. Duke’s Steve Nesbitt said that Catawba’s MOX fuel assemblies are “behaving exactly as expected.” The fuel was made in France by Cogema at Cadarache from 140kg of US military as part of a deal between the USA and Russia calling for each party to reduce military Pu inventories by 34 tonnes. The transatlantic shipment of the Pu attracted a lot of attention – particularly from Greenpeace upon arrival in France. The USA intends to use the remainder of the 34 tonnes of Pu at a MOX fabrication facility to be constructed at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. The facility will be owned by the DoE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and built by an alliance of Duke, Cogema and Stone & Webster. A twin facility is intended for Russia, where her 34 tonnes of plutonium will also be made into MOX. Talks are ongoing between Russian and US officials but US energy secretary Sam Bodman recently said that presidents Bush and Putin had made “significant progress” and would “soon” agree on an approach to solve their differences. Obstacles to the deal include the liability of US companies working in Russia. -------- utah Huntsman makes anti-nuke pitch He gets ear of energy chief at conference for West's governors By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret Morning News E-mail: lisa@desnews.com Wednesday, June 15, 2005 http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600141602,00.html BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Before leaving his first Western Governors' Association meeting, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. managed to make a private pitch against a high-level nuclear waste site in Utah to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. "I'm not expecting any yes or no immediately, because I know how these things work," Huntsman said. "They take time to play out. . . . You work the process and you work the key decision-makers." The chance to spend 15 minutes with Bodman was one of the main reasons Huntsman attended the three-day annual meeting of the WGA, which ended Tuesday. The governor also was able to have approved a resolution raising concerns about nuclear waste storage and transport. Huntsman, who opposes a temporary high-level nuclear waste facility proposed on the Goshute Indian reservation in Tooele County, has raised a number of safety and security concerns about the project with various administration officials. Tuesday, the governor said he was told by Bodman that the energy bill pending before Congress includes $10 million to study storing nuclear waste where it is produced. That's the solution preferred by Huntsman and by officials from Nevada, where a permanent storage site is proposed for Yucca Mountain. Such a study, the governor said, "hasn't been done before. . . . It's a step in the direction from a public policy standpoint I think bodes well for perhaps a longer-term policy fix." Legislation calling for on-site storage has already been introduced in Congress by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. During his meeting with Bodman, Huntsman said he "covered the on-site aspects that he knows I'm pushing. And, of course, he wanted to remind me there are two sides." Also discussed was the potential danger of transporting nuclear waste from facilities around the country to be stored in Utah. "I once again stated how outlandish I thought it was from a security standpoint, and from a long-term storage standpoint, to be putting 4,000 above-ground casks filled with that material downwind from 2 million people," the governor said. "It's not that a lot of people disagree with what I'm saying. It's just getting the process to work." The resolution that he and Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn co-sponsored on nuclear waste should help, Huntsman said. There was no discussion Tuesday on that or any of the 27 resolutions that were approved by the governors. But there were months of work on the language done behind the scenes. Huntsman's chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, spent two days at this ski resort finalizing the resolution. While it's not an outright statement in support of on-site storage, it does suggest it as an option. That's a big step, Huntsman said. "It's important. We worked hard on it. We vetted it with all of the other governors. The fact that it survived, I think, says something very good about the momentum that this policy option is getting," he said. Two governors attending the meeting — both Democrats — said they support Huntsman's stronger stand on the issue. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said the WGA statement could be revised at a future meeting to reflect that stance. "I'm with Huntsman," Richardson said. "So we'll continue working on this. Maybe we'll propose another one at the November meeting." Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said she, too, prefers on-site storage. But asked if some of the 18 governors who make up the WGA aren't ready to go that far, Napolitano said, "I think that's a fair statement." The Arizona governor, who was named chairwoman of the WGA Tuesday, said concerns about transportation and homeland security need to be considered. She cited an accident in Arizona involving the transportation of low-level waste. "The transportation issues are serious," Napolitano said. The governors talked energy before ending their meeting, hearing from Bodman as well as a panel of experts. During that session, Huntsman asked the energy secretary about how states should look at renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power. Bodman didn't have an answer for the Utah governor, suggesting that should be left for "the market to take its rightful role." Huntsman said later he would like the state to pursue alternative energy sources. "I'm very open-minded on this subject," he said. "My bias would be to take a very serious look at the renewable options. . . . I think the time is right as the United States, and indeed the region, are thinking through longer-term energy strategies to open this discussion." Huntsman said he will direct his newly formed energy policy advisory group to study such sources, including geothermal. He said within a few weeks, a state energy adviser should be selected who will work for the governor's economic development office. -------- washington Senate would add to Hanford budget Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 By Annette Cary and Les Blumenthal, Tri-City Herald staff writers http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/6609966p-6494616c.html A Senate appropriations subcommittee added $34 million back into the Hanford fiscal year 2006 budget Tuesday, but that still would leave the proposed budget more than $230 million below this year's spending. "We had to work hard to get what we did," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate energy and water appropriations subcommittee. It's unlikely legal cleanup deadlines for the Hanford nuclear reservation can be met at the level of the Senate budget, she said. In February the president proposed cutting the Hanford budget of nearly $2.1 billion for 2005 by $267 million in fiscal year 2006. But because security spending would be increased, the actual cut to cleanup dollars would be closer to $297 million. The U.S. House took up the proposed budget this spring and restored about $200 million of the reduced funding under the leadership of Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. The Senate subcommittee budget that would restore less money still must be approved by the full committee, then go before the Senate for a vote. If the Senate's Hanford budget remains the same, a conference committee then will have to reconcile the difference between the $34 million added back under the current Senate budget and the $200 million the House voted to restore. In the meantime, Hanford contractors are preparing for layoffs under what's certain to be a reduced budget when the fiscal year starts Oct. 1. CH2M Hill Hanford Group is prepared to cut 350 jobs if no money is restored to the Hanford budget. Fluor Hanford, while not saying layoffs are tied to budget reductions, has announced that up to 1,000 jobs could be cut in September. And Bechtel National will finish cutting nearly 1,000 jobs this month because of concerns about earthquake standards at the $5.8 billion vitrification plant under construction and other difficulties. The House was able to restore more cleanup money for Hanford than the Senate because it agreed to cut money from science and water projects also included in the bill, Murray said. Overall, DOE's environmental management programs received $128 million more from the Senate subcommittee than the president requested. The largest part of the Senate increase, a little over a quarter of it, would go to Hanford. However, Hanford money accounted for almost half of the $550 million cut in the president's proposal for environmental management programs across the nation. "This budget is very challenging," Murray said. "The president has made it very difficult." State officials are concerned that as sites in more states are cleaned up, fewer states will have a stake in cleaning up nuclear weapons sites contaminated in World War II and the Cold War, said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Ecology. "We expect to see attention to it by Congress diminish," she said. The state has been encouraged to see the Washington congressional delegation pulling together to restore the administration cuts to the Hanford budget, she said, "But we know it's an uphill battle." The $34 million restored by Murray would be used at the Hanford tank farms, where fields of huge underground tanks hold 53 million gallons of radioactive waste left from the production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Hanford workers are emptying and preparing to close the oldest of the tanks, some of which date from World War II. The president's budget cut tank farm spending by $89 million. The House version of the budget restored about $60 million of the cut. The Senate bill would not restore any of the $64 million cut from the $690 million budget for construction of the vitrification plant to turn tank waste into a stable glass form for disposal. That reduced budget amount will guarantee a delay in the start of vitrification of waste and is in violation of the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement, which regulates Hanford cleanup, Murray said. The construction schedule already is expected to be delayed by concerns over earthquake standards for key parts of the vitrification plant. The Senate budget also would not restore any of the cuts to the budget for work now performed by contractor Fluor Hanford, including cleanup of soil and ground water in the central plateau and preparation of plutonium-tainted waste for disposal in a federal repository in New Mexico. The House version provided limited restoration of funding for Fluor projects, including $15 million for ground water protection, $5 million for urgent infrastructure maintenance, $8 million for waste to be sent to New Mexico and $15.8 million for work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. The Senate bill also did not include a boost for cleanup along the Columbia River corridor under a new contract awarded to Washington Closure. The House version added $20 million for the project to allow minimum contract funding for 2006. "The president's budget didn't meet the (Tri-Party Agreement)," Murray said. "I doubt the Senate's will or the House's will. The administration is making it very difficult to meet the milestones of the TPA." Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill included no funding to study temporary storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel at DOE cleanup sites such as Hanford. The House report asked that DOE begin considering storing the fuel temporarily at Hanford or other DOE cleanup sites until a permanent solution is found. The fuel, along with high-level radioactive waste turned into glass at Hanford, is planned to be sent to Yucca Mountain, Nev., but the opening of the repository has been delayed until at least 2012. More commercial waste already is being stored at 129 private and government sites across the nation than Yucca Mountain will be able to hold under its current configuration. ---- Radioactive contamination at Hanford is on the move It is 'not just staying in place,' warns report by watchdog group By LISA STIFFLER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER Wednesday, June 15, 2005 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/228573_hanford15.html Radioactive dust in a Tri-Cities attic and plutonium-tainted clams in the Columbia River are red flags signaling that contamination from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is in the environment and moving into the food chain, a watchdog group says. After finding radiation in river mud, mulberry bushes and deer and mouse scat, the Government Accountability Project says better testing is needed to determine how widespread the potentially dangerous material is and where it's going. The Seattle-based non-profit group, which is releasing its findings today, says it has measured radiation in lichen that is twice as high as previously believed. "It's not just staying in place," said Tom Carpenter, director of the group's nuclear oversight campaign. "It's getting to areas where there are people." The U.S. Department of Energy spends $2.8 million a year monitoring radiation in water, soil, plants and animals on and around the multibillion-dollar Hanford cleanup project. DOE officials and their contractors said the watchdog group's results were not surprising and that they encourage outside scrutiny. "The levels that they're dealing with really aren't out of line with what we've been dealing with for years," said Ted Poston, an environmental manager with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the company tracking environmental pollution for DOE. "The Department of Energy encourages environmental groups ... to do independent sampling and take us to task," said Dana Ward, DOE project manager for the public safety and resource-protection program. Ward and Poston said they needed more time to carefully review the report to determine its validity. Regardless, the government is protecting the public through its monitoring, Ward said. Key findings from the GAP report include finding traces of plutonium in pike minnows and clams pulled from the Columbia near Hanford, in south-central Washington. Tests are still being performed on a sturgeon recently caught offshore. Other specimens analyzed in the $50,000 study were collected last year. Contamination was also found upstream of Hanford, leading to speculation that fish could be spreading the radioactivity, though there could also be non-Hanford sources for the contamination. Land across the river from the cleanup is part of the Hanford Reach National Monument and accessible to the public. The segment of river wrapping around Hanford is renowned as part of the last free-flowing stretch of the extensively dammed river. "People are out there fishing and eating the fish," Carpenter said. If the government is finding plutonium in the pike minnow and clams, "they sure haven't reported it." It's well known that radioactive material escaped from Hanford, home of the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor and source of atomic bomb fuel. Since its creation during World War II, billions of gallons of waste were dumped into the soil and radiation released into the air. Back in the 1960s -- Hanford's heyday -- radiation from the site was measured as far as the coasts of California and Canada, said Dirk Dunning, a Hanford nuclear specialist with the Oregon Department of Energy. "Was there stuff released? Unquestionably," he said. Government officials know that radioactive groundwater is still flowing to the river tainted with radiation. It's still in the soil at the 586-square-mile reservation and has been detected in tumbleweeds that roll across the desert site. What concerns Carpenter is the presence of the radioactive and other dangerous chemicals moving from the soil and water and into plants and animals offsite that can spread the contamination, increasing the risk of exposure for people. None of the radiation detected presented an immediate risk to human health, according to the report. Even so, the results worry Tim Jarvis, a former toxicologist with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Jarvis, who reviewed the report, said the detection of radiation in the attic dust of a Richland home was "shocking." "I'm sitting here in Richland. I've got a 25-year-old home," Jarvis said. "I don't know how much radiation's in my attic." The researchers did not determine what type of radiation was in the attic, but know it's not plutonium and does not pose a risk to people living there. Dunning said that he had not studied the report. Other researchers with his department had read an earlier draft and noted in a written response concerns with its limited scope. The response stated that it "lacks scientific rigor." Carpenter and Marco Kaltofen, president of Boston Chemical Data Corp., which did the sampling for the report, agree that their research is not definitive. They want more testing done, preferably by an independent source outside of DOE or their contractor. Federal officials said they'd be willing to discuss the research with the watchdog group. A better assessment of regional contamination is essential, critics said, if the cleanup -- which could cost $60 billion and continue until 2035 -- is going to be successful. "This study says, 'We're a third party. We're citizens. And where we look, we find (radioactivity).' " Jarvis said. "So DOE, where in the hell did it go? How much, and where is it? "If DOE knows it has escaped, why isn't it out getting it?" he asked. "It's their job." P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com -------- us nuc waste Eternity metal Nuclear waste watch - 6/15/05 Joplin, Missouri, Independent by Ron Bourgoin http://www.joplinindependent.com/display_article.php/bourgoin1118846693 Thanksgiving would be an appropriate time to open a repository: while Americans are stuffing turkeys, the DOE can be stuffing a mountain. The DOE says the cans it'll stuff in mountains will hold waste for at least 10,000 years. The newest forever metal from which cans will be made was developed at Lehigh University. [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/lu-nav040405.php] I don't have a problem with claims made about the lifetime of can metal. What I have a problem with is man working inside the mountain repository. Cans will be smashed into cans, and cans will be smashed against mountain walls. Cans will be put on top of cans, and the ones on the bottom will spill their contents. Before the final sealant's applied to close the mountain off for eternity, lethal uranium and plutonium will already be migrating outward to soil and ground water. Politicians can talk all they want to about how cans will simply be retrieved in case high levels of radiation are measured coming from the mountain, but the fact is no-one's going to do that. If it takes 30 years to fill a mountain, it'll certainly take no less to empty it, and by that time it'll be too late to save the area. We have to remember that Yucca Mountain, for instance, is slated to be stuffed with 20,000 cans. That job's got to get very boring after a while, which is when problems will begin. We can all expect the first 100 cans will be entered in the mountain according to specs, especially with the public and smiling DOE, NRC, and EPA officials watching. But what worries me is what bored mountain stuffers will do with can numbers 101 to 20,000. Whether Yucca opens or not doesn't erase the fact that this will happen in any repository. ---- -------- -------- MILITARY -------- afghanistan -------- africa -------- -------- arms -------- -------- asia -------- -------- balkans -------- -------- biological weapons -------- -------- britain -------- -------- business -------- -------- chemical weapons -------- -------- china -------- -------- europe -------- haiti -------- iran -------- -------- iraq -------- -------- israel / palestine -------- -------- landmines -------- -------- latin america -------- -------- mideast -------- -------- nato -------- -------- pacific -------- -------- pakistan / india -------- -------- philippines -------- prisoners of war -------- puerto rico -------- -------- russia / chechnya -------- -------- space -------- -------- spies -------- -------- un -------- -------- us -------- -------- venezuela -------- war crimes -------- -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals -------- death penalty -------- drug war -------- homeland security / national intelligence -------- human rights -------- immigration / refugees -------- justice -------- police -------- prisons / prisoners -------- -------- terrorism -------- torture -------- POLITICS -------- budget -------- corruption -------- investigations -------- propaganda wars -------- -------- us politics -------- -------- voting -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy -------- -------- energy -------- -------- OTHER -------- environment -------- -------- genetics -------- -------- health -------- -------- imf / world bank / wto (economics) -------- poverty -------- ACTIVISTS -------- --------