NucNews - June 19, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- britain BNFL told to combat threat of nuclear contamination on Cumbrian beaches After the Thorp leak, Environment Agency gets tough over problems at waste-storage site near Sellafield By Jason Nisse UK Independent 19 June 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=647922 BNFL, which is facing a potential prosecution over a recent nuclear leak at Sellafield, has been told by the Environment Agency to come up with an action plan to prevent 950,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste oozing out on to beaches in Cumbria. The waste is stored in the low-level waste repository at the village of Drigg, near Sellafield. Although it was transferred from BNFL's ownership to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) earlier this year, it is managed by British Nuclear Group, a BNFL subsidiary. In a secret report, prepared by the state-owned nuclear group for the Environment Agency three years ago, BNFL warned that coastal erosion could mean that in 500 years, waste from Drigg could fall from the repository on to the beaches and be washed into the sea. In this scenario, the risk of contamination would be 100 times the risk target - which is that there would be a one in a million chance of death from radiation for local residents. Much of the waste in Drigg has a radioactive life running into thousands of years. The Environment Agency launched a consultation last week on what BNFL should do about the problem, seeking the views of the company, residents and environmental experts. At the moment, the waste is stored in trenches, covered by soil. Ian Streathfield, the nuclear regulator at the Environment Agency, said that the options put to the BNFL are: stopping further storage of certain nuclear waste at the site; removing some of the waste from Drigg; building a new, thicker cap for the waste trenches; and making BNFL manage the site for twice as long as the 150 years it had proposed. "The solution could involve any or all of these proposals," said Mr Streathfield. "Any option has advantages or disadvantages, in terms of costs and benefit." Removing some of the waste would be a massive headache for BNFL, as would stopping further disposals at Drigg, which is the largest waste-storage facility in the UK. Much of the long-term waste - which would need to be removed - was dumped at Drigg in the 1980s and is buried below other waste. Stopping further shipments would mean the NDA changing its low-level waste strategy completely. Drigg has been operating since 1959 and it was planned to continue until 2050, taking up to 500,000 cubic metres more waste. Unless another site could be found near Sellafield, this waste would have to be transported by train across the country. The consultation on what is to be done at Drigg will continue until January, and a solution will have to be approved by the secretaries of state for health and for environment, food and rural affairs. A spokesman for BNFL said: "We are aware of the concerns of the Agency, and once the process comes to a decision, we will act upon it." The problems at Drigg have emerged only weeks after a report on the Thorp fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield, which found that radioactive liquid had been leaking, undetected, from a pipe until discovered in April, creating a pool of 83,000 litres. This is being cleaned up and BNFL is being investigated by the Nuclear Industries Inspectorate over the incident. Industry experts believe that the NII may prosecute BNFL for breaches of health and safety over the Thorp leak. The Government dropped plans to privatise BNFL two years ago but this month will start attempting to sell Westinghouse, the BNFL subsidiary that builds nuclear reactors. NM Rothschild, the merchant bank, is advising on the sale and will invite bids from interested parties. ---- BNFL pleads with Treasury to delay Westinghouse sale By Andrew Murray-Watson (Filed: 19/06/2005) UK Telegraph http://money.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/06/19/cnbnfl19.xml British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), the state-owned nuclear power group, is trying to persuade the Treasury to delay a £1bn sale of Westinghouse, its US-based subsidiary, for at least a year. The Treasury is determined that Westinghouse, the nuclear power station construction business, should be sold in what would be the start of the break-up of BNFL. The BNFL board's demand for a delay could lead to a major row with the Treasury. The board believes that Westinghouse could be sold for a higher price if an auction were delayed for at least a year. An executive with links to BNFL said: "It is clear that there is about to be a global renaissance of nuclear power. So what is the logic of selling Westinghouse now? There is a very good chance there will be more upside to a sale once countries all over the world start building new plants." It is believed that the BNFL board does not disagree with the argument that the Government should not own nuclear assets. However, it is ready to argue vociferously that the immediate sale of Westinghouse is the wrong move. The board will meet at the end of this month and is expected to reluctantly ratify the Government's decision to sell Westinghouse. However, it will argue that the state should maintain a minority stake in the business to gain a share of any upside in the value of the business in the future. Leading bidders for Westinghouse are likely to include General Electric, the US conglomerate, Areva, the French nuclear group, and Shaw Group, the -Louisiana-based company, as well as Toshiba and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan. However, some analysts believe that Areva will run into competition issues in the US and that the UK government may favour an American buyer. Westinghouse is currently bidding to build a next generation range of nuclear power stations in China. A growing number of scientists and environmentalists believe that building a new generation of nuclear power stations is the only way to significantly reduce the UK's emission of gases that cause global warming. -------- depleted uranium U.S. Used WMD in Iraq Posted: 06/19/05 Methaba.net From: Freiheit und Wissen Charles Norman Todd http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=246266 A startling report has emerged yesterday that the U.S. has used napalm fire bombs in Iraq and then lied about it to the British government. Background Consider the sorts of weapons that international law generally prohibits: unconventional weapons used to attack the civilian population of a country, either directly or indirectly by leaving behind hazardous remnants. One example of such heinous weapons are those enriched with depleted uranium left over from either nuclear weapons or nuclear reactors. The U.S. has used D.U. enriched weapons for over a decade, in the first Gulf War, in Kosovo and the Balkans, in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and again most recently in Iraq. The problem with D.U. enriched weapons is that the depleted uranium spreads out over a wide area upon impact and then sinks to the ground as a heavy dust. The result has been devastating environmental damage. After the invasion, some hot spots in downtown Baghdad registered 1,000 to 2,000 times higher than normal background radiation levels. At some locations in Iraq where the U.S. used D.U. weapons during the first Gulf War, doctors have identified a dramatic rise in both cancer and birth defects. In addition, many suspect that what is now known as “Gulf War Syndrome” is in fact the result of soldiers being expose to D.U. dust while serving in Iraq. The effects of D.U. on a community can be long term. But other abhorrent weapons can affect a civilian population swiftly and immediately. For example, incendiary weapons such as white phosphorous ammunitions create a dense white smokescreen and burn intensely. When such ammunitions impact in close range to human targets, the burning particles will imbed in the skin. And burning white phosphorus cannot be extinguished simply by hosing it with water, but rather requires a complete smothering. Such incendiaries have been prohibited by the 1980 Protocol III of the Geneva Convention – a protocol which the U.S. has refused to ratify to this day, despite general international agreement. Reports from Iraq indicate that the U.S. has used white phosphorus in the current conflict. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the siege which flattened Fallujah in November 2004 involved the use of phosphorus weapons: Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns. Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted." And independent journalist Dahr Jamail wrote that citizens in Fallujah he interviewed described bombs that exploded into large fires that burned flesh and could not be put out with water. Between the D.U. enhanced weapons and the evidence of phosphorous ammunitions in Fallujah, it seems difficult to deny that the U.S. persists in using weapons that constitute criminal acts against humanity. Napalm Yesterday we learned that the U.S. may have used – or may still be using – another United Nations banned horror: Napalm. According to The Independent, the U.S. used 30 MK77 firebombs – a new generation of incendiary weapons - during the initial Iraqi invasion between March 31 and April 2 2003. Like white phosphorus ammunitions, napalm has a strategic role when used against civilian populations. Napalm not only produces a sticky burning gel that adheres to the skin as it burns through, leading to loss of blood pressure and eventually death in a short period of time, but it also releases clouds of carbon monoxide that can kill by asphyxiation. (Everyone will remember the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the naked girl in Vietnam, running down the road screaming as her skin burned with napalm.) In 2001, with great fanfare, the U.S. Navy operations at Fallbrook Weapons Station in San Diego County sent the “last” of the U.S.’s Vietnam-era napalm to be incinerated at plants in Texas and Louisiana. At the time, the Navy claimed that this was the last of the military’s supply of napalm. It was the end of a wartime horror, or so we thought. But right after the March 2003 invasion, a report surfaced in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald which stated that a U.S. officer had told the paper that napalm had in fact been dropped on Iraq. A Navy spokesman denied this claim, saying once again that the U.S. military no longer had any napalm in its supplies. But in August, the San Diego Union-Tribune was able to confirm that napalm bombs had been dropped on Baghdad as U.S. troops prepared to capture the city. In that article, Union-Tribune wrote: Marine Corps fighter pilots and commanders who have returned from the war zone have confirmed dropping dozens of incendiary bombs near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris River. The explosions created massive fireballs. "We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. James Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.” "...It's no great way to die," he added. How many Iraqis died, the military couldn't say. No accurate count has been made of Iraqi war casualties. Yesterday’s story in The Independent not only confirms that a new generation of incendiary weapons have been used in Iraq, but that U.S. officials also lied about their use to British officials. In January, the British Defense Minister Adam Ingram offered his assurances to members of Parliament that no new napalm weapons had been used by the U.S. during the Iraq invasion. Indeed, Mr. Ingram made such statements based upon assertions made to him by U.S. officials. But in a letter written to a Labor MP, Ingram wrote: I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position. This admission raises grave questions now about whether or not the U.S. in fact used such incendiary weapons for the siege against Fallujah – claims that the U.S. has denied all along. If the U.S. did in fact use this new generation of napalm bombs, they would have violated the 1980 weapons convention – a protocol ratified by the U.K., but not by the U.S. Mike Lewis, a spokesman for The Iraq Analysis Group issued the following statement: “The US has used internationally reviled weapons that the UK refuses to use, and has then apparently lied to UK officials, showing how little weight the UK carries in influencing American policy." He added: "Evidence that Mr Ingram had given false information to Parliament was publicly available months ago. He has waited until after the election to admit to it - a clear sign of the Government's embarrassment that they are doing nothing to restrain their own coalition partner in Iraq." The Consequences There remains little doubt that the U.S. has knowingly committed crimes against humanity in Iraq, crimes that they actively tried to keep from public knowledge. D.U., white phosphorus, and the new generation of napalm all constitute weapons of mass destruction – weapons whose effects cannot be made precise, whose impact covers a wide area, and in the case of D.U., will remain for generations after the conflict is over. It is now time for the international community to hold the White House and the Pentagon responsible. In particular, those in the Bush administration and the top ranks of the military who approved the use of such weapons and then knowingly lied about it need to be help accountable. Our leaders need to know that we the citizens of the United State do not support the use of chemical weapons in any fashion and categorically abhor the enrichment of ammunitions with depleted uranium. And if the U.S. will not take responsibility for its actions, then the international community needs to hold them accountable. ---- Army handed revised bill Starmet cleanup cost up by $3.1m By Davis Bushnell, Boston Globe Correspondent | June 19, 2005 http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/06/19/army_handed_revised_bill/ CONCORD -- The estimated cost of removing more than 3,700 barrels of depleted uranium from Starmet Corp.'s Superfund site in West Concord has now increased by $3.1 million, according to state Department of Environmental Protection officials. As a result, according to department spokesman Joseph Ferson, the DEP sent a June 13 letter to the Army asking it to pick up the revised tab of $8.3 million for removing those barrels, a step considered crucial to cleaning up the 46-acre property off Route 62. The Army, which agreed in April 2004 to pay for removing and disposing of the barrels containing low levels of radioactive material, has 20 days to reply to the request for more money, Ferson said. The barrels are stored in Starmet buildings. Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the US Justice Department, which is handling the matter for the Army, said, ''We've received the letter and are reviewing the next steps." Starmet's predecessor company, Nuclear Metals Inc., produced uranium-tipped bullets for the Army from 1970 to 1999. In 2003, the Army and four other parties were cited by the US Environmental Protection Agency for contaminating the property, which in June 2001 went on the agency's Superfund list of the nation's most polluted sites. Bids submitted by two out-of-state contractors three months ago exceeded the original cleanup estimate of $5.2 million, Ferson noted, because of additional charges for evaluating and disposing of the barrels. Also, the DEP will have to spend more on overseeing the process, he said. Since the 2004 agreement with the Army involved the state Attorney General's Office as well, it is believed that the Army will comply with the request for more funds, said Ferson. If the Army does comply, then a contractor will be selected and start the yearlong project during the summer, he said. The sooner the work gets started, the better, a remediation specialist and a Concord citizens group member said. The disposal of the barrels of uranium represents ''the last obstacle" to pinpointing the extent of the property's contamination, said Bruce Thompson, project manager for Windsor, Conn.-based de maximis inc., which is conducting a remedial investigation of the Starmet property for the Army and the other parties cited by the EPA. ''After a contractor has removed those barrels, we've got to go into the buildings and investigate what's left," in terms of other possible contaminants, he said. The barrels continue to be guarded around-the-clock and do not constitute a present danger, Thompson and others have said. Although the delays in removing the barrels have been very frustrating, ''I think the Army will meet its obligations and come up with the extra money," said James West, technical assistance coordinator for the Citizens Research and Environmental Watch group. It has a $50,000 technical-assistance grant from the EPA. In addition to the Army, the others responsible for the property's contamination are the US Department of Energy, Whittaker Corp. of Simi Valley, Calif., Textron Inc. of Providence, and MONY Life Insurance Co. of New York City. -------- japan Japan Paper Runs Censored A - Bomb Stories By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS June 19, 2005 Filed at 6:51 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nagasaki-A-Bomb.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print TOKYO (AP) -- An American journalist who sneaked into Nagasaki soon after the Japanese city was leveled by a U.S. atomic bomb found a ''wasteland of war'' and victims moaning from the pain of radiation burns in downtown hospitals. Censored 60 years ago by the U.S. military, George Weller's stories from the atom bombed-city surfaced this month in a series of reports in the national Mainichi newspaper. A woman at a hospital ''lies moaning with a blackish mouth stiff as though with lockjaw and unable to utter clear words,'' her legs and arms covered with red spots, Weller wrote. Others suffered from a dangerously high-temperature fever, a drop in white and red blood cells, swelling in the throat, sores, vomiting, diarrhea, internal bleeding or loss of hair, his censored dispatch said, describing the then-unknown effects of atomic radiation. By hiring a Japanese rowboat, catching trains and later posing as a U.S. Army colonel, Weller, an award-winning reporter for the now-defunct Chicago Daily News, slipped into Nagasaki in early September 1945, Mainichi said -- about a month after the Aug. 9 bombing that killed 70,000 people. In a Sept. 8, 1945 dispatch, Weller wrote of walking through the city -- a ''wasteland of war'' -- and finding evidence to back the talk of radiation fallout in American radio news reports. ''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,'' he wrote. Weller's reportage about the unknown affliction he called ''disease X'' appeared in Mainichi in Japanese and on its Web site in English. The United States dropped two atomic bombs -- the first on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, and the second three days later on Nagasaki, about 614 miles southwest of Tokyo. The twin bombings led to Japan's Aug. 15, 1945, surrender ending the war. Weller, who died in 2002, was the first foreign journalist to set foot in the devastated city, which Gen. Douglas MacArthur, head of the U.S. occupation in Japan, had designated off-limits to reporters, the newspaper said. Carbon copies of his stories, running to about 25,000 words on 75 typed pages, along with more than two dozen photos, were discovered by his son, Anthony, last summer at Weller's apartment in Rome, Italy, Mainichi said. Anthony Weller, a novelist living in Annisquam, Mass., couldn't be reached for comment. He previously said he plans to publish his father's stories. Though he skirted American authorities to get into Nagasaki, Weller submitted his reports -- the first was dated Sept. 6 -- to the censors. The stories infuriated MacArthur and he personally ordered them quashed. The originals were never returned to him. Anthony Weller told Mainichi he thought wartime officials wanted to hush up stories about radiation sickness and feared that his father's reports would sway American public opinion against building an arsenal of nuclear bombs. The first batch of stories were finished just as a delegation of American scientists was to visit the city to test for radiation. Though thousands of burn victims had died within a week after the attack, doctors were stumped by ''this mysterious 'disease X''' which sickened and was killing many Japanese as well as allied soldiers freed from prison camps a month later. Weller met a Japanese doctor and X-ray specialist who thought that the bomb had showered the population with harmfully high levels of beta and gamma radiation. But nobody could say for sure. ''The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here,'' Weller wrote. Weller was 95 when he died in December 2002. He won the Pulitzer Prize for an eyewitness account of an emergency appendectomy carried out by a pharmacist's mate on a Navy submarine underwater in the South China Sea. He also covered the French Indochina war in Southeast Asia and World War II in Europe. He also sent dispatches from the Mideast, Africa, the Soviet Union and other parts of Asia. On the Net: Mainichi newspaper: http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/specials/0506/0617weller.html ---- U.S. made Japan drop Lucky Dragon probe The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 19, 2005 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20050619wo32.htm A document in the U.S. National Archives shows that the United States exerted pressure on the Japanese health ministry to drop research into the radioactive contamination of tuna following a 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test that irradiated a Japanese trawler in the South Pacific, it was learned Saturday. The proof was reported by Hiroko Takahashi, an expert on U.S. history at Hiroshima City University's Hiroshima Peace Institute. About nine months after the test, the then Health and Welfare Ministry suddenly discontinued research on tuna caught in waters off Bikini Atoll, where the test was conducted. Twenty-three crewmen aboard the 140-ton Fukuryu Maru No. 5, out of Yaizu in Shizuoka Prefecture, better known overseas as the Lucky Dragon, were irradiated during the test on March 1, 1954. According to Takahashi, the document, dated Jan. 5, 1955, was written by the U.S. tuna investigation association and was addressed to Dr. W.R. Boss of the division of biology and medicine at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The one-page letter mentioned the Japan-U.S. conference concerning the effect and usage of radioactive substance held in Tokyo in November 1954. The letter to Boss said the conference clearly influenced the Japanese government to stop on Jan. 1, 1955, research into the effects of radiation exposure on the tuna, and thanked him for his help in stopping the study. The Health and Welfare Ministry started the research immediately after the test and confirmed the tuna caught by the Lucky Dragon was contaminated with radioactivity and ordered the catch destroyed. The ministry confirmed that a wide area around the atoll was radioactive after the United States dropped a hydrogen bomb on it. But about one month later, after a bilateral conference, the ministry suddenly stopped its research, saying that while the internal organs of tuna caught in the area were highly radioactive, the flesh of the tuna was safe for human consumption. The United States settled the incident politically with Japan by paying the government 2 million dollars in compensation, while not acknowledging its legal responsibility for the incident. The relationship between the death of Aikichi Kuboyama, who was the chief radio operator of the Lucky Dragon, and his exposure to radioactivity was never properly investigated. "The content of the Japan-U.S. conference is classified even today, and there are lots of unclear points," Takahashi said. "The document shows that the research was stopped not by Japan of its own accord, but as a result of the consideration the Japanese government gave to the wishes of the U.S. government." Osamu Ishii, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University and an expert on the history of international relations, said: "For the United States, the research into radioactive contamination of tuna could have raised anti-U.S. sentiment in its ally Japan, and the United States feared that Japan would leak the data on radiation to the Eastern bloc in the fierce competition with the then Soviet Union for nuclear development. The document showed that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission prevented these possibilities." Takahashi is to publish the document in a book titled "Kakusareta Hibakusha" (Hidden Radioactivity Victims), cowritten with other researchers and to be published this month by Gaifusha Publishing Inc. -------- russia Russia's spies creep out of the cold By Oliver Bullough Sun Jun 19, 9:11 PM ET (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050620/lf_nm/russia_spies_dc_1 MOSCOW - The KGB's fearsome reputation will take decades to fade, but Russia's spies are -- bit by bit -- trying to change their image. It seems they're just ordinary guys, doing a hard job on a tight budget. A book published last month was the latest step in an operation to present edited highlights of the espionage triumphs hidden during the dark days of the Cold War. "There are no superheroes. Superheroes are an artificial creation of the quill or the screen," wrote Vladimir Karpov, a highly decorated ex-spy in "The Elite of Russian Intelligence." "But real espionage work is always more interesting than any inventions," his foreword to the book said. Books like this, and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) helps publish around a dozen a year, aim to change Russian spies' image from that created by thriller writers such as Ian Fleming or John Le Carre. "This policy of openness has helped us reduce the number of myths and legends," said Boris Labusov, a former agent who works as spokesman for the SVR and was listed as "scientific consultant" in the book's credits. "People are always attracted to what they cannot know. And now we have said what the service is, and what is does, well, that's the end," he said in an interview. SLEEK HOUSE He spoke in a light, airy SVR house near Moscow's inner ring road -- a far cry from the grim halls of the KGB's Lubyanka headquarters as enshrined in Russian spying legend. "We have to explain to society why it needs a foreign espionage organ... they pay their taxes, and they have the right to know where their money goes," he said. He declined to discuss current operations, but scandals have made sure that Russian spies, in a state now headed by former spy Vladimir Putin, are never long out of the news. Russia has been through at least six rounds of tit-for-tat diplomat expulsions since Putin's election in 2000. And the spies plunged into crisis last year when Qatar convicted two Russian agents of using a car bomb to murder a Chechen rebel leader in exile in the Gulf State -- the kind of "wet work" even the KGB might have shied away from. But commentators say the intelligence services' policy of openness only goes so far, and that a system with any kind of democratic control is still a long way off. "The situation has changed, there is not the stand-off there used to be. The Americans probably know more about our security than we do," said Mikhail Lyubimov, a former spy in Britain who became a journalist and writer in the later 1980s. "Of course it is not like it was in Soviet times... if they speak, it is wonderful, if there are books it is wonderful. But I would not exactly say this is a triumph of openness," he said. SHAKY Vladimir Zavershinsky, first deputy head of the SVR, hardly comes across as a staunch democrat. In the new book he attacks the fledging Russian parliament's attempts to establish control over the spies' activities after the collapse of Soviet rule. "We got crushed by pointless parliamentary investigations, run by incomprehensible and, believe me, unprofessional commissions," he said in an interview published in the book. He went on to savage the lack of support shown by Russia's democratic government for the authoritarian leaders of East Germany -- including Erich Mielke, the so-called "Master of Fear" who headed the Stasi intelligence service. "They cravenly gave them up, basically threw them out of Russia, forgetting that they had been not only close allies, but also antifascists, heroes of our Soviet Union," he said. And for some, the tentative steps toward openness have gone too far. "I do not understand why these people talk about spies so much, it is totally wrong," said Valentin Velichko, head of the murky Veterans of Foreign Intelligence organization, which played a key if unexplained role in freeing Dutch hostage Arjan Erkel from captivity in the North Caucasus last year. "There should be (legislative) control, because espionage is paid for by tax-payers, but the commission should be former agents, professionals who know how things should be," he said. With so many former spies in top ranks in the Russian state -- including Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, and several members of the presidential administration -- it looks unlikely that spies will see any return to the interference in their work of the immediate post-Soviet years. "You cannot compare then with now. We sense that the state and the president need us. The head of the SVR reports to the leader of the country with intelligence every week, more often if needed," Zavershinsky was quoted as saying. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Time to take fresh look at neglected nuclear power June 19, 2005 BY BARCLAY JONES, Chicago Sun-Times http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref19.html It is surprising how little notice has been taken of the most important technology we have in the battle against global climate change. Nuclear power in Illinois generates more than half of the electricity we use, without releasing any carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. By contrast, coal-fired power plants in this state release more than 90 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and the carbon load is expected to grow as more coal plants are built. In addition, coal plants emit huge quantities of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and even greater amounts of sulfur dioxide that winds up as acid rain, damaging our forests and lakes. Nuclear power plants release none of these pollutants. To many Americans, nuclear power's environmental advantages have become increasingly clear. A recent national poll shows that 63 percent of people who describe themselves as environmentalists favor nuclear energy. And 60 percent of those polled agree that "we should definitely build more nuclear power plants in the future." Although spent nuclear fuel is being stored safely at nuclear plant sites, inadequate funding and political conflicts continue to hamper the licensing and construction of an underground waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. To date, receipts to the Nuclear Waste Fund exceed $22 billion. However, only $7 billion has actually been spent on the program, leaving it severely underfunded. Because it is realistic and workable, unobligated money should be made available for completion of the repository. And as France and Great Britain are doing, we should move ahead on developing ways to economically reprocess spent nuclear fuel so that this valuable resource can be used again in nuclear power plants, reducing by more than half the amount of radioactive waste that would need to be disposed of in the Yucca Mountain repository. We should invest in research on reprocessing and keep an open mind. We cannot afford to postpone dealing with the threat to our environment from the rising use of fossil fuels, or from the threat to our economy from providing inadequate supplies of clean energy. The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration says the United States needs at least 393,000 megawatts of new electricity generation by 2020 -- that's a 40 percent increase in electric-power capacity from today. This need for more electricity must be met, even as we work to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the environment. Where will the country get the clean energy to satisfy our growing need? And at a price that will keep our industries competitive with those of other countries? A large part of the answer is nuclear power. Because of its environmental advantages, progress is well under way toward the next generation of nuclear electric power plants. For starters, electric companies are renewing the operating licenses of nuclear power plants for another 20 years, so they can run for 60 years rather than 40. It appears that nearly all of the 103 U.S. nuclear plants will be extending their period of operation to carry us well into the future. But now the country needs additional generation, and nuclear plants must be part of the mix. Major energy companies have formed several groups that are collectively considering plans for new nuclear plants. The regulatory uncertainty facing construction of the first few nuclear plants will require some form of government risk insurance and policy incentives -- possibly loan guarantees. But once the first plants are built, others will follow and even more greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced. Of course, nuclear power alone cannot solve our problems. Energy-efficiency measures, along with greater use of wind turbines and solar energy, can make a contribution to the nation's energy needs, while helping to reduce carbon emissions. Wind power already has become the fastest-growing energy source in the country. But even under the most favorable circumstances for the expansion of these emission-free energy sources, more nuclear power will be necessary. Nuclear power has proven its environmental advantages over the burning of conventional fuels. Policymakers, the public and the industry alike are realizing that it's time to capitalize on those advantages, and move ahead with the next phase of nuclear power. Barclay G. Jones is professor of nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- california Still Generating Controversy Plans for a nuclear plant near Malibu were shelved decades ago after residents' protests. Landslides are the legacy. By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, June 19, 2005 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-me-malibunuke14jun14,1,4201551.story?coll=la-editions-valley&ctrack=1&cset=true Call it fallout from Malibu's nuclear era. Playwright Charles Marowitz is suffering from it, he says as he points into a ravine beneath his home of more than two decades. It has nothing to do with the mysterious building hidden near the bottom of the mountain — where he says local legend has it that an eccentric billionaire once secretly tried to build an atom bomb. Marowitz's problem involves the ill-fated atomic power plant the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power tried to construct four decades ago in rugged Corral Canyon. The DWP reluctantly shelved plans for its nuclear station after experts argued that the isolated canyon three miles west of the Malibu Pier was geologically unstable and unsafe for an atomic reactor. But the city retained ownership of part of the 305-acre nuclear site. And now a slow-moving landslide at the edge of the DWP parcel threatens to undermine multimillion-dollar ocean-view homes owned by Marowitz and his neighbors. City water and power officials contend that the slope failure is not their problem because they have done nothing to their land to cause it to slide. In 1963, Los Angeles officials proposed building a San Onofre-style atomic generating plant in Corral Canyon as a solution to the fast-growing city's need for more electricity. DWP engineers viewed nuclear power as the perfect solution to a looming electricity shortage. The Corral Canyon plant would be larger than any atomic plant in existence and would have the capacity to generate enough power for every home, office, and factory in Los Angeles for four hours a day, the agency predicted. Unlike oil- and coal-powered generating stations, the atomic plant would be pollution-free and would not contribute to the smog that was blanketing Los Angeles almost daily. Corral Canyon's isolation was another plus. The atomic plant would be tucked between hillsides at the bottom of a deep ravine. Seawater pumped from pipes buried under Pacific Coast Highway and the beach and extending half a mile into the ocean would cool the reactor. The plant's electricity would be carried into Los Angeles by a line of steel transmission towers constructed across the Santa Monica Mountains through Calabasas and connected to the DWP's existing electric grid in the San Fernando Valley. The deal sounded sweet to Los Angeles officials for other reasons as well. The federal Atomic Energy Commission was willing to classify the Corral Canyon reactor as a nuclear power demonstration project. As such, the commission would pay up to $8 million for the design of the plant and would waive fuel-use charges of up to another $8.2 million. City officials thought at first that the atomic plant plan would sail through federal and local reviews. In 1963, they entered into a tentative agreement with the Westinghouse Corp. to buy the generating equipment. The Atomic Energy Commission named a Boston company to design and build the reactor. Officials announced that the plant would be completed by 1967. But the proposal quickly caused a furor in Malibu, helping galvanize a fledgling environmental movement, leading to the creation of a vast network of public parkland and land-development restrictions throughout the Santa Monica Mountains — including Corral Canyon. Malibu celebrities joined in public hearings conducted by Los Angeles County to complain that the coastal area was seismically active. The thought of a nuclear plant up the road from her beachfront home "makes my hair stand on end," actress Angela Lansbury told the county's Planning Commission. "The two words 'atomic energy' are the most horror-packed words in the English language. We have harnessed it, but as long as there is a margin for error, I don't think the few in Malibu should be sacrificed for the many." Singer Frankie Laine cited an incident involving a leaking truck at an Idaho nuclear plant that forced officials to dig up a street and bury the contaminated pavement. In 1970, after six years of debate and dozens of conflicting geology reports over the canyon's safety, the city quietly dropped an option to buy nearly $100 million worth of equipment that would have launched the first 490,000-kilowatt phase of the atomic plant project. In the years since, the DWP has all but forgotten the 98 acres of Corral Canyon it still owns. The acreage extends across deep ravines and steep slopes in an area bounded on the east by Corral Canyon Road and on the west by what is now the National Park Service's Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The northern edge of the city's land comes within about 25 feet of Marowitz's two-story home in a small residential enclave called El Nido. From his front deck he can peer about half a mile down into Solstice Canyon Park. That's where an odd, silo-shaped structure stands in a small clearing. "We're told that's where Howard Hughes was developing an atomic bomb in the 1940s. They say he closed up shop down there in the '50s," Marowitz said. "They called it the Nuclear Canyon." The DWP property is closer — reaching within about 15 feet of his home. The falling slope has undermined part of Sequit Drive, a private roadway in front of his house, causing chunks of asphalt to fall away. A major slope failure could take out the whole road and then his house and neighboring structures, Marowitz says. The sliding started in 1991 and his fight with the DWP began two years after that, said Marowitz, an author and stage director as well as a playwright of such works as "Sherlock's Last Case," who is married to former actress Jane Windsor. "It's like being in a Kafka novel," he said of the city's response. "You kind of get lost in a maze when you try to deal with them." DWP officials say they have responded to each of Marowitz's complaints over the years. Earlier this year, department surveyors marked the city's property line with stakes, and DWP property managers and lawyers inspected the site, which is about 30 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. Officials suggest that grading done for the construction of Sequit Drive might have weakened the hillside. Brush clearance and seepage from residential septic tanks may also have contributed to the slippage, DWP officials say. Since "the slope failure was not the result of any department activity, we do not intend to take any corrective action" on "the department's former nuclear site," DWP General Manager Ronald F. Deaton told Marowitz in February in response to complaints about new storm damage. As for atomic bombs, the neighboring landowner, the National Park Service, said it could not verify that Hughes ever had any connection with the canyon. His name does not appear on any property records, said Philip Holmes, a park service anthropologist who is compiling a history of the area. There is no record of Hughes' involvement in nuclear bomb-making. The silo-like structure was built in 1961 by scientists with Space Technology Laboratories Inc. on 10 acres rented from landowner Fred Roberts, Holmes said. Roberts also sold land to the DWP for its power station. Constructed entirely of wood, the silo building contained no metal that would interfere with the design, assembly and testing of instruments used in early space satellites. Medical magnetic-resonance imaging devices were also created there, according to Holmes. The isolated site — far from any electrical motors that could interfere with testing — was run by scientists from Thompson Ramo Woolridge and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory through 1973. Because of its significance, Holmes said it could eventually be given landmark status. There is no monument planned for the proposed site of the city's failed attempt to join the nuclear age, however. And despite the city's continued ownership of the Malibu land, DWP spokeswoman Gale Harris said there was no plan to ever again build a nuclear plant in Corral Canyon. -------- connecticut Military base closing threatens environment By Ellen Wulfhorst and Adam Tanner Sun Jun 19,12:15 PM ET (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050619/us_nm/environment_military_dc_1 GROTON, Conn. - The proposed closing of America's oldest submarine base could not only rob the area of a vital economic engine but leave the land too contaminated by toxic waste for quick redevelopment, Connecticut authorities say. Worried residents of Groton, Connecticut, where the New London Naval Submarine Base is slated to be shut, can look to the Alameda Naval Air Station in California, where locals said cleanup and redevelopment were slow, expensive and frustrating. Groton, the largest single base marked for closure, is among 33 major military installations Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recommended for closure in May. A final decision is due later this year. The base at the mouth of the picturesque Thames River has 29 contaminated spots in need of environmental cleanup, officials say. Pollutants like acids, metals, pesticides and medical waste have poured into the base's land and groundwater over the course of its century-long history. "That's our major concern," Gina McCarthy, commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection, said of the proposed closing. "We don't think that decision really looks realistically at the contamination of the property from the redevelopment standpoint." Cleaning up Groton, the self-proclaimed "Submarine Capital of the World," for redevelopment will cost far more than the government estimates, local officials say. The Navy already has spent about $57 million, and the Pentagon has proposed another $23.9 million for Groton's cleanup. "The big question is who is going to pay for everything that has to be done? That has actually not been resolved," said Paulann Sheets, a member of the Groton town council. Spokesmen at the Pentagon and the New London Naval Submarine Base could not be reached for comment. NOT CLEAN ENOUGH Some contaminated spots on the submarine base have been closed and capped, but they are not clean enough for commercial or residential use, McCarthy said. "We have a number of sites where their (idea of a) final cleanup is 'We've paved it over, don't go near it,"' she said. "That is not exactly in a condition to be redeveloped." In California, the Alameda base, located on a scenic island across the bay from San Francisco, shut down in 1997. Since then, additional contaminants were found on the base, according to Ron Plaseied, the Navy's base closure manager for Alameda. So, like many military bases closed in recent years, Alameda is stuck in a tangle of environmental cleanup. Many of its buildings, from aircraft hangers to apartments, remain boarded up. Since leaving, the Navy has relinquished a fraction of the territory, putting on hold redevelopment of prime land in one of the hottest U.S. property markets. "The Navy's required to do the environmental cleanup before they can convey the property, but they need to have the funding," Alameda Mayor Beverly Johnson said. "The problem is that they depend on Congress to get the money." Plaseied estimates the cleanup bill will be $128 million, in addition to the $200 million already spent. Others say the real costs will be much higher. Some commercial tenants use Alameda's military buildings, and local officials and the Navy say they are close to a deal to transfer the land and allow fuller redevelopment to begin. "It takes a long time to make these projects, to really start seeing the positive effects from base closures. We still haven't seen that from Alameda," Johnson said. "It's a little frustrating." ECONOMIC COST At Groton, local officials still hope to keep the base open. The federal government estimates about 8,460 military and civilian jobs are at stake with the proposed closing; state officials say it could be as many as 31,500 jobs. Another of Groton's large employers, General Dynamics' Electric Boat, has said it would remain in business if the base closed. But such a closing could affect the number of jobs at Electric Boat, which now has some 11,300 employees. While the base's waterfront location is breathtaking, the land may be too dirty to join neighboring Mystic, a popular resort, in attracting tourists, officials say. But new industrial uses might be welcome in a town so dependent on the base that some 40 percent of its school children come from Navy families. Many other residents are military retirees who opted to stay near a base for its health care facilities and discounted shopping. Sheets said small businesses in particular depend on the base. "They will shrivel up and blow away within six months if we don't have something moving in," he said. Joseph Quaratella, whose Nautilus Barber Shop is filled with photographs of submarines, has been giving crew cuts to Groton's military staff for 46 years. "This place is going to be disasterland" if the base closes, he said. "I know I'll lose business. Will it be enough to survive? Who knows?" -------- maryland Bush to give energy policy speech at Calvert Cliffs— Sunday, June 19, 2005 (AP) http://www.wmdt.com/wires/displaystory.asp?id=34757799 LUSBY, Md. - President Bush will make an energy policy speech next week at a nuclear power plant in southern Maryland. The president will speak Wednesday at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant in Lusby. That's according to a news release from Constellation Energy Group, the plant's operator. Bush will speak from the grounds of the plant, which are secured and not open to the public. The nuclear power industry and the federal government are trying to increase support for nuclear energy, which flagged after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania and the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl facility in Ukraine. Calvert Cliffs is a candidate for the construction of the first nuclear energy reactor in the United States in 30 years. -------- virginia Dominion clears NRC hurdle over proposed Virginia reactors June 19, 2005 WAVY TV, Associated Press http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3489400 CHICAGO Dominion Resources Incorporated may be one step closer to building two new nuclear reactors at Virginia's North Anna Power Station. The U-S Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced today that Dominion has cleared a safety hurdle in reserving the right to build the reactors. Four reactors originally were designed for North Anna, but only two were built to completion. Dominion asked the N-R-C in late 2003 for an early site permit for two additional reactors at the North Anna site. If granted -- possibly in mid-2006 -- the permit will give the Richmond, Virginia, power company a head start on a new plant application. That's if it submits one in the ensuing 20 years. Company spokesman Karl Neddenien (ned-EN-ee-yen) says while Dominion has NO firm plans to add new reactors there, company leaders want to essentially bank the right to apply later. -------- pennsylvania Pennsylvania Uranium Expo draws core proponents Sunday, June 19, 2005 By DANIE HARRELSON The Daily Sentinel Cox Newspapers, Inc. http://www.gjsentinel.com/hp/content/news/stories/2005/06/19/6_19_uranium_conference.html Ron Greenwood has never quite shaken the nickname he earned 26 years ago tending to an accident that forever changed public perception of nuclear power. “Kaptain Krypton” shared his role Saturday in preventing a core meltdown at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Penn. The accidental overheating of the part of the nuclear reactor where fission takes place could have potentially released dangerous levels of radioactive materials into the environment. But the worst-case scenario never happened, and the accident brought about sweeping changes in the way nuclear power plants operate and prepare for emergencies. Greenwood, a retired professional engineer, joined a roster of speakers who addressed everything from health issues faced by uranium mine workers to the case for investing in uranium at the 2005 Uranium Expo in Grand Junction. He shared with the crowd at Two Rivers Convention Center the sequence of events — equipment malfunctions, operator error and design-related problems — that led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core of Three Mile Island Unit 2, otherwise known as TMI-2, but only small off-site releases of radioactivity. TMI-2 shared the three-mile long island with a second nuclear power plant referred to as TMI-1. Greenwood compared the process of licensing, constructing and putting the two power plants online. TMI-1 took seven years to build and comply with federal standards. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission went so far as to make sure the power plant could withstand a run-in with a Boeing jet. “You could fly an airplane into that and nothing would happen,” he said. The same attention to detail, however, was not paid to TMI-2, the site of the accident. What had taken seven years happened in three years. The cheaper, newer plant boasted less steel and less concrete and inadequately trained employees, Greenwood said. He chronicled the four-day sequence of events that eventually sent 140,000 nearby residents prematurely scrambling for the shores of New Jersey and Maryland. Media coverage helped feed fear about the event, he said. “I can see how the fear went from nothing to something bad,” Greenwood said. Fear and distrust was on display Saturday as a handful of protesters welcomed expo attendees outside Two Rivers Convention Center with signs and clothed warnings. Demonstrators wore yellow hazardous materials suits to remind observers of what they see as the harmful consequences of uranium mining and processing and its link to nuclear warfare. The Voice of Reason, a group of local activists, headed up the demonstration to share its objection to reopening uranium mines in western Colorado. Group members fear exploitation of public health, the local economy and the state’s natural resources. No nuclear power plant operates in Colorado. About 50 licenses to operate a nuclear power plant in the United States were issued in the years leading up to the Three Mile Island accident, Greenwood said. Another 50 licenses were granted between the immediate fallout over the accident and 1996. No new licenses have surfaced in the last 10 years, Greenwood said, but the United States still gets 20 percent of its energy from nuclear power. Many Americans assume nuclear power fuels a smaller percentage of the country’s energy production, he said. U.S. production of nuclear power pales in comparison to other countries’ dependency on nuclear energy. France leads the pack with 78 percent of its energy generated by nuclear power, followed by Sweden at 48 percent, Greenwood said. Nuclear power supplies Germany with 29 percent and the United Kingdom with 23 percent of their energy needs. Danie Harrelson can be reached via e-mail at dharrelson@gjds.com. -------- MILITARY -------- arms US and Israel close to deal on arms sales By Harvey Morris in Jerusalem Published: June 19 2005 19:33 Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0a42034e-e128-11d9-a3fb-00000e2511c8.html Israel and the US were on Sunday reported to be close to a deal that would give the Pentagon the right to vet Israeli weapons sales to third countries. Agreement would mark the end to a long-running dispute over Israeli arms sales to China that overshadowed a visit at the weekend by Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state.... -------- europe Summit Fight Shakes Europe By ELAINE SCIOLINO June 19, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/international/europe/19europe.html?pagewanted=print BRUSSELS, June 18 - Something shattered in Europe on Friday night. The leaders of the 25 European Union nations went home after a failed two-day summit meeting in anger and in shame, as domestic politics and national interests defeated lofty notions of sacrifice and solidarity for the benefit of all. The battle over money and the shelving of the bloc's historic constitution, after the crushing no votes in France and the Netherlands, stripped away all pretense of an organization with a common vision and reflected the fears of many leaders in the face of rising popular opposition to the project called Europe. Their attacks on one another after they failed to agree on a future budget - for 2007 through 2013 - seemed destructive and unnecessary, and it is not at all clear that they will be able to repair their relationships. Even if they do, the damage to the organization is done. Most embarrassing for the European Union was a last-minute attempt by its 10 newest members to salvage the budget agreement late on Friday night. They offered to give up some of their own aid from the union so that the older and richer members could keep theirs. For the new members, that offer was an opportunity to prove their worth. Criticizing the "egoism" of countries driven by national interests, Prime Minister Marek Belka of Poland said, "Nobody will be able to say that for Poland, the European Union is just a pile of money." But for the older members, it was a humiliation. "When I heard one after the other, all the new member states - each poorer than the other - say that in the interest of an agreement they would be ready to renounce part of the money they are due, I was ashamed," Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister and the departing European Union president, told journalists after talks collapsed. Even as a number of leaders stated that the European Union was in one of the worst crises of more than half a century of European integration, none of them predicted its end. Certainly, it will have to continue to negotiate over money, and it can survive without a constitution using existing treaties. The process of European integration has faced crises in the past. In 1954, for example, the French National Assembly rejected an initiative to create a European defense community to forge closer military ties among the bloc's six founding members. In 1965, de Gaulle refused to allow France to take its seat in the bloc's governing body to protest a switch in voting procedures. In 1992, Danish voters rejected a treaty creating the current European Union with a single European currency. In 1996, Britain announced that it would block European Union decision making after the bloc imposed a ban on British beef because of an outbreak of mad cow disease. The current crisis comes as the European Union has begun to play a much more important role in the world, most visibly in negotiations over one of the most serious global security issues: Iran's nuclear program. President Bush will welcome Mr. Juncker, José Manuel Barroso, the head of the bloc's administrative arm, and Javier Solana, its foreign policy chief, to the White House on Monday, and he will underscore the need for a strong Europe. Many other signs suggest that the Bush administration has sought to work more closely with the European Union. It has begun to work with France, Germany and Britain on the European Union-sponsored talks on Iran. The United States and the European Union also are jointly planning projects for Iraq's reconstruction. Whether the crisis will affect the bloc's foreign policy in the long run remains unclear. But the failure of the summit meeting laid bare the deep divide with the European Union between grand but competing visions of Europe. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain leads the camp that wants a Europe with fewer trade and employment barriers and a more free-market orientation to better compete against rising giants like India and China. Yet he rejected all criticism of Britain for vetoing the final agreement on the budget, which would have required Britain to reduce the annual rebate, now $6 billion a year, that it gets back from its contribution to the European Union budget. By contrast, Mr. Chirac and some of his allies are skeptical of what they call the "Anglo-Saxon model" and protective of the continental "social model" that offers citizens a protective economic security shield. He refused to compromise Friday night on Mr. Blair's demand that France reduce the $13 billion in farm subsidies it receives every year from the European Union. Meanwhile, Mr. Blair, who assumes the six-month rotating European Union presidency next month, says he will use the current crisis to push for what he contends are needed reforms. "I'm not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is and that's the view expressed by certain people at certain points in time," he told reporters on Friday, clearly alluding to Mr. Chirac. "Europe isn't owned by any of them; Europe is owned by all of us." But the feelings against Britain among some other members are so raw that even Mr. Juncker, who is passionate about collegiality, said that he would "not be listening" when Mr. Blair outlines his priorities to the European Parliament next week. He said he would hand over the presidency "without comment and without advice, because clearly my advice is not appreciated." Lost in the turmoil over the budget debacle on Friday night was a joint communiqué issued by the leaders that their constitution could one day be carried out. It did not explain how, given the French and Dutch rejections and the requirement that all 25 countries ratify it. Before the referendums in both countries, there was widespread speculation that there could be a "Plan B," either to revise the current text or salvage the parts that are not objectionable to voters. In announcing that the constitution would be put on hold so that it could be better understood, Mr. Juncker insisted that there would be no "Plan B." Instead, he told reporters on Thursday night, "there is a Plan D - for dialogue and debate." That prompted jokes throughout the corridors of the conference building that the D in "plan D" could stand for other things as well: denial, defeat and even death. -------- us War and Weakness By RICHARD A. CLARKE June 19, 2005 NY TIMES EDITORIAL http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/magazine/19ADVISER.html?pagewanted=print In Washington, people in government often communicate with one another and with the public in guarded, even coded statements. The mass media seldom detect, note or explain these messages. Lately one of those messages has been coming from senior American military officials, both on and off the record. Their message, decrypted, is that things in Iraq are not going well and may not do so for a while. Their corollary charge is that the American military has been seriously damaged. The top man in the military is about to retire. Perhaps sensing the freedom of speech that comes with retirement, Gen. Richard B. Myers has let slip two interesting observations. First, he noted that the insurgency is about as strong now as it was a year ago. At a second appearance, he noted that insurgencies like the one in Iraq have lasted 7 to 12 years. It's not hard to see the message that we may well be fighting in Iraq in 2012, at the end of the next president's first term. Although official administration spokesmen have for some time been saying things like ''We have turned a corner in Iraq'' or ''We have broken the back of the insurgency'' or ''The insurgents are in a last-gasp campaign,'' the truth seems to be otherwise. A brief quiet followed the Iraqi election, but it has been broken by a sustained round of insurgent attacks. Iraqi civilian casualties in May were up by 33 percent over April, while Iraqi police deaths were up 75 percent over the same period. American military dead in Iraq more than doubled last month over the lull in March. Because the need for large numbers of troops there has remained much longer than originally planned (some reports suggest that Pentagon civilian planners anticipated a force of only 30,000 by 2004; we now have more than four times that number in Iraq), many of the active-duty Army units in Iraq are on their second deployments. In addition to the thousands of American and Iraqi casualties, one victim of this slow bleeding in Iraq is the American military as an institution. Across America, the National Guard, designed to assist civil authorities in domestic crises (like the pandemic of a lethal avian flu that some public-health planners fear), is in tatters. Re-enlistments are down, training for domestic support missions is spotty at best, equipment is battered and many units are either in Iraq or on their way to or from it. Now the rot is beginning to spread into the regular Army. Recruiters are coming up dry, and some, under pressure to produce new troops, have reportedly been complicit in suspect applications. The implications for the all-volunteer military are significant. With almost every unit in the Army on the conveyor belt into and out of Iraq, few units are really combat-ready for other missions. If the North Korean regime that is often called crazy were to roll its huge army the few kilometers into South Korea, significant American reinforcements would be a long time coming. This raises the possibility that the United States may have to resort to nuclear weapons to stop the North Koreans, as has been contemplated with increasing seriousness since the last Nuclear Posture Review in 2002. The Army is already the smallest it has been since the Second World War. If the current trend in volunteering for the Army continues for long, the Pentagon may have to consider disbanding units or requesting the reinstatement of the draft. Most military experts consider either option to be a disaster for the Army as an institution, reducing its currently limited capabilities. By the end of President Bush's term, the war in Iraq could end up costing $600 billion, more than six times what some administration officials had projected. Now the many other costs are also beginning to become clearer. Maybe it is time to at least begin a public dialogue about ''staying the course.'' Opponents of an ''early'' departure of American forces say it would result in chaos in Iraq. Yet we already have chaos, and how sure can we be that sectarian fighting will not follow our departure whenever we leave? Is it unpatriotic to ask if the major reason for the fighting in Iraq is that we are still there? Richard A. Clarke, an author and security consultant, was a senior adviser to the last three presidents. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Hydrogen Won't be our Energy Savior It takes more energy to produce than it yields by Frank Kreith and Ron West Sunday, June 19, 2005 by the Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0619-23.htm Hydrogen is widely viewed by environmentalists, as well as by many large corporations, as a panacea to air pollution, global warming and shrinking petroleum supplies. This view has been endorsed by President Bush who, in his 2003 State of the Union Address stated, "The first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution free." Hydrogen-powered cars and trucks that use fuel cells to drive electric motors instead of internal-combustion engines could potentially eliminate tail-pipe pollution and dependence on foreign oil. But hydrogen is not an energy source. It is only an energy carrier that must be produced from a primary energy source, such as natural gas, coal, nuclear fuel, wind or solar radiation. There are two main methods for making hydrogen. The dominant commercial method uses natural gas and steam to produce ultimately hydrogen and carbon dioxide. In this process, called steam reforming, less than 80 percent of the input energy is left in the hydrogen; then another 15 percent or more is lost converting the hydrogen to liquid or compressed gas. Thus, at most only two-thirds of the original energy ends up as useful hydrogen. Moreover, natural gas is an expensive non-renewable fossil fuel that is in short supply. Furthermore, natural gas has many other important uses, such as heating our homes and serving as a feedstock for many chemicals. The other main way of making hydrogen is by electrolysis. This process is straightforward, but costs three times as much as steam reforming to make the same amount of hydrogen. It uses an electrolyzer, in which a current is passed through water, to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. An electrolyzer is essentially a fuel cell operating in reverse. But the electricity must first be produced from a primary energy source. At the very best, only half as much electricity can be obtained from the hydrogen as is consumed to make it. If electricity from the grid were used to produce the hydrogen, over 50 percent of the electric energy would come from coal-fired power plants, which are the most polluting source. If hydrogen produced by electrolysis were used as fuel, the president's statement should be amended from a "pollution-free car" to a "pollute elsewhere car." Environmentalists recommend using solar energy or wind to generate electricity for a "renewable hydrogen economy." We have been staunch supporters of renewable energy for half a century and recently some renewable options have achieved economic competitiveness in favorable locations. But the renewable hydrogen path to electricity would more than double the cost of electricity, and probably would set back deployment of renewable electric power for decades. Wind, solar and biomass should be used for heat and power generation, not for making hydrogen. The nuclear industry argues that reactors are the preferred option to make hydrogen for fuel cells, because they do not generate greenhouse gases. If the public is willing to accept the risks associated with transport and storage of nuclear waste, nuclear power is an available option. But, using nuclear-generated electricity to make hydrogen, from which to make electricity, is a waste of energy and money. Petroleum engineers predict that worldwide petroleum production will peak in 10 to 30 years. Once production begins to decrease, it will be necessary to supplement oil with some other fuel or to reduce consumption by conservation measures, such as increased mileage of the vehicle fleet and using mass transport. Both of these changes will take time, and we must begin to plan now. Fortunately, there are several technologies to reduce petroleum consumption. The most obvious is to increase the mileage of the auto and pickup fleet. This can be achieved by building smaller cars and hybrid vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape. Hybrids use a small gasoline or diesel engine that always runs at maximum efficiency and charges on-board batteries when it produces excess power; when needed, the hybrid draws energy from the batteries to run an electric-drive motor. Battery technology has improved enormously in the past decade, and state-of-the-art batteries in hybrids increase mileage. But even greater reductions in fuel consumption and pollution can be achieved with "plug-in," electric-gasoline or diesel hybrids, by charging their batteries overnight when excess electrical capacity is available. Demonstration-model plug-in hybrids are on the road and need no new technology for their large-scale deployment. It has been estimated that plug-in hybrids could approach and perhaps even exceed 100 miles per gallon of fuel used. It is also possible to replace petroleum-based fuels with liquid fuels made from coal or biomass, further reducing our dependence on imported petroleum. There are no huge technical obstacles to making hydrogen and using it as a fuel. But a hydrogen economy would be more expensive and use more primary energy than other options. Moreover, it would require many hundreds of billions of dollars to build a storage and transport infrastructure. We should not accept President Bush's statement that hydrogen will replace oil without examining other options that are more economical and for which the technology and infrastructure already exist. Frank Kreith and Ron West are retired engineering professors from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and both live in Boulder. Kreith also served as Branch Chief at the Solar Energy Research Institute for 10 years.