NucNews - June 20, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR Canada: Oldest reactor alarms watchdog Agency issues harsh criticism of research facility Set to close soon, but operator wants it kept in service PETER CALAMAI SCIENCE REPORTER, Toronto Star Jun. 20, 2005 01:00 AM http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1119219009729&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467 OTTAWA—The country's oldest nuclear reactor is being run by people prone to "overconfidence," "complacency" and "deficiencies in management oversight and safety culture," says the federal nuclear safety watchdog. In a report prepared for an upcoming meeting, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says these problems have been turning up repeatedly at NRU, a federal research reactor nearly 50 years old that uses enriched uranium fuel. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a federal Crown corporation, operates the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor. AECL is asking the nuclear safety commission to approve keeping NRU in service indefinitely, although it was supposed to shut down permanently at the end of this year. The repeated problems at NRU "erode confidence in the licensee's qualification to safely manage the work," the regulatory agency concludes in one of its harshest criticisms ever of a reactor operator. Commission officials declined further comment on the report, which was distributed by email Wednesday. An AECL spokesman said the reactor is being operated safely and the commission's concerns are being dealt with. "These are strong words. There are no punches pulled here," acknowledged Glenn Artchinoff, AECL's chief regulatory officer. The NRU reactor is the world's leading source of medical isotopes used in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. More than five million patients annually are treated with isotopes from the reactor, operated since 1957 in AECL's sprawling nuclear complex at Chalk River on the Ottawa River. Reactor is leading source of medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancer NRU is also celebrated as the test bed for developing the CANDU power reactors used extensively in Ontario and as the facility that led to a Canadian researcher sharing a Nobel physics prize. But commission officials are worried that AECL no longer has enough qualified and experienced staff to operate NRU properly. They have told the Crown corporation to have an "independent" expert examine staffing levels versus workload. The regulatory agency also complains that AECL is taking a long time to fix NRU operating problems. More than half the "corrective actions" are overdue and some stretch out more than a year after the mishap that prompted the agency's original probe. During a routine refuelling at the NRU last October, operators failed to provide cooling for a radioactive fuel rod for almost two minutes. The reactor uses fuel containing 20 per cent enriched uranium, while the natural uranium fuel in CANDU power reactors has no enriched component. If the heat of radioactive decay in used enriched fuel is not cooled by using water or other methods, the bundles can rupture and spread radioactive debris. Extreme cooling failures could trigger a nuclear meltdown. Although the particular fuel rod suffered no harm in the mishap, the commission noted that a longer cooling lapse could have produced damage. Artchinoff said AECL's internal inquest into the incident itemized the same failings that the federal regulator highlighted in last week's report. In addition to overconfidence, complacency and poor safety culture, AECL also singled out an emphasis on expediting work instead of following procedures and misplaced reliance on the judgment of individuals. "We're confident that the facility is being operated safely but we have to take actions to give CNSC staff the confidence that they're looking for," he said. Artchinoff said AECL has spent $40 million since 1996 upgrading NRU, including a new emergency cooling system, a backup electrical system and earthquake resistance. He said he did not think the age of the reactor was a significant factor in the CNSC concerns. The safety problems are scheduled to be aired June 29 at a CNSC public meeting. The agency's commissioners will also hold a separate hearing the same day concerning AECL's bid to keep operating the country's oldest reactor. ---- Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends By WILLIAM BLUM June 20, 2005 Counterpunch Anti-Empire Report http://www.counterpunch.org/blum06202005.html The Pentagon awarded three contracts this past week, worth up to $300 million, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into US psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly their opinion of the American military. "We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element. Dan Kuehl, a specialist in information warfare at the National Defense University, added: "There are a billion-plus Muslims that are undecided. How do we move them over to being more supportive of us? If we can do that, we can make progress and improve security."{1} And so it goes. And so it has gone since September 11, 2001. The world's only superpower has felt misunderstood, although co-existing with this feeling at times, and expressed more than once by Bush administration officials, has been oderint dum metuant, a favorite phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero -- "let them hate so long as they fear". "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?" asked George W. (aka jerkus maximus) a month after 9-11. "I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it because I know how good we are."{2} Psychological operations, information warfare, cutting-edge media ... surely there's a high-tech solution. But what if it's not a misunderstanding? What if the problem is that people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world understand the Pentagon and US foreign policy only too well? In short, what if they don't know how good we are? What if they -- in their foreign ignorance and al-Jazeera brainwashing -- have come to the bizarre conclusion that saturation bombing, invasion, occupation, destruction of homes, torture, depleted uranium, killing a hundred thousand, and daily humiliation of men, women and children do not indicate good intentions? In early June, as well, Zalmay Khalilzad, nominated to be US ambassador to Iraq, appeared before the Senate. "The degree of support for our policies, opinion polls indicate, is not very high," he said. It has partly "to do with the perception that what we are about in Iraq is occupation, what we're about is to gain control of Iraqi resources. I think what we need to do is a better job of explaining our goals, the goal of an Iraq that's self-reliant, an Iraq that's successful. We want Iraq for the Iraqis, an Iraq that works for the Iraqi people. It's the insurgents who don't care about the Iraqi people."{3} Yes, it is remarkable indeed how misinformed some people can be. The Cold War is dead. Long live the cold war. In last month's report, during the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, I commented about three enduring tales which the West exploited to win Cold War points against the Soviet Union: the Soviets signing a pact with Nazi Germany in 1939; their occupation of the three Baltic nations in 1940; and their occupation of the rest of Eastern Europe after the war. My purpose was to show that there were ways of looking at these events radically different from the ways Americans are taught to look at them. This greatly upset a number of my readers; not because what I wrote was historically incorrect, but because to them it seemed to excuse the crimes of the Soviet Union. The idea that the Russians could have legitimate reasons, self defense for one, for doing some of what they did is too painful to acknowledge for committed anti-communists. To them, any attempt to correct a myth concerning the Soviet Union is tantamount to ignoring -- if not approving -- Stalin's crimes and the sufferings of the people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Progressives of my generation became anti-anti-communists because the powers-that-be in the United States, for decades and decades, used the sins -- real and (often) fabricated -- of the Soviet Union as a justification for US foreign policy. Thus, the horrors carried out by the US in Korea were justified because "we're fighting communism". Thus, the horrors carried out by the US in Vietnam were justified because "we're fighting communism". Ditto the horrors of Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, etc., etc., etc. (Now, of course, "we're fighting terrorism", but it's for the exact same imperialist reasons.) It's no wonder that people with a social conscience, who suffered over the horrors of US foreign policy, it's no wonder that so many became anti-anti-communists. And still are. I've written a concise history of American anti-communism, which can be read online.{4} Another myth I should have added in last month's report: The Yalta agreement of 1945, in planning for "the establishment of order in Europe", affirmed "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." We've been told ever since that it was the evil commies that caused this noble agreement to fall apart. But, in fact, it was the United States and the United Kingdom who cynically violated this affirmation before Stalin did. In Greece. Before the war in Europe even ended! By grossly interfering in the civil war, taking the side of those who had supported the Nazis in the war (sic), thus enabling them to defeat those who had fought against the Nazis. The latter, you see, had amongst its number some who could be called (choke, gasp) "communists".(5) Anti-communism still holds a death grip on the American psyche. Witness the screams of pain -- from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the media -- over Amnesty International's recent characterization of US torture sites as "the gulag of our times". Could anything be more infuriating and humiliating to an inveterate cold warrior than for the United States to be compared to Stalin's Russia? Yet another patriotic myth (sorry to burst so many bubbles) August 6 and 9 will mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. We can expect the usual speeches and editorials telling us how the use of the bombs obviated the need for a land invasion of Japan, thus saving a huge number of US servicemen's lives. "Omission," wrote George Orwell, "is the most powerful form of lie." The principal omissions from the a-bomb story is that Japan's military capability had been hopelessly destroyed and the Japanese government had been frantically sending peace feelers to the United States for a long time before those fateful days of August; peace feelers which Washington completely ignored because they wanted to use the atomic bombs. The full story can be read online.{6} But to American government and media leaders, it doesn't matter much if the official a-bomb story is only a legend. It's a higher truth. Why does NATO exist? NATO is preparing an "ambitious" expansion into southern Afghanistan next year, announced its Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on June 1. Eventually, the alliance will take charge of foreign security in "the whole of the country", he said.{7} NATO has been taking ambitious steps for years -- bombing Yugoslavia; patrolling the Balkans like a Governor-General; training Iraqi security forces; putting itself into the war on terrorism; providing security for the 2004 Olympics in Greece; expanding its membership, which now stands at 26 nations plus 20 others brought into the NATO fold under the reassuring name of Partnership for Peace; and much more. Time out. Where does NATO get all this authority? What body of citizens has ever voted for them to do any of this? Why does NATO routinely ignore the UN Security Council? Why, indeed, does NATO even exist? We were told during the Cold War that NATO was needed to protect Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. As some may have noticed, the Soviet Union no longer exists,. (It's been suggested, plausibly, that NATO was created originally to suppress the left in Italy if the Communist Party came to power through an election.) We were also told that NATO was there to counter the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact folded its tent in 1991, calling upon NATO to do the same. If NATO hadn't begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. "Out of area or out of business" it was said. If NATO had never existed, what argument could be given today in favor of creating such an institution? Other than being a very useful handmaiden of US foreign policy. Reforming the Indonesian military, for 40 years On May 25, President Bush stated that it makes sense for the United States to maintain close military ties with Indonesia, despite the objections of human rights activists who say such coordination should be withheld until Indonesia does more to address human rights abuses by its military. "We want young officers from Indonesia coming to the United States," said Bush. "We want there to be exchanges between our military corps -- that will help lead to better understandings." Bush made his remarks after meeting with the Indonesian president, who, Bush added, "told me he's in the process of reforming the military, and I believe him."{8} (In May 2002, Indonesian Defense Minister Matori met with US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Matori said his government had begun to "reform the military". Rumsfeld believed him enough to call for "military-to-military relations" to be "re-established".){9} Indonesian officials saying they're going to reform the military is like officials in Nevada saying they're going to crack down on gambling. For 40 years the Indonesian military has engaged in mass murder and other atrocities, in Jakarta, East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and elsewhere, taking the lives of well over a million people, including several Americans in recent years. For 40 years relations between the US and Indonesian militaries have been one of the very closest of such contacts in the third world for the United States, despite the occasional objections and prohibitions from Congress. For 40 years, American officials have been saying that they have to continue training and arming Indonesia's military because the contact with the American military will have some kind of ennobling effect. For 40 years it has had no such effect at all. As Senator Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa) observed in 1999: "I have seen no evidence in my 24 years in Congress of one instance where because of American military involvement with another military that the Americans have stopped that foreign army from carrying out atrocities against their own people. No evidence, none."{10} Yet the pretense continues, for what else can an American official say? Something like this? -- "We don't care how brutal the Indonesian military is because they got rid of Sukarno and his irritating nationalism for us, and for 40 years they've been killing people we call communists, killing people we call terrorists, and protecting our oil, natural gas, mining, and other corporate interests against Indonesian protestors. Now if that's not freedom and democracy, I don't know what is." Liberals: conservatives -- How meaningful the distinction? Kenneth Tomlinson, the dogmatically conservative chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, has been trying to remove what he sees as a liberal stain on the airwaves and replace it with what he calls "objectivity and balance". This endeavor has been heating up of late, resulting in all the old discussions about liberal vs. conservative. As I've mentioned before in this report, these discussions are usually less than satisfying or enlightening due to a very common misunderstanding in the mainstream media and among the public -- the idea that conservatives (far to the right on the political spectrum) and liberals (ever so slightly to the left of center) are ideological polar opposites. This is particularly not the case with the current, omnipresent breed of neo-conservatives. Thus, a radio or TV program with one of these conservatives and a liberal maintains that it is "balanced", when in fact a more appropriate balance to a conservative is a left-wing radical, progressive or socialist. Liberals, at least those of the genus Americanum, are often closer to conservatives, especially on foreign policy, than they are to these groupings on the far left. In this light, the never-ending debate about whether the media has a conservative or a liberal bias takes on much less significance. Tomlinson, it should be noted, was appointed to the corporation board by President Clinton. He was chosen as chairman by President Bush in September 2003. The other Watergate mystery The Watergate mystery has been solved, we've been told again and again in the wake of the exposure of Deep Throat. But I'm confused. Doesn't the much more important mystery still remain? Why was the office of the Democratic National Committee burglarized in the first place? Did I somehow miss that piece of news? I've read a number of theories about the break-in over the years, but as far as I know nothing has been substantiated or settled upon as the official, correct explanation. I'd appreciate it if anyone could enlighten me. William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com NOTES {1} Washington Post, June 11, 2005, p.D1 {2} Boston Globe, October 12, 2001, p.28 {3} Federal News Service, June 7, 2005, Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) {4) http://members.aol.com/bblum6/intro2004.htm; also see William Blum, "Freeing the World to Death", chapter 12 ("Before there were terrorists there were communists and the wonderful world of anti-communism") (5) See Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 3, Greece {6} http://members.aol.com/essays6/abomb.htm {7} Washington Post, June 2, 2005 {8} Washington Post, May 26, 2005, p.10 {9} Associated Press, May 14, 2002 {10} New York Times, September 20, 1999, p.6 -------- britain Is nuclear energy cost-effective? By Guy Robarts BBC News Online business reporter Monday, 20 June, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4095658.stm The debate over the future of nuclear power is set to reach meltdown as the UK prepares to decide how to keep the home fires burning over the next few decades. Advocates of splitting the atom have been at loggerheads with the anti-nuclear movement for half a century. Old passions die hard. But is the nuclear option as scary as it was in the 1950s? Or is it now vital in the drive to stop global warming and meet the Kyoto targets for reducing carbon emissions? It depends which side you are on. The pro-nuclear lobby is keen to show the public how things have changed in the industry, particularly on the safety front. And Tony Blair says he is ready to consider the nuclear power option if he can convince the public that it is safe and cost-effective. More importantly for politicians, nuclear-derived electricity is estimated to be less than half the cost of coal and wind power. Fear factor Opponents to the use of nuclear fuel often brandish three haunting reminders of nuclear power's fallibility: Sellafield, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. No new nuclear power stations have been built in either the US and Britain since these incidents. Meanwhile, a recent poll by BBC 2's Newsnight found that more than half of Britons are opposed to an expansion of nuclear power. In its general election campaign, the Green Party warned that while nuclear power produces energy from 30 to 40 years, it produces nuclear waste for thousands and thousands of years. NUCLEAR POWER Nuclear power accounts for about 16% of the global electricity supply One tonne of nuclear fuel is equivalent to burning about 120,000 tones of coal Uranium, unlike fossil fuels, can be recycled Source: World Nuclear Transport Institute However, radioactive waste has been stored in the UK without any problems or loss of life since the 1950s, the nuclear industry says; while engineers say that they have learnt their lessons from previous accidents at nuclear power plants. Nuclear power already supplies 20% of UK electricity and, crucially for the pro-nuclear lobby, this form of power is "carbon neutral", meaning it does not contribute to global warming; nor does it spew out the sulphurous chemicals that cause acid rain. Britain needs to cut its carbon emissions by 20% by 2010 and alternatives such as hydroelectric and wind power are very dependent on geographical factors. Friends of the Earth (FOE), however, is adamant that investment in a programme to construct new nuclear power plants is not justified. "Doubling nuclear power in the UK would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by no more than 8%," it says. Shut-downs From this maelstrom of argument, the government has to decide whether to support the crisis-hit UK nuclear industry as the country faces becoming a large net importer of energy. Nuclear power will not be enough to service our other energy needs It may have to learn the lesson of Sweden, a country which voted to phase out its own nuclear industry 25 years ago but, hit by the lack of a cost-effective alternative, is now Europe's third largest consumer of nuclear-generated energy. Of the UK's 14 ageing nuclear power stations, all but one will have shut by 2023 and the share of nuclear-generated electricity is expected to drop to just 7% by that time. Government ministers need to act fast if they choose to expand the industry. It takes a good 10 years to plan and construct a nuclear reactor. "Wind turbines and wave power can be approved very quickly," says Roger Higham, from Friends of the Earth (FoE). And the cost of the nuclear option is likely to be at least £10bn over a period of about 20 years. Oil quandary Part of the difficulty of making such a major decision can be blamed on rising oil prices and the impossibility of predicting the future. Nuclear electricity has been reported to be cheaper than gas as long as oil is more expensive than $28 a barrel. It's currently above the $50 mark. In this climate, nuclear power looks very cost-effective indeed, but who can tell what the price of oil will be in a year's time, never mind in three or four decades from now? Another factor is the financial state of British Energy, the company which runs Britain's existing nuclear power stations. It desperately needs investment having nearly collapsed in 2002 in the wake of a slump in wholesale power prices. And the cost of decommissioning the older Magnox nuclear power stations has bedevilled BNFL, the government-run company that reprocesses nuclear fuel at Sellafield which has taken over that financial responsibility. However, investors may be loath to put money into a reactor that could be unprofitable in a few years' time, so government support is vital to offset such a huge financial commitment. Planning problems have already hampered the industry. The Sizewell B reactor in Suffolk had to wait six years for approval - too long for a country with dwindling domestic energy supplies. Chain reaction At next month's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, the US is expected to push its "Generation IV" plans to "broaden the opportunities for the use of nuclear energy". Public support in the US for the continued use of nuclear energy in the US now stands at a record high of 70%, according to the Nuclear Industry Association. And Prime Minister Tony Blair's scientific advisers are known to consider new reactors as the only way for the UK to meet targets for cutting greenhouse emissions. One major allay for the pro-nuclear lobby has come, ironically, in the form of James Lovelock, the "father" of the environment movement and author of the Gaia hypothesis. Mr Lovelock came out and declared that nuclear energy was the only practical answer to the challenges of global warming, but regarded it as a necessary medicine rather than a cure to the problem. Meanwhile, Dr Keith Melton, at the New & Renewable Energy Centre, believes the CO2 advantages of nuclear energy outweigh any cost-effectiveness issues, but dismisses claims that the atomic option is a cheaper one. "I think the cost of nuclear will be higher than for fossil fuels. If oil goes up to $100 a barrel and drags up gas and electricity with it, that could be different. But at the moment, the argument is CO2s," Dr Melton says. Cheaper alternatives According to the Nuclear Industry Association, if the government acts quickly a new generation of nuclear power stations could be in place to help the UK meet its target of a 10% cut in emissions by 2010. But the political and financial costs may take years to ascertain. Interestingly, the last time the government had a debate about the economics of nuclear energy in 2002, it concluded that nuclear power was going to be much more expensive in 20 years' time than wind power, while solar and hydroelectric prices were coming down. As Friends of the Earth points out, nuclear power can only address a fraction of our energy needs. "At the moment all our cars, all our aeroplanes and most of our central heating systems all depend on fossil fuel," says Roger Higman. "Nuclear power is not all that relevant anyway." ---- Nuclear waste was mooted for UK district By Kris Hall, 9:29am Monday 20th June 2005 This is Local London http://www.thisislocallondon.com/news/headlines/display.var.607233.0.nuclear_waste_was_mooted_for_district.php SECRET documents released by the Government have revealed High Wycombe was a potential base to store radioactive waste. A 195-acre MOD site in the town which has not been named in the town was one of 537 locations across the UK to be geologically assessed in the 1980s. Although the programme by which sites were chosen was abandoned in 1997, the sensitive dossier was shelved and its contents remained secret until last week. Buckinghamshire county councillor Richard Pushman said the plan would have caused anger in Wycombe district if it had gone ahead. He said: "I do not think I would have been happy about it had it gone ahead. "I would need to be very reassurred that it was totally safe and inert, whether or not they can ever give that assurance I don't know." Details of the historic list, compiled during the late 1980s, were published by Oxfordshire-based company Nirex under the Freedom of Information Act. The independent firm is responsible for the long term management of the UK's radioactive waste. The shift in policy won praise from the Nuclear Legacy Advisory Forum (NuLeAF). Its chairman Geoff Blackwell said: "We do appreciate that the release of this list might raise real concerns in the local communities being named. "NuLeAF understands Nirex's view that the list is mainly historic in nature, but recognises some locations could be considered again in a new siting process, depending on how the UK nuclear waste legacy is managed in the future." The list explains that High Wycombe was one of 333 sites struck off the list in December 1984, during the first of six vetting stages. The information has been welcomed by environmentalists. Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said: "It's a disgrace that the location of these sites has been kept from the public. "Every community named on this list should take steps to help halt plans to expand nuclear power in the UK." Chris Murray, managing director of Nirex, said should there be a new shortlist the current list of locations would not form the starting point of such a process. -------- business Amid nuclear renaissance, time has come to mine more uranium - experts Mon Jun 20, 1:42 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050620/sc_afp/iaeanuclearuranium_050620174200 VIENNA - Haunted by the threat of global warming, the world may very well be on the verge of a renaissance in the use of nuclear power and the time has come to gear up uranium mining, the head of the world's largest uranium producer said. "All of the things that we now see coming out of media reports around the world on a daily basis (show that there) is a very, very strong renewed interest in nuclear energy," said Gerald Grandey, president of the Canada-based Cameco Corporation. "That gives us a lot of confidence that the market for our primary product, which is uranium, will be growing in the future," Grandey told reporters. He was speaking as the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened a five-day symposium on uranium resources. IAEA deputy director for nuclear energy Yuri Sokolov said that nuclear power could "help to resolve the problem of climate change (as it is a) sustainable and secure supply of energy." Echoing the conclusions of an IAEA conference on nuclear energy that was held in Paris in March, Sokolov said: "Nuclear power has a good and lengthening track record in terms of safety and economics" and produces 100 times fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuel. "New environmental constraints on greenhouse gas emissions favor low-emission energy sources like nuclear power," Sokolov said. He said this made it important to "know how many uranium resources we have" as even current Russian-US programs to recycle highly enriched uraniums from nuclear weapons into nuclear fuel could not supply growing demand. The IAEA said in a press release that "declining secondary supplies have pushed the spot price of uranium to over 75 dollars (63 euros) a kilogram from 28 dollars a kilogram in 2003." Grandey said his company was confident demand would stay high for decades. He said that "today the world's 440 nuclear plants use 180 million pounds of uranium annually" and that "conservative estimates . . . show that annual consumption is expected to increase to about 206 million pounds within 10 years and rise to 215 million pounds by 2024." He said the attitude to nuclear power has "changed dramatically so now you find all the US utilities are engaged in or planning life extensions to make the total life span of their (nuclear) units 60 years," instead of what had been 40 years. That "gives us confidence that we should be investing a great deal of money in exploration and new mine development," Grandey said. He said this was important since "when we are investigating exploration or mine development, given the lead times for exploration, given the lead times to present a license and bring out a mine, we are really looking at 20, 30, 40 years to see, is the industry going to be growing, is it healthy, is it going to be stable or is it shrinking?" And nuclear power is not only becoming more desireable in developed countries with advanced programs as "many countries that have not historically had nuclear power are now talking about building units," such as Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, Grandey said. "We now know that there will be customers well into the 2030, 2040 time," he said. Grandey said: "All that talk of course has the anti-nuclear establishment a little bit worried because it seems a huge reversal as a lot of the icons of the environmental movement have now come across and begun to support nuclear technology." But the Greenpeace environmental group said in a report in April that "all operational reactors have very serious inherent safety flaws which cannot be eliminated by safety upgrading." Still, Grandey said the main question from the environmentalists is now: "How can you possibly supply the amount of uranium it is going to take for nuclear rejuvenation of nuclear renaissance." "It is true that we have been living on inventories for about 20 years and the industry is producing out of its primary mine consumption 60 percent of what is consumed on an annucal basis," Grandey said. "But uranium is a very, very common element," Grandey said, "and there is a lot to be mined. -------- canada Oldest reactor alarms watchdog Agency issues harsh criticism of research facility Set to close soon, but operator wants it kept in service PETER CALAMAI SCIENCE REPORTER Jun. 20, 2005. 01:00 AM Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1119219009729&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467&DPL=JvsODSH7Aw0u%2bwoRO%2bYKDSblFxAk%2bwoVO%2bYODSbhFxAg%2bwkRO%2bUPDSXiFxMh%2bwkZO%2bUCDSTnFxIm%2bwgTO%2bQIDSPnFxUm%2bw8TO%2bMIDSPjFxUi%2bw8XO%2bMMDSPvFxUu%2bw4RO%2bIIDSLhOw%3d%3d&tacodalogin=yes OTTAWA—The country's oldest nuclear reactor is being run by people prone to "overconfidence," "complacency" and "deficiencies in management oversight and safety culture," says the federal nuclear safety watchdog. In a report prepared for an upcoming meeting, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says these problems have been turning up repeatedly at NRU, a federal research reactor nearly 50 years old that uses enriched uranium fuel. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a federal Crown corporation, operates the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor. AECL is asking the nuclear safety commission to approve keeping NRU in service indefinitely, although it was supposed to shut down permanently at the end of this year. The repeated problems at NRU "erode confidence in the licensee's qualification to safely manage the work," the regulatory agency concludes in one of its harshest criticisms ever of a reactor operator. Commission officials declined further comment on the report, which was distributed by email Wednesday. An AECL spokesman said the reactor is being operated safely and the commission's concerns are being dealt with. "These are strong words. There are no punches pulled here," acknowledged Glenn Artchinoff, AECL's chief regulatory officer. The NRU reactor is the world's leading source of medical isotopes used in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. More than five million patients annually are treated with isotopes from the reactor, operated since 1957 in AECL's sprawling nuclear complex at Chalk River on the Ottawa River. Reactor is leading source of medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancer NRU is also celebrated as the test bed for developing the CANDU power reactors used extensively in Ontario and as the facility that led to a Canadian researcher sharing a Nobel physics prize. But commission officials are worried that AECL no longer has enough qualified and experienced staff to operate NRU properly. They have told the Crown corporation to have an "independent" expert examine staffing levels versus workload. The regulatory agency also complains that AECL is taking a long time to fix NRU operating problems. More than half the "corrective actions" are overdue and some stretch out more than a year after the mishap that prompted the agency's original probe. During a routine refuelling at the NRU last October, operators failed to provide cooling for a radioactive fuel rod for almost two minutes. The reactor uses fuel containing 20 per cent enriched uranium, while the natural uranium fuel in CANDU power reactors has no enriched component. If the heat of radioactive decay in used enriched fuel is not cooled by using water or other methods, the bundles can rupture and spread radioactive debris. Extreme cooling failures could trigger a nuclear meltdown. Although the particular fuel rod suffered no harm in the mishap, the commission noted that a longer cooling lapse could have produced damage. Artchinoff said AECL's internal inquest into the incident itemized the same failings that the federal regulator highlighted in last week's report. In addition to overconfidence, complacency and poor safety culture, AECL also singled out an emphasis on expediting work instead of following procedures and misplaced reliance on the judgment of individuals. "We're confident that the facility is being operated safely but we have to take actions to give CNSC staff the confidence that they're looking for," he said. Artchinoff said AECL has spent $40 million since 1996 upgrading NRU, including a new emergency cooling system, a backup electrical system and earthquake resistance. He said he did not think the age of the reactor was a significant factor in the CNSC concerns. The safety problems are scheduled to be aired June 29 at a CNSC public meeting. The agency's commissioners will also hold a separate hearing the same day concerning AECL's bid to keep operating the country's oldest reactor. -------- europe Armenian leader signs law on building depot for spent nuclear fuel Arminfo 20 Jun 05 Armenian News Network / Groong http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg116555.html Yerevan, 20 June: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan signed a law on 18 June allowing the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant to build a depot for spent nuclear fuel, the presidential press office has reported. The depot is designed to store spent nuclear fuel for 50 years, then the depot will be inspected. Used nuclear fuel loses 70 per cent of its radioactivity in the first few years, but fully only over 130 years. The construction is expected to cost 10m euros. -------- japan US Asks Japan For $545 Million For Missile Defense: Report Tokyo (AFP) Jun 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/bmdo-05z.html The US government has asked Japan to pay more than half a billion dollars for a joint missile defense system being developed that would be capable of warding off a possible attack by North Korea, but Tokyo finds the sum too high, a news report said Monday. Washington estimates it will spend some 545 million dollars on the high-tech defense project between the 2006 and 2011 fiscal years and has requested Japan make an equal contribution, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said without specifying sources. But, the Yomiuri said, Japan planned to negotiate with the United States for a significant cut in the cost as Tokyo has been trying to slash defense spending amid mixed signals on the direction of the economy. The defense agency would not confirm the report but said talks were ongoing. "Japanese and US authorities are now in the work of determining cost sharing and other points as the project moves from joint research to a development phase, but nothing has been decided yet," an agency spokesman said. "We would like to withhold comment on further details," he added. Japan's spending on joint research on missile defense with the United States totals 26.2 billion yen (240 million dollars) for the seven years to March 2006. Japan has been in a hurry to build up a missile defense system with the United States since North Korea stunned the world in 1998 by firing a missile over the Japanese mainland into the Pacific. The communist state is now locked in a standoff over its aspirations to be a nuclear power. Japan has been officially pacifist since World War II and is under the security umbrella of the United States, which stations some 40,500 troops in the country. ---- 60 Years Later, the Story as Lived in Nagasaki By LOUISE STORY June 20, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/business/worldbusiness/20nagasaki.html?pagewanted=print Initial American reports of the devastation caused by the use of an atomic bomb against Nagasaki, Japan, have finally been published, almost 60 years after they were first written. In September 1945, a few weeks after the war ended, George Weller, a correspondent for The Chicago Daily News (now defunct), sneaked into Nagasaki, an industrial city more than 600 miles southwest of Tokyo, ahead of American ground forces. He wrote dozens of articles detailing the effects of the atomic bomb dropped there on Aug. 9. Mr. Weller sent his reports to Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur's censorship office in Tokyo, as he was required to do. Unknown to him for much of his stay in Nagasaki, the articles were never published. Some of his observations appeared for the first time on Thursday in the Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun and in English on the paper's Web site. His writing and photographs from Nagasaki were thought to have been lost for most of the last 60 years until his son, Anthony Weller, discovered them in his father's old apartment in Italy. Mr. Weller died in 2002. The articles that appeared online were filed on Sept. 8 and 9, 1945, early in Mr. Weller's roughly three-week stay in Nagasaki. Written in the first person, they provide a raw account of the destruction and the sad confusion that survivors experienced as they watched their neighbors and members of their families die from radiation exposure. When Mr. Weller arrived in Nagasaki on Sept. 6, 1945, the atomic bomb, he wrote, seemed "a tremendous, but not a peculiar weapon," "Nobody here in Nagasaki has yet been able to show that the bomb is different than any other, except in a broader flash and a more powerful knockout," his account said. (The first American use of a nuclear weapon occurred three days earlier, against Hiroshima.) By telling those he encountered that he was an American colonel, Mr. Weller acquired an official guide, driver and place to stay. He also began to witness the bomb's different character and long-lasting effects. "Several children, some burned and others unburned but with patches of hair falling out," a dispatch of his said, "are sitting with their mothers. Yesterday Japanese photographers took many pictures with them. About one in five is heavily bandaged," but none, he said, were "showing signs of pain." "Some adults are in pain as they lie on mats," Mr. Weller wrote. "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." Mainichi Shimbun bought the articles from Mr. Weller's son, who hopes to publish the rest of them, about 25,000 words in all, in a book. George Weller was already a well-known, sometimes swashbuckling, reporter before going to Nagasaki. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for an article about an emergency appendectomy performed on a submarine. He was detained for two months by the Gestapo in Europe and had many other narrow escapes during the war. Anthony Weller, 47, said his father believed that his carbon copies of his Nagasaki articles, which were written in a telegraphic shorthand, had been lost. "It was a source of enormous frustration to him," he said, "because obviously he was a celebrated war correspondent and he thought this was one of the biggest stories he had gotten." Mr. Weller said his father was furious that the censors blocked his articles, which not only detailed Nagasaki's destruction but also included accounts from witnesses of the explosion - prisoners of war who had survived the explosion by burying themselves in trenches. "All of this was kept from the American people who had a right to know," Anthony Weller said. Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher, which first reported the publication of the articles, and an author with Robert Jay Lifton of "Hiroshima in America," said Mr. Weller's articles were of great historical importance. "To me, it's one of the great historical finds of our times," Mr. Mitchell said. "For decades, the full picture of what the bomb did was kept from the people." ---- Banned A-bomb horror reports found KENJI HALL IN TOKYO Mon 20 Jun 2005 The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=676202005 CENSORED reports of the devastation caused by the Second World War atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki have been rediscovered 60 years after they were suppressed on the orders of US General Douglas MacArthur. Award-winning reporter George Weller sneaked into the country - despite a ban on journalists - to provide an unflinching account of the "wasteland of war" and the horrific illnesses caused by radiation. Mr Weller, who died in 2002, posed as a US Army colonel at one point to get into Japan in early September, about three weeks after the nation surrendered and a month after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Carbon copies of his stories, running to about 25,000 words on 75 typed pages - along with more than two dozen photographs - were discovered by his son, novelist Anthony Weller, at his father's flat near Rome. The stories infuriated General MacArthur so much that he personally ordered that they be quashed, and the originals were never returned. About 70,000 people were killed in the explosion in Nagasaki, and Anthony Weller said he thought wartime officials wanted to cover up stories about radiation sickness and feared his father's reports would sway American public opinion against building an arsenal of nuclear bombs. In an article dated 8 September 1945, Mr Weller, who submitted his work to the US censors, told how he walked through the city. Though thousands of burn victims had died within a week after the attack, doctors were stumped by "this mysterious disease X" which was still killing many Japanese people and also Allied soldiers freed from prison camps a month later. "In 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. One 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. Others suffered from a dangerously high fever, a drop in white and red blood cells, swelling in the throat, sores, vomiting, diarrhoea, internal bleeding or loss of hair, Mr Weller wrote. The next day, he met a Japanese doctor and X-ray specialist who thought the bomb had showered the population with harmfully high levels of beta and gamma radiation. But nobody could say for sure. The journalist was 95 when he died in December 2002 at his home in San Felice Circeo, Italy. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious journalism prize in the United States, 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. -------- korea Two New 1,350 Megawatt Reactors a $4.89 Billion Plank in South Korea's Nuclear Platform, an Advisory from Industrialinfo.com Business Wire - June 20, 2005 Electricity Industry News http://www.canelect.ca/english/article.html?SMContentIndex=3&SMContentSet=0 HOUSTON, Jun 20, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Power units known as the "Korean Next-Generation Reactor" will be at the heart of South Korea's new Shin Kori 3 and Shin Kori 4 nuclear power plants, on which construction started in May. For details on this development view the entire article by subscribing to Industrialinfo.com's Premium Industrial News at http://www.industrialinfo.com/showNews.jsp?newsitemID=64155, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com. Industrial Information Resources (IIR) is a Marketing Information Service company that has been in business for over 22 years. IIR is respected as a leader in providing comprehensive market information pertaining to the industrial processing, heavy manufacturing and energy related industries throughout the world. For more information send inquiries to powergroup@industrialinfo.com or visit us online at www.industrialinfo.com. SOURCE: Industrialinfo.com CONTACT: Industrialinfo.com, Houston Mike Bergen, 713-783-5147 -------- pakistan N-missiles had been readied for launch': Kargil crisis By Anwar Iqbal, June 19, 2005 DAWN http://www.dawn.com/2005/06/20/top4.htm WASHINGTON: The Pakistani military had prepared their nuclear-tipped missile to fight back a possible Indian attack during the Kargil crisis and former US President Bill Clinton had conveyed this news to the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, one of Mr Clinton's close aides said here. Bruce Riedel, a special assistant to the president and a senior director of Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council in the Clinton era, was present in the July 4, 1999 meeting between the two leaders. In a new book, "Pakistan Between Mosque And Military," Mr Riedel is quoted as saying that Mr Sharif "wanted desperately" to find a solution that would allow Pakistan to withdraw from Kargil "with some cover." The author, Husain Haqqani, has spoken to a number of senior US officials who dealt with Pakistan during major crises confronting the country during the last 58 years and includes their description of crises like the 1971 disaster and the Kargil dispute in his book. "Without something to point to, Mr Sharif warned ominously, the fundamentalists in Pakistan would move against him and this meeting would be his last with Mr Clinton," says Mr Riedel. "Mr Clinton asked Mr Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was? Did Mr Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear-tipped missiles? Mr Sharif seemed taken aback and said only that India was probably doing the same. "The president reminded Mr Sharif how close the US and Soviet Union had come to a nuclear conflict in 1962 over Cuba. Did Mr Sharif realize that if even one bomb was dropped . Mr Sharif finished his sentence and said it would be a catastrophe." According to Mr Riedel, during the same meeting President Clinton also raised the issue of Pakistan's reluctance to help the US catch Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders. "The president was getting angry. He told Mr Sharif that he had asked repeatedly for Pakistani help to bring Osama bin Laden to justice from Afghanistan. Mr Sharif had promised often to do so but had done nothing. Instead the ISI worked with bin Laden and the Taliban to foment terrorism." Mr Riedel recalls that Mr Clinton's draft statement on the Kargil crisis also mentioned Pakistan's role in supporting terrorists in Afghanistan and India. Going back to the meeting, Mr Riedel says: "Was that what Mr Sharif wanted, Mr Clinton asked? Did Mr Sharif order Pakistani nuclear missile force to prepare for action? Did he realize how crazy that was? You have put me in the middle today, set the US to fail and I won't let it happen. Pakistan is messing with nuclear war." At the end of that meeting, Mr Sharif agreed to announce a Pakistani withdrawal from Kargil and restoration of the sanctity of the Line of Control in return for Mr Clinton taking a personal interest in resumption of the India-Pakistan dialogue. ---- N-missiles had been readied for launch': Kargil crisis By Anwar Iqbal, June 19, 2005 DAWN http://www.dawn.com/2005/06/20/top4.htm WASHINGTON: The Pakistani military had prepared their nuclear-tipped missile to fight back a possible Indian attack during the Kargil crisis and former US President Bill Clinton had conveyed this news to the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, one of Mr Clinton's close aides said here. Bruce Riedel, a special assistant to the president and a senior director of Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council in the Clinton era, was present in the July 4, 1999 meeting between the two leaders. In a new book, "Pakistan Between Mosque And Military," Mr Riedel is quoted as saying that Mr Sharif "wanted desperately" to find a solution that would allow Pakistan to withdraw from Kargil "with some cover." The author, Husain Haqqani, has spoken to a number of senior US officials who dealt with Pakistan during major crises confronting the country during the last 58 years and includes their description of crises like the 1971 disaster and the Kargil dispute in his book. "Without something to point to, Mr Sharif warned ominously, the fundamentalists in Pakistan would move against him and this meeting would be his last with Mr Clinton," says Mr Riedel. "Mr Clinton asked Mr Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was? Did Mr Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear-tipped missiles? Mr Sharif seemed taken aback and said only that India was probably doing the same. "The president reminded Mr Sharif how close the US and Soviet Union had come to a nuclear conflict in 1962 over Cuba. Did Mr Sharif realize that if even one bomb was dropped . Mr Sharif finished his sentence and said it would be a catastrophe." According to Mr Riedel, during the same meeting President Clinton also raised the issue of Pakistan's reluctance to help the US catch Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders. "The president was getting angry. He told Mr Sharif that he had asked repeatedly for Pakistani help to bring Osama bin Laden to justice from Afghanistan. Mr Sharif had promised often to do so but had done nothing. Instead the ISI worked with bin Laden and the Taliban to foment terrorism." Mr Riedel recalls that Mr Clinton's draft statement on the Kargil crisis also mentioned Pakistan's role in supporting terrorists in Afghanistan and India. Going back to the meeting, Mr Riedel says: "Was that what Mr Sharif wanted, Mr Clinton asked? Did Mr Sharif order Pakistani nuclear missile force to prepare for action? Did he realize how crazy that was? You have put me in the middle today, set the US to fail and I won't let it happen. Pakistan is messing with nuclear war." At the end of that meeting, Mr Sharif agreed to announce a Pakistani withdrawal from Kargil and restoration of the sanctity of the Line of Control in return for Mr Clinton taking a personal interest in resumption of the India-Pakistan dialogue. -------- russia Agreement Likely on Russian Nuclear Fuel By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer Mon Jun 20, 3:04 PM ET http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050620/ap_on_go_co/us_russian_nuclear_fuel_2 WASHINGTON - Prospects are good that the United States and Russia will soon conclude an agreement designed to keep Russian nuclear fuel out of terrorists' hands, a top Senate architect of the program said Monday. Vladimir Putin at the G-8 meeting of leading industrialized countries in Scotland July 6-8, said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., in an Associated Press telephone interview. The goal is to dispose of 68 tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The main hurdle for the last two years has been arrangements for compensation in the event of accidents. U.S. contractors are seeking protection from liability at disposal facilities they would construct. Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said efforts to define responsibility for accidents had moved along and the two sides were making headway toward an agreement. He credited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and John R. Bolton, the department's top international security official until he was nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, with major progress toward resolving a two-year impasse. "Bolton took a very active and positive role before I ever talked to Secretary Rice," Domenici said. "She then went on to work very hard to unsnarl the liability problem, and we have made great strides." Bolton, whose nomination is being contested by Senate Democrats, has been succeeded as undersecretary of state by Bob Joseph. Last year, Domenici publicly rebuked Bolton at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing for slow progress on liability. But in January, U.S. negotiators offered the Russians a compromise arrangement that eased liability responsibilities and the Bush administration is now waiting for a formal response from Moscow. "The concept is rather novel to them and very hard to put into an agreement, but I think they are making headway," Domenici said. -------- security Nuclear export states gather to discuss non-proliferation OSLO (AFP) Jun 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050620183455.zl9qz55h.html More than 40 countries which export nuclear technology began a four-day meeting in Oslo Monday to dicuss ways of preventing nuclear proliferation. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is an informal organisation of 44 countries which export nuclear materials and technology, all of them signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It includes major exporters such as Britain, France, Russia and the United States. Iran and North Korea are likely to be high on the agenda. "The discussions among the member states...are not public, but at the end of the session on Friday there will be a statement", Richard Ekwall, outgoing group president, said. The group works through strengthening export controls. "There are a lot of products which can be used to perfectly legitimate ends, but which can also be used to construct weapons of mass destruction", Ekwall said. The meeting in Oslo has taken on a special importance since the NSG could be a major instrument for cracking down on proliferation, particularly with the United States wanting to do more to monitor exports. ---- Security Breach At Nuclear Plant KNOXVILLE, Tenn., (AP) June 20, 2005 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/20/national/main703076.shtml Sixteen foreign-born construction workers with phony immigration documents were able to enter a nuclear weapons plant in eastern Tennessee because of lax security controls, a federal report said Monday. Controls at the Y-12 weapons plant have since been tightened and there was no evidence the workers had access to any sensitive documents, said the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons facilities for the Department of Energy. However, the said in the report issued Monday that its field agents found "official use only" documents "lying unprotected in a construction trailer which was accessed by the foreign construction workers" at the plant. "Thus, these individuals were afforded opportunities to access ... (this) information," the inspector general wrote. "We concluded that this situation represented a potentially serious access control and security problem." The report, initiated by a tip in 2004, said the workers had fake green cards that certified them to work in the United States. Their cases were turned over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for deportation. The Y-12 plant, created for the top-secret Manhattan Project that developed nuclear bombs in World War II, makes parts for nuclear warheads and is the country's principal storehouse for weapons-grade uranium. The plant in Oak Ridge, about 25 miles west of Knoxville, has been criticized for losing keys to sensitive areas and purported cheating on security drills, weaknesses that officials say have been corrected. In response to the foreign workers intrusion at the plant, visitors now must provide passports or birth certificates along with other background information. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Steve Wyatt said that agency and managers for Y-12 contractor BWXT became concerned earlier this year about the potential for uncleared workers entering a construction site within the Y-12 complex, mostly involving steel and concrete workers. He said the case was turned over the IG after investigators confirmed that some undocumented workers had access to the area. The inspector general said it was particularly concerned about allowing subcontractors to self-certify the citizenship of their employees, and that the Office of Counterintelligence didn't know foreign constructions workers were at the Y-12 site until it was notified by the inspector general's office. ---- OSCE states all to sign UN convention on halting nuclear terrorism VIENNA (AFP) Jun 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050620164059.6zjfmo6x.html The 55 members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will all sign a United Nations convention aimed at stopping nuclear terrorism, France and Russia, which initiated the plan, said on Monday. Adopted by consensus in April after seven years of negotiations, the convention was added to a series of 12 other antiterror conventions already in place. France's ambassador to the OSCE, Yves Doutriaux, said the organisation's 55 members would sign the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism in mid-September, when it will be presented for signature by presidents and heads of state starting mid-September at a summit in New York. The OSCE, which spans the geographical area from Vancouver to Vladivostok, aims at increasing dialogue and cooperation between East and West. The convention will come into force when it has been ratified by 22 states. Russia initiated the convention in 1997, in what Russian ambassador to the OSCE Alexei Borodavkin said was an attempt to be able to "prosecute and extradite" suspected terrorists believed to hold nuclear materials, notably in part of the former Soviet Union. Asked about the connection with the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya, he said "terrorism and Chechnya are interconnected... Nowadays (Russian law enforcement agencies) have the situation under control." UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made the convention a priority as part of a series of proposals he would like to see the international community adopt before the September summit. Alyson Bailes, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said the threat of nuclear terrorism lay not so much in the theft of nuclear weapons as in the use of radioactive waste -- from hospitals, for example -- to make a "dirty bomb". -------- space Russia, China Join Against US 'Star Wars' China has repeatedly made clear that it would vastly increase the size of its intercontinental ballistic missile force, building hundreds more nuclear armed ICBMs if necessary to swamp America's new ABM defenses. by Martin Sieff UPI Senior News Analyst Washington (UPI) Jun 20, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/milspace-05zp.html Russia and China have joined forces in a major U.N. forum to oppose U.S. plans to develop new space weapons. And the move could herald a far more wide-ranging strategic cooperation between the two nations. Russia and China have joined forces to urge the U.N. Conference on Disarmament to launch a new round of international negotiations to prevent the increased militarization of space. On June 9, the two countries issued a joint working paper calling for the reactivation of the moribund Committee on Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space that was discontinued in 1994. The appeal was delivered to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. Hu Xiaodi, China's veteran top negotiator, and one of its most influential policymakers on space weapons systems, told the conference, "The recent developments concerning outer space are worrisome and require more urgent efforts to start work on preventing an arms race in outer space... China and Russia stand for the negotiation, at the Disarmament Conference, of an international legal instrument prohibiting the deployment of weapons in outer space and use of force against outer space objects." Analyst Sergei Blatov writing for the Eurasia Daily Monitor of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation called the Sino-Russian initiative "an apparent strategic partnership" and added that it was "understood to be anti-Washington, due to known joint Russo-Chinese opposition to the planned U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) program." The initiative is not likely to get anywhere. Efforts through the U.N. Disarmament Conference to update international space disarmament agreements have deadlocked. The United States has said it sees no need for any new space arms control agreements. Also, President George W. Bush has appointed a neo-conservative super-hawk, Robert G. Joseph, to replace John Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. Joseph has been a leading advocate of countering Chinese and other potentially threatening ballistic missile build ups not with arms control agreements but with the unilateral U.S. deployment of high tech active, as well as passive weapons systems. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov used the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the famous Baikonur cosmodrome, still operated by Russia but now in independent Kazakhstan, on June 2 to warn that his country was prepared to deploy counter weapons to any new ones the United States launched into the heavens. "If some state harbors plans to deploy weapons in space or starts doing this, we will certainly take measures in response to this," he said. Some U.S. and Russian experts have pooh-poohed both the signals from the Bush administration that it intends to boldly develop new strategic capabilities in space and the ability of nations like Russia and China to block them. However, U.S. experts have warned that Chinese military scientists have been seriously exploring forms of asymmetrical warfare with which they could cost-effectively disable America's space domination. The easiest way to paralyze the entire U.S. space satellite system in so-called Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, they warn, is by detonating a nuclear weapon above the Earth to produce a radiation belt at the altitude where the satellites orbit. Satellites built to function for 10 years will then all die a slow death over just a few weeks as they pass through the most irradiated areas. "Given the inherent vulnerability of space-based weapons systems (such as space-based interceptors or space-based lasers) to more cost-effective anti-satellite, or ASAT, attacks, China could resort to ASAT weapons as an asymmetrical (defense) measure," Hui Zhang, an expert on space weaponization and China's nuclear policy at the John F, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University told United Press International in a recent interview. Also, if China, Russia or even North Korea were to detonate a single nuclear weapon in the upper atmosphere it would produce an electric magnetic pulse, or EMP. One nuclear weapon detonated in near space would therefore melt down the entire electronic communications network of the United States. That could ruin the U.S. economy and utterly disrupt society China has repeatedly made clear that it would vastly increase the size of its intercontinental ballistic missile force, building hundreds more nuclear armed ICBMs if necessary to swamp America's new ABM defenses. That could include producing as many as 14 or 15 times as many ICBMs with a range of more than 7,800 miles that are able to threaten the United States, Zhang said. Currently, China has about 20 liquid-fueled, silo-based ICBMs with single warheads. But if the United States deployed a Ground-Based Missile Defense system with 100 to 250 ground-based interceptor rockets, China would probably be willing to build and deploy anything from 100 to almost 300 more warheads and the missiles necessary to carry them, Zhang said. Even if the new Alaska-California system of ABM interceptors eventually works as planned to prevent individual or small numbers of ICBM launches by so-called "rogue" nations like North Korea or Iran, it was never designed to protect the United States against any attack by Russia's still huge Strategic Rocket Forces, with their 2,500 nuclear weapons - more than 10 times as many as are needed to obliterate every city in the northern hemisphere or every U.S. town and city with a population greater than 50,000. Neither the West Coast-Alaska ABM system nor any of the visionary "Star Wars" type programs currently being developed at astronomical cost by the Air Force and, to a far lesser extent, by the Army, show any possibility of defending America against the Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicle, or MIRV, capabilities of the Strategic Rocket Forces. So far Russia, apart from the United States, is the only other country in the world with a MIRV capability. And China, despite all its astonishing industrial and technological progress, is still believed to be decades away from developing a MIRV capability of its own. Up to now, Russia has jealously guarded its MIRV technology and refused to sell or share it with China. But there is no doubt that Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation is developing rapidly. And no one truly knows how far it will ultimately go. This fall, Russia and China are going to hold massive war games that Blagov described as "unprecedented." "The war games are expected to involve Russia's strategic Tu-95MS bombers firing cruise missiles, presumably an exercise on how to overcome missile defense," he wrote. Many experts like respected U.S. space analysts Dwayne Day and James Oberg, and Russian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dworkin have expressed skepticism that most if not all of the projected new U.S. wonder weapons will ever be deployed at all, given the enormous engineering and technological costs and problems involved But the very fear that they might be could be enough, others warn, to propel Russia and China to level of strategic and technical cooperation they might never otherwise have contemplated against what may only be a "phantom menace." -------- u.s. nuc weapons WMD American-Style It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo By MICKEY Z. June 20, 2005 Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/mickey06202005.html http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz06202005/ http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2772&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 It was in 1942, at the University of Chicago, that physicists working under Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi, and others produced fission of the uranium isotope U-235. In other words: a nuclear chain reaction. With an ultra-secret $2.2 billion investment (the equivalent of $26 billion today), the Manhattan Project began that same year. Nearly 200,000 workers toiled in 37 installations in 19 states and Canada. On July 16, 1945, an atomic bomb was successfully detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico after which Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut called it "the most important thing in history since the birth of Jesus Christ." THE FIRST GROUND ZERO While the long-term effects of Alamogordo are still being calculated, the initial consequence of this Second Coming, of course, was felt in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to the August 15, 1945 edition of the New York Daily News, 60 percent of Hiroshima, a city with a population of roughly 343,000, was destroyed on August 6, 1945. A Tokyo radio broadcast on August 8 described how "the impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things, human and animal, were seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure engendered by the blast." Tokyo radio went on to call Hiroshima a city with corpses "too numerous to be counted...literally seared to death." It was impossible to "distinguish between men and women." The Associated Press carried the first eyewitness account: a Japanese solider who described the victims as "bloated and scorched-such an awesome sight-their legs and bodies stripped of clothes and burned with a huge blister." "Two days after the first bomb, Moscow declared war on Japan," explains journalist Stephen Shalom. "[Army Chief of Staff George C.] Marshall ordered a crash propaganda campaign to inform the Japanese public about the bomb in order to get them to press for surrender. Propaganda leaflets were dropped on many cities, but Nagasaki did not get its full quota of leaflets until August 10, the day after it was obliterated." The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki has never been explained. "Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb?" Howard Zinn asks. "Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victim of a scientific experiment?" These shocking images and postulations have become a footnote to the atomic bomb myths-a sideshow, at best. Still, the primary question remains: Why was the bomb really used? The most common answer is that President Harry S. Truman ordered the attack to avoid an American invasion of the Japanese homeland. Such an invasion, we have been told for nearly six decades, would have resulted in millions of American deaths. But is this justification accurate? BLAME IT ON ADOLF Before confronting Truman's reasoning for unleashing the bomb, there is another, lesser-known myth surrounding the Manhattan Project that must be dealt with: the life-and-death race with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi scientists he had working on an atomic program of their own. "Working at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer," writes historian Kenneth C. Davis, "atomic scientists, many of them refugees from Hitler's Europe, thought they were racing against Germans developing a 'Nazi bomb.'" Surely, if it were possible for the epitome of evil to produce such a weapon, it would be the responsibility of the good guys to beat der Führer to the plutonium punch. While such a desperate race makes for excellent melodrama, it bears more resemblance to the never-ending supply of arms "gaps" produced by Cold War propagandists than to reality. Simply, the German bomb effort fell far short of success. Thanks to the declassification of key documents, we now have access to "unassailable proof that the race with the Nazis was a fiction," says Stewart Udall, who cites the work of McGeorge Bundy and Thomas Powers before adding: "According to the official history of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), those agents maintained 'contacts with scientists in neutral countries...'" These contacts, by mid-1943, provided enough evidence to convince the SIS that the German bomb program simply did not exist. Despite such findings, U.S. General Leslie Groves, military commander of the Manhattan Project, got permission in the fall of 1943 to begin a secret espionage mission known as Alsos (a name chosen by Groves, Greek for "grove"). The mission saw Groves' men following the Allies' armies throughout Europe with the goal of capturing German scientists involved in the manufacture of atomic weapons. While the data uncovered by Alsos only served to reinforce prior reports that the Third Reich was not pursuing a nuclear program, Groves (with the help of Secretary of War Henry Stimson) was able to maintain enough of a cover-up to keep his costly pet project alive. The criminal concealment of the truth about the Nazis and their lack of atomic research kept the momentum going in the New Mexico desert and, according to Udall, "swept it, following Germany's defeat, onto a path that led to Hiroshima and to the creation of misinformation that has obscured essential truths concerning the Manhattan Project and the epoch it initiated." THE INVASION THAT NEVER WAS The most commonly evoked rationale for the dropping of atomic bombs on hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians was to save lives, but was it true that an Allied invasion of the Japanese homeland would have cost many American lives? In an August 9, 1945 statement to "the men and women of the Manhattan Project," President Truman declared the hope that "this new weapon will result in saving thousands of American lives." "The president's initial formulation of 'thousands,' however, was clearly not his final statement on the matter to say the least," remarks historian Gar Alperovitz. In fact, in his book, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, Alperovitz documents but a few of Truman's public estimates throughout the years: * December 15, 1945: "It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities." * Late 1946: "A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand-maybe half a million-of America's finest youth." * October 1948: "In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed." * April 6, 1949: "I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved." * November 1949: Truman quotes Army Chief of Staff George S. Marshall as estimating the cost of an Allied invasion of Japan to be "half a million casualties." * January 12, 1953: Still quoting Marshall, Truman raises the estimate to "a minimum one quarter of a million" and maybe "as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy." * Finally, on April 28, 1959, Truman concluded: "the dropping of the bombs...saved millions of lives." Fortunately, we're not operating without the benefit of official estimates. In June of 1945, President Truman ordered the U.S. military to calculate the cost in American lives for a planned assault on Japan. Consequently, the Joint War Plans Committee prepared a report for the Chiefs of Staff, dated June 15, 1945, thus providing the closest thing anyone has to accurate: 40,000 U.S. soldiers killed, 150,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing. While an actual casualty count remains unknowable, it was widely known at the time that Japan had been trying to surrender for months prior to the atomic bombing. A May 5, 1945 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., "dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace." In fact, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey reported, shortly after the war, that Japan "in all probability" would have surrendered before the much-discussed November 1, 1945 Allied invasion of the homeland, thereby saving all kinds of lives. Truman himself eloquently noted in his diary that Stalin would "be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini (sic) Japs when that comes about." Clearly, Truman saw the bombs as way to end the war before the Soviet Union could claim a major role in Japan's terms of surrender. However, one year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a top-secret U.S. study concluded that the Japanese surrender was based more upon Stalin's declaration of war than either of the atomic bombs. TO BOMB OR NOT TO BOMB Many post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki sentiments questioned the use of the bombs. "I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives," said General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Not long after the Japanese surrender, New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, "The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position... Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative." Was it Cold War hysteria that motivated the nuking of civilians? U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes seemed to think so when he turned the anxiety up a notch by explaining how "our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in the East... The demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia with America's military might." General Leslie Groves was less cryptic: "There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of [the Manhattan] Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis." During the same time period, President Truman noted that Secretary of War Henry Stimson was "at least as much concerned with the role of the atomic bomb in the shaping of history as in its capacity to shorten the war." What sort of shaping Stimson had in mind might be discerned from his Sept. 11, 1945 comment to the president: "I consider the problem of our satisfactory relations with Russia as not merely connected but as virtually dominated by the problem of the atomic bomb." Stimson called the bomb a "diplomatic weapon," adding,"American statesmen were eager for their country to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip." The message was heard...loud and clear. "The psychological effect on Stalin was twofold," suggests historian Charles L. Mee, Jr. "The Americans had not only used a doomsday machine; they had used it when, as Stalin knew, it was not militarily necessary. It was this last chilling fact that doubtless made the greatest impression on the Russians." Imagine the impression it made on the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Why did we drop [the bomb]?" pondered Studs Terkel at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings. "So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we've got the cards. That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we've got something and they'd better behave themselves in Europe. That's why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they'll spit in your eye." I'LL TAKE MANHATTAN Many of the men who helped give Little Harry the cards toiled at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The scientific director at Los Alamos was J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man who, in 1943, pioneered the idea of "poisoning the German food supply with radioactive strontium." "We should not attempt a plan," Oppenheimer explained to his boss, General Leslie Groves, "unless we can poison food sufficient to kill half a million men." Within a few years, however, Oppenheimer began to see things a little differently. After learning of the horrors his bomb had wrought on Japan, the scientist began to harbor second thoughts, and he resigned in October 1945. In March of the following year, Oppenheimer told Truman: "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands." Truman replied: "It'll come out in the wash." Later, the president told an aide, "Don't bring that fellow around again." For others at Los Alamos, life (and death) went on. In the case of Louis Slotin, a thirty-four-year-old Canadian physicist, his work would bring home the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here's how historian Mark C. Carnes described Slotin's fate: While other scientists watched in tense silence, Slotin delicately manipulated a screwdriver barely separating two silvery-gray globes of fissionable plutonium. One time, he slipped, the globes touched, and radiation flooded the laboratory. Slotin lunged forward and pushed the plutonium apart, saving the others. His own dosage of radiation, he knew, was lethal; with chalk, he marked the positions of others in the room and calculated on a nearby blackboard that they would live. Then he became nauseated. His arms, legs, and face swelled hideously. Within a week, he became incoherent and died. LIFE DOWNWIND The legacy of Alamogordo has infiltrated almost every aspect of our daily lives. Americans now use forks and knives made from recycled nuclear waste to eat irradiated food. There's nuclear medicine, nuclear payloads on space missiles, and the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and training bases like Vieques. Many Americans were unwitting laboratory subjects in tests to discover the effects of radiation on the human body and innumerable more have become "downwinders." These folks lived in the vicinity of nuclear testing grounds and experienced the deadly fallout from the many atomic and hydrogen bombs exploded nearby. On a personal level, while writing an article about the 60th anniversary of the first successful detonation of an atomic bpmb, I am reminded that the Indian Point nuclear reactor is only about 40 miles from where I sit in New York City. As noted physician and activist Helen Caldicott explains, "A meltdown [at Indian Point] would [trap] millions of people in a radioactive hell, unable to escape, dying within forty-eight hours of acute radiation illness. Such an event is not unlikely according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, because this reactor is plagued with safety problems." Sixty years into the WMD age, we're all downwinders. Mickey Z. is the author of "50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism (Disinformation). He can be found on the Web at: http://www.mickeyz.net. -------- u.s. nuc facilities U.S. nuclear power industry working on quiet comeback By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY Mon Jun 20, 7:00 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050620/pl_usatoday/usnuclearpowerindustryworkingonquietcomeback More than 26 years after a near-meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the Senate is considering an energy bill that includes financial incentives for construction of nuclear plants. It's the latest sign of the industry's quiet rehabilitation. Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who is the chief architect of the bill being debated, has long been an advocate of nuclear energy. And President Bush will repeat his call for boosting nuclear power when he visits the Calvert Cliffs plant in Lusby, Md., this week. They have some unexpected company: • Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said that although he has been "totally opposed to nuclear power" in the past, he's now willing to give it a second look. "You're going to see a move towards nuclear power," he predicted. "If it's done right, it will protect the environment." • Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., includes incentives for nuclear power in a measure he plans to offer to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. McCain argues that nuclear power can help solve global warming. "I am a green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy," he said in a Senate speech. • Another recent convert: Sen. Frank Lautenberg (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat whose home state of New Jersey gets nearly 52% of its electricity from nuclear power. "Nuclear issues are being forced on us by the realities of life," he said. "We are being blackmailed by those who produce fossil fuels that we import, and more traditional domestic energy production poses risks to the environment." 27 years with no new licenses No nuclear power plant has been licensed in the USA since 1978, the year before the Three Mile Island accident in central Pennsylvania. But interest is growing. The reasons: rising prices for oil and natural gas, concerns that fossil fuel emissions are harming the climate, and an increasing desire to make the nation less dependent on energy supplies from the Middle East. "It's now dawning on people that if you're talking about producing cleaner energy that will really fulfill needs of large populations, nuclear stands alone," Domenici said in an interview this week. No one died at Three Mile Island. But the failure of mechanical systems, which caused a partial meltdown of the reactor core and some release of radioactivity, was "a public relations disaster for our industry," said Steve Kerekes of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Even so, nuclear power never went away. There are 103 nuclear plants operating in 31 states, which Kerekes said generate 20% of the nation's electricity. Now, three companies have told the Energy Department that they plan to file for nuclear power plant licenses. The Senate energy bill and a version passed by the House contain incentives to encourage investment in nuclear power. Both bills renew federally backed insurance for the nuclear industry, which Bush also supports. Under the Senate bill, new nuclear plants could qualify for federally backed loan guarantees for "innovative technologies." The Senate energy bill also provides tax credits for companies that develop new nuclear reactors. Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan watchdog group, called the credits one of "the worst" of the measure's "giveaways to energy special interests" and estimated that it could cost taxpayers "billions of dollars in tax breaks." Potentially costly for taxpayers Some environmentalists, including Stewart Brand, editor of The Last Whole Earth Catalogue, are endorsing nuclear power as a way to reduce global warming. But according to Dave Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs for the Sierra Club, "by and large the environmental community is united in thinking that nuclear power is a bad idea that causes more problems than it solves." Nuclear reactors do not produce greenhouse gases, but they do create radioactive waste. There will be 52,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in U.S. storage by the end of this year, according to Dave McIntyre of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Safety and security are key issues, especially amid concerns of possible terrorism. Hamilton said nuclear power is potentially costly for taxpayers because the government will have to pay for the cost of waste storage and the bulk of any cleanup after a reactor accident. But he says the industry has done a good job of cultivating lawmakers. "They have done an exceptional job of lobbying." The Nuclear Energy Institute's political action committee has contributed $76,376 to candidates so far this year; 95% of the contributions have gone to Republicans, The industry has also donated to Senate Democrats, such as Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. -------- new york Lowey introduces bill that would change relicensing guidelines By JIM FITZGERALD Associated Press Writer June 20, 2005, 5:35 PM EDT http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--indianpoint0620jun20,0,1000571.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Rep. Nita Lowey introduced a bill Monday that would force the nation's nuclear power plants, including the Indian Point reactors, to meet the same standards for re-licensing that a new plant would have to meet for an original license. If the bill became law, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have to take into account such factors as population density and vulnerability to terrorist attacks if the owners of Indian Point seek relicensing in the next decade. Currently, the NRC concentrates on how the owners have managed the aging of the plants and the plants' effect on the environment. "With 280,000 people living within a 10-mile radius of the plants and millions more just minutes away in New York City, Indian Point is located in one of the most densely populated areas of the country," Lowey said. "We couldn't locate a new nuclear plant there today and it is a double standard to allow Indian Point to continue operating under such circumstances." The legislation reflects the recent strategy of Indian Point opponents to concentrate on blocking the relicensing rather than seek an immediate shutdown, which was tried and failed in 2003. Indian Point 2's license runs until 2013, Indian Point 3's until 2015. Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano said last week that he would propose to Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owners of Indian Point, that they negotiate a shutdown of the plant in exchange for compensation of up to $1.4 billion. He said that proposal was the "carrot" of a "carrot-and-stick" approach, with legislation like Lowey's the "stick." The Lowey bill does not include compensation for plant owners. Larry Gottlieb, an Entergy spokesman, said the announcement of the bill showed "They've skipped over the carrot and have gone right to the stick part. That's not fair to Entergy because they're not giving us the respect that they offered." He said Spano had not yet contacted Entergy about negotiating. Passage of the bill appears problematic. Lowey said she did not yet have House co-sponsors or a Senate backer and acknowledged, "We have a lot of work to do." She expressed the hope that even if the bill, which would be an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act, did not pass, it might "influence" the NRC. The bill would also mandate that any state within 50 miles of a nuclear plant approve the evacuation plans for emergencies, which would bring Connecticut and New Jersey, for example, into the approval process for Indian Point. -------- utah Native American Church can stop waste dump David Hamblin Monday, June 20, 2005 - 12:00 AM The Utah Daily Herald http://devel.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=57764 The recent efforts of our federal legislators and state governor to change the tide of the nuclear toxic waste dump slated for Utah have failed. The only way that the nuclear waste dump will not go through will be if traditional Native Americans are supported in preserving their sacred inheritance. But the roots of the present problem have a long troubled history. The LDS people of the state of Utah are out of integrity with our Native American neighbors and their religion. We were driven from our God-given inheritance in Missouri to exile into the wilderness. But once we were here, we drove the Native American children of Lehi out of theirs, so "that there would be no place for an inheritance," (2 Nephi 1:8). The planned nuclear waste dump in aptly named "Skull Valley," the remaining inheritance of the Goshutes in the "waste places", has rightly disturbed us. It is no surprise that some natives have forsaken Mother Earth and are willing to sell her for money, as we do. Despite the teachings of the Book of Mormon, we have not honored Mary, the mother of God as Mother Earth and have even sought to convert her children away from her worship. But now it is the ancient American religion, deeply rooted in the Book of Mormon, which can put a quick stop to the dreadful prospects of a nuclear waste dump in Utah. There is a real possibility that the Native American Church can stop the waste dump through a federal court injunction based on the First Amendment and the powerful Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. RLUPIA protects the religious land use of a church or tribal entity from governmental interference in their free exercise of religious worship. The imposition of nuclear waste onto sacred tribal lands is an absolute abomination in traditional Goshute belief. It is time for sincere people to join the stand to assure that the Native American Church has equal rights and protection under the law, which is the only pan-Nativist spiritual movement that there is. The woman, who is leading the spiritual struggle to protect Mother Earth from desecration, is a relative of Pipe Springs Paiute tribal council member Gary Lee Tom. Gary Tom is the custodian of the sacred Medicine, peyote, in the Oklevueha Native American Church. The Book of Mormon proclaims that the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, is the interpretation of the sign of the precious Tree of Life -- a powerful, ancient symbol of Mother Earth. The beautiful and white Tree of Life represents the beautiful and white Mary holding the fruit of her womb, the Son of God. Both the sacred Tree and Virgin are, respectively, precious above all other trees and above all other virgins. To review a complete unfolding of the Book of Mormon passage of 1 Nephi 11, see www.nativeamericanchurch.net. Had we opened our hearts to this Book of Mormon message, we would already be honoring our Heavenly Mother through Her manifestation as Mother Earth. We Latter-day Saints have been blinded to that doctrine because of the hardness of our hearts and thus have not passed the test of the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 26:9-11). The timeless struggle between the wicked and the humble worshipers of the Tree of Life is a major theme of the Book of Mormon. The traditional worship of Mother Earth on sacred tribal lands is fundamental to indigenous religion and has the power to defeat the maneuvers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Leon Bear's actions are a gross betrayal of the Goshute spiritual path and a violation of his tribal members' First Amendment rights. The fact that these impoverished people have been given the inducement of hundreds of millions of dollars, for otherwise (to us) poor wasteland, should point out to us our folly in having dispossessed and marginalized them in the first place. Nevertheless, for a triumph of true religion to happen, our own wise and generous men and women who seek the Tree of Life must now step forward. Ironically, we Utahns must now rely on the Native American church. But in its oppressed condition it simply cannot stand against our system without our legal and political assistance. The solution to the nuclear dump has been there all along, as has the Book of Mormon message of the Tree of Life. David Hamblin is a spiritual leader in the Oklevueha Earthwalks Native American Church. -------- washington Complaints on Hanford health bills Managers seek outside review of workers' compensation program THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Monday, June 20, 2005 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/229213_hanford20.html KENNEWICK -- Federal managers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are asking for an independent review of the program that handles workers' compensation claims at the site. Workers at last week's annual meeting complained they had to hire attorneys to seek payment for some medical claims, with some workers complaining they waited more than a year before being paid on other claims. In an e-mail to Hanford employees Friday, U.S. Department of Energy managers at Hanford said they would appeal to one of the agency's assistant secretaries for help. "This is a complicated situation with a number of parties and issues involved," wrote Keith Klein, manager of the Richland operations office, and Roy Schepens, manager of the river protection office. Klein and Schepens said they want an independent review to ensure that the contractor handling workers' compensation claims processes them in a timely manner, treats employees well and properly informs workers. The claims are handled by Texas-based Contract Claims Services Inc. The company undergoes continuous scrutiny to ensure it complies with its federal contract and state law, said Lisa McManus, the company's president. The most recent review, by the U.S. Public Health Service in February 2004, found the contractor complied with state regulations, said Colleen French, an Energy Department spokeswoman in Richland. "But we're taking a fresh look," she told the Tri-City Herald. In another Hanford development, the new director of the state Department of Ecology said last week that new estimates of the money needed to finish a major radioactive-waste cleanup plant at the nuclear reservation are likely to be so high there will be pressure to pull the plug. The Hanford vitrification plant is expected to cost at least $5.8 billion, and that estimate could increase dramatically. "Abandoning it or slowing down significantly would be a great mistake," said Jay Manning, the new director. "The governor and I will push hard to not let that happen." Manning, appointed three months ago by Gov. Christine Gregoire, visited the Tri-Cities last week to tour Hanford, speak at the annual Hanford State of the Site meeting and address the Hanford Advisory Board. Taxpayers so far have spent $3.3 billion on design and construction of the vitrification plant, which is meant to turn some of Hanford's worst waste into a stable glass form for permanent disposal. The waste is left over from more than 40 years of producing plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. A new seismic study suggests critical parts of the plant might not withstand a worst-case earthquake. Construction has slowed as calculations are done to see what changes might make the facility more quake-resistant. The revised cost and budget estimates "are going to be bad," Manning said. "There's going to be real pressure to slow down, to rethink the project." The Energy Department is reviewing an Army Corps of Engineers report on plant costs, said Roy Schepens, manager of the department's Office of River Protection at Hanford. The new estimate will be conservative and will include more piping and other materials, the costs of revising the design to meet new earthquake standards, and more contingency money, he said. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars 'A Warning to the World' By Greg Mitchell, Editor and Publisher Published: June 20, 2005 11:00 PM ET http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000965825 The end of a 60-year mystery -- the censorship, and then disappearance, of the first newspaper accounts from Nagasaki after the atomic attack on that city -- gained wide attention this week, after the story was broken in this country by E&P last Thursday. Famed reporter George Weller of the Chicago Daily News filed vivid accounts of the then-unknown radiation effects of the bomb on humans, but they were spiked by General Douglas MacArthur's censorship office in Tokyo, and never published, until after Weller's son miraculously located them. Some finally appeared on June 16 in the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun (my story is at: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000963439). But what of the first reporter to reach Hiroshima, a few days earlier? Of several hundred Western reporters in Japan in early September 1945, only two chose to defy travel restrictions and censorship instituted by General MacArthur's office in Tokyo. One was Weller. The other was Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett. Burchett set out from Tokyo for Hiroshima by train on the morning of Sept. 2, simply looking for a scoop (only later did he become known for his pro-Soviet views). The following morning he encountered in Hiroshima what he later described as a "death-stricken alien planet," with a dank, sulfurous smell. He was taken directly to one of the few hospitals left standing (although badly damaged) in the city. Its director felt certain that what he called "radiation sickness" was real. Patients were developing purple skin; some were also losing their hair. Many had white-cell counts about one-tenth the normal number. The death rate was rising with each day. Burchett pulled out his typewriter and, sitting on a chunk of rubble near ground zero, composed his historic article, which began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly -- people who were uninjured in the cataclysm -- from an unknown something which I can only describe as the plague ... I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world." Just as he was finishing his story, a group of journalists on an Air Force charter landed just outside Hiroshima. Included in this small group were two giants: Bill Lawrence of The New York Times and Homer Bigart of the New York Herald-Tribune. The reporters were not happy to see Burchett there before them. He told them, "The real story is in the hospitals." After a few hours, they were ready to leave, and Burchett asked one to carry a copy of his article to Tokyo. The request was denied. That evening he managed to transmit his story to a colleague in Tokyo, who eased it through MacArthur's censorship office mainly intact, perhaps because it was "only" for a British publication. Two days later, on Sept. 5, it ran on the front page of the London Daily Express under the headline, "The Atomic Plague." Burchett credited his editor with displaying extraordinary courage in publishing the article. Great Britain, after all, had helped build the bomb. Later that day, Lawrence's article in The New York Times appeared, marked "delayed," obviously by the censorship office. Others on that trip filed stories. Some mentioned a mysterious ailment, but not a single article described conditions in hospitals or indicated that the reporters had seen any of the gravely ill patients. Yet in his memoir, published in 1972, Lawrence would reveal that on that day, "We talked with dying Japanese in the hospitals." Were the reporters disinclined to cover this angle, or prevented from doing so? Whatever else can be said about these articles, they would remain the only accounts by American reporters from Hiroshima for many months. According to Lawrence's memoir, "General MacArthur's men were hopping mad" about the junket to Hiroshima. To prevent a re-occurrence, they cut off supplies of gasoline to planes that might make another such mission possible. At the same time, the censorship office would spike George Weller's stories from Nagasaki, which did feature eyewitness accounts from hospitals. The full story of the special radiation effects of the bomb on its victims was kept hidden for years, as the U.S., and then the Soviets, developed more bombs. As Weller later wrote, referring to the censorship officials: "They won." Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P and co-author with Robert Jay Lifton of "Hiroshima in America." -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy New Jersey Solar Market Takes Off NEWARK, New Jersey, June 20, 2005 (ENS) http://ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-20-09.asp#anchor6 More than 100 solar market participants gathered today at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s solar rooftop terrace to celebrate the summer solstice and a milestone in the growth of New Jersey’s solar market. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Office of Clean Energy reported that over 500 solar electric systems have been installed in New Jersey since 2001 through the New Jersey Clean Energy Program, and the market is strengthening. A new solar credits program that pays solar system owners for generating and using clean, emission free electricity is helping to finance many of those systems and building confidence in New Jersey’s solar market. "We in New Jersey are proud to be at the forefront of the growing and booming solar market industry," said Acting Governor Richard Codey. "In addition, we offer some of the most generous rebates and incentives in the nation in an effort to encourage the use of renewable energy." The Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs) Program is New Jersey’s financing mechanism for solar electricity and a way to compensate solar generators for the generation and use of clean, emission free power. Registered-solar owners receive one SREC certificate for each 1,000 kWh of electricity produced by the solar system. These certificates can then be traded at prices ranging from $160 to over $200, depending on market dynamics and the amount of demand for SRECs. The Office of Clean Energy reports today 2,216 SRECs were traded in the first year and New Jersey SREC prices have trended upward, ranging from $160 in August 2004 to $200 in April 2005. Demand is forecast to double in the in reporting year 2005. An average residential solar system produces 8,000 kWh, at no cost, and generates up to $1,600 a year. Along with the solar rebates available through the state, the added revenues improve business and residential customers’ ability to finance projects and reduce the payback period for solar. s “The ‘New Jersey Solar Mixer’ is a great opportunity for all involved parties to come together, celebrate our triumphant beginning, and share plans for an even more successful future – in an industry that is currently booming,” said Jeanne Fox, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. “Our hope is that clean and renewable energy in New Jersey will become an industry that is regulated by the market and will respond to market demands, sustaining itself and creating alternatives to cleaner generation of electricity.” In the year since the SRECs were first approved in New Jersey, the Office of Clean Energy today reports that New Jersey residents and businesses received a total of $21 million in solar rebates since 2001 - nearly $11 million in 2004 alone. Consumer demand in New Jersey for solar has quadrupled from 42 systems installed in 2002 to 282 systems installed in 2004. The most unique feature of New Jersey’s program is that SRECs are owned by the system owners, creating an incentive for both residential and business customers to invest in solar. In other states, the utilities or installers own the renewable energy certificates. Large and small solar electric systems owners attended today's event, networking with trade companies, solar installers, manufacturing companies and large national entities that are part of the US solar and renewable market - such as BP Solar, the MidAtlantic Solar Energy Industry Association, Johnson & Johnson, Sun Farm Ventures, Inc., and Reliant Energy Solutions.