NucNews - June 24, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 

Surviving a Nuclear Attack on Washington, D.C.

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., National Journal

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_6_24.html#A0F258F9

WASHINGTON — What if we fail to prevent an attack? (see GSN, June 1).

Assume every line of defense against nuclear terrorism is breached: the efforts to lock up nuclear material abroad, to spy out hidden weapons programs, to deter rogue states and capture terrorists, to detect smuggled bombs at the border or downtown — every preventive measure discussed in the previous five installments of this series. Assume someone, somehow, gets all the way through. It only has to happen once.

Assume that this someone puts together a crude atomic bomb, of the “Little Boy” type dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, a heavy and awkward device but one still small enough to fit into a medium-size truck.

Assume that of all the potential targets in the world, from Los Angeles to Moscow, the spot where this someone parks the bomb is on Pennsylvania Avenue, halfway between the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

Assume the bomb goes off. Now what?

The First Minutes: 15,000 Dead

At zero hour, the conventional explosives in the bomb go off. They launch a slug of highly enriched uranium down a surplus artillery tube toward another, larger, but still less-than-critical mass of uranium. As the two come close, the radiation each emits destabilizes atoms in the other, which causes those atoms to split, which emits more radiation, which splits more atoms, which emit more radiation — a nuclear chain reaction. If the bomb makers botched their calculations, the energy released blows the uranium slugs apart too early — a 1-kiloton fizzle, still as powerful as 1,000 tons of TNT, occurs. If the bomb makers got it right, the two uranium masses slam together with sufficient force to reach supercritical mass for a fraction of a second. Depending on the details of the bomb’s design, the resulting explosion has the force of 12,000 to 18,000 tons of TNT — 12 to 18 kilotons.

Parked midway between the White House and the Capitol, the bomb is right in front of the National Archives at 700 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are displayed. The Archives is vaporized.  The dust that was the building, the documents, the pavement outside, the Navy Memorial across the street, the bodies — all now highly radioactive — shoots five miles up in the air. Remember that dust: It will start coming back down as “fallout” in about 15 minutes.

In the first second, the blast flattens the Justice Department and the FBI’s headquarters, one block west of the Archives, and the Federal Trade Commission, one block east. The offices of the Internal Revenue Service — less than a quarter-mile west from ground zero — and both wings of the National Gallery of Art — within half a mile southeast — collapse. Northward, the shock wave plows through blocks of office buildings to smash in the southern end of the new Convention Center; southward, it blows through the Museum of Natural History, then races over the Mall — and the tourists on it — to destroy the Smithsonian Castle — 0.41 miles — and damage the Energy Department — at 0.49 miles distant — which oversees the U.S. nuclear programs.

The force of the blast is fading at this range, and as it uses up some of its energy in plowing through one massive building after another. But those same structures are channeling the force of the explosion up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, toward the White House and the Capitol.

The ground-level detonation of a 12-kiloton bomb, the lowest estimated yield for the Hiroshima bomb, produces 5 pounds of pressure per square inch — enough to flatten houses and smash up reinforced concrete or monumental stone buildings — at a distance of about 3,400 feet from ground zero. A 15-kiloton bomb, the middle estimate, produces such force at about 3,700 feet; an 18-kiloton bomb, the extreme high end, at about 3,900 feet. From the midpoint of Pennsylvania Avenue to the center of either the White House or the Capitol is just over 4,000 feet. The Founding Fathers’ obsession with the separation of powers, made physical in L’Enfant’s design for the federal city, puts the seats of the executive and legislative branches a mile and a half apart — by happenstance, just far enough that no single Hiroshima-style device can wreck them both.

Both buildings are badly damaged, however. The White House, low to the ground, partially shielded by the Treasury, and rebuilt with reinforced concrete by President Truman, sustains less damage than the sandstone-and-marble Capitol, exposed high on its hill. But even on the far side of each structure from ground zero, doors blow in, windows explode in showers of glass, walls crack. In rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, the clothing and skin of victims burn. But these two citadels of democracy stand.

Beyond the Capitol and the White House, the shock wave drops off. How fast?  Hard to tell. No one has ever set off a nuclear weapon at ground level in a city: U.S. bombers detonated the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs nearly 2,000 feet up in the air to ensure maximum destruction unimpeded by obstacles on the ground. Naval Postgraduate School professor Robert Harney calculates that in the densest cities — like Manhattan with its skyscrapers — exploding the device at ground level might cut the radius of destruction by roughly half, compared with a ground burst on a perfectly flat plain; by one-third, estimates the RAND think tank; by a few percent, caution government experts speaking anonymously.

Assume, though, that all the urban uncertainties damp the blast force down to that of a 10-kiloton bomb on an open plain. Almost every building within a half-mile of ground zero collapses onto its occupants. Wood and brick structures collapse, and reinforced concrete or monumental stone structures take heavy damage, at up to two-thirds of a mile, just short of the White House and Capitol. A mile or so away — around Capitol Hill, Farragut Square, and Mount Vernon Square — houses are damaged but mainly still standing, which means most of their occupants survive. Two or three miles away, windows shatter violently from Adams Morgan to Arlington. People who happen to be looking straight at the flash are blinded — most of them temporarily — at 13 or 14 miles out. Hundreds of drivers crash.  According to estimates in the Department of Homeland Security’s unpublished National Planning Scenario No. 1, nearly 15,000 people are dead — 95 percent of them within that lethal half-mile of ground zero — and another 15,000 are injured.

All of this takes less than 15 seconds.

As minutes pass, the electrical power grid reels from the sudden loss of every substation downtown and a surge of electromagnetic pulse up power lines. Fuses blow and safeties trip in “many states,” National Planning Scenario No. 1 guesstimates. Well into West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, all the lights go out.

And then, across the region, the emergency generators kick in at firehouses, police stations, local emergency operations centers, major hospitals, and military bases. Broken windows aside, the Pentagon remains intact. So does Fort McNair, home to the military’s local homeland defense command, Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region. Said Army Col. James Bartran, JFHQ-NCR’s operations chief, “This area has more capability for responding than anywhere else in the nation; that’s here and ready.” Totally outside the blast zone are Andrews Air Force Base, Bolling Air Force Base, Fort Belvoir, the hospitals at Walter Reed and Bethesda, and even Reagan National Airport. So, too, are the fire, police, and medical services of Alexandria and Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia, of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, and even District of Columbia responders in the northern and eastern portions of the city.

Hundreds of miles above Washington, military satellites are measuring the explosion and the mushroom cloud. Data fill the screens at Colorado Springs, home of U.S. Northern Command. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories in New Mexico, nuclear weapons scientists turn from the TV news to start software that predicts the fallout path. And at the Homeland Security Department’s alternative command post outside Washington — location undisclosed — dazed functionaries mechanically punch through checklists to assemble an Interagency Incident Management Group. They call agency after agency, backup number after backup number, until they get the military people and the scientists and the emergency managers and the local responders all talking to each other.

The country is already starting to move. So is the fallout. Now everything depends on time.

The First Hours: Your Instincts Can Kill You

Everyone for miles has seen the flash. Everyone can guess what’s happened. Everyone knows the obvious things to do. And most everyone is wrong.

Checking CNN won’t work: The power’s out.

Picking up the phone won’t work: Even if the attack didn’t crash the network, everyone’s calls to 911 or to their family will.

Jumping into your car won’t work: A few hundred thousand people just had the same idea — imagine rush hour, only with most stoplights out and the streets downtown blocked by rubble.

Even professional lifesavers have to fight their instincts. Rushing to the rescue won’t work:  More than 15,000 people are injured — that’s more than all the firefighters — paid and volunteer combined — and hospital beds in the D.C. area. Besides, most victims are trapped inside several square miles of burning, collapsed, or tottering buildings, with the streets to reach them gridlocked.

And while people are fighting traffic, either to flee ground zero or to get there to help, the fallout is starting to come down.

Everyone’s first reaction is wrong because the problem is not, in fact, the nuclear blast. If at this point you’re still alive and uninjured — and after a Hiroshima-sized explosion at ground level, 99 percent of the people in the D.C. area are — then your real problem is the radioactive dust that the blast threw into the air. According to the estimates in National Planning Scenario No. 1, an explosion that kills 15,000 people outright could eventually expose 200,000 people to lethal doses of radiation if they stay exposed and unprotected in the fallout path for 24 hours. Sitting downwind in gridlock, with your vehicle’s windshield shattered, goes a long way toward giving you a lethal dose. All sorts of simple alternatives — moving away from downwind, seeking proper shelter, even taking a shower — go a long way toward saving you.

Fallout is simply radioactive dust, launched miles into the air in a mushroom cloud and then carried on the wind. Much of it is alpha particles, whose radiation cannot penetrate bare skin, or beta particles, which cannot penetrate layers of clothing. Both are most dangerous if inhaled — or if they settle on food that is eaten unwashed. More deadly are the gamma rays, whose radiation can go through walls. But even gammas cannot hurt you from cloud height. The danger starts when the dust settles to earth.

The ideal is to avoid the fallout in the first place. In apocalyptic gridlock, you cannot drive very far. But you may not have to.  Normal winds blow the cloud into a long but narrow plume, just a few miles across. In typical Washington-area weather, Virginia, Montgomery County in Maryland, and most of the District itself are not in the fallout path at all. People in the path could conceivably walk out of the fallout zone in the 10 or 15 minutes before the dust begins to fall — if they know which way to go.

But, of course, you cannot count on perfectly typical weather. The wind might shift; the breeze you feel at ground level may be blowing crosswise to the radioactive clouds five miles up; a still day might cause the fallout to seep outward slowly in all directions; sudden rain or snow could wash the dust out of the sky, heavily dousing everything beneath the storm but sparing areas farther out.

If you do not want to trust in weather and traffic, the alternative is what the experts call “sheltering in place.” You want to be in a building, as solid as possible to block the gamma rays, as airtight as possible to keep out radioactive dust. You need to turn off air conditioning, close vents, seal the seams around windows and doorways. If you wondered what former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was talking about, this is what you need the duct tape for. Abandon rooms with windows broken by the blast.

The dust that does not seep into the building will settle outside, on the roof and on the ground, emitting gamma rays. A car with an intact windshield stops 30 to 50 percent of the radiation — probably not enough, however, to save someone who’s inside the car and stuck in traffic a few miles downwind of ground zero. A wood-frame house, similarly, stops just 30 to 60 percent of gamma rays. A windowless basement stops 90 percent.  The middle floors of a concrete apartment building, safely away from both roof and ground, stop 99 percent or more. But there is no 100 percent protection.

For those whom evacuation and shelter fail — or for those, like the thousands fleeing in blind panic, who never try either — there is still decontamination. A lethal dose of radiation takes time to build. The sooner the radioactive dust is off the skin, the better. And it is not that hard to remove.  “Radiation contamination is easier than chemical,” said Col. David Jarrett, a medical doctor and the director of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda. “Simply removing the clothes and washing takes off up to 90 percent.”

Every major Washington-area hospital has some decontamination facilities, but 10,000 radiation patients in one day would swamp them. So mass decontamination falls to fire departments, with their mobile pumps and generators; their protective gear; their hazardous-materials experience; and, because both Maryland and Virginia have nuclear power reactors, their years of radiation training. Area firefighters can quickly set up special decontamination tents, and they have plans to take over buildings that have lots of showers — so high school gyms, for example, are a good place to head for. In the chaos of those first hours, said Michael Cline, state coordinator at the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, “the real key is to make sure people go to those facilities.” It will take every firefighter available to man the decontamination sites, and every cop to control the crowds pouring in panic out of the city.

So who goes in to save the wounded? Even if first responders can get downtown in time to save blast victims, they still have to get back out before radiation claims both rescued and rescuer alike. Breathing masks keep alpha particles out of the lungs, protective clothes keep betas off the skin, but nothing light enough to wear can keep out gammas. Responders have radiation sensors, modeling software, and Energy or Defense Department analysts on call to map the radiation plume, plus dosimeters to measure their own exposure. Existing safety standards, written for nuclear power plant accidents, mandate “turn-back limits” on lifesaving runs into the fallout zone.

“Responders are going to have to assess risk relative to lives saved,” said Fairfax County Fire Chief Michael Neuhard. “It may well be that you are committed largely to decontamination, to treating people on the periphery.” Tens of thousands of people fleeing the city could be saved by decontamination. Tens of thousands of others downwind will need help evacuating or finding shelter. Sending rescue workers into the fallout zone will probably cost more lives than it will save.

“We need people to be able to take care of themselves for 72 hours,” said Lara Shane, director of public education for the Homeland Security Department. For any disaster, from nuke to hurricane, DHS advises stockpiling a three-day supply of food and water, a flashlight, and a radio — a battery-powered radio. The power is out; most stations are off the air. But government transmitters and a few private channels will be broadcasting on backup generators. And everything and everyone, from satellites to Energy Department survey planes to local firefighters, are trying to track the fallout plume. At some point — in minutes with good planning, in hours without it — those little battery-powered radios will come alive with urgent bulletins: where the cloud is drifting, what areas should evacuate, what roads are open, and where people can find shelter or decontamination sites.

And all this time, the radiation that keeps the helpers out of downtown, and the victims in it, is fading. By the physicists’ rule of thumb, 90 percent is gone in seven hours, 99 percent in seven times seven — that is, 49 — hours, or two days; and 99.9 percent in seven times seven times seven hours, or two weeks: the civil defense “all-clear” standard from the Cold War.

The First Days: Nation in Motion

Find a small pond. Throw a big rock in it. Now watch the ripple effect.

That, in essence, is the United States after a nuclear terrorist attack. In the early hours, disaster and response alike are local, limited by wind speed and gridlocked highways. In days, the effects convulse the entire country.

With perfectly average weather — a big assumption — the fallout spreads to the east and north along a path 200 miles long and 25 miles wide, drifting out to sea north of Atlantic City, before its radioactivity fades below the National Response Plan’s threshold for increased risk of cancer — 1 rem, which is one-fifth of the acceptable annual dose for nuclear power workers; the rem is the standard unit of measurement for human exposure to radioactivity. Real-world uncertainty about shifts in the wind keeps millions of people on alert to evacuate or take shelter, anxiously following broadcast bulletins as if awaiting a particularly violent hurricane — but without the years of planning that guide Gulf Coast evacuations. Local governments, the Red Cross, and the National Guard struggle to control, feed, shelter, and in some cases decontaminate what National Planning Scenario No. 1 guesstimates to be half a million displaced people. With local hospitals overflowing or contaminated, thousands of patients are shipped out across the country — the less sick they are, the farther they go — to military, veterans, and private medical centers activated under the National Disaster Medical System.

As victims ripple outward from the fallout zone, rescuers are converging inward. The first responders are reeling now. Many are dosed with radiation despite taking precautions, most are using contaminated equipment. All are exhausted from working nonstop shifts wearing heavy protective gear. But as the front line crumbles, reinforcements from the next ring of counties step forward, and from the next county after that, and then the next state, and the next.

“What you have kicking in is something called statewide mutual aid,” said Arlington Fire Chief James Schwartz, who commanded units from four counties at the Pentagon on 9/11. “As Arlington has depleted its capability helping the District, its emergency management system would contact the state: You could see units from Fredericksburg or Richmond coming into Northern Virginia.” A parallel system exists in Maryland.  Nationwide, the District and every state but California and Hawaii are party to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which provides databases and advance teams to match what disaster-struck states request with what unaffected states can offer. Federal resources, civilian and military, rally under the National Response Plan.

Across the country, firefighters, paramedics, police, soldiers, and volunteers are loading up their trucks and rolling toward Washington. The resources the nation can mobilize are staggering. The United States has more than 155,000 emergency medical technicians, 600,000 police and sheriff’s deputies, a million firefighters, 1.6 million active-duty military troops, and 1.1 million in the Reserves and National Guard. Taking just 10 percent of those people from their regular duties equals a midsized city of rescuers. The Red Cross alone mustered nearly 55,000 volunteers for 9/11. And in this sea of numbers are countless islands of specialized capabilities. Washington-area jurisdictions have mobile communications vans and generators. Virginia alone has 13 state-sponsored hazardous-materials teams with radiation-monitoring equipment.

The Energy Department has several airplanes and helicopters equipped to monitor fallout from the air, and rapidly deployable teams of nuclear scientists. The Homeland Security Department controls a Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies prepacked to be moved by air. And the military has all of this and more: mobile hospitals, hazard-suited rescue units, radiation sensors, mobile water purification, warehouses full of Meals Ready to Eat, and the trucks, planes, and helicopters to transport them around the world. In a few days, just as the radiation ebbs, all this aid flows in.

The greatest challenge, in fact, is not getting the resources but coordinating them. At the World Trade Center on 9/11 — one incident in one jurisdiction — firefighters and police had neither radios nor procedures designed to work together. The Pentagon response that day was smoother, with four neighboring jurisdictions reinforcing Arlington’s Fire Chief Schwartz. And “since Sept. 11, we’ve really made a concerted effort on interoperability,” said Scott Graham, a battalion chief in Montgomery County. “Communications within the region have improved greatly.”

But even now, Washington-area agencies sometimes have to physically swap radios to talk on each other’s networks. And nationwide, no common channel, no standard protocol links either local governments or federal agencies.

The nation has, at least, adopted a common framework that organizes all of these assets. Under the Incident Command System — developed by local firefighters, endorsed by Homeland Security, and being taught to federal civilians and the military alike — the local government of the stricken area has command. Units from neighboring jurisdictions answer requests from the local chief. So do the federal agencies — from Energy to Health and Human Services to the Environmental Protection Agency to Defense. They are grouped according to 15 functions by the National Response Plan, and all of them are, in theory, coordinated by a “principal federal official” named by the secretary of Homeland Security. “Issues beyond the secretary’s authority to resolve,” the National Response Plan says unhelpfully, “are referred to the appropriate White House entity for resolution.”

How well this structure comes together after a nuclear explosion is unknown. “Many times, in national exercises,” said Red Cross Executive Vice President Alan McCurry, “we stop before we get to this part.”

The First Weeks: Thousands Fall Ill

By the 14th day after the attack, power should be back on across most of the area. Radiation levels fall to a thousandth of their peak. Rescue workers from across the country are in place and, one hopes, organized. But now, depending on how well sheltering, evacuation, and decontamination went in the first hours after the attack, tens of thousands of exposed people start to die.

“Most of the deaths occur at two-to-four weeks after the incident,” said Col. Jarrett, citing studies of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and nuclear power accidents. Victims will start vomiting a few hours after exposure, but then they enter a latent phase: “They have a couple of weeks before they start becoming clinically ill, and they can be moved to treatment centers across the country, not as patients, but as passengers,” said Jarrett. The bad news is, there is no cure for radiation sickness — not yet, anyway.

Radiation sickness is strange and slow. A high enough dose of radiation can kill in hours, but anyone close enough to get that much is probably dead from the explosion. The less intense energy of the fallout bombards the body and breaks random bits of DNA. Until the cells can repair their genetic code, they cannot divide to make new cells. That’s it:  “All that radiation does is stop cells from dividing,” said Evan Douple, a health physicist with the National Academy of Sciences. "It doesn’t kill them.”

But a few tissues have such high wear and tear that they need new cells constantly. The most obvious, and least essential, is the hair follicles, which explains why cancer patients lose their hair during radiation therapy. Another one is the lining of the digestive tract. At a dose of 1,000 rems or more — 200 times the maximum permitted for nuclear reactor workers in a year, the lining stops regrowing. In seven to 10 days, the lining wears right through, causing infection and internal bleeding. At a dose of a few hundred rems, the bone marrow stops replenishing white blood cells for the immune system and platelets for clotting. After a few weeks, minor injuries continue to bleed and infections fester unchecked.

Specialized treatments do exist. The best known is potassium iodide, stockpiled for the population around nuclear power plants and sold on survivalist Web sites as “antiradiation pills.” Atomic reactions produce radioactive iodide, which accumulates in the thyroid gland, particularly in growing children, eventually causing cancer. Flooding the body with good iodide keeps out the bad. Unfortunately, it does nothing about the dozens of other radioactive isotopes in the fallout from an atomic bomb, which will kill you long before you can develop cancer.

The National Stockpile also includes chelating agents — most famously a substance known as “Prussian blue” for its normal use, as a dye — which chemically bind with certain types of radioactive particles inhaled from the fallout cloud and flush them from the body. Scarce and expensive, chelators still do nothing to reverse the damage done before you take them.

Once the immune system is compromised, the only treatment available today is intensive care: infusions of antibiotics to control infection, platelets to control bleeding, and, at the cutting edge, hormonal growth factors to jumpstart the recovery of bone marrow. This regime has saved victims of radiation accidents — if started promptly, under a doctor’s supervision, in a fully equipped hospital. There is no way to provide that standard of care for tens of thousands of victims.

The government has ramped up its research into the next generation of growth factors, which would regenerate bone marrow without the traditional panoply of other treatments. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute sees the most promise so far in a steroid called 5-Androstenediol, brand-named “Neumune” by the institute’s corporate development partner, Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals. Neumune requires no refrigeration, has no known side effects, and can be packaged in disposable needles like the nerve gas antidotes now issued to troops and first responders. Five injections over five days dramatically boost survival rates in animals.

So far, unfortunately, that first injection has to be given within four hours of exposure, before the damage to cells outraces the capacity for regrowth. But it is probably impossible to distribute tens of thousands of stockpiled doses across a fallout zone within four hours; and Hollis-Eden’s own cost estimates for mass production are $75 to $100 per person: too high to put Neumune in every citizen’s emergency kit. The current cost and the four-hour window wouldn’t impede first responders, however. With Neumune in their gear, they could be far bolder in fallout-zone rescue operations.

Long-Term Costs

The high toll of a nuclear attack continues long after the fires die down. In the worst case — no one gets to shelter, no one evacuates, no one is decontaminated — National Planning Scenario No. 1 estimates that radiation-damaged DNA will manifest, eventually, as 50,000 cases of cancer, half of them fatal. People keep dying for decades.

The scenario does not even guess the economic cost. Abt Associates, a research and consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., estimates $150 billion to $3 trillion for the loss of life alone, plus up to $500 billion in property damage. The indirect disruptions ripple unpredictably through the world economy. Just closing the highways and rail lines through Washington costs shippers $5 billion a week. And in contrast to the swift federal response to stabilize the financial markets after 9/11, the Treasury and other key agencies may be too badly damaged and decimated to intervene quickly. “If there’s a long gap between the attack and the ability of the federal government to start running in a normal way,” said Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Robert Hormats, “that has a very serious economic impact, psychologically in particular.”

How long before the seat of government is restored — if it is restored? “When you go back depends on what standards you use,” said Thomas Cochran, a physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The traditional approach to cleanup is to demolish badly contaminated buildings, which would include the White House and the Capitol, scrub every surface of the rest, then dig up the top few inches of asphalt and soil and cart all of it away, if anywhere will take it. Meeting the EPA standard for public safety — no more than 15 millirem of radiation exposure per year — would cost trillions of dollars for a midsized city, according to a study led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researcher Barbara Reichmuth. But the cost drops by half or more when the acceptable threshold is raised to 100 or, better, 500 millirem, which is still just 10 percent of the 5-rem level approved for nuclear reactor workers. The nation may well develop a new tolerance for radiation hazards.

Overall, though, it is impossible to calculate the total cost of a nuclear attack on Washington, because that cost depends on what is done in the first hours, days, and weeks after the attack, which in turn depends on what is done in the years before. If fallout places hundreds of thousands of people at lethal risk, then improving the response by just 1 percent saves thousands of lives. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for example, has proposed running computer models of various combinations of nuclear yield and weather conditions for selected cities, providing baseline scenarios for planners. That data might allow radio announcements about shelters and evacuation to air a few crucial minutes faster. So might more drills, better communications, or a clearer chain of command.

The odds of a nuclear attack are low. But experts say the huge potential cost of such an attack merits more preparation. And such preparation would save lives in more-likely disasters. Research into drugs to heal irradiated bone marrow could spin off into treatments for immune disorders such as AIDS. Predictive models, decontamination gear, and public-warning systems for nuclear fallout would be useful in a reactor leak, a nerve gas attack, or an ordinary chemical spill. More hospital beds would help with outbreaks of anthrax, smallpox, or avian flu. Compatible radios and common training for emergency responders would make a difference every time a cop or firefighter responded to a call across the county line. A battery-powered radio would be handy anytime the lights went out. In the worst-case nuclear disaster, these everyday defenses would matter that much more. It might be wise to think how best to use them.

“It’s not good enough anymore to plan to do these plans,” said Shelley Hearne, director of the Trust for America’s Health, a nonpartisan group that advocates building a strong public health infrastructure. “Everyone hates this conversation; but I get even madder when I see how little we deal with it. There are things we can do, and do well — and it’s OK to talk about it.”



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

-------- depleted uranium

Military shipments debated
Activists, supporters air opinions at port forum

BY KATHERINE TAM
THE OLYMPIAN, June 24, 2005

http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050624/NEWS01/506240325/1006

OLYMPIA -- Peace activists continued to raise environmental and moral concerns Thursday about military shipments at the Port of Olympia.

Meanwhile, several residents spoke out in support of the shipments and urged the port to continue allowing them.

About 40 people gathered at St. John's Episcopal Church for a forum on the state of the port that was intended to give citizens a chance to ask questions and engage in a dialogue. Most left with the same opinion they came in with.

The debate about whether the port should allow military cargo started last year after the first shipments arrived. About 100 protested near the dock in November, and 150 packed a public hearing that same month.

The port hasn't had military shipments since 1987, but officials have sat down with military representatives annually to express an interest in serving them, port Commissioner Bob Van Schoorl said.

"It's not a new endeavor. It's an ongoing relationship we've continued to develop," he said.

The shipments generated $858,000 last year, or 24 percent of the revenue at the marine terminal, he said. The terminal, which last year brought in $3.5 million, accounted for one-third of the port's total income of $7.5 million.

But some residents urged the port Thursday to look elsewhere for revenue.

"I believe it is morally wrong to kill or have my government kill in my name," said Dennis Mills, an activist. "My property taxes do help fund the port. What I'm encouraging Bob and others to start thinking about is building on a peace economy and not benefit from a war economy."

Questions remain about the health and environmental effects of the shipments, said Carrie Lybecker, a member of Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, which sponsored the forum.

Is sonar, which can hurt marine life, being used? she asked. How can officials ensure depleted uranium, which she said has been tied to lung damage and cancer, won't come to Olympia from the military equipment used in Iraq?

Several residents spoke in favor of the shipments.

"I'm honored to have military shipments through the port," said Duane King, a Korean War veteran. He is a member of Veterans for Peace, but was speaking as a private citizen Thursday.

Sonar is not used for security and cannot be used in Budd Inlet because it's shallow, Van Schoorl said. Ships aren't dumping bilge water into the inlet, either.

Vehicles and other equipment shipped from Iraq are washed of contaminants before they're allowed into the United States, Van Schoorl said.

"There is no and there will be no ammunition coming through the Port of Olympia," he added. "We are not certified to ship ammunition."

Katherine Tam can be reached at 360-704-6869 or at kathetam@ olympia.gannett.com.

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Connecticut Lawmakers Return To Finish Bills In Special Session

10:14 am EDT June 24, 2005
NBC 30 Connecticut News / Associated Press

http://www.nbc30.com/politics/4647642/detail.html
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/state/hc-23222055.apds.m0694.bc-ct-xgr--jun23,0,2596056.story?coll=hc-headlines-local-wire

HARTFORD, Conn. -- State legislators returned to the Capitol Thursday to begin taking care of work they could not complete in this year's regular session, including a key budget bill seen as a last chance to revive dead legislation.

The far-reaching bill, which includes 115 sections, is supposed to spell out details of the two-year, $31.2 billion budget plan that lawmakers passed earlier this month.

It outlines, for example, changes to formulas for state grants to municipalities and new benefits for state veterans and their families.

The House of Representatives approved the bill 91-34 shortly after 10 p.m. The Senate is expected to vote on the legislation Monday.

Throughout the day, there was much speculation about non-budget items being added to the legislation.

There was an effort, for example, to include language amending Connecticut's smoking ban in bars and restaurants to allow smoking at off-track-betting parlors across the state. House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, said he wanted that provision in the bill, but pulled it after members of the House Democratic caucus balked at the idea.

"I think it would be a mistake to have that in the budget implementing bill when it has nothing to do with implementing the budget," said House Minority Leader Robert Ward, R-North Branford.

The legislation explains details of planned bonuses for Connecticut National Guard members, a study of veterans' exposure to hazardous materials including depleted uranium, a new Military Relief Fund for needy military families and a new death benefits program for Connecticut military personnel.

It also would delay plans to require vision screening for licensed drivers until 2007, allow members of the current State Ethics Commission to become members of the new Citizens Ethics Advisory Board until Sept. 30, delay plans to buy police cruisers with fire suppression systems until Jan. 1, 2007, delay a study of legalized gambling until fiscal year 2009 and provide grants to numerous historic attractions throughout Connecticut.

There are also changes to the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund grant to cities and towns, which is financed by part of the state's share of slot machine revenues from the two Indian casinos in southeastern Connecticut.

The grant program would be increased by $4.8 million in fiscal year 2007.

One-third of that amount would be distributed to members of the Southeastern Council of Governments and any distressed municipality that is a member of the Northeastern Connecticut Council of Governments or the Windham Area Council of Governments.

Rep. William Dyson, D-New Haven, questioned why towns outside the immediate vicinity of the casinos were receiving some additional cash from the fund.

Casino neighbors have traditionally received extra money to cover costs for hosting the casinos, such as additional police expenses.

"Disparity is being fostered by virtue of this action," he said.

In other business, the House voted 129-7 earlier in the day to approve the "energy independence" bill.

The legislation died on the final night of the regular session on June 8, after the House stripped language that would have continued up to $21 million in possible payments to Northeast Utilities and United Illuminating for securing electricity contracts with various producers.

While some legislators hoped to add back the fees to the utility companies, the version approved Thursday replaced the payments with a study of the issue by the Department of Public Utility Control.

This fall, the agency will evaluate different alternatives for procuring energy, including having state government or a third party secure the contracts.

Opponents said the fees are a gift to the utilities. They claim the payments are much higher than the utilities' actual cost of securing the estimated $2 billion worth of electricity for Connecticut's residents and businesses.

One of the main goals of the energy bill is to blunt the effect of a new federal electricity charge.

Connecticut electricity rates could climb by $4 billion over five years because of a regional plan to encourage electricity generators to stay in business and encourage construction of new generators, especially in parts of the New England region that are short on power.

"That impact would be just staggering, staggering for the economy of this state, for our residents," said Rep. Kevin DelGobbo, R-Naugatuck, the ranking House Republican on the energy committee.

The bill would provide incentives for new power generators, encourage conservation and help cover businesses' capital costs for alternative forms of energy, such as fuel cells.

Most of Thursday's action at the Capitol involved the House. Senators only came in to adopt rules for the special session.

They're expected to return to Hartford on Monday to vote on bonding bills and legislation that would implement Gov. M. Jodi Rell's 10-year, $1.3 billion transportation improvement package.

Both House and Senate leaders said they hoped to wrap up the special session by Monday or Tuesday.

According to the Office of Legislative Management, it costs taxpayers about $9,000 a day to hold a special session. That figure includes mileage costs for lawmakers, sessional employee costs and printing.

----

'Tribunal' accuses U.S., Britain of warcrimes 

World Tribunal on Iraq, First Day

June 24 ,2005
By Ayla Jean Yackley ISTANBUL (Reuters) - 

http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2005%20News%20Archives/June/25%20n/World%20Tribunal%20on%20Iraq,%20First%20Day,%20June%2024,%202005.htm

International anti-war advocates accused the United States and Britain on Friday of committing war crimes in the invasion and occupation of Iraq in a symbolic "tribunal" in Turkey's largest city.

Former U.N. officials, legal experts and human rights activists said they convened the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), to examine whether the2003 invasion was an "illegal aggressive war." It has no binding authority and no officials were present to defend the U.S.-led war. A "verdict" is due on Monday.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declined invitations to appear at the tribunal.

"The war and occupation challenges us to face the threat to international law by the actions of the U.S. and UK," said British international human rights lawyer Phil Shiner.

"The International Criminal Court (should) fulfill its functions to make those responsible for these war crimes and crimes against humanity accountable through principles of individual criminal liability," he said.

The lack of U.N. support for the war and "disproportionate" use of military force had violated international law, he said.

The U.S. and British governments have argued Iraq's suspected breach of U.N. resolutions on weapons of mass destruction had made the invasion legal and necessary.

Some panel members also took the U.N. to task.

"The United Nations failed in preventing unjust economic sanctions, an illegal war and carnage under occupation," said Hans von Sponeck, U.N. assistant secretary-general until2000 .

"The U.N. remained mute when (the United States and Britain) dropped out of the international community to unilaterally mount an illegal invasion into Iraq," he said.

"NO OPEN DEBATE"

The proceedings consisted of presentations by opponents of the war to a "jury of conscience."

A U.S. official criticized a lack of open debate at the tribunal.

"The statements of the organizers have indicated that this is not a two-way discussion," said the official, who was not present at the proceedings.

Arundhati Roy, India's Booker Prize-winning novelist, deflected criticism the tribunal amounted to a kangaroo court.

"Questions have been raised that this tribunal represents only one point of view," she said. "This would suggest the views of the U.S. government have somehow gone unrepresented. (We) are aware of the arguments in support of the war."

Organizer Richard Falk of Santa Barbara University in California said NATO member Turkey was chosen to host the WTI because of its 2003 refusal to permit its ally to invade Iraq from its soil, but Turkey also bore blame for allowing the U.S. military to use its bases before and after the war.

"This tribunal will show that such complicity engages legal responsibility for Turkey and other governments in the region that support directly or indirectly such aggressive warmaking."

Despite close diplomatic and military links, relations between the two countries have been fraught since the war.

A survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center this week showed only 23 percent of Turks have a favorable view of the United States, compared to52 percent in2000 .

----

Existential Warfare: Overwhelming our Opponents by Killing Ourselves

by Matt Gonzalez, June 24, 2005 MESH Magazine (San Francisco)

http://meshsf.com/2005/print_article.php?art_id=009-0002&vol_id=009-0000

Depleted Uranium (DU) is a highly dense material (2.5 times denser than iron and 1.7 times denser than lead) that, if placed on the end of a projectile, can pierce through armored tanks and other military shields with relative ease. It is the radioactive waste product of the uranium enrichment process and is normally disposed of under strict federal guidelines. But when used as part of our military arsenal, it is subject to no such precautions.

How does a nuclear waste product that must be handled and disposed of with utmost care, suddenly become safe when placed on the end of a missile and shattered into the atmosphere during wartime?

The US and British military first started using DU in the 1991 Gulf War, exploding 340 tons of DU laden warheads there. Later, DU was used by the Clinton Administration in Yugoslavia (at least 10 tons) and most recently by the Bush Administration in Afghanistan (1,000 tons) and Iraq (2,400 tons). In all, over 4,000 tons of DU has been released into the world’s atmosphere. Because DU missiles ignite upon impact, the resulting smoke, bullet fragments and dust released poison everything in their wake. The resulting harm is exactly what you would expect to see with such negligent use of a radioactive material. Since 1991, American soldiers have been complaining of a variety of health consequences for which the US government cannot otherwise account, known as Gulf War Syndrome. American soldiers returning from conflict complain of chronic fatigue and kidney, liver and respiratory disorders. Many have contracted leukemia, lung cancer and other serious illnesses. They also have noted a higher incidence of birth defects among their children. And, in the places devastated by war, congenital birth defects, lymph cancer and leukemia are well documented.

As of July of 1999, 251,000 of the 579,000 veterans returning from the 1991 Gulf War were seeking medical treatment for aftereffects of the war. Today it is estimated to be closer to 350,000. Yet only 167 died from wounds inflicted by opponents. According to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, 518,000 soldiers fighting in both wars in Iraq have been placed on medical disability since 1991, although only 7,000 have been wounded there.

Yet, the US government continues to publicly deny the harmful effects of DU and suggests that the incidence of health problems is consistent with that in the general population, though they offer no data to support this claim. Admittedly, DU, or U–238, is not as radioactive as U–235, the isotope used in nuclear weapons and reactors. Nevertheless, DU emits alpha radiation and has a half–life of 4.5 billion years. In 1974 a military report noted that the widespread use of DU munitions would likely result in the inhalation and ingestion of U–238 and would be “locally significant.” A 1990 report by a military subcontractor, Science Applications International Corporation, warned that “Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant, with potential radiological and toxicological effects.” It also noted probable cancers from internal exposures.

Realizing that its ability to garner widespread support for military conflicts rests on its ability to overwhelm opponents with superior firepower and few short–term American casualties, the US government has made DU its weapon of choice for the new millennium, even if the long–term costs are hundred of thousands of American war dead. This sentiment is expressed in a 1993 General Accounting Office report that found “Army officials believe that DU protective methods can be ignored during battle and other life–threatening situations because DU–related health risks are greatly outweighed by the risk of combat.”

The mantra of “support the troops” becomes an ominous lie to win popular support for a war, but in reality it is the height of hypocrisy. Of course, this shouldn’t surprise us, given the well documented history of the US government knowingly harming the health of civilians and military personnel. One need only recall the Tuskegee syphilis experiment where the government purposefully failed to treat infected men in order to study the disease’s progression. Or the widespread spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam which continues to devastate Vietnamese communities and debilitate veterans, despite the herbicide’s known toxicity.

The government persists in its lies about DU because it can. Beginning in 1950 when the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Feres v. United States (340 U.S. 135), the military has been immune from any kind of actions under the Federal Tort Claims Act for harm to soldiers during their active military service. Lt. Rudolph Feres was a soldier who died in a barracks fire at Pine Camp, New York. His widow sued the U.S. government, alleging unsafe conditions. In denying her negligence claim, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tort actions could not be brought against the military for injuries to soldiers. (In a companion case that was decided at the same time, the court denied a claim against a military doctor who had left an 18–by–30 inch towel in a soldier’s abdomen during surgery.)

The “Feres Doctrine”, as it has come to be called, has given the military free license to expose soldiers to whatever harm it wants and leaves soldiers without recourse to legal actions and the protections these would engender. A rule that dealt with simple negligence cases has been dubiously extended, such that it applies to the government knowingly and intentionally exposing soldiers to harm. In 1987, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia agreed, noting that Feres had been wrongly decided. But change isn’t going to happen until at least five Justices overturn the Feres Doctrine or until Congress legislates change. There is no current effort among either Republicans or Democrats to change this law.

And what should we think of any government that ignored the scientific findings and used this material indiscriminately? How does this compare to the crimes of Pinochet or those prosecuted at Nuremberg? Certainly they are worthy for consideration as war crimes.

In 2002 a United Nations subcommission declared DU a weapon of mass destruction and its use a breach of international law. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration continues to utilize this weapon.

And things may be worse than we think. The US Department of Energy has recently admitted that military reactor waste has been mixed with DU, making the new compound even more deadly. (Nuclear waste includes plutonium, uranium–236, neptunium and other isotopes thousands of times more radioactive than DU.)

One is left to wonder; will the self–proclaimed policeman of the world ever be held accountable for its actions?

Sources: Discounted Casualties, The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium by Akira Tashiro (Japan: The Chugoku Shimbun, 2001). “Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets” by Leuren Moret, SF Bay View, August 18, 2004. “Weapons of Self–Destruction” by David Rose, Vanity Fair, December 2004, pp. 204–218. “Has Our Country Abandoned Them” by Kenneth Miller, Life, November 1995, pp. 46–61. “WHO ‘suppressed’ scientific study into depleted uranium cancer fears in Iraq” by Rob Edwards, Sunday Herald, February 22, 2004. “Radiological toxicity of DU” by Kevin Baverstock, Carmel Mothersill & Mike Thorne, (Repressed WHO Document), November 5, 2001.

Matt Gonzalez is an attorney in San Francisco. He is a Green Party member and the former President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.   



-------- europe

Ruling Dutch Political Party Advocates Nuclear Energy in Policy Paper

June 24, 2005 — By Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8056

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's party said Thursday that the country needed more nuclear reactors because the country cannot rely on fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.

The policy paper by the Christian Democratic Appeal, or CDA, is the latest sign of a reversal in the trend to phase out nuclear power, reflecting the growing concern about climate change and the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main byproduct of burning coal and oil.

The Netherlands has one nuclear reactor used for energy. The Borssele plant had until recently been scheduled for closure, but all parties in the governing coalition now agree it must remain active.

Balkenende's government reopened the sensitive debate on nuclear power in February, saying all options needed to be considered as the country tried to meet its growing energy needs.

The main opposition Labor Party, which is roughly as large as the CDA, continues to support Borssele's closure.

In its policy blueprint released Thursday, the CDA said not only should Borssele remain on line, but more reactors should be built.

It also suggested investing heavily in alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass, while working to cut use of fossil fuels, and reducing overall energy use by consumers and industry.

"Nuclear energy will remain an option during the transition to durable energy to reduce CO2 emissions from electricity production," the party said in a statement. "By focusing on the development of clean energy technology, the Netherlands will gain an economic advantage."

Environmental activists from Greenpeace stepped up their campaign against nuclear energy, citing the threat of nuclear accidents and the problems of disposing of waste. On Wednesday, they dumped 200 empty oil drums -- labeled as nuclear waste -- into a pond outside the parliament building.

"We demand that the Cabinet stand by its earlier commitment to close Borssele in 2013 and opt for a durable energy policy that focuses on saving energy and safe energy sources," Greenpeace said in a statement.

The Borssele reactor has been the focus of protests by environmental groups for decades. It is owned by the Zuid Nederland Electricity Company and has a thermal power of 450 megawatts, enough to power a million homes.

----

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe Remain Off NATO’s Agenda

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire, June 24, 2005

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_6_24.html#DE004107

WASHINGTON — The NATO alliance so far has refrained from considering the withdrawal of hundreds of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from military bases in Europe, despite growing calls to do so by members of European governments and political figures (see GSN, April 22).

Opponents had hoped to see the question discussed at a biannual meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on June 9. That did not occur, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in a telephone interview yesterday.  

During a classified meeting of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group during the session, he said, German Defense Minister Peter Struck described the state of “internal discussions” in his country, but the group did not address the matter.

Struck “did not ask for any comment, nor was there any comment by the other ministers,” Appathurai said.

The subject also is not on the agenda for NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer’s meetings with Russian leaders in Moscow today, he said.

“The secretary general wouldn’t talk on that issue unless the allies wanted him to do it,” Appathurai said.

Growing Call

The U.S. nongovernmental Natural Resources Defense Council in a report this year estimated there are as many as 480 U.S. B61 bombs in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the United Kingdom. No official confirmation is available (see GSN, Feb. 10).

The bombs have yields that can range from 0.3 to 170 kilotons, according to the report. The respective yields of the U.S. warheads used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II were 15 and 21 kilotons.

Critics have said the weapons’ presence undermines the credibility of NATO nations when arguing for tougher international nuclear nonproliferation measures, as well as efforts to account for and reduce Russian tactical nuclear weapons, believed to number in the thousands. 

NATO maintains the bombs are necessary for its security. The ministers in a joint communique released after the meeting said the alliance “affirms the fundamental political purpose of NATO’s nuclear forces: to preserve peace and prevent coercion.”

“The nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO continue to provide an essential political and military link between the European and North American members of the Alliance,” the communiqu‚ says.

In April, the opposition German Liberal Party proposed a resolution calling for the weapons’ removal from the country. The resolution was referred to a committee for consideration. Also that month, the Belgian Senate called for the eventual removal of the weapons from Belgium and Europe.

At the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference last month, German Foreign Affairs Minister Joschka Fischer said his government favored reducing and eliminating substrategic nuclear weapons worldwide. The European Union in a German-authored working paper to the conference urged the United States and Russia to move toward reducing and eliminating those weapons.

On Wednesday, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara published an opinion piece in the Financial Times urging a gradual withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, which they said could be used to achieve Russian nuclear accountability and reductions and “close a dangerous chapter of European [Cold War] history.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said early this month that Moscow would not negotiate reductions of its tactical nuclear weapons with countries that based such weapons outside their borders, apparently referring to the United States (see GSN June 3).

No Movement

An unidentified U.S. diplomat last month told the International Herald Tribune the weapons would not be removed from Germany.

Oliver Meier, international representative in Berlin of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association,” said, “European governments shy away from urging a change in NATO’s nuclear weapons policy because they fear repercussions for transatlantic relations.

Natural Resources Defense Council consultant Hans Kristensen, though, said there are indications that some European governments would like to see the weapons stay, or at least are “dragging their heels.”

“This is not a priority issue” for disagreement with the United States, he said.

The way for NATO to begin considering the idea would be for a member to request a formal discussion, said spokesman Appathurai, a Canadian.

However, there is now no “movement” toward that, he said.

“A lot of discussion I see in the press, but very little in government circles on this issue, in terms of changing policy or posture on nuclear weapons,” he said.

----

Ruling Dutch Political Party Advocates Nuclear Energy in Policy Paper

June 24, 2005 — By Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8056

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's party said Thursday that the country needed more nuclear reactors because the country cannot rely on fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.

The policy paper by the Christian Democratic Appeal, or CDA, is the latest sign of a reversal in the trend to phase out nuclear power, reflecting the growing concern about climate change and the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main byproduct of burning coal and oil.

The Netherlands has one nuclear reactor used for energy. The Borssele plant had until recently been scheduled for closure, but all parties in the governing coalition now agree it must remain active.

Balkenende's government reopened the sensitive debate on nuclear power in February, saying all options needed to be considered as the country tried to meet its growing energy needs.

The main opposition Labor Party, which is roughly as large as the CDA, continues to support Borssele's closure.

In its policy blueprint released Thursday, the CDA said not only should Borssele remain on line, but more reactors should be built.

It also suggested investing heavily in alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass, while working to cut use of fossil fuels, and reducing overall energy use by consumers and industry.

"Nuclear energy will remain an option during the transition to durable energy to reduce CO2 emissions from electricity production," the party said in a statement. "By focusing on the development of clean energy technology, the Netherlands will gain an economic advantage."

Environmental activists from Greenpeace stepped up their campaign against nuclear energy, citing the threat of nuclear accidents and the problems of disposing of waste. On Wednesday, they dumped 200 empty oil drums -- labeled as nuclear waste -- into a pond outside the parliament building.

"We demand that the Cabinet stand by its earlier commitment to close Borssele in 2013 and opt for a durable energy policy that focuses on saving energy and safe energy sources," Greenpeace said in a statement.

The Borssele reactor has been the focus of protests by environmental groups for decades. It is owned by the Zuid Nederland Electricity Company and has a thermal power of 450 megawatts, enough to power a million homes.

-------- india



-------- iran

US doubts Iranian elections will change nuclear showdown

Fri Jun 24, 4:12 PM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050624/pl_afp/iranvoteuspolicy_050624201243

WASHINGTON - Whoeever wins Iran's presidential run-off elections is unlikely to come clean about the country's controversial nuclear program, a senior US State Department official said.

The official was speaking as Iranians were voting Friday in a tight clash between moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadine.

"If there were an Iranian leader who is elected, who's an arch conservative who did what Kadhafi did (and says): 'we'll be clean and you can inspect us,' I'd expect that would elicit quite a different response from us than we are now," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"If that happened, either candidate did that, I'll be surprised," he said.

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in 2003 renounced weapons of mass destruction. Relations between the United States and Libya have been improving since that landmark decision.

The State Department official said the United States would watch carefully the policies to be crafted and actions to be taken by the new Iranian president.

"It goes back to policies and actions as opposed to personalities," he said, not showing any preference for Rafsanjani or Ahmadine.

Earlier Friday, Iran's foreign ministry said the country would eventually resume its controversial uranium enrichment activities regardless of the result of the Islamic republic's presidential election.

"Whoever is the next president, a permanent suspension is not on the cards," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on Thursday urged Iran to abide by a nuclear suspension agreement signed in Paris and not to engage in nuclear enrichment activities.

Washington's top diplomat said the United States supported the work of the so-called EU3 negotiators of Britain, France and Germany in trying to secure a guarantee from Iran that it is not making nuclear weapons.

Iran claims that its nuclear activity is purely non-military and that it has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, but Washington says Tehran is using its civilian program to mask covert atomic weapons work.


-------- japan

Enriched uranium missing from Japan plant

By Natalie Obiko Pearson, Associated Press Writer  |  June 24, 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/06/24/enriched_uranium_missing_from_japan_plant/

TOKYO --A small amount of enriched uranium -- not enough to make a bomb -- has gone missing from a nuclear power plant in central Japan, the Science Ministry said Friday.

Officials have been unable to locate a neutron-detecting device containing 1.7 milligrams of enriched uranium at the No. 3 reactor at Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui state about 200 miles west of Tokyo, the ministry said in a statement.

The amount missing is too small to make a bomb and not radioactive enough to pose a threat to humans, a ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

The device, used to measure the level of neutrons in the reactor, was reported missing Friday afternoon during an inspection of the nuclear fuel inventory at the plant, which is operated by Kansai Electric Power Co.

Officials have ordered Kansai Electric to conduct a thorough investigation and were set to send ministry inspectors to the plant on Saturday, the ministry said.

Another plant run by Kansai Electric, also in Fukui, was the scene of Japan's deadliest-ever nuclear-plant accident last August.

In that incident, a corroded cooling pipe carrying boiling water and superheated steam burst at a plant in nearby Mihama, killing five workers. No radiation was released in that accident.

Kansai Electric later admitted that the pipe had not been inspected since 1996. It is being investigated on suspicion of negligence leading to death.

The government has been eager to push nuclear power to meet the energy needs of resource-poor Japan, but public trust has been deeply shaken by a series of safety violations, reactor malfunctions and accidents in the nuclear energy industry.

Japan's 52 nuclear reactors supply 35 percent of the country's electricity. The government wants to build 11 new plants and raised electricity output to nearly 40 percent of the national supply by 2010.



-------- russia

Russia becomes full-fledged member of the global nuclear market

06/24/2005 17:48 Pravda

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/89/357/15702_nuclear.html

Storing only one kilogram of spent nuclear fuel brings $1,000 of profit

The security of both civil and defense nuclear objects has become a highly important issue during recent years. There are 213 nuclear installations, 454 facilities to store spent nuclear fuel, 1508 radioactive warehouses and some 16,500 radioactive sources in Russia. It stands the reason that such an impressive nuclear constituent requires special attention.

One may not say that Russian nuclear objects are being operated on a perfect level. Andrei Malyshev, the chairman of the Federal Service for Nuclear Control, said that the quality of various violations, which specialists make during their work, increased slightly in 2004. They were all technological violations, Malyshev added, which could not lead to any serious consequences. However, the situation in the Russian nuclear industry does not win favor.

The Russian Nuclear Power Agency currently implements a large-scale program for long-term storage of the spent nuclear fuel. The Russian nuclear industry already suffers from the lack of storage facilities, although it will soon have to deal with deliveries of foreign nuclear wastes as well. The project has a legal base for the time being. The laws to import spent nuclear fuel to Russia were passed in 2000. Russia also has the technology to establish adequate storage and production facilities. However, specialists of the Russian Nuclear Power Agency have not decided yet where the facilities should be built.

Storing only one kilogram of spent nuclear fuel brings $1,000 of profit, whereas the processing is a lot more expensive. This year, Russia ratified the international Vienna convention about civil responsibility for nuclear damage. Moreover, the Russian government submitted a new draft law to the Russian parliament about the ratification of the united convention on safe circulation of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive wastes. Moscow will host a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in March of 2006. It brings up the idea that Russia gradually becomes a full-fledged member of the global nuclear market.

The security of Russian nuclear objects was tested in May of the current year, during the energy crisis in Moscow, when a big part of the city was left without electricity. Andrei Malyshev, the chairman of the Federal Service for Nuclear Control, said that 360 nuclear objects were disconnected from electric power as a result of the power outage: all the objects worked normally during the crisis.

A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Colonel-General Igor Valynkin, said that Russian nuclear weapons experienced no losses or breakdowns during 55 years of their operation. It is impossible to conceal an accident with nuclear weapons, Valynkin said. However, the general could not guarantee the absolute safety of Russian nuclear objects: the terrorist threat is rather high.

Foreign states invest their funds in the Russian nuclear industry: American and German funds are currently being used to provide better security at Russian nuclear objects. American specialists have a right to supervise only the work of the firms, which install security means. It is noteworthy that the Russian Defense Ministry does not receive any profit: the funds are wired directly to the firms.

Nobody has a right to control nuclear defense objects of Russia even under emergent conditions. Neither UN departments, nor NATO have any international agreements on the matter. Russia conducts an active anti-terrorist cooperation with Western states. Russia, the USA and IAEA collaborate in the reduction of the radioactive threat: the initiative stipulates the withdrawal of nuclear wastes from third world countries, which Russia and the USA had delivered there previously. Nuclear wastes have already been removed from Yugoslavia and Afghanistan; Uzbekistan is next on the list.

Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Dmitry Sudakov)

----

US Ask Russia’s Former Nuclear Minister Adamov’s Extradition

Created: 24.06.2005 MosNews

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/06/24/usadamov.shtml

The United States sent a request to Switzerland on Friday to extradite Russia’s former nuclear energy minister Yevgeny Adamov.

Pittsburgh prosecutors have charged Adamov with theft of $9 million allocated by the United States for the security of Russian nuclear objects.

Earlier on the same day, Switzerland’s Supreme Court has ruled that Adamov must stay in custody pending a decision on his extradition to either the United States or Russia.

Adamov was detained in Bern on May 2 after the U.S. request. Russian authorities, concerned that he could divulge nuclear secrets if extradited to the United States, have demanded his extradition to Russia instead.



-------- security

Advisers Say U.S. WMD Defense Responsibilities Vague

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire June 24, 2005

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_6_24.html#B05ECFAD

WASHINGTON — The United States must more clearly apportion specific responsibilities among federal and other agencies in the effort to defend the country against WMD attacks, a federal advisory body said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2004).

“Clear lines of authority” are lacking in the area of “plans, policies and procedures,” the head of the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s WMD defense task force told the council at a public meeting here.

“A better definition of roles and responsibilities is called for,” said task force Chairwoman Lydia Thomas, the chief executive officer of Mitretek Systems.

Thomas’ group, one of four subject-specific task forces within the blue-ribbon advisory body to the Homeland Security Department, focuses on “prevention of weapons of mass effect and those who may use them from American soil.”

The chairwoman said the group’s search for ways to “develop a layered, integrated and multilateral system of defense” against such weapons began with a review of the state of U.S. WMD defenses, a process she said is nearly complete and would be followed by the identification of defense gaps and the proposal of a defense strategy.

Speaking at a time of widespread debate in Washington about how to prioritize domestic and international activities to prevent nuclear terrorism, Thomas said the task force believes cooperation with foreign countries and businesses is an especially important part of the defense effort (see GSN, June 22).

“We don’t in any way believe that our own borders should be where we start,” Thomas said.

Analytic Services President Ruth David, the chairwoman of the council’s critical-infrastructure task force, called for an increased focus on “resilience” in efforts to secure key infrastructure. Companies and government agencies too often focus on strictly protective measures, David said, but should also plan for “maintaining continuity of service” and “reducing consequences” of attacks or other disruptions.

“Resilience-based planning is not new but appears to be gaining momentum,” she said.

The task force on private-sector information sharing expressed concern about liability risks associated with providing companies’ security information to the government. Boeing Senior Vice President Rick Stephens, a member of the task force, laid out a lengthy list of changes Homeland Security should make to encourage more information sharing while assuring business that the data is safe.

“We genuinely are concerned about how well that information can in fact be protected,” Stephens said.

The group said there is so far no agreement about what should be required of business and of the different levels of government as they collect security information and share it with each other. Industry and government must work together to define what information each needs from the other and how the information would be secured, the task force said.

“DHS and the private sector should work in collaboration to develop [a] formal and objectively manageable homeland security intelligence/information requirements process,” it wrote in its formal recommendations.

The task force called on Homeland Security to adopt a “tiered” system for the sharing of information on infrastructure vulnerabilities. Rather than seeking to centralize all such information within the department, the task force said, Homeland Security should allow the continued maintenance of “federal information at the DHS level, state information at the state level, local at the local level and private-sector at the private-sector level.”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff expressed support for such an approach, saying his department must have “access” to but not “possess” companies’ vulnerability information.

Chertoff also updated the council on the agency’s “second-stage review,” the wide-ranging departmental evaluation he initiated as he took office in February (see GSN, June 9).

The secretary said he has almost finished meeting with subject-specific teams he designated to study areas for improvement in the department and that the Homeland Security Advisory Council could play a role in implementing the results of the review.

“Some of the solutions that have been identified, I think, do obviously deal with issues that … we don’t have total control over — either the private sector or other parts of government have a major role to play,” Chertoff said.

“I think, as we start to think through the details of some of these solutions … there’s going to be a lot of expertise here, and I’m going to be asking that we start to develop some working groups here to look at the way we might implement those and get those things done,” he said. “So I think that that is an additional value, maybe an additional burden, I’m going to place on the council.”

----

Nuclear power plant secrets leaked by computer virus, Sophos reports
Confidential information about power plants has been released onto the internet.

24/06/2005 10:55:23 Computer Worldf

http://www.computerworld.com.au/pp.php?id=1151551948&taxid=45

Experts at SophosLabs, Sophos's global network of virus and spam analysis centres, has reminded internet users of the importance of computer security after media reports revealed that sensitive information about nuclear power plants has been leaked onto the internet from a virus-infected computer.

According to the Japanese press, approximately 40MB of confidential reports, related to nuclear power plant inspections over several years, was leaked from a virus-infected computer belonging to an employee of the Mitsubishi Electric Plant Engineering (MPE). The data is said to have been distributed to users of the Winny peer-to-peer file-sharing system. Winny is the most popular file-sharing network in Japan, with over a quarter of a million users.

According to officials, the leak occurred when a 30-year-old engineer used his personal computer for company business. The PC was infected with an unnamed computer virus which is said to have enabled Winny users across Japan to access the sensitive information. The exposed data included photographs of the insides of the nuclear power plants and the names and addresses of inspecting engineers.

Commenting on the alleged leak, Rob Forsyth, Sophos’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said, "With discussion of Australia’s nuclear energy assets back on the public agenda, this leak is a timely reminder that Government and other organisations with sensitive data must protect their remote users from viruses, spyware and hackers. This duty of care is now a mainstream responsibility for company directors and public sector managers."

"It's bad enough when an individual has data stolen from them by a malware attack, but a nuclear power station being the victim is a real cause for concern," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "The fall-out from this breach acts as an unpleasant reminder that all businesses need to take computer security seriously."

Authorities have been quick to reassure the public that it does not believe that the information leaked was directly related to radioactive substances.

Sites referred to in the leaked data include Kansai Electric Power's Mihama nuclear plant and a power station in Tsuruga, as well as pressurised water reactors in Tomari and Sendai.

"If you allow your employees to put sensitive company data onto their own home computers, you are running the risk that they will not be as well defended as the PCs within your organisation," continued Cluley. "Security at power plants should be at an all-time high, but it needs to extend beyond the physicality of barbed wire and high walls and encompass information security too."

Sophos recommends companies protect their email gateways, desktops and servers with an automatically updated consolidated solution to defend against the threats of viruses and spam.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Rob Forsyth (rob.forsyth@sophos.com) is available for comment: +61 2 9409 9100 (tel) +61 2 417 234 176 (mob) +61 2 9409 9191 (fax)

Sophos's press contact at Gotley Nix Evans is: Michael Henderson (sophos@gne.com.au) +61 2 9957 5555 (tel) +61 413 054 738 (mobile) +61 2 9957 5575 (fax) 

----

Nuclear export states agree on measures to prevent proliferation

OSLO (AFP) Jun 24, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050624155425.l16sftrw.html

More than 40 countries that export nuclear technology have agreed on measures to prevent proliferation, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) said in a statement on Friday after a four-day meeting in Oslo.

The informal group of countries that export nuclear materials and technology and that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agreed on procedures to halt "nuclear transfers to countries that are non-compliant with their safeguards agreements".

The discussions were held behind closed doors but the NSG revealed in its statement that concerns over the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran had figured high on the agenda.

The organization, which approved Croatia as its 45th member at the Oslo meeting (effective from July 15), "called on all states to exercise extreme vigilance and make best efforts to ensure that none of their exports of goods and technologies contribute to nuclear weapons programs".

The NSG, which includes major exporters such as Britain, France, Russia and the United States, also determined that countries dealing with nuclear material should come up with fall-back safeguards in case the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was unable to continue ensuring safe use in recipient states.

The group additionally insisted that effective export controls in recipient states should be "a criterion of supply for nuclear material, equipment and technology".

"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," Richard Ekwall, outgoing group president, said when the Oslo meeting got underway on Monday.



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

Nuclear Industry Stands To Get Help from Taxpayers

June 24, 2005 — By Bill Lambrecht, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8067

With the president leading the cheers, the nuclear industry is poised to receive a bounty of incentives from Congress that could subsidize construction of new nuclear reactors in central Illinois and several other locations.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday became the first president in 26 years to visit a nuclear plant, declaring near Washington that the nation needs nuclear power.

Speaking as the Senate neared a vote on legislation spelling out a new energy policy, Bush referred to nuclear power as "the one energy source that is completely domestic, plentiful in quantity, environmentally friendly and able to generate massive amounts of electricity."

The president offered his endorsement while touring the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland, 50 miles southeast of Washington, one of the plants that could receive incentives to expand from the new energy bill.

A vote was expected in the Senate today on an amendment to remove loan guarantees for nuclear power and other energy sources, but it's not expected to pass.

The Senate bill would place taxpayers squarely behind resuming new construction of nuclear plants for the first time in 30 years with tax credits that could reach $6 billion if fully used by the industry.

The legislation would authorize $2.7 billion for research and development over the next five years, similar to provisions in a bill already passed by the House. An additional $1.25 billion would be allocated for a nuclear reactor in Idaho that would try to generate hydrogen fuel.

The nuclear industry could have received even more subsidies under an amendment Wednesday to curb global warming. But after several hours of debate, the amendment, sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., was defeated.

Meanwhile, the Senate legislation -- as well as the House bill -- would renew the half-century-old Price-Anderson Act limiting the liability of nuclear power plants in the event of an accident.

The provisions have generated a debate that the nuclear industry appears set to win in the Republican-controlled Congress.

Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, said the provisions amount to "kick-starting the first of the new orders of new nuclear power plants that we would be starting later this decade. We're talking about limited incentives for a limited period of time for a limited number of plants."

But Keith Ashdown, an energy analyst with the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, argued that the government should not be risking a bounty of tax dollars on an industry "that cannot exist in the private market without huge handouts from Uncle Sam."

"We pay for nuclear research and development," he said. "We're starting to pay for siting plants. We're backing loans to build the facilities. We're paying for the production of energy. Then we pay for the decommissioning of plants. There's no other industry that's completely subsidized from cradle to grave."

In his speech at the plant, Bush argued that government help for nuclear power is essential. "It makes sense for the long-term economic security of our country to expand nuclear power, and on the other hand, say to those who are risking capital, 'Here's some help, here's some ways we can provide incentive for you to move for with the construction of plants.'"

Not since Jimmy Carter visited Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania after a near meltdown in 1979 had a president toured a nuclear plant. Clad in a white hard hat, Bush looked at a plan by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy to build a new reactor along Chesapeake Bay.

The Maryland plant is one of several being examined by the nuclear industry in a two-track effort to resume building at nuclear plants.

Last month, NuStart Energy Development, a consortium of nuclear companies that includes Illinois-based Exelon Corp., put the Calvert Cliffs site on a list of six existing plants from which it intends to choose two for nuclear expansion.

Meanwhile, three nuclear companies are proceeding on their own under a streamlined permitting process:

--Exelon is seeking a so-called early site permit for construction at its Clinton, Ill., nuclear plant, 22 miles south of Bloomington.

--Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Corp. has asked for a siting permit for new construction at its plant at Mineral, Va.

--Entergy Corp. is seeking early approval for expanding generation at its Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Port Gibson, Miss.

To see more of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.stltoday.com.

Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 



-------- arkansas

Bill Could Fund Cleanup Of Strickler Nuclear Plant
Lincoln Says Federal Government Should Bear Cost Of SEFOR Cleanup

June 24, 2005 Hometown Channel

http://www.thehometownchannel.com/news/4645808/detail.html

STRICKLER, Ark. -- Since the late 1960s, many in Washington County have lived with a nuclear neighbor in their back yards -- but officials said Thursday that will soon change.

An experimental nuclear reactor was built in 1969 in the Washington County community of Strickler. The U.S. Senate was expected to pass a bill Thursday night that would free up federal funds to clean up the old site.

The reactor site was permanently shut down in 1972. In 1975, the University of Arkansas took ownership of the site.

The nuclear reactor is called the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor, or SEFOR. Officials who support the demolition of the plant say that after decades of no use, SEFOR has become an environmental hazard containing several contaminants and explosive chemicals.

Officials said the old reactor contains radiation, lead, asbestos and mercury. A Senate energy bill could provide the money to clean the site.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said the federal government built SEFOR and should also bear the cleanup cost. She said the final price of the cleanup could be as much as $16 million.

If the bill passes, it will take four to five years for the site to be cleaned. The university will still own the land, and it will be up to officials there to decide how it will be used.

University officials and residents near the site have been fighting to get the reactor removed since the 1990s.


-------- new mexico

Activists ask NRC to take HRI's license
Hydro Resource officials point out conflicting concerns in the petition

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau, Gallup Independent
June 24, 2005

http://www.gallupindependent.com/2005/june/062405activists.html

WINDOW ROCK — Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining and Southwest Research and Information Center have asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to revoke Hydro Resources Inc.'s uranium mining license for HRI's proposed in-situ leach mining operation in Church Rock.

In a 300-page brief filed June 14 with the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, ENDAUM and SRIC intervenors in the case charged that an abandoned uranium mine known as Section 17, formerly operated by United Nuclear Corp. (UNC), has released contaminants that exceed federal radiation limits in off-site areas, contributing to air pollution and threatening public health.

Mark Pelizza of HRI said, "ENDAUM has requested that HRI's license be terminated as part of every filing throughout Phase I and Phase II of the hearing. In Phase I there were nine-plus filings. The NRC found HRI's project safe and upheld the license each time.

"In short, ENDAUM's request that the license be revoked is SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) in their pleadings. Because of the inherent safety of modern uranium recovery, the revocation requests have not been approved in the past and I see no change in the future," he said.

Asking the U.N.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., at a meeting Wednesday in Paris, France, asked the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to stand with the Navajo Nation and its people in their right to protect themselves against the harmful effects of radiation exposure due to uranium mining.

"Uranium has not sustained the Navajo people. It has brought only death, illness, degraded lands and polluted water supplies," President Shirley told a UNESCO official.

Pelizza said HRI's data has shown that pre-mining water quality around uranium ore is toxic due to the concentrations of dissolved uranium and uranium-related elements, including radon.

He noted data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review which states that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants.

According to ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the amount of uranium-235 alone dispersed by coal combustion is the equivalent of dozens of nuclear reactor fuel loadings. The main sources of radiation released from coal combustion include uranium and thorium and their byproducts, such as radium, radon, polonium, bismuth and lead.

"Large quantities of uranium and thorium and other radiocative species in coal ash are not being treated as radioactive waste. ... Because of regulatory differences, nuclear waste products from coal combustion are dispersed through the biosphere in an unregulated manner," the Review states.

"Collected nuclear wastes that accumulate on electric utility sites are not protected from weathering, thus exposing people to increasing quantities of radioactive isotopes through air and water movement and the food chain," the Review said.

The NRC board previously has ruled that evidence regarding airborne doses from the proposed operation indicate that the Church Rock site will not exceed regulatory requirements, Pelizza said.

Offsite radiation monitoring conducted by the Church Rock Uranium Monitoring Project in 2003 showed gamma radiation levels on Section 17 significantly higher than levels found in two areas of the Church Rock Chapter not affected by past mining.

New assessments

ENDAUM and SRIC has asked the feds to order HRI to conduct new environmental assessments of the site and submit documents related to the design of its uranium processing plant so the community would know how much radiation would be released routinely from the facility.

ENDAUM, SRIC, and two Pinedale Chapter residents are challenging the NRC staff's January 1998 decision to issue an operating license to HRI for its proposed Crownpoint Uranium Project, which includes Sections 8 and 17 located six miles north of Church Rock Village, and two other sites located 2 miles west of and in the town of Crownpoint.

The legal brief filed by the intervenors with the NRC states that high gamma radiation levels were found on the grazing lands of rancher Larry J. King, whose grazing area and families' home sites are located on Section 17.

King, a member of ENDAUM who grazes 21 head of cattle on his land, said CRUMP radiation assessments done in October 2003 "show convincingly that our land is already affected by past mining."

He noted that radiation levels significantly higher than normal background levels were also measured in other areas of Church Rock, Pinedale and Coyote Canyon chapters where people still live next to abandoned mines and a mill tailings pile that is also a federal Superfund site.

King said intervenors' experts determined that if he and his family lived on the contaminated areas year-round, that federal exposure limits would be exceeded. "My sisters and their families and I live very close to areas where contaminants from the old mine have spread. We need this mess cleaned up now, not another uranium mine to add to our risk."

According to Pelizza, "Unlike Section 8, HRI will not have a process facility on Section 17 and the radiation emissions on Section 17 will be far less than the small amount from Section 8 that has already been determined to be safe."

Conflicting concerns
"I find it interesting that the intervenors are concerned with the quantity of dissolved radon gas in the groundwater that will be released to the atmosphere yet when it comes to groundwater quality concerns, the same water is 'pristine,' " Pelizza stated in an e-mail.

"How can it be that this water is safe to circulate through one's home or for one to drink, yet is unsafe for the water to be vented to the atmosphere where radon is dispersed? Which way is it?" he asked.

Lynnea Smith of Crownpoint, administrative officer from ENDAUM, said, "HRI needs to respect the will of the Diné people and the Navajo Nation Council and withdraw its mining proposal.

"And instead of proposing to subsidize uranium mining, the Congress of the United States needs to fully fund the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program and order federal agencies to respect the jurisdiction and sovereignty of American Indian tribes. They can start by honoring the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining," Smith said.

The presence of abandoned mines and pollution from past uranium mining in the Church Rock area was one of the reasons the Navajo Nation Council adopted and President Joe Shirley Jr. signed into law, the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act 2005, which bans uranium mining and processing on Navajo lands, intervenors said.

During Wednesday's trip to UNESCO headquarters, President Shirley asked the United Nations to support this sovereign action to help him protect the Diné against future exposure. "There are those who would still like to weaken our sovereignty and gain access to the uranium under our land. For this reason I appeal to UNESCO," he said.
	


-------- new york

NEW RESIDENT INSPECTOR NAMED AT INDIAN POINT 3

June 24, 2005
CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330
Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 	E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2005/05-037i.html

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in King of Prussia, Pa., have selected Brian D. Wittick as the new resident inspector at the Indian Point 3 nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y.

Entergy Northeast operates both Indian Point 2 and 3. The NRC has two inspectors assigned to each unit. Wittick joins Senior Resident Inspector Tom Hipschman at Unit 3. He replaces Robert Berryman, who was selected for a position in the NRC Region II office in Atlanta.

"Brian Wittick’s experience and commitment to safety will help the NRC ensure that Indian Point 3 conducts operations with the highest safety standards to protect the public health and safety," said NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins.

Wittick joined the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September as a reactor engineer in the Division of Reactor Safety. Previously, he served in the United States Navy for 21 years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering from the United States Naval Academy; a master’s in acoustical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, and a master of business administration from National University in San Diego.

Each U.S. commercial nuclear power plant has at least two NRC resident inspectors. They serve as the agency's eyes and ears at the facility, conducting regular inspections and monitoring significant work projects.

The Indian Point 3 resident inspectors can be reached at 914/739-8565.


-------- utah

Hatch takes aim at PFS

N.S. Nokkentved DAILY HERALD
Friday, June 24, 2005 

http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58091&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

The nation's nuclear waste policy should not include private storage facilities, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said Thursday.

Hatch secured the assurance of Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., that as policy, nuclear waste should be stored at federal facilities, not private, off-site facilities such as the proposed storage site at the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.

"A few nuclear power companies should not hijack our nation's nuclear waste strategy by building an off-site, above-ground storage site in Skull Valley," Hatch said in comments on the Senate floor Thursday.

John Parkyn, head of Private Fuel Storage LLC, took issue with Hatch's comments. The Minnesota-based consortium of utility companies has proposed a facility in Skull Valley to store highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial power reactors.

"We've hijacked nothing," Parkyn said in a telephone interview Thursday. The Skull Valley project was part of a federal strategy that started with federal promises of a solution to the nuclear waste disposal issue by 1998, Parkyn said. That was seven years ago, and the government still has not come up with a solution.

Hatch has been in the Senate since 1976, "and now he's criticizing us for his failure," Parkyn said.

If Congress wants to store nuclear waste at federal facilities, there are several in Utah, including Hill Air Force Base and sites in Tooele County, Parkyn said.

The two do agree on one point: The country needs a nuclear waste disposal strategy.

"President Bush has called for a robust nuclear power strategy, but we cannot have one until we know what to do with all the spent nuclear fuel," Hatch said. "It's becoming quickly apparent to me and to the people of Utah that we do not have a coherent national nuclear waste policy."

And Parkyn's take: "It's absolutely necessary that we bring this waste to a central point."

But they part ways on how best to resolve the issue.

"Is our nuclear waste policy going to be established by the federal government, or should that policy-making rest with a couple of private companies driven by profit?" Hatch asked on the Senate floor.

But it was the failure of Congress's nuclear waste policy that led to the current proposal at Skull Valley by the eight companies of the consortium, Parkyn said. Utilities that rely on nuclear power also have charged customers a small fee that was to pay for disposal of waste at the long-promised federal site.

The 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act directed the department to find entities to serve as voluntary hosts for temporary long-term storage sites. Local and state governments balked; only Indian tribes expressed interest. It was under this program that the Skull Valley Goshutes learned about spent fuel storage and the financial boost it could give tribal members.

Congress cut off funding for the program in 1994 just as the Goshutes completed a contract with federal Nuclear Waste Negotiator Richard Stallings. That drove the Goshutes into the open arms of Private Fuel Storage.

Also on Thursday, Hatch agreed to postpone consideration of an amendment he sponsored with Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, that would ban the transportation of high-level nuclear waste to private away-from-reactor waste sites.

Hatch now intends to introduce the amendment as stand-alone legislation.

The bill calls for a feasibility study of either storing spent fuel at Department of Energy facilities or of the Department taking possession of the spent fuel on-site at nuclear reactors.

It also would also require a study of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for future use.

The bill is similar to a proposal by Nevada Democrat Sen. Harry Reid and a bill introduced in the House in February.

N.S. Nokkentved can be reached at 344-2930 or at nnokkentved@heraldextra.com.

Project has roots in 1996

On Dec. 27, 1996, the Minnesota-based Private Fuel Storage LLC, a consortium of eight private utility companies, signed a lease for up to 40 years with the Goshute Tribe for 820 acres on the tribe's 17,460-acre Skull Valley Indian Reservation about 52 miles due west of American Fork.

In 1997, PFS applied for a license to build a $3.1 billion temporary storage facility to hold 44,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial power reactors in 4,000 upright concrete and steel casks.

The waste comprises ceramic fuel pellets, slightly larger than a pencil eraser, sealed inside zirconium alloy tubes. The tubes, known as fuel rods, are held in a metal framework sealed inside a welded stainless steel canister, in turn inside a cask that provides shielding from radiation.

The casks are 19 feet tall and 11 feet in diameter. The walls consist of 27 inches of concrete, lined with two-inch thick steel and covered with three-quarter-inch steel. Each one would weigh 180 tons and would stand vertically on concrete pads.

Most of the waste would be brought by rail through Utah County.



-------- vermont

Utah senator wants new look at nuclear waste policy
Republican upset over storage site nearing OK for home state

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Friday, June 24, 2005
Las Vegas Review-Journal

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jun-24-Fri-2005/news/26774175.html

WASHINGTON -- Saying he was growing "madder and madder" that a nuclear waste site is close to final approval in Utah, Sen. Orrin Hatch on Thursday proposed taking another look at the government's policies for disposing of radioactive spent fuel.

Hatch, R-Utah, said he has prepared legislation calling for the Energy Department to study keeping the material near utilities' nuclear reactors or to store it at government-owned sites.

Both ideas have been floated as possible alternatives to Yucca Mountain as the government faces continued delays in licensing a Nevada underground repository. DOE officials have said a repository opening, already seven years late, might slip to 2012 or 2015.

Hatch voted for a Nevada repository in a 2002 Senate vote. After a Senate speech Thursday, he said he still supported Yucca Mountain but was "rethinking" his position because of Utah's failure to avoid being targeted for nuclear waste.

"I am coming to believe that we will have to reprocess in place," at reactors, Hatch said. "That's the only feasible way of doing it."

The Utah Republican said his legislation would order DOE to direct more resources to nuclear waste reprocessing technology.

Scientists have said reprocessing could reduce nuclear waste volumes and toxicity, but the science would not be practical for decades.

The amendment also would tell DOE to study nuclear waste storage alternatives.

Hatch said he prepared the amendment to be debated as part of a major energy bill this week but withdrew it after Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., "agreed to work with me."

The amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, would prohibit nuclear waste shipments to the Private Fuel Storage waste site that is being developed on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah.

Utah officials expect the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to grant final approval by the end of the year to the 100-acre Goshute site.

Private Fuel Storage is a group of eight utility companies that proposes to store 40,000 tons of nuclear waste in up to 4,000 temporary above-ground casks on reinforced concrete pads.

Hatch said allowing private storage in Utah would "hijack our nation's nuclear waste strategy," which has been focused on Yucca Mountain.

"There is no reason in God's good world why they should stick this stuff in open air above ground," Hatch said. "It is just idiotic. I am getting madder and madder about it." 

----

NRC's stamp
Why was Entergy Vermont Yankee not fined?

Friday, June 24, 2005 Brattleboro Reformer

http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8854~2936583,00.html

Back in April, we wrote an editorial "The 'R' in NRC" in which we stated our belief that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acted as a rubber stamp for the nuclear industry.

We based that assessment on the apparent lack of concern by the NRC over the security and accountability of spent fuel at nuclear plants around the country.

The editorial yielded a response from NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan that his agency "takes its mission of overseeing U.S. commercial nuclear power plants and protecting health and safety very seriously."

Our question to the NRC is, if you indeed take that mission seriously, why was Entergy Vermont Yankee not fined when it was unable to account for two pieces of highly radioactive spent fuel last year?

Entergy could have faced a civil fine of up to $60,000 by the NRC. Instead, it just got a mild scolding from the NRC on Wednesday.

While the sloppy record keeping that allowed the two fuel rod pieces to be misplaced in the spent fuel pool for nearly 25 years happened under the plant's previous ownership, it's not an excuse for Entergy. The buck stops with them.

Entergy may be working to set up a system to keep better track of the materials in the future, may not have had any violations in the previous two years that they owned the plant, and were fortunate that the missing pieces never left the spent fuel pool. These factors, in the NRC's view, justified their decision not to fine Entergy.

However, we agree with Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., who said that the NRC's action sends the wrong message to nuclear plant owners.

"The NRC should not send the message to licensees that simply acting to recover fuel rods discovered missing only upon an NRC-ordered inspection is sufficient to overcome years of poor materials accounting," Jeffords wrote in a letter this week to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz.

There have been three incidents in the past five years of nuclear plants in the U.S. losing track of their spent fuel. We feel that's three too many.

The NRC's reaction to the misplaced fuel rod incident at Vermont Yankee again shows that the NRC puts the interests of nuclear plant owners ahead of the public safety. We'll repeat what we said in April. The "R" in NRC is supposed to stand for regulatory, not rubber stamp. 



-------- us nuc waste

Hatch takes aim at PFS

N.S. Nokkentved DAILY HERALD June 24, 2005

http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58091&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

The nation's nuclear waste policy should not include private storage facilities, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said Thursday.

Hatch secured the assurance of Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., that as policy, nuclear waste should be stored at federal facilities, not private, off-site facilities such as the proposed storage site at the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.

"A few nuclear power companies should not hijack our nation's nuclear waste strategy by building an off-site, above-ground storage site in Skull Valley," Hatch said in comments on the Senate floor Thursday.

John Parkyn, head of Private Fuel Storage LLC, took issue with Hatch's comments. The Minnesota-based consortium of utility companies has proposed a facility in Skull Valley to store highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial power reactors.

"We've hijacked nothing," Parkyn said in a telephone interview Thursday. The Skull Valley project was part of a federal strategy that started with federal promises of a solution to the nuclear waste disposal issue by 1998, Parkyn said. That was seven years ago, and the government still has not come up with a solution.

Hatch has been in the Senate since 1976, "and now he's criticizing us for his failure," Parkyn said.

If Congress wants to store nuclear waste at federal facilities, there are several in Utah, including Hill Air Force Base and sites in Tooele County, Parkyn said.

The two do agree on one point: The country needs a nuclear waste disposal strategy.

"President Bush has called for a robust nuclear power strategy, but we cannot have one until we know what to do with all the spent nuclear fuel," Hatch said. "It's becoming quickly apparent to me and to the people of Utah that we do not have a coherent national nuclear waste policy."

And Parkyn's take: "It's absolutely necessary that we bring this waste to a central point."

But they part ways on how best to resolve the issue.

"Is our nuclear waste policy going to be established by the federal government, or should that policy-making rest with a couple of private companies driven by profit?" Hatch asked on the Senate floor.

But it was the failure of Congress's nuclear waste policy that led to the current proposal at Skull Valley by the eight companies of the consortium, Parkyn said. Utilities that rely on nuclear power also have charged customers a small fee that was to pay for disposal of waste at the long-promised federal site.

The 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act directed the department to find entities to serve as voluntary hosts for temporary long-term storage sites. Local and state governments balked; only Indian tribes expressed interest. It was under this program that the Skull Valley Goshutes learned about spent fuel storage and the financial boost it could give tribal members.

Congress cut off funding for the program in 1994 just as the Goshutes completed a contract with federal Nuclear Waste Negotiator Richard Stallings. That drove the Goshutes into the open arms of Private Fuel Storage.

Also on Thursday, Hatch agreed to postpone consideration of an amendment he sponsored with Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, that would ban the transportation of high-level nuclear waste to private away-from-reactor waste sites.

Hatch now intends to introduce the amendment as stand-alone legislation.

The bill calls for a feasibility study of either storing spent fuel at Department of Energy facilities or of the Department taking possession of the spent fuel on-site at nuclear reactors.

It also would also require a study of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for future use.

The bill is similar to a proposal by Nevada Democrat Sen. Harry Reid and a bill introduced in the House in February.

N.S. Nokkentved can be reached at 344-2930 or at nnokkentved@heraldextra.com.

Project has roots in 1996

On Dec. 27, 1996, the Minnesota-based Private Fuel Storage LLC, a consortium of eight private utility companies, signed a lease for up to 40 years with the Goshute Tribe for 820 acres on the tribe's 17,460-acre Skull Valley Indian Reservation about 52 miles due west of American Fork.

In 1997, PFS applied for a license to build a $3.1 billion temporary storage facility to hold 44,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial power reactors in 4,000 upright concrete and steel casks.

The waste comprises ceramic fuel pellets, slightly larger than a pencil eraser, sealed inside zirconium alloy tubes. The tubes, known as fuel rods, are held in a metal framework sealed inside a welded stainless steel canister, in turn inside a cask that provides shielding from radiation.

The casks are 19 feet tall and 11 feet in diameter. The walls consist of 27 inches of concrete, lined with two-inch thick steel and covered with three-quarter-inch steel. Each one would weigh 180 tons and would stand vertically on concrete pads.

Most of the waste would be brought by rail through Utah County.


-------- MILITARY


-------- space

Lawmaker Calls For Reviving Space-Based Laser Work

Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 24 June 2005

http://www.space4peace.org/articles/sbl_revival_call.htm
 
A member of the House Armed Services Committee called June 23 for reviving the development of space-based lasers for missile defense.

Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) said that lasers offer more precision and speed than other weapons and that fielding them in space would provide the ultimate "high ground" to defend the United States against ballistic missile attack. Such technology also has the potential to protect U.S. satellites, he said.

Speaking at a Capitol Hill breakfast seminar, Hostettler urged the Bush Administration to show its support for space-based lasers to give them a political boost in Congress.

Past efforts to pursue space-based lasers have run aground. The Defense Department's Space Baser Laser Integrated Flight Experiment (SBL-IFX) called for launching an experimental laser into space to shoot down a ballistic missile in its boost phase of flight. But the program was scrapped several years ago after sustaining deep budget cuts in Congress, which deemed SBL-IFX too ambitious and expensive.

----

Solar Sail Official Blames Rockets

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 24, 2005
Filed at 12:10 a.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Solar-Sail.html?pagewanted=print

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Officials in charge of the Russian rocket that failed during launch of a spacecraft carrying a solar sail believe that the booster's stages never separated, the project director said in a statement.

The officials believe the rocket went down near Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago that separates the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea, Louis D. Friedman said in a statement from Moscow posted on the Web site of The Planetary Society, the Pasadena-based organization behind the $4 million experiment.

The three-stage Volna rocket, a converted missile, was launched by a Russian submarine under the Barents Sea on Tuesday. Russian authorities have said the booster failed during the first-stage firing, 83 seconds into flight, but there were no details on what the failure entailed.

The Cosmos 1 spacecraft carried eight Mylar sails that were to be unfolded in orbit to try to demonstrate that a spacecraft could be propelled by the pressure of sunlight.

Although Russian officials said the first-stage failure prevented Cosmos 1 from reaching orbit, tracking stations at several points around the globe recorded weak signals that Planetary Society team members said seemed to have come from Cosmos 1, suggesting it somehow reached space but was in the wrong orbit.

Mission officials gave that a very low probability, but were continuing to analyze the tracking station data.

''We are hopeful of having more definitive results from their analysis in the next few days,'' Friedman wrote in the statement.

Friedman is executive director of The Planetary Society, which he co-founded in 1980 with the late astronomer Carl Sagan and former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Bruce Murray. The space-interest group says it has members in 125 countries.


On the Net:

The Planetary Society: http://www.planetary.org



-------- us

Age 16 to 25? Pentagon Has Your Number, and More

By DAMIEN CAVE
June 24, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24recruit.html?ei=5070&en=fd1a1b9461e95b6b&ex=1120449600&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

The Defense Department and a private contractor have been building an extensive database of 30 million 16-to-25-year-olds, combining names with Social Security numbers, grade-point averages, e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

The department began building the database three years ago, but military officials filed a notice announcing plans for it only last month. That is apparently a violation of the federal Privacy Act, which requires that government agencies accept public comment before new records systems are created.

David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, acknowledged yesterday that the database had been in the works since 2002. Pentagon officials said they discovered in May 2004 that no Privacy Act notice had been filed. The filing last month was an effort to correct that, officials said.

Mr. Chu said the database was just a tool to send out general material from the Pentagon to those most likely to enlist.

"Congress wants to ensure the success of the volunteer force," he said at a reporters' roundtable in Washington. "Congress does not want conscription, the country does not want conscription. If we don't want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people to tell them what is being offered. It would be na�ve to believe that in any enterprise, that you are going to do well just by waiting for people to call you."

On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the notification in The Federal Register had drawn criticism from a coalition of eight privacy groups that filed a brief opposing the database's creation. Yesterday, many of those privacy advocates, learning that the database had been under development for three years, called its existence an egregious violation of the Privacy Act's rules and intent.

"It's far more serious if the database had been established prior to Privacy Act notice," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "It's end-running the act by putting it into private hands and subverting the act by creating a public database without public notice."

The issue of the database has emerged as the Army and, to a lesser extent, the Marines, struggle to meet recruitment goals to replenish the ranks of the all-volunteer services. The Web site for the Pentagon's Joint Advertising Market Research Studies division, which manages recruiting research and marketing for all four branches of the military, describes the database as "arguably the largest repository of 16-to-25-year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30 million records." It is managed by BeNOW Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., a marketing company that uses personal data to concentrate on customers.

The database includes the names of more than 3.1 million graduating seniors, a list bought by the Pentagon, as well as the names of 4.7 million college students, Pentagon records show. Drawing information from motor vehicle records, Selective Service registrations and private vendors, it includes a variety of personal information, including grades, height, weight and Social Security numbers.

The information is used primarily for direct-mail campaigns and to help the military weed out people who would not be eligible. It is also sent monthly to the recruiting command, said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, and could be shared with local recruiters.

Recruiters have compiled and used similar data for decades, according to interviews with former military officials. But this database is the most extensive centralized collection of such records. The information is continually being merged for focused marketing.

"Halfway through 2004," said a briefing on the program in February that appears on a Pentagon Web site, "we started overlaying ethnicity codes and telephone numbers."

Mr. Chu said the information, particularly Social Security numbers, was closely guarded and had not been shared with other agencies.

For some parents, any information gathered by the military covertly amounts to an intrusion.

"There is no buffer zone," said Sandra Lowe of Sonoma, Calif., who is a mother of four, including two teenage boys. "It's a direct shot to someone's child without consent from a parent. If you were to come on campus and wanted to take a picture of a child, you have to get a release - just to take a picture. This is a lot more than that."

Margot Williams contributed reporting from New York for this article, and John Files from Washington.

----

Pentagon Developing Massive Database on Millions of U.S. Students

Friday, June 24th, 2005, Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/24/1348257

The Pentagon is working with a private company to create information dossiers on millions of young Americans to help identify college and high school students as young as 16 to target for military recruiting. We speak with the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Center and Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA). [includes rush transcript] The Pentagon is working with a private company to create information dossiers on millions of young Americans to help identify college and high school students as young as 16 to target for military recruiting.

The massive database includes an array of personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying. The Pentagon has hired the Massachusetts-based company BeNow to run the database apparently in an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work.

The new database is being created at a time when the Armed Forces is struggling to meet its recruiting goals. The Army has missed its monthly recruiting goals every month so far this year.

The Pentagon's Joint Advertising, Market Research and Studies Group has overseen the data since 2003, when it took over several recruiting databases managed separately by the military.

Privacy advocates learned of the database only recently after the military - as required by law - put a notice in the government publication "The Federal Register," that it keeps such information.

Some data on high school students is already given to military recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers' license records and other sources.

    * Mark Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC.
    * Mike Honda (D-CA), he is sponsoring a bill that would make it easier for parents to block military recruiters from gaining access to their high school-aged children.

NOTE: We called BeNow to get comment, they referred us to Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke. When we contacted her at the Pentagon, she did not answer our request for an interview. RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to Congress Member Honda in a minute, but right now, we turn to Mark Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. Can you explain this database?

MARK ROTENBERG: Yes. Amy, first of all, it's Mark Rotenberg. And the database that's being proposed by the Department of Defense is an effort to essentially micro-target the recruiting effort. What they are doing is taking information that’s available in public record sources and commercial data brokers and developing profiles on American high school students and American college students who could be recruited into the armed services. EPIC, my organization, which is online at EPIC.org does a lot of privacy act work. And when we saw the notice in the federal register last month about this proposed database we quickly realized that there were Privacy Act problems. And as the story has gone forward over the last month, it's really extraordinary what's coming out now about this program.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the whole issue that the armed forces are saying that they are prepared to share the information with other entities of the government, as well?

MARK ROTENBERG: Right. Well, they're saying many different things. I mean, there have been a lot of conflicting statements, even at the press conference last evening when they were talking about the database. They said on the one hand, it was not going to be used to call recruits directly until someone pointed out that, in fact, they were collecting telephone numbers. So they’re having a bit of difficulty, I think, you know, getting the story straight. But one of the important things about the Privacy Act, and this really does go to your question, is that it requires the federal agencies to explain how they propose to use the information. So the Department of Defense says that in the first instance the information will be used for recruiting purposes, and then they set out what are called the Privacy Act Exceptions. And they list 13 different categories of additional use of the information, including a possible use for law enforcement purposes. They have, in effect, by this notice already announced that they reserve the right to use all of this data that they're collecting for law enforcement purposes and to transfer to law enforcement agencies.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress Member Mike Honda of California is also on the phone with us. He is sponsoring a bill that would make it easier for parents to block military recruiters from gaining access to their high school-aged children through this provision of the No Child Left Behind Act. Congress Member Honda, what is the bill that you have introduced?

REP. MIKE HONDA: Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. Can you hear me?

REP. MIKE HONDA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the bill that you have introduced?

REP. MIKE HONDA: Yes, I introduced HR 551. It's the Students’ Personal Information Protection Act. What is possible right now, because of No Child Left Behind was amended to require school districts, public schools to divulge personal information, private information of minor students without the consent of parents. And if a school district or school denies military recruiters of those information, they shall lose federal funding. Now, this bill is not about denying access to the campus for the purpose of recruitment of the military recruiters. It is to protect and put back in place the parent prerogative to share that information of their minor child's information.

AMY GOODMAN: I just want to comment that we did call BeNow, the Massachusetts company, to get comment, and they referred us to the Pentagon. A Pentagon spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Ellen Krenke said -- well, would not answer our request for an interview.

REP. MIKE HONDA: Okay.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this company, and can you talk about this Pentagon corporate relationship? And also the fact that information will also go to corporations, is this right?

REP. MIKE HONDA: That’s my sense. It's something that just came up. What I do know is that there are federal laws that prohibit federal agencies from sharing individually recognizable information without the individual's consent. What the Pentagon is doing is contracting a third party, that is BeNow, that is a very well known data mining organization that can go out and data mine all of the information that is out there publicly, pull that together for the purposes of identifying individuals, and that would include minors who have credit cards or have, you know, access to certain kinds of information technology, oriented identification, and ability to get – buy or sell things on Ebay and things like that. But information is out there, and they're mining it. And the third party, it seems to me, may be exempt from the federal laws in terms of sharing -- in terms of sharing the data that they have gathered. So they don't seem to fall under it, but it seems to me that it escapes the intent and spirit of the law.

AMY GOODMAN: It's just interesting to point out, if you go to the BeNow website, the company that's going to data mine for the Pentagon, that their other clients include Tower Records, Saab (the car), and MetLife.

REP. MIKE HONDA: Right. And those are the areas where -- those rental companies are not able to share information. They're prohibited from sharing it, but it seems like that the information is available to be mined by BeNow, and gather that information. And, you know, it may be a loophole, I don't know. But the bottom line for me is that military recruiters want to come on campus and talk to students. I think that's fine. But I think that to demand that of school districts at the pain of losing federal dollars is not right, and number two, if schools say, “We're not sharing that information, you need parent permission,” I think that's appropriate. Parents should have the first right of refusal to be able to protect their minor child's private information.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Congressman, you have taken the lead on this issue in Congress. Have you been getting a lot of phone calls from concerned parents that prompted you to do this? Or what are they saying about these attempts to recruit their young, their children?

REP. MIKE HONDA: Yeah. A lot of parents are dismayed that this is going on, and most of them didn't know that this could happen to them and their child. And so, they have complained and made us aware that this is going on. And so, being a high school teacher and an ex-principal of a public school, I understand what they're saying, and I also understand that, you know, public schools have a responsibility to protect their children and be an advocate for the children and for the parents that they serve.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Congress Member Mike Honda of California. Also in the Washington studio with us is Mark Rotenberg with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. How can students opt out of having their personal information put into this database, Mark Rotenberg?

MARK ROTENBERG: Oh, sorry, Amy. Well, there are two different databases actually at issue here. One is under the No Child Left Behind Act, which Congressman Honda described. Parents have the opportunity to fill out a form to say that they don't want their personal information on their children used for recruiting purposes. It's a very difficult provision to exercise. We generally recommend opt in, basically allowing people to express an interest in participating in a database as a better way to go. But that problem and that approach is actually separate from what goes on with the new database that the Department of Defense is proceeding with, which is actually not tied to No Child Left Behind. That database, the one being managed by BeNow, according to the Federal Register, will permit individuals to express a preference not to be contacted for recruiting purposes, but they will still be included in the database, as well as all of the personal information about them that's been acquired. So the privacy protections here that were established are really very weak.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the issue -- we're reading almost every week in the mass media of a new breach of security with these data-collecting services. Now we are getting yet another one being collected by the Pentagon. Your concerns about this continued gathering of information by private companies who often don't have very good security to be able to protect their files?

MARK ROTENBERG: Right. Well, we think that's a very serious issue in a couple of different ways. I mean, one, it's clear this year with all of the security breach notifications that there is a real problem with the security of information databases in this country right now. The most recent breach was about 40 million records maintained by a credit card processing company, and this is also having a direct impact on the crime of identity theft, which according to the Federal Trade Commission last year cost American consumers and businesses over $50 billion. When the Department of Defense announced this database and we looked at the Federal Register notice, and we saw that they were proposing to include the Social Security number, I mean, for us and people in the privacy and security field, that's just a red flag, because it is the Social Security number that enables both the data matching and also the crime of identity theft, and it's another problem under the Privacy Act, because federal agencies, generally speaking, aren’t supposed to collect the SSN.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Rotenberg and Congress Member Honda, I want to thank you both very much for being with us; Mark Rotenberg with EPIC, website, EPIC.org, Congress Member Honda of California. 



-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE


-------- courts / tribunals

Indian Leaders Offer to Settle Largest Class Action Lawsuit Against Federal Government in U.S. History

Friday, June 24th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/24/1349201

Prominent Native American leaders united this week in a historic effort to resolve a struggle dating back more than 100 years, offering to settle the largest class action lawsuit against the federal government in U.S. history. We speak with the lead plaintiff in the case, Elouise Cobell. [includes rush transcript] Indian leaders have offered to settle the largest class action lawsuit against the federal government in US history. Several prominent Native American leaders united this week in a historic effort to resolve a struggle dating back more than 100 years. The issue is the federal government's care of trust funds belonging to Native Americans. The result is a set of 50 principles adopted by a national tribal task force to change how the Department of Interior does business with Indian country.

Trust funds were set up for Native Americans in 1887 under the General Allotment Act. The policy aimed to absorb Indians into American society by breaking up tribally owned lands. Congress divided 90 million acres of reservation land into individualized parcels called allotments. Congress awarded allotments to each tribal member, but viewed Native Americans as incompetent to manage their own affairs or resources. The federal government took complete charge of the Indians' lands and leased the allotments to oil, gas, timber, grazing and mining interests. The money was supposed to be passed along to the Indians, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs often failed to do so. Lease payments weren't collected and when they were, the money went elsewhere. Native Americans have never received all the money due, despite constant complaints and numerous investigations. Some $300 million a year flows into the trust accounts.

In 1996, the largest class-action lawsuit ever launched against the government was filed on behalf of 300,000 trust-fund beneficiaries. Cobell vs. Norton challenges the federal government to account for the billions of dollars held in trust since the late 19th century. The case has dragged on for 9 years. A federal judge hearing the case in 1999 said the accounts were so botched that it was impossible to know what was owed to whom. The court was placed in charge of overseeing the process of fixing the trust funds.

This week, leaders of the Osage, Blackfeet, Navajo, and Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations converged in Washington to announce a set of guiding plans for reform. This comes after urgings from Senate and House members. Sens John McCain of Arizona and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota are now expected to introduce legislation for a settlement in the Cobell case and trust reform. The inter-tribal coalition presented a settlement amount of $27.5 billion as part of the map for reform.

    * Elouise Cobell, Lead plaintiff in the landmark Cobell v. Norton case. She was part of the national working group that drafted the Principles roadmap for trust reform. She served as Treasurer of the Blackfeet nation in Montana before launching the case.

NOTE: We called the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior. Spokesperson Dan DuBray declined to be on the show. RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined by Cobell, Elouise Cobell, that is. Part of the national working group that has drafted the Principles Roadmap for Trust Reform. She served as treasurer of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana before launching the case. By the way, we did call the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior. The spokesperson, Dan DuBray declined to be on the program today. This is Democracy Now!, I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, to begin with, could you tell us a little bit about the meeting that was held over the weekend, the decision to offer a settlement, which as I understand, is much lower than what you believe the federal government actually owes Native Americans?

ELOUISE COBELL: Well, we have been in court for nine years, as you stated. We’ve won every step of the way in court. And basically, it drags on. The government has a way of stalling the victories and, in fact, we want an accounting. This case is basically about an accounting, accounting to Indian people for the lands that you spoke about that they were to manage in trust for individual Indians, and as we won our victory, the United States government would never, ever comply. They just adverted the court orders, but Senator McCain and many members of Congress said, you know, “Well, can you get united?” And I think one of the biggest war tactics that the government has used against us is they continue to say “Divide and conquer.” If you don't -- if you are not united, and if you don't stand with a united front, you know, then we're not going to get anything done.

And so, we basically took Congress up on the challenge, and we came together as Indian people, and Indian people across the nation supported the lawsuit 100% and said, “This is what it will take for us to settle this case.” As you stated, they can't account for anything and the amount of money that we have determined because the Appellate Court ruled in our case that compound interest exists, and it's in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

But in the meantime, in our communities, our Indian communities, which are very, very poor, we have oil wells pumping in your back yard and people not getting any money. And people are dying every single day without their due justice. So, we have determined, with the help of experts, you know, what will it take to settle this case. That was our challenge from Congress, and so we came up with the amount of $27.5 billion. And that's discounted substantially, but we do need to get money -- this is money that is owned by our own people and we need to get that money back into our communities. We need to have people -- it's their inheritance.

You know, it's amazing to me that the United States government could get away with this for so long, and it's very simple. This suit is just -- let me tell you, I'm a banker, and no other private citizen would ever have to sue for what we had to sue for. We sued the United States government for fixing the systems, fixing the accounting systems that manage our money. The second part, we sued for an accounting, and once the accounting is done, then account balances have to be adjusted, and let me tell you, nobody has to sue for that. Normally, if you have the behavior like the United States government has behaved in the management of our trust funds, you would not be walking the streets. You would be in jail.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Let me ask you, Secretaries of the Interior under both Democrats and Republicans now have been held in contempt of court over failure to properly account for these monies, and as I understand it, one article I read said the government has spent now $300 million trying to figure out what they owe Native Americans, and they still can’t do it. How did this get to where it is today? What was it about the breakdown here in accounting that made it possible for this to go on for so long?

ELOUISE COBELL: Well, since 1887, the United States government never ever was – was never made to give an accounting to the individual Indians that owned these trusts. Although that there were zillions of G.A.O. reports, which is Government Accounting Office reports, zillions of Inspector General reports that pointed to this is a horrible mismanagement of these trust funds. There's fraud that exists. You know, money is being stolen from individual Indians, and nobody would do anything about it.

And you know, I grew up with this. I grew up with grandparents, parents that continued -- and relatives would continue to say, you know, “We can’t get our money. My husband is sick, and I need to take him to the doctor, but I can’t get my money from the Indian agent.” And they treated us like dirt. When people would try to get any information on their account, they’d say, “Come back in a week.” You go back in a week. “Well, come back in three months.” You go back in three months. You never, ever would get your money until the United States government decided that, “Oh, well, you know, maybe I will pay you something.” And we just got really tired of it. I got tired of it. I tried to the best of my ability to try to get the government to do the right thing. I knocked on doors between administration to administration. “You have got to see this. See what has happened.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: But, Elouise Cobell, where did the money go? Have you been able to trace some of it that would show who benefited actually from this stolen money?

ELOUISE COBELL: The Treasury Department testified in our case, because the Treasury Department acts as the bank, and the Department of Interior is supposed to tell the Treasury Department who gets the money, because the government collects the money. And a Treasury official testified in our case that this money kept coming in to Treasury, billions and billions of dollars, and they didn't know who it belonged to, because the Department of Interior was too lazy or inept to give the information to the Department of Treasury to send out checks to them, so they said, billions of dollars just accumulated, and they didn't know who it belonged to, so they used it for other purposes, such as reducing the national debt.

And all this time Indian people in our communities are so poor that they couldn't afford to do anything. I mean, basically, they robbed us out of an entire quality of life. I mean, we could have been sending our kids to college. We could have been building homes. We could have health insurance. But in the meantime, the government had control. And they testified in our court case that 75% of the leases were not recorded. So, basically, big oil companies, big timber companies, were using our land for free. And no money was being paid in.

AMY GOODMAN: An Interior Department report provided to the court refers to storage facilities plagued by problems ranging from poisonous spiders in the vicinity of stored records to mixed records strewn throughout the room with heavy rodent activity.

ELOUISE COBELL: Early on in our case, the judge issued an order for the protection of documents, and Babbitt, Secretary Babbitt, Department of Interior Secretary at that time, and Secretary Rubin, the Department of Treasury at that time, ignored it, and so the judge held them in contempt of court for not protecting the documents, because they continued to destroy documents. And you know, they could make Enron look like a shoplifting case, because what they did, the United States government, what they did is they started destroying documents willfully and they cannot -- they cannot do an accounting. That's basically it. But they spent nine years in court hoping that individual Indians, the poorest people in this country, would go away, that we would run out of money, that we wouldn't be able to fight them. They basically took advantage of people that could not represent themselves, but we have stayed in court and we have won every single step of the way, and this announcement that we did on Monday was a call, “We're still in court, and we will be in court.” Let me tell you. I will stay in court until the Department of Interior is accountable to individual Indians.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And could you tell us what made you decide to launch this case? You are the lead plaintiff in this largest class action suit ever against the federal government. What was it -- the moment when you decided, “I'm going to sue the federal government and I'm going to go after this money?”

ELOUISE COBELL: Well, I don't think I have to give you a lesson in history, but for many, many years, the United States government has taken advantage of Native American people. I live on the Blackfeet Indian reservation in Montana. And we have stories that we tell. They're similar to the Holocaust, where Indian agents withheld rations or they black marketed rations that were supposed to go to Indian people after they put them on reservations and put a barbed wire fence around the Indian reservations, and said, “Okay, you be dependent on us, and you can’t carry arms, and you can’t hunt.”

Right near my house, ten miles from my house, is a place called Ghost Ridge, and it was where 500 Blackfeet Indians starved to death because the Indian agent, the Department of Interior, did not provide the rations that they said they were. So, women and children died, and they just dug great big old graves, and they threw bodies in these graves. And my father, as a young child, always would tell us, “Now, you remember this. Don't you forget it. And you continue to tell the story.”

And then when I went off to college, and I became an accountant, and I became a banker, and I started understanding how other people's money were managed, you know, that there was regulations, and there had to be accountability, and I just could not believe how the Department of Interior was managing our money. People would be almost in the same situation: didn’t have money for the basics of life, and yet they had oil wells or they had timber.

And they would come to me and I was in a position because I was the treasurer of the Blackfeet tribe. Individual Indians would come to me and ask me to help them. “Can you write letters?” I would write letters and they would not respond. I would do everything. I went to Washington. I knocked on every single door, and it didn't matter if it was Democrat or if it didn’t matter if it was Republican, they just did not answer. And finally, I just had decided I had enough, that I was going to go out and try to find the money, to make the United States government accountable. And to this day, they continue to try to ignore court orders. And that's what really bothers me, is because, you know, we have laws that have been imposed, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, on all corporations, to make them accountable to people. And let me tell you, the United States government has violated every single one of them.

AMY GOODMAN: Elouise Cobell, I want to thank you for being with us, and we will certainly continue to follow the details of this case, the largest class action lawsuit brought against the U.S. government in U.S. history. Elouise Cobell, former treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana, is the lead plaintiff in this case. 



-------- POLITICS


-------- propaganda wars

Democrats Take Heat For Rove's Rotten Comment

June 24, 2005 Newshounds

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/06/24/democrats_take_heat_for_roves_rotten_comment.php

Defending Karl Rove and shifting the attention and blame to Ted Kennedy and other Democrats was the theme this AM on Fox&Friends. Rove's comments at a Republican fundraiser have outraged Democrats who are asking for an apology but the parade of guests and callers on F&F shifted the heat to Kennedy, Durbin, Moveon, Michael Moore and even George Soros. Below is Karl Rove's comment.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
"Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said, 'We will defeat our enemies.' Liberals saw what happened to us and said, 'We must understand our enemies.' "

Dan Bartlett couldn't understand why Senators Clinton and Schumer were upset since Rove said "liberals" not Democrats and was actually talking about Moveon.org and Michael Moore types not them.

Three callers supporting Rove brought up Howard Dean and Dick Durbin who was called a traitor. The caller thought the Democrats needed to follow Zell Miller.

The clip of Ted Kennedy asking Rumsfeld if it was time for him to resign was shown several times throughout the show and was emphasized over the Rove comment.The Friends had these comments about the hearings with Rumsfeld yesterday.
"How many strikes does Ted Kennedy get?"
"Why does Byrd get 2O minutes just to say hello?"
Then mentioning that Lindsay Ghraham was also critical of Iraq, Juliet Huddy commented that his attitude and tone was respectful compared to Kennedy's.

Around 8:30 Senator Imhofe arrived and Doocy asked with a smirk.
"Will Rove apologize at noon or 3PM?"
Imhofe said it was hard for him to keep a straight face claiming that there are dangerous terrorists down in Guantanamo and "they're (democrats) concerned about what they're served for dessert."

Some other excuses for Rove were offered like it was okay because he was at a private dinner, unlike Durbin in the Senate. The distinction between Democrats and "liberals" was offered several times as if since liberals are such scum they deserve Rove's criticism. The fact that Democrats were angry was treated like a situation too strange to understand and the concept of Rove apologizing was absolutely out of the question.

comment: If Howard Dean made a comment on his cell phone in the bathroom, it would be fair game for the Republicans to attack."Go F... Yourself" from Cheney, on the Senate Floor, is considered a private place but Durbin's comment was public. Of course, as always there was no shame expressed by the Republicans. I think if Rove had accused liberals of eating their babies at birth, the Republicans would have stayed united and on message in his defense.
Reported by deborah at June 24, 2005 08:33 AM


-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

Pennsylvania Awards $10 Million for Clean Energy Projects

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, June 24, 2005 (ENS

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-24-09.asp#anchor6

Pristine Resources Inc. will receive $3.5 million to convert waste heat from a 1.7-million ton per year coking operation into an operation that will produce 130 megawatts of electricity annually. The project will create 179 jobs at the coking operation and another 500 jobs in three coal mines that would be reopened to provide feedstock to the plant. Another 1,000 jobs would be created to construct the project.

The grant is the largest of 17 clean energy grants totalling $10 million announced by the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority (PEDA) Thursday.

These are the first awards by the newly revitalized agency as the state works to build an energy manufacturing base that will realize environmental benefits, economic growth and enhanced homeland security, said Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty.

“We, in Pennsylvania, have the ingenuity and resources to develop and deploy new clean energy technology,” McGinty said. “Our commonwealth is offering significant financial incentives to make energy manufacturing a cornerstone in the state’s economic future and ensure that more electricity generation comes from environmentally beneficial sources.

"PEDA refocuses our priorities on indigenous energy resources by investing in clean, efficient energy made in Pennsylvania," she said.

The 17 selected projects will receive financial assistance in the form of grants or loans for a variety of electric power projects, including wind, solar, biomass, waste coal and coal gasification, and comprehensive redevelopment plans. The state financing supports millions of dollars in funding being invested into the projects by private interests.

Community Energy Inc. will receive $1 million to build a 24 megawatt utility scale wind farm using Gamesa turbines to produce 73,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually

Southeastern Chester County Refuse Authority will receive $500,000 to develop a landfill gas collection system to produce 6.9 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually.

Franklin Fuel Cells Inc. will receive $460,000 to research ongoing development of solid oxide fuel cell technology.

These projects will stimulate the state economy, McGinty said, creating as many as 1,786 permanent and construction jobs in the commonwealth. In addition, the research projects, if successful, could net as many as 327 full-time jobs.

Currently, DEP is receiving applications for the Pennsylvania Energy Harvest Grant Program, which funds projects that save resources, improve the environment, spur economic growth and job creation, and enhance homeland security. The program awarded $10 million and leveraged another $26.7 million in private funds since its inception May 2003.

Pennsylvania voters approved a $625 million bond initiative in the May 17 primary election to fund a set of environmental programs dubbed Growing Greener II, and the administration and Legislature are working to enact enabling legislation to fund environmental initiatives included in Growing Greener II.

"Rendell’s Growing Greener II initiative is critical to expanding Energy Harvest and building on the success that the program and other energy initiatives already have achieved," McGinty said. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

Military shipments debated
Activists, supporters air opinions at port forum

BY KATHERINE TAM
June 24, 2005
THE OLYMPIAN

http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20050624&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=506240325&SectionCat=&Template=printart

OLYMPIA -- Peace activists continued to raise environmental and moral concerns Thursday about military shipments at the Port of Olympia.

Meanwhile, several residents spoke out in support of the shipments and urged the port to continue allowing them.

About 40 people gathered at St. John's Episcopal Church for a forum on the state of the port that was intended to give citizens a chance to ask questions and engage in a dialogue. Most left with the same opinion they came in with.

The debate about whether the port should allow military cargo started last year after the first shipments arrived. About 100 protested near the dock in November, and 150 packed a public hearing that same month.

The port hasn't had military shipments since 1987, but officials have sat down with military representatives annually to express an interest in serving them, port Commissioner Bob Van Schoorl said.

"It's not a new endeavor. It's an ongoing relationship we've continued to develop," he said.

The shipments generated $858,000 last year, or 24 percent of the revenue at the marine terminal, he said. The terminal, which last year brought in $3.5 million, accounted for one-third of the port's total income of $7.5 million.

But some residents urged the port Thursday to look elsewhere for revenue.

"I believe it is morally wrong to kill or have my government kill in my name," said Dennis Mills, an activist. "My property taxes do help fund the port. What I'm encouraging Bob and others to start thinking about is building on a peace economy and not benefit from a war economy."

Questions remain about the health and environmental effects of the shipments, said Carrie Lybecker, a member of Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, which sponsored the forum.

Is sonar, which can hurt marine life, being used? she asked. How can officials ensure depleted uranium, which she said has been tied to lung damage and cancer, won't come to Olympia from the military equipment used in Iraq?

Several residents spoke in favor of the shipments.

"I'm honored to have military shipments through the port," said Duane King, a Korean War veteran. He is a member of Veterans for Peace, but was speaking as a private citizen Thursday.

Sonar is not used for security and cannot be used in Budd Inlet because it's shallow, Van Schoorl said. Ships aren't dumping bilge water into the inlet, either.

Vehicles and other equipment shipped from Iraq are washed of contaminants before they're allowed into the United States, Van Schoorl said.

"There is no and there will be no ammunition coming through the Port of Olympia," he added. "We are not certified to ship ammunition."

Katherine Tam can be reached at 360-704-6869 or at kathetam@ olympia.gannett.com.