NucNews - July 14, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR Purdue findings support earlier nuclear fusion experiments July 14, 2005 PhysOrg.com http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=5130 Researchers at Purdue University have new evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions. Image: Purdue University researchers Yiban Xu, standing, and Adam Butt, in the foreground, look at a monitor connected to a camera trained on a nearby experiment. The research has yielded evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger) The technology, in theory, could lead to a new source of clean energy and a host of portable detectors and other applications. The new findings were detailed in a peer-reviewed paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design. The paper was written by Yiban Xu, a post-doctoral research associate in the School of Nuclear Engineering, and Adam Butt, a graduate research assistant in both nuclear engineering and the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. A key component of the experiment was a glass test chamber about the size of two coffee mugs filled with a liquid called deuterated acetone, which contains a form of hydrogen known as deuterium, or heavy hydrogen. The researchers exposed the test chamber to subatomic particles called neutrons and then bombarded the liquid with a specific frequency of ultrasound, which caused cavities to form into tiny bubbles. The bubbles then expanded to a much larger size before imploding, apparently with enough force to cause thermonuclear fusion reactions. Fusion reactions emit neutrons that fall within a specific energy range of 2.5 mega-electron volts, which was the level of energy seen in neutrons produced in the experiment. The experiments also yielded a radioactive material called tritium, which is another product of fusion, Xu and Butt said. The Purdue research began two years ago, and the findings represent the first confirmation of findings reported earlier by Rusi Taleyarkhan. Now at Purdue, Taleyarkhan, the Arden L. Bement Jr. Professor of Nuclear Engineering, discovered the fusion phenomenon while he was a scientist working at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "The two key signatures for a fusion reaction are emission of neutrons in the range of 2.5 MeV and production of tritium, both of which were seen in these experiments," Xu said. The same results were not seen when the researchers ran control experiments with normal acetone, providing statistically significant evidence for the existence of fusion reactions. "The control experiments didn't show anything," Xu said. "We changed just one parameter, substituting the deuterated acetone with normal acetone." Deuterium contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Normal hydrogen contains only one proton in its nucleus. Taleyarkhan led a research team that first reported the phenomenon in a 2002 paper published in the journal Science. Those researchers later conducted additional research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences and wrote a follow-up paper that appeared in the journal Physical Review E in 2004, just after Taleyarkhan had come to Purdue. Scientists have long known that high-frequency sound waves cause the formation of cavities and bubbles in liquid, a process known as "acoustic cavitation," and that those cavities then implode, producing high temperatures and light in a phenomenon called "sonoluminescence." In the Purdue research, however, the liquid was "seeded" with neutrons before it was bombarded with sound waves. Some of the bubbles created in the process were perfectly spherical, and they imploded with greater force than irregular bubbles. The research yielded evidence that only spherical bubbles implode with a force great enough to cause deuterium atoms to fuse together, similar to the way in which hydrogen atoms fuse in stars to create the thermonuclear furnaces that make stars shine. Nuclear fusion reactors have historically required large, expensive machines, but acoustic cavitation devices might be built for a fraction of the cost. Researchers have estimated that temperatures inside the imploding bubbles reach 10 million degrees Celsius and pressures comparable to 1,000 million earth atmospheres at sea level. Xu and Butt now work in Taleyarkhan's lab, but all of the research on which the new paper is based was conducted before they joined the lab, and the research began at Purdue before Taleyarkhan had become a Purdue faculty member. The two researchers used an identical "carbon copy" of the original test chamber designed by Taleyarkhan, and they worked under the sponsorship and direction of Lefteri Tsoukalas, head of the School of Nuclear Engineering. Although the test chamber was identical to Taleyarkhan's original experiment, and the Purdue researchers were careful to use deuterated acetone, they derived the neutrons from a less-expensive source than the Oak Ridge researchers. The scientists working at Oak Ridge seeded the cavities with a "pulse neutron generator," an apparatus that emits rapid pulses of neutrons. Xu and Butt derived neutrons from a radioactive material that constantly emits neutrons, and they simply exposed the test chamber to the material. Development of a low-cost thermonuclear fusion generator would offer the potential for a new, relatively safe and low-polluting energy source. Whereas conventional nuclear fission reactors make waste products that take thousands of years to decay, the waste products from fusion plants would be short-lived, decaying to non-dangerous levels in a decade or two. For the same unit mass of fuel, a fusion power plant would produce 10 times more energy than a fission reactor, and because deuterium is contained in seawater, a fusion reactor's fuel supply would be virtually infinite. A cubic kilometer of seawater would contain enough heavy hydrogen to provide a thousand years' worth of power for the United States. Such a technology also could result in a new class of low-cost, compact detectors for security applications that use neutrons to probe the contents of suitcases; devices for research that use neutrons to analyze the molecular structures of materials; machines that cheaply manufacture new synthetic materials and efficiently produce tritium, which is used for numerous applications ranging from medical imaging to watch dials; and a new technique to study various phenomena in cosmology, including the workings of neutron stars and black holes. The desktop experiment is safe because, although the reactions generate extremely high pressures and temperatures, those extreme conditions exist only in small regions of the liquid in the container – within the collapsing bubbles, Xu said. Purdue researchers plan to release additional data from related experiments in October during the Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics conference in Avignon, France. The 2004 paper was written by Taleyarkhan while a distinguished scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, postdoctoral fellow J.S Cho at Oak Ridge Associated Universities; Colin West, a retired scientist from Oak Ridge; Richard T. Lahey Jr., the Edward E. Hood Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI); R.C. Nigmatulin, a visiting scholar at RPI and president of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Bashkortonstan branch; and Robert C. Block, active professor emeritus in the School of Engineering at RPI and director of RPI's Gaerttner Linear Accelerator Laboratory. Confirmatory experiments were conducted to assess the potential for nuclear fusion related emissions of neutrons and tritium during neutron-seeded acoustic cavitation of deuterated acetone. Corresponding control experiments were conducted with normal acetone. Statistically significant (5-11 S.D. increased) emissions of 2.45 MeV neutrons and tritium were measured during cavitation experiments with chilled deuterated acetone. Control experiments with normal acetone and irradiation alone did not result in tritium activity or neutron emissions. Insights from imaging studies of bubble clusters and shock trace signals relating to bubble nuclear fusion are discussed. Source: Purdue University This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com -------- britain London 2012 Olympic Park to be built on nuclear site By David Charter and John Goodbody July 14, 2005 UK Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4662-1693416,00.html LONDON’S proposed Olympic Park in 2012 had been the site of an experimental nuclear reactor, it was revealed yesterday. London 2012 officials insisted, though, that the area was free from nuclear contamination and senior bid figures told The Times that it came as a surprise to learn that Queen Mary College’s department of nuclear engineering built a reactor at the Lower Lea Valley in 1980. The college issued a statement declaring that the reactor was closed down in 1982, under supervision by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, and that there were “absolutely no ongoing health implications of the decommissioned reactor”. London 2012 said that it had not disclosed the existence of the reactor to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) because it had not known about it until yesterday and its own environmental advisers had not raised “any nuclear contamination issues”. But the Conservative member of the London Assembly who made details of the reactor public called for a fresh survey of the site. Bob Blackman, the Tory economic development spokesman, said: “If there was an experimental nuclear reactor there . . . they may well have closed it down properly and removed the contamination. But have they surveyed it recently?” Mike Lee, the bid spokesman, said that environmental advisers had assured the London Development Agency that there was “no nuclear contamination issue”. Lee flatly denied Blackman’s claims that he had confirmed there was a nuclear contamination issue with the site. “We were not aware of this issue when we submitted the candidate file to the IOC,” Lee said. “The only time that the bid became aware was when the matter was raised in the London Assembly today.” The candidate file, which was submitted to the IOC on November 15, 2004, was examined by the IOC’s evaluation commission, which visited London in February. No mention of the fact that there had been a nuclear reactor on the site of the Olympic Park appears in its official report, which was published on June 6 and read by IOC members before they voted in Singapore on July 6. London 2012 insiders were furious at the way Blackman raised the issue, dismissing the disclosure as “a storm in a teacup”. Lee has accused Blackman of “scaremongering”. During the meeting, Blackman asked: “This site was also the site of a nuclear reactor at one stage. Can you assure us that all of that contamination has been removed?” Lee responded: “My understanding is that all the remediation work that is needed, the decontamination that is needed, is being planned and is under way. Everybody who has been engaged in this — and there has been a lot of assessment of the area and the land — knows that it will be fully decontaminated and safe before the building work starts.” Asked last night to explain why he had apparently known about the issue, despite having said that the bid team became aware of it only yesterday, Lee said: “My comments were of a very general nature, dealing with contamination. They were not to do with any issue about a nuclear reactor.” In its statement, Queen Mary College said that the now-defunct Department of Nuclear Engineering used to house a small nuclear reactor at Marshgate Lane. It added: “It was used for undergraduate experiments and postgraduate projects, and for training people to work in or on nuclear power stations. “It was decommissioned in 1982 under supervision by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. The reactor was exceptionally small; the core was the size of a bucket and produced virtually no energy. Decommissioning staff were able to stand inside the reactor void with no protective clothing.” Later, a spokesman for the college said that the core was dismantled and removed but that the concrete shield was found to have some minor contamination. Those radioactive parts were chipped away and sent to a nuclear processing plant. “As far as the college is aware, none of the material from the reactor is buried on the site,” the spokesman added. Professor Ian Fells, of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, agreed that there was no risk. “I should be very surprised if there is any substantial contamination from the reactor at all,” he said. “Those reactors were feeble in power — that was the reason they were allowed to have one on a university campus in the first place.” A spokesman for the London Development Agency said: “This seems to be completely spurious. There is no issue here because it was fully decontaminated 23 years ago. It is not relevant what was there years ago if there are no health implications now. There was a full process of checking everything in the area.” No one from the IOC was available to comment. --- Olympic Park on ex-nuclear site Thursday, 14 July, 2005 BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/olympics_2012/4682251.stm London 2012 officials have insisted there is no health risk after learning part of the planned Olympic Park is on the site of a former nuclear reactor. Conservative politicians have called for a fresh survey at the site in East London's Lower Lea Valley. But a London 2012 spokesman said the London Development Agency had already carried out a full environmental impact assessment. "It showed no evidence of any nuclear contamination," said the spokesman. Details of the reactor were revealed by a Conservative member of the London Assembly at an assembly meeting on Wednesday where 2012 team spokesman Mike Lee was questioned about the Olympics. Bob Blackman, the Tory economic development spokesman, said: "During this process, officers at the bid team have been very blase about the problems of contamination in the Lower Lea Valley, but they must take this matter seriously. "We have got a huge amount of building to do and this work cannot even start until we clean the site up." It is understood bid officials did not know about the reactor until Mr Blackman raised the issue. But they are satisfied the area was fully decontaminated 23 years ago when the reactor was decommissioned. The reactor was used by Queen Mary College's department of nuclear engineering, which is now defunct, until 1982. In a statement, the college said: "The reactor was exceptionally small; the core was the size of a bucket and produced virtually no energy. "Decommissioning staff were able to stand inside the reactor void with no protective clothing." London beat four cities to win the right to host the Games, and its bid won cross-party support. Tories say they did not raise the nuclear reactor issue earlier in case it damaged the capital's bid. And Mr Blackman believes a fresh survey of the site will help to resolve the matter. But London 2012 insiders feel he is being "mischievous", and officials have already pledged to carry out any clean-up work - where it is needed - on former industrial sites. Although many sports fans and Londoners welcome the Games being held in London, there has been opposition. Businesses at Marshgate Lane in Newham, where the new Olympic Stadium will be built, have been unhappy with relocation plans. NUCLEAR REACTOR FACTS Location: Main college campus, Mile End, then moved to Marshgate Lane. Decommissioned 1982 Reactor: Was used for undergraduate experiments and postgraduate projects Training: One of three centres which trained people for work at nuclear power stations. Others were Navy bases at Greenwich and near Ascot -------- canada Gov. refuses to assist N.B. nuclear plant Canadian Press Thursday, July 14, 2005 http://www.canada.com/fortstjohn/story.html?id=329754be-fd0c-442d-8509-333bc0b76192 Ottawa refuses assistance to Point Lepreau nuclear facility, above, in New Brunswick. FREDERICTON -- Ottawa has rejected a request for it to provide $400 million towards refurbishing the Point Lepreau nuclear facility in New Brunswick. Andy Scott, the province's representative in the federal cabinet, said Thursday that providing the assistance towards the project -- which would cost a total of about $1.4 billion -- would have set an expensive precedent. “We simply could not adequately build a firewall that wouldn't cause others to come forward with a similar request,” said Scott during a news conference in Fredericton. He said electrical generation falls within provincial jurisdiction and federal involvement would have triggered a clamour from other provinces. “The problem was there was always this other issue having to do with 'can we do this in a way that would allow us to say no to the three power plants in Ontario that are in roughly the same place, as well as one in Quebec?”’ he said. The news from Ottawa drew an angry reaction in Fredericton. Chisholm Pothier, a spokesman for Premier Bernard Lord, told the Fredericton Gleaner the Tory government feels like it has been misled. Pothier said Ottawa is walking away from an historic commitment to the nuclear industry in New Brunswick. “We are disgusted by the way the federal government informed us, basically through journalists,” he said. Pothier said the federal government set a precedent when it backed the construction of Point Lepreau 25 years ago. Nuclear power has provided a cushion from the energy market's volatility, keeping power rates stable in a province heavily dependent on manufacturing. The nuclear power plant came on line in 1983 and faces the end of its life in 2008. It employs 700 workers and generates one-third of the province's electricity. It remains unclear what impact Ottawa's decision would have on dealings between the Ontario firm, Bruce Power, and NB Power. Bruce Power had proposed it take over operations of the nuclear power plant and then sell the power back to the province. ---- N.B. government considers nuclear facility retrofit without federal cash KEVIN BISSETT July 14, 2005 - 18:31 (CP) http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/news/shownews.jsp?content=n071449A FREDERICTON - The New Brunswick government is still considering the refurbishment of its aging nuclear power facility, despite Ottawa's rejection of a request for major federal help. New Brunswick politicians came out in droves Thursday to express their dismay with the federal Liberal government's decision to deny the province's request for money. Since January, the province had been pressing for about $400 million to help with the $1.4-billion cost to extend the life of the Point Lepreau reactor by another 25 years. New Brunswick officials, including Premier Bernard Lord and NB Power president David Hay only learned of Ottawa's rejection through media calls Wednesday night. Lord said Thursday he heard the news hours before getting calls from a federal regional minister, Andy Scott, and Prime Minister Paul Martin. Scott told reporters during a news conference in Fredericton that providing the assistance would have set an expensive precedent. "We simply could not adequately build a firewall that wouldn't cause others to come forward with a similar request," said Scott. He said electrical generation falls within provincial jurisdiction and federal involvement would have triggered a clamour from other provinces. "The problem was there was always this other issue having to do with 'can we do this in a way that would allow us to say No to the three power plants in Ontario that are in roughly the same place, as well as one in Quebec?' " he said. Lord said that's nonsense, because the federal government has helped the energy sector in other provinces, including the decommissioning of coal plants in Ontario. Lord said he was strung along, trusting the prime minister and members of the federal Liberal cabinet that a deal was coming. "We were clearly misled by the federal government, because in every single conversation I had in the last three or four months, it was very clear that things were moving along," said Lord. Rob Moore, the Conservative MP for the New Brunswick riding of Fundy-Royal, said the federal decision was purely political. "I have almost 100 per cent certainty that if we were into an election right now, Lepreau would have received the money," he said. "That is just how blatantly political these decisions have become." New Brunswick Liberal Leader Shawn Graham said he is also disappointed with his federal counterparts. "Expectations were raised," he said. "The federal government could have been more forthcoming about its concerns of creating a precedent." But Graham also blamed the provincial Conservative government, saying it wouldn't need the federal help if it had better managed the provincial energy file. Despite that, Graham said refurbishment is still the better option than a new coal-fired plant. Lord said a retrofit of Lepreau is still his preference, and he has ordered Hay to call a meeting of the NB Power board of directors to make a decision within two weeks. Hay told reporters Thursday he wants to talk with prospective partners Bruce Power of Ontario and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. first. "We're going to offer them an opportunity to negotiate here before we bring the final proposal to our board," he said. He said the loss of federal funding changes the project and will put pressure on power rates. "In a Bruce transaction it puts more pressure on rates . . . that's where you've got private sector insurance," said Hay. "If we go an (Atomic Energy of Canada) route there may be less pressure now on rates, but we're assuming much more risk, which could translate into rates later on." Bruce Power had proposed it take over operations of the nuclear power plant and then sell the power back to the province. Nuclear power has provided a cushion from the energy market's volatility, keeping power rates stable in a province heavily dependent on manufacturing. Lepreau came online in 1983 and faces the end of its life in 2008. It employs 700 workers and generates one-third of the province's electricity. Refurbishment of the plant would take 18 months, starting in the spring of 2008. Environmentalist David Coon of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick said the New Brunswick government should take this opportunity to shut down Point Lepreau. "It think the provincial government should face up to the reality that this is unaffordable, and we're going to have to transform our electricity system to one that is Kyoto friendly and green, and get away from these giant megaprojects," said Coon. He said the federal government is willing to hand out money from its $10-billion Kyoto plan to help make the transition of the electricity system to a Kyoto-friendly one. --------- depleted uranium Army agrees to pay more for cleanup The removal of more than 3,700 barrels of depleted uranium from Starmet Corp.'s Superfund site in West Concord will begin by late summer, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which was notified this week that the US Army will pay an additional $3.1 million to rid the property of this material. By Davis Bushnell, Boston Globe Correspondent | July 14, 2005 http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/07/14/army_agrees_to_pay_more_for_cleanup/ The department, spokesman Joseph Ferson said, is working out contractual details with Salt Lake City-based Envirocare of Utah Inc., which, he noted, has handled a number of similar projects in Colorado and Utah. It's expected that an agreement will be ironed out within two weeks, after which Envirocare will go on-site, take an inventory of the barrels and then prepare a timetable for removing and disposing of them, Ferson said. He said the project will probably be completed in six months. The long-awaited announcement was hailed by environmental officials and Concord activists as a giant step toward getting a handle on the property's overall contamination. The project, which is critical to the cleanup of the 46-acre property off Route 62, has been delayed since March over the cost of removing and disposing of the barrels containing low levels of radioactive material. They are stored in Starmet buildings. Bids submitted three months ago by Envirocare and another, unnamed, out-of-state contractor exceeded the original cost estimate of $5.2 million by $3.1 million. That prompted the environmental protection department to ask the Army last month to pick up the revised tab of $8.3 million. The Army then agreed in a letter from the Justice Department. In April 2004, the Army had signed an agreement with the environmental department and the state attorney general's office to pay for the removal of the barrels filled with depleted uranium. From 1970 to 1999, Starmet's predecessor company, Nuclear Metals Inc., made uranium-tipped bullets for the Army. Because the barrels of depleted uranium continue to be guarded 24 hours a day, they don't constitute a present danger, according to state officials and other environmental specialists. The announcement that the barrel-removal process will get going soon elicited positive responses from the project manager of the company conducting a remedial investigation of the Starmet property and from a Concord activist group leader. Envirocare offers an excellent ''disposal option for mixed waste, and we'll undoubtedly be meeting with company officials when they tour the [Starmet] site for the first time," said Bruce Thompson of Windsor, Conn.-based De Maximis Inc., which has been evaluating air and ground-water data from the Starmet site. De Maximis is conducting its investigations for the Army and four other parties cited in 2003 by the US Environmental Protection Agency for contaminating the property, which went on the list of the agency's most polluted sites nationwide in June 2001. In addition to the Army, the others found to be responsible by the EPA for the Starmet property's contamination are: the US Department of Energy; Whittaker Corp. of Simi Valley, Calif.; Textron Inc. of Providence; and MONY Life Insurance Co. of New York City. ---- The Dead Children’s Society by Lucinda Marshall July 14, 2005 Dissident Voice http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July05/Marshall0714.htm The global pandemic of abusive behavior towards children is the human species’ ultimate form of self-sabotaging behavior. Execrable as they are, out of sheer psychic necessity we avoid adding up the individual bits and pieces and totaling the damages; quite simply, we can no longer process all the horror that we are confronted with. But this isn't about one or two instances that we can pawn off as an aberration, it’s not just about Boy Scout leaders accused of child pornography or clergy accused of sodomy. We are talking about human rights abuses on a grand scale, abuses that add up to some sort of hideous endgame where if we can't pollute, poison, nuke or bomb ourselves to death, then we go to Plan B and make damned sure that the next generation doesn't stand a chance of survival. It is beyond comprehension that we can live with ourselves in good conscience while 640 million children in the world do not have adequate shelter and 500 million have no access to sanitation. What excuse could there possibly be for 270 million children lacking healthcare and 90 million being severely food-deprived? And why is it that 140 million children (mostly girls) have never been to school and more than a million children throughout the world work in mines? It is crucial to understand that these problems are not exclusive to non-industrialized nations. In 11 out of 15 industrialized nations, for all of our affluence and wealth, the proportion of children living in low-income households has risen during the last decade. Here in the United States, one out of six children live in poverty. In the state of Alabama, a whopping half of all public schoolchildren live in poverty and in one county, the rate is 100%. One in eight (9.3 million) children in the U.S. have no health insurance. Further, according to the Children's Defense Fund's “The State of America's Children 2004," an estimated three million American children a year are suspected victims of child abuse and neglect, eight die from gunfire each day and almost one out of every ten teens between the ages of 16 to 19 is a school dropout. Last year the rate of juvenile homicides in Washington, DC doubled. It should perhaps come as no surprise, given how we treat our own children, that the U.S. is one of only two countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the other is Somalia). Armed conflict throughout the world inflicts a profoundly heinous toll on the lives of children. Save The Children reports that some three million children are involved in armed conflict, of which approximately 40% are girls, many as young as eight years of age. Most of the girls and many of the boys have been sexually violated. According to UNICEF, during the last decade, two million children have been killed in conflicts, between four and five million have been disabled. Twelve million children have been left homeless and more than one million orphaned or separated from their parents. Ten million children have been psychologically traumatized. In countries experiencing conflict, children who are detained are often treated as adults. Seymour Hersh reports that according to Pentagon documents, hundreds of children have been held by U.S. forces in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and we have learned recently about children being held at Guantanamo. (1) The U.S. is certainly not the only country to incarcerate children. In a recent interview with Justin Podur, human rights advocate Sahar Francis explained that Israel also has a policy of incarcerating children, “Israel does not apply the international definition of a child (under 18) to Palestinian children, though it does apply that definition to its own children, for the purposes of incarceration. According to the military orders Palestinian children of 16 years old are jailed as adults. There are no juvenile courts in the military system Palestinians are subject to (there are in the Israeli civil system for Israeli children). The same torture practices are used against children as against adults.” (2) The toxic nature of modern weaponry has a particularly devastating impact on the lives of children. In Vietnam, some 150,000 children born to those exposed to Agent Orange during the war 30 years ago have been born with birth defects. Perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel used by the military, has recently been found in water and breast milk samples in numerous locations in the United States. A known carcinogen, it is not yet clear what the impact of this toxin is on the health of children. In Iraq, doctors report a significant rise in birth defects and childhood cancer during the last few years, likely due to the parent's exposure to depleted uranium and radiation and other chemical weapons. Birth defects have increased from a rate of 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001. There were 650 reported cases in public hospitals between August 2003 and May 2005. The incidence of cancer among children rose 242% in the years between 1990 and 1999. Since much more depleted uranium was used in the recent war than in the early 1990’s and since many cancers take several years to develop, the rates are expected to continue to rise. In addition, the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children under the age of five has doubled since the U.S. invasion of Iraq according to the UN Human Rights Commission. It is likely that we are only just beginning to comprehend the serious consequences that environmental pollution and damage has for children. In Immokalee, FL, clusters of birth defects are being found among babies born to migrant farm workers who were exposed to pesticides. Indeed, a suit was recently filed by a coalition of farm workers, environmentalists and public health advocates alleging that the EPA has failed to protect children from pesticides used on farms. Doctors also believe that as many as 600,000 babies suffer permanent brain damage because of their mothers' exposure to Mercury emitted from power plants that is absorbed by fish and then consumed by pregnant women. Earlier this year, the New York Times published a frightening list of toxins now found regularly in breast milk. They included, PCB's, dioxin, trichloroethylene, perchlorate, mercury, lead, benzene and arsenic coming from sources such as paint thinner, dry-cleaning fluids, wood preservatives, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, gasoline byproducts, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides and flame retardants. It is also now known that women who breathe air polluted with smoke and exhaust fumes are up to 4 times more likely to have children who develop cancer. A recent study also found that gender-bending phthalates (used to make plastic more pliable) have been found in the urine of pregnant women. Boys born to women with higher levels of four different phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises, undescended testicles and other feminizations similar to those seen in animals exposed to these chemicals. The report also noted that when this occurs in male animals, levels of aggression, as well as parenting and learning skills are affected. Girls throughout the world are at particular risk. According to Dr. Lynette Dumble of the Global Sisterhood Network, some 200 million girls are missing from expected populations, with the worst occurrences taking place in countries such as India and China, victims of female feticide and infanticide. Further, hundreds of thousands of girls have been trafficked throughout the world, sold for body parts and sexually and economically enslaved. (3) As I have sifted through the evidence of our collective irresponsibility, I keep asking myself what it says when all the sordid pieces are added together, and praying for some divine insight as to how to end these tragedies. I have two wonderful and precious children whom I love fiercely, and for whom I would do anything necessary to protect their well-being. If anything happened to them, it would be a wound from which I would never recover. But the imperative for ending abusive behavior towards the world’s children goes beyond moral or emotional repugnancy, it’s also a lousy investment policy. Children are the future of our species, if we do not care for and nurture them, we humans have little to look forward to. Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org which publishes Atrocities, a bulletin documenting violence against women throughout the world. Her work has been published in numerous publications including, Awakened Woman, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, The Progressive, Rain and Thunder, Z Magazine, Common Dreams and Information Clearinghouse. Copyright © 2005 by Lucinda Marshall REFERENCES 1) The Unknown Unknowns Of The Abu Ghraib Scandal: 10 Inquiries Into Prisoner Abuse Have Let Bush & Co Off The Hook by Seymour Hersh, The Guardian -- UK, May 21, 2005. 2) Palestinians in Israel's Prisons by Sahar Francis and Justin Podur, ZNET, May 19, 2005. 3) Female Imperilment in the Third Millennium by Dr. Lynette J. Dumble, Said It Vol. 3 No. 3, 2001. ---- A Letter From Basrah to the British People By Iman Al-Saadun July 14, 2005 Islam Online http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2005/07/article_01.shtml Reprinted, with minor modifications, from albasrah.net I am sending this letter to the British people and, in particular, to the residents of London. For a period of hours, you lived through moments of anxiety and horror. In those hours you lost a member of your family or a friend, and we wish to tell you, in total honesty, that we, too, grieve when human lives are lost. I cannot tell you how much we feel hurt when we see desperation and pain on the face of another person, for we have lived through this situation—and we continue to live through it everyday—since your country and the United States formed a coalition and laid plans to attack Iraq. The prime minister of your country, Tony Blair, said that those who carried out the explosions did so in the name of Islam. The secretary of state of the United States, Condoleezza Rice, described the bombings as an act of barbarism. The United Nations Security Council met and unanimously condemned the event. I would like to ask you, the free British people, in whose name was our country blockaded for 12 years? In whose name were our cities bombed using internationally prohibited weapons? In whose name did the British army kill Iraqis and torture them? Was that in your name? Or in the name of religion? Or humanity? Or freedom? Or democracy? What do you call the killing of more than two million children? What do you call the pollution of soil and water with depleted uranium and other lethal substances? What do you call what happened in prisons in Iraq—Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, and many other prison camps? What do you call the torture of men, women, and children? What do you call tying bombs to prisoners’ bodies and blowing them apart? What do you call the refinement of methods of torture for use in Iraqi prisoners—methods such as pulling off limbs, gouging out eyes, putting out cigarettes on prisoners’ skin, and using cigarette lighters to set fire to the hair on prisoners’ heads? Does the word “barbaric” adequately describe the behavior of your troops in Iraq? May we ask why the Security Council did not condemn the massacre in Al-Amiriyah and what happened in Al-Fallujah, Tal a`far, Sadr City, and An-Najaf? Why does the world watch as our people are being killed and tortured and not condemn the crimes being committed against us? Are you human beings and we something less? Do you think that only you can feel pain and we can’t? In fact it is we who are most aware of how intense the pain is of the mother who has lost her child, or the father who has lost his family. We know very well how painful it is to lose those you love. You don’t know our martyrs, but we know them. You don’t remember them or cry over them, but we do. Have you heard the name of the little girl Hannan Salih Matrud? Or of the boy Ahmad Jabir Karim? Or Sa`id Shabram? Yes, our dead have names too. They have faces and stories and memories. There was a time when they were among us, laughing and playing. They had dreams, just as you have. They had a tomorrow awaiting them. But today they sleep among us with no tomorrow on which to wake. We don’t hate the British people or other peoples of the world. This war was imposed on us, but we are now fighting it in defense of ourselves, because we want to live in our homeland—the free land of Iraq—and to live as we want to live, not as your government and the American government wish. Let the families of those killed know that the responsibility for the Thursday morning London bombings lies with Tony Blair and his policies. Stop your war against our people! Stop the daily killings that your troops commit! End your occupation of our homeland!. ---- Object to depleted uranium weapons Originally published July 14, 2005 Battle Creek, Alabama, Enquirer http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050714/OPINION03/507140312/1014/OPINION The U.S. government is exposing the Iraqi people and our military personnel to deadly radiation from depleted uranium weapons in the Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq despite a 1996 United Nations resolution that depleted uranium weapons are weapons of mass destruction - illegal under all international laws and treaties. Depleted uranium weapons are pyroforic metal - bullets and shells ignite when fired and 70 percent becomes a metal vapor, a radioactive gas which contaminates the atmosphere and terrain. Radioactive particles are blown about and ingested by all who come in contact with them. Solar winds transport the radioactive dust around the world, falling to earth in rain, snow, fog and pollution. It takes just four days for DU radioactive pollution to travel from Iraq to the U.S. Iraqis has been exposed to heavy doses of DU radiation; many have died, the rest will have an unimaginable future in their contaminated country. Iraqi children are being born with terrible birth defects - missing or deformed limbs, organs, partial faces, no eyes, horrible blood diseases and mental retardation. Life magazine has an online photo essay of these children. American soldiers are returning with equally tragic contamination - there is a rise in severe birth defects in children born to those exposed to DU weapons. The VA reported 518,739 vets on disability from the Persian Gulf wars. Recent reports show a large number of troops returning from Iraq who require extensive medical treatment, resulting in a $2 billion VA shortfall. Experts believe that anyone who has been in the Middle East and Afghanistan will be contaminated for life and many will have serious medical problems. The World Health Organization expects global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by 2020. To further educate yourself, look up: Depleted Uranium Weapons on the Internet. Write to your congressman to object to DU weapons. Joanna Learner -------- india Nuclear energy tops Indian PM's agenda in the U.S. Thu Jul 14, 2005 10:20 PM ET (Reuters) By Y.P. Rajesh http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=9074161 NEW DELHI - India's prime minister visits the United States next week hoping to seal a growing friendship with Washington with a landmark deal over sharing nuclear technology and backing for a U.N. Security Council seat. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's three-day state visit starting July 18 is being seen by New Delhi as a touchstone of President Bush's intention to take the relationship between the world's two largest democracies to new heights. Singh will hold talks on issues ranging from defense to trade, aviation to agriculture. But the success of his visit may be measured by whether the Bush administration agrees to help boost India's civilian nuclear energy program and back its candidature for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. "What this visit would be doing is reaffirming at the highest level the transformation that is taking place in India-U.S. relations," Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said. "What we are really looking at is a genuine partnership between India and the U.S." Relations between India and the United States have come a long way from the days of the Cold War when the two countries were on opposite sides. India's economic reform program, its huge market, a booming information technology industry, its military might and potential as a counterweight to China have all combined to bring New Delhi closer to Washington. Today, the two capitals are talking about India buying U.S. F-16 fighter jets and nuclear reactors -- a far cry from the days when Washington imposed sanctions on New Delhi after it conducted nuclear tests in 1998. DIFFERENCES OVER IRAN India, which has refused to sign most global non-proliferation regimes saying they are discriminatory, has been looking to develop its civilian nuclear industry with Russian and U.S. help. At present, a measly three percent of India's total power requirement is met by nuclear energy, a proportion New Delhi aims to increase to around 25 percent by 2050. Foreign Secretary Saran said India wanted to move from talks to action when it comes to accessing U.S. civilian nuclear technology. But any deal would have to reckon with a U.S. bureaucracy and Congress still upset over India's nuclear weapons. "If there is a deal on civilian nuclear energy cooperation it will be a major achievement as it basically means the U.S. administration has decided to hold in abeyance non-proliferation laws," said Bharat Karnad, an analyst at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi think-tank. Securing support for India's candidature for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council could be even trickier. New Delhi is part of a group called the G-4 -- Germany, Japan and Brazil, all aspirants for permanent Security Council seats. Washington has opposed a resolution moved by these nations to enlarge the Security Council, saying time is not ripe for change. So far, the United States has only backed Japan, but Indian officials hope Singh might win the White House over. Much hinges on whether the two nations can resolve differences over Iran. India is pushing for a $4-billion plan to build a gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan, brushing aside U.S. concerns over the project as Washington pressures Tehran over what it says is a secret nuclear weapons program. Given India's soaring energy needs, some say Washington might find it hard to block the pipeline deal -- unless it is prepared to extend a helping hand to India's attempts to develop alternative, nuclear sources of energy. "Iran is the big roadblock, there is simply no meeting ground here," said Chidanand Rajghatta, the Washington-based foreign editor of the Times of India newspaper. "It's the ghost in the room both sides will have to ignore to move ahead on other fronts. So far, both sides have expressed intentions to achieve a greater degree of clarity and consonance in their ties. This visit will reveal if they have the will." -------- korea DPRK: Nuke-free peninsula our goal (China Daily/Xinhua) Updated: 2005-07-14 05:44 http://www2.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-07/14/content_460029.htm PYONGYANG: The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the goal of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), its top leader Kim Jong-Il said yesterday. North Korea's leader Kim Jong II (R) shakes hands with visiting Chinese presidential envoy Tang Jiaxuan during their meeting in Pyongyang July 13, 2005. [Xinhua] He expressed hope that the mechanism of the Six-Party Talks could become an important platform to realize this objective. Kim made the remark when meeting with visiting Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, also an envoy for President Hu Jintao, on issues related to the Six-Party Talks. Tang conveyed a message from Hu to Kim. The message from Hu said the Chinese Communist Party and government highly respect the long-standing friendship between China and the DPRK, and that China is ready to make joint efforts with the DPRK to further boost relations. On the forthcoming fourth round of the Six-Party Talks planned for late this month, Hu expressed the hope the talks could achieve substantial progress through exchanges and co-operation between China and the DPRK. "The DPRK expects the next round of talks to be held on time and to make positive progress," Kim told Tang. Kim said he appreciated China's unremitting efforts at resuming the talks. China insists on realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, maintaining the permanent peace and stability of the peninsula, and seeking a peaceful solution through dialogue. Tang said that China's stance on the issue is clear, that is, China insists on realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, maintaining the permanent peace and stability of the peninsula, and seeking a peaceful solution through dialogue. Tang, a state councillor and former Chinese foreign minister, arrived in the capital Tuesday morning and is expected to stay here for two days. He was received by Kim Yong-nam, president of the presidium of the DPRK's Supreme People's Assembly, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang early Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Tang visited the Kumsusan Memorial Palace to pay tribute to late DPRK President Kim Il Sung. He also laid a wreath before the Sino-DPRK Friendship Tower to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the Chinese People's Volunteersduring the Korean War. ---- Can N. Korea let South control the on-off switch? SEOUL (AFP) Jul 14, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050714075219.0m2f0nhh.html South Korea has made a huge offer to supply the North with electricity in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons, but would the Stalinist state let Seoul control so much of its power? That could be the 2,000-megawatt question when six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions re-open later this month -- a new beginning that got a kick-start with South Korea's offer for the power-starved North. "Seoul's energy project must have whetted Pyongyang's appetite as it would meet most of the shortfalls for its immediate energy need," said Dong Yong-Seung, senior researcher at the Samsung Economic Research Institute. "As to the question whether the North would accept the South controlling the power switch ... it was North Korea itself that had asked for electricity from the South," he said. North Korea, fighting shortages of food and power, has repeatedly demanded energy and security guarantees before renouncing a weapons nuclear program that the CIA believes may have produced at least one or two crude nuclear bombs. An international consortium had been building two nuclear-power reactors in North Korea under a 1994 deal between Pyongyang and the United States. That program came to a halt when the United States claimed it had been told by North Korea that it was running a uranium enrichment program. Three previous rounds of six-party talks -- bringing together both Koreas as well as China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- ended in stalemate last year when North Korea walked away from the bargaining table. Now the talks are back on, with South Korea saying it could route 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity to the North -- roughly equal to the total amount the country is currently producing. But that would mean leaving the on-off switch across one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world, between two countries that technically remain at war since the end of the Korean conflict in 1953. Professor Koh Yu-Hwan of Dongguk University said he was "quite certain" that Pyongyang would offer a counter-proposal -- perhaps including getting the nuclear reactors project back on stream if it gives up the chase for the bomb. "It is highly likely that North Korea will ask for a promise to resume the light-water reactor project after the nuclear issue is settled," Koh said. South Korea had already put 1.1 billion dollars into the reactors when the project was put on hold. Before Seoul's latest offer was made public this week, it had been conveyed to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il when South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young met him in Pyongyang last month. Kim then told Chung that Pyongyang might get back to six-party talks on dismantling the North's nuclear programmes as early as July -- and the North subsequently announced its return to the negotiating table. "North Korea looks forward to the next round of talks taking place as scheduled and to obtain positive progress," China Central Television quoted Kim as saying on Wednesday. "The realisation of the Korean peninsula's de-nuclearisation is the target of North Korea," Kim said. "I hope the mechanism of the six-party talks will be an important platform for (its) realisation." ---- Will S. Korea proposal energize nuclear talks? South Korea offered to supply North Korea with 2 million kilowatts of electricity. July 14, 2005 edition By Donald Kirk | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0714/p04s01-woap.html SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – No sooner had Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice landed here Tuesday, on the last leg of her Asian swing, than South Korea announced what she described Wednesday as a "very creative idea" to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear-weapons program. The proposal would supply 2 million kilowatts of electricity - half the foundering North's total energy needs - to be delivered across the demilitarized zone that has divided the two Koreas for decades. Rice's measured response suggest that differences still exist between Seoul and Washington, which is committed to taking a hard line toward North Korea but is eager to smooth over any sign of a rift with South Korea in the South's pursuit of Korean reconciliation. While repeatedly insisting on her trip that North Korea give up its weapons program as a prerequisite for further aid, Rice said the South's proposal would be "very easy" to include in six-party discussions, which the North agreed this weekend to rejoin at the end of the month. So far North Korea has given no real clue of how it will respond. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has frequently reaffirmed his desire for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, only to backtrack on his word. Meanwhile, analysts maintain that nuclear parity with the US is the North's ultimate goal. "North Korea wants to be a nuclear power," says Choi Jin Wook, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification. "It wants to negotiate with the United States on that basis." South Koreans see the latest proposal as crucial to a deal that would replace the 1994 Geneva agreement, under which North Korea stopped making warheads with plutonium. That agreement unraveled after the North in October 2002 acknowledged a separate program for building warheads with uranium. North Korea says it has resumed production of plutonium warheads but denies the existence of the uranium program. Under the circumstances, analysts see little possibility that North Korea will quickly embrace the South Korean plan. Mr. Choi questions whether North Korea will agree to a proposal that would place it at the mercy of the South for half its energy needs. "North Korea would be dependent on South Korea," he says. "If things are ever going a different way, if North Korea does not give up its nuclear program, [South Korea] can't supply electricity. So our proposal is very sensitive." Others here criticize the program, which would cost approximately $5 billion, as a burden that South Korea can ill afford. "We are not so rich as to support North Korea," says Kim Dae Doo, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, affiliated with the defense ministry. "We have lots to solve in [South] Korean society." The deal will likely cost more than the price of simply installing the generators and power lines. As part of the offer, South Korea also proposes investing in mines in North Korea and then importing valuable North Korean minerals. The United States and other countries would also have to agree to resume shipment of heavy fuel oil to the North until the electricity began to flow across the DMZ. That's a package that South Korean officials are convinced will lead North Korea to make a deal. "They've been asking for electricity since 2000," says Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon. "That was even before the crisis started." -------- russia Russia faces difficulty in spent nuclear fuel market MOSCOW (AFP) Jul 14, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050714165642.d0v4nbmz.html Russia on Thursday admitted difficulties with its plans for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, in the face of competition from France and opposition by the United States. Alexander Rumyantsev, head of the Russian atomic energy agency, acknowledged that since Moscow adopted a June 2001 law permitting it to import nuclear waste "we have not imported a single gramme of spent nuclear fuel produced abroad". His comments do not include fuel from power stations built by the Soviet Union in eastern Europe. "France does not let new players enter the market," he told reporters. "And the Americans who criticise us over Iran do not accept the importation to Russia of (spent nuclear) fuel which is under their control in different countries," he added. Russia was not yet able to reprocess large amounts of fuel, he said, adding: "Our industry can only reprocess some hundreds of tonnes of fuel a year." "But Russia can develop its industry." Russia continues to import spent nuclear fuel from Romania, Bulgaria or Serbia under Soviet-era contracts. ----- Russia continues to accept foreign nuclear waste for storage 13:55, July 14, 2005 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050714/40907240.html Moscow - About 900 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel from six countries are currently stored at sites across Russia, a senior figure in the country's nuclear industry said Thursday. Addressing an international conference, Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Non-Proliferation Issues, Alexei Lebedev, deputy chief executive of Techsnabexport, said the nuclear waste had come from Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Libya, Latvia and Uzbekistan. Lebedev, whose company exports goods and services produced by enterprises under the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power, added that bringing spent nuclear fuel into Russia for storage was only possible under "the appropriate agreements." He said that in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union had a number of research nuclear reactors built in other countries as a way of achieving political influence, so now there were more than 29,700 spent fuel rods left over from the communist era, most of them in eastern Europe. More than 200 spent fuel rods will be brought into Russia from research reactors in Uzbekistan in the near future, Lebedev said. He also reported that a program had just been drawn up on the transit transportation of nuclear waste into Russia via Kazakhstan. ---- Group to consider nuclear power plants' construction completion 20:35, July 14 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/business/20050714/40910400.html MOSCOW - A joint working group from the State Duma, parliament's lower house, and the government will consider completing the construction of certain nuclear power plants. The working group on the draft federal budget for 2006 will look into the finalization of construction plans for the Kursk plant's fifth unit and the Beloyarsk plant, as well as building floating plants. State Duma Dpeaker Boris Gryzlov and head of the Duma Energy, Transport and Communications Committee Valery Yazev discussed the Russian nuclear power industry's urgent problems and proposals for the 2006 draft budget. The construction of the fifth unit of the Kursk plant's third stage began in 1986. Its completion is essential to the power supply of Russia's central regions. The construction of the BN-800 unit at the Beloyarsk plant in Western Siberia is linked to the development of innovation technology of creating reactors on fast neutrons with a fundamentally new fuel cycle. The technology makes it possible to considerably reduce the amount of radioactive waste, lift resource limitations and increase the plant security. Fast-neutron reactors with closed fuel cycles are in line with nuclear nonproliferation and security standard requirements. Construction began in the mid-1980s, but without state funding, it will either be extended for an unspecified amount of time or terminated. Another priority direction is industry development on the basis of mobile power units, a possibility based on Russia's considerable experience of making ship-based nuclear stations. Small- and medium-capacity reactors should take higher priority in Russia's power industry, expanding its "nuclear segment," the State Duma leadership said. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Dream of a nuclear nightmare By BILL WITHERUP GUEST COLUMNIST Thursday, July 14, 2005 Seattle Post Intelligencer http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/232391_nuke14.html I dreamed last night of blind horses with a white mane. Such an incident happened after the first test of a nuclear weapon at White Sands, N.M., on July 16, 1945. A rancher living in the blast pattern of the Trinity Test said that, afterward, some of his horses went blind. When they stumbled, fell and then rolled over -- their backs and manes had gone white. In my dream I am naked on the blind, white horse, and we are riding directly into the nuclear fire. No doubt my dream was influenced by two of Alfred Pinkham Ryder's paintings: "The Poet on Pegasus Entering the Realm of the Muses" (middle 1880s) and "The Race Track -- Death on a Pale Horse" (late 1880s-early 1890s). The novelist and short story writer Katherine Anne Porter titled a novella, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," after Ryder's racetrack painting, which shows Death riding a horse in the reverse direction around a track, a scythe in his right hand. I have italicized reverse direction purposely, for we have not put an end to war since the end of World War II: Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the War on Iraq, to name only the four most reported. Gen. Douglas MacArthur considered using a nuclear weapon in Korea. U.S. forces sprayed Agent Orange on Vietnam. Depleted uranium (DU) coats ammunition in the Iraq War arsenal and was also employed in the Gulf War. Though poison gas grenades and shells were used in World War I, with the development of nuclear armaments mankind has created a weapon that not only kills enemy combatants but also poisons non-combatants, poisons soldiers in the field and poisons the workers who manufacture the nuclear components of the weaponry. An atomic bomb or nuclear missile has more destructive power than so-called conventional bombs because those not killed by blast and heat may die of radiation poisoning. Propagandists for the atomic bomb, such as Gen. Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, and William L. Laurence, the science reporter for The New York Times, deliberately drew the curtain over the radioactive horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has now been documented that Laurence was also on Groves' payroll, for PR purposes. Laurence was perhaps the main writer to glorify the atomic bombings. He once wrote of the mushroom cloud that it was as beautiful as a modernist sculpture. This fact should be taught to all schoolchildren: On July 16, 1945, 05:29:45, Mountain War Time, at the Alamogordo Test Range, in the Jornada del Muerto desert (Journey of Death), the most murderous weapon in human history was tested. The scientists already knew that if the Trinity explosion was successful, it would also have radioactive fallout. The rancher and his horses downwind from the blast were not warned of the test. Native Americans, ranchers and others in towns near the Trinity site are still dying of cancer. Workers, family members and downwinders in the Tri-Cities are dying of cancer and the Columbia River has nuclear contaminants in its gut. I know Trinity personally. My father worked at Hanford, helping to manufacture the plutonium for the Trinity Test and for its nuclear twin, Fat Man. Dad died in 1988 from cancer, after 30 years of work at Hanford. A snapshot of my father, when he first came out to Hanford in 1944, shows him on a fake pony, and he has a cowboy hat on. My mother -- the rest of the family was still in Kansas City -- thought it was a real horse and wrote him "to please be careful!" Bill Witherup is a poet living in Seattle. His essay, "Mother Witherup's Top Secret Cherry Pie," is forthcoming in the anthology "Working Class Literature of the United States," edited by Nicolas Coles and Janet Zandy (Oxford, 2006). ---- Reliving the Creation of The Atomic Bomb 60 Years Later By Deborah Block Trinity Site, New Mexico 14 July 2005 http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-07-14-voa42.cfm Saturday, July 16, 2005 marks the 60th anniversary of the first test of an atomic bomb. The explosion took place in a secret location in the desert in the southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico. The “Trinity Site” as it is known, is now part of a government missile range. It is usually only open to the public for one day in April and one in October. But this year, tourists will also be able to visit the historic landmark on the 60th anniversary of that test. VOA's Deborah Block takes a look back at the world's first nuclear explosion. The flash of light was blinding. The explosion, gigantic. The shock waves, earth-shattering. Jay Weschler has vivid memories of that first fireball. He measured the force of explosions for the top-secret government Manhattan Project where a group of scientists created the bomb. He was 15 kilometers from the Trinity Site when the nuclear bomb went off. "It was like a regular explosion but you began to get a feeling for the scale as it rose higher and higher. It stayed bright for so long and it was pretty luminous and it was like no other explosion I'd seen," he said. Now 81, Peggy Shephard saw the rainbow of colors from the blast at her home 200 kilometers away. But she didn't know until about a month later that she'd witnessed a nuclear explosion. She described events that morning. "And I had gotten up that morning, and it was brighter, much brighter than it is right now, for just a few seconds. And then you saw that cloud come with all those colors in it. Beautiful. Beautiful." The first atomic test bomb, and the first use of the bomb, came during World War II. The United States was in a race against time, trying to develop a nuclear device before the Nazis in Germany, who never perfected the process. In 1945, the plutonium core of the first atomic bomb was assembled at a former ranch house, and then taken to the nearby site, code-named Trinity. The bomb was placed on top of a 30-meter steel tower and detonated just before 5:30 in the morning. A huge crater was formed during the blast more than 700 meters long. Intense heat vaporized most of the steel tower, and melted the desert sand into a hard, glassy, radioactive substance that was named trinitite. Later, most of the crater was filled in and the trinitite was buried under the sand. Visitors still find small pieces of trinitite today. The substance used to be highly radioactive. But as some high school science students show, 60 years later, the radioactivity of the remaining trinitite is so low it's no longer dangerous. "From what I measured earlier, this does seem to be marginally radioactive," remarked one of the students. Today, not much is left at the Trinity Site, except for a few legs from the steel tower, and a shed covering a small section of the remaining crater containing pieces of trinitite. A memorial stands at the spot where the bomb exploded. About a month after the blast, the U.S. military dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities -- Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing widespread destruction. Soon after, the Japanese government surrendered, and the Second World War was over. Jerry DuBois, an American bomber pilot during World War II, was relieved when the Japanese surrendered. "We knew that if we had to continue to do the regular bombing in Japan there would be more and more destruction. Naturally, with the two bombs the mortality was high -- in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But if it hadn't been for that, we would have had a widespread massacre on any potential landing (on the ground) or anything." Tom Nathan was a U.S. soldier who was about to be part of an allied land invasion of Japan where casualties were expected to be high. After the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan, he didn't have to go. He says, "I resent when people are anti-nuclear bomb, because I figure it saved my life." John Hunner, a history professor at New Mexico State University, took a tour group to the Trinity Site. He's concerned about nuclear arms in the future. "But hopefully there will be an international effort to contain and control nuclear proliferation, so that weapons aren't developed, because sooner or later, as the weapons proliferate they will be used in anger or combat or an act of terrorism," he fears. Jay Weschler says the scientists who developed the nuclear bomb didn't know for sure what they were unleashing. But for better or worse, the world changed with the explosion of the first atomic bomb that ushered in the nuclear age. ---- Symposium revisits start of nuclear age Veterans, experts are in D.C. for talk on 60th anniversary By Carl Schoettler Baltimore Sun Staff July 14, 2005 http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.bomb14jul14,1,7755377.story?coll=bal-artslife-today On Aug. 6, 1945, in an airplane returning from the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, a young, reflective and religious physicist named Lawrence Johnston wrote a letter to his baby daughter. Dear Ginger, Your Daddy is leaving the city of Hiroshima in Japan in a B-29 bomber, after having dropped a bomb on the city which appeared to almost completely wipe it out. Until we land, only the people in our mission of three planes know what has happened, although there are a lot of Japanese who probably suspect they have seen something new under the sun ... Of course, we hope that it will not be necessary to drop another one. And that this may be the coup de grace that ends the war. But three days later, he flew on the mission that dropped the second A-bomb, on Nagasaki. Three weeks earlier, Johnston had been aboard a B-29 flying over the New Mexico desert when the first A-bomb was exploded in the test called Trinity and the nuclear age had begun. He may be the only person to have witnessed all three of those first nuclear explosions. He's 87 now and he'll join 10 other Trinity veterans today in a roundtable discussion at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington at a public symposium to mark the 60th anniversary of this first manmade nuclear explosion. In addition to the veterans, academic experts and one congressman will address the past, present and future of nuclear weapons. "The farther we get away from the actual events, the more difficult it is for people to grasp intellectually what nuclear war really would look like and what the impart of that would be," says Anne Harrington, director of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control, the sponsor of the symposium. "This is probably the last time any significant number of the individuals who created the science and developed the engineering that allowed this to happen will meet on a major anniversary," she says. "With all of the debate going on right now [about] what we should be doing with the U.S. nuclear arsenal, this is our attempt to put some perspective on that debate - driven by some of the people who created the nuclear age." In his short paper prepared for the symposium, Johnston says, "I have been asked many times in interviews what were my immediate thoughts when we saw the [Trinity] bomb go off? No problem remembering. I burst out 'Praise the Lord, my detonators worked!'" At the A-bomb laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M., Johnston had worked closely with Luis Alvarez, a physicist who would later win the Nobel Prize for his work in particle physics, in creating the complicated system that detonated the Trinity device and later the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Johnston received a patent for the detonator. Alvarez, one of his professors at the University of California at Berkeley, had become his mentor. Johnston was a graduate student at Berkeley in 1941 when Johnston recruited him to work on the creation of radar. He moved with Alvarez to work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Johnston lives now in Moscow, Idaho. He was professor of physics at the University of Idaho there from 1967 until his retirement in 1988. In his paper and in a long telephone conversation before he headed off for Washington, Johnston says the scientists were not at all sure what would happen with the Trinity test. "I was in a B-29 flying at 30,000 feet," he says. "We were hoping to use that as a dress rehearsal." They carried the same equipment for monitoring the blast they would later use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, had second thoughts. "Alvarez got a hurried call from Oppenheimer," Johnston says. "Oppie was worried the bomb might be a lot stronger than they had calculated and that we might be blown out of the sky. He ordered Alvarez to stay at least 25 miles from the tower [that held the bomb]." So they became spectators at Trinity. "Quite a few bets were settled," he says. He recalls that the great physicist Enrico Fermi, one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, bet that half the atmosphere of New Mexico would explode in a thermonuclear reaction. But Trinity went off almost exactly as the theorists had predicted, Johnston says. "What I saw was a white flash on a cloud lit up by the flash of the bomb. There were thunderstorms in the area and a lot of clouds remained. The white flash was quite pervasive. It was just like daylight." He was watching from a small porthole which had replaced the machine gun blister in the side of the B-29. The scientists were in a fairly roomy compartment at the rear of the plane behind the bomb bays. That would be his vantage point at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But on those bombing runs he had more work to do and less time to look. "Our job on these flights was to measure the energy of the bombs," he says. He flew on a B-29 called The Great Artiste, which went in just behind the Enola Gay, which carried the "Little Boy" bomb at Hiroshima. They followed the B-29 called Bockscar which dropped Fat Man at Nagasaki. "We decided the best way was to record the pressure wave from the bomb," he says. Aluminum cylinders dropped on three parachutes contained microphones and a movie camera to record the shock wave. He received the information on the plane by telemetry. Johnston got only a quick look at the mushroom cloud forming above Hiroshima. "For the next five minutes after the bomb went off," he says, "I was very busy calibrating films. We had to tend to business." But he felt the shock wave. "It felt about like somebody had hit the outer skin of the plane with a 2-by-4. It was definitely noticeable but far from damaging." He doesn't remember praying. "I probably should have," he says. The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Johnston was born in China and didn't come to the United States until he was 6 years old. "I am a Christian," he says. "Should I have been praying for the people being killed?" He pauses, perhaps to search back down the years. "I don't think I was. I was all prayed up on what I was doing and decided it was right." But when he got back from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings he found a lot of people were already having misgivings about "our evil deeds." "Oppenheimer was saying 'we have known sin' and quoting the Bhagavad Gita," he says. "Alvarez was very much of the same mind as I was - that it was the right thing to do." In his paper for today's symposium, he says he doesn't have any new insights on nuclear proliferation. "Each of us has a sphere of influence," he says, "and I think we should all do all we can to promote goodwill and understanding." ---- US still pursuing nuclear options 60 years after first bomb Thursday • July 14, 2005 — AFP http://www.todayonline.com/articles/61434print.asp Sixty years after the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert, the United States still has some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert and is considering new weapons such as earth-penetrating bunker busters. The US administration has agreed to pare back its nuclear arsenal from about 10,000 warheads today to about 6,000 in 2012 under the Moscow Treaty reached with Russia in 2001. But even as it moves to retire much of its Cold War arsenal, it has pressed a reluctant Congress for funds for nuclear bunker-buster studies, refurbished nuclear testing facilities, and a facility to build the plutonium triggers for new weapons. The US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, is reported to be developing "global strike" options, including a nuclear option, against potential adversaries with nuclear weapons such as Iran and North Korea. More than 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, nuclear weapons "are alive and well," said Robert S. Norris, an expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an arms control and environmental advocacy group. Norris points to the administration's Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 as "the revealing document" that shows its intention to use nuclear weapons to counter a new cast of potential adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction. The review called for a "new triad" in which conventional and nuclear forces would be meshed in a "global strike" capability, enabling the United States to respond to a threat anywhere in the world on very short notice. It envisioned more precise long-range missiles armed with conventional warheads as well as smaller, lower yield nuclear tips. The other parts of the triad are missile defense systems and a revived infrastructure of weapons labs and production facilities that had deteriorated since the end of the Cold War. "So the vision of the Bush administration is that we are going to need nuclear weapons well out into the middle of the 21st century, and beyond. I mean for decades to come," said Norris. But the administration appears not to have counted on Representative David Hobson. The Ohio Republican, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs, stunned the administration by rejecting last year's request for new nuclear weapons funding. He nixed nine million dollars in funding for research into new low yield "mini-nukes;" denied another 27.6 million dollars request for study of a Robust Nuclear Earth-Penetrating Weapon; and put off a request for another 30 million dollars for a new plant to manufacture the plutonium pits that trigger nuclear explosions. "The development of new weapons for ill-defined future requirements is not what the nation needs at this time," Hobson said in a speech February 3 to the Arms Control Association. "What is needed, and what is absent to date, is leadership and fresh thinking for the 21st Century regarding nuclear security and the future of the US stockpile," he said. The United States currently has 5,300 operational nuclear warheads, and another 5,300 in reserve, said Victoria Sampson, an expert at the Center for Defense Information. "We have about 2,000 which are on hair trigger alert, which means they can be ready to go within minutes of that decision to launch," she said. Hobson and others are worried that new nuclear weapons initiatives could lower the threshhold for their use, and warned it would send the wrong signal at a time when the United States was demanding that North Korea and Iran stop their weapons programs. But the administration has struck back with a request for 8.5 million dollars of renewed funding for the nuclear earth penetrator in 2006. It also has asked for 25 million dollars to get its Nevada test site ready to resume testing in 18 months if needed, instead of the 24 to 36 months it would currently take. Those requests are working their way through Congress where opposition remains strong. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that only "very large, very dirty nuclear bombs" could now destroy the increasing numbers of facilities that potential adversaries have buried deep underground. "So the choice is: do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between. That is the issue," he said in April. "It seems to me studying it makes all the sense in the world," he said. But scientists warn that no earth-penetrating nuclear weapon could bore deep enough to trap devastating fallout that the National Academy of Sciences has concluded would still kill more than a million people on the surface if it was near a densely populated urban area. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Arkansas, others in compact, discuss how to spend $141 million PEGGY HARRIS Associated Press Writer, Thursday, July 14, 2005 http://ap.thecabin.net/pstories/state/ar/20050714/3160013.shtml LITTLE ROCK — Representatives from four states gathered Thursday to discuss the future of a nuclear waste compact that, after two decades, began falling apart after a fifth state, Nebraska, refused to license a dump to handle low-level nuclear material. Delegates from Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma were to decide what to do with $141 million that Nebraska will pay to the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. Nebraska, a former member of the pact, agreed last year to pay a lump sum Aug. 1 to other members to settle a federal lawsuit over its refusal to license a low-level waste dump in the northeastern corner of that state. Laura Gilson, who chairs the compact and is Arkansas' representative, said the two-day meeting will be useful in deciding what the group should do next: disband after distributing the money among the states, the utilities and research operations that have paid into the endeavor over two decades, or look for another disposal site. In 1980, Congress passed a law requiring states to form regional compacts to dispose of their low-level waste, such as tools from nuclear power plants and needles from hospitals, or be individually responsible for the waste. No compact to date has opened a regional dump and the country's low-level waste is primarily handled by private dumps in South Carolina, Utah and Washington state. The Central Interstate compact was formed in 1983. Each member state has paid about $750,000, while private companies have posted millions. According to the compact office in Lincoln, Neb., the states and waste generators contributed nearly $89 million to the failed disposal facility project in Butte, Neb. Of that, the major generators and their estimated shares of the total were Entergy Arkansas, 21 percent; Entergy Gulf States, 17 percent; Entergy Louisiana, 16 percent; Nebraska Public Power District, 16 percent, Omaha Public Power District, 13 percent; and Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, 17 percent. In Arkansas, the state contribution came from the Health Department budget. Gilson has said she's keeping an open mind about whether the compact should remain intact. She said the Barnwell disposal site in South Carolina, which handles much of Arkansas' waste, has been regularly threatening to close for financial reasons. She said it probably would be a good idea to hold onto the settlement money and keep the compact alive, at least on paper, in case a publicly operated disposal site were needed in the future. On the Net: Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact http://cillrwcc.org/ -------- california PG&E studying tsunami threat to Diablo Seismologists gathered information in Sumatra that will be used to show how the coast could be affected to Diablo By David Sneed The Tribune Thu, Jul. 14, 2005 http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/12131008.htm Earthquake experts with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are launching a $500,000 study to decide how the utility might need to better protect Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in the event of a large tsunami. In May, PG&E seismologists toured the Banda Aceh region of Sumatra, which was devastated by the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami and the undersea earthquake that spawned it. The information they gathered will be used to generate computer models showing how tsunamis from a quake in the Pacific Ocean might affect the California coast and the nuclear plant. In addition to large waves, tsunamis also cause the ocean to temporarily recede, which creates problems for power plants. The study should be completed by the end of the year. PG&E might present the findings at a local public forum, given the high level of interest in the subject, said Stuart Nishenko, a senior seismologist with PG&E who participated in the Sumatra tour. Large earthquakes, especially ones that spawn killer tsunamis, are unusual events. Each time one happens, it's a chance to learn and update the threat potential to Diablo Canyon, Nishenko said. Nuclear watchdog groups applaud the study -- and PG&E's initiative. But Rochelle Becker, executive director of the San Luis Obispo group Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have required the study in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami. "This is just another example of inadequate regulation that could result in immeasurable economic risks to our state," she said. Assessing the risk The scientists, including PG&E's chief seismologist, Lloyd Cluff, toured a cement factory as well as several oil and gas facilities. They were heartened to see that the cement factory was not destroyed. "That gives us some indication that well-engineered structures can survive tsunamis when everything else is lost," Nishenko said. That confirmed the company's belief that Diablo Canyon would be able to withstand the largest waves that could be created by earthquake faults offshore of the plant, he said. The plant was built with the possibility of earthquakes and tsunamis in mind. "We are still confident that we have addressed these issues and we are still in a safe position," he said. Earthquakes are a major concern for nuclear plants. PG&E shut down its Humboldt Bay plant in the 1970s after determining there were too many earthquakes in that area of Northern California to safely operate the plant. PG&E seismologists believe Diablo Canyon does not face the potential of a tsunami similar to Sumatra or Humboldt Bay. They believe that storm-driven waves, which can grow to heights in excess of 20 feet, pose a greater threat than tsunamis. Other potential dangers The closest earthquake fault to Diablo Canyon is the Hosgri, just offshore of the plant. Although there is scientific debate about this, many earthquake experts believe that the Hosgri fault moves horizontally and is likely to generate tsunami waves no more than six feet in height. The nearest Pacific Ocean fault that has historically moved vertically and is capable of generating larger tsunamis is the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest. Over the past 3,000 years, the largest tsunami that fault generated was 40 feet. Diablo Canyon sits 85 feet above sea level on coastal bluffs that would provide protection from waves of that size, Nishenko said. The curve of the Pacific Coast would provide additional protection, causing waves from the Cascadia fault to hit the Central Coast at an angle, rather than straight on. The scientists also will look at a recently discovered phenomenon called edge waves -- tsunamis that are refracted by the shoreline and concentrate in shallow coastal waters, causing larger than expected waves in some places farther away from the epicenter of the quake. "We will see how that contributes to overall wave run-up," Nishenko said. Also potentially dangerous for nuclear plants is that tsunamis cause the ocean to recede from the shoreline as a large wave approaches. Power plants need a constant supply of water to cool the generators, and losing that supply, even for a short time, would be a problem. Nishenko said Diablo Canyon's water intake structure is 16 feet below the surface, meaning that the ocean level would have to drop 16 feet before cooling water would be lost. The plant also has plans in place to deal with the loss of ocean water, including shutting the plant down, releasing steam from the generators and using fresh water stored in ponds behind the plant as a backup cooling water source. -------- colorado Feds should acquire Flats mineral rights Sunday, July 14, 2005 Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_2858716 Colorado's House delegation should work to ensure that the Rocky Flats site can be turned into a wildlife refuge by preventing it from being mined. Cleanup at Rocky Flats, the Colorado Superfund site with the most hazardous wastes, could be basically done by Halloween, although a few environmental projects will continue. The looming date means Colorado leaders must scramble to put in place a series of important policies, because in the future federal officials won't be as focused as they are now on solving lingering problems at the site. Topping the list are private mineral rights that, if developed, could wreck plans to make Rocky Flats a wildlife refuge. For 50 years, the government used a few hundred acres at the core of the Rocky Flats site for nuclear weapons production. The industrial area was contaminated and will remain the Department of Energy's burden. Outside the core, the government left about 6,000 acres as a security and safety zone. Today that relatively untouched buffer zone harbors some of the last natural short-grass prairie on the Front Range - prime habitat for several endangered species. In a few years, after environmental reports are finished, the U.S. Department of Interior is slated to manage the old buffer zone as a wildlife refuge. But the feds never acquired rights to gravel, oil and other minerals under the site. Interior officials fret that it will make no sense to operate a wildlife refuge if the property could be mined. Four years ago, U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, and U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, an Eldorado Springs Democrat, successfully co-sponsored a bill designating Rocky Flats' buffer as a national wildlife refuge once the cleanup is done. Two weeks ago, Allard and Colorado's U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, a Democrat, got the Senate to OK $10 million to buy part of the mineral rights. This month, Udall is supposed to serve on a conference committee, where he will work to ensure that the federal agencies involved have legal authority to buy the mineral rights. Udall and U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, a suburban Republican, also are co-sponsoring a bill that would permit an exchange of Rocky Flats mineral claims for mineral rights elsewhere. Meanwhile, Allard is pushing a Senate version of the bill giving federal agencies the clout to buy the minerals. But the group that represents cities and counties near the site, the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, has raised important red flags. Allard's bill deals with only four parcels covering 540 acres, but there are at least another 2,200 acres of mineral rights at Rocky Flats. The federal government should acquire all of them. Worse, in exchange for acquiring the minerals, the DOE wants off the hook for potential future legal liabilities. The federal Superfund law gives states like Colorado the right to seek reimbursement if their natural resources, such as clean water or soils, were harmed by Superfund sites. Colorado no doubt could file such claims. But Allard's measure would exempt the DOE not only for damages that already have happened, but also from any future liability even if problems were found with the Rocky Flats cleanup decades from now. That's a concern because the DOE isn't cleaning up all the contamination. For example, there's neither the federal funds nor the technology to completely cleanse the site's soils. Bluntly, the DOE wants to strong-arm Colorado into surrendering its legal rights far into the future in exchange for doing what the feds ought to be doing anyway. Allard, Salazar, Udall and Beauprez deserve praise for trying to resolve the minerals issue. But Colorado shouldn't have to give up its right to seek compensation in case something goes wrong at the site years from now. -------- georgia Southern Co. Likely to Locate Nuclear Power Plant on Waynesboro, Ga.-Area Site 2005/07/14 09:01:05 CDT Atlanta Journal-Constitution http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=174200 Jul. 14--Southern Co.'s first new nuclear power plant in decades will likely sit on the Plant Vogtle site along the Savannah River near Waynesboro, if the energy giant decides to build one. That's where Southern has been performing the tests needed to apply for an initial permit for a new nuclear plant, Southern Nuclear spokesman Steve Higginbottom confirmed Wednesday. Southern has said it will apply for that first, "early site" permit next year. The permit requires the company to submit environmental and geological information about a specific piece of land. Southern Co. is doing the testing to get that information at the Vogtle site and nowhere else, Higginbottom said. Despite that, Higginbottom said the company had not yet made a decision to site a new nuclear unit there -- or anywhere else, for that matter. Like other energy companies now inching through the nuclear permitting process for the first time in almost 30 years, Southern Co. says it has made "no commitment" to actually build a plant but wants to keep its options open. No new nuclear power plant project has been licensed since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Construction on the two existing nuclear units at Plant Vogtle began before that, although the units weren't completed until the late 1980s. Safety concerns and the high cost of building nuclear plants left the industry and Wall Street wary of new plants. Plant Vogtle's units, originally estimated to cost $975 million, ended up costing nearly $9 billion by the time they were done. Aversion to nuclear building continued in the 1990s as electric deregulation -- then considered imminent -- threatened utilities' ability to recoup building costs. Interest in widespread electric deregulation has since waned. The Bush administration has been actively promoting a nuclear comeback and supported a new, streamlined permitting process to encourage utilities to try again. The new permitting system, the possibility of federal financial assistance, new and purportedly cheaper plant designs, and the threat of caps on greenhouse gases emitted by other kinds of power plants all helped revive utility interest in nuclear power. Southern Co. has been publicly tiptoeing toward nuclear power since early last year. It joined a consortium of utilities dedicated to "testing" -- read "applying for" -- new permits, and independently announced intentions to apply for a site permit by next year. Higginbottom said a new nuclear power plant would take about 10 years to bring on line. In addition to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the project would have to clear the Georgia Public Service Commission and state environmental regulators. Southern Co. has been meeting with community leaders in Waynesboro to talk about a new plant. "Southern Co., and Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power, have been very helpful in keeping us abreast of their plans and what they're doing," said Waynesboro Mayor Jesse Stone. Stone said Waynesboro and the surrounding county supported a new nuclear plant at Vogtle and that the original 1970s plans there called for four plants, not the current two. "We always wanted those two more," he said. "We've met with them several times to express our support," he said. "A wide range of community leaders have, and have expressed our unanimous support." State environmental activists, meanwhile, are promising a fight. They said the original Vogtle cost overruns alone should discourage investment in a new nuclear plant. "This diverts time and money from cheaper and safer and more resilient energy alternatives that are going to serve local communities far better than nuclear power can," said Rita Kilpatrick, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "It's an unsafe technology, with phenomenal costs and risks," she said. Neill Herring -- of the state Sierra Club -- said he had no faith that cost overruns wouldn't dog a new nuclear project. And he said a proposed new plant at the Vogtle site would be devastating for the Savannah River. The existing plants pull millions of gallons of water daily from the river and discharge some of it back at higher temperatures. "The river just can't take another plant discharging into it," Herring said. "The river is maxed out." Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. -------- nevada New deadline set on Yucca Mountain Energy Department won't give up data By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Thursday, July 14, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jul-14-Thu-2005/news/26879133.html WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter set a new deadline Wednesday for the Energy Department to hand over documents related to Yucca Mountain workers' e-mails. Porter, R-Nev., gave DOE officials until Monday to comply with a demand issued in April by the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee. Porter, the panel's chairman, is investigating allegations of improper pressures and misconduct on the nuclear waste project. "I am giving them one last opportunity," Porter said when Energy Department leaders missed a Wednesday deadline. Porter said he will seek to subpoena material concerning e-mails in which scientists appear to discuss shortcomings in quality assurance documentation of water flow research at the Nevada site. Porter sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman demanding the documents by Monday. DOE spokesman Allen Benson said officials are reviewing the letter. Energy Department officials have expressed concern that disclosure of certain documents could interfere with investigations by inspectors at the Energy and Interior departments, and with a document database being compiled at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. DOE's acting general counsel, Eric Fygi, proposed in letters Friday and last month that subcommittee investigators review material at the agency's headquarters. Porter rejected the offer, saying, "I'm sorry, that is an insult to the congressional process." The subcommittee had held two hearings on the e-mails, which were written between 1998 and 2000 by scientists assigned by the U.S. Geological Survey to collect data and write computer models on water flow at the repository site. Joseph Hevesi, a USGS hydrologist who wrote some of the e-mails, was subpoenaed to testify and told the subcommittee June 29 that he did not falsify documents on Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Hevesi testified that some provocative messages were written out of job frustration but not malice. He said others contained science jargon that could be wrongly interpreted. ---- Editorial: Will politics decide Yucca? LAS VEGAS SUN July 14, 2005 http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/jul/14/519048583.html A year ago Nevada's legal fight against storing the nation's high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain scored a near-knockout blow. A federal appeals court ruled that a critical safety standard governing Yucca's construction was not even close to being met. The standard had to do with the science of nuclear waste, and for how long its radiation would pose a lethal danger to the outside world once buried. Congress had ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to set a "radiation standard," which would be integral to how a proposed nuclear waste dump would be built and how the waste would be contained. Congress had also ordered the EPA to rely on calculations by the National Academy of Sciences in setting the standard. The Academy said the standard should be set for the peak life of the radiation, which is about 300,000 years. The EPA, however, had set the standard at 10,000 years. This was a gift to the Energy Department, which must apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to operate Yucca Mountain. Given the political will at the federal level for Yucca Mountain to open, it's conceivable that the department could persuade regulators that Yucca Mountain would be safe for 10,000 years. It would be impossible to make that case if the standard were 300,000 years. The court gave the EPA two options: Write a new standard based on the academy's recommendation, or persuade Congress to drop the requirement that it rely on the academy's scientific judgment. The EPA is working on a new standard. But wouldn't you know it? This week Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy Committee, said he intends on his own to introduce a bill in the fall that could mandate a 10,000-year radiation standard. Because of the court's ruling, the Yucca Mountain project is near death. But if successful, Barton's bill could lead to its full recovery. And this would prove, once again, that Yucca Mountain is a political endeavor having very little to do with science. ---- House member plans measure to speed opening Nevada nuclear dump July 14, 2005 Associated Press. http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3591386 LAS VEGAS -- A key House lawmaker said he plans to introduce a comprehensive nuclear waste bill in the fall that could speed the opening of a national radioactive waste repository in Nevada. House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, told a Las Vegas newspaper for Wednesday's editions that his measure could mandate a 10,000-year radiation standard for the Yucca Mountain project. Barton said he may also include a plan for storing radioactive waste at temporary storage sites while Yucca Mountain is being developed and give the Energy Department more access to funds outside the spending constraints of the annual congressional budget. All three of the proposals have been floated previously by pro-Yucca lawmakers, with limited success. They have drawn strong opposition from Nevada lawmakers, who said they would again oppose Barton's proposals. Any new legislation designed to speed Yucca would be "dead on arrival as far as we're concerned," said Jack Finn, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Since 1987, the nation's nuclear waste policy has focused on developing an underground repository at Yucca Mountain. President Bush and Congress approved the site in 2002. The program has been slowed in recent months by budget shortfalls, controversy about scientific research at the site and a crucial court ruling last year on the radiation standard. The proposal allowing Congress to set the radiation rule would essentially negate the July 2004 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It threw out the 10,000-year standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency, forcing the Energy Department to postpone plans seeking a license to operate the repository. The EPA is expected to set a new standard sometime this year. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said there was a possibility the GOP-controlled Congress could embrace the proposals. But Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the House Budget Committee has no appetite for giving the Energy Department more control of the national nuclear waste fund. "It takes away our congressional oversight of taxpayer-dollar expenditures, which no one believes is a good idea," he said. Nuclear industry leaders have said the proposal does not strip away oversight, just artificial annual budget caps. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said changing Yucca funding rules would be a "major step in the wrong direction," at a time when "red flags" have been raised about Yucca's viability as a repository site. Porter is leading a House investigation into e-mails suggesting some quality assurance documents relating to the project were falsified. The Yucca site is expected to entomb 77,000 tons of high-level commercial, military and industrial radioactive waste now stored at sites in 39 states. Project planners have pushed back the target for opening the repository from 2010 to 2012 or later. ---- Barton plans to write nuclear waste bill By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Thursday, July 14, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jul-14-Thu-2005/news/26879681.html WASHINGTON -- A House committee chairman plans to begin writing a nuclear waste bill this fall that would remove barriers holding up Yucca Mountain, according to state officials and industry lobbyists. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, intends to revive legislation that would grant the Department of Energy greater access to construction funds for the nuclear waste repository, according to lobbyists who met with him recently. Barton, the influential chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters this week he is weighing other initiatives to expedite the stalled program and make changes in the nation's nuclear waste policy. He has said he would turn to nuclear waste after Congress completes action on a major energy policy bill, most likely later this year. Proposals being studied by Barton reportedly include resolving a court ruling on Yucca Mountain radiation safety standards by requiring them to remain at the current 10,000-year level. Committee spokesman Larry Neal said Wednesday that "Barton's plan is to provide full funding for Yucca Mountain. Others may have other ideas, and they may be glorious things and worth considering, but the chairman has not drafted a bill to implement them." Charles Pray, a Maine nuclear safety official, and David Wright, a state utility regulator from South Carolina, said Barton told them in a June 29 meeting that he planned for his committee to begin forming a repository accounting bill this fall, and continuing into next year. Pray and Wright are co-chairmen of the Yucca Mountain Task Force, a pro-repository coalition. In an interview on June 30, the task force leaders said Barton did not mention other nuclear waste initiatives that might be included in such a bill. House lawmakers have worked over the past half dozen years to reclassify Yucca Mountain budget accounts to grant the Energy Department easier access to $750 million that nuclear utilities pay each year into a nuclear waste fund. Department officials have cited underfunding by Congress as one reason for delays in the repository which was supposed to open in 1998. DOE more recently has abandoned a proposed 2010 opening, and experts say it could be 2015 or later before Yucca Mountain might begin accepting nuclear waste. Although the House has been supportive of Yucca legislation, efforts have stalled in the Senate where Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a repository opponent, has put up roadblocks. "My reaction is to not be too excited about whatever is brewing in the House, because the challenge for those who seek such solutions is getting anything supported through the Senate," said Brian O'Connell, nuclear waste project director for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. -------- new jersey Scarpelli petitions NRC for change in relicensing rules Mayor says Oyster Creek should be judged on state of county today BY JENNIFER DOME Staff Writer July 14, 2005 Brick, NJ, Bulletin http://bulletin.gmnews.com/news/2005/0714/Front_page/021.html BRICK — Mayor Joseph Scarpelli has decided that, at least where the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant is concerned, compromise may be the best solution. Scarpelli has been working for some time with local and state environmental groups that are lobbying with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) against relicensing the power plant. Located on an 800-acre tract in the Forked River section of Lacey Township, Oyster Creek has been in operation since 1969 and is the oldest large-scale commercial nuclear reactor in the United States. The plant’s owner, Exelon Corp., is expected to apply for a 20-year license extension with the NRC to keep the plant running until 2029. The plant’s current license expires in 2009. Speaking at Brick’s Bayside Park last Thursday, Scarpelli said he will petition the NRC to change their requirements for renewal of the operating license. He said the requirements need to be amended because otherwise, Oyster Creek’s relicensing will be based on standards when the plant opened — 36 years ago. “We’re taking this approach because we know this approach may be the most viable because of the bureaucracy we have to deal with,” Scarpelli said. The idea to petition the NRC to change their relicensing requirements was passed on from another elected official, Andrew Spano of Westchester County, N.Y., who is fighting to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant. “They’re looking at criteria that’s 36-40 years old,” Scarpelli said. “We are petitioning them for change.” The population growth is one of the biggest changes in Ocean County during the past three decades that the NRC should take into account, Scarpelli said. He said that in 1970 when Oyster Creek came on line, the county’s population was approximately 208,000. Now there are more than 510,000 residents in the county, according to the 2000 Census. Among the other items that Scarpelli said the NRC should look at when deciding to relicense Oyster Creek are: • the impact of population growth on local infrastructure; • changes in technology; • the age and state of technology for the plant; • the plant’s safety and security record; • evacuation plans; and • storage procedures for spent nuclear waste. Kelly McNicholas, of the Sierra Club, said most children are taught to think of “safety first.” “Safety first — and the fact that the federal government is ignoring that is just a disgrace,” McNicholas said. The Sierra Club, the New Jersey Environmental Federation, the New Jersey Public Information Research Group and Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch, among other groups, said they support Scarpelli’s petition. “Anything that we can do to nudge the NRC to change their requirements, because they’re so outdated, should be done,” said Grace Costanzo of the Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch. Scarpelli has supported shutting down the plant altogether. However, he said he believes the plant would not pass inspection if the NRC adopts the additions he’s proposed. “The NRC should be the toughest agency in Washington [D.C.],” Scarpelli said. “[But] they have the reputation of being a rubber stamp for the nuclear power industry.” In December, Brick hosted a hearing for the state Assembly’s Environment and Solid Waste Committee during which plant executives, plant union workers and environmental groups presented testimony on both sides of the issue. At that time, the vice president of Exelon’s regional office, Bill Levis, said the plant will undergo rigorous reviews before the federal NRC makes a decision to extend the license or not. Nuclear power provides 50 percent of the electricity in the state, and Oyster Creek provides electricity for more than 600,000 homes, Levis said. He added that the plant’s evacuation plan has been graded by the NRC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) twice in the past four years and each time it was approved. Numerous union representatives were present at the December meeting and urged their elected officials to think about the men and women who work at the plant while discussing if Oyster Creek should be shut down. The Brick Township Council passed a resolution in March 2004 that opposed the plant’s relicensing and called for its immediate closure and decommissioning. At least 13 municipalities in Ocean County support an immediate closure of the reactor, while others just oppose its relicensing. Only one known municipality, Lacey Township, supports the relicensing. Scarpelli said he would ask other state officials to join him in signing the petition to the NRC. -------- new mexico Sandia researcher shares European physics prize for work; observations transformed Z-pinch field July 14, 2005 Physorg.com http://www.physorg.com/news5167.html Work led to major increase in power output and hastened first fusion success Albuquerque, N.M. _ Some physicists believe that the pulses of power formed in a technique called a Z-pinch may one day be a more efficient source of fusion power than magnetic confinement used by Tokamak reactors, the current leading contender for controlled nuclear fusion. A major reason for this belief began in January 1995 when Sandia researcher Tom Sanford saw strange behavior in the wires forming a Z-pinch as he sat in his office examining technical photographs from a new camera. A Z-pinch is a plasma formed from wires hung vertically and then ionized by a large electric current. The magnetic field accompanying any electric current "pinches" the plasma, which emits energy as its component ions run out of traveling room and are forced to brake to a sudden stop. Sanford's observation, explained below, led him to follow-up work that, by increasing the number of wires in a pinch, significantly increased the output radiation pulse by nearly a factor of three, from 15 to 40 terawatts. The result put Z-pinches on the road to far higher outputs and improved them from a tool of somewhat abstract investigation into a possible source of power from controlled nuclear fusion. For this work and further experiments, Sanford shared the European Physical Society's Hannes Alfven Prize "for the remarkable achievements of the multi-filament Z-pinch development in the recent years" with Malcolm Haines, former director of London's Imperial College Plasma Physics Dept., and Valentin Smirnov, director of the Institute of Nuclear Fusion at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. The three shared a prize of 5,000 Euros, awarded on June 27 at this year's annual meeting of the Society in Tarragona, Spain. Both Smirnov and Haines, in separate interviews, described the considerable depth and longevity of their own contributions to Z-pinch development but graciously gave credit to Sanford and Sandia for his observation and the Labs' subsequent validating tests by a number of personnel. "[Sanford's] technical observation was correct, but he had to be stubbornly persuasive to get resources transferred to this [multifilament] area," observed Haines. Said Smirnov, "The greatest achievement [in Z-pinch work] was made by Sandia in increasing the radiating material of the wires and in reconstructing PBFA II to Z." Sanford's key experiment, which used nearly 200 wires -- something that had never been done -- led to a furious burst of work by Sandia technical staff on experiments that produced nearly 80 terawatts of X-ray power from tungsten wire arrays on an accelerator called Saturn. The increase in X-ray output increased the excitement about the ongoing project to convert a more powerful pulsed power facility called PBFA-II into a high-current driver for Z-pinch implosions. Completed in September 1996 and soon dubbed Z, this accelerator soon produced more than 200 TW of X-rays for nuclear stockpile and fusion energy purposes. What Sanford saw It had been known for more than a century that a large current passing through thin wires would vaporize them, like an electrical short-circuit does fuses. Since the 1950s, it had been observed that thin wires, if strung in the shape of a cylinder, would form a plasma compressed by the magnetic field that accompanies the flow of electrical current. This was known as a Z-pinch. (Z is the direction of the axis of a cylinder in mathematics.) It was believed each wire's ions -- the ghosts of the wires, if you will --essentially gave up their individuality, metaphorically held hands to become a kind of cylindrical gaseous cloud or shell compressed toward the center of the now-vaporized cylinder. Based on this belief, experimentalists around the world saw no reason to hang more than a few wires to form the pinch. Hanging the few-micron-thick wires was a tedious, time-consuming task; they were almost too thin to see and could break in an instant. Adding more wires in earlier experiments did not significantly increase Z-pinch outputs. But Sanford had seen something else. A pinhole camera newly installed at Sandia had electronics that allowed a nanosecond exposure and had no lens to shatter from the force of an explosion. The object of its attention merely needed to be placed at its focal length. Aided by protective devices, it could be placed close to the wire array and take pictures of unequalled clarity. What its film showed was that individual plasma cylinders formed around each wire in a 24-wire array. Each wire, in effect, was self-pinching. And each lurched inward, inharmoniously with its neighbors, in the grip of the overall magnetic field. While the effect of each wire forming its own plasma cylinder had been observed by others in experiments that used 12 wires, it was unexpected to see the same phenomenon with 24 wires. "If they're still clumping like this," thought Sanford, "[using only] a few wires seems like a bad idea." Installing many more wires in the array, he thought, might create the magnetic shell mistakenly thought to be already in place. If the radiated power already achieved were merely the result of individual wire shells in effect staggering inward, how much more power could be obtained from an implosion involving many more wires that created a true shell that compressed coherently toward the center of the pinch? The power created might exceed the simple addition of individual wire plasmas added to other wire plasmas. Experiments with a large number of wires had never been tried because of the complexity of building the arrays. Sanford, with aid from other Sandians, proceeded to find out. He had been trained by two high-energy physics Nobel laureates -- Leon Lederman and Sam Ting -- not to settle for inconclusive solutions. In the tenacity of his experiments, says his manager Ray Leeper simply, "Tom's a bulldog." Sanford set up a series of experiments, using different radii of wires with spacing adjusted to keep the total wire mass constant, to determine whether wire size and spacing had any appreciable effect as his team painstakingly measured X-ray output produced by arrays ranging from a very small number to nearly 200 wires. The results were clear. A larger number of thinner wires with smaller spacing between them sent the output of Saturn, and later the machine that became known as Z, skyrocketing, and eventually caused a change in the world scientific view of the Z-pinch process. "Where it ends up, we don't know yet," Sanford says. "But it's regenerated a worldwide effort on Z pinches." Sanford, who has been "riding the tsunami of papers" generated by his discovery, has since then been "swimming in the ocean of Z-pinch physics," (as he phrases these things), turning out more than 20 papers in the last 10 years on the phenomenon, and his work is ongoing. Sandia's Z Machine, looked down at from the ceiling of the building that houses it, resembles a 120-foot-diameter wagon wheel. Its rim is formed by a series of large electrical capacitors. With the throw of a firing switch, these transfer 20 million amps to 36 "spokes" -- large metal conduits -- that link the capacitors to the vacuum chamber at the hub of the machine. Inside the hub sits the almost invisibly thin wires whose destruction will form the Z pinch. The wires form a cylinder only about as big as a spool of thread. It is on this machine that the most powerful Z-pinch experiments have been achieved. Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness. Source: DOE/Sandia National Laboratories -------- ohio Southern Co. considering building nuclear plant near Waynesboro Associated Press Thu, Jul. 14, 2005 http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/12129138.htm ATLANTA - A site along the Savannah River near Waynesboro could become the location of a new nuclear power plant. Southern Co. has been performing tests there needed to apply for an initial permit for a nuclear plant, company spokesman Steve Higginbottom said Wednesday. The company plans to apply for that first permit next year. The permit requires the company to submit environmental and geological information about the land. Southern Co. is doing the testing at the Plant Vogtle site to get that information, Higginbottom said. But Higginbottom said the company has not yet made a decision to build a new nuclear plant there. No new nuclear power plant projects have been licensed since the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Construction on the two existing nuclear units at Plant Vogtle began before that, although the units were not completed until the late 1980s. The Bush administration has been promoting nuclear power and supported a new, streamlined permitting process to encourage utilities to try again. Higginbottom said a new nuclear power plant would take about 10 years to build. In addition to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the project would need approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission and state environmental regulators. In the meantime, the company has been meeting with community leaders in Waynesboro to talk about a new plant. "Southern Co., and Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power, have been very helpful in keeping us abreast of their plans and what they're doing," Waynesboro Mayor Jesse Stone said. Stone said Waynesboro and the surrounding county supported a new nuclear plant at Vogtle and that the original 1970s plans there called for four plants, not the current two. "We always wanted those two more," he said. But environmental activists, are opposed to the idea of a new nuclear plant. They say the original Plant Vogtle cost overruns should discourage investment in a new nuclear plant. "This diverts time and money from cheaper and safer and more resilient energy alternatives that are going to serve local communities far better than nuclear power can," said Rita Kilpatrick, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "It's an unsafe technology, with phenomenal costs and risks," she said. -------- pennsylvania Supplemental inspection planned for TMI The plant was issued a low to moderate safety violation for an issue from 2004 By SEAN ADKINS York, PA Daily Record/Sunday News Thursday, July 14, 2005 http://ydr.com/story/business/77565/ Three Mile Island Unit 1 will face increased federal scrutiny for a violation that involved expired emergency responder qualifications. Between June and November 2004, about half of the plant's emergency response workers did not receive required radiological response retraining, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection report. Responders must periodically submit to retaining and requalification exercises they need to maintain familiarity with specific emergency response duties. In TMI's case, the commission found that the plant had let lapse the retraining of four of its emergency response organization responder teams. "As a consequence, for an approximate five-month period, those individuals would not have been considered available to respond to a radiological emergency," according to the report. Following the NRC's November inspection, plant officials immediately set about retraining and requalifying each of the four teams. AmerGen Energy officials informed the NRC July 8 that it would not contest findings related to the 2004 "white" violation, said Neil Sheehan, commission spokesman. A "white" violation — an infraction of low to moderate safety significance — typically results in increased federal oversight. The NRC will run a supplemental inspection of the Dauphin County nuclear power plant's emergency response training program, Sheehan said. An administrative oversight is to blame for TMI's 2004 lapse in emergency responder retraining and requalification, said Ralph DeSantis, spokesman for AmerGen Energy. The plant's current emergency responder training plan requires that all emergency responders participate in series of requalification classroom training exercises about every 15 months. Based on that plan, TMI should have conducted its 2004 retraining program no later than June 2004. Instead, the plant based its retraining schedule on the Exelon Emergency Preparedness Corporate Office Administrative Training Procedure, which called for a less restrictive requalification timetable. Under that plan, the time between required retraining exercises could be as long as 23 months and 30 days. "We kind of overlooked the fact that we still had the annex," DeSantis said. "This is more of an administration issue. Our people were very qualified to do what they had to do." DeSantis said the emergency responders had demonstrated their response skills during in-house tabletop exercises and training drills. While those exercises and drills are designed to reinforce skills, the NRC has not authorized those to substitute for the content of classroom training for emergency responder training, according to the inspection report. Sheehan said the finding does not suggest that the plant's emergency responders were not able to fulfill their duties. "This is an annual refresher and just for requalifications," he said. sadkins@ydr.com. -RD> BACKGROUND Earlier this year, Three Mile Island put in place more than 450 actions and initiatives aimed at improving its training programs for control room operators, said Ralph DeSantis, spokesman for AmerGen Energy. On Dec. 15, the National Nuclear Accrediting Board placed that same program on probation for training weaknesses. Last month, that board renewed TMI's accreditation after the utility outlined the actions it had taken to improve its control room operator training program. -------- MILITARY -------- africa Coming to grips with Mandela legacy Mandela remains a champion of the poor even after retirement Thursday 14 July 2005, 23:49 Makka Time, 20:49 GMT http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/97B372B7-933E-45AE-8F78-6D8594FAB928.htm Organisers of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project, run by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, are planning a rugby match, lectures, comic books and a virtual gallery. All because the legacy of South Africa's first black president, as he approaches his 87th birthday on Monday, is too big for a conventional museum. "What we are seeking to do, and the process we have embarked upon, is to try and get to grips with what Nelson Mandela's legacy is to all of us as South Africans, to all of us as Africans and indeed to the world," Cyril Ramaphosa, a foundation trustee, said on Thursday. Ramaphosa, who presided over the drafting of a post-apartheid constitution, joined others who fought apartheid with Mandela at the Johannesburg-based foundation on Thursday to launch a series of activities marking his birthday. They include a book of photographs on Mandela's 27 years in jail and a now traditional children's party. Exhibition An exhibition at the foundation features some of the thousands of gifts and awards Mandela receives every year. There's a painting by actor Robert de Niro's father, a pair of bright green size 13 sneakers from South African tennis champion Amanda Coetzer, a bust of Mandela made by a man serving 25 years for armed robbery and an ostrich foot of undetermined origin. Sitting among them is the Nobel Peace Prize Mandela shared with South Africa's last apartheid president, F W De Klerk. "Unless we find imaginative ways of addressing this reality, future generations are in danger of losing their histories" Leaning heavily on Ramaphosa's arm, a frail-looking Mandela perused the collection on Thursday. "I am an old man," he said with a laugh. "That is why Ivhave so many things." Before the end of the year the memory project plans to set up a website where users ranging from academics to school children can view the many other Mandela artefacts, photographs, newsreels and documents housed in collections around the world. A small museum, featuring rotating exhibitions, will eventually be housed within the Constitutional Court complex in Johannesburg. Free distribution Through a series of comic books, which will be distributed free at schools and in newspapers, the foundation hopes to pass on to a new generation of South Africans the story of Mandela's life and values. "One of the sad realities today is that very few people, especially young people, read books," Mandela said. "Unless we find imaginative ways of addressing this reality, future generations are in danger of losing their histories." Mandela's presidency was marked by his commitment to reconciling a nation in transition. On 23 July, the national rugby team plays Australia in the stadium where Mandela made history a decade ago by striding onto the field wearing the green and yellow team jersey to celebrate its victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup. With that one gesture, Mandela reassured millions of the sport's largely white fans that they too had a place in post-apartheid South Africa. The game will be played in Mandela's honour and the whole stadium will sing "Happy Birthday" for him, said South African Rugby President Brian Van Rooyen. Reconciliation Even after Mandela retired from political life in 1999, he remained a champion of the sick, the poor and underprivileged. He set up a foundation dedicated to improving the lives of children and another to raise awareness of the Aids pandemic. To continue the debate around major social issues, the Mandela Foundation hosts an annual lecture series. This year's will be delivered on 19 July by Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai. Also attending the event will be former US President Bill Clinton and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who delivered previous lectures. Despite the focus on him, the aging Mandela hoped the rest of South Africa would join him in celebrating their country's achievements. "Our country represents a powerful symbol of reconciliation and hope in the world, and the gifts and awards you see in the exhibition are an acknowledgment of that" he said. "Today, we are sharing the honour with all South Africans." -------- europe U.S. working on deal that may give troops more access to Bulgarian bases By Russ Rizzo, Stars and Stripes European edition, Thursday, July 14, 2005 http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=30345 James Pardew, U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, and Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker, 1st Armored Division assistant commander for maneuver, listen to a question from a Bulgarian newspaper reporter at a news conference Wednesday in Sofia, Bulgaria. SOFIA, Bulgaria — The United States expects to finalize negotiations with Bulgaria in the fall that may grant U.S. troops additional access to military bases in the country, U.S. and Bulgarian officials announced Wednesday. James Pardew, the U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, said he expected to reach an agreement about use of the Novo Selo training area, about 25 miles from Sliven, and nearby Bezmer Air Base, as early as September, when Bulgaria’s new government is slated to take power. Pardew did not discuss Sarafovo air base, near the coastal city of Burgas, but that base has been mentioned in past discussions of U.S. basing locations, Bulgarian defense ministry officials said. Pardew and Ilko Dimitzov, deputy defense minister for Bulgaria, stressed in a news conference that the deal would not create a large, permanent presence of U.S. military forces. “This exercise is kind of what it would look like,” Pardew said, referring to a training program going on now in Novo Selo that includes about 400 U.S. and 250 Bulgarian forces. “It would be like this but more frequent.” As the U.S. military draws down forces in western Europe — primarily in Germany — it has said it would like to expand its presence in eastern Europe. Bases in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland have been mentioned for use as possible “lily pads” from which to launch or maintain contingency operations. The U.S. military regularly trains in those countries — with two Army exercises this month in Bulgaria and Romania. In an interview with Stars and Stripes after the news conference, Dimitzov said no combat troops would be permanently stationed in Bulgaria, although some support elements could be. He said the size of the U.S. presence would be limited by the small size of the bases. “They will become U.S. bases, but not in the sense of U.S. bases in Germany,” said Col. Yordan Yordanov, a Bulgarian Defense Ministry official who oversees cooperation with the U.S. military, in an interview with Stars and Stripes. “It will not be building cities, building PXs (post exchanges), commissaries, fitness centers and swimming pools.” It is still unclear whether the Bulgarian bases would serve as forward operating bases that could be used for deployments or if they would simply be cooperative locations for training, Dimitzov said. “This is a question that must be decided by the politicians,” Dimitzov said. The proposal under review allows a U.S. presence until 2010, Dimitzov said. Issues still undecided include: * How much the United States would pay to use the facilities. * Whether the U.S. military would have unrestricted access to the bases. Discussions began in December 2003, when the Bulgarian parliament unanimously agreed to allow a U.S. military presence in the country, Dimitzov said. Bulgaria has sought to improve relations with the United States in recent years as it works to climb out of economic hardship left over from communist rule. The country supported the United States in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, committing 450 troops to Iraq and 60 soldiers to Afghanistan. It allowed U.S. planes to refuel at Sarafovo air base during both wars and offered use of its airspace during U.S. airstrikes in Kosovo in 1999. Just last week, Pardew announced a $15 million pledge to Bulgaria to support the country’s military efforts abroad. “Priority No. 1 for Bulgarian strategy is a strong relationship with the United States,” Yordanov said. “We want to look like a strong NATO member and act like one.” -------- iraq Dahr Jamail on Iraqi Hospitals Under Occupation, War Profiteering and the "Brain Drain" Out of Iraq Thursday, July 14th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/14/1345204 As dozens of people are killed in suicide bombings and attacks in Iraq, we speak with independent journalist Dahr Jamail about his new report, "Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation," the "brain drain" out of Iraq and the difference in the media's coverage of the repeated attacks in Iraq and last week's London bombings. [includes rush transcript] Millions of people across Europe are observing a two-minutes silence today to remember the victims of last week's London bombings. At least 52 people were killed and 700 injured in the blasts. But few people remember that just three days after the bombings last Thursday, a series of suicide attacks in Iraq left 48 people dead - an eerily similar death toll to London - and the difference in the world's reaction was tangible. The Iraq attacks did not make it to the front-pages of newspapers across the globe, governments around the world did not universally condemn the attacks and the victims received few words of consolation. Since last week, dozens more people have been killed in Iraq. Yesterday a massive car bombing in Baghdad killed 27 people - almost all of them children. An American soldier was also killed in the blast. Elsewhere in the capital, another dozen Sunni Muslims were found dead after being arrested by Iraqi police over the weekend. Meanwhile a new study from an Iraqi humanitarian organization is estimating that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invaded in March 2003 - over half of them women and children. And Iraq's Interior Ministry told The New York Times today that over 8,000 civilians have been killed in insurgent attacks between August and May. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We're joined right now by independent journalist, Dahr Jamail, who spent many months in Iraq. He has just returned from the World Tribunal on Iraq in Turkey. He also attended the Alternative G8 meeting in Scotland. We welcome you to Democracy Now! DAHR JAMAIL: Thanks, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: First, your response to the London bombings. DAHR JAMAIL: Well, just like anyone else, it's a horrific situation, where anytime civilians, innocent civilians, are killed as a result of the actions of their government abroad, which is exactly what this is, it's a smaller scale 9/11 for Great Britain, where their government policy in Iraq specifically is most likely the cause of this blowback that occurs on their home soil where civilians are going to be killed, but just like anyone else, I condemn it. It's a horrific situation and awful to see this sort of a thing where innocent civilians are paying the price for their government's actions. AMY GOODMAN: So, this comparison, the day after the attacks, looking at the tally, almost the same for the number of people counted that day killed in London and in Iraq, and yet the difference in the coverage? DAHR JAMAIL: It's astounding, but not surprising. At least the media is being consistent in their constant efforts to really not give the proper coverage to Iraq that it deserves. The situation in London, four bombings, four bombs, and so many civilians killed. That's become almost an average day in Iraq. And yet, we look at the disparity of the coverage, which this incident is really telling in the disparity that's ongoing with this, where so many civilians, every single day in Iraq, are being killed, the infrastructure in shambles, the country on fire. And where is the coverage? It's becoming more and more difficult as time goes on to even find it. AMY GOODMAN: Dahr Jamail, you did a report, “Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation.” You presented it at the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. Talk about your findings. DAHR JAMAIL: Well, in this report, I surveyed 13 different hospitals in Iraq, mostly in Baghdad, but some to the north and some to the south. And I presented this as evidence that at the World Tribunal. And it was the brunt of my testimony where, in summation, the report really showed that hospitals now, a little over two years into the occupation, are suffering far worse than they were even under the sanctions against Iraq. The most common quote that I heard from doctors when I was working on this report is that ‘Our situation now is worse than it was even during the sanctions.’ In sum, disastrous levels of medicine shortages, equipment shortages, supply shortages, and almost no reconstruction happening, and also another one of the major findings was what appears to be now a standard operating procedure in the military of a deliberate targeting of hospitals, ambulances, and medical workers. AMY GOODMAN: You have a section of your report on U.S. military interfering with medical care. DAHR JAMAIL: Right, and what I use as one of the major examples of that is the U.S. military operations, both sieges of Fallujah, that is, where -- particularly the November siege, the first thing that the U.S. military did was go into Fallujah General Hospital and occupy it, place snipers on the roof and detain doctors, prevent them from carrying out their medical care, as well as the deliberate targeting of ambulances. And since that siege, in ongoing operations like in Al Qaim and in Hadithah, we have seen a almost exact repeat of that, where hospitals are sealed off, medical workers are prevented from working or being targeted themselves, and this has become clear that not only in Al Qaim and Hadithah, but it’s ongoing right now in Buhrez, which is right near Baquba; as we speak, this is ongoing, and any time there is a major operation now by the U.S. military in Iraq, this is the type of tactic that they're using. AMY GOODMAN: You spent a long time in Iraq. Did you talk to anyone in the U.S. military about this? DAHR JAMAIL: Well, phone calls to request information from them about what's been happening regarding the hospitals usually -- excuse me, usually result in the typical runaround of, ‘Well, you need to contact this commander; we don't have information on this,’ or flat out denials like, ‘No, the U.S. military engages in no such policy.’ So it's been very difficult to get any accurate information or certainly admittance from them that this is happening. Most of my information on this is gleaned from medical workers themselves who have been targeted, detained and threatened by the U.S. military. AMY GOODMAN: Key to medical care, among other issues, is water. Water, electricity, what is the situation in Iraq? DAHR JAMAIL: Well, again, the fact that the infrastructure, particularly the water and electricity, has had disastrous effects on hospitals. Just to give you an idea of how this plays out, when we have on average of three hours of electricity per day in Baghdad, most of the hospitals are relying almost solely on generators, and there was one incident that I cited in the report, where in one of the larger hospitals in Baghdad, their generator broke down during the middle of day, and an operation was in progress so, of course, with a patient on the table, they were unable to run the instruments that they needed, and they lost the patient simply because of an electricity failure. And then, of course, with the water situation, almost as disastrous effects, as well, where without potable water, sterilization becomes next to impossible. So, we have rampant infections and inability for doctors to clean their instruments. AMY GOODMAN: You know, Dahr Jamail, there's been this discussion in this country, should U.S. troops withdraw? And what will happen in Iraq if they were to stay there; what else can the U.S. do? How often do you see issues raised of provide money for health care for the infrastructure, compared to how much money is now being spent on the military? DAHR JAMAIL: Well, exactly. It's a grossly overlooked topic. The Ministry of Health was due to receive $1 billion of the reconstruction funds, and where has that money gone? Of course, corruption is rampant. But a larger question for the United States government is what has happened to the companies that were awarded the contracts for the rebuilding, such as A.B.T. and other companies, handed out the contracts from U.S.A.I.D. There's almost no oversight going on. Where is the reconstruction that they have said they have completed? The hospitals have received basically paint jobs and sometimes new furniture, but as far as equipment and supplies that they have needed and medicines, it's just not there. AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about the subcontracts for all of this? You talked to the Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Amer Al Khuzaie? DAHR JAMAIL: Right, and that's exactly what he said was that he had -- at the time that I interviewed him, had put in constant requests to the Coalition Provisional Authority for monies, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars that they were asking for in order to get new supplies and give hospitals the equipment that they needed to get the work done, and he said that they had received next -- basically only promises at that point, and since then, it appears as though that really no other assistance has come through, and any that has has been dissolved into the corrupt situation with looting still going on, and many people inside the Ministry of Health itself being responsible for this not happening. But really, primarily, we see tens of millions of dollars being funneled into these western companies, and I think the big question at the end of the day is why are they not doing the work; if they can't do the work, why are they not giving these contracts to Iraqi companies? AMY GOODMAN: Are there Iraqi companies, subcontractors, who could handle this? DAHR JAMAIL: Without a doubt. This is another situation where, for example, after the 1991 Gulf War, where the infrastructure suffered so much damage, Iraq is more than capable itself of providing the people, as well as the knowledge and experience necessary to get the job done, and they're simply not being allowed to. Of all of the contracts handed out in Iraq since the invasion, roughly 2% of the value of all of the money available for reconstruction have gone to Iraqi concerns, so it's the same in the medical situation. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to independent journalist, Dahr Jamail. We’ll go to break. When we come back, I just want to ask you quickly about the brain drain in Iraq and also about Zarqawi. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We continue our conversation with independent journalist, Dahr Jamail. He has done a report, spent many months in Iraq, called “Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation.” We know about the Geneva Conventions, supposed to protect prisoners, prisoners of war. You include sections of the Geneva Conventions relevant to health care and health rights. Can you talk about those? DAHR JAMAIL: Well, in summation, essentially, the Geneva Conventions that have been broken cover things regarding to the health sector like it's the primary responsibility of the occupying powers to insure the safety of civilians, and these are broken repeatedly by -- not just with civilians, but medical workers, as well. Again, not just not protecting them, but deliberately targeting medical workers, impeding them from doing their work. For example, at the lead of the report, I have a photograph of -- which was shown actually in media all around the globe at the beginning of the siege of Fallujah of doctors literally inside a hospital being detained, being handcuffed, being prevented from doing their work. And this is a nice photograph of a violation of international law. So, this is one, as well as not assisting them in any way, shape or form when it's obvious that the medical system needs the help. AMY GOODMAN: Zarqawi. You have written about Zarqawi. You were in Jordan asking people about him. A top aide apparently, the U.S. reports, has been captured in Iraq. DAHR JAMAIL: Well, when I was in Amman, I went to Al Zarqa, which is the city where Zarqawi is from. It's close to Amman. And I interviewed people there, and I went and saw where his brother lives and brother-in-law lives and a couple of the different mosques where he used to pray. And really, the -- it's a difficult story to follow. What I found was that he definitely has existed as an individual, but there remains no definitive proof whatsoever that he's still alive, and certainly none that has been made available by the U.S. military that this man is operating in Iraq. He remains a large nebulous myth, much like bin Laden. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the brain drain in Iraq? DAHR JAMAIL: Again, this is a direct result of the bloody occupation, and we have so many Iraqi doctors who have been leaving the country because of the security situation and primarily because they have been targeted for kidnappings in order for the criminal gangs to extort ransom from their families. So there's massive brain drain. This is another huge difficulty facing the hospitals in Iraq where there's just simply not enough doctors. AMY GOODMAN: Dahr Jamail, I want to thank you for joining us today. His report is, "Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation." If people want to get a copy of it, where can they go online? DAHR JAMAIL: They can go to my website and download a copy there. AMY GOODMAN: And that is? DAHR JAMAIL: It’s DahrJamailIraq.com. AMY GOODMAN: And if you have trouble remembering that, just go to our website at DemocracyNow.org. -------- pakistan / india Pakistan assumes Presidentship of Conference for Weapons Disarmament Thursday July 14, 2005 (1526 PST) Pakistan Tribune http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=112616 GENEVA, July 15 (Online): Pakistan has assumed the Presidentship of Conference for Weapons Disarmament here in Geneva on Thursday. Talking to a private TV channel after presiding over the session of the Conference for Weapons Disarmament, Pakistan ambassador to Geneva Masood Khan said that today's (Thursday) agenda for the conference was Disarmament. Referring to the formation of Conference for Weapons Disarmament, he informed that the forum had been established in 1979, which was mandated to workout modalities and accords to control spreading of nuclear arms. The Conference, he went on to say had achieved some successes during 1990, which the forum led to creation of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and holding of a convention on nuclear weapons. He regretted since 1996 this forum had witnessed deadlock due to political ground. He pledged that Pakistan would strive to reactivate the role of this forum saying however, this would take time. Referring to some circles apprehension that the forum should be suspended because it did not bear the desired results, he said that Pakistan was of the opinion that suspension of this forum would beyond the interest of international community as well as United Nations. -------- us Governor Schwarzenegger Testifies Before BRAC Commission Council on Base Support & Retention Co-Chairs Panetta & Tuttle Also Testify in Support of California's Bases For Immediate Release July 14, 2005 California Space Authority http://www.californiaspaceauthority.org/html/government_pages/brac050718.html Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger testified today before the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission concerning the military significance of California's bases and the Department of Defense's BRAC recommendations. Governor Schwarzenegger was followed by testimony from California Council on Base Support and Retention co-chairs Leon Panetta and Donna Tuttle. The text of the Governor's remarks follows below. Time: 1 p.m. Date: Thursday, July 14, 2005 Event: BRAC Commission Los Angeles Regional Hearing, Westchester High School, Los Angeles, CA As Prepared: Thank you very much. I am very happy to participate in this hearing today, and I want to thank the members of the BRAC Commission for coming to our state and giving us the opportunity to talk with you about the military significance of our bases here in California. I would also like to thank everyone here today, including those speaking on behalf of their base communities, and of course everyone who has worked so hard for California throughout the BRAC process, including Leon Panetta, Donna Tuttle and the members of my California Council on Base Support and Retention; the members of our California congressional delegation; and all the other state and local officials who have come together as a bipartisan, unified team to make it clear what California's military bases mean for the nation. This is what we set out to do from the start - to bring all the parties together in this effort. And our California Council did a tremendous job under the leadership of Leon and Donna. One important product the Council developed was a comprehensive report on all California bases and their military value to the nation, and I would like to ask the Commission to accept this report as part of my testimony today. The BRAC list from the Department of Defense is good news for California and the country, and it shows that Washington understands what we have known all along - that our bases have unique advantages that make them essential to our national defense and homeland security. I can tell you, this is something I have learned over the years, visiting our bases here and around the world. I have met with our troops at places like Camp Pendleton and Fort Irwin, and learned about how they train for combat in realistic conditions here in California that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. And I have met with our troops in far away places like Iraq and Kuwait, and learned how they have used that training that they got right here in California, to defend America. I have visited installations like Los Angeles Air Force Base, where brilliant minds developed the famous Global Positioning System, or GPS - and where today they continue to develop leading-edge technology, including the satellite technology that is critical to our national security. And throughout our state, I have seen a military infrastructure uniquely positioned to accommodate joint operations; to surge forces rapidly and effectively; and to further the transformation of our nation's military, so we can master new capabilities and meet new threats. So we are very proud of the strategic advantages in California that keep us at the tip of the spear of our nation's military capability. Now, I know that one topic that always comes up as part of the BRAC process is the economic impact. As Governor, it is my job to always consider the effect of any action on our economy. And certainly our state's economy has taken big hits after previous BRAC rounds, when California absorbed 30 percent of all base closures and realignments nationwide. But today, even though we don't want to lose a single job - no state does - we are pleased that the impact of the current plan on our economy is far less than it has been in the past. We also know that in any event, there is a larger purpose served by the BRAC process, especially in the post 9/11 world - and that is the security, and future military capability of our nation. And in fact, we have believed from the start that the criteria established for this BRAC round emphasizes more than ever why we need the bases, the training, and the technology that California provides. And also - the ability to take full advantage of California's location in the Asia-Pacific Theater, where so many of our future threats and strategic challenges are located. What we know today, and what the Defense Department has recognized, is this: For the good of our nation's security - the bases that are here, should stay here. I also want to say that we appreciate the difficult job your Commission has over the next several weeks. You have a lot to consider and many tough decisions to make. And I am sure you are hearing strong testimony everywhere across the country. We are no different. We feel strongly about our bases, and I know that today you will also hear from some base communities that do not agree with the Defense Department's military assessment. I urge you to listen to them, and give their arguments serious consideration. Thank you again for giving us this opportunity, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with you and our leaders in Washington through the remainder of the BRAC process. Thank you. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Washington Man's Wind Generator is Silenced July 14, 2005 — By Evan Caldwell, Tri-City Herald http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8230 When Gerry Greenfield received an old surplus wind generator and steel tower from a friend in Tehachapi, Calif., his only cost was the drive. Back in his Finley home's front yard, Greenfield, a retired radio engineer, fixed the blades, assembled the tower, installed guide wires to stabilize it and plugged the generator into the Benton PUD grid. For the past two years, the windmill has been producing a small amount of electricity. Greenfield, 58, who lives on a fixed-income and relies on Social Security, said it saves him about $33 per month on his utility bill. "It may not seem like much to someone else, but to me it's a lot," he said. Besides, he's a proponent of renewable energy. He has the blessing of Benton PUD and even got help from the utility's engineers in setting up the system. However, Benton County officials want Greenfield to take down the 78-foot tower because he didn't get the appropriate permits and it violates several building codes, including a restriction that doesn't allow towers taller than 60 feet. The county received a complaint about the tower and possible code violations, and Greenfield said he thinks it comes from a neighbor who didn't like the whirring noise it sometimes makes in high winds. "The neighbor's dogs make more noise than my wind generator," he said. But on Monday, Greenfield complied with Benton County's order, turned off the power and gently brought down the tower. Gary Brenner, code enforcement officer with the county planning and building department, said Greenfield can have the tower and generator but must start the permitting process and follow the appropriate codes. The building code states that structures such as Greenfield's tower must be as many feet away from his property line as they are tall. The base of his tower had been 36 feet from his property line. Greenfield plans to rebuild. In fact, he intends to build a second windmill. In his garage lay more blades for a more efficient wind generator. It could produce the maximum amount of electricity allowed by law, 25 kilowatts at any one time. Greenfield's past generator typically produced between 1 and 10 kilowatts. A normal house draws between 5 and 10 kilowatts at any given moment. Greenfield said he tells people that someday, he would like to see homes equipped with at least one mass-produced, efficient, quiet, small wind generator propped up on the roof. "Imagine if everyone had a little 300-watt wind generator," he said. "You know how much energy that would save? How many houses that would light?" However, there's a problem. Another restriction Benton County has adopted for land like Greenfield's in an agricultural protection zone district says a wind generating tower must not exceed 60 feet. Greenfield said he would gladly go through the permitting process, but because county code doesn't allow for his tower's height, "it wouldn't do any good." "The county didn't do proper research," he said. "Wind towers come in the standard size of 60 feet and with the blades, the height exceeds that limit, making it impossible to have a tower. They've effectively coded me out of my hobby." Mike Shuttleworth, a county senior planner, said the code was adopted in October 2001 after several public comment periods during which no one spoke on the issue. The height limit was chosen because a court case at the time required that communication towers, such as ham radio towers, be limited at 65 feet, Shuttleworth said. The Washington State Environmental Policy Act, or SEPA, also exempts towers 60 feet or smaller from triggering an environmental review process. Shuttleworth said if the code allowed for higher towers, the applicant also would have to go through the SEPA checklist. Greenfield said he will continue to urge the county to change its rules and is willing to go through any steps as long as he can use the wind generator. He also supports new legislation allowing a wind generation towers as tall as his. House Bill 1021 would have changed the law to allow for wind generator towers to be no more than 80 feet, but the bill was never voted on during the legislative session earlier this year. Steve Hunter, Benton PUD director of engineering, said Greenfield was the first in the county and possibly the first in the state to use the new Net Metering Law, which allows private individuals throughout the state to set up wind generating towers and plug into a local utility company. "This is still the only one we have on our system," Hunter said. "At first, it was an interesting thing, we had a process to go through." Hunter said the PUD now is set up to help those who want to install their own wind generators. To see more of the Tri-City Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tri-cityherald.com. Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News -------- OTHER -------- environment Toxic Chemicals By the Hundred Found in Blood of Newborns WASHINGTON, DC, July 14, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2005/2005-07-14-01.asp Exposure to hundreds of toxic chemicals begins in the womb, finds a new study of the umbilical cord blood of 10 American newborns commissioned by the Environmental Working Group. The research and advocacy organization asked a lab to test 10 American Red Cross cord blood samples for what the group claims is the most extensive array of industrial chemicals, pesticides and other pollutants ever studied. The group wanted to measure how early the human body burden of chemicals begins to accumulate. The lab tests found that hundreds of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides are pumped back and forth from mother to fetus through umbilical cord blood. The blood samples came from babies born in U.S. hospitals in August and September of 2004. Analysis conducted on the samples for 413 industrial and consumer product chemicals found that the babies averaged 200 contaminants in their blood. The analysis tested for pollutants including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and a chemical used in the production of Teflon, PFOA. In total, the babies' blood had 287 chemicals, including 209 never before detected in cord blood. "For years scientists have studied pollution in the air, water, land and in our food. Recently they've investigated its health impacts on adults. Now we find this pollution is reaching babies during vital stages of development," said Jane Houlihan, EWG vice president for research, from the group's office in Washington, DC. "These findings raise questions about the gaps in our federal safety net. Instead of rubber-stamping almost every new chemical that industry invents, we've got to strengthen and modernize the laws that are supposed to protect Americans from pollutants." U.S. industries manufacture and import some 75,000 chemicals. The current regulatory system does not require comprehensive testing of chemicals before they are put into products and it does not provide authority to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prevent harmful chemicals from being used in products and released into the environment. The EPA has issued regulations to control only nine chemicals since the enactment of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976. The EWG points out that the system allows chemicals with known hazards and clear health impacts to remain on the market, even when safer alternatives are available. "Our wombs are no place for poisons. Our babies have the right to be born toxic-free," said Laurie Valeriano, Policy Director of the Washington Toxics Coalition and mother of three. "It's time for a complete overhaul of the current system," said Valeriano. "Government should phase out very harmful chemicals and industry must substitute safer substances when they are available. There is no reason consumer products should be filled with chemicals that poison babies when there are safer alternatives." There is other evidence that chemicals harm embryos. Physicians for Social Responsibility has said, "It is clear that the developing fetus, infants and young children are particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of pesticides." Each year, Americans use over 4.5 billion pounds of pesticides, including about one billion pounds of "conventional" pesticides used in agriculture, industry, home and garden, says the Physicians for Social Responsibility. "Every day, we are unknowingly exposed to a variety of pesticides in our food, drinking water, homes, schools and offices." When pregnant women are exposed to pesticides and other chemicals, it appears that their developing babies are exposed too. The harmful effects of embryonic exposure to one chemical, or a class of chemicals, has been known for at least a decade. Large numbers and large quantities of endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been released into the environment since World War II. A 1993 study of exposure to these endocrine disrupters conducted by scientists with the W. Alton Jones Foundation and World Wildlife Fund, among others, found that, "Many of these chemicals can disturb development of the endocrine system and of the organs that respond to endocrine signals in organisms indirectly exposed during prenatal and/or early postnatal life; effects of exposure during development are permanent and irreversible." The scientists found that, "transgenerational exposure can result from the exposure of the mother to a chemical at any time throughout her life before producing offspring due to persistence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in body fat, which is mobilized during ... pregnancy and lactation." The EWG study comes at a useful time for residents of Washington State. The Washington State Department of Ecology is seeking public input on a rule to implement the state's strategy to eliminate persistent toxic chemicals including mercury, dioxin, and toxic flame retardants. "This rule is Washington’s opportunity to take action now to stem the tide of toxic chemicals our children are exposed to on a daily basis,” said Ivy Sager-Rosenthal, environmental health advocate for the Washington Toxics Coalition. s A coalition of groups, the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition, is urging Washington state to include "a comprehensive, scientifically defensible, list of persistent toxic chemicals and establish clear goals and timelines for elimination" in the rule. The coalition would like the state to include phthalates, chemicals used to soften vinyl plastic and in cosmetics, on the list of chemicals to be phased out. These chemicals were recently linked to reproductive problems in male infants. They were banned across Europe earlier this month. The EWG study, "Body Burden: The Pollution in Newborns," is online at: www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/ --- Unborn Babies Soaked in Chemicals, Survey Finds July 14, 2005 — By Maggie Fox, Reuters http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8239 WASHINGTON — Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday. Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment. The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA. "These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted," said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who planned to publicize the findings at a news conference Thursday. "If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb," Slaughter, a Democrat, said. Cord blood reflects what the mother passes to the baby through the placenta. "Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests," the report said. Blood tests did not show how the chemicals got into the mothers' bodies. MERCURY AND PESTICIDES Among the chemicals found in the cord blood were methylmercury, produced by coal-fired power plants and certain industrial processes. People can breathe it in or eat it in seafood and it causes brain and nerve damage. Also found were polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are produced by burning gasoline and garbage and which may cause cancer; flame-retardant chemicals called polybrominated dibenzodioxins and furans; and pesticides including DDT and chlordane. The same group analyzed the breast milk of mothers across the United States in 2003 and found varying levels of chemicals, including flame retardants known as PBDEs. This latest analysis also found PBDEs in cord blood. The Environmental Working Group report coincided with a Government Accountability Office report issued Wednesday that said the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the powers it needs to fully regulate toxic chemicals. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act gives only "limited assurance" that new chemicals entering the market are safe and that the EPA only rarely assesses chemicals already on the market. "Today, chemicals are being used to make baby bottles, food packaging and other products that have never been fully evaluated for their health effects on children -- and some of these chemicals are turning up in our blood," said New Jersey Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who plans to co-sponsor a bill to require more testing of toxic chemicals. Pollutants and other chemicals are believed to cause a range of illnesses. But scientists agree the only way to really sort out the effects is to measure how much gets into people and then see what happens to their health. ---- Conservationists Take EPA to Court Over Mercury Rule WASHINGTON, DC, July 14, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2005/2005-07-14-09.asp#anchor3 Five conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s rule establishing a cap-and-trade system for reductions of mercury emissions. The National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, filed their challenge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Waterkeeper Alliance have joined the suit. The plaintiff groups argue that although Bush administration's cap-and-trade rule may provide some limits on mercury emissions, the rule will not take full effect until 2018, providing a much lower emissions standard than what is already required under the Clean Air Act. The plaintiffs defend their litigation challenging the cap-and-trade rule against those who claim a lawsuit will slow any mercury reductions. They say the suit could defeat a weak rule that already allows for much longer mercury attainment goals than those already required by the Clean Air Act. Mercury is a neurotoxin that interrupts the development of children's brains, even in the womb. In 2004, EPA scientists cited new research showing that 630,000 U.S. newborns had unsafe levels of mercury in their blood in 1999-2000. In a January 26 presentation at the EPA's National Forum on Contaminants in Fish, in San Diego, EPA biochemist Kathryn Mahaffey said researchers had shown that mercury levels in a fetus's umbilical cord blood are 70 percent higher than those in the mother's blood. The Bush administration stands behind its mercury rule, saying it is the first rule to regulate emissions of mercury. On March 15, 2005, the EPA issued the Clean Air Mercury Rule to permanently cap and reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants for the first time ever. But the plaintiff groups argue that the cap-and-trade system falls short of mercury reductions originally mandated under the Clean Air Act. This lawsuit, as well as litigation filed May 18 challenging another portion of the EPA’s power plant rule, challenges the agency to develop stronger emission standards. The cap-and-trade rule creates an overall industry cap on the amount of mercury emissions as well as a mercury trading market where individual plants can trade credits. The plaintiff groups object to the rule, saying it allows plants to avoid reducing their emissions and increasing mercury levels in some areas. For instance, Texas power plants currently release some 10,000 pounds of mercury each year. Under the EPA’s proposed cap-and-trade system, Texas will be required to reduce its mercury output to 9,314 pounds annually between 2010 and 2017. This seven percent reduction will do little to reduce the threat of mercury contamination in the state’s waterways and lakes, the plaintiffs say. Three of Texas’ coal-burning power plants are among the top 15 highest mercury emitters in the country. Under EPA’s rule, two of these plants - Martin Lake and Limestone - could actually increase their overall mercury emissions through 2017. “Texas is the perfect example manifesting how flawed EPA’s approach at mercury reduction really is,” said Dr. Ramon Alvarez, a scientist with the Texas office of Environmental Defense. “Our state has the highest mercury pollution levels in the country, but EPA is allowing some of the dirtiest plants to increase their pollution." Forty-five states have advisories against fish consumption due to mercury contamination. Water bodies such as the Chesapeake Bay experience unhealthy levels of mercury, limiting fishing and other recreational activities. “I plan to have children in the next two years and I eat fish from the Chesapeake Bay region,” said Ally Gontang, an employee and member of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “However, I have had my hair tested for mercury and my level is above EPA’s alert for women of childbearing years. My fiancé and I are both saddened by and mad at EPA’s actions.” Many of those who rely on subsistence fishing view the EPA rule as dangerous because it keeps mercury laden emissions pouring into the air and being deposited on waters where they fish. “EPA's rule is an assault on our tribal people and culture,” said Eric Nicolar, the air quality manager for the Penobscot Indian Nation in Maine. “Our 1,100 members are being forced to subsist on mercury laden fish taken from the Penobscot River every day. Under EPA's illegal cap and trade scheme, the Ohio Valley coal-fired power plants will be free to poison our sacred waterways with mercury for many more years to come.” -------- ACTIVISTS Remembering Rainbow Warrior: How French President Mitterrand Personally Approved the Attack on Greenpeace 20 Years Ago Thursday, July 14th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/14/1345216 Twenty years ago, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French government agents and sunk in a harbor in Auckland, New Zealand. The French newspaper Le Monde recently revealed that the late French President Francois Mitterrand personally approved the sinking of the ship. We speak with David Robie, an independent journalist who was on board the ship and wrote the book "Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior." [includes rush transcript] Twenty years ago, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French government agents and sunk in a harbor in Auckland, New Zealand. The ship was preparing to head to sea to protest against French nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira was killed in the attack. Last weekend, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed that the late French President Francois Mitterrand personally approved the sinking of the ship. The paper obtained a handwritten account of the operation written by the former head of France's spy agency, Steve Lacoste. Lacoste describes his meeting with Mitterrand two months before the attack. At that meeting, he asked Mitterrand for permission to conduct the bombing. Lacoste wrote that Mitterrand "gave me his consent while emphasizing the importance he placed on the nuclear tests." Two members of the 13 person French secret service team that carried out the bombing were arrested two days later. Dominique Prieur and Alain Marfart were sentenced to ten years in prison but were extradited to French Polynesia, where they served less than three. Others who carried out the bombing have apparently escaped punishment. The man who coordinated the operation, Louis Pierre Dillais- a former lieutenant-colonel in the French Secret Service, is now living in Washington D.C and working for the giant Belgian Arms Maker FH Herstal. The company sells weapons to the United States Special Forces and to New Zealand's defense forces. * David Robie journalist and author of the book "Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior." He is also an associate professor in Auckland University of Technology's School of Communication Studies. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the phone now from New Zealand by David Robie, an independent journalist who was on board the ship on its last journey and wrote Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. A new updated edition of the book is being released this week. He's also Associate Professor at Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, David Robie. DAVID ROBIE: Hello, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you respond to this latest news, the handwritten memo that describes the approval of the French President, Francois Mitterrand, for the blowing up of the ship? DAVID ROBIE: Well, it's been largely received in New Zealand with a certain amount of a ‘ho-hum, well, we thought so all along.’ Most of the reaction, certainly in New Zealand, is that, well, you know, it was no surprise. You know, people have more or less accepted for the best part of 20 years that although it was not, you know, absolutely certain before that Mitterrand had actually sort of authorized the attack, it's been more or less accepted in New Zealand that that was probably the case. It's just interesting that Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who was the Deputy Prime Minister in New Zealand at the time of the bombing said -- his reaction when confronted with this news from Le Monde, he said it's very disappointing, because one would not expect the president of a friendly nation to authorize an illegal act against the nation with whom you enjoy friendly relations and with whom you fought in two world wars. That seems to me to be rather extraordinary. So that was Sir Geoffrey Palmer's reaction. AMY GOODMAN: This past weekend, there was this memorial at the Rainbow Warrior. Can you talk about what happened, who was there, and also about the Greenpeace photographer who was killed? DAVID ROBIE: Well, Fernando, he, in fact, had a cabin just very close -- I was on board for something like ten weeks up until the time of the bombing, but I had actually left a couple of nights before, because after the Rainbow Warrior arrived in New Zealand, my home is actually in Auckland, so I had actually gone ashore. And it was good to get ashore for a while. And with – now, at the 20th anniversary, Marelle, Fernando's daughter who was eight at the time that he died, she came out for the voyage of the new Rainbow Warrior, going up to Matauri Bay where the original ship was sunk to make a living reef. Well, Fernando's daughter, Marelle, came up on this voyage. And it was a very moving – a very emotional time for her. It was be a opportunity to talk to crew members, and also she addressed the local Maori Iwi, the tribe, and to the Greenpeace people and many other peace supporters, and so on, that came up for the ceremony. AMY GOODMAN: The mission of the Rainbow Warrior, can you talk about that and how it applies to what is happening today, David Robie? DAVID ROBIE: Well, I mean, the irony today, I think, is that, you know, 20 years ago this was an act of state terrorism, yet the major powers of the era, the U.S., Britain, and so on, and even Australia, gave no reaction whatsoever to this extraordinary attack, you know, on a sovereign nation, a friendly, sovereign nation with 30 nations operating in the country as part of the attack. In this context of war on terror today, it seems extraordinary that, you know, that -- you know, so little attention was given to it. And the legacy of the period of nuclear testing, although France subsequently stopped nuclear testing in 1996 when it signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, there's still the unresolved problem of the Tahitians that were subjected to radioactive fallout during the period of atmospheric testing in French Polynesia. And another aspect, of course, with the Rainbow Warrior was that immediately prior to being bombed, it was actually on a voyage to the Marshall Islands, where it resettled a number of Rongelap islanders. In fact, the whole community on Rongelap Atoll were moved to another island. And the reason they did this was because they were subjected to nuclear radiation during the 1950s when the United States was doing atmospheric testing in the Marshall Islands. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to David Robie, who was on the last journey of the Eyes of Fire before it was blown up by the French government by French intelligence agents. Do you think President Francois Mitterrand should be charged for the explosion and for the death of the photographer? DAVID ROBIE: Well, the fact is that, you know, there's a lot of bitter, you know, sort of feeling left in New Zealand as a result of the fact that only two of those agents were arrested and, of course, they were sentenced to ten years for manslaughter for the death of Fernando Pereira, and also for willful damage to the Greenpeace ship. And, of course, what really happened was through a brokered trade deal and mediation from the United Nations at the time, France did apologize and it did pay over $13 million in compensation to the New Zealand government, but in return, New Zealand handed over these two agents to the French authorities, and they were whisked off to Hao Atoll in French Polynesia, which was the military base supporting the nuclear testing at Moruroa. Well, of course, Hao Atoll was rather something like a military Club Med, and both Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur only served there in exile for probably less than two years. AMY GOODMAN: David Robie, we have to wrap up. DAVID ROBIE: And then they were taken back to France as heroes. AMY GOODMAN: But, we have to wrap up. And, of course, with Mitterrand dead, I mean, members of his administration but also the head of French intelligence, Louis Pierre Dillais, the former lieutenant colonel and French secret service, now living in Washington and working for the giant Belgian arms maker, FH Herstal, it's interesting he's selling weapons to, well, your own defense department, the New Zealand defense department, as well. DAVID ROBIE: Absolutely, and many New Zealanders are aghast at that. AMY GOODMAN: We're going to have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. ---- UQ Wire: The DC Emergency Truth Convergence Thursday, 14 July 2005, 11:15 am Press Release: http://www.UnansweredQuestions.org http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0507/S00249.htm CALLING ALL INDIE MEDIA ACTIVISTS TO THE DC EMERGENCY TRUTH CONVERGENCE At the National Press Club, Lafayette Park & American University JULY 22~24, 2005 Come Help Build a Breakthrough Campaign to Expose and Explode the Seamless Deceit behind 9/11, Resource Wars, Troop Betrayal and Constitutional Jeopardy DC LAUNCH: JULY 22~24, 2005: An unprecedented event series joining the power of veteran/victim groups, key truth movements and the indie media to halt the deadly coup now underway and launch a thousand Paul Reveres. Everything we need to succeed - we now have: - The facts and evidence of betrayal from truth movement researchers - The support of respected leaders across the political spectrum - A nationwide communications network in independent media - Enduring inspiration from whistleblowers, veterans & victim families - A country gradually waking up to the desperate need for truth All that's missing is a shared strategy - Come to DC and help create it.... RALLY SPEAKERS*** AND WORKSHOP LEADERS "War on Freedom" author Nafeez Ahmed***, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, Colonel Robert Bowman***, John Brunes*** of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Steve Cobble of afterdowningstreet.org, Dr. David Ray Griffin***, Jim Hoffman of wtc7.net, Rep. Charles Key*** of the Oklahoma City Bombing Commission, CIA veteran Ray McGovern***, Depleted Uranium authority Leuren Moret***, Gael Murphy*** of Code Pink, Jenna Orkin*** of WTC Environmental Organization, Don Paul, Peter Phillips*** of Project Censored, "Weapons of Mass Deception" producer Danny Schechter***, "Terror Timeline" author Paul Thompson***, Celeste Zappala*** of Gold Star Families for Peace, "Great Conspiracy" producer, Barrie Zwicker, and many more. LATEST SCHEDULE FRIDAY, JULY 22nd (first birthday of the 9/11 Commission Report) The first National Press Club briefing specifically for the independent media The 9/11 Commission Cover-up and the Toll of Media Complicity 1:00 - 2:30 PM, Holeman Lounge, National Press Club Briefers: Peter Phillips of Project Censored, 9/11 family members, Dr. David Ray Griffin, Danny Schechter, producer of Weapons of Mass Deception, and Celeste Zappala of Gold Star Families for Peace. SATURDAY, JULY 23rd (third anniversary of the Downing Street Memo) Lafayette Park Rally against the Reign of Lethal Deceit 11:00 ~ 2:00 PM, Lafayette Park (in front of the White House) 3:00 ~ 4:00 PM, American University "War on Freedom" author, Nafeez Ahmed introduces his new book, The War on Truth 4:30 ~ 6:30 PM, American University Beyond Downing Street Town Hall Meeting 7:30 - 10:30 PM, American University Truth Rock Concert/Dance SUNDAY, JULY 24 9:00 AM ~ 1:00 PM, American University Solutions-focused workshop sessions on publicizing and defusing the most lethal lies of modern history, building new media truth networks, mobilizing new constituencies, developing new media, legal and political tactics to launch honest truth commissions, etc. See http://www.truthemergency.us/ for latest details. 2:00 ~ 6:00 PM, American University Collaboration strategy brainstorm among truth movement leaders, veteran & victim family groups, indie media activists and foreign journalists. OVERALL PURPOSE Potent insights into the coup d'état we face emerge whenever citizens working on Iraq lies, 9/11, troop abuse, stolen elections and/or the "missing" government trillions gather and compare notes. This DC Emergency Truth Convergence presumes that we now have enough dangerous truths, damning facts, and populist media to deliver the evidence of treachery throughout the land. It's now time to clarify that vision, join with veterans and victim families, and assist media activists everywhere in reenacting Paul Revere. THE CHALLENGE TO INDIE MEDIA ACTIVISTS Truth Math 101: In 2004, 70% of Karl Rove's red voters still believed Saddam had WMD and trysts with Al Qaeda. 70% of Americans who knew the truth voted blue. According to Zogby, most New Yorkers reject the official 9/11 story. The blues carried New York by over one million votes and NYC by 81%. Do the math. Truth matters. Truth matters more when the country's in crisis. Truth matters most when thousands are dying without a clue. This is the challenge facing our independent media. Leaders selling war, repression and corporate rule could fool a lot less people a lot less of the time if indie media flooded the streets and airwaves with badly needed truths. Today's bloody liars are red. Tomorrow's may be blue. Only grassroots media vigilance and collaboration can thwart their propaganda and reverse their corporate coup. George Orwell taught us, "in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Multiply that act by a thousand street zines, blogs, and community broadcast outlets and we can finally overthrow this coup. Please come to DC and END THE FEAR HERE! Publicize the Master Lies Behind the Endless War CHEAP ACCOMMODATIONS STILL AVAILABLE See http://www.truthemergency.us for details. Contact: Janice Matthews @ 707-616-7939 Email sharethe911truth@yahoo.com