NucNews - July 15, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- asia Pakistan and China discuss disarmament, proliferation Friday, July 15, 2005 Pakistan Daily Times http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_13-7-2005_pg7_54 BEIJING: Senior Pakistani and Chinese officials met here on Tuesday and discussed matters relating to arms control, disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation. During talks, both sides’ officials also deliberated over the new initiatives being taken at the regional and international levels for arms control. Diplomatic sources said the two countries had close relations and shared identical views on nuclear non-proliferation. They added that China had always appreciated Pakistan’s efforts and support for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. “Such consultation is aimed at coordinating the position in regard with matters that regularly come under discussion at disarmament conferences in Geneva, IAEA in Vienna and the United Nations in New York,” said sources. -------- australia Australia's Deep Yellow Plans Uranium Acquisitions By Stephen Bell, Dow Jones Newswires Friday July 15, 11:01 AM http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050715/15/3thy2.html PERTH (Dow Jones)--Australia's Deep Yellow Ltd. (DYL.AU) said Friday that it plans to unveil an expansion of its uranium exploration interests early next week. Shares in Deep Yellow were placed in a trading halt before the market opened Friday, pending a statement by the Perth-based company. "An announcement is likely to be made Monday morning about some uranium acquisitions," Deep Yellow director Gary Steinepreis told Dow Jones Newswires. The upcoming deal follows news late last month that Deep Yellow acquired the uranium exploration rights to prospects owned by Tanami Gold NL. (TAM.AU) in the Tanami-Arunta region of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. "There are a couple of other things that we have put our foot on," Steinepreis said, adding that the new projects are in Australia. Shares in several Australian uranium explorers have risen sharply in recent months on the prospect of new mines opening up in response to high uranium prices. Deep Yellow was queried by the Australian Stock Exchange earlier this month after its shares more than doubled in the space of two weeks. Its shares closed Thursday at 12 cents, off a high of 15 cents struck earlier in the week. ---- Australia government picks remote military sites for nuclear waste dump SYDNEY (AFP) Jul 15, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050715053615.lkptihqa.html Australia's government announced Friday that it would locate a controversial nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, the country's least populous region, but opponents vowed to fight the decision. Science Minister Brendan Nelson said the federal government had drawn up a short-list of three military sites in the huge outback region for locating the dump, which will hold low and intermediate-level waste. The choice was made after local authorities in South Australia won a court battle last year preventing the government from building the nuclear dump in their state. Although opposition parties quickly attacked the new plan, arguing that nuclear waste should be stored in smaller repositories located near where it is produced, Nelson said the government would push ahead regardless. "We've got to proceed with this now, there will be no further mucking about," he said. "The Australian government is absolutely determined to make sure once and for all that one of these three sites are chosen and that we proceed through the environmental impact statement and then to the construction of the facility," he said. Nelson said the waste dump had to be operational by 2011 for Australia to meet contractual and international treaty obligations. Most of the waste to be stored will come from Australia's sole nuclear reactor, a research facility located at Lucas Heights in suburban Sydney. Other waste will come from federal medical, industrial and research facilities. Two of the three short-listed sites are near the town of Alice Springs in the deserts of central Australia -- 2,300 kilometers from Sydney -- and the other lies on the Fishers Ridge Defense Property a further 1,000 kilometers away in the tropical north of the country. All the land is owned by the federal government, but officials in the Northern Territory -- the most untamed of Australia's eight states and territories -- said they would fight the plan. The territory's chief minister, Clare Martin from the Labor Party which is in opposition on the federal level, overwhelmingly won reelection earlier this year after campaigning against the waste dump. Senator Lynn Allison of the opposition Democrats party said the government chose the Northern Territory because the local government there has fewer powers than their counterparts in Australia's full-fledged states. "(The Commonwealth) has more control over the Northern Territory government because it's a territory not a state and that's clearly why it's chosen the NT," Allison told the Australian Associated Press. "But I'm sure the NT government won't give in without a fight, so we're going to have another stoush and this will worsen Commonwealth-state and territory relations," she said. ---- Australia mulls nuclear dump in remote desert heart Fri Jul 15, 2005 02:29 AM ET (Reuters) http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=9075964 CANBERRA - Australia's government is considering dumping radioactive waste in the nation's remote desert heart, just a few hundred kilometres from the iconic Uluru monolith once known as Ayers Rock. Science Minister Brendan Nelson unveiled three sites in Australia's Northern Territory on Friday as potential locations for the safe disposal of low- and intermediate-level medical, industrial and research waste from national government agencies. "We need to make sure that Australians appreciate that what is being proposed here makes sense to the national interest and is making sure that we have a single repository for waste," Nelson told reporters. He said the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Facility was due to start operating in 2011. The Mt Everard site being considered is less than 300 km (185 miles) from Uluru, while Harts Range is 450 km from the rock that attracts almost 400,000 visitors a year. The Fisher's Ridge site is about 360 km south of the tropical northern city of Darwin. Along with waste from various government agencies, the radioactive dump would also receive waste from Australia's only reactor, a research facility at Lucas Heights in Sydney. Low-level waste includes laboratory gloves, clothing, glass, and contaminated soil, while intermediate-level waste includes disused radiotherapy equipment and about 50 cubic metres of spent fuel from the research reactor that has been reprocessed overseas. But the country's six states will have to look after their own waste after Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government scrapped plans for a national dump a year ago after the states had failed to agree on a location. The government had earmarked a site for a national dump in South Australia state, near the former rocket range at Woomera, 475 km (295 miles) north of Adelaide, but abandoned it after a court ruled the compulsory purchase of the land was illegal. The court action had been launched by the centre-left Labor state government in South Australia. "The reality is we've got to proceed with this now, there will be no further mucking about," Nelson said. Nelson said state and territory governments hold their own low and intermediate-level radioactive waste at more than 100 different locations around the country. ---- Nuclear waste to be stored in NT PM - Friday, 15 July , 2005 18:30:23 Australia Broadcasting Reporter: Samantha Hawley http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1415473.htm MARK COLVIN: Nowhere likes being considered a dumping ground, but that's the fate the Federal Government's got in mind for the Northern Territory as it searches for a place to put Australia's nuclear waste. And to add insult to injury, the Northern Territory Government only found out by fax as the Federal Science Minister was announcing the decision. The Territory Government is going to fight the decision. The Federal Opposition says the Government's broken an election promise, and environmental groups are outraged. The Federal Cabinet has listed three Defence land sites in the Territory as possible dumps. Samantha Hawley reports. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: During the federal election campaign last year, the Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, ruled out a nuclear dump on the mainland. IAN CAMPBELL: The only options that we're pursuing are on offshore islands. I think the reality of this is that there's no one on the mainland who particularly wants a nuclear waste dump in their backyard, and that is why we're pursuing the practical option of going to an offshore island. So the Northern Territorians can take that as an absolute, categorical assurance. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: But at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney today came a policy reversal. With thousands of drums of low-level nuclear waste surrounding him, the high-spirited Science Minister, Brendan Nelson, announced the Northern Territory as the preferred site to dump medium and low-level nuclear waste. BRENDAN NELSON: This waste represents no threat to human health or life but it is extremely important that we store it in safe, secure, appropriately designed and constructed facilities in the long-term. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Brendan Nelson outlined three possible sites in the Northern Territory, and says the Government will choose one by the end of next year. One is 27 kilometres from Alice Springs, another 100 kilometres from the town, and the third about 40 kilometres from Katherine in the north of the State. BRENDAN NELSON: The Australian Government is absolutely determined to make sure once and for all that one of these three sites is chosen, and that we proceed through the environmental impact statement, and then to the construction of the facility. There is absolutely no room for mucking about now, and we're certainly not going to be held hostage by political parochialism, or the short-term view of some Australians. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: The Federal Opposition's Jenny Macklin says that's a broken election promise. JENNY MACKLIN: It's just typical of this Government that they're taking a roughshod approach to the decision, riding over the wishes of the people of the Northern Territory, the laws of the Northern Territory. They think that they can deliver this nuclear waste to the Northern Territory they're going to get a very rude shock with a very big community campaign run against this decision to put nuclear waste in the Northern Territory. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Over the coming year there'll be a detailed site selection process looking at road access, security and the geological sustainability at the three sites. The Government wants dumping to start by 2011, with the first shipment of medium level waste to return from the UK and France where it's been processed in that same year. JENNY MACKLIN: At this stage we still don't know how it will be transported, whether it will be transported by land or sea. If it's transported by land, of course there are many, many places throughout Australia who could see nuclear waste go through their town or through their countryside. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: David Noonan from the Conservation Foundation is also worried. DAVID NOONAN: We don't need either a reactor in Sydney or a national nuclear waste dump, and the only way of really solving these issues is to turn off the tap of unnecessary nuclear waste production back in Sydney at the core, at the reactor site itself. We don't need that reactor for medical isotopes, and there's no acceptable reason for the Commonwealth to be imposing reactor risk in Sydney that's a potential for major accidents there, increasing targeting of nuclear terrorism on nuclear facilities. They're imposing that risk in Sydney, and they're willing to impose nuclear transport and dumping, just to get away with that plan. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: The minister says the dump will hold only Commonwealth waste and not that from the States and Territories, although he says that's open to negotiation. MARK COLVIN: Samantha Hawley. -------- business RPT-BNFL to Send Westinghouse Memos in July -Sources Fri Jul 15, 2005 08:08 AM ET (Reuters) By Mathieu Robbins http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=EVXICDJ4BRFJCCRBAEKSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=9079201 LONDON - Engineering, nuclear energy and buyout firms will be formally invited later in July to bid for Westinghouse, the nuclear maintenance business the UK's BNFL is trying to sell for about 1 billion pounds ($1.8 billion), people familiar with the situation said. Companies including General Electric (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , Siemens (SIEGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) , Areva, Urenco, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts are all set later in July to receive information memoranda on the business from Rothschild [ROT.UL], the investment bank advising BNFL. U.S.-based Westinghouse provides nuclear fuel services, technology, plant design and equipment for nuclear power producers. BNFL had bought the business, which employs about 9,000 people, from Swiss engineer ABB in 1999. General Electric is widely viewed as a frontrunner to buy the business, which has a majority of its operations in the U.S. However some said the Stamford, Connecticut-based engineer could face regulatory hurdles to buying Westinghouse. Also possibly facing competition concerns from regulators is Areva, France's state-owned nuclear fuel reprocessing firm which is likely to bid through Framatome, its joint venture with German engineer Siemens. This may present opportunities for other U.S. engineers such as Bechtel and Fluor Corp. (FLR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , which are also expected to bid for the business, bankers said. European and American engineers and nuclear companies will be competing with Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (7011.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , which has said it plans to bid for the business. Buyout interest is likely to be expressed by larger U.S. funds including the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the sources said. "We are in no formal talks with any one party at present," said a spokeswoman for BNFL. She declined to comment further on the process. -------- china China, firm on Taiwan, says general's words his own Fri Jul 15, 2005 10:17 PM ET Reuters http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-07-16T021719Z_01_N15170846_RTRIDST_0_INTERNATIONAL-CHINA-TAIWAN-DC.XML BEIJING (Reuters) - Remarks by a Chinese general that Beijing could use nuclear arms against the United States in a war over Taiwan were his personal views, but China will never allow Taiwan to be independent, China's Foreign Ministry said. "We will firmly abide by the principles of peaceful reunification and 'one country two systems' and we will express the deepest sincerity and exert the greatest efforts to realize peaceful reunification," state-mouthpiece Xinhua news agency reported a ministry spokesman as saying late on Friday. But, he added: "We will never tolerate 'Taiwan Independence', neither will we allow anybody with any means to separate Taiwan from the motherland." The Financial Times reported on Friday that Zhu Chenghu, a general in the People's Liberation Army, said China would have no option but to go nuclear in the event of an attack over the contentious Taiwan issue. Zhu had told reporters visiting from Hong Kong he was expressing his own views and did not anticipate a conflict with Washington, it said. Nevertheless, a State Department spokesman called the remarks irresponsible. Beijing considers Taiwan, split politically from the mainland since 1949, a part of China and has vowed to bring the it back into the fold. In March, China passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of "non-peaceful means" to do so. While the United States only recognizes one China and says it does not support Taiwan independence, Washington is bound by law to help the democratic island of 23 million people defend itself. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman did not explicitly say that Zhu's comments conflicted with policy. However, China has had a declared policy of not using its nuclear weapons unless it has already suffered nuclear attack. Zhu is dean of China's University of National Defense. "Zhu had repeatedly emphasized that he would express personal views on the issues that the reporters are interested in before they started discussions," the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. He said he hoped the United States would "join efforts with China to maintain the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits." "We firmly believe it is in the interests of both China and the United States, as well as benefits the peace, stability and development of the Asia Pacific region and the whole world, to oppose 'Taiwan Independence' and maintain the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits," he was quoted as saying. ---- China Plans to Build 10 New Plants The Associated Press Friday, July 15, 2005; 8:31 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071500529_pf.html http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8582532/ BEIJING -- A state-owned utility plans to build 10 nuclear power plants in eastern China as the country tries to reduce its reliance on coal, a state newspaper reported Friday. Six of the 1,000-megawatt reactors will be built in Shandong province in the east and four in Liaoning in the northeast, the China Daily said, citing Liu Changqing, a senior director of the state-owned China Power Investment Corp. China is struggling to meet surging power demand amid economic growth that exceeds 9 percent a year, while also trying to cut its heavy reliance on dirty coal, which has left cities choked in smog. Construction dates for the new power plants are still unknown, the China Daily said. No decision has been made on what technology the reactors will use, Liu was quoted as saying. China's first commercial nuclear reactor began operation in 1991. ---- China warns US against attack Zhu said China could not wage conventional war against the US Friday 15 July 2005, 5:36 Makka Time, 2:36 GMT Reuters http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C6AAE8BD-E22F-47EE-9126-195C764A815E.htm A senior Chinese general has warned that Beijing was ready to use nuclear weapons against the United States if Washington attacked his country over Taiwan, the Financial Times newspaper reported. Zhu Chenghu, a major general in the People's Liberation Army(PLA) who said he was expressing his own views and did not anticipate a conflict with Washington, nevertheless said China would have no option but to go nuclear in the event of an attack. "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," he told an official briefing for foreign journalists on Friday. Zhu said the reason was the inability of China to wage a conventional war against Washington. Nuclear response "If the Americans are determined to interfere ... we will be determined to respond," he said. "Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese" "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese," he added. The newspaper observed that it was unclear what prompted the remarks, but noted that they were the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there should be no unilateral change in the status quo over the disputed island of Taiwan. "That means that we don't support unilateral moves toward independence by Taiwan. It also means that we are concerned about the military balance, and we'll say to China that they should do nothing militarily to provoke Taiwan," she added. ---- China ready to use nuclear weapons against US over Taiwan: media BEIJING (AFP) Jul 15, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050715072732.e7oaut2x.html China could use nuclear weapons to retaliate against the United States if it attacked in any conflict over Taiwan, reports said Friday citing a Chinese general. "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," said General Zhu Chenghu. His comments were reported by the Financial Times and the Asian Wall Street Journal, which attended a briefing with the general organised by a private Hong Kong organisation, the Better Hong Kong Foundation. "If the Americans are determined to interfere (then) we will be determined to respond," said Zhu, a professor at China's National Defence University. "We ... will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese." Xian is an ancient city in central China. Zhu said the comments represented his personal view and not the policy of the government. Nonetheless, his threat to use nuclear weapons is the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade. The Chinese foreign ministry said it was "gathering information" on the issue and refused to comment further. The defence ministry also refused comment. Analysts said the remarks were largely rhetoric but also indicated that Beijing wanted to show the United States it was serious about Taiwan. "China's leaders, especially the military, think it is important for weaker countries like China to demonstrate their willingness to defend their core interests," Joseph Cheng, a political analyst at City University in Hong Kong, told AFP. "It's an old-fashioned strategy that is also meant for domestic consumption. "On the Taiwan issue, the US government tends to adopt a strategic ambiguity approach. On the part of China, it wants to show it is ready to make the sacrifices," Cheng said. China's military spending has risen at an average double-digit rate over the past decade, hitting 24.5 billion US dollars in 2004. Despite this, it would still not have the capability to fight a conventional war against the United States, leaving the nuclear card as the only option, analysts said. Although China has a no first-strike nuclear policy, Zhu said he believed the policy applied to non-nuclear powers and could be changed, the reports said. China and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of a civil war but Beijing still claims it as part its territory and has repeatedly threatened to invade if the island formalises its 56-year separation with a declaration of independence. In March China adopted a law allowing it to use force against any secession moves by Taiwan, triggering concerns in Washington and raising tensions in the region. Since the United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, Washington has acknowledged Beijing's position that Taiwan should be considered an integral part of China. Yet the United States remains the leading arms supplier to Taiwan because it is bound by law to offer the island the means of self-defence if its security were threatened. Zhu's comments come ahead of Washington's annual report on the Chinese military and as a string of US officials have raised concerns about the rise of China's military. The issue was most recently brought up by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who, on a visit to Beijing last weekend, highlighted tensions with Taiwan as a key concern. She urged Beijing to reach out to the island's elected leadership. ---- Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs if U.S. Intrudes By JOSEPH KAHN July 15, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/international/asia/15china.html?pagewanted=print BEIJING, Friday, July 15 - China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday. "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing. General Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed that his comments reflected his personal views and not official policy. Beijing has long insisted that it will not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict. But in extensive comments to a visiting delegation of correspondents based in Hong Kong, General Zhu said he believed that the Chinese government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy and to make clear that it would employ the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan. "War logic" dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival, he said, speaking in fluent English. "We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States," General Zhu said. "We can't win this kind of war." Whether or not the comments signal a shift in Chinese policy, they come at a sensitive time in relations between China and the United States. The Pentagon is preparing the release of a long-delayed report on the Chinese military that some experts say will warn that China could emerge as a strategic rival to the United States. National security concerns have also been a major issue in the $18.5 billion bid by Cnooc Ltd., a major Chinese oil and gas company, to purchase the Unocal Corporation, the American energy concern. China has had atomic bombs since 1964 and currently has a small arsenal of land- and sea-based nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States, according to most Western intelligence estimates. Some Pentagon officials have argued that China has been expanding the size and sophistication of its nuclear bombs and delivery systems, while others argue that Beijing has done little more than maintain a minimal but credible deterrent against a nuclear attack. Beijing has said repeatedly that it would use military force to prevent Taiwan from becoming a formally independent country. President Bush has made clear that the United States would defend Taiwan. Many military analysts have assumed that any battle over Taiwan would be localized, with both China and the United States taking care to ensure that it would not expand into a general war between the two powers. But the comments by General Zhu suggest that at least some elements of the military are prepared to widen the conflict, perhaps to persuade the United States that it could no more successfully fight a limited war against China than it could against the former Soviet Union. "If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," he said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese." General Zhu's threat is not the first of its kind from a senior Chinese military official. In 1995, Xiong Guangkai, who is now the deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told Chas W. Freeman, a former Pentagon official, that China would consider using nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict. Mr. Freeman quoted Mr. Xiong as saying that Americans should worry more about Los Angeles than Taipei. Foreign Ministry officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about General Zhu's remarks. General Zhu said he had recently expressed his views to former American officials, including Mr. Freeman and Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the former commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command. David Lague of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting for this article. ---- Beijing plays down general's threats By Richard McGregor in Beijing and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington Published: July 15 2005 19:50 Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4062b908-f561-11d9-8ffc-00000e2511c8.html Beijing on Friday distanced itself from comments by a senior Chinese general that China could use nuclear weapons against the US in the event of any military conflict with America over Taiwan. “What he talked about were just his personal views,” said Shen Guofang, an assistant minister of foreign affairs. In an interview with foreign reporters in Beijing on Thursday, Major General Zhu Chenghu, who is also a dean at China’s National Defence University, said Beijing should respond with nuclear weapons if the US targeted Chinese territory. “We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all cities east of Xian [in central China], he said. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.” Taiwan on Friday criticised his remarks but steered clear of blaming the Chinese government. Michael You, vice-chairman of the mainland affairs council, Taipei's cabinet-level China policy body, said: “The statement reveals the ferocious face of the hawks in China. It should be condemned and the person making it should apologise.” Chinese government officials emphasised that Gen Zhu's remarks were seen as a minority opinion and being the first to use nuclear weapons would contradict Beijing's military strategy. Gen Zhu, who is understood to have made similar comments in the past, said his remarks were his personal opinion and not government policy. But his comments come at a sensitive time for US-China military relations. The Pentagon is next week expected to release its annual report on the Chinese military, which is likely to take a more hardline stance than previous years. A string of US officials have raised concerns about the rise of the Chinese military recently. Gen Zhu's comments are also likely to further inflame anti-China sentiment in Washington. Lawmakers have complained of unfair trade practices, allegations of currency manipulation, and opposition to a bid by CNOOC, a state-owned Chinese oil company, for US-owned Unocal. “This one sentence from a PRC general has probably nuked any remaining possibility that CNOOC will succeed in its bid for Unocal,” said Andy Rothman, a China strategist with CLSA, a brokerage, in Shanghai. Some Washington analysts caution that Gen Zhu's comments should not be read as official Chinese policy. But Michael O'Hanlon, defence analyst at the Brookings Institution, said Gen Zhu stated a reality that cannot be ignored. “He was right on the merits, but as a policy statement it was a stupid thing to say.” Mr Shen played down any conflict with the US emerging over Taiwan, saying Washington had consistently recognised Beijing's claim to sovereignty over the island. “We don't wish to see any dispute or disagreement between the US and China, or any scenario of conflict with the US,” he said. China has long vowed to retake Taiwan by force, should its government declare formal independence from Beijing, a scenario under which the US may use its military to defend the island from attacks. Mr Zhu's claim that China might destroy hundreds of US cities might be beyond the capability of the country's nuclear forces at the moment, according to a paper published last month by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Quoting “the intelligence community”, the paper said China would increase its strategic nuclear warheads from “18 to 75-100” over the next 15 years, primarily targeted against the US. Additional reporting by Kathrin Hille in Taipei ---- China, Firm on Taiwan, Says General's Words His Own By REUTERS July 15, 2005 Filed at 10:23 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-china-taiwan.html?pagewanted=print BEIJING (Reuters) - Remarks by a Chinese general that Beijing could use nuclear arms against the United States in a war over Taiwan were his personal views, but China will never allow Taiwan to be independent, China's Foreign Ministry said. ``We will firmly abide by the principles of peaceful reunification and 'one country two systems' and we will express the deepest sincerity and exert the greatest efforts to realize peaceful reunification,'' state-mouthpiece Xinhua news agency reported a ministry spokesman as saying late on Friday. But, he added: ``We will never tolerate 'Taiwan Independence', neither will we allow anybody with any means to separate Taiwan from the motherland.'' The Financial Times reported on Friday that Zhu Chenghu, a general in the People's Liberation Army, said China would have no option but to go nuclear in the event of an attack over the contentious Taiwan issue. Zhu had told reporters visiting from Hong Kong he was expressing his own views and did not anticipate a conflict with Washington, it said. Nevertheless, a State Department spokesman called the remarks irresponsible. Beijing considers Taiwan, split politically from the mainland since 1949, a part of China and has vowed to bring the it back into the fold. In March, China passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of ``non-peaceful means'' to do so. While the United States only recognizes one China and says it does not support Taiwan independence, Washington is bound by law to help the democratic island of 23 million people defend itself. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman did not explicitly say that Zhu's comments conflicted with policy. However, China has had a declared policy of not using its nuclear weapons unless it has already suffered nuclear attack. Zhu is dean of China's University of National Defense. ``Zhu had repeatedly emphasized that he would express personal views on the issues that the reporters are interested in before they started discussions,'' the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. He said he hoped the United States would ``join efforts with China to maintain the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.'' ``We firmly believe it is in the interests of both China and the United States, as well as benefits the peace, stability and development of the Asia Pacific region and the whole world, to oppose 'Taiwan Independence' and maintain the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits,'' he was quoted as saying. -------- europe Belgian House of Representatives asks withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons Another small step forward for the movement From: Pol D'Huyvetter Date: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:20pm For immediate release Belgian House of Representatives ask withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe Brussels, July 15th 2005 - The Belgian House of Representatives has adopted a resolution on nuclear disarmament and on-proliferation, calling for the withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons based in Europe. They also ask to exclude nuclear weapons from the common EU security policy. This is the second time that a parliamentary assembly in Europe demands the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons. The Belgian Senate approved a similar resolution last April 21st 2005, just prior to the NPT Review Conference in New York which ended in failure. An estimated 480 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons are suspected to be based in Belgium, Germany, England, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. The United States is currently the only country to have nuclear weapons stationed on the territory of other countries. The resolution of the Belgian House comes just prior to the 60th anniversary of the first Trinity nuclear test in the "Jornada del Muerto"-valley in New Mexico on July 16th 1945. Since that day 2.053 nuclear weapons were detonated, or on average 1 every 10 days since 1945. Three weeks after the successful nuclear blast in New Mexico the inhabitants of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to suffer the first A-bomb attacks, making an estimated of 237.062 casualties. More information: http://www.motherearth.org/walk/tests.php To increase pressure today the mayor of Hiroshima, Mr. Akiba Tadatoshi, calls people to participate between July 26th and August 9th in a For Mother Earth peace walk from Ypres to NATO headquarters in Brussels, and onwards to the U.S. nuclear weapon base in Kleine Brogel, in the north of Belgium. Also Belgian mayors are increasingly getting involved with the campaign of the Mayors for Peace, as almost half of Belgian mayors joined the global call for elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020. Mr. Akiba Tadatoshi, the mayor of Hiroshima states that "At a time when apathy and ignorance are common enemies, I applaud the walkers who are taking this action to expose the double standard of the Western states concerning weapons of mass-destruction. Of course, we cannot condone nuclear weapons in North-Korea, Iran or Iraq. But why should we tolerate nuclear weapons in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey or anywhere else?". Pol D'Huyvetter, spokesperson for For Mother Earth, a member group of Friends of the Earth International declared: "This resolution is very good news for the many people who have participated in our disarmament campaign for many years. This resolution will help convince our government that they need to get rid of the NATO nuclear base at Kleine Brogel. This nuclear base is dark spot on the world map as the base has a capacity to store up to 20 US B61 nuclear bombs, each of which has a lethal power that exceeds the power of the Hiroshima bomb by up to 14 times. We need to ban these genocidal weapons as soon as possible with a global treaty. Unfortunately the U.S. is very strongly opposed to such a treaty. But even without the U.S. we'll move forward as we prove again today, and as we are doing for the International Criminal Court, the Land Mine Treaty or the Kyoto Protocol. One day they'll have to join the global call for a world free of nuclear weapons." Text resolution in French and Dutch: http://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/pdf/51/1545/51K1545007.pdf More information: http://www.motherearth.org Press contacts: Dirk Vander Maelen +32-475-74 59 31 Pol D'Huyvetter +32-495-28 02 59 For Mother Earth - Voor Moeder Aarde vzw member of Friends of the Earth International K. Maria Hendrikaplein 5 9000 Gent - Belgium Phone +32-9-242 87 52 or 04 Mobile +32-495-28 02 59 Fax +32-9-242 87 51 http://www.motherearth.org ---- Belgian parliamentary discussion on nuclear weapons From: Hans Lammerant Date: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:21pm The Belgian Chambre approved a new resolution on nuclear weapons. It is quite similar to the one approved in the Senate (translation on http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/BelgiumSenate032205.pdf ) but slightly weaker. The resolution still contains the call for the withdrawal of American tactical nuclear weapons out of Europe. Main discussion was 9.b. on excluding the role of nuclear weapons from the EU security policy. The french speaking liberals MR and the flemish christian-democrats CD&V wanted to skip this part. In the end the liberals agreed with a weakening and voted for. The christian-democrats withdrew their support because of this paragraph and abstained. Interesting in the discussion was the position of the MR and of the minister of foreign affairs De Gucht, which implied that nuclear weapons already played a role in the EU security policy! This shows it can be interesting to raise the issue of the role of nuclear weapons in the ESDP in the European Parliament and in the debates around the constitution, especially in non-NATO countries. To put it a bit stronger: do you want your country to be dragged into nuclear warfare due to alliance politics comparable to the situation before WW I, especially in the age of the war against terrorism. Since both the sticky points (withdrwal of US nukes and exlusion from EU policy) were put in compromise text, a weaker interpretation is possible which leaves the policy of the Belgian government as it is. Allthough seen the signatures under the original texts in Senate and Chambre represented already a parliamentary majority, the stronger interpretation can be defended. Dutch and French text: http://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/pdf/51/1545/51K1545006.pdf Translation of the operative part: ASKS THE GOVERNMENT: 1. to make all efforts to assure the continued existence of the Non Proliferation Treaty and the strict implementation in all its aspects; 2. to make all efforts to ensure that, after the failure of the NPT Review Conference in May 2005, the NPT does not get weakened further but is revitalised by strengthening the verification procedures, the restoration of trust in the treaty and the adaption of the treaty to new challenges. 3. to make all efforts to strengthen the role of the IAEA in the surveillance and the elimination of the fissile material stocks, to accelerate the signing and ratification of the additional IAEA-protocol by all state members of the NPT, to help the development of a multinational system for the production, trade and reprocessing of fissile material for strictly civil aims, to support the proposal of the IAEA-director for a moratorium of 5 years on the building of installations for uranium enrichment or reprocessing of fissile material, to develop incentives to make countries abandon the development of a closed cycle for nuclear energy; 4. to make a policy plan for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation concerning her efforts in the diverse international fora; 5. to assure that non-proliferation initiatives also include a clear and irreversible component on disarmament; 6. to take concrete initiatives to assure efforts from the UN General Assembly to break the deadlock around the NPT, when in September 2005 170 state- and government leaders will discuss development, security and human rights 7. to assure the consideration inside NATO of practical steps towards nuclear disarmament, conform to the conclusions of the NPT Review Conference of 2000; 8. to propose initiatives in NATO concerning: a. the review of strategic doctrines concerning nuclear weapons; b. the gradual withdrawal of the American tactical nuclear weapons from Europe as fulfillment of Article VI of the NPT and taking the necessary diplomatic measures to start in the NATO-Russia Council negotiations on the reduction and the destruction of the American tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and the Russian tactical nuclear weapons and their security, and to strengthen on this point confidence and transparency measures between NATO and Russia; c. the application of the irreversibility principle on the non-presence of nuclear weapons in the new NATO member states; d. steps towards a nuclear weapon free zone, formed by all NNWS in Europe; e. a transparency policy which goes farther than the existing practice; 9. inside the European Union: a. to support and actively develop the policy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, by among other issues raising the issue of nuclear disarmament and the presence in Europe of weapons of mass destruction and by implementing as fast as possible the proposed measures concerning the trade in nuclear materials and possible means of delivery of nuclear weapons and the measures demanded by resolution 1540 of the Security Council; b. to take initiatives to limit and exclude any role of nuclear weapons from the common security and defense policy; 10. to support initiatives concerning: a. the strengthening and the ratification and implementing in the shortest delays of the CTBT; b. the review of strategic doctrines; c. the adoption of interim measures to prevent accidental firing of nuclear weapons; d. verification, transparency and confidence building measures; e. the formation of new Nuclear Weapon Free Zones; f. including the negative security assurances in a judicially binding instrument; g. the struggle against illegal trade of nuclear materials; h. installing measures for international control on nuclear installations of countries which started the procedure to step out of the NPT; 11. to support and to take itself in other multilateral bodies initiatives aimed at non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. Hans Lammerant Forum voor Vredesactie http://www.vredesactie.be - http://www.bomspotting.be -------- india India needs US to become a global power: Mansingh (INTERVIEW) By Manish Chand, Indo-Asian News Service July 15, 2005 http://www.eians.com/stories/2005/07/15/15om.shtml New Delhi (IANS) - Asserting that India will never be a client state of the US, former Indian envoy Lalit Mansingh predicts a radical transformation of bilateral ties powered by New Delhi's ambition to be a global power with help from Washington. "We need the friendship of the US to join the high table of international relations. We want infusions of US technology and investments in infrastructure. We want US support to be a major global power," Mansingh told IANS in an interview. "India will not be a client state of the US. It will take an independent stand on all issues. If the Americans want us to fight their battles in Cuba, we will not go along with it. The Americans are not forcing us into anything," he stressed. "There is an active as well as passive convergence of interests between India and the US. Passive convergence of interests centres on common liberal democratic values. "Keeping sea-lanes free for international trade, energy quest, stopping illegal trade in narcotics, and the global war against terror are the key areas of strategic convergence between the two countries," said Mansingh. "The US wants us to support these strategic objectives. There is nothing objectionable about them." Allaying apprehensions about closer India-US ties in the context of the framework agreement on defence signed last month, he said: "The US and India are natural partners, not allies. We will never be an ally of the US or any other country." Calling for a national consensus on pushing India-US relations to a new level, Mansingh stressed on a major shift in the friendship to what he called gut issues during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington beginning July 18. "The focus has shifted from big ticket issues like space and civilian nuclear cooperation, nuclear defence and high technology to gut issues that directly affect the lives of millions of ordinary Indians and Americans," Mansingh said. "We are now going to enter subjects that touch the lives of people. The focus is now on the new trinity of issues: infrastructure and investments in this crucial sector, energy dialogue and agriculture. For the first time, there is an agenda heavy with substance. "The prime minister wants the US to be a partner in a second green revolution in the country. The focus will be on reviving links with the American universities to make Indian universities vibrant centres of learning. There is tremendous potential in the sharing of agriculture-related technologies," said Mansingh, who was foreign secretary before becoming India's ambassador in Washington in 2001. He served there for three years. Mansingh is, however, skeptical about the growing buzz about a breakthrough in civilian nuclear cooperation during Manmohan Singh's visit. "Emphasising the nuclear issue as a make-or-break issue is misplaced. This is mere symbolism. Coal is more important than nuclear energy," he said. "In the field of nuclear cooperation, there is a possibility of headway on the supply of nuclear fuel. "The US can give a green signal to the Nuclear Suppliers Group about selling nuclear fuel to India." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed during her India visit in March on partnering India during the common quest for energy. Mansingh was at pains to understand "exaggerated anxieties and paranoia" about deepening relations with the US. He compared the present turning point in India-US relations to 1971 when India signed the treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation with the former Soviet Union. "There is something intriguingly familiar about the scene. The same fears were then voiced by the (Hindu rightwing) Sangh Parivar which are now expressed by the Left vis-à-vis relations with the US. "But (Indira) Gandhi took a bold decision in the greater interest of India. We benefited from this relationship (with the Soviets) for 30 years," he added. "There is a political consensus in the US on the relationship with India. There is no matching consensus in India on a major transformation of relations with the US. This gap has to be bridged." For clarifications/queries, please contact IANS NEWS DESK at 2616-5778/8546, 2617-3369 or mail us at support@eians.com -------- russia France Blocking Russia’s Entry to Spent Nuclear Fuel Market — Rosatom Head Created: 15.07.2005 12:51 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:51 MSK MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/money/2005/07/15/nuclearmarket.shtml Russia admitted difficulties with its plans for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, in the face of competition from France and opposition by the U.S., AFX reported. Alexander Rumyantsev, head of the Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom, 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 criticize 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 and Serbia under Soviet-era contracts. ---- Russia supports IAEA approach to nuclear cycle 17:02, July 15 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/world/20050715/40915714.html MOSCOW - Russia supports the initiatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency on comprehensive approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle, an IAEA official said Friday at an international conference. Yuri Sokolov, IAEA Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy, said that the Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Power (Rosatom) Alexander Rumyantsev had expressed their support for the IAEA initiatives on a rational approach to the nuclear fuel cycle. On July 13-15 Moscow hosted an international conference to examine comprehensive technical and organizational approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Sokolov said the international conference, "had allowed the parties to better understand one another and provided a good basis for further cooperation." Vladimir Kuchinov, head of the Rosatom department for international and external economic affairs, said that international efforts to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime must be consolidated for the future development of nuclear energy. The conference reported that the existing methods for producing and transporting nuclear fuel were at "a technically acceptable level despite the considerable growth of nuclear energy powers." They provide a basis for the development of international nuclear fuel cycle centers. Talking about the establishment of an international center for processing spent nuclear fuel, Kuchinov said the issue should be discussed at an international level under the supervision of the IAEA. He said that the proposal to establish a reserve stock of nuclear fuel under IAEA control had been discussed for many years. He added that some political, technical and organizational issues still had to be addressed. "Setting up international working groups should be the next step toward establishing a reserve stock of nuclear fuel under the IAEA," he added. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Radical nuclear weapons overhaul recommended James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, July 15, 2005 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/15/MNGE3DOH3F1.DTL An Energy Department task force has proposed a radical transformation of the nation's complex for producing nuclear weapons, recommending the manufacturing of a new generation of more flexible warheads at a single site that would consolidate activities previously done at plants across the country. If adopted, the extremely expensive changes would resuscitate America's warhead manufacturing capabilities even while requiring substantial downsizing of the weapons design labs at Livermore and Los Alamos, N.M., which are administered by the University of California. The proposals would also change the weapons design and production processes into operations run more like businesses in the private sector. As envisioned by the task force, the work of the weapons complex would be driven more by engineering and rigorous cost reduction than by an interchange of scientific ideas conducted in a university-like setting -- a profound shift in the culture that has prevailed since a group of physicists detonated the first atomic bomb 60 years ago this week in the high desert of New Mexico. "Successful businesses know when products and services are good enough, and recognize that cost is one of the metrics for excellent performance," the report says. "The complex must learn to balance quality, safety, security and cost in order to meet the needs of the nation in a cost-effective, appropriate manner." The proposals will now be reviewed by senior government officials, including the secretary of energy, and then by Congress before any changes can be undertaken. The six-member task force -- two retired energy lab officials and four from the private sector -- used strong language in making clear its view that the current system, which has struggled to define its mission since the end of the Cold War, is obsolete. "In summary, the task force found a complex neither robust, nor agile, nor responsive, with little evidence of a master plan," the report said. Taken together, the costly recommendations in the 124-page report would amount to the most sweeping restructuring of the way the United States produces nuclear weapons since the years right after World War II, when scientists working under J. Robert Oppenheimer and the University of California laid the foundations for the network of facilities. The report is described as a draft, but it supports several goals of the Bush administration -- in particular, producing a new generation of more reliable warheads to replace the current arsenal, and giving the complex the ability to design and build new warheads in a fraction of the time it once took. Those ideas have long been disputed by some weapons experts, including some retired weapons designers and government advisers. For instance, Sidney Drell, a professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime adviser to the government on weapons issues, has said that the current warheads in America's arsenal will work fine for years and that it would be a waste of billions of dollars to build new ones. Other critics, such as Michael May, a former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, contend that an aggressive new production effort by the United States might encourage other countries to ramp up their own programs, creating proliferation. The task force report said new weapons should be developed without resuming underground nuclear testing, prohibited by U.S. government policy since 1992, but it does urge the construction of new facilities at the Nevada Test Site, including preparation for possible underground tests. The report, in short, is a blueprint for a large-scale resuscitation of the nuclear weapons production system. In its Nuclear Posture Review, issued in 2001, the Bush administration called for creation of a smaller but more reliable stockpile of warheads, as well as construction of a manufacturing capability that would allow the United States to respond quickly to new threats. But the administration has never determined exactly how many or what kind of warheads it will need in the future -- a problem that the task force said must be addressed before the details of the new complex could be fixed. Even so, the task force's report urges swift action, saying that the new complex, which probably would cost tens of billions of dollars, should be up and able to produce 125 new warheads a year by 2030. While the recommendations would reduce the number of jobs at the existing design labs, they would also improve safety in and around them by removing all sensitive nuclear materials, such as plutonium and uranium, and placing the materials at the new manufacturing site. The report included no proposals on where that facility should be located. Any changes would be battled vigorously in Congress, not least because the recommendations call for a huge investment at a time when the United States is spending more than $5 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman did not comment directly Thursday on the proposals by the task force, which reports to his department's advisory board. A department spokesman said only that Bodman welcomed a debate over ideas for improving the nuclear weapons complex. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N. M., who has long been a major supporter of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, showed immediate resistance, issuing a statement making it clear that no funds would be available until fiscal 2007 at the earliest. "I do not think we should rush into any quick fixes," Domenici said. But Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Ohio, who as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the weapons complex called for creation of the task force in March, 2004, endorsed the recommendations. "The task force concludes that the current stockpile and supporting weapons complex is neither technically credible nor financially sustainable," he said in a statement. "I agree 100 percent." The existing system was developed as a highly decentralized operation that placed talented scientists in the leading roles, with the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs working not just independently of each other, but in open competition. That has meant some redundancies, but the system was justified as producing greater innovation. Both labs have been managed since their inception by the University of California, which underscored the principle that the labs were essentially about developing creative scientific ideas. UC officials said they would have no comment on the draft task force report. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the complex stopped designing new warheads and halted all underground testing. Initially, budgets at the design labs fell until Congress agreed to give them a new task, known as science-based stockpile stewardship. The labs were given free rein to develop new techniques for testing warhead components without detonating them and coming up with methods for refurbishing older warheads. The result has been a doubling of the weapons budget since the mid-1990s and an arsenal that is deemed safe and reliable. But the design labs have been hit with a series of management and security scandals over the past three years that have eroded the credibility of the University of California and tried the patience of even some of the strongest lab supporters in Congress. For the first time, the Energy Department is putting the lab management contracts up for bidding. The task force called for an end to the competition between the labs and said they should share some equipment and facilities, such as computing centers and high-energy testing gear, to eliminate costly redundancies. With all production activities to be consolidated at the new site, the task force said, the costs of securing sensitive nuclear materials would drop. Under the task force proposals, the last Cold War-era warhead would be dismantled by 2030. The aim would be to use modern manufacturing technology from the private sector to make warheads cheaper and easier to modify and maintain, and to speed up design and production. Cost reduction would be an overriding concern. "Cost goals add a healthy degree of discipline to the design process," the report says. The panel's chairman is David Overskei, president of Decision Factors Inc. , in San Diego. It also includes John Crawford, the retired deputy director of the Sandia National Laboratories, Hermann Grunder, the retired director of the Argonne National Laboratory, Donald Kaczynski, the director of technology at Brush Wellman, Robert Nickell, an engineering consultant to Applied Science & Technology, and Donald Trost, vice president of TechSource Inc. E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com. ---- U.S. Urged to Consolidate Nuclear Weapons By H. JOSEF HEBERT The Associated Press Friday, July 15, 2005; 7:54 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071500471_pf.html http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050714/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/nuclear_terrorists_1 WASHINGTON -- The country's nuclear weapons plants and sensitive material such as plutonium should be consolidated at a single site to increase security and reduce targets for terrorists, a federal advisory task force says. A report made public Thursday also urged the Energy Department to speed development of sturdier, more reliable nuclear warheads that can be maintained more easily and last longer. Such a program is in the early design stages. The report by a special task force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board has yet to be approved by the full board. But it is expected to weigh heavily in the future configuration of the governments nuclear weapons complex, including activities at three weapons design laboratories in New Mexico and California. While such labs have been modernized, production facilities are "World War II era ... lacking in modern-day production technology and striving to optimize performance with antiquated equipment and facilities," the report said. It recommended consolidating the most critical parts of the weapons complex, now spread across eight facilities, into a single site with "cutting edge nuclear component production, manufacturing and assembly technologies." The report did not recommended a location, but said site selection should begin immediately. The report also criticized the "broad distribution" of sensitive nuclear material such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium, which now is located at six of the eight major facilities. This distribution, once considered a security advantage, now "increases the number of potential terrorist targets within this country, exposing the (weapons) complex and the surrounding civilian population to risk," according to the report. It noted that when the weapons complex was designed, most of the sites were remote and relatively easy to secure. Today, residential and or commercial communities border most of them. "The primary method for dealing with current and future terrorist threats to the complex is through the application of guards, guns and gates," the report said. It noted that such activities now account for nearly 15 percent of the weapon complex budget. Citizen groups at a number of the weapons design and production facilities have argued that plutonium stockpiles should be removed from places such as the Livermore National Laboratory, which is in the heart of a residential area. Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are needed for weapons design and other activities at Livermore. The lab has resisted removing all of such material, fearing its weapons work would have to be abandoned. Energy Department spokesman Mike Waldron, noting that it was a draft report, said "it would premature to comment on specifics" until the public has had a chance to comment on the findings and the advisory panel has given its final approval. In the mid-1990s, a panel of outside scientists recommended consolidating the three nuclear weapons labs, drawing opposition from the laboratories and members of Congress. The idea was rejected by then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. This recommendation also is expected to meet opposition. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., whose state is home to two of the three weapons labs, said in a statement, "We should not rush into any quick fixes." Domenici said the spending bill for the Energy Department prohibits, for the now, the use of any money to put in place the advisory panel's recommendations. The weapons facilities the task force looked at for consolidation were the three national labs _ Lawrence Livermore in California and Sandia and Los Alamos in New Mexico _ as well as the Savannah River complex in South Carolina, the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn., the Pantex facility in Texas, the Nuclear Test Site in Nevada and a non-nuclear facility in Kansas City. On the Net: Secretary's Advisory Board (SEAB): http://www.seab.doe.gov ---- Task Force Urges Single Nuclear Weapons Facility By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 15, 2005; A06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/14/AR2005071402149_pf.html A special task force appointed by the energy secretary sharply criticized the aging U.S. nuclear weapons production complex yesterday and the lack of unified vision in how the Pentagon and the Energy Department agree on nuclear weapons needs and carry out their design and production. The six-member panel, in its draft report, recommended construction of a modern nuclear production center that would consolidate all production, manufacturing and assembly of nuclear weapons in one location, instead of the five that exist today. The group called for bringing together all primary and secondary components for the weapons at that same complex so special nuclear materials would be at one site, thereby limiting targets for terrorist attacks. The current complex keeps plutonium and highly enriched uranium, key nuclear materials, at six sites, a situation that the panel said "increases the number of potential targets within this country, exposing the complex and the surrounding civilian population to risk." The new approach would eventually cut down the roles of the three national laboratories that design weapons: Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore in California. The panel found that the current policy to extend the life of the Cold War nuclear weapons stockpile through modernization "will eventually result in old weapons with some new components . . . that will require an extensive and ever-more-costly maintenance program." The answer, according to the panel, is to proceed with design and production of a new family of nuclear weapons under "a new version" of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, now before Congress. "This family of weapons will form the basis of the sustainable stockpile of the future that will replace the current Cold War stockpile," the panel's report said. The panel found that there is no "unified interdependent nuclear weapons enterprise vision or set of mission priorities," something that has developed because the Defense Department "does not provide the Energy Department with unified and integrated weapon requirements." Yesterday, at a public symposium at the National Academy of Sciences on the 60th anniversary of "Trinity," the first atomic bomb test, Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, called for support of the current RRW program, which involves producing new parts. He said his program could begin producing a smaller, safer warhead without the need for nuclear testing by 2012 to 2015. The panel's report drew a quick response from Capitol Hill. Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that controls the nuclear complex budget, praised the labs and said, "I do not think we should rush into any quick fixes." To back up his view, he included language in next year's appropriation bill to prohibit funds from being used to implement any of the task force's recommendations. ---- Panel urges removal of nuclear materials By Betsy Mason CONTRA COSTA TIMES Posted on Fri, Jul. 15, 2005 http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/cctimes/12139006.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp A new report from an advisory group to the federal Secretary of Energy recommends nuclear materials now housed in various facilities around the country, including the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, be moved into a new, improved facility away from population centers. The committee, tasked with assessing the nuclear weapons complex, also recommended replacing the nation's aging nuclear arsenal with new, redesigned weapons. That production would also take place at this new facility. This move would initially cost the Department of Energy more than continuing to maintain the current stockpile, but would lead to cost savings over the next 25 years, as the new weapons would be designed for easier maintenance, according to the report. Moving plutonium and highly enriched uranium out of Livermore has been discussed at various levels for some time. Last year, then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham mentioned the idea in a speech at the Savannah Rivers Site in South Carolina, where he said the Energy Department would "consider whether essential work at Livermore could be relocated." The plutonium facility at Livermore has been essentially shut down since Jan. 15 because of safety concerns after plutonium was found stored in potentially unsafe containers such as paint cans. "This would be a good time to get rid of it," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Livermore-based watchdog group Tri-Valley CARES. "This is not an appropriate location for plutonium storage. You have 7 million people in a 50-mile radius of the lab." The new report suggests that consolidation would be safer today, saying it would also mean fewer potential terrorist targets. The report also suggests competition between the national nuclear weapons labs, Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia, leads to redundant research and facilities and consequently unnecessary costs. The committee specifically mentioned Livermore's National Ignition Facility, its funding in peril of being cut by Congress after the Senate dropped all NIF construction money from the facility's budget this month. The committee specifically recommends designating facilities such as NIF, the Z-machine at Sandia in New Mexico and the Omega laser at Rochester University as user facilities that can be accessed equally by scientists in the entire Energy Department complex. The committee suggests that if this step is taken, redundant user facilities could eventually be closed, but the report doesn't specify which ones would get the ax. The report was released in draft form Wednesday and has yet to undergo the required public comment period before it can be approved by the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. "While we welcome a discussion of ideas that would contribute to the safety and security of the American people, it would be premature to comment on the specifics of the report," said Michael Waldron, spokesman for the current Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, said the report "raises important issues that should be a part of a larger discussion about the future of our nuclear weapons policy." Specifically, she said the report leaves unanswered questions about the plan to build new nuclear weapons and the ultimate size of the nuclear arsenal. Kelley also worries about the weapons replacement plan. "It's a really a Trojan horse filled with new nuclear weapons designs," she said. Betsy Mason covers science and the national laboratories. Reach her at 925-847-2158 or bmason@cctimes.com. ---- Trinity Site marks 60th anniversary of A-bomb Anti-war groups plan protest Friday, July 15, 2005 Posted: 1847 GMT (0247 HKT) http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/07/15/atomic.anniversary.ap/ Photo: Scientists and workmen rig the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site. http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/TECH/science/07/15/atomic.anniversary.ap/story.trinity.site.ap.jpg ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- Herb Lehr hasn't been to Trinity Site since the day a mushroom cloud filled the early morning sky in the New Mexico desert. Standing 12 miles from the blast, he looked toward the Oscura Mountains and watched as scientists detonated the first atomic bomb 60 years ago Saturday, ushering in the nuclear age. "All of a sudden this very bright light came out and where I was, it was intense enough that the whole mountain range itself was completely whited out," he said. "I could see the ball and fire rising up. It was sort of awe-inspiring." This Saturday, Lehr will guide a tour bus from the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque to the Trinity Site, on what is now the Army's restricted White Sands Missile Range. More than 5,000 people visited the site for the 50th anniversary, and officials said they are prepared for an increase for the 60th. But just like the 50th anniversary, no special events or speeches are planned. For more than a year, Lehr was part of the top-secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos that developed two atomic bombs that essentially stunned Japan into surrender and ended World War II. Tens of thousands of people died when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Lehr said he never fully understood the impact the bombs would have. Nevertheless, he said he would do it again. "In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile," said Lehr, 83. "I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability." At Trinity Site, visitors can walk on Ground Zero, where the bomb was detonated from a 100-foot steel tower that was vaporized by the blast. Ground Zero, now a gentle depression in the desert, is marked by a lava obelisk with a simple inscription: "Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945." Along the fence line hangs a pictorial history of what happened there. Not everyone is happy with that history. Anti-war groups planned to protest the anniversary at the National Atomic Museum on Friday. Bob Anderson of Stop the War Machine said celebrating the development of weapons sheds blood on the nation's morality. "It glosses over all the political and human tragedies that occurred as a result of the Trinity blast and the use of weapons on Japan," Anderson said. "We just think that's probably a more important message than trying to glorify the weapons." Lehr said it is unfortunate the bombs were used for war. But the development of a nuclear bomb was a race among scientists around the world that couldn't be stopped, he said. "I'm just interested in going and seeing it and maybe getting some memories back," said Lehr, who now lives in Mesa, Arizona. "Los Alamos was a whole interesting experience. It was something unique. I worked very hard down there." --- The first 'ground zero' A visit to the Trinity test site, where the deer and the antelope play By Andy Walton CNN Interactive July 15, 2005 http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/the.bomb/route/03.trinity/ NEAR SOCORRO, New Mexico -- The Trinity test site is fenced off from the surrounding terrain, secured with a padlock. This would not seem odd except that it is in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range, itself a secured site. It was here -- 33 degrees, 40 minutes, 31 seconds north latitude, 106 degrees, 28 minutes, 29 seconds west longitude -- where the world changed on July 16, 1945, at 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time. In this place, at that time, the world's first nuclear device exploded and the nuclear age was born. A simple stone obelisk, erected some 20 years after the event, marks that birthplace. Officials chose this site because it was already under government control, part of the Alamagordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. It is in a basin dubbed the Jornado del Muerto -- journey of the dead -- by Spanish explorers. And, though remote, it was close to Los Alamos. In the first light of dawn, the obelisk casts a long shadow across the scrub. Without the stone marker, the site would blend into the surrounding desert, the crater -- more of an indention, actually -- having long ago been bulldozed into oblivion. Off to one side a tin structure with Plexiglas windows in the roof shelters a small portion of the crater, preserved for posterity. Nearby there is a small knot of steel and concrete that was once one of the four supports for a 100-foot tower. Most of the tower was vaporized when the gadget atop it was detonated. Gadget, not bomb -- in the Los Alamos days, scientists feared being overheard by workmen. The term stuck. After the test, the indention at ground zero was covered with trinitite, a green, glass-like mineral created by the extreme heat of the blast. Most of the trinitite was carted away after the test, but small fragments can still be found. The chain-link and barbed-wire fence that surrounds the site is decorated with weathered radiation warning signs. One large sign warning that "The use of eating, drinking, chewing and smoking materials and the application of cosmetics is prohibited within this fenced area." Jumbo: bottle that held the genie Outside the fence is what's left of Jumbo, a cast iron vessel built as an insurance policy. Scientists were unsure if the plutonium-based bomb would work, and built Jumbo to contain the radioactive plutonium if the explosives went off but failed to trigger a chain reaction. The 25-foot, 214-ton can was placed 800 yards from ground zero, and survived the blast. In 1946, the Army detonated eight 500-pound bombs in the bottom of the vessel, blowing both ends off but leaving much of the middle intact. The remains of Jumbo were moved outside the fence in 1979. Today, it resembles a massive segment of pipe, 10 feet in diameter. Just west of the test site, one of the instrument bunkers survives. The heavy concrete structure, a few feet high, is buried in sand, the tubes that led to its sensors choked with dust. Next to the bunker is a beer can, rusted beyond recognition but obviously old, from the triangular openings in the top -- it was opened with a "church key" can opener. A home on the range The project's base camp, 10 miles from ground zero, is long gone. So are the three bunkers where scientists triggered and monitored the explosion. But the McDonald ranch house, two miles from the blast site, remains. Here, in the master bedroom, scientists covered the windows in plastic and sealed off cracks with tape to create a "clean room" where they could assemble the bomb's core. The Trinity test blew out most of the house's windows but left the structure of the house intact. What the bomb did not destroy, time and weather nearly did. Though the 51,500-acre test site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975, the house was left to the elements until 1982, when the Army stabilized the house to prevent any further damage. In 1984, the National Park Service restored the house to its July 1945 condition. The barn, its roof damaged by the blast, remains a ruin. But the house, the stone wall around it, and the rainwater cistern the Manhattan Project staff used as a swimming pool are all intact. Today, the former Alamagordo range is the White Sands Missile Range. The bustle of the summer of 1945 is gone, and the area around the Trinity site has been largely given over to its original inhabitants: the jackrabbits, pronghorn antelope and mule deer. There are also more exotic transplants, such as the South African Oryx, and the site is occasionally opened to hunters. It is also open to tourists twice a year, in April and October. Between public events, the site remains part of the missile range -- not in active use, but part of the area evacuated for missile tests. A brochure for atomic tourists describes the radiation risks as minor -- one hour at the site means exposure to .5 to 1 milliroentgens of radiation, compared to 3-5 milliroentgens normally experienced in a coast-to-coast airline flight. ---- The day the world lit up By Kathryn Westcott BBC News Friday, 15 July, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4641861.stm One eyewitness said it was as if someone had turned the sun on with a switch. Picture: Los Alamos National Laboratory http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41298000/jpg/_41298559_trintycolouredmain.jpg The atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexico desert at 05:29:45 local time on 16 July, 1945, "lit up the entire world". That is how Private Daniel Yearout, one of the few remaining eyewitnesses some 60 years on, recalls the morning the powers of the atom were first unleashed. Asked for his first thought after the test, top scientist J Robert Oppenheimer quoted from his favourite Hindu poem, The Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer and other world-leading scientists who had taken part in the top-secret test knew that from that moment on, the world had changed forever. For others who were involved, such as Private Yearout, it would be some time before they fully realised what had taken place. The world would not know the full secret until 6 August, when the Japanese town of Hiroshima was bombed. Daniel Yearout, a 25-year-old army private with the US Corps of Engineers, was deployed close to what became known as "Ground Zero" on that morning in July. In 1945, Private Yearout was based at Los Alamos, the secret town that the US government had built during the war in the remote hills of New Mexico. It was here that a laboratory was established to design a nuclear weapon that the army hoped would win World War II. Some 8,000 people lived and worked in the town - scientists and their families, engineers, technicians, secretaries and army personnel. They had more or less disappeared from the world and set up their own communities. While each played their part, few fully understood the magnitude of the work that went on there. "The Los Alamos project was the best secret there's ever been," says Mr Yearout, who now lives in Waverly, Tennessee. Deployed in the desert On Saturday 14 July, 1945, Private Yearout and other members of the US Corps of Engineers left their base to take part in a "top-secret mission". "No one knew where we were going or what was going to happen," Mr Yearout told the BBC News Website. The officers were given telephone numbers to call along the way to find out where to go to next. The convoy travelled some 200 miles into the desert to a place called Alamorgordo, about 18 miles from "Ground Zero". They had been stationed in case the small communities in the probable fallout path needed to be evacuated. "We were called out the night before. One of the officers told us we were going to take part in some testing," says Mr Yearout. "He said that if everything went well, the war would be over in a few days. But, then he said that if it all went wrong, 'it was each damn man for himself'." Early on Monday morning Private Yearout and a few of his colleagues climbed a hill. They had been told it would be the safest place to be. The day of the actual test began with an early morning thunderstorm. "There was someone running a camera up on the hill. We lay there and talked to him for a bit. The test was supposed to take place at around 0400 but was delayed because of the weather." Shortly before 0530, half an hour before sunrise, the scientists went to bunkers six miles from the test site and put on sunglasses and sunscreen. The test began and the sky was lit up by an unnatural ball of fire. "I don't remember whether I was standing up or lying against the fence," says Mr Yearout. "Suddenly, without any sound, the whole world lit up. When I came to my senses, I was lying on the ground with my back to where the light was coming from. I put my hands over my eyes to protect them and I could see the bones in my fingers. It was as if I was looking at an X-ray. "I whisked around and looked towards the light. I could hear a rumble and the Earth shook. I saw a big fireball rising in the sky - it looked like it was pouring gasoline out there, all the way around. The fireball was getting bigger and bigger and we just stood and watched. "This was followed by a long rumbling - I'd say it went on for 10 minutes. In and out and round the mountains. The fire began going down and then I saw a swirl of black smoke rising in the sky. "I was scared at the time. I didn't know what was going on. I remember the man running the camera beside us hollering that it was the most beautiful picture he had ever taken in his life - he said it maybe 25 times. All he was interested in was the picture and all I was wondering was if we were going to get out of there or not." Eventually the men went back down the hill to their tents and started a game of poker. Radiation readings stayed at what was then considered safe levels and no one needed to be evacuated. "No one was allowed to talk about what we saw," says Mr Yearout. "Anyone who did was shipped out pretty quickly." The flash released four times the heat of the interior of the sun and was seen 250 miles away. But, so secret was the mission - codenamed Trinity - that local media were told that an ammunition dump had blown up on an army base in the area. In Potsdam outside Berlin, President Harry Truman waited for the coded message that the bomb had been successful. Mr Yearout says Trinity paved the way for bringing an end to the war and saving many American and Japanese lives. "If we had gone into Japan, we would have encountered the worst fighting we ever had ever seen. We would have been there for four to six years." But 60 years on, debate still rages over whether the bomb was really necessary to force the Japanese to surrender. A number of the scientists involved in the project ended up feeling extremely ambivalent about the bomb's use, and some went on to campaign against nuclear arms. For Mr Yearout, Trinity remains one of the 20th Century's most significant achievements. "I was glad I'd seen it," he says. "But I hope I don't see another one." ---- Trinity scientists issue call for reducing nuclear caches By James W. Brosnan Scripps Howard News Service July 15, 2005 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NucNews/pending WASHINGTON - To mark the 60th anniversary of the world's first nuclear bomb blast in the New Mexico desert, 10 men who helped make the bomb turned their thoughts to the future of weapons in an age when terrorists and rogue states have replaced the Soviet Union as the enemy. Some of their suggestions were startling. "We must stop the production of nuclear weapons," said Wolfgang Panofsky, director emeritus of Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center. "Each sovereign state must be convinced that its security is better off without nuclear weapons than with them." Panofsky, who developed a way to measure the force of the Trinity test bomb, invited the nine other former Manhattan Project scientists to a symposium Thursday in Washington sponsored by the Committee on International Security and Arms Control to mark the anniversary of the Trinity explosion 60 years ago Saturday. Within a month, that successful test led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan's agreement to surrender. It also ushered in an era of nuclear weapons building that would eventually see the Soviet Union amass more than 40,000 warheads and the United States more than 30,000. Now their stockpiles are down to about 10,000 warheads apiece with plans for further reductions, but the United States is threatened with the prospects of nuclear weapons in North Korea or Iran or in the hands of terrorists. All of the scientists were involved in building or testing the bomb. They said they feared most that it wouldn't work. "I was raised to love my country. I had no compunction about bombing an enemy," said Hugh Bradner, who helped plan the construction of Los Alamos and now is professor emeritus at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California. Maurice Shapiro spent much of the night before the test up on the tower itself, "baby-sitting" the electronic ignition device he had helped devise. On a bus going back to Los Alamos after the test, he bet a colleague on how many bombs it would take for Japan to surrender. Shapiro said fewer than 10; his colleague predicted more than 10. It took two. Shapiro is a visiting professor at the University of Maryland. Val Fitch watched the fireball while lying on the ground outside the bunker 6 miles south of the explosion tower. He turned to a pale soldier and said, "The war will be over soon." Fitch, chairman emeritus of the Department of Physics at Princeton University, said it's time to explore "common sense" to reduce nuclear weapons instead of wasting money on things like an anti-ballistic missile defense system. Robert Christy, who developed an implosion design for the core of the plutonium bomb, said the world might be safer if most nations had a handful of nuclear weapons to deter aggression rather than the major powers trying to maintain a monopoly. "The `have/have not' situation doesn't work," because smaller countries believe they can negotiate with the United States only if they have the bomb, said Christy, a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology. Rubby Sherr, a professor emeritus at Princeton who designed the plutonium bomb's trigger, suggested giving every country just one bomb. Louis Rosen, a senior laboratory fellow emeritus at Los Alamos, said the United States should be concerned not only with terrorists but with the lack of civilian control over nuclear weapons possessed by countries such as Pakistan. Lawrence Johnston is the only person to have witnessed the Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions. Now retired from the University of Idaho, he said his solution to proliferation is to pray. "I am asking that God will give us good ideas," he said. Also speaking at the symposium were Harold Agnew, an adjunct professor at the University of California; Donald Horning, a former president of Brown University; and Arnold Kramish, a former senior staff member with the Rand Corp. ---- N.M. Site Marks Anniversary of Bomb Test By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS July 15, 2005 Filed at 10:21 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Atomic-Anniversary.html?pagewanted=print ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Herb Lehr hasn't been to Trinity Site since the day a mushroom cloud filled the early morning sky in the New Mexico desert. Standing 12 miles from the blast, he looked toward the Oscura Mountains and watched as scientists detonated the first atomic bomb 60 years ago Saturday, ushering in the nuclear age. ''All of a sudden this very bright light came out and where I was, it was intense enough that the whole mountain range itself was completely whited out,'' he said. ''I could see the ball and fire rising up. It was sort of awe-inspiring.'' This Saturday, Lehr will guide a tour bus from the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque to the Trinity Site, on what is now the Army's restricted White Sands Missile Range. More than 5,000 people visited the site for the 50th anniversary, and officials said they are prepared for an increase for the 60th. But just like the 50th anniversary, no special events or speeches are planned. For more than a year, Lehr was part of the top-secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos that developed two atomic bombs that essentially stunned Japan into surrender and ended World War II. Tens of thousands of people died when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Lehr said he never fully understood the impact the bombs would have. Nevertheless, he said he would do it again. ''In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile,'' said Lehr, 83. ''I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability.'' At Trinity Site, visitors can walk on Ground Zero, where the bomb was detonated from a 100-foot steel tower that was vaporized by the blast. Ground Zero, now a gentle depression in the desert, is marked by a lava obelisk with a simple inscription: ''Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945.'' Along the fence line hangs a pictorial history of what happened there. Not everyone is happy with that history. Anti-war groups planned to protest the anniversary at the National Atomic Museum on Friday. Bob Anderson of Stop the War Machine said celebrating the development of weapons sheds blood on the nation's morality. ''It glosses over all the political and human tragedies that occurred as a result of the Trinity blast and the use of weapons on Japan,'' Anderson said. ''We just think that's probably a more important message than trying to glorify the weapons.'' Lehr said it is unfortunate the bombs were used for war. But the development of a nuclear bomb was a race among scientists around the world that couldn't be stopped, he said. ''I'm just interested in going and seeing it and maybe getting some memories back,'' said Lehr, who now lives in Mesa, Ariz. ''Los Alamos was a whole interesting experience. It was something unique. I worked very hard down there.'' On the Net: National Atomic Museum: http://www.atomicmuseum.com/ Trinity Site: http://www.wsmr.army.mil/pao/TrinitySite/trinst.htm -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- california New director of super laser project at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Fri, Jul. 15, 2005 San Jose Mercury News http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/12144207.htm LIVERMORE - Edward Moses, an engineer and physicist with 20 years experience at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has been named associate director of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the lab. Moses has been acting director since May and NIF project manager since 1999. He will be responsible for almost 850 employees and an annual budget of $385 million. He will be in charge of completing construction of the $3.5 billion project and transforming it into a national user facility. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate cut construction funding for NIF from its budget for the upcoming year. The House included the funding in its budget, and the two houses will resolve the difference in conference in the fall. The aim of the project is to achieve nuclear fusion ignition to help maintain the country's nuclear weapons stockpile without actually testing weapons. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2009. ---- Third look for nukes comes up with nil Unresolved questions resolved in new search By Adam Ashton AASHTON@MERCEDSUN-STAR.COM Last Updated: July 15, 2005, 09:00:49 AM PDT http://www.mercedsun-star.com/local/story/10891633p-11664247c.html CASTLE -- The Air Force's third search in two years for radioactive remnants of nuclear weapons at Castle Airport Aviation and Development Center turned up a few piles of buried fence posts. Linda Geissinger, spokeswoman for the agency charged with environmental cleanup at the former Air Force base, said a team of surveyors did not find any radioactive material this week at a site near the United States Penitentiary, Atwater. The site was the last at Castle over which the Air Force had unresolved questions about radioactive materials, Geissinger said. Two previous searches also resulted in a clean bill of health. The Air Force Real Property Agency is drafting a final report on its findings which must be approved by federal regulators. Atwater City Councilman Ed Abercrombie, the city's liaison to the Air Force on cleanup efforts, said he wasn't surprised that the investigation turned up clear. "We were pretty sure there wasn't any nuclear waste out there, but just to calm all the nerves of people out there, it's good," Abercrombie said. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report released earlier this year sparked the most recent search with a suggestion that the Air Force sometimes disposed of potentially harmful materials in the 1950s by digging pits and then capping the waste with concrete. Investigators this week dug up three concrete pits near the federal prison, but Geissinger said they only uncovered old construction materials. Classified information disclosed to the Real Property Agency in 2003 prompted the first search for radioactive materials that might have been used in maintenance of nuclear weapons at the base in the '50s and '60s. That search came up clean, and the Air Force returned a few months later to investigate claims from former employees that some of the materials might have been buried near the prison. That investigation yielded another all-clear. The Air Force won't confirm or deny that it kept nuclear weapons at the base, but former base commanders have indicated weapons were there to arm powerful planes like the B-52 Stratofortress. The Real Property Agency has managed Castle environmental cleanup efforts since the Air Force left the base in 1995. It has spent more than $150 million and treated more than 12 billion gallons of groundwater to scrub remnants of cleaning solvents and fuels. Reporter Adam Ashton can be reached at 385-2484 or aashton@mercedsun-star.com. -------- massachusetts NRC ISSUES $60,000 FINE FOR INATTENTIVE CONTROL ROOM SUPERVISOR AT PILGRIM NUCLEAR POWER PLANT AND INITIAL INAPPROPRIATE RESPONSE NRC News Friday, July 15, 2005 http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2005/05-040i.html The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a $60,000 civil penalty for Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., for violations that occurred at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant on June 29, 2004. The violations involve a control room supervisor who was asleep for approximately 4 minutes while on duty in the control room, and improper response by a shift manager and reactor operator after observing the inattentive supervisor. After the NRC learned of the event, the agency’s Region I Office of Investigations began an investigation at the plant, which is located in Plymouth, Mass., and operated by Entergy. That investigation determined, among other things, that the supervisor in question fell asleep in a chair and was therefore inattentive to his duties. (Public safety was still assured because another reactor and senior reactor operator were also on duty in the control room at the time.) Based on the investigation’s findings, the NRC has identified four violations of agency requirements. Specifically, they involve: (1) the control room supervisor being asleep and therefore neither alert nor attentive to his duties; (2) a reactor operator observing the supervisor asleep but deliberately failing to take immediate actions to awaken him, inform appropriate site personnel and file a report on the event; (3) the shift manager, in careless disregard of requirements, failing to inform appropriate site personnel and file a report on the event; and (4) the control room supervisor not being relieved of duty and subjected to fitness-for-duty testing. “Although there was no actual safety consequence resulting from this event because there were no plant conditions that warranted immediate action, it is important for licensed operators to be alert and attentive to their control room duties at all times so that they can adequately monitor the reactor, manipulate reactor controls, and react to any plant transients,” NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins wrote in a letter to Entergy regarding the enforcement action. “It is also important that when licensed operators are not alert or attentive to their duties, appropriate action must be taken to immediately correct the situation and inform management.” In addition to the fine proposed for Entergy, the NRC is issuing a Severity Level III violation to the reactor operator involved; a Severity Level III violation to the control room supervisor; and a Letter of Reprimand to the shift manager. The Letter of Reprimand for the shift manager is based on a settlement agreement reached under the NRC’s Alternate Dispute Resolution Process. It acknowledges that under the agreement, the shift manager will conduct outreach to peers at Pilgrim and other licensed operators in the nuclear industry regarding his experience and lessons learned. These commitments have been put in place by a confirmatory order. Entergy has taken several steps in response to the event, including conducting training on behavioral observation and other topics, as well as senior managers meeting with plant personnel to discuss the event, fitness-for-duty obligations and safety conscious work environment requirements. The company will have 30 days to respond to the enforcement action. -------- north carolina Progress finds cause of N.C. Brunswick 1 nuke outage Fri Jul 15, 2005 07:37 AM ET (Reuters) http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=EVXICDJ4BRFJCCRBAEKSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=9078809 NEW YORK, July 15 - Progress Energy Inc. (PGN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) determined the cause of the automatic shutdown of the 872-megawatt unit 1 at the Brunswick nuclear power station in North Carolina on July 13. In a report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the North Carolina-based company said the turbine tripped due to the shorting to ground of one phase of the main generator no-load disconnect switch, which connects the generator to the main transformer. The turbine trip caused the reactor to trip. The company said it put the unit into cold shutdown while it investigates the switch failure and the performance of the reactor shutdown systems. The 1,683 MW Brunswick station is in Southport, North Carolina, about 160 miles south of Raleigh. There are two units at the station: the 872 MW unit 1 and the 811 MW unit 2. Unit 2 continued to operate at full power. One MW powers about 800 homes, according to the North American average. Progress Energy operates the station for its owners Progress (81.7 percent) and North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency (18.3 percent). Progress Energy's subsidiaries own and operate more than 24,000 MW of generating capacity, market energy commodities, and transmit and distribute electricity to more about 2.9 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. -------- ohio FirstEnergy says it will focus on problems at Perry plant Associated Press Fri, Jul. 15, 2005 http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/business/12140729.htm PERRY, Ohio - FirstEnergy Corp. is revising plans for its nuclear plant performance to address issues federal regulators say warrant continued close scrutiny of the company's northeast Ohio plant here, a company spokesman said Friday. The company's improvement goals will be updated to focus on the most important issues raised in a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission letter released Thursday, said Todd Schneider, spokesman for the Akron-based utility. The NRC letter, sent last week, said the Perry nuclear plant is generally safe, but there are still a series of small problems such as poor staff training that must be addressed before the federal agency will loosen its oversight. The agency gave the utility 30 days to develop a detailed plan to deal with the problems raised in a preliminary NRC report and to improve the plant performance, under scrutiny since 2004. "Your facility is being operated safely," the letter said. "However, the team identified problems similar to those previously identified. ... The NRC will continue to provide increased oversight of activities at your Perry nuclear power plant ... until you have demonstrated that your corrective actions are lasting and effective." The NRC, which oversees the industry, has noted a string of problems at the plant, about 35 miles northeast of Cleveland. The plant shut down twice over the winter because of a failed water pump and broken instrument that gave a false indication of elevated radiation. In a special review conducted from January until May, inspectors found that Perry managers didn't sufficiently probe possible problems and that employees lacked focus on some tasks, leading to mistakes. The report also found inadequate supervision. In April, the NRC said it would review operations at the Perry plant every three months. That news came about a year after FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse nuclear plant, about 30 miles east of Toledo, started producing electricity again after a two-year shutdown because of a corroded hole in the reactor cap. The NRC has said it will lift stricter oversight of Davis-Besse because FirstEnergy has made enough progress there. FirstEnergy operates from New Jersey to Ohio and gets 37 percent of its electricity output from nuclear power. The company has said it has made significant progress reducing the backlog of needed repairs at its nuclear plants and that safety equipment is tested daily. ON THE NET FirstEnergy: http://www.firstenergycorp.com Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov -------- pennsylvania NRC ups TMI oversight following training lapse For five months in 2004, half of the nuclear power plant’s 364-member emergency response team had not taken an annual refresher course as required, inspectors say. By Ad Crable Lancaster New Era Published: Jul 15, 2005 1:49 PM EST http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/15665 LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - The operators of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant are being hit with another training violation involving workers who would handle an emergency at the plant. Inspectors for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that for five months in 2004, half the plant’s 364-member emergency response team had not taken an annual refresher course as required. Technically, they were ineligible to respond to an emergency involving a release of radiation at the plant for those five months. But realistically, says NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan, “They would have, and they certainly would have been able to handle any emergency that would have arisen. Nevertheless, this is one of the annual requirements.” The recent training violation comes after two of eight control room crews at TMI flunked requalification exams in 2004 during a hypothetical emergency in a simulated control room. Two of five control room supervisors failed a portion of the simulated tests and a third had to be retrained because of a weak performance on the test. In addition, the simulator used at TMI to test operators did not accurately replicate some current plant conditions, and it was determined that tests were not varied, as required, so that inspectors conceivably could have told their colleagues what to expect, the NRC found. In all, four violations were issued. All those who failed the tests were subsequently retrained and certified. In the latest accident-training development, the NRC has notified TMI operator AmerGen Energy that the violation is of low to moderate safety significance and that TMI will now come under increased oversight by the federal agency. AmerGen notified the NRC last Friday that it would not contest the violation. The utility has addressed the problem, Sheehan said. Sheehan said there is no indication AmerGen willfully ignored the requirement. “It appears to be confusion having to do with their procedures,” he said. AmerGen spokesman Ralph DeSantis concurred. AmerGen internal plans had two different requirements, he said. One said retraining had to be done every calendar year. The other that it had to be done every 12 months, plus or minus up to three months. Once the NRC’s intent was made clear, the emergency response people were immediately retrained. DeSantis noted that the retraining often involves a mere one-hour training session. All the workers had passed training exercises throughout the year, he added. “We feel very comfortable everyone was very qualified to do their job. It was more of an administrative issue than anything else.” Emergency responders at TMI would perform a wide range of roles during an emergency, from working with the media and public to addressing the problem at the plant. Eric Epstein of Three Mile Island Alert, a safe-energy group, says the incident is just the latest in a disturbing pattern at TMI. “Staffing cuts, forced overtime and an aging work force has undermined training and eroded safety margins at Three Mile Island,” Epstein said. “For an industry based on safety and depth, poor training and inadequate staffing are cause for alarm.” -------- vermont Vermont Yankee seeks rule change to aid uprate bid By CAROLYN LORIÉ Friday, July 15, 2005 Brattleboro Reformer Staff http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2966335,00.html BRATTLEBORO -- Representatives from the Vermont Department of Public Service and anti-nuclear group New England Coalition will be at the headquarters of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, arguing against a proposed rule change. The guideline that would be changed has to do with "taking credit" for pressure in the containment tank after an accident. If revised, it could affect Vermont Yankee's bid to increase power by 20 percent. The NRC now advises plant operators that in order to comply with its regulations, they should not take credit for pressure in the tank unless absolutely necessary and no alternative exists. If Vermont Yankee were to produce 20 percent more power, the water in the containment tank would be hotter, allowing steam bubbles to form. The air in the bubbles would interfere with the ability of the emergency pumps to suction the water, eventually rendering them useless. Without the emergency pumps constantly circulating cool water into the tank, the core would eventually become exposed, resulting in a meltdown. Engineers at the plant, however, argue that there is enough pressure already in the tank to prevent the steam bubbles from forming. The pressure is there under normal operating conditions and would not change in the event of an accident. But opponents say that this is far from certain and that plant operators should not count on the level of pressure remaining the same after an accident. "[Defense in depth, safety margins and redundancy] evaporate if you permit plants to operate with an emergency core cooling system that very well may not work," said Raymond Shadis, technical advisor to the coalition. Some plants that have increased power -- or "uprated," as it is known in the industry -- have been allowed by the NRC to take credit for containment pressure. The NRC is currently reviewing Vermont Yankee's application to uprate. A decision had been delayed because of lingering concerns about possible problems with the steam dryers. Bill Sherman, the state nuclear engineer, said that Vermont Yankee's proposal did not show a need for taking credit for containment pressure, as state in the NRC guidelines. The state's case before the licensing board revolves entirely around this issue. "We didn't see power uprate as creating a need," said Sherman. David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is working with the Department of Public Service and will be presenting with Sherman at Tuesday's meeting in Rockville, Md. A representative from Vermont Yankee will attend the meeting, said Larry Smith, spokesman for the plant. Though the public meeting, which will be with a subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, will be about the rule change in general, the department and the coalition will focus on Vermont Yankee in the arguments. "Vermont Yankee is the poster child for containment over pressure. It is the poster child for why one should pay attention," said Shadis. -------- us nuc waste Transportation Dept. prepares for nuke hauls - Role in overseeing: But Hatch, Bennett ready to block funding for the department positions Salt Lake Tribune, The (UT) July 15, 2005 Author: Robert Gehrke http://www.shundahai.org/PFS_USDOT_Approve0718-05.htm http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:nlAsJl6z0UMJ:www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2861994+Transportation+Dept.+prepares+for+nuke+hauls&hl=en WASHINGTON -- The Transportation Department is making preparations for its role in overseeing shipments of spent nuclear fuel to PrivateFuelStorage's proposed nuclear waste dump in Utah. The department asked Congress to approve four new staff positions at a cost of about $100,000 each, who would review transit plans for the waste and ensure they comply with existing regulations governing hazardous materials shipments. The department's request indicates steps are already being taken to prepare for shipments to the waste dump, even though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not yet granted a license to the facility. A license application filed by PrivateFuelStorage, a group of electric utilities, is in its final stages of review and a decision is expected by the end of the summer. PrivateFuelStorage plans to store 44,000 tons of high-level waste in steel and concrete casks on the SkullValley Band of Goshutes Indian reservation until the Energy Department opens a permanent dump, presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Somehow, the language that ended up accompanying the House transportation bill when it passed June 30 was an approval for the Transportation Department to hire two staffers to handle legal challenges over shipments to the waste site. A Transportation Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that is not what the department was seeking and he was not sure how the request morphed into the language that ended up accompanying the House bill. The single paragraph in a 252-page report caught Utah's congressional delegation by surprise, with House members and the state's new lobbyist unaware it had been tucked into the report when the House passed the bill. As it is written, the House passage gives the Transportation Department permission to hire two employees to handle anticipated legal challenges stemming from the shipment of the nuclear waste to the SkullValley site. The state has made clear that it will go to court to try to block the waste dump, but no lawsuits have been filed, which made the language in the House bill puzzling, said Dianne Nielson, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. As it is written now, the provision in the House bill makes no sense, said Sen. Orrin Hatch. "If the government were to defend itself in a lawsuit -- a lawsuit which doesn't exist, by the way -- the Department of Justice would handle it, not Transportation. It needs to come out," he said. "This should not be in the Senate bill, and it should not survive a conference with the House." The Transportation official said the department anticipates going back and helping to rework the language before it passes the Senate. Sen. Bob Bennett's spokeswoman, Mary Jane Collipriest, said that because of ambiguity in what came out of the House, Bennett will make sure the provision does not make it into the Senate bill when the committee considers it next week. -------- MILITARY -------- asia Thailand adopts emergency powers PM Thaksin has new powers of censorship and phone tapping Friday 15 July 2005, 9:55 Makka Time, 6:55 GMT http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/89169CBB-FE11-42C6-8AEC-8E9165892324.htm Thailand's cabinet has passed emergency laws giving Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra the power to tap phones, censor newspapers and detain suspects without charge in response to rising violence in the far south. The Emergency Powers Law, passed on Friday, replaces localised martial law already in place in the three southern most provinces, Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, where more than 800 people have died in the past 19 months. "In the past seven days there have been signs that the situation will escalate," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said after an emergency cabinet meeting prompted by a coordinated set of attacks on Thursday evening in the provincial capital of Yala. "The last straw that prompted us to impose this law is what happened at 7pm (1200 GMT) in Yala," he said. Bombs set off In one of the most dramatic episodes of the southern unrest, suspected Muslim separatists set off a series of bombs, bringing down pylons outside electricity sub-stations and plunging the town into darkness for an hour. Two policemen were killed and 23 people injured in the ensuing shooting in the normally quiet town, home to 30,000 people and situated 1100km south of Bangkok near the Malaysian border. The new law allows Thaksin to stop the sale of newspapers and magazines deemed "threatening to national security or causing public anxiety", according to a draft seen by Reuters. Government criticised Earlier this year the Thai government was criticised by a local human rights body for its handling of a protest last year in which many Muslim demonstrators died. Security forces mistreated protesters at the town of Takbai and their methods were ill thought-out, the National Human Rights Commission reported. Most of the 85 protesters who died at Takbai suffocated when they were loaded on to a truck. -------- russia / chechnya Rights group: Russia tortured Uzbeks Tashkent says 187 were killed; but NGOs put it at 1000 Friday 15 July 2005, AFP http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/133DEB78-3731-4200-BEBD-74AD9BBF4594.htm A human rights group has accused Russian authorities of torturing Uzbek nationals arrested at the request of Uzbekistan earlier this year. Uzbeks, arrested in Russia on suspicion of taking part in an uprising, have been tortured, the Russian human rights group, Memorial, said on Friday. According to the group, 14 people of Uzbek origin - 12 Uzbek nationals, a Russian and a Kyrgyz - were detained at Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, in June following a request by the authorities in Tashkent. The arrests were linked to the insurrection in the eastern Uzbek town of Andijan last May. Tashkent says 187 people were killed in the uprising, but non-governmental organisations (NGOs) put the figure at between 500 and 1000. Memorial says the 14 were beaten and given electric shocks in the presence of Uzbek interrogators, who threatened to "get even" with the detainees if they were sent home. Russian backing The detained men deny links to the Andijan uprising and membership in the Akromiya movement, accused of organising the uprising, according to Russian NGOs. A second Russian NGO, Civil Contribution, has written to the Russian Prosecutor General, Vladimir Ustinov, asking him to look into the torture charges as a matter of urgency. The Uzbek request for extradition is under consideration by the prosecutor's office, and Civil Contribution fears the 14 may be sent back at any moment. Russia backed Tashkent's crackdown of the Andijan uprising. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Wind power doesn't need nuclear backup: Ballem Last updated Jul 15 2005 07:04 AM ADT CBC News http://pei.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=pe-ballem-lepreau-20050714 P.E.I. Energy Minister Jamie Ballem says the development of wind power on the Island does not depend on the Point Lepreau nuclear station staying in operation. In the wake of the federal government's announcement Thursday that it would not help fund a proposed refurbishment of Point Lepreau, the only nuclear generating plant in the Maritimes, Ballem was responding to suggestions that the nuclear plant will be needed for backup energy when the wind isn't blowing. Earlier this week, during a meeting in Charlottetown, Liberal leaders from P.E.I. and New Brunswick suggested the nuclear plant located near Saint John was central to the development of wind power on the Island. Ballem said Point Lepreau is not an appropriate backup for wind power, because nuclear stations are too slow to power up and power down. At the moment, about 95 per cent of the Island's power comes from New Brunswick sources, including Point Lepreau. P.E.I. hopes to use renewable energy sources such as wind to generate about 15 per cent of its power needs within the next few years. New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord has threatened to build a coal-fired plant if there is no federal money to help refurbish Point Lepreau, a project that would cost about $1.4 billion but would give the plant another 20 to 30 years of oepration. Another alternative would be a plant in Saint John powered by liquefied natural gas. The New Brunswick government has said it will make a decision within two weeks on whether to go it alone on refurbishing Point Lepreau. Maritime Electric president Jim Lea is anxious to see the nuclear power station refurbished. He says any replacement will mean more expensive electricity for Prince Edward Islanders. ---- Malawi Explores Biodiesel as a Cash Crop By Charles Mkoka LILONGWE, Malawi, July 15, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2005/2005-07-15-04.asp The Biodiesel Agriculture Association in the central African country of Malawi has embarked on a nationwide campaign, urging farmers to plant a crop that will produce biodiesel. The plants of choice are drought tolerant, environmentally friendly, do not need production inputs, and are harvested three times annually. The biodiesel association in Malawi has been contracted to implement a Jatropha curcas planting program by D1 Oils Africa (Pty) Limited, headquartered in the United Kingdom. Jatropha curcas is a drought resistant shrub that grows up to 15 feet tall with spreading branches. Bark, fruit, leaf and root contain hydrogen cyanide; the plant also contains the toxics toxalbumin and curcin. The black thin-shelled seeds of one variety can be fatal if even four or five seeds are eaten. But Jatropha seeds also contain a high percentage of oil, used for candles, soap and biodiesel production. “We are currently on a nationwide campaign sensitizing rural communities through district commissioners, senior chiefs, and right now we have already conducted meeting with over 600 chiefs," said the Biodiesel Agriculture Association Director of Operations Osman Ibrahim in an exclusive interview with ENS in the commercial industrial hub of Kanengo in Lilongwe. Ibrahim said, "The program has secured substantial land rights through contract farming amounting to 13,000 hectares to plant Jatropha.” Ibrahim is a former Emergency Operations Coordinator for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mozambique where he initiated the food for work program. He intends to lobby WFP to establish a food for work program in Malawi. The Association is currently urging local and international nongovernmental organizations, institutions dealing with communities, clubs, cooperatives involved in development work, micro-finance institutions and agro-business partners to introduce the Jatropha planting program to their members and beneficiaries. “The farmers are being provided with seeds and seedlings including incentives to plant Jatropha," says Ibrahim. "For every tree planted, the association rewards the planter with one Malawi kwacha, just as is the case after the seeds given to them free have germinated.” The kwacha is Malawi's the basic unit of money. “We are urging farmers to plant 2,500 trees per hectare," says Ibrahim. "This is part of community empowerment at its best. The association does not buy land from the people, neither does it lease it. Both the trees and the land belong to the people. There are no strings attached to this initiative." Ibrahim advises communities not to destroy existing trees or forests but to identify idle land and plant Jatropha. The Biodiesel Agriculture Association views Jatropha is an alternative cash crop. Each plant produces five to 15 kilograms of seeds per harvest three times a years, and when crushed and processed the seeds produce biodiesel. Biodiesel is a clean burning alternative fuel produced from domestic renewable resources. It contains no petroleum, but it can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel for use in vehicles. It is also used in compression ignition engines with no major modifications. It is simple to use, biodegradable, nontoxic and essentially free of sulfur and aromatics. The overall smog forming potential of biodiesel is 67 percent less than diesel fuel, the company states. Its analysis of biodiesel emissions show decreased level of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which have been identified as potential cancer causing compounds. The global market demand for biodiesel is strong as concerns rise that petroleum production may peak soon. Ibrahim says there is an estimated demand for diesel of at least 10.5 billion liters by 2010 in the European Union alone. Current current global production by 2010 is estimated at only three billion liters. The demand for alternative fuel sources continues to grow throughout Africa, the company says, and it intends to meet this demand in Africa through regional development and the production of biodiesel as an alternative fuel source. D1 Oil Plc has adopted a policy of social and ethical responsibility, and says it is committed to reducing global reliance on nonrenewable sources of energy which contribute to global warming through the emission of greenhouse gases. The company says it is conducting its Jatropha agro-forestry in a sustainable manner to ensure that the benefit of producing vegetable oil for refining into biodiesel does not come at the cost of destruction to the environment, the misuse of water and other natural resources, or loss of biodiversity. In addition to biodiesel, Jatropha seeds also yield glycerin, which is used as a body lotion. The final product is a cake that can be used as fertilizer. A member of the spurge family, the plant is also called the physic nut, Barbados nut, purging nut, pignon d'inde, and kuikui pake. Used in traditional medicine against a long list of ailments including burns, cough, stomachache, gonorrhea and syphilis, inflammation, jaundice, paralysis, pneumonia, rash, tumors, and ulcers, the Jatropha has latex that contains an alkaloid, jatrophine, which shows anti-cancerous properties. The extracts have been used in folk remedies for cancer. D1 has established a foundation "to engage isolated rural communities in developing countries in the commercial production of biodiesel feed stocks." The foundation aims to strengthen local agricultural employment, encourage rural self–sufficiency and establish appropriate energy infrastructure. "Our intention is that such project will in due course become self supporting and functioning,” the company says. Ibrahim says that next week the association will start crushing the seeds it has collected from farmers, and samples of the oils will be sent to South Africa for testing. "We expect to get official communication from experts after the oils have been tested. Already some analysts have told us the quality of our seed is good in the region," added Ibrahim. An economic commentator, who asked not to be named, said that embarking on new discoveries on a large scale like Jatropha planting would prevent the country from draining its foreign reserves. That consideration is especially important at this time when Malawi is experiencing acute foreign currency shortages that make it difficult to import raw materials and goods. A land-locked country, Malawi has recently experienced rising prices of crude oil on the world market, resulting in soaring prices at the pump. The prices hikes cover freight charges at sea, demurrage charges at landing ports, and transportation costs including road levies. If done on a large scale, the initiative will save motorists from dipping deeper into their pockets. Environmentalists have also hailed the move saying that the main product of Jatropha biodiesel is environmentally friendly, since it produces fewer emissions into the atmosphere. “The whole world is embarking on renewable sustainable energy resources," says environmentalist Dixie Makwale. "This is really a timely initiative." -------- energy House, Senate Take up Widely Different Energy Bills Amid Attempts to Resolve Dispute July 15, 2005 — By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8247 WASHINGTON — A dispute over a gasoline additive could jeopardize hopes for an agreement as the Senate and House worked on Thursday to forge a compromise to deal with the nation's energy problems. Under pressure because of soaring gasoline and other fuel prices, President Bush has urged lawmakers to send him an energy bill before they depart for their summer recess in August. Some members of Congress are skeptical about meeting that timetable. "We're going to try," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who is leading the Senate negotiations. But lawmakers, he said, don't want to rush the process and get "a shoddy bill." The conferees met for more than 90 minutes Thursday but did not get into the substance of the legislation. They planned several more meetings next week. The House approved its bill in April; the Senate's was passed in June. The Senate version would direct more tax breaks to develop renewable energy sources and promote conservation. It differs sharply from the House-passed measures on issues such as drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge to mandatory use of renewable energy sources by electric utilities. The Senate bill would cost about $17.5 billion over 10 years; the House version comes in at $8 billion. Both are more costly than the $6.7 billion total favored by the White House. The chief disagreement, however, centers on methyl tertiary butyl ether, the gasoline additive known as MTBE. The House bill would protect MTBE makers against liability from lawsuits stemming from the chemical's contamination of drinking water supplies in at least 36 states. The Senate measure contains no such provision. Dozens of senators, both Democrats and Republicans, have pledged to block any legislation that contains that MTBE plan. Even in the House, the issue is contentious. An attempt on Thursday to direct House negotiators to abandon the MTBE provision failed, but only by a small margin, 217-201. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who is chairman of the House-Senate negotiating conference, has sought a compromise on MTBE that the Senate might accept. "It's absolutely imperative that we have a comprehensive national energy bill," Barton said, expressing optimism that lawmakers can settle the differences over MTBE and other issues. The discussions over MTBE, largely among House Republicans, have focused on setting up a cleanup fund for state and communities where MTBE water contamination has been found. It also would strengthen an existing program intended to repair or remove leaking underground tanks at gasoline stations. But it would still shield MTBE manufactures from product liability suits. Barton has given no details about the discussions. "There is no deal yet," said Lisa Miller, a Barton spokeswoman. But even as a general framework of a compromise has surfaced, it has been just as quickly dismissed by critics of the liability provision. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., has said he has yet to hear anything that would ease his concerns. His state's suit against MTBE makers would be nullified by the House bill. The fund could have as much as $8 billion, according to some accounts, and be funded by taxpayers and MTBE makers and distributors. But such a fund will not address the MTBE contamination that (communities) ... face today or may face in the future," said Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif. Capps cites various estimates that the cost of MTBE cleanup could reach $33 billion, both in existing and future pollution. Barton dismisses such estimates and says if they were true, "most of the money is trial lawyer contingency fees" arising from the lawsuits. Barton cites industry estimates that actual cleanup costs could be a little as $2 billion.