NucNews - June 17, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Air Force finds no trace of lost nuke 6/17/2005 12:48 PM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-17-lost-bomb_x.htm SAVANNAH, Ga. — The first government search in decades for a nuclear bomb lost off the Georgia coast in 1958 found no trace of the sunken weapon, the Air Force said in a report Friday. The report, released nine months after scientists tested radiation levels off Tybee Island, concluded the 7,600-pound bomb cannot explode and should be left at sea. "We still think it's irretrievably lost. We don't know where to look for it," Dr. Billy Mullins, an Air Force nuclear weapons adviser who led the search, told a news conference. A damaged B-47 bomber jettisoned the Mark-15 nuke into a sound about 15 miles from Savannah after colliding with a fighter jet during a training flight. The military never recovered the bomb and gave up searching until last year, when a retired Air Force pilot claimed his private search team had detected unusually high radiation levels in the sound. Government scientists investigated, taking radiation readings and soil samples Sept. 30 from water in an area the size of four football fields. The report said varying radiation levels were observed, but they were from natural elements in the sediment on the sea floor. "The best course of action in this matter is to not continue to search for it and to leave the property in place," said the report by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency. The Air Force has said the bomb contains uranium and about 400 pounds of conventional explosives, though it lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger a nuclear blast. The amount of uranium was undisclosed. In 2001, the Air Force declared the bomb "irretrievably lost" and estimated it lies buried beneath 8 to 40 feet of water and 5 to 15 feet of mud and sand. The report issued Friday by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency said dropping the search and leaving the bomb was "the best course of action." --- Air Force releases findings of Wassaw Sound survey by Master Sgt. Mitch Gettle 6/17/2005 - Air Force Print News http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123010804 WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials completed their evaluation of radiation levels in the Wassaw Sound where an incomplete nuclear weapon was lost off the coast of Georgia in 1958. During a June 17 press conference in Savannah, Ga., Air Force officials released results of a data collection survey conducted Sept. 30. “We found a variation of radiation in this area; however, this is not a surprise since radiation is found in most dirt,” said Dr. Billy W. Mullins, associate director of strategic security for Air Force air and space operations. “The radiation levels we found are due to the radioactive decay process of naturally occurring mineral deposits in the area." On Feb. 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber carrying a single Mk15 Mod 0 nuclear bomb had a midair collision with a fighter jet. The bomb was not configured with a nuclear capsule on board. After three unsuccessful attempts to land the bomber, the weapon was jettisoned several miles from Savannah into the Atlantic Ocean. The Air Force considered the case to be closed until 2004, when media reports indicated a citizens group named American Sea Shore Underwater Recovery Expedition had discovered enhanced levels of radiation and were concerned that the elevated readings were associated with the lost bomb. In response, Air Force officials worked with the Department of Energy, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to complete the survey. “We sent a team of 23 people to meet with ASSURE team members to go over the data they could provide us,” Dr. Mullins said. "We went out to the sound and took detailed radiation measurements from over 20,000 data points as well as 12 seabed samples. “We do not have any evidence that they found the bomb,” he said. "We found no evidence of man-made enriched uranium." No new information was uncovered that leads Air Force officials to modify the conclusions reached in 2001 -- that it is in the best interest of the public and the environment to leave the bomb in its resting place and remain categorized as irretrievably lost. “There is no danger from this bomb in its current position, wherever that may be," Dr. Mullins said. "For the people of Savannah, there is no exposure to unnatural levels of radiation. And, any attempt to search and locate this bomb will result in a negative economic and environmental impact to the local area for no gain in public safety." -------- britain Moray sites on secret nuclear dump list 17/06/2006 The Northern Scot http://www.northern-scot.co.uk/article.tvt?_ticket=NB5YMVKACK3SMLDEIOQNBPYDALOLQEHFURUSKONFATVEARQEFNRGUU2901MAAQ6G9LLDNBF2TRRIVNNAHNSEASQ9CHYITRRLUNNAGWSEARO9CHVRFCJP&_scope=Flow/Northern%20Scot/News&ARTICLECAT=News A SECRET list, made public for the first time, has revealed five sites in Moray which have been earmarked as potential nuclear waste dumping grounds. Moray's RAF bases at Lossiemouth and Kinloss are two of the identified sites, and areas within the Culbin, Roseisle and Lossie Forests have also been examined by nuclear industry chiefs. The disclosure prompted shock locally among environmental and community figures, and the public has been urged to voice their protest against Moray's inclusion on any future list. Nirex, the UK radioactive waste agency, was forced to publish its list of possible nuclear waste storage sites last week under new Freedom of Information legislation. That revealed that five areas in Scotland were shortlisted in the mid-1980s as favoured sites - these being Dounreay and Altnabreac in Caithness, the Western Isles of Fuday and Sandray, and a dump site under the sea to the west of Hunterston in North Ayrshire. In total, 159 sites were examined across Scotland, and 33 of them made it past the third of a six-stage selection process operated by Nirex - including all five sites in Moray. The inclusion of so many areas in Moray within the site selection process, which started after Nirex was formed in 1982 and ended in 1997, has prompted shock and surprise locally. Nirex has insisted that the list is purely historical and will not form the basis of a fresh site selection process. But Moray folk have been urged to make it clear that they would not welcome any such development. Friends of the Earth has asked communities across Scotland to join the fight against plans to expand nuclear power in the UK. Mike Bowker, the Moray branch chairman, said he hoped the publication of the list would act as a wake-up call to the dangers of nuclear power. "Hopefully, this will focus people's minds, the fact that quietly, behind the scenes for so many years, they have been trying to find suitable geological sites to store this stuff. I am deeply concerned by this." Mr Bowker fears that the Government could be set to invest more money in future in generating energy through nuclear power, rather than properly supporting the drive for renewable energy sources. "People need to become more aware of the nuclear power generation issues and the true cost of producing electricity that way. "Nuclear is an easy, expensive, toxic and potentially hazardous option. It is in nobody's best interests to have nuclear power stations and nuclear waste storage facilities on our back doorstep." Mr Bowker said Scotland could become selfsufficient in energy production through wave, wind and other renewable sources, allied to a concerted campaign to encourage everyone to reduce energy consumption. However, he questions whether the political and financial will exists to do that. Business leader Jim Johnston said that being touted as a potential nuclear storage site would do little to help the local economy. "The economy is getting hammered from pillar to post at the moment, and we are looking for businesses to relocate here. "It is bad enough that we are already flagged up as an area with great potential for flooding, if we are then flagged up as an area for nuclear dumping, that is not the most attractive proposition. "The very fact that we have been considered should be enough to set the alarm bells ringing. The notion of living in a place the size of Moray and this stuff being dumped on our doorstep is frightening, " he added. Senior forester Phil Whitfield said: "I am surprised by this, and it was not something I was aware of. "Three of the Moray sites are really important locally and nationally for their conservation and environmental values, not to mention their value to local people for recreation." Mr Whitfield, Moray district manager for Forestry Commission Scotland, added: "I would not think they are sensible candidates for a development of that kind. The Culbin Forest is a site of special scientific interest." Environmental campaigner Rod Lovie said: "This is a timely reminder of the dangers in going down the nuclear route for energy creation. -------- business BNFL considers $1bn US sell-off BNFL has to adapt to a changing landscape in the nuclear industry Friday, 17 June, 2005, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4103900.stm British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) is considering plans to sell its Westinghouse business in the US for $1bn (£548m), according to a report. The Times newspaper said that the disposal will be announced at the end of this month, but BNFL said no decision had been taken over the sale. The state-owned firm is reviewing its operations after plans to privatise the entire business where shelved. Westinghouse is a leading builder of nuclear power stations. Cerberus Global Investments, a private equity firm chaired by former US Vice-President Dan Quayle, is thought to be interested in buying Westinghouse. The sale would come as nuclear energy is making something of a comeback. A growing number of scientists, energy industry observers and policymakers have been trumpeting the merits of nuclear energy as a safe and pollution-free way of generating power. Changing role BNFL operates the Sellafield nuclear plant and the UK's remaining older Magnox stations. Westinghouse, meanwhile, has been bidding for contracts to build new power stations in China and the US. The Times quoted BNFL's chief executive Mike Parker as saying that "the UK government has been asking whether a new-build programme really fits with the risk profile it is seeking". "It believes in the market; it doesn't want to own assets," he was quoted as saying. Other interested companies could be French nuclear firm Areva and Louisiana-based Shaw Group. Banking group NM Rothschild will oversee the sale of the Westinghouse, the paper said. The role of BNFL is set to change with the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) next year and it has shifted its clean-up activities into a separate company. It will also transfer the majority of its assets and liabilities to the NDA. -------- china Westinghouse adds partner in bid for China nuclear deal Friday, June 17, 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05168/522969.stm Westinghouse Electric Co. yesterday said it had completed the consortium hoping to build four huge nuclear reactors in China, adding the nuclear services unit of Louisiana-based engineering and facilities management conglomerate Shaw Group. The consortium, which also includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc., has submitted a bid for the China work and hopes to learn this fall if it's the winner. The reactor was designed in Monroeville by Westinghouse and relies on passive safety features that require fewer active parts than previous designs and less human interaction. If the Westinghouse group wins the bid, it's anticipated the work would preserve and create some 4,000 to 5,000 jobs in the United States, much of it in this region. It also is expected that China, under fire to reduce emissions pollution, will seek to build several more. Others in the running for the China work include a French firm, Areva, and its joint venture partner, German-based Siemens. Vice President Dick Cheney, in a visit to China last spring, pushed Westinghouse by name in discussions with officials there about the booming country's desire for new nuclear plants. -------- depleted uranium Dumbocracy: The Silence of Americans By Jim Kirwan Al-Jazeerah, June 17, 2005 http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2005%20Opinion%20Editorials/June/17%20o/Dumbocracy%20The%20Silence%20of%20Americans%20By%20Jim%20Kirwan.htm CONGRATULATIONS America: It seems that we have succeeded where no one else would ever want to go! This nation took a settled Republic and dismembered its form of government turning this democracy into something that looks a lot more like Dumbocracy – and then has had the temerity to wonder why the world thinks we’re crazy. Many writers, including this one, have been trying to figure out why Americans do not react to what this nation is doing in the world today, both at home and abroad. Perhaps the answer is much simpler than many of us imagined. Initially it appeared that Americans were either just asleep or were willfully blind to all that is and was being done in our name. It appears that the population is behaving like a herd of dumb animals, slavishly following orders from a certifiable “leader” who has no qualifications, no leadership skills, and no accompanying track record that could ever have justified the failures of GWB in the office that he now occupies. His “cabinet” has been filled with equally unqualified people who collectively have no experience in military matters, or in the administration of anything meaningful or real. So why does this nation credit this spoiled offspring from a truly criminal family, this AWOL coward who ran away on 911 instead of doing anything at all to interrupt the attacks of that day? WHY has Bush not yet explained himself to the nation or the world? In the mid nineteen-thirties Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” and in that novel he concluded: “ where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!” Even today the US Senate cannot bring itself to apologize to the victims of lynching -4 , 743people killed (illegally) between 1882 and1968 ,” and we call ourselves a civilized nation! We have taken a dire situation and intensified the risks, destroyed the impediments that might have slowed the rise of anarchy, and all the while we have remained deaf, dumb and blind to what we are creating – WHY? If the dead of all those wars we entered into – to “Make the World Safe for Democracy” were to be heard on this subject the chorus would be deafeningly opposed to our present course of action. Yet the public in its bubble world of profits and power continues on the one sure path that will bring death and ruination to all the Outlaws say they represent. These men and women who died in our wars would not applaud what has been done with the sacrifice they did not really choose to make. In WWII 50 million died, for this? In the two wars we have going now, there are officially over 1700 dead, and there have been over a hundred-thousand exposed to Depleted Uranium and the malignancy of that disease that continues to kill long after the guns have been silenced: this affects not only the GI’s but their families as well - yet the public is still not concerned enough to demand real answers from those who got us into this situation. How many more must die before we begin to scream ENOUGH? What’s the magic number here2 ,000,10 , 000–20 , 000dead? Who decides what that weighty number will be, who will stand against this injustice, not just for our dead but also for all the people that have been maimed or displaced or killed because of our belligerence? Why is it so hard for Americans to understand that the people we kill for the OUTLAWS all have families, dreams and would have had futures, had we not slaughtered them, too! Why do we seemingly not want to know who is responsible for pulling the strings on our homegrown Outlaws – the thugs who sign the orders – then lie about the facts of what they have done and continue to do hourly? One reason that seems to hold a lot of sway is that Congress no longer makes our laws, they’ve sold that privilege to the highest bidders. The Government of the United States of America is now of, by and for the Corporations. These are the same corporations, the Corporatocracy, to whom the people of the USA have bequeathed a literal and legal eternal life, while at the same time allowing their own corporate “best interests” to over-ride the needs and interests of the very citizens who made all that largess possible. All the terms of any agreements that the workers for such companies signed on for – are now subject to nullification at the whim of the corporations. The retirement funds, the health-care, and the long-term interests of those who made the profits happen, now represent nothing but “excessive costs” to the corporations that are failing on all fronts, because they have destroyed any incentive for anyone besides the upper-level managers to profit from their existence. But it gets worse. Americans gave the newly minted outlaw corporations the legal right to exist – now those corporations have no further need for working Americans, because now they have foreign markets to buy their outsourced products, so the public here is overripe to become nothing more than a wage-enslaved herd of animals to be directed and controlled by what suits the corporations – at each and every turn in their corporate schedule for hegemony. The answers to the above questions are not pretty, but it goes something like this. War is GREAT for business and it’s especially good for stockholders, people with jobs at those corporations who hold the SECRET no-bid contracts, and for insiders. Normally Wars are good for the initiating country for the profits that are generated by that action. In this case, since the jobs have been outsourced, down to and including the manufacture of American Flags in China – this nation has actually lost millions of jobs because of the war, and its demands upon our outsourced corporate legions whose profits have never been greater. All this while the public was told to “just go shopping!” http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/articles/2003/art9.htm Perhaps it is understandable if the above is the real reason why so many refuse to “know” what’s going on – this could explain many things. For instance if the above is true, then it would definitely be understandable that many would indeed fear for the loss of their jobs, or the loss of the income generated in their401 K’s, or their stock portfolios – IF they were to publicly demand accountability from those who created 911 and then started these wars to cover-up their crimes. No wonder all the little lambs chose silence over protest: that is what the “smart-money” always does! Congratulations are in order – it took real perseverance to turn this democracy on its head, and to learn to worship Outlaws while we are killing everything that we have always professed to “believe in.” Welcome to the Dumbocracy of the New United States of the Corporatocracy. We have created a prison of the mind that will destroy any rational thoughts we ever had of being human. Maybe, we have become nothing more than pod people without the capacity for critical thought. We have abdicated all that we would each have brought to being viable beings, opting instead to live as footnotes in the margins of the lives of faceless, soulless corporations. In the final analysis we are destroying all that makes each of us valuable – to ourselves or to others. Think about it – do you really want to be the excuse given for the USA to continue to live as the world’s sole Dumbocracy? Break the Silence - NOW! Jim Kirwan may be contacted at: kirwanstudios@earthlink.net ---- Kosovo, 1999: An Insider's View by Christopher Deliso balkanalysis.com June 17, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=6338 Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo By John Norris Praeger, 2005, 334 pp. Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo gives an unprecedented inside view of the planning and conduct of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Written by John Norris, the former communications director for Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, this recently released work traces the chronology of decisions and events made by all of the key political players involved. With his enviable access to the communications and meetings held among U.S., European, Serbian, and Russian diplomats, Norris is able to weave a riveting narrative that provides access to the minds and motives of those who crafted the war. As such, the author helpfully expands the existing literature on Kosovo. For the first time, we get comprehensive explanations for decisions (mostly, those of Washington and Moscow) that have always been murkily known. However, unless one is a committed interventionist who unhesitatingly accepts the status quo on all of America's foreign policy, this book will also frequently prove hard to digest. I suspect that this dichotomy (exclusive inside sources and blatant state propaganda) will make reading Collision Course a necessary, if somewhat irritating, experience for most of our readers. A Caveat It's important to note from the outset that Collision Course is an establishment work, and its author and key sources were and are cheerleaders for an intervention and occupation that have led to humanitarian horrors, local mafia consolidation of power, and the imminent betrayal of UN Resolution 1244, which guaranteed that Kosovo would remain a part of Yugoslavia. Despite the analytical critiques Norris makes of poor decision-making and infighting among Clinton officials, the rationale for intervention itself is never seriously questioned, except when it is referred to in order to cast doubting allies (and especially Russia) in a bad light. Further, the author is currently special adviser to the president of the International Crisis Group, an utterly loathsome think-tank and graveyard of retired, failed, and ambitiously aspiring Western diplomats. Nevertheless, the ICG retains considerable clout among the "international community," considering that it is funded by the same governments and institutions whose views it parrots with regularity. In short, it is the civilian version of private military contractors like MPRI that are staffed by retired military men. The difference is that the ICG concentrates on political murders rather than corporeal ones. Now the ICG has always been especially aggressive when it comes to the Balkans. It is no accident that several of the participants on the winning side of the Kosovo conflict now sit on its board. In addition to author and advisor Norris, names like General Wesley Clark and former Finnish president (and special negotiator during the war) Martti Ahtisaari jump out. The ICG has been foremost in the lobbying war for Kosovo's independence – an eventual scenario that was obvious from the onset of NATO's bombing, yet one that Norris inexplicably excludes from the minds of those executing the war, as if they had never expected their actions would lead to logical conclusions at variance with the peace they dictated in the end. A Manifesto, Not a Foreword Before the book even starts, there is a foreword by former Deputy Secretary of State Talbott – not unreasonable, considering that he is one of the book's main protagonists. Talbott's brief text is dripping with a retrospective neoconservatism that remarkably manages to valorize the 1999 bombing while also taking jabs at the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. The goal is to slyly posit Kosovo – a Clintonian "achievement" – as an example for the current administration to follow elsewhere. Among the other carved-in-stone truths we meet here include statements like, "to the extent that there is such a thing as an international community, it owes much to NATO" (p. ix), and "the sovereignty of states is not absolute" (p. x). He attempts to trace the lineage of the American humanitarian crusade as far back as the 1994 intervention meant to prop up Aristide in Haiti, stating the need to overthrow the military junta as "thousands of Haitians sought asylum in the United States by taking to the sea in rickety boats" (p. xi). Could the threat of such an unwanted intrusion of refugees, perhaps, actually have had more to do with the intervention than with safeguarding human rights and democracy? Predictably enough, for Talbott, the Bush administration failed in Iraq and Afghanistan because of its "reluctance to cast its own policies in terms of continuity with its predecessors, especially its previous predecessor, the Clinton administration" (p. xi). Imagine that. Nevertheless, all's well that ends well, because Bush has performed a total about-face on the nation-building angle, with the helpful result that "Kosovo looks more like a model for what they may end up putting in place in those other states that American-led armies liberated from heinous regimes" (p. xi). According to the former diplomat's checklist of criteria on war and peace, "[Kosovo] was far from perfect, but overall, it gets a passing grade" (p. xii). According to whom? As I've argued before, Kosovo should not be held up as a model for anything but disaster. A Startling Revelation Following this rather hackneyed attempt to justify intervention as a policy, author Norris begins the book with a contention so surprising that one suspects some retrospective contextualization has been performed here as well for political benefit. How else can one explain the following statement and its conclusion? "[N]ATO's large membership and consensus style may cause endless headaches for military planners, but it is also why joining NATO is appealing to nations across Central and Eastern Europe. Nations from Albania to Ukraine want in the Western club. The gravitational pull of the community of Western democracies highlights why Milosevic's Yugoslavia had become such an anachronism. As nations throughout the region strove to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder that NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course. "It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of Kosovo Albanians – that best explains NATO's war." (pp. xxii-xxiii) This astonishing paragraph clearly seeks to contextualize Clinton's war as a necessary predecessor to the Bush administration's multicolored revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and who knows where next. Sadly, it might even be true. The "liberals" of American politics are often contrasted with the belated liberals of the neocon camp, the ones most often identified with permanent revolution for the sake of spreading democracy, but it's clear that despite the occasional softball criticism of the Bush administration's interventions, it's more like a family squabble than some deeper alienation. The Democrats prefer allied lynch mobs, whereas the Republicans are more willing to intervene without outside help. The difference is basically the same. At the end of the day, both Democrats and Republicans remain committed to the same "values" of forcing political change on foreign regimes. Norris' explanation seems to replace one deception (that of the humanitarian intervention) with another (the democracy-building intervention), somehow by rolling them into one. Considering that the ultimate justification for NATO's war has always been cited as being primarily the protection of the Kosovo Albanians, I would be feeling pretty insulted right now if I were one of the latter. Room for Self-Criticism? That said, the author at least notes several contemporary criticisms of the unfolding war. Starting from the second chapter, he recites a litany of abuses leveled at the Clinton administration from the press, former officials, and the Republican opposition. Perhaps because of his former position, Norris is most acutely aware of the antagonisms leveled at the State Department by the Pentagon, CIA, and others over the former's failure to foresee a refugee crisis once bombing got underway and over their naïve view that Milosevic would immediately capitulate. Henry Kissinger is cited as saying the administration wasn't hawkish enough, while the "fiercely conservative" Richard Perle charged that Clinton's was "the worst foreign policy team since the Second World War" (p. 26). However, when Norris alleges that the Clinton administration "was caught off-balance by the refugee crisis," while at the same alleging that "few understood raw politics better than Bill Clinton," (p. 27) one has to question his sincerity. This contradiction cuts to the central dilemma of the book: whether we can take the testimony of the author at face value or we have to understand him as an apologist. After all, many less gifted and less privy to sensitive information than the president were arguing at the time that such a bombardment would in fact cause such a crisis; how then can the sagacious Clinton have failed to see it? Unless, of course, he had hoped for it to occur for his own propaganda purposes; but this possibility is preempted by Norris, who merely says that Milosevic's evil intent "helped" justify the president's decision. Notably, he refers only to "images" of refugees as being pivotal in firming alliance support for war – images of refugees being the key weapon for developing the "human interest" angle of the story and taking attention away from the bombing's destructiveness. And though it is well known that the Albanian KLA at least in some cases forced people to become refugees to cynically generate world sympathy, and shot other Albanians believed to be Serb "collaborators," this scenario is dismissed by the author as nothing more than Russian-Yugoslav propaganda (pp. 13, 20). Essentially, the question is one of believability: could the Western leadership really have been so naïve about so much? For instance, the American negotiating principle from the beginning was to secure the rights of Kosovo's Albanians with the introduction of peacekeepers, while still somehow keeping Kosovo a part of the Yugoslav state. Anyone with sense could have seen that this was not a possibility once the Serb forces were expelled. Should we believe, then, that the Americans were sincere in their "official" platform, and/or that the author is being sincere vouching for their sincerity in his retelling? This is one of the book's great mysteries. Intimate Portraits Aside from its problematic intrinsic nature, however, Collision Course has plenty to offer on the informative level. The portrayals of interactions among the biggest world diplomats offer much insight into the negotiating process. Norris reveals how our leaders (and theirs) really think and presents the kind of seemingly minor details that contribute to their relationships. For example, to a senior NATO official is attributed the observation that because "winters are bad for Yeltsin," negotiations with the Russian president, as well as the intervention itself, were best held off: "he starts to pay attention and always gets better in March and April (p. 4)." Incredibly, Clinton and Yeltsin had only spoken twice about Kosovo in the six months between October 1998 and March 1999 – with the latter slamming the phone down on both occasions – a fact that serves Norris' thesis that the Russians were intransigent, bellicose, and slow to engage with the negotiating process. Yet while there may indeed be some truth to stereotypes, it becomes tiresome after a while to hear the Russian negotiators constantly mocked for the great crimes of smoking and drinking, while the fresh-faced Western diplomats are described with generally positive adjectives ("lean," "affable," "good-natured," "scrappy," etc.) as they sanctimoniously interface with their laptops and policy papers. The subtle implication of Norris' opposing descriptions of the Russians and Westerners is that the former were unwilling to negotiate and an impediment to the peace process – even as the facts the author recounts lead to a precisely opposite interpretation. In the end, the picture painted of American diplomacy is actually quite unflattering. It is the Russians who throughout proved most pragmatic and eager to engage all parties in negotiations, and the Americans (as well as Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac) who come off as obdurate, unyielding bullies – a position they could well afford, since they were the ones dropping the bombs. As Collision Course abundantly reveals, the entire tenor of American negotiation throughout the conflict was in the form of ultimatum, and the primary considerations of those involved were not empathy for refugees or democracy, but merely to further their own individual and collective reputations and prestige. That said, it is important to note that all the parties involved acted according to their own political considerations first. Russian President Boris Yeltsin's frantic calls to stop the bombing were fueled by his own looming impeachment hearings, and the helpful effect that the war was having for his Communist opposition. For his part, U.S. Vice President Gore was weighing the consequences any high-profile diplomatic role might have for his upcoming presidential campaign. Finnish president and special negotiator Martti Ahtisaari worried about what shaking hands with the Hague-indicted Milosevic would mean for his image among EU leaders. Ground War! Collision Course gives extended coverage of the constant argument then going on within NATO and within the U.S. administration over the desirability of a ground war. In retrospect, it seems incredible that in spring 1999 some high officials feared that the war might drag on for another year. The reader is made to appreciate that given the immense logistical challenges of posing a ground invasion of Kosovo, plans had to be made well in advance (June 1 was the deadline given by Gen. Clark, but in the end it wasn't necessary). The chief advocates for ground invasion were, Clark, Tony Blair, and Madeleine Albright, as well as more minor characters such as Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Tom Pickering and Special Adviser on Balkan Affairs James Dobbins. The well-documented animosity between the Pentagon and Clark was fueled largely by this debate, with the trigger-happy Clark reasoning that a fast and massive invasion would end the war faster, and the Pentagon balking at the risks of either crossing the Albania-Kosovo mountains or sweeping down the Hungarian plain, and then being forced to take Belgrade itself. Again and again, political decision-making is held up against the fear of public reaction; the majority of NATO countries apparently had no stomach for a messy ground war. In the end, NATO got itself off the hook by bombing enough civilian targets and threatening to level Belgrade itself, thus forcing a capitulation from Milosevic. In this light, the whole furor over the necessity of a ground invasion in a certain sense seems to lack reality. High Drama Undoubtedly the most exciting chapters of Collision Course are the penultimate ones (9 and 10) that describe the high-stakes brinkmanship between NATO and Russia over troop deployment into Kosovo. This section describes in detail the secret planning that went into Russia's surprise entrance into Kosovo via Bosnia, and the diplomatic maelstrom this move caused. As the author notes, though tensions were deflated and the Russian occupation of Slatina Airfield quickly descended into farce, no one knew at the time how the situation would play out. Had Wesley Clark had his way, the situation could well have boiled over into a shoot-out – which memorably led British subordinate Gen. Michael Jackson to indignantly tell Clark, "I'm not starting World War III for you" (p. 278). Norris details how the mutual mistrust over Russia's role in the future peacekeeping force – it had asked for, but was denied, a sector of its own – led Yeltsin to force the situation by sending in his peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia. NATO feared that a new Cold War scenario might play out, in which Kosovo would be more or less partitioned, with Russia occupying the Serb-inhabited north of the province and NATO the rest. However, as the author explains, these worries were premature because the Russians had not planned through to the end and did not send a large enough force to stake out anything more than a symbolic presence. This was ultimately the result of Moscow's failure to win overflight clearance from Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and Bulgaria, thus preventing them from being able to drop thousands of paratroopers into Kosovo. The author portrays this result triumphantly as an indicator of Eastern Europe's turn to the West. Drawbacks: Unconnected Events and the Media's Role However, the author's bad faith is shown in two ways: one, the complete avoidance of government-media organized deception; and two, the almost surreal lack of proper context for events. We are thus expected to believe that Milosevic's mid-war indictment by the Hague – a political move that effectively removed him from the negotiating process and made any Western politician associated with him stigmatized – caught the Clinton administration by surprise. The "irony" of the fact that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour (who "broke" the story) was married to State Department Spokesman James Rubin is attributed to unnamed U.S. diplomats almost as an afterthought, and with no consideration of the fact that the news network and U.S. government were officially, if clandestinely, cooperating to spin the war. At many points, the reader is left to imagine that events happened by themselves, detached from one another, as if by accident. A major shortcoming, considering that the author was tasked with dealing with the media, is the total omission of how the U.S. and NATO worked hand-in-glove with a complicit, self-serving Western press to spin a web of deception in newspapers and TV screens back home, casting the war in an honorable light while demonizing the Serbs. The effect of the media as an echo chamber for NATO propaganda was tremendous, and to not even mention it shows that, at the end of the day, Norris' apparent intent to provide a comprehensive account falls short. In fact, the media is only mentioned when unfavorable stories or reporter swarms catch Western diplomats off-guard or otherwise irritate them – the implication being that the media is a hostile and alien force out to attack rather than serve the government. Since the author obviously knows better, the failure to at least allude to some of the bigger lies (like "100,000 Albanians dead") is further evidence of an attempted whitewash. Conclusions Since Collision Course tends to glorify the West for its diplomatic acumen, martial prowess, and (apparently) more glowing health than the Russians, it is no surprise that the book's conclusions also tend to sugarcoat the war. There are no mentions of depleted uranium, and not too many of civilian casualties. There is no mention of the fact that the Russians proved correct in most of their predictions regarding "reverse" ethnic cleansing of Serbs and destruction of Serbian cultural monuments once NATO swept into Kosovo. The author has little sympathy in this regard, yet constantly points out the humanitarian valor displayed by NATO in defense of the Albanians as being a prime justification for the war – failing to delve very deeply into the real campaign of terror and intimidation that Albanian extremists had been waging for years against Serbian civilians. Milosevic may have indeed been guilty of many evils, but nothing happens in a vacuum, after all. Other conclusions seem to have been jury-rigged for contemporary requirements. Thus the constant portrayals of "reckless" Russian diplomacy (as if they were the ones bombing people!) also dovetail quite nicely into the author's current criticism of Vladimir Putin, something that is decidedly in vogue in the West today. And while not directly calling for the immediate independence of Kosovo (as his very own ICG is loudly doing), the author closes the book by stating that "hard choices still need to be made, and they need to be made sooner rather than later" (p. 322). So at some level Collision Course can be said to be a well-timed manifesto aiming to both justify NATO's bombing and whitewash its leaders' crimes, while also stigmatizing Russia. In this way, the book attempts to set a precedent, or at least a preferred context, for today's apparently irreversible trend toward Kosovo independence. The victors are still keen to write the history. However, none of these things make up the most compelling aspect of Collision Course. For what seems most striking in a book written about "how diplomacy is really practiced," as one reviewer put it, is the utter barrenness of American diplomacy today. The narration of events paints the same unflattering picture of American diplomacy as nothing more than the unyielding projection of ultimatums backed up by military force. That America rarely compromises is not, of course, the author's fault. Yet when the deck is stacked to the extent that it is in today's unipolar world, not even the most compelling storyline can sustain real excitement and suspense when the end result is so often a foregone conclusion. ---- Dust off the Nuremberg Files Friday June 17, 2005 (0634 PST) Pakistan Tribune Anwaar Hussain eagleeye@emirates.net.ae http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=109580 At Nuremberg, in early October 1945, the four prosecuting nations -- the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia -- issued an indictment against 24 men and six organizations of the Nazi Germany. Of that 24 only 21 eventually sat down in the trial. The individual defendants were charged not only with the systematic murder of millions of people, but also with planning and carrying out the war in Europe. Twelve Nazi officials were sentenced to be hanged, three sentenced to life in prison, four were given prison sentences of 10-20 years, and the rest were acquitted. Presently, the ongoing American and British slaughter of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians constitutes a blatant war crime. Average legal skills should be able to prove that a similar case for the prosecution against the current coalition leaders can easily be constructed on comparable lines. In September 2004, the incumbent UN Chief Kofi Annan made a very clear statement. Talking to BBC Annan said "the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter." Being the UN Chief, and the custodian of International law, he should have known what he was talking about. The consequent unlawful war of aggression, the killing of civilians and abuse of prisoners constitute war crimes as clearly as the UN Chief's statement. Here are the Nuremberg Trial indictments. The Nuremberg Trial Counts One & Two: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War and Waging Aggressive War. The "common plan or conspiracy" charge was designed to get around the problem of how to deal with crimes committed before the war. The defendants charged under Count One were accused of agreeing to commit crimes. Accusation for Count Two was defined in the indictment as "the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances." Abundant evidence is now available that shows that leaders and advisers of the Bush and Blair administrations engaged in "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression." Iraq posed no threat to either the United States or Britain. Its government had neither the means nor the intent of waging war against these countries; nor did it issue any threat to them. It possessed no WMDs. The events now bear out that the US administration had plans ready well before the 9/11 crime to not only invade Iraq, but also target much if not all of the Middle East. Former CIA Director James Woolsey and presidential advisor David Gergen have confirmed that. The war of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," was planned well over a decade earlier. All alibis put forward by Bush administration for the Iraqi invasion, and the resultant near-genocidal massacre, have now been fully exposed as fraudulent motives. In his book 'The Price of Loyalty', writer Ron Susskind disclosed that from the very beginning of the Bush administration, the President was scheming and contriving to launch a belligerent war against Iraq. Richard Clarke, Bush's counter-terrorism expert, in his book 'Against All Enemies' confirmed the Bush administration's fixation with attacking Iraq. He also noted down in his book, an insider's view on the illegal planning, preparation and initiation of the war through the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate reporter, clearly establishes that just five days after 9/11, the President was clandestinely scheming to go after Saddam Hussein and not bin Laden - the man purportedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In particular, 72 days after 9/11, Bush ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to draw up the secret war plans. According to The Sunday Times, another fact recently come to light is that the Royal Air Force and the USAF doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs at Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war. The allies dropped twice as many bombs in the 2nd half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001. By end of August the raids had become a full air offensive. These attacks were intensified from May 2002, six months before the November 8 2002 UN Resolution 1441 that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith argued gave the coalition the legal cover for war. These details follow the leak of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal. This new information and the Downing Street memo clearly show that the two leading coalition members, the US and Britain, were fully engaged in "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" and "fixing" intelligence to suit these aims. The Nuremberg Trial Counts Three and Four: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. These Counts addressed the charges of atrocities committed against humanity in the death camps, concentration camps and killing rampages like the indiscriminate bombing of civilian population centers. According to various sources, as a result of this genocidal war, over 24,000 Iraqi civilians have died directly and over 120,000 indirectly. The Afghanistan toll on civilians is cited any where between 6,000 and 10,000. Substantial evidence is now available that the Bush administration leaders, and military personnel following orders of these leaders, have committed "violations of the laws or customs of war," including "murder . . . of civilian populations of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war . . . plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." The perpetrators' unjustifiable entreaties of military inevitability, of course, cannot free them of their actual crimes. If all other war crimes could be argued against by legal wizardry, there is one crime of the coalition forces that is enough to surely sentence them ten times over for crimes against humanity. The use of depleted uranium weapons by the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is as horrific a crime against humanity as there ever could be. This one crime takes its ghastly toll not just on the existing humanity, but successive generations continue to suffer for eons to come. A look here (too graphic, be warned) would confirm that the hideous beginning has already been made. According to recent studies, the rate of birth defects, after increasing ten-fold from 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001, is soaring further. There have been 650 cases of birth deformities in total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals in Iraq. That is a 20% increase from the previous regime. Also, a dreadful increase was registered in the rate of cancer among children under the age of 15 in southern Iraq from 1976 to 1999. In the province of Basra, the occurrence of cancer of all types rose by 242 percent, while the rate of leukemia among children rose 100 percent. Children living in the area were falling ill with cancer at the rate of 10.1 per 100,000. In districts where the use of DU had been the most concentrated, the rate rose to 13.2 per 100,000. Appalling as these results were then, the last six years have witnessed a further rise in the number of children under 15 falling ill with cancer in Iraq. The rate has now reached 22.4 per 100,000, more than five times the 1990 rate of 3.98 per 100,000. The medical crisis is being directly blamed on the widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the US and British forces in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the even greater use of DU during the 2003 invasion. According to a August 2002 report by the UN sub commission, laws which are violated by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'. No legal genius, then, is required to indict George Bush, Tony Blair and a few other coalition leaders with violating: * The United Nations Charter * The 1945 Nuremberg Charter * International humanitarian law * The Geneva Conventions The main indictments could be further buttressed by certain other charges. There have been verifiable instances of offering inducements, coercing and threatening others, including the members of the United Nations Security Council, to support belligerent acts against Iraq. Moreover, there are speculations gaining momentum with each passing day that the incumbent US government itself was involved in the 9/11 crime. State leaders that conspire in the annihilation of their own citizens are the exact opposite of being instruments of rightful authority. They are, indeed, agents of unashamed criminality. Recently, the Media Education Foundation has released a powerful documentary regarding the sinister agenda of the current ruling cabal of the United States of America. Called Hijacking Catastrophe, it is a forceful indictment and a straightforward comment on the criminal schema of the accused. One problem remains though. And that is that it is always the vanquished that are supposed to have committed war crimes. The current accused are militarily so powerful that inflicting a military defeat on them by any power/combination of powers looks remote at the moment. Additionally, the 'war on terror' has been purposely made so elusive that the lines of legality are blurred enough to muddy the evidence of the crime. The only possible line of action seems to be an immediate impeachment of these leaders by their nations as a first step, followed by a swift recourse to international law after these leaders have been disinvested of their powers. Noam Chomsky once said, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American President would have been hanged." If that be the case then some now would be hung and then re-hung. Dust off the Nuremberg files ….I would say. By Anwaar Hussain Courtesy: Fountainhead http://malakandsky.blogspot.com/2005/05/dust-off-nuremberg-files.html ---- Collateral Risk: DU Research Gap Could Impact Vermont Troops Kathryn Casa, The June 17, 2005 Vermont Guardian http://www.vermontguardian.com/local/0105/CollateralRisk.shtml By the end of June, more than 600 Vermont National Guard members will be deployed in and around heavy combat areas in Iraq, where battlefield exposure to depleted uranium - a highly toxic and radioactive battlefield poison widely used by the United States in combat zones - has now become routine, military watchdogs say. During the recent legislative session, Vermont lawmakers and state leaders turned aside a modest proposal to assess the impact of Vermont National Guard members deployed in dangerous and highly stressful war zones. However, other legislatures have been aggressively pursuing measures aimed at safeguarding their troops. Louisiana last week became the first state to require returning troops to be tested for exposure to depleted uranium. And, like both the Louisiana House and Senate, the Connecticut House unanimously passed similar legislation earlier this month. That bill, which has broad bipartisan co-sponsorship, is now before the state's Senate. Lawmakers from at least seven other states interested in drafting similar legislation have contacted Rep. Patricia Dillon, D-New Haven, the Connecticut author of the bill. Ninety Vermonters are currently serving in combat zones, including 25 assigned to a military police company based in the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein; and 65 are attached to a Mississippi National Guard unit in Najaf, according to Lt. Veronica Saffo, a National Guard spokeswoman in Colchester. Twenty Vermont soldiers are in Iraq working as support staff; 600 are based in Kuwait, where they rotate in and out of combat; and 65 are guarding civilian security contractors in Saudi Arabia. On Thursday, another 400 Vermont troops are scheduled to leave for Iraq as part of a brigade combat team. Their base is not identified ahead of time for security reasons, Saffo said. But "they will be in the combat areas, definitely in the villages and working with the Iraqi police as part of a significantly sized brigade combat team," she confirmed. The Department of Defense said depleted uranium use in Iraq is significantly lower than the 320 tons fired during the first Gulf War. Outside watchdogs say up to 150 tons of DU have been fired during the current Iraq conflict. No DU weapons systems have been used in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon, where six Vermonters are stationed and another 50 are headed later this month. "Previous to the Gulf War, no special training was mandated concerning DU," according to Barbara Goodno with the Defense Department's deployment health office. "Soon after the Gulf War, awareness training was instituted for service members who may be exposed to DU weapons, specialized teams . who may have higher than average exposure receive increased training." But according to a 2000 study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, a survey two years earlier by the Army's Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses of more than 1,600 personnel, found that only 65 percent received required DU training. "We also found a great deal of disparity among units in that three units had not conducted the required DU training at all," the GAO reported. None of the branches of the military had made sufficient progress in implementing DU training, the study found, concluding that "service members were only marginally better prepared to contend with DU hazards than they had been during the Gulf War." Saffo said all Vermont troops participate in annual DU training and get more intensified training prior to their deployment. "There is a list of specific core training requirements mandatory for all units in the Army. Every year the commanders of every unit in the state have to make sure the soldiers get the specialized training provided by the Army." But Joyce Riley, a Gulf War National Guard veteran and executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association in Versaille, MO, calls the Pentagon's claim of better training "a lie." "They have used hundreds of tons of DU over there," said Riley, who hosts a daily radio talk show. "We are overwhelmed with phone calls from people who have just returned from Iraq who are not getting treatment." Just 180 Vermont National Guard members have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan thus far. Although they are given physical and mental health screening, they are not routinely tested for DU exposure, said Anselm Beach, a spokesman for the Veterans Administration Hospital in White River Junction. Returning troops are reporting primarily "readjustment issues," noted Beach. "Some muscular skeletal problems because you have soldiers wearing 60 pounds of gear, some issues with hearing from explosions . the regular things with combat, but nothing out of the ordinary." The hospital would test for DU exposure only if symptoms prompt a doctor to recommend it, Beach said. However, a group of congressional Democrats would like to see DU testing standardized. On May 17, Washington Rep. Jim McDermott, a Vietnam veteran, and 21 other Democrats introduced a bill in Congress that would require the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to report to Congress on the health effects of DU exposure, not only on veterans but also on their children born after exposure to DU munitions. "There are countless stories of mysterious illnesses, higher rates of serious illnesses and even birth defects," McDermott said on the floor of the House. "We do not know what role, if any, DU plays in the medical tragedies in Iraq, but we must find out." In 1997, federal medical researchers at the Naval Health Research Center and the CDC determined that babies born to Gulf War veterans were more likely to suffer from certain birth defects including malformations of the eyes, jaw, and spine. DU danger Depleted uranium, a highly toxic and radioactive byproduct of the uranium enrichment process, is widely used in U.S. weapons systems because of its ability to penetrate steel and its low cost. It is also used to line tanks, and advocates say its strength and efficiency as a weapon is a benefit for U.S. troops. But the term "depleted" is a misnomer, since DU contains about 60 percent of the radioactivity found in natural uranium, according to Tod Ensign, a veteran and attorney with the veterans advocacy group Citizen Soldier in New York. "When a DU shell strikes its target, up to 70 percent of the depleted uranium vaporizes into fine dust, which then settles out in the surrounding soil and water," he wrote. "Over half of the aerosolized particles are smaller than 5 microns and anything smaller than 10 microns can be inhaled. Once lodged in the lungs, these particles can emit a steady dose of alpha radiation." Goodno said all service members in the field carry protective masks for use against chemical or biological attack, which could also be used "in extreme cases" to prevent DU inhalation. "Protective equipment is only required as a precaution for those who have repeated, prolonged exposure" to DU, she noted. Some veterans of the first Gulf War say DU exposure has led to a battery of debilitating symptoms including headaches, fatigue, joint pain, sleep disturbance, and frequent urination, which they call Gulf War syndrome. Ensign reports that months before the first Gulf War, the Army's Armament, Munitions, and Chemical Command published the following warning: "Following combat, the condition of the battlefield and the long term health risks to natives [sic] and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU for military applications." The report added that DU has been "linked to cancer when exposures are internal." Iraqi doctors and researchers have reported dramatic increases in cancer and childhood leukemia since the early 1990s. Of the nearly 700,000 troops who fought in the first Gulf War, more than 187,000 had been granted some level of disability status for injury or illness related to their service, according to Veterans Administration statistics for February 2005. More than 10,000 of the returning Gulf War veterans have died. The Defense Department continues to insist that there is no scientific evidence that links exposure to depleted uranium to any of the symptoms, and that no single diagnosis explains the symptoms. Of the 104 soldiers known to have been hit by "friendly fire" DU munitions during the 1991 war, according to Goodno, 70 participated in a VA follow-up program. All of them had inhalation exposure, and about one third had embedded DU shrapnel. "Those veterans with retained DU shrapnel continue to excrete elevated levels of urinary uranium," she noted. "To date, none of these individuals have developed kidney abnormalities, leukemia, bone or lung cancer, or any other uranium-related health problems." But McDermott asks, "If DU is so safe, why do American soldiers need to wear protective clothing in the first place?" He urged Congress, "Let the Pentagon prove that it is safe." -------- iran Iran official says poll won't shift nuclear policy Fri Jun 17, 2005 12:08 PM ET (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050617/wl_nm/iran_election_nuclear_dc_1 TEHRAN - A top Iranian official said on Friday the election of a new president would have little impact on Iran's nuclear policy, which Tehran says is to generate power but which Washington suspects is to build an atomic bomb. Hassan Rohani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and leading nuclear negotiations with Europe, told the official Iranian news agency IRNA that the nuclear issue would be decided on a national level and not just by the president. Whoever wins Friday's presidential race, real power in the Islamic Republic -- the world's fourth biggest oil exporter -- lies with conservative anti-West religious authorities. "The position and the characteristics of the next president would have some impact on the country's foreign policies, including the nuclear issue, but it wouldn't be as much as the Europeans and Americans think," Rohani said. Iran has suspended uranium enrichment as part of a deal agreed with Britain, France and Germany, but has said it will not give up enrichment altogether as the Europeans demand. The Europeans share U.S. concerns that Iran could use the enrichment process to make material for a nuclear bomb, instead of simply making the fuel used for generating electricity. "The stance of Iran's next president on the nuclear issue cannot be a new stance because the nuclear issue is a national issue and decision-making depends on agreements between all the country's high officials," Rohani added. "Although the Europeans and Americans believe the elections and the new president will greatly influence the nuclear issue, I emphasize again that we will never give up our legal and lawful rights," he said. The European trio has offered economic and political incentives if Iran ends enrichment and has said it would provide detailed proposals by the end of July or early August. Iran has dismissed previous economic incentives as insignificant. Analysts say the front-runner in Iran's elections, pragmatic cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has a personal power base that could help reach a compromise with the West. But opinion polls indicate Rafsanjani is unlikely to secure the 50 percent needed to win outright in the first round, and he could face a run-off with another candidate possibly on June 24. -------- japan A Nagasaki Report By George Weller, September 8, 1945 Published June 17, 2005, Mainichi Daily News Part I http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/specials/0506/0617weller.html American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. Weller wrote a series of stories about what he saw in the city, but censors at the Occupation's General Headquarters refused to allow the material to be printed. Weller's stories, written in September 1945, can be found below. NAGASAKI, Sept.8 -- The atomic bomb may be classified as a weapon capable of being used indiscriminately, but its use in Nagasaki was selective and proper and as merciful as such a gigantic force could be expected to be. The following conclusions were made by the writer - as the first visitor to inspect the ruins - after an exhaustive, though still incomplete study of this wasteland of war. Nagasaki is an island roughly resembling Manhattan in size and shape, running in north and south direction with ocean inlets on both sides, what would be the New Jersey and Manhattan sides of the Hudson river are lined with huge-war plants owned by the Mitsubishi and Kawanami families. The Kawanami shipbuilding plants, employing about 20,000 workmen, lie on both sides of the harbor mouth on what corresponds to battery park and Ellis island. That is about five miles from the epicenter of the explosion. B-29 raids before the Atomic bomb failed to damage them and they are still hardly scarred. Proceeding up the Nagasaki harbor, which is lined with docks on both sides like the Hudson, one perceives the shores narrowing toward a bottleneck. The beautiful green hills are nearer at hand, standing beyond the long rows of industrial plants, which are all Mitsubishi on both sides of the river. On the left, or Jersey side, two miles beyond the Kawanami yards are Mitsubishi's shipbuilding and electrical engine plants employing 20,000 and 8,000 respectively. The shipbuilding plant damaged by a raid before the atomic bomb, but not badly. The electrical plant is undamaged. It is three miles from the epicenter of the atomic bomb and repairable. It is about two miles from the scene of the bomb's 1,500 feet high explosion where the harbor has narrowed to 250 foot wide Urakame River that the atomic bomb's force begins to be discernible. This area is north of downtown Nagasaki, whose buildings suffered some freakish destruction, but are generally still sound. The railroad station, destroyed except for the platforms is already operating. Normally it is sort of a gate to the destroyed part of the Urakame valley. In parallel north and south lines? here the Urakame river, Mitsubishi plants on both sides, the railroad line and the main road from town. For two miles stretches a line of congested steel and some concrete factories with the residential district "across the tracks. The atomic bomb landed between and totally destroyed both with half (illegible) living persons in them. The known dead-number 20,000 police tell me they estimate about 4,000 remain to be found. The reason the deaths were so high -- the wounded being about twice as many according to Japanese official figures -- was twofold: 1. Mitsubishi air raid shelters were totally inadequate and the civilian shelters remote and limited. 2. That the Japanese air warning system was a total failure. I inspected half a dozen crude short tunnels in the rock wall valley which the Mitsubishi Co., considered shelters. I also picked my way through the tangled iron girders and curling roofs of the main factories to see concrete shelters four inches thick but totally inadequate in number. Only a grey concrete building topped by a siren, where the clerical staff had worked had reasonable cellar shelters, but nothing resembling the previous had been made. A general alert had been sounded at seven in the morning, four hours before two B-29's appeared, but it was ignored by the workmen and most of the population. The police insist that the air raid warning was sounded two minutes before the bomb fell, but most people say they heard none. As one whittles away at embroidery and checks the stories, the impression grows that the atomic bomb is a tremendous, but not a peculiar weapon. The Japanese have heard the legend from American radio that the ground preserves deadly irradiation. But hours of walking amid the ruins where the odor of decaying flesh is still strong produces in this writer nausea, but no sign or burns or debilitation. Nobody here in Nagasaki has yet been able to show that the bomb is different than any other, except in a broader extent flash and a more powerful knock-out. All around the Mitsubishi plant are ruins which one would gladly have spared. The writer spent nearly an hour in 15 deserted buildings in the Nagasaki Medical Institute hospital which (illegible). Nothing but rats live in the debris choked halls. On the opposite side of the valley and the Urakame river is a three story concrete American mission college called Chin Jei, nearly totally destroyed. Japanese authorities point out that the home area flattened by American bombs was traditionally the place of Catholic and Christian Japanese. But sparing these and sparing the allied prison camp, which the Japanese placed next to an armor plate factory would have meant sparing Mitsubishi's ship parts plant with 1,016 employees who were mostly Allied. It would have spared a Mounting factory connecting with 1,750 employees. It would have spared three steel foundries on both sides of the Urakame, using ordinarily 3,400 but that day 2,500. And besides sparing many sub-contracting plants now flattened it would have meant leaving untouched the Mitsubishi torpedo and ammunition plant employing 7,500 and which was nearest where the bomb up. All these latter plants today are hammered flat. But no saboteur creeping among the war plants of death could have placed the atomic bomb by hand more scrupulously given Japan's inertia about common defense. Part II http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/specials/0506/0617weller/0617weller1.html NAGASAKI, Saturday, Sept.8 (odn) -- In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki. Look at the pushed-in facade of the American consulate, three miles from the blast's center, or the face of the Catholic cathedral, one mile in the other direction, torn down like gingerbread, and you can tell that the liberated atom spares nothing in the way. The human beings whom it has happened to spare sit on (illegible) One tiny family board their platforms in Nagasaki's two largest (illegible) hospitals, their shoulders, arms and faces are strapped in bandages. Showing them to you, as the first American outsider to reach Nagasaki since the surrender, your propaganda-conscious official guide looks meaningfully in your face and wants to knew: "What do you think?" What this question means is: do you intend saying that America did something inhuman in loosing this weapon against Japan? That is what we want you to write. Several children, some burned and others unburned but with patches of hair falling out, are sitting with their mothers. Yesterday Japanese photographers took many pictures with them. About one in five is heavily bandaged, but none of showing signs of pain. Some adults are in pain as they lie on mats. They moan softly. One woman caring for her husband, shows eyes dim with tears. It is a piteous scene and your official guide studies your face covertly to see if you are moved. Visiting many litters, talking lengthily with two general physicians and one X-ray specialist, gains you a large amount of information and opinion on the victims. Statistics are variable and few records are kept. But it is ascertained that this chief municipal hospital had about 750 atomic patients until this week and lost by death approximately 360. About 70 percent of the deaths have been from plain burns. The Japanese say that anyone caught outdoors in a mile by half-mile area was burned to death. But this is known to be untrue because most of the allied prisoners burned in the plant escaped and only about one-fourth were burned. Yet it is undoubtedly true that many at 11:02 o'clock on this morning of Aug. 9 were caught in debris by casual fires which kindled and caught during the next half hour. But most of the patients who were gravely burned have now passed away and those on hand are rapidly curing. Those not curing are people whose unhappy lot provides the mystery aura around the atomic bomb's effects. They are victims of what Lt. Jakob Vink, Dutch medical officer and now allied commandant of prison camp 14 at the mouth of Nagasaki harbor calls "disease." Vink himself was in the allied prison kitchen abutting the Mitsubishi armor plate department when the ceiling fell in but he escaped this mysterious "disease X" which some allied prisoners and many Japanese civilians got. Vink points out a woman on a yellow mat in hospital, who according to hospital doctors Hikodero (sic) Koga and Uraaji (sic) Hayashida have just been brought in. She fled the atomic area but returned to live. She was well for three weeks expect a small burn on the heel. Now she lies moaning with a blackish mouth stiff as though with lockjaw and unable to utter clear words. Her exposed legs and arms are speckled with tiny red spots in patches. Near her lies a 15-year-old fattish girl who has the same blotchy red pinpoints and nose clotted with blood. A little farther on is a window lying down with four children, from one to about 8, around her. The two smallest children have lost some hair. Though none of these people has either a barn or a broken limb, they are presumed victims of the atomic bomb. Dr. Uraji Hayashida shakes his head somberly and says that he believes there must be something to the American radio report about the ground around the Mitsubishi plant being poisoned. But his next statement knocks out the props from under this theory because it develops that the widow's family has been absent from the wrecked area ever since the blast yet shows symptoms common with those who returned. According to Japanese doctors, patients with these late developing symptoms are dying now a month after the bombs fall, at the rate of about 10 daily. The three doctors calmly stated that the disease has them nonplussed and that they are giving no treatment whatever but rest. Radio rumors from America received the same consideration with the symptoms under their noses. They are licked for cure and do not seem very worried about it. End Weller (c82300-via Tokyo) Part III http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/specials/0506/0617weller/0617weller2.html NAGASAKI, Sept.8 (cdn) -- More pieces to the broken mosaic of history are supplied by prisoners in the liberated, but still unrelieved camps on Kyushu, Japan's southernmost island. While waiting for Gen. Walter Krueger's army to arrive, the inmates are receiving humble bows and salutes from the Japanese officers who formerly ruled them with an iron red. By exchanging visits with prisoners from other parts of Kyushu they are able to find out what happened in the blacked out periods of the past. Camp No. 14 which was inside Mitsubishi war factory area until the atomic bomb fell there is now moved inside the eastern mouth of the Nagasaki harbor. Here you can meet Fireman Edward Matthews of Everett, Washington and the American destroyer Pope. He fills in the unknown story of how the Pope fought trying to take the cruiser Houston through the Sunda straits in the face of a Japanese task force of "eight cruisers and endless destroyers. "We contacted the Japs at seven in the morning. They opened fire at 8:30 a.m. We held out until 2 p.m., when a Jap spotter plane dropped a bomb near out stern and watched us go down. A Jap destroyer saw us sink. It was a perfectly clear day. They let us stay in the water - 154 men with one 24 man whaleboat and one life raft - for three days. We were about crazy when they picked us up and took us to Macassar." From Camp No. 3 at Tabata near Mojie in northern Kyushu come three ex-prisoners who have found the lure of the open roads irresistible after three years confinement and have come to Nagasaki in order to view the results of the atomic bomb. Charles Gellings of North East, Md., says, "The Houston was caught on the eastern side or Java side of Sunda. It was in the straits near Bantan Bay. Three hundred and forty-eight were saved, but they were all scattered." Chicago born Miles Mahnke, Plane, Ill., who looks all right, though his original 215 pounds dropped to 160, says, "I was, in the death march at Bataan. Guess you know what that was." Here is Albert Rupp of the submarine Grenadier, who lives at 920 Belmont av., Philadelphia, "We were chasing two Nip cargo boats 450 miles off Penang. A spotter plane dropped a bomb on us hitting the maneuvering room. We lay on the bottom, but the next time came up we were bombed again. We finally had to scuttle the sub. Thirty-nine men of forty-two were saved." Also from the submarine is William Cunningham, 4225 Webster av. Bronx N.Y., who started with Rupp on his tour of southern Japan. Another party of four vagabond prisoners from camps whose Japanese commanders and guards have simply disappeared, are Albert Johnson, Geneva, Ohio; Hershel Langston, Van Buren, Kans., Morris Kellogg, Mule Shoe, Tex., all crew members of the oil tanker Connecticut, now touring Japan with a carefree marine from North China Guard at Peking, Walter Allan, Waxahachie, Tex. The three members from the oil tanker would like a word with the Captain of the German raider who took them prisoner. The captain told them that "in the last war you Americans confined Germans in Japan; this war we Germans are going to take you Americans to Japan and see how you like a taste of the same medicine." Kyushu has about 10,000 prisoners, or about one-third the total is all Japan, mixed in the completely disordered fashion, the Japanese used and without any records. At Camp No.2, by the entrance to Nagasaki Bay are 68 survivors of the British Cruiser Exeter which sank in the Java Sea battle while trying to expel the Japanese task force. Eight inch shells penetrated her waterline. Five of the supposed total of nine survivors from the British destroyer the Stronghold, sunk near the Sunda straits at the same time are also here. There are also 14 Britons of an approximate 100 from the destroyer Encounter lost at the same time, besides 62 R.A.F. mostly from Java and Singapore. Among 324 Dutch cruisers the Java and De Ruyter were sunk at 2300 the night of Feb. 27, 1942 by torpedo attacks which the Japs boasted were staged not by destroyers or submarines, but cruisers. There is also a Dutch officer from the Destroyer Koortenaer, torpedoed by night in the Java Sea battle. Husky Cpl. Raymond Woest, Fredericksburg, Tex., told how remembers of the 131st Field Artillery poured 75 caliber shells into the Japs for six hours outside Soerabaya before Java fell, killing an estimated 700. To correspondents eager questions about this outfit which had been into action in Java, Wuest said that 450 members (illegible) and were now scattered in the Far East. (illegible) Nagasaki, whereof most were moved to Camp No. 9 (at least one further sentence follows, but it is illegible.) Part IV http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/specials/0506/0617weller/0617weller3.html NAGASAKI, Sept.9 (cdn) -- The atomic bomb's peculiar "disease," uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here. Men, woman and children with no outward marks of injury are dying daily in hospitals, some after having walked around three or four weeks thinking they have escaped. The doctors here have every modern medicament, but candidly confessed in talking to the writer - the first Allied observer to Nagasaki since the surrender - that the answer to the malady is beyond them. Their patients, though their skin is whole, are all passing away under their eyes. Kyushu's leading X-ray specialist, who arrived today from the island's chief city Fukuoka, elderly Dr. Yosisada Nakashima, told the writer that he is convinced that these people are simply suffering from the atomic bomb's beta Gamma, or the neutron ray is taking effect. "All the symptoms are similar," said the Japanese doctor. "You have a reduction in white corpuscles, constriction in the throat, vomiting, diarrhea and small hemorrhages just below the skin. All of these things happen when an overdose of Roentgen rays is given. Bombed children's hair falls out. That is natural because these rays are used often to make hair fall artificially and sometimes takes several days before the hair becomes loose." Nakashima differed with general physicians who have asked the regiment to close off a bombed area claiming that returned refugees are infected from the ground by lethal rays. "I believe that any after effect out there is negligible. I mean to make tests soon with an electrometer," said the specialist. A suggestion by Dutch doctor Lt. Jakob Vink, taken prisoner and now commander of the allied prison camp here, that the drug (illegible) which increased white corpuscles be tried brought the answer from Nakashima that it would be "useless, because the grave (illegible). At emergency hospital No. 2, commanding officer young Lt. Col. Yoshitaka Sasaki, with three rows of campaign ribbons on his breast, stated that 200 patients died of 343 admitted and that the expects about 50 more deaths. Most severe ordinary burns resulted in the patients (sic) deaths within a week after the bomb fell. But this hospital began taking patients only from one to two weeks afterward. It is therefore almost exclusively "disease" cases and the deaths are mostly therefrom. Nakashima divides the deaths outside simple burns and fractures into two classes on the basis of symptoms observed in the post mortem autopsies. The first class accounts for roughly 60 percent of the deaths, the second for 40 percent. Among exterior symptoms in the first class are, falling hair from the head, armpits and public zones, spotty local skin hemorrhages looking like measles all over the body, lip sores, diarrhea but without blood discharge, swelling in the throat (illegible) of the epiglottis and retropharynx and a descent in number of red and white corpuscles. Red corpuscles fall from a normal 5,000,000 to one-half, or one-third while the white's almost disappear, dropping from 7,000 or 8,000 to 300 to 500. Fever rises to 104 and stays there without fluctuating. Interior symptoms of the first class revealed in the postmortems seems to show the intestines choked with blood which Nakashima thinks occurs a few hours before death. The stomach is also blood choked, also mesenterium. Blood spots appear in the bone narrow and bus-arachnoydeal, oval blood (illegible) on the brain which, however, is not affected. Going up part of the intestines have a little blood, but the congestion is mainly in (illegible) down passages. Nakashima considers that it is possible that the atomic bomb's rare rays may cause deaths in the first class, as with delayed X-ray burns. But second class has him totally baffled. These patients begin with slight burns which make normal progress for two weeks. They differ from simple burns, however, in that the patient has a high fever. Unfevered patients with as much as one-third of the skin area burned have been known to recover. But where fever is present after two weeks, healing of burns suddenly halts and they get worse. They come to resemble septic ulcers. Yet patients are not in great pain, which distinguishes them from any X-ray burns victims. Up to five days from the torn to the worse, they die. Their bloodstream has not thinned as in first class and their organs after death are found in a normal condition of health. But they are dead - dead of atomic bomb - and nobody knows why. Twenty-five Americans are due to arrive Sept. 11 to study the Nagasaki bombsite. Japanese hope that they will bring a solution for Disease X. -------- korea S Korean Govt Not Seeking Majority for Nuclear Repository Referendum (Yonhap) Friday June 17, 9:03 AM http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050617/16/3t0dk.html SEOUL, June 17 Asia Pulse - The government is not seeking an absolute majority in a referendum to decide on a nuclear repository for low- and intermediate- level radioactive waste, Commerce and Industry Minister Lee Hee-beom said Friday. Speaking at a radio talk show, the official said that under current law a referendum could be considered passed if a third of the constituents take part in the vote and "many" of these support the building of the repository. The government said Thursday that a waste site will be selected by late November, with local administrators required to submit their views on holding a referendum on the issue by the end of August. "The wording of the regional referendum law is vague, but it does not state a clear-cut majority (is needed)," Lee said. He added that this would not be problematic legally. The country's top policymaker, who pointed out that a waste site needed to be built by around 2008 at the latest, claimed that local assemblymen will be able to check on the progress of selecting the site twice before the administrator of a municipality can call for a geological safety survey or a referendum. "In effect the will of the people is reflected in the actions by local lawmakers and the referendum itself gives an added degree of transparency," the official said. He said that there were seven or eight possible sites that had expressed interest in the repository. Seoul said the region that accepts the radioactive waste site for discarded clothing, gloves used at atomic power plants, as well as filters and hospital X-ray byproducts, will get a special support fund of 300 billion won (US$296 million) and an annual fee of 8 billion won for storing the waste. The headquarters of the state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. will also be moved from the capital to the region that accepts the site, providing a new source of revenue and jobs. South Korea relies on 20 nuclear reactors, including one completed earlier this year, to provide more than 40 per cent of its electricity needs and is planning to build eight more in the coming years. The search for a candidate site comes after the government picked a location in Buan, about 280 kilometers southwest of Seoul, in 2003 but was forced to back down in the face of strong opposition from residents. This failure caused the government to set up new guidelines in December to alleviate public concerns and ensure full participation of the people. Lawmakers supported this by passing a bill in March that outlined the level of support that the central government would give and pledged not to build a dumping ground for highly radioactive waste on the location of the low- and intermediate- repository area. At present, places like Gunsan on the west coast, along with Gyeongju, Uljin and Yeongdeok, have been surveyed and proven to have stable conditions for the construction of a repository. Other venues like Pohang have said that they might be interested in accepting the site. -------- u.n. IAEA approves U.S. plan to boost nuclear security Fri Jun 17, 2005 08:24 AM ET (Reuters) By Francois Murphy and Louis Charbonneau http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Y15VIKTFTK0ZWCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=8823006 VIENNA - The United Nations' nuclear watchdog on Friday approved a U.S. proposal aimed at boosting and enforcing global atomic security rules following North Korean and Iranian nuclear crises. The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors unanimously approved the plan to set up a committee to examine how the nuclear safeguards regime can be improved. "The board of governors decides to set up a committee on safeguards and verification to consider ways and means to strengthen the safeguards system," said a document on the board's decision, obtained by Reuters. The United States issued a statement saying the committee would help "strengthen the agency's ability to monitor and enforce compliance with nuclear non-proliferation obligations." Washington accuses Iran of following North Korea's example of developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program. Tehran vehemently denies this, insisting its nuclear ambitions are limited to generating electricity. The head of the U.S. delegation, Ambassador Jackie Sanders, said the committee should help the agency increase its ability to detect new kinds of safeguards breaches. "The proliferation challenges of today, including non-compliance by North Korea and Iran and the revelation of (illicit) nuclear procurement networks calls for more evolution," Sanders told reporters outside the IAEA boardroom. "This new committee should play a key role in helping us meet those challenges," she said. Iran hid its nuclear enrichment program from the IAEA for nearly two decades before officially declaring it in October 2003. North Korea expelled U.N. inspectors on Dec. 31, 2002 before withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the first country to leave the global anti-arms pact. ELBARADEI ORIGINALLY OPPOSED Diplomats on the board said IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had originally opposed the plan, but significant revisions were made to overcome IAEA objections. ElBaradei told reporters the committee would be a "reality check" to ensure its safeguards system was adequate. Among the compromises Washington accepted to the plan, first proposed by President Bush last year, was to set it up for an initial 2-year period as opposed to leaving it open-ended, diplomats on the IAEA board told Reuters. Also, instead of barring suspected violators of the NPT from the committee, as Bush had proposed, any country on the IAEA's 35-nation board would be allowed on it, the IAEA document said. ElBaradei said the IAEA needed more authority to make sure there are no more secret nuclear weapons programs like the ones developed by Iraq, North Korea and Libya. "We need as much authority as we can (get) to do a credible job," ElBaradei said. In the text of a speech he gave to the board on Thursday, ElBaradei was more specific. "We have learned the hard way. We learned in Iraq in 1990, we have learned in North Korea, we have learned in Libya that we cannot provide you a sense of full security, or with assurances that go beyond our authority," ElBaradei said. In the text of his Thursday speech, ElBaradei did not mention Iran, whose nuclear ambitions are a key foreign policy issue for the United States. --- United States Welcomes Establishment of IAEA Committee on Safeguards and Verification Press Statement Sean McCormack, Spokesman U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC June 17, 2005 http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/48266.htm The United States welcomes the decision by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to establish a Committee on Safeguards and Verification. President Bush called for the establishment of this Committee in his February 2004 speech to the National Defense University. The International Atomic Energy Agency plays a critical role in strengthening international nonproliferation efforts. This decision begins a process that will strengthen the Agency's ability to monitor and enforce compliance with nuclear nonproliferation obligations. It is a significant achievement and one of the President’s priorities for controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In recent years, we have uncovered black-market operatives who deal in equipment and expertise related to weapons of mass destruction. We have been working with other Board members for many months to develop the basis for establishing the new Committee and to develop a common understanding of how it will function and what it will seek to accomplish. The International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards system must be strengthened, and this will be a key task of the Committee. We look forward to working with other members of the Board and the Committee to ensure that the International Atomic Energy Agency has all the tools it needs to fulfill its mandate, and to strengthen its contribution to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. -------- u.s. nuc facilities 300 Groups Reject Nuclear Power as Global Warming Solution WASHINGTON, DC, June 17, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-17-09.asp#anchor5 In response to a campaign by the nuclear industry promoting new nuclear reactors as a solution to global warming, nearly 300 international, national, regional and local environmental, consumer, and safe energy groups have issued a declaration rejecting nuclear power as a solution to Earth's warming climate. In a statement Thursday morning, the groups said nuclear power is too polluting, hazardous, and costly. Instead, the groups urged a focus on clean and renewable sources of energy as well as energy efficiency and conservation. With votes on global warming amendments expected this week during Senate consideration of the Energy Bill, representatives of several of the groups called on Congress to reject legislation that subsidized nuclear power plants as part of reducing global warming pollution. "Global warming is the most serious environmental problem facing us today and we should aggressively increase energy efficiency and renewable energy to reduce carbon dioxide pollution,” said Anna Aurilio, legislative director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "We’re now one of nearly 300 public interest groups that say nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive and should not be part of a global warming solution." No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States for 30 years, and the nuclear industry as well as President George W. Bush are moving towards building new reactors soon. Speaking to the 16th Annual Energy Efficiency Forum Wednesday in Washington, the President said, "We need to expand our nation's use of nuclear power. America has not ordered a nuclear power plant since the 1970s. France, by contrast, has built 58 plants in the same period of time - and today, France gets more than 78 percent of its electricity from safe, low-cost nuclear power. It's time for America to start building again." "So I've directed the Department of Energy to work with Congress to help pass legislation that will reduce uncertainty in the nuclear plant licensing process," the President said. "We're also working with Congress to provide other incentives - such as federal insurance to protect the builders of the first four new plants against lawsuits, bureaucratic obstacles, and other delays beyond their control. To build a secure energy future for America, we need to expand production of safe, clean nuclear power." Congress is supporting a nuclear future. The pending Senate energy bill is likely to have financial inducements that will encourage energy companies to build new reactors. At this stage, it includes $4.3 billion in subsidies for various nuclear programs. The tax provisions, which may include billions in tax breaks for the nuclear industry, have not been completed. The groups warn that nuclear energy will not ease global warming. "Addressing climate change is too important to leave to the failed nuclear industry,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington, DC based anti-nuclear advocacy group. "Throwing a few billion dollars of taxpayer money at the nuclear industry might make some utility executives happy, but would do virtually nothing to reduce carbon emissions," Mariotte said. "In fact, by diverting limited resources that should be used for sustainable technologies, subsidizing nuclear power would be counterproductive.” In their statement the groups said, "This would exacerbate all of the problems of the technology: more terrorist targets, more cost - potentially trillions of dollars - less safety, need for a new Yucca Mountain-sized waste site every four or five years, more proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies, dozens of new uranium enrichment plants, and even then, a severe shortage of uranium even within this century, while displacing the resources needed to ensure a real solution to the climate change issue." The groups cited a recent MIT study that calculated using nuclear power to have any significant effect on climate change would require building at least 1,000 new reactors worldwide. Wenonah Hauter director of Public Citizen’s energy program says renewables, conservation and efficiency will provide plenty of energy to meet U.S. needs. "Nuclear power is fatally flawed and we cannot overcome all of its obstacles," she said. "It’s time to support renewable energy technologies because they already exist and have great potential and provide a real opportunity to keep our planet healthy for future generations.” -------- connecticut Get Educated On Nuclear Power The Day Letters to The Editor Published on 6/17/2005 http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=2ed63d4f-49d5-48fc-b9b7-b594bbbb81bd Letters To The Editor: For the past 19 years I have worked, at one time or another, at all of the nuclear power plants in Connecticut. Through the years I have tried my best to refrain from getting into public discussion on the pros and cons of nuclear power because the emotion involved usually confuses the issues. I find most of the statements made in opposition to nuclear power to be inflammatory and so global in nature that they cannot be proven by any credible scientific methodology. An example of such a statement was contained in the article published June 10 titled “Former whistle-blower blasts Millstone's security practices.” The article quoted Paul Blanch: “Any boat could approach those water intake structures and certainly cause a meltdown.” This statement is both inflammatory and inaccurate. These types of statements are used to sway public opinion and are not based on any credible evidence. Nonetheless, these types of statements find there way into newspapers and magazines and accomplish their intended goal, which is to scare and misinform the public. Our country continues to consume an enormous amount of energy. We need to be open-minded about our energy prospects and plan for the future generations. I would encourage individuals to become more informed about our country's energy needs, so you can judge for yourselves the pros and cons of nuclear power and not be at the mercy of such propaganda. -------- kentucky Radioactive cylinder recycling on pace if funding is left intact The funding must still be approved by the full Senate before differences with the House bill can be worked out in conference. By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com 270.575.8656 Friday, June 17, 2005 Paducah Sun http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2005/nn12151.htm The recycling of 39,000 cylinders of low-level radioactive waste at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant will stay on pace if Congress doesn't tinker with funding earmarked by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The committee added $15 million to the House version Thursday, pushing funding from $70.8 million to $85.8 million. Recycling plants here and in Piketon, Ohio, would share the funding. "Obviously, senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning had a lot to do with that," said Tim Forden, president of recycling contractor Uranium Disposition Services. "That brings us back to the full funding level, so there's no question the project will stay on track." The funding is included in the fiscal 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations bill and must still be approved by the full Senate, then differences with the House bill worked out in conference. McConnell, a senior member of the appropriations committee, said Paducah nuclear projects remain one of his top priorities during the funding process. Other projects approved by the committee: $105 million for cleanup of the plant, which enriches uranium for use in nuclear fuel. The amount is $7 million more than the House version and includes additional funds to speed up characterization and disposal elsewhere of scrap metal and low-level radioactive waste. $465,000 for continued operation of a mobile unit that screens nuclear workers for early signs of lung cancer. The unit visits Paducah, Piketon and Oak Ridge, Tenn. $32 million, compared with $21.75 million in the House, for ongoing work to double the size of Kentucky Lock. The Bush administration budget had no money for the lock project, now 25 percent complete. $85 million for the half-finished new Olmsted Locks and Dam, which started in 1993. House legislation included $90 million. Morsey Inc. of Calvert City, which did site preparation work for the conversion plant, has been awarded two contracts worth $1.3 million to lay a foundation and erect a prefabricated metal warehouse building. Foundation work should begin by the end of June, Forden said. He said the firm expects to award a contract for an administration building in about 45 days. Other contracts this summer will include waste disposal and a railroad spur for the recycling factory, to be build in front of the diffusion plant in west McCracken County. On June 27, UDS will assume operation of the plant cylinder yards from Bechtel Jacobs, lead environmental contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy. That work involves eight to 10 jobs. The factory will convert spent uranium hexafluoride in the cylinders into more stable material from which valuable fluorine will be extracted. Leftover waste will be shipped to Energy Department-approved disposal facilities in the desert Southwest. Once the factory shell is erected by early 2006, employment for mechanical and electrical work will quickly increase to about 200 and remain at that level for about six months. Hiring for 150 long-term operational and support jobs will start about six months before the plant opens, sometime in 2007. The Paducah factory will operate for 25 years with four production lines, each converting about one of the massive 10- and 14-ton cylinders daily. -------- new york Lawmaker questions Indian Point consultant costs By GREG CLARY gclary@thejournalnews.com THE NJOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: June 17, 2005) http://www.nyjournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050617/NEWS02/506170321/1018 Westchester County Legislator George Oros yesterday challenged the county's Board of Acquisition and Contract to account for money promised to a consultant on Indian Point before the board pays the Boston company an additional $158,000 in fees. "I want to make sure that the county avoids frivolous expenditures like this," Oros, R-Cortlandt, said in a prepared statement. He also said future consulting studies should be reviewed in detail by the Board of Legislators before action is taken on additional spending. The county's contract board is run by Democratic County Executive Andrew Spano, County Legislature Chairman Bill Ryan, D-White Plains, and Ralph Butler, Spano's commissioner of public works. Susan Tolchin, Spano's chief adviser, said the board approved the extra money for additional work Levitan & Associates has performed or is likely to perform on the county's efforts to close Indian Point. She said the $158,000 figure was a ceiling price, not a set budget. She said most of that will pay for work on a county petition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to tighten its relicensing criteria to make it tougher for Indian Point to remain in operation at its Buchanan location as late as 2035. Spano on Tuesday released Levitan's 225-page report on how the county could close the Indian Point nuclear operation by 2015. It suggested pushing for a voluntary shut-down by Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plant's owner, rather than taking ownership of the property through eminent domain at a projected cost of up to $3 billion. Oros said Tuesday that the Levitan study, which cost $385,000, brought out nothing new, but acknowledged after that statement that he had not read the report. -------- us nuc waste Progress made in science of recycling nuclear fuel But experts warn lawmakers not to make decisions on reprocessing technology too soon By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Friday, June 17, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jun-17-Fri-2005/news/26737189.html WASHINGTON -- An Energy Department official said Thursday that new technologies could revive commercial nuclear waste reprocessing in 10 or 20 years, but other experts warned Congress not to embrace the concept too quickly. Reprocessing is far from cost-effective and the most readily available technologies carry nuclear security risks without corresponding benefits, a researcher from Harvard University and a physicist from New Mexico said at a House science subcommittee hearing. "Take the time to get the science right," said Roger Hagengruber, a former senior vice president at Sandia National Laboratory who now teaches at the University of New Mexico. A dozen lawmakers took active part in the hearing, reflecting a growing interest in nuclear fuel recycling as the nuclear industry seeks to build more power plants while the government continues to struggle over management of radioactive waste. Experts agreed that a repository being developed at Yucca Mountain still would be necessary to hold nuclear waste. But reprocessing could wring more energy out of nuclear fuel rods, reduce volumes of fuel waste and its radioactive toxicity, extending the life of the Nevada site, they said. Congress has set a 77,000 ton limit for Yucca Mountain, meaning the repository could be filled almost by the time it is opened, they said. More than 40,000 tons already is being stored at plant sites, in pools and hard shell casks. "I'm supportive of Yucca Mountain, but I don't want us to get to Yucca Two any sooner than we have to," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, a proponent of fuel reprocessing. President Carter in 1977 declared a moratorium on nuclear fuel reprocessing to limit weapons-grade plutonium, a reprocessing byproduct. President Reagan reversed course, but U.S. efforts remained dormant. On Thursday, Robert Shane Johnson, acting director for nuclear science and technology, told the House subcommittee the Energy Department has made "significant progress" in the past several years in researching new fuel treatment technologies. Johnson said an advanced uranium extraction process could reduce nuclear waste mass and chemically separate the components of spent fuel in a way that reduces the risk of creating weapons-grade materials that pose proliferation risks. Another technology, pyroprocessing, looks promising to handle fuel from new generations of nuclear reactors, Johnson said. But challenges loom in moving the technologies out of the laboratory, Johnson said. Retrofitting existing nuclear facilities might not work. Experiments to design new reprocessing plants could begin in about nine years, with commercial operations in about 20 years, he said. Phillip Finck, deputy associate director of the Argonne National Laboratory, agreed reprocessing holds promise. But Hagengruber and a second scientist warned Congress against getting excited too soon. Hagengruber recommended another 10 years of research would allow the government to "make a more enduring and prudent decision. A decision on reprocessing shouldn't outpace the science." Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate at Harvard, said nuclear waste could be safely kept at reactor sites in dry casks for decades while all options are weighed. Even nuclear waste sent to Yucca Mountain will be retrievable for 50 to 100 years. "During that time, technology will develop," Bunn said. "There is no need to make this decision in 2007 or in fact anytime in the next few decades." -------- POLITICS -------- us politics PATRIOT ACT BATTLE NOT OVER YET Friday, June 17, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/17/EDGN7D9N7E1.DTL What we said: “The Patriot Act, enacted at a time of trauma and fear,compromised the basic freedoms of the American people by going farbeyond what was needed to pursue terrorist cases. The law needs to benarrowed, not expanded.” — Editorial, May 24, 2005. What happened: House members on Wednesday wisely voted to repeal Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which gives federal agents the authority to obtain documents from public libraries and bookstores, allowing them to track people's book-reading habits in terrorism investigations. On June 7, however, the Senate Intelligence Committee emerged from a closed-door hearing in which they conducted a secretive mark-up of the law, not only making it permanent, but drastically expanding it as well. The committee reported out a bill that has yet to be made public. What's next: With 16 provisions of the hastily enacted Patriot Act set to expire by the end of the year, President Bush has called on Congress to renew the law without weakening it, and has already threatened to veto any bill that appears to do so. The ban on the provision, therefore, may only be a temporary victory. In addition, the Senate Intelligence Committee says its bill expanding the Patriot Act will be made public on its Web site soon, though no date has been given. What you can do: Write members of Congress and urge them to reject any effort to follow the example of Senate Intelligence Committee that would strengthen the Patriot Act and further encroach on the civil liberties of the American people. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Senate Approves National Renewable Energy Standard By J.R. Pegg WASHINGTON, DC, June 17, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-17-10.asp The U.S. Senate on Thursday narrowly approved a five-fold increase in renewable energy production and moved closer to finalizing its version of a comprehensive energy plan. But the inclusion of a renewable portfolio standard in the Senate energy bill is at odds with the positions of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Bush administration, and could prove another stumbling block for lawmakers eager to finally pass a national energy plan. The measure, which passed 52-48, mandates 10 percent of U.S. electricity be generated from renewable energy sources by 2020. It allows electric utilities to trade renewable energy credits in order to help the entire sector meet the goal. Proponents say it would result in enough renewable energy by 2025 to power 56 million homes and note that currently only two percent of the nation’s electricity is produced by renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. "That is a paltry sum," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. Eight Republicans supported the measure, but not John McCain of Arizona, who is the co-author of a climate stewardship bill pending before the Senate. Only two Democrats voted in opposition. Critics of the provision said it is unrealistic and expensive. The standard could cost utilities – and consumers – some $18 billion, said Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss. "It imposes a one-size fits all mandate on the whole country without regard for whether the requirement is technologically or economically feasible," Chambliss said. But the amendment’s coauthor, New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman, said the $18 billion in estimated costs for the electric utility industry would be more than offset by lower spending on natural gas. The measure will have a "negligible cost to consumers," Bingaman said. New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman is ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator) Seventeen states, including Texas and Wisconsin, have enacted renewable energy standards that require electric companies to increase their use of renewable energy sources. The amendment was coauthored by Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who said the amendment is good for his constituents. "With Minnesota’s wind energy production the fastest growing in the nation, the extension of wind energy tax credits, the Rural Renaissance style bonding authority, and the Renewable Energy Standard are all important incentives, for greater energy independence, environmental protection, and economic development," Coleman said. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, a Republican, says he supports developing domestic sources of energy - oil, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and alternative energy sources. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator) Environmentalists praised the renewable portfolio standard, but noted that the Senate has passed such a provision in each of the last three sessions only for the overall energy bill to falter. Immediately after the vote approving the measure, Chambliss called on Senate leaders to modify the proposal in the conference report to give states "greater flexibility and protect consumers from price increases." The Senate on Thursday considered another provision not supported by the House or the White House – mandatory cuts in the nation’s oil consumption. The amendment, offered by Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell, calls on the White House to cut oil imports 40 percent by 2025. The U.S. currently imports some 58 percent of the 20 million gallons of oil it consumes each day. Given current forecasts of increasing foreign oil dependence, the goal in the amendment represents a total reduction of some 7.5 million barrels per day. The amendment failed by a vote of 47-53. Three Republicans voted in favor of the amendment, with only one Democrat – Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow - in opposition. Senator Domenici called the measure a "gaudy, impossible resolution." "[The president] would have to send us a plan that the whole world would laugh at," Domenici said. "Our cars would have to be the size of golf carts." Many proponents of the amendment oppose efforts to increase the domestic supply of oil, Domenici said, in particular the bid to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). "They don’t even want to get the oil from ANWR," Domenici said. "That is a million barrels [a day] of what they are asking for." Critics noted that the energy bill already contains a provision that requires the White House to enact a plan to cut oil consumption by one million barrels a day by 2015. But Cantwell said that provision "does nothing" to curb dependence on foreign oil and would result in the nation importing a greater percentage of its oil by 2018. "It is the status quo and a bump and an increase," Cantwell said. "It is too timid." The White House opposes Cantwell’s amendment as well as the existing provision to cut oil consumption – a measure that is also absent from the House bill. Critics of mandatory cuts say such provisions will force automakers to rapidly increase fuel economy, a move that could harm the economy. Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin rejected that criticism and said "it has been 20 years since we held Detroit responsible" for fuel economy. "During that time fuel economy has gone down and down and down," Durbin said. "If you want to drive a Hummer, you ought to join the Army." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, told colleagues he intends to make sure the Senate finishes work on the energy bill next week. The legislation is expected to pass without much trouble, although debate is still expected on several amendments, including provisions to address global warming and offshore oil drilling. Ironing out the differences with the House and White House could prove far more difficult. On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee approved $14.1 billion over 10 years in tax incentives for the energy bill. The figure is more than double what the White House has requested and it is far richer in tax incentives and credits for renewable energy than the House legislation. The Senate bill also contains a mandate for ethanol in excess of that proposed by the House and requested by the administration. -------- ACTIVISTS Green Groups Reject Nuke Power as Answer to Global Warming June 17, 2005 — By Global Resource Action Center for the Environment http://www.enn.com/aff.html?id=704 WASHINGTON, D.C. — GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment) today joined nearly 300 international, national, regional and local environmental, consumer, and clean energy groups to reject recent claims that nuclear power is a viable solution to global warming. With votes Congress discussing a new energy bill this, GRACE joined several of the groups in calling for Congress to reject legislation that would subsidize nuclear power as part of a plan to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas. "Embracing nuclear power as a remedy to global warming is like taking up heroine to avoid an addiction to crack," said GRACE President Alice Slater. "Proponents of nuclear power conveniently ignore the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions that come from mining the uranium needed to fuel the reactor, building and powering the enrichment facilities needed to turn it into fuel, constructing the massive power plants that burn this radioactive material, and storing and securing for hundreds of thousands of years the toxic waste produced." The statement against nuclear power comes in response to recent efforts by the nuclear energy industry to revive the moribund sector as a means to temper climate change. But the groups today dispelled the argument that nuclear power is a viable solution to global warming, citing a recent MIT study that found that expanding nuclear power to have any significant effect on climate change would require building at least 1,000 new reactors. And even if the facilities could be built, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that there are only enough uranium reserves available to fuel that many reactors for 4 decades, after which the U.S. would face yet an even greater energy crisis. And even if an inexhaustible supply of uranium could be found, hundreds of new plants would generate so much waste as to require the construction of a new Yucca Mountain-sized waste site every 4 or 5 years. In a torrent of recent media coverage and advertising, the nuclear industry has seized upon the climate change debate to encourage the unprecedented expansion of an energy production method long viewed as uneconomical and unsafe, especially after the Chernobyl disaster abroad and the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. "Don't believe the hype," Slater said. "There remain several insurmountable hurdles to expanding nuclear energy in the amounts necessary to make a dent in global warming pollution. Even if all the technical obstacles could be overcome, there would still be the danger of proliferation. It is inconceivable that, at a time when the world shudders at the prospect of rogue states developing nuclear weapons capabilities, our elected officials are considering increasing by the thousands the number of sites that store potential weapons-grade material," she said. The pending Senate energy bill is likely to include many nuclear-friendly provisions designed to encourage energy companies to build new reactors. Already, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of energy legislation in April, including $6.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks, as well as other incentives. The Senate version of the energy bill includes $4.3 billion in subsidies; the tax provisions, which are likely to include billions in tax breaks for the nuclear industry, have not been completed yet. In the statement released today, the groups outlined five key reasons why nuclear energy should be rejected as a solution to global warming, stating that nuclear energy is unnecessary, too expensive, too dangerous, too polluting and would exacerbate the problems posed by the technology. "We can meet our future electricity needs and reduce global warming pollution without increasing our reliance on nuclear energy," the groups wrote, noting that 19 states have passed renewable electricity standards requiring an increasing percentage of energy to be generated by renewable energy sources, and that several studies have shown that clean energy solutions can dramatically reduce global warming pollution. "Using clean energy, we can reduce seven times the greenhouse gas emissions for the same price as a new generation of nuclear power plants," said David Hamilton, Director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program. "Americans should resist the attempt by the nuclear industry to force a nuclear energy revival on us." "It is ironic that the same folks who, until recently, denied that global warming even exists now want Americans to give them billions of dollars to solve the problem," noted Slater. "If even a fraction of the public dollars now being sought to revive the nuclear industry was devoted to harnessing the clean, inexhaustible energy form the sun, the wind, and the tides, we could solve our global warming problems in a matter of years. And no terrorist has ever attacked a windmill!" To read the full statement, go to: http://www.citizen.org/documents/GroupNuclearStmt.pdf or http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/nuclearglobalwarmingstatement6162005 .pdf For more information on the dangers of nuclear power, visit: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/fatalflaws or http://www.gracelinks.org/nuke CONTACT: Chris Cooper, Media Relations Director 212-726-9161 ccooper@gracelinks.org