NucNews - July 30, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- australia Australian: Submarine fleet riddled with risks Cameron Stewart July 30, 2005 The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16093368%255E601,00.html THREE of Australia's six Collins-class submarines have suffered potentially "catastrophic" fires, floods or equipment faults at sea. An explosive internal navy report on submarine safety hazards - written in May 2002 and obtained by The Weekend Australian - reveals that the six submarines were plagued by far more serious safety issues than has been publicly admitted. The report, which details the contents of "hazard logs" for the entire fleet, finds 67 of 468 reported hazards to be "unacceptable" faults that needed to be "promptly resolved". It also criticises the navy for adopting an "out of sight and out of mind" attitude to less serious faults on the multibillion-dollar submarines - widely considered Australia's most valuable defence asset. The report, which was distributed to 26 naval commanders, reveals several potentially "catastrophic" incidents at sea, including a fire on board HMAS Waller and damage to crucial battery cables aboard HMAS Farncomb and HMAS Sheean. Nine months after the report was written, HMAS Dechaineux and its crew of 55 almost sank after it suffered a major flood off the coast of Perth -- as revealed for the first time in The Weekend Australian last Saturday. The report shows the navy knew that the anti-flood systems on its submarines were "inadequate and dangerous" before the Dechaineux accident and reveals that a flood also occurred aboard HMAS Collins. The report says that in April 2000, HMAS Waller suffered an on-board fire in the "main propulsion starter resistor" at the back of the submarine. "The fire, adjacent to a main battery circuit-breaker cabinet, could have had catastrophic consequences," it says. Yet the findings of those who investigated the accident could not be implemented because "funding is not available". The report reveals that all of the Collins-class submarines were at risk of main battery short-circuit faults. "Such faults would be uncontrollable and catastrophic," it says. "Submarines have suffered cable damage, through poor installation and wear, which could have resulted in battery short-circuit faults." It warns that the submarines' diesel and hydraulic oil systems "may fail and cause fires", yet at the same time questions "the effectiveness of the Collins' Halon fixed firefighting system". The report also discloses that audits raised doubts about the integrity of the submarines' pressure hulls, but gave no further details. "Cracks in the hull! This could be catastrophic," it says. The navy said yesterday that it had addressed the major safety issues raised in the report. "The issues outlined in the minute of May 24, 2002, have not been ignored and have all been acted upon either by eliminating the risks or mitigating against them. Safety is the navy's most important priority," the navy said. The hazard report reveals that the "overheating and breakdown of one battery cable insulation" on HMAS Waller "may have had catastrophic consequences" and that this same hazard was "also present on HMAS Sheean". It warns that, under certain conditions, the submarines could face "total loss of propulsion", while a separate set of conditions could lead the autopilot to "drive the boat to a 20-degree bow-down aspect". The report also says that "Collins submarines roll badly in some circumstances while surfaced" and that this had resulted in several injuries to sailors, including one who had to be medically discharged from the navy. It also criticises the attitude taken within the navy to submarine safety, saying that only the most serious safety hazards were being actively managed. "(Less serious hazards) are less actively managed and, in some cases, ignored", it says. -------- canada Uranium explorers stake out Canada Saturday, July 30, 2005 12:07 EDT By Nicole Mordant (Reuters) http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/ROC/20050730/2005-07-30T160924Z_01_N22640061_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESS-COLUMN-CANADA-MARKETS-COL VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Canada's hot and humid summer is often a quiet time in the mining industry but some exciting uranium finds this year have kept prospectors and investors from lounging at the lake. There's been a 44 percent surge in the uranium price this year, and Canada's exploration industry has fanned out across almost every province and territory in search of new deposits of the heavy metal, which is fairly abundant in the Earth's crust. Uranium is popular again as the world hunts for new and cheaper sources of energy to generate electricity and as coal-fired power plants get a bad rap from those worried about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. From British Columbia in the west to Nunavut in the north and Labrador in the east, some 60 junior mining firms are hunting for the next big lode of uranium, which is mostly used to produce electricity in nuclear power stations. "The recent news of a new discovery in the Athabasca Basin by partners UEX Corp. and Cogema appears to have the market buzzing again about junior uranium explorers," said National Bank Financial analyst Brian Christie. The Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan is already the world's biggest uranium-producing region, where world No. 1 miner Cameco Corp. each year unearths millions of pounds of the dense, silvery-white metal. UEX and Cogema's discovery comes at a time when spot uranium prices, most recently at $29.50 a pound, are at their highest levels since the 1970s because of industry estimates of a 35 to 45 million pound shortage of mined material a year. Although the deficit is still being met out of above-ground stockpiles, for many years a millstone on prices, these could run out in a few years. There are 440 nuclear reactors worldwide needing uranium and energy-hungry China alone is planning to build another 30 over the next 15 years. Christie's research shows that the number of active uranium-seeking junior miners listed on Toronto's two stock exchanges has more than tripled to 60 in only four months. With just about every inch of land in the Athabasca staked, new explorers such as Firestone Ventures Inc. have headed to less geologically-tested areas like southern Alberta. "The appeal to a junior explorer like us is to go out and find an area. What we like about southern Alberta is that it could be a whole new district. The uranium potential is unknown," said Lori Walton, Firestone's president. "Alberta has a history of being an energy rich province with oil, gas and coal. I think we would have a really good reception to being a uranium producer too," she told Reuters. Less certain about their reception are explorers in neighboring British Columbia, which imposed a moratorium on uranium exploration and mining between 1980 and 1987 after a commission concluded that the health risks for the people who extract the radioactive metal were too great. At least three junior companies, Aldershot Resources Ltd., Sparton Resources and Santoy Resources Ltd. are busy trying to acquire uranium claims in the Okanagan area in south-central British Columbia. According to Geoff Freer, BC's assistant deputy minister of mining and minerals, there is nothing today to stop companies from applying to the West Coast province's government for a uranium exploration permit. But no one has yet. He added though that nuclear energy "is not in BC's future." And any suggestion of a uranium industry in the environmentally conscious province has already angered some green movement activists. They point to its use in making nuclear bombs, the problem of where to store radioactive waste and to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion in 1986 that killed 30 people and forced 200,000 to flee a cloud of radioactive debris as it drifted over the then Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. BC's Green Party, which has some clout in the politics of the province, has called for the moratorium to be reimposed. Asked if the potential opposition even before the company had started to explore made it worth the bother, Santoy Resources spokesman Rupert Allan had few doubts. "The potential economics are very attractive. I think it's worth the effort," he said. (Bay St. Week Ahead appears weekly. Comments or questions can be e-mailed to nicole.mordant@reuters.com.) -------- india A Deplorable Nuclear Bargain India has betrayed its disarmament commitment, joined the 'Atomic Apartheid' regime, and agreed to pursue an uneconomical and unsafe energy technology by signing the 'grand' nuclear bargain with Washington. Praful Bidwai July 30, 2005 Economic and Political Weekly http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=07&filename=8920&filetype=html Prime minister Manmohan Singh has surprised the world by entering into a nuclear cooperation agreement with president George W Bush, which legitimises the present discriminatory global nuclear order in return for India’s acceptance by the US as a ‘responsible’ de facto nuclear weapons-state (NWS) and Washington’s promise of resumption of civilian nuclear commerce. The central, overwhelmingly important, fact about the July 18 agreement is that it marks India’s descent into cynical, Machiavellian nuclear realpolitik as a newly recognised member of the cabal that forms the world’s exclusive ‘Nuclear Club’. This is a comprehensive and disgraceful betrayal of the United Progressive Alliance’s promise to “take a leadership role in promoting universal nuclear disarmament and…a nuclear weapons-free world”. This was meant to correct a ‘deviation’ effected by the Vajpayee government in abandoning India’s ‘traditional’ emphasis on global nuclear weapons abolition, and a prelude to updating Rajiv Gandhi’s thoughtful plan for nuclear disarmament of 1988. India has now upheld and sanctified the global nuclear regime, which it for decades condemned as ‘Atomic Apartheid’–by joining its ruling hegemons. This will further erode India’s credibility and global stature and expose her colossal hypocrisy in masking a crude, dirty truth behind high moral posturing. Many will say India had nothing against ‘nuclear apartheid’; for 15 years or longer, it only wanted to be inside the Club. After legitimising the world’s skewed nuclear regime in return for being decorated as a “responsible” state “with advanced nuclear technology” (a euphemism for NWSs), New Delhi cannot credibly demand that the order be radically altered so the five ‘recognised’ NWSs fulfil their disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Signing an agreement that leaves the global nuclear order basically unreformed, while making a one-time exception for India, amounts to hammering the last nail in the coffin of India’s half-century-long commitment to ridding the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons. Egregious Unilateralism The Washington bargain reflects president Bush’s egregious unilateralism in restructuring the global nuclear order outside of a multilateral forum and without consulting other states, including the 44-member Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). India, which professes a strong commitment to multilateralism and the UN, has legitimised Bush’s unilateralism. The Washington deal has several unctuous features. For one, it wholly lacks transparency. Neither its rationale, nor its likely content, was discussed in advance in the cabinet, its committee on security, the national security council, or the national security advisory board. Even the department of atomic energy (DAE), its principal executing agency, was kept in the dark about it until the last stage. The only advance briefing, to select members of the media, reportedly came from the US embassy in India. This sets an extremely undesirable precedent for policy-making on issues of national importance. Asymmetrical Deal For another, the agreement is not symmetrical. It does not impose, as has been claimed, the same obligations on India or confer ‘the same benefits’ on it as the five NWSs. India must take several steps including “identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities”; declaring “civilian facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)”, “voluntarily” placing them under its inspections; continuing the nuclear-testing moratorium; and “working with the US” for a “Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty”. India must also “secure nuclear materials …through comprehensive export control” and through “adherence to Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and NSG Guidelines”. But India is not even a member of the NSG or MTCR, a plurilateral agreement among a minority of the world’s nations. India’s commitment to continue its testing moratorium is not reciprocated by the US. This is not an academic issue: Washington reportedly has every intention to resume testing to develop new uses for nuclear weapons (such as ‘bunker-buster’ bombs) and invent new weapons, including ‘Star Wars’-style ballistic missile defence systems. Even more important, India must separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities. But this obligation does not apply in practice to the five NWSs. For instance, The Telegraph (July 25) reported: “France has produced substantial quantities of military plutonium from civilian power reactors at Chinon, St Laurent, Marcoule (now under closure) and Bugey. The United Kingdom built the Calder Hall and Chapelcross nuclear power stations to produce plutonium and tritium for weapons as well as electricity. There is no separation of civilian and military programmes in Russia and China.” The US civilian nuclear facilities are operated by private or municipal utilities. But it has placed only a handful of its 100-odd reactors under IAEA safeguards. The IAEA rarely inspects these, citing shortage of funds/manpower. The safeguards regime has always been unequal and based on the assumption that the five NWSs have the ‘right’ to divert materials to military uses – because they are, so to speak, ‘legitimate’ possessors of nuclear weapons. And for a third, the ‘benefits’ offered to India – through a promise to “adjust US laws and policies” and “work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes” to enable full civil nuclear transactions – are intangible or dubious. It is not certain that Bush can sell this agreement either to the US Congress or to the NSG. Visible Opposition There is visible opposition to it from influential members of the US ‘strategic community’, such as former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, former US assistant secretary for non-proliferation Robert Einhorn, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace vice-president George Perkovich and Stimson Centre president emeritus Michael Krepon. Days after the Washington deal was signed, a committee of the House of Representatives resolved to block nuclear technology transfer to India – a calculated signal opposing it. In the NSG too, the agreement is likely to be opposed by states like Brazil, South Africa and Argentina (which renounced their nuclear capability in the 1980s), and possibly by China, Germany and Japan. China, which piloted Resolution 1172 through the UN Security Council in 1998 reprimanding India and Pakistan for their tests, has so far made a guarded response to the deal: it “has noted the report… We hope the US-India cooperation …will be conducive to safeguarding peace and stability in the Asian region”. There is thus no assurance that Bush’s promise to ‘adjust’ domestic and international arrangements to facilitate nuclear commerce with India will materialise. That said, the criticism of the deal by the Bharatiya Janata Party and some super-hawkish Indian right-wingers is fundamentally misplaced. The deal won’t, contrary to their claim, ‘cap’ India’s fissile production or the size of its ‘minimum nuclear deterrent’. Nor will it permit the IAEA’s ‘interference’. IAEA inspectors cannot go into unsafeguarded facilities. There is no obligation on India to place all its thermal-nuclear reactors or fast-breeders under safeguards. (The latter supposedly represent its ‘second’ as-yet –unproved stage of nuclear power development, eventually leading to the still – very-experimental thorium cycle – itself premised upon the wish that India with its plentiful thorium reserves could somehow obviate the need for uranium while greatly expanding nuclear power generation.) The agreement’s most questionable civilian component is its unquestioning faith in the relevance and indispensability of nuclear power for India. No credible study establishes this. There is only a cursory observation in the Mid-Term Review of the Tenth Plan, unsupported by evidence, that nuclear power can be “an important tool for decarbonising the Indian energy sector”. Yet, nuclear power is declared to be the key to India’s “energy security” and to “cleaner and more efficient” energy generation. India’s experience with nuclear power has been, to put it mildly, unhappy. India sinks thousands of crores every year into nuclear power development. Yet, nuclear power contributes less than 3 per cent to electricity generation. The DAE is one of the worst performing departments of the government, with a history of missed targets, grotesque cost overruns, gross mismanagement, lack of coordination between different programmes (e g, heavy water and uranium production), and an appalling safety and occupational health record. India’s nuclear reactors are among the most contaminated atomic plants in the world. They have exposed hundreds of workers to radiation in excess of DAE-stipulated maximum permissible doses. Unsafe practices in plant operation and maintenance and storage and transportation of hazardous materials, are rampant in the DAE. Popular opposition to nuclear power has steadily grown, forcing the DAE to locate new plants at old sites. Protests against uranium mining projects in Meghalaya and Andhra Pradesh are the main reason why the DAE cannot procure enough uranium to charge its reactors under construction. The DAE has avoided scrutiny of its activities by shielding itself behind the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 which empowers it to suppress any information. This has promoted a culture of irresponsibility, and lack of transparency and accountability. Globally too, nuclear power has been a failure. As US energy consultant Amory Lovins says, it has “suffered the greatest collapse of any enterprise in the [world’s] industrial history. Overwhelmed by huge construction and repair costs, it achieved less than 1/10th the capacity and 1/100th the new orders officially forecast a quarter-century ago… Today, if a nuclear power plant cost nothing to build, it would be cheaper to write it off… than to operate”. The US pioneered nuclear power generation. But it has ordered no new nuclear reactors since 1973! US taxpayers have subsidised nuclear power by an estimated one trillion dollars. But nuclear power has failed the market test. In any case, the US is an inappropriate nuclear source for India. India’s main reactor technology (CANDU) uses natural uranium. The US only makes enriched-uranium reactors. Importing these will perpetuate external dependence, replicating the sordid Tarapur experience. About two-thirds of the world’s 440 power reactors in current operation are in North America and western Europe. Many of these countries went in for nuclear power in the 1960s. They are phasing it out, including Germany, Sweden, Italy and Belgium. Even France, which gets 78 per cent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, has closed 11 reactors, including the much tom-tommed 1,200 MW Superphenix, the world’s largest fast-breeder. On current reckoning, a majority of North American and western European nuclear plants are likely to be shut down by 2030. Only a handful of countries have plans for expanding nuclear power generation –including China, Taiwan, South Korea, and more uncertainly, India. It is unclear if rising demand from them can compensate for the receding prospects for nuclear power in the states that account for a majority of today’s reactors. The contribution of nuclear power to global electricity generation has marginally shrunk from 17 to 16 per cent. In the 1990s, global nuclear capacity annually grew by 1 per cent, while renewables like solar and wind rose by 17 and 24 per cent respectively. Nuclear power research alone calculates the ultra-conservative Economist, has claimed a huge $159 billion in OECD between 1974 and 1998. The US government funded the entire development costs of America’s reactors. Despite such huge subsidies, nuclear power remains about twice as expensive as electricity from gas/coal. Its economics is unlikely to improve unless safety regulations are ‘relaxed’– to disastrous effect. In India, wind generation (3,600 MW) has already overtaken nuclear power capacity (3,300 MW). Wind’s potential is estimated at 70,000 MW-plus – 10 times higher than nuclear electricity with indigenous uranium reserves. Health Problems Nuclear power generically poses serious safety and occupational health problems owing to that invisible, intangible poison – radiation. All reactor types are liable to undergo serious accidents leading to a core meltdown like Chernobyl, with massive radiation releases. All nuclear plants leave a trail of high-level wastes, which remain hazardous 20fold longer than the oldest human structure. There exists no solution to the problem of storing, leave alone disposing of, wastes. Nuclear power has been recently touted as a remedy for global warming. This claim is spurious. Electricity generation accounts for only 9 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nuclear power globally contributes only 16 per cent to electricity generation, and a mere 3 per cent in India. So the scope for reducing GHGs by going nuclear is insignificant. Nuclear power is not orders-of- magnitude superior even to gas or coal in GHG emissions. It is certainly inferior to renewables like wind, cogeneration and solar. Each step in the ‘nuclear fuel cycle’, from uranium mining to reprocessing, emits GHGs. There is no evidence that nuclear power contributes to reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. Japan’s nuclear capacity rose between 1965 and 1995 by 40,000 MW. But carbondioxide emissions tripled. In France, the world’s most nuclear power-addicted country, GHG emissions have been rising. The real reason for the present hype about nuclear power in India may have to do with India’s aversion to cutting GHG emissions – which has become imperative. By citing nuclear power expansion as a substitute for GHG reduction and thus pandering to its elite’s appetite for private transport and profligate energy consumption, India is being disingenuous. But disingenuousness is the stuff of which the nuclear bargain is made. Email: bidwai@bol.net.in ---- PM's statement on N-deal removes misgivings: V P Singh July 30, 2005 (PTI) http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/002200507300350.htm New Delhi: Welcoming the nuclear deal signed between India and the US, former premier V P Singh on Friday said the statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament had removed all "misgivings" about the agreement. "Positive avenues have been opened (by the signing of the agreement). It has safeguarded India's strategic needs and at the same time ensured that its vital interests are not compromised," he told reporters here. Singh said the Prime Minister's statement made it clear that the deal would be based on "reciprocity and we will not fall into a trap." About the requirement that civilian nuclear facilities be opened for inspection by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he said this was nothing new as four plants were already open to checks by the organisation. "Besides, now that we are firmly on the path to be accepted as a nuclear power, we have to adopt responsibility," he said. Singh said India had the largest reserves of thorium and when technology allows it to be used, it would take care of all of the country's energy needs. The former Prime Minister also praised UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi for endorsing the Jobs Guarantee Scheme and hoped that the Government would accept it in its present form which stipulates that any person who wants to work will get employment. Singh asked the Government to reduce interest levied on purchase of tractors from present 12 per cent to seven per cent. -------- iran Iran demands EU nuclear offer within two days TEHRAN (AFP) Jul 30, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050730173957.dwhvpc50.html A new point of tension emerged Saturday in the delicate search for a nuclear deal between the European Union and Iran when Tehran demanded the bloc publish its latest proposals within the next two days. An Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Agha Mohammadi, told AFP that Britain, France and Germany must present their offer for a deal by Monday, which he said was the originally scheduled time and not a later proposed date of August Mohammadi also expressed scepticism over the content of the proposals, which aim to forge a deal that would give Iran nuclear energy cooperation in exchange for providing guarantees that its controversial nuclear programme is peaceful. Ambassadors from the so-called EU-3 sent a message to the foreign ministry informing Tehran that it would make the offer by August 7, said Mohammadi. "After studying the message, the Islamic republic decided that the European proposals must be submitted on August 1," he added. The EU had said on Tuesday the package would probably be presented in the first week of the month, after hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad takes over the presidency on August 3. The negotiator complained that the August 1 date had been fixed at a previous meeting in London and if the Europeans did not stick to this then Iran would take "measures in line with its national interest". However a spokesman for the British Foreign Office in London denied that there was ever a deadline for the European Union to come up with the proposals. "An exact date hasn't been fixed," said the spokesman, adding the parties were only following a general guideline of late July or early August. Asked whether the European Union would now submit the offer on Monday, he replied: "I very much doubt it, but I can't confirm the dates." For his part Mohammadi also lamented that the content of message was not in line with what it wanted to see from the proposals. "The European proposals have to be corrected and presented at the requested moment." One of the chief stumbling blocks in the process so far has been the issue of uranium enrichment, a sensitive process which Iran says is its right under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but the EU would like Tehran to renounce. Mohammadi indicated that the message did not recognise its right to enrichment. "It is necessary that the minimum demands of the Islamic republic... are taken into account in the proposals," he said. According to Mohammadi the message details the "numerous obligations" that Iran would have to respect to prove to the world that it is not attempting to build a nuclear bomb. For the Europeans, the most watertight guarantee of Iran's intentions would be a renouncement of uranium enrichment, a process that can be used both for civilian energy purposes and to manufacture the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Washington accuses its arch enemy Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge vehemently denied by the Islamic republic. The negotiation process with the European Union is aimed at avoiding a stand-off at the UN Security Council over the issue. -------- korea No Stinking Badges by Gordon Prather, July 30, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6814 According to neo-crazy media sycophants at the New York Times and elsewhere, the Bush-Cheney administration is currently engaged in the six-party talks "aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs" and is "supporting" European Union efforts to force Iran "to end its nuclear weapons program." But media sycophants to the contrary, that is not what the six-party talks are "aimed at," nor is that what the European Union is attempting to do. When Bush-Cheney came to power in 2001, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were "non-nuclear-weapons states parties" to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Hence, all their nuclear programs were subject to safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And as best the IAEA inspectors could determine, none of the safeguarded "special nuclear materials" or safeguarded facilities in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were involved at that time in any activity that served a military purpose. Nevertheless, in his 2002 State of the Union address, after singling out Iraq, Iran, and North Korea by name as "regimes that sponsor terror" and threaten America "with weapons of mass destruction," President Bush declared "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." Later that year, Bush announced a new National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, which declared – among other things – that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively." But Bush had a couple of problems. First, at the Sixth NPT Review Conference, held at UN Headquarters in New York City in 2000: "The [Sixth] Conference notes the reaffirmation by the nuclear-weapon states of their commitment to the United Nations Security Council resolution 984 (1995) on security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons." Among other things, UNSCR 984 "recognizes" that "in case of aggression with nuclear weapons or the threat of such aggression against a non-nuclear-weapon State Party" to the NPT, "the nuclear-weapon State permanent members of the Security Council will bring the matter immediately to the attention of the Council and seek Council action to provide, in accordance with the Charter, the necessary assistance to the State victim." In other words, if Bush had threatened to nuke North Korea prior to its withdrawal from the NPT, China and Russia would have been required to seek Council action against him. Then there was a second problem. "The [Sixth] Conference reaffirms that IAEA is the competent authority responsible for verifying and assuring … compliance with its safeguards agreements … with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. … It is the conviction of the Conference that nothing should be done to undermine the authority of IAEA in this regard." In other words, an IAEA determination that none of the safeguarded "special nuclear materials" or safeguarded facilities in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are involved in any activity that serves a military purpose is final. Nevertheless, Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003 after "determining" that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program in spite of the IAEA determination that he hadn't. Shortly after invading Iraq "to counter a sufficient threat to our national security," Bush formally announced his Proliferation Security Initiative. Its stated objective was to create a web of international "counter-proliferation partnerships" to prevent proliferators from "carrying out their trade in WMD and missile-related technology." According to Undersecretary of State John Bolton, the PSI was necessary because "proliferators and those facilitating the procurement of deadly capabilities are circumventing existing laws, treaties, and controls against WMD proliferation." Unlike the existing UN proliferation-prevention regime, "PSI is not diverted by disputes about candidacies for director general, agency budgets, agendas for meetings, and the like." Like, specifically, the NPT and UNSCR 984? So what will Bush do if the EU-Iran and six-party talks fail – as they no doubt will – to reach an agreement acceptable to him? Stay tuned. -------- russia Russia to build floating nuclear plant Jul. 30, 2005 at 5:28PM United Press International http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20050730-034432-7678r.htm Environmental groups are opposing a decision by Russia to begin building a floating nuclear power plant, The Times of London reports. The first ever floating plant, one of many Russia plans to build, is expected to supply power to Russia's northern coast by 2011. Nils Boehmer, the head of the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, says Russia's history of nuclear and naval accidents -- as well as regular terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels -- make the decision to go ahead on the plant a bad idea. He also said the plant will be able to make nuclear weapons. Officials at Russia's Federal Nuclear Energy Agency say the plants will be safe from leaks and reinforced enough to sustain attacks. ---- Safety fear overruled for Putin's floating reactors July 30, 2005 UK Times From Jeremy Page in Moscow http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1713946,00.html RUSSIA is to start building the world’s first floating nuclear power plant next year to supply electricity to its remote northern coast. Despite the warnings of environmentalists, the Federal Nuclear Energy Agency has said that it will complete the first of several plants by 2011 and put it into operation at the northern port of Severodvinsk, on the White Sea. Environmental groups say that the power plants will be an unprecedented environmental and security hazard because they will be moored in remote ports and would be hard to reach in the event of an accident or terrorist attack. Russia has an unenviable record of nuclear and naval accidents, including the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk in 2000, and has suffered terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels. “We’re very concerned — you’ll have an environmental, a security and a proliferation risk,” said Nils Boehmer, head of the Russia group at Bellona, an environmental group based in Norway. “It will be difficult to do anything if they have an accident, plus the fuel will be highly enriched and could be used in nuclear weapons,” he added. But Russian nuclear officials, who have been promoting the idea for 15 years, say that the plants will have extra safety features to prevent radiation leaks and to resist even a 9/11-style terrorist attack. “Leakage won’t occur even if a plane or a helicopter crashes into the floating block,” said Vladimir Uryvsky, the deputy department head at the Federal Nuclear Energy Agency. “This construction comes with a 100 per cent safety guarantee.” The plants will supply electricity to remote ports that are inaccessible by road, such as Severodvinsk, which is the site of the Sevmash shipyard, an important defence manufacturer. Many such communities were left stranded when subsidies dried up after the Soviet Union’s collapse and still face power shortages during winter in temperatures as low as - 40C. Each floating plant will house a 70 megawatt reactor similar to that on a nuclear submarine, or icebreaker, and big enough to power a city of 200,000 people. They will probably be assembled in St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, before being towed to their destinations around the coast. The far eastern regions of Kamchatka and Chukotka — governed by the oil tycoon Roman Abramovich — have already signed up for one each and other regions are expected to follow. Each plant is designed to last 40 years and will cost about $200 million (£115 million). China signed a $86.5 million deal this week to build the boat for the first one, while Russia will construct the reactor block. Russia also plans to export plants to China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Middle East and even Canada. Concerns have been raised that the plants’ nuclear technology and materials could fall into the hands of hostile governments or terrorist. Each plant will hold enough highly enriched uranium to produce several nuclear weapons. Earlier this year Greenpeace asked Russia’s Federal Security Service to ban the production and export of the floating plants, arguing that they would be easy targets for terrorist attacks. Greenpeace and other environmental groups say that it would be cheaper and easier to develop wind and solar power in remote regions like Kamchatka and Chukotka. But the nuclear industry appears to have won over President Putin, who has accused environmental groups of impeding Russia’s economic development. “The nuclear lobby is very powerful. They still have the connections from Soviet times and now they want new business,” Mr Boehmer said. ATOMIC WOES # Sept 29, 1957: waste storage tank explodes near Chelyabinsk — hundreds killed # Apr 26, 1986: Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev, in Soviet-ruled Ukraine, explodes: 31 killed in explosion; almost one million people evacuated from the area; possible long-term death toll 300,000 # Aug 2000: Nuclear submarine Kursk sinks in Barents Sea — 118 die -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- idaho KYNF calls INL Proposal "Predetermined" By Gil Brady - brady@planetjh.com 7.30.05 Planet Jackson Hole, Wyoming http://www.planetjh.com/brady/brady_2005_07_30_inl.html During an interview for PJH's upcoming issue on a Department of Energy (DOE) plan to center the production of plutonium-238 at Idaho National Laboratories, Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free (KYNF) President Tom Patricelli informed the Planet that, "This was a predetermined outcome." KYNF is the leading watchdog group opposing the DOE's proposal to stockpile the nation's supply of plutonium-238 at Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government decided to increase its demand for remote and harsh environment thermal decay batteries (a.k.a. Radioisotope Power Systems or RPSs) to power NASA and National Security missions (such as fueling spy satellites). Highly enriched plutonium-238 is the main ingredient in the production of RPSs, and accelerating the rate of production — to 5 kilos (11 lbs) of Pu-238, per year, by 2011 – falls to the DOE to accomplish. KYNF is the leading watchdog group opposing the DOE's proposal to stockpile the nation's supply of plutonium-238 (currently around 40 kilograms) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in Idaho Falls. The Idaho nuclear reactor lies 105 miles upwind of Yellowstone National Park, and KYNF is concerned about nuclear fallout potentially contaminating the region should the DOE plan at INL go through. The Planet and the KYNF President discussed the government's Environmental Impact Statement (the E.I.S is the principal public document outlining the DOE's views on consolidating its production of nuclear batteries at INL). "They say they consider all these alternatives," Mr. Patricelli said, referring to two other government run nuclear plants in Tennessee and New Mexico, "but if you read the EIS closely you see in there that it says, ‘Only a site with an operating nuclear reactor was considered for this project'." Patricelli continued, "Now, the only place where there is an operating nuclear reactor that can make 5 kilograms of plutonium-238 a year is INL." INL, in the DOE's view, possess the best combination of infrastructure, experienced personal and security apparatus to warehouse, safeguard and produce Pu-238 to fulfill the requirements of NASA and national security. While supportive of nuclear power, space missions, and the requirements of national security, the KYNF President remained unconvinced that INL is the government's best choice to fulfill its new post-9/11 goals and missions. "The DOE releases [a] massive, highly technical 500 page document," Mr. Patricelli said, illustrating a question about the DOE's "fairness in the public comment process," regarding the INL proposal, "And they want the lay public to read that, digest it, and form informed coherent questions in essentially two weeks time. We have a very dedicated and well-educated community here. So when they do show up to ask questions and make points, then they're limited to three minutes of comment... But when you get the Department of Energy giving their pitch for 35 minutes it's certainly not a level playing field... And then figuring in a person they call ‘the facilitator' and he refuses to let groups use the podium supplied by Snow King and tries to forcibly take microphones away from people, I don't think that's really indicative of good public outreach by the DOE." Pick-up next week's issue of Planet Jackson Hole and read the full interview with DOE/INL Deputy Manager John Kotek and KYNF President Tom Patricelli. -------- iowa Iowa nuclear plant owners seek state approval of pending sale July 30, 2005 Associated Press http://www.whotv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3660167 CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa The owners of the state's only nuclear power plant filed documents with state regulators today, the first step in seeking approval to sell the plant to a Florida-based utility company. Interstate Power and Light Company, the Iowa utility subsidiary of Alliant Energy, filed a joint application with the Iowa Utilities Board to sell the 598-megawatt Duane Arnold Energy Center, located near Palo in eastern Iowa. F-P-L Energy, an affiliate of Florida Power and Light Company, has offered to buy the plant for about 380 (M)million dollars. The deal must be approved by utility regulators in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must also approve. The companies hope to complete the sale by the first quarter of next year. Central Iowa Power Cooperative and Corn Belt Power Cooperative, own the remaining 30 percent interest in the nuclear power plant. -------- new jersey Oyster Creek license-renewal application on NRC Web site July 30, 2005 Press of Atlantic City http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/ocean/073005OYSTER_CREEK_APP.cfm The Nuclear Regulatory Committee announced Thursday that the application for a 20-year renewal of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant is available for public review on the NRC Web site. AmerGen Energy, the company that owns Oyster Creek, submitted its application July 22. According to the NRC, the agency is doing an initial review of the application to determine if enough information was included to warrant the formal full review. If the application has enough information, at that time the NRC will formally file the application and announce an opportunity in the communities that surround Oyster Creek to hold public hearings, according to the NRC. In December, the NRC granted AmerGen an exemption allowing it to retain the protection of the "timely renewal" provisions of the NRC. That means that if a plant applies for a license renewal five years before its current license runs out, the current license will not expire until a decision is made on the renewal request. Oyster Creek's license expires April 9, 2009. AmerGen initially missed the five-year cutoff, but the NRC determined that the exemption was warranted because there would still be ample time to complete the review if the application was filed by July 2005, the NRC said. The 462-page application contains the most updated information on the plant's operations, equipment and upgrades. Links to the application and the environmental report can be found at www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ licensing/renewal/applications.html Both documents are in Adobe Acrobat format. To e-mail Nicoletta Kotsianas at The Press: NKotsianas@pressofac.com ---- Missing reports worry watchdog Published in the Asbury Park Press 07/30/05 BY TODD B. BATES AND NICHOLAS CLUNN STAFF WRITERS http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050730/NEWS/507300361 ULTRASONIC TESTS: On barrier around Oyster Creek reactor CORROSION LEVEL: Crucial to license renewal application In a thick license renewal application, AmerGen Energy Co. says it can manage corrosion of the critical steel barrier surrounding the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's reactor until 2029, but a nuclear industry watchdog is not so sure. Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C., said neither the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission nor AmerGen has provided documents on recent ultrasonic tests of the barrier, called a drywell. The drywell is designed to contain radiation and keep it from leaving the plant during an accident. "We're having to play hide and go seek" for documents related to drywell corrosion, Gunter said Friday. "We don't see verification and validation of the drywell inspections (ultrasonic tests) . . . that they've committed to." An attempt to locate those documents was not immediately successful this week. NRC spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said in an e-mail that "the company rather than the NRC would have conducted the ultrasonic tests. The actual test reports would have to come from the company; we would not have kept copies of those." Pete Resler, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, said he was unfamiliar with the drywell reports but will seek information on them. Exelon owns AmerGen. Ultrasonic inspections in areas that "exhibited the worst corrosion" were done in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004, and "no significant degradation has been identified," according to an NRC document e-mailed to the Press Friday. AmerGen, in its license renewal application, which was accepted by the NRC on Monday, said "the Oyster Creek . . . aging management program assures that the Oyster Creek drywell vessel thickness will not be reduced to less than the minimum required value in any future operation." AmerGen's application launched a review by the NRC including inspections at the plant, which began generating electricity in 1969 and is the country's longest-running nuclear plant, and several opportunities for the public to comment. The review could last about two years. The NRC did not accept the application July 22 because of a technical problem involving a computer disc but accepted it on Monday. Oyster Creek became the 25th plant in the country to seek a renewed operating license, which would last for 20 years beyond 2009, when its current license expires. It joined 15 other reactors at eight other plants now under review, according to NRC figures. So far, the NRC has approved license renewals for 33 reactors at 16 plants and has yet to deny an application. The NRC staff is conducting an initial review of the AmerGen application to determine whether it has enough information for the required formal review, according to a commission statement posted on its Web site Thursday. If the application contains enough information, the NRC will formally file the application and announce an opportunity for "stakeholders" to request a public hearing, the statement says. As for AmerGen's application, Gunter said Thursday that "there are lots of areas that we're going to be looking at and the drywell is going to be one of them." Gunter is concerned about the drywell's integrity because GPU Nuclear, Oyster Creek's operators in 1980, found that it had been corroded in some spots. According to an NRC document from 1986, the agency had considered the corrosion a "significant safety problem." By 1993, however, plant operators told the NRC that they stopped a water leak from causing further damage and strengthened the drywell with a special coating. Yet, Gunter said he's still concerned whether AmerGen has been periodically testing the strength and measuring the width of the drywell, which is what GPU had promised regulators it would do over the life of the plant. "This is just to put everybody on notice . . . that they (NRC and AmerGen) need to show these inspections," Gunter said Friday. "Perhaps they're going to show them . . . . At least for the public record, they've not satisfied (us) yet" with the documentation of their commitment. Sheehan, in his e-mail to the Press, said that provided the ultrasonic tests "did not show any changes in liner degradation, our inspectors most likely would not have documented the test results in an inspection report." "All of our inspection reports (with the exception of security-related reviews) are available to the public," Sheehan said. "I did a quick search and didn't see any references in inspection reports to the corrosion issue." In another e-mail, he said "our inspectors review countless plant documents and it wouldn't be practical to keep copies of each one. No, we don't witness every test conducted by the plants. We serve an audit function and pick our spots. We would check on the results of such testing, whether they were good, bad or unchanged." According to the AmerGen application "inspections conducted since 1992 demonstrate that as a result of corrective actions the corrosion rates are very low or in some cases have been arrested . . . ." "Therefore, the effects of loss of material on the intended function of the drywell will be adequately managed . . . for the period of extended operation." Oyster Creek has made more than $1.2 billion in capital improvements since 1969, "making it as up-to-date and productive as the day it was first built," according to a plant brochure on the Web. Oyster Creek will be the first plant to have its license renewal application evaluated under new guidelines that make clear the NRC's technical reasoning behind how operators should manage the aging of safety components and structures during an extended operating period, said Johnny Eads, an NRC spokesman. The new guidelines will also make the renewal process more effective and efficient because the staff reviewing applications have better guidance, according to NRC officials. Though the revised rules won't go into effect until September, their implementation will come before NRC staff who will begin to review the portion of Oyster Creek's application regarding age-related degradation. AmerGen prepared the renewal application in anticipation of the new rules by meeting with NRC staff while putting it together. The revision changed 48 programs meant to manage degradation and added nine. NRC staff last updated the renewal rules about four years ago. "It's an ongoing process," Eads said. "This isn't the last update we're going to do." Under the revised rules, renewal proceedings are more standardized. During the first few renewal proceedings, NRC staff adapted the rules for each plant. This story includes material from previous Press stories. Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com -------- vermont Bechtel Jacobs Fined for Nuclear Safety Violations at Oak Ridge WASHINGTON, DC, August 4, 2005 (ENS) http://ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2005/2005-08-04-09.asp#anchor4 The Department of Energy (DOE) today notified the Bechtel Jacobs Company (BJC) that it will fine the company $247,500 for violations of the department’s nuclear safety requirements. The company is the DOE contractor responsible for environmental cleanup and waste management at its Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. “One of our top safety priorities is to improve the performance of subcontractors, and to do that we need to hold prime contractors responsible,” said John Shaw, assistant secretary for environment, safety and health. “Our goal is to have work conducted in a manner that protects workers, the public and the environment.” The violations cited today took place in 2004. On May 14, 2004, leakage from a radioactive waste shipment originating from the new Hydrofracture Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory caused contamination to spread to public roadways. The response to the contamination required that several roads be temporarily closed and that contaminated sections be removed and repaved. There was no contamination to personnel or private vehicles. The second event occurred at a radioactive material storage area on the Oak Ridge Reservation known as the Hot Storage Garden. On August 10, 2004, four workers were exposed to radioactive materials while working with contaminated metal storage baskets. Although the occupational radiation exposures resulting were well below DOE regulatory limits, worker exposures could have been much higher, the DOE said. Although both events involved BJC subcontractors, DOE fined BJC the entire penalty. The penalty was partially mitigated in recognition of the corrective actions already taken, including BJC’s acceptance of responsibility for the subcontractors’ performance. The Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988 authorizes the Energy Department to undertake regulatory actions against contractors for violations of its nuclear safety requirements. The enforcement program encourages DOE contractors to identify and correct nuclear safety deficiencies at an early stage, before they contribute to or result in more serious events. -------- washington HANFORD NUCLEAR SITE: Washington court: Initiative can stand Waste ban might hold even if parts ruled unconstitutional By SHANNON DININNY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Saturday, July 30, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jul-30-Sat-2005/news/26966111.html YAKIMA, Wash. -- An initiative that bars the U.S. Department of Energy from sending any more waste to the Hanford nuclear site until all existing waste there is cleaned up might stand even if a federal judge finds parts of it are unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The federal government has sued seeking to overturn Initiative 297 on grounds that it violates the federal government's authority over interstate commerce and nuclear waste. The case is before U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald in Yakima, who will decide the constitutionality of the initiative. The state, which is defending the measure, had asked McDonald to allow the state Supreme Court to first decide if the entire measure would be nullified if McDonald finds part of it unconstitutional. The state justices held that even if the judge rules that some parts of the initiative are unconstitutional, that does not necessarily invalidate the rest of it. The state court did not decide on the constitutionality of the initiative. The case now returns to McDonald for a decision on that question. At issue are the federal government's plans for disposing of waste from nuclear weapons production nationwide. The Energy Department chose Hanford to dispose of some mildly radioactive waste and mixed low-level waste, which is laced with chemicals. The south-central Washington site also would serve as a packaging center for some transuranic waste before it is shipped elsewhere for long-term disposal. Transuranic waste is highly radioactive and can take thousands of years to decay to safe levels. The initiative has not been enforced pending resolution of the lawsuit, and waste shipments to the site already had been halted under another lawsuit. The state also asked its highest court for clarification on several issues, the first being the definition of "mixed waste" under state law. The federal government had argued that the initiative expanded the definition of mixed waste, and the high court agreed. However, the court ruled that the state has clear responsibility for characterizing waste in unlined trenches, which had been another question that was raised. The state also questioned whether the initiative bars movement of nuclear waste already on the site. The court ruled that it does not. Still unresolved is whether the initiative affects waste at Navy sites in Washington state. "We're disappointed that they didn't agree with us on a narrow construct on the definition of mixed waste," said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology. "But ultimately what we wanted here was clarity, which we have. Now we can go back to federal court to argue the case." Washington state voters overwhelmingly approved I-297 last November. The measure was sponsored by Hanford watchdog group Heart of America Northwest. For 40 years, the Hanford nuclear site made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Pentagon reports progress on U.S.-Israel talks on arms sales to China 30/07/2005 By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz Correspondent and Reuters http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/606468.html Tough issues remain in a dispute between Israel and the United States over Israeli arms sales to China, but talks to resolve them are not stalemated, a Pentagon official said on Friday. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita cited good progress in the talks but refused to put a timetable on the negotiations, which were delayed last week when Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz canceled a planned trip to Washington to take part in ongoing talks. On Wednesday, Haaretz reported that the U.S. administration has refused to rescind sanctions against Israel until the latter proves it has increased its monitoring of security-related exports. The U.S., which provides Israel with $2 billion in annual defense aid, has restricted arms deals with Israel in the dispute, with Washington demanding that Israel adhere to tight regulations on the transfer of military technology. Washington is concerned that Israel's sales of Harpy unmanned attack drones and other technology to Beijing could tilt the regional balance of power and boost China's military strength, which could threaten Taiwan. "I have talked to folks who are involved, who think this is going to be resolved, in the time-honored phrase, sooner rather than later. They don't think that this is something that is going to take forever," Di Rita told reporters in response to questions at the Pentagon on Friday. "That was an assessment by people involved as of the last day or two ... There still is a general sense that they will probably get something done," he said. Mofaz's trip to Washington had been expected in the first half of August. Washington began freezing mutual-security projects and delivery of defense equipment to Israel last month following the arms deal with China. The Pentagon spokesman denied that the sensitive talks were stalemated. "I wouldn't describe them as that (stalemated) at all. There has been good progress," said Di Rita, who refused to go into details of the discussions, which also involve the U.S. State Department. The U.S. wants to see Knesset legislation enacted within 18 months tightening oversight of military exports, and is demanding a memorandum of understanding be signed. The U.S. also wants a written apology from Israel and Mofaz. Opposition in Israel is mounting against the signing of such a memorandum. In any case, the agreement is not intended to end the crisis, but rather to stop it from gathering steam, by allowing for the gradual lifting of sanctions. The sanctions were imposed as the result of a bill passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives, which placed a five-year ban on the purchase of defense items from any country that sells arms to China. -------- business The Mystery Of The Marconi Boffins This Is Local London 30 June 2000 http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/archive/display.var.57533.0.the_mystery_of_the_marconi_boffins.php During the 1980s, the prestigious defence contract company Marconi was the focus of interest following a series of deaths of leading scientists involved with the firm. Were the deaths the subject of an elaborate cover-up or simply an inexplicable coincidence? SIMON ROGERSON investigates. A little over 10 years ago, the death of a Marconi computer specialist in Stanmore prompted intense media speculation about the company's top-secret work. Trevor Knight had no apparent reason to commit suicide. A leading expert in the technical research wing of Marconi Space and Defence Systems, he was at the height of a successful career when his body was found in a parked car with a hosepipe connected to the exhaust He had died of carbon dioxide poisoning and the coroner returned a verdict of suicide after a short inquest. Several local newspapers contacted Marconi's, but the company declined to comment. But Mr Knight's suicide put Marconi under the spotlight, and there were to be plenty more deaths in the coming months, including that of former Army officer Brigadier Peter Ferry. Brigadier Ferry had access to Ministry of Defence files, many of which were secret. He had retired from the Army in 1981 and joined Marconi as an assistant marketing director, liaising with Britain's armed forces. Although he lived with his wife in Wiltshire, he travelled around all of Marconi's sites and often used a company flat in Frimley. It was here he was found dead, after apparently connecting himself to the mains. When police discovered his body, electricity was still surging through him. At the time of his death, he was also chairman of the Nato Industrial Advisory Group. He had knowledge of a revolutionary new gun Marconi was developing, and there was speculation that he played a vital role in the British end of America's controversial "Star Wars" defence programme. British industry had won £1.5 billion-worth of contracts connected to Ronald Reagan's vision of a satellite-based defence system, which many political and military commentators believed unworkable. Meanwhile, mounting interest had brought to light a series of "brain drain" deaths dating back to March 1982, when Professor Keith Bowden of Essex University, an expert in computer-controlled aircraft systems, died in a drink-driving accident. He was believed to have been involved in SDI-related research. In October 1988, Labour MP Doug Hoyle called on the Government to launch an inquiry into the deaths: he was convinced the MoD was withholding vital information. Under pressure to act, the then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd ordered several police forces to liaise over the deaths, but no official inquiry ever took place. No fewer than 30 people with high-level connections to the defence technology industry died in suspicious or unusual circumstances between 1982 and 1991, including: Roger Hill, a top-level researcher for Marconi Avionics, who baffled friends and colleagues by shooting himself with his own shotgun in March 1985. Ashad Sharif, a Marconi computer analyst who was found dead in his car with a rope around his neck in April 1996. Vimal Dajibhai, a computer software engineer who was working on highly classified projects including the secret Tigerfish torpedo guidance system at Marconi's underwater research facility in Croxley Green. He fell to his death from the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol in August 1986. Victor Moore, who worked at the company's Space and Defence Systems branch in Portsmouth as a design engineer. He was working on a top-secret project involving satellite tracking quipment in the period leading up to his death from a drugs overdose in February 1987. The scientists had one thing in common: they were all either working on defence projects or within military establishments. And nearly half of them worked for, or on behalf of, Marconi or its sister companies at one time or another. Ironically, a recent Government paper on working environments concluded that scientists and electronic engineers are less likely to die prematurely. Marconi variously blamed stress, rows with loved ones, the loss of research contracts and alcohol for the deaths, but no-one has ever adequately explained why so many people involved in specialised industry died during this period. In the absence of any official explanation for the deaths, various suggestions have been advanced by conspiracy theorists who believe the scientists uncovered information which put their lives at risk. The bizarre circumstances in which most of these men died led to understandable frustration among relatives. Was a secret organisation out to put a halt to research projects? Then there was the connection with the Star Wars programme, which would have established America as an indominable nuclear power had it established a satellite-based anti-missile system. Britain's involvement in SDI was highly controversial: did someone take it on themselves to scupper the programme? Most fanciful of the conspiracy theories is the contention that the scientists may have been subjected to mind control techniques that influenced them to take their own lives. The truth is that no-one will ever know what prompted these men to commit suicide. No notes were left and in 22 of the cases, the families of the dead men have said that the deaths came right out of the blue. With Marconi, the MoD and politicians all refusing to comment, it seems there will never be an answer to account for the "Marconi Mystery". MI5 is believed to have carried out its own investigations into the deaths, but its files will not be available for inspection for at least another 50 years -- if ever. 9:30am Saturday 17th January 1998 -------- israel / palestine Disengagement's Foreplay by Ran HaCohen July 30, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/?articleid=6810 Historic days in Israel: a showdown between the government and the settlers. Though the sides do negotiate behind the scenes, this time it does not look like the cat-and-mouse games for the media a few years ago, Prime Minister Barak's favorite dissimulation, when a few settlers were filmed dragged from some unmanned West Bank outpost after signing a confidential agreement with the government assuring their return once the cameras were gone. This time it's serious. One can understand why so many soldiers disobey orders in the evacuation's foreplay – apparently more than soldiers refusing to partake in the atrocities of occupation. Whereas the latter refused to fight what had always been defined as the enemy, the former simply fail to adapt to the sudden change-of-heart that turned the settlers from allies to opponents. After all, only total outsiders (or paid and unpaid Israeli propaganda agents) can believe that the Israeli army is a neutral organ that impartially enforces law and order on everyone in the occupied territories. As every soldier, settler, and Palestinian knows, the Israeli army is there for the settlers (and vice versa). For decades, soldiers have been trained not only to protect the settlers from the Palestinians (and not vice versa) and to back (or at least turn a blind eye at) every settlers' transgression; Israeli soldiers also serve as bodyguards, drivers, and even nannies for individual settlers and their families. The mental shift that turns allies into opponents is not an easy one to stomach. Spoiled Thugs This mental and practical shift has strange repercussions. The settlers are perhaps the most ludicrous example. Their slogan, coined specially for the expected eviction, is "a Jew doesn't deport a Jew." Note on one hand the honest, blatant racism of the slogan – a Jew may well deport non-Jews, say Arabs, as Israel has been doing again and again, with settlers' help; but deporting Jews – oh no, that's un-Jewish. On the other hand, note the demagoguery in using the term "deportation," even more apparent in their slogan "No to Transfer": Israeli citizens, who moved to a land knowing it was under occupation – actually, they moved there precisely because of its controversial status – are now moved back to their own country by their democratically elected government, which also compensates them generously. These people now hypocritically compare themselves to Palestinians deported in war, by their enemy, to foreign countries, losing not only their entire possessions without any compensation, but usually also their political and civil rights. Utterly embarrassing is the fact that while chanting their racist slogans, the settlers suddenly discovered "Democracy." Settlers' leader and columnist Israel Harel (Ha'aretz, Jul 14, 2005) describes the decision to evict settlements (endorsed once again by a Knesset majority last week) as "a rape of the democracy," as if religious settlers like himself ever truly acknowledged the right of a democratic majority to withdraw from what they consider the holy land that belongs to the Jewish people of all past and future generations. Settlers also complain about "undemocratic" measures aimed at foiling their intention to infiltrate the Gaza settlements in order to resist their eviction. It's strange indeed to hear the settlers – who always complain that the army is too soft on the Palestinians, who consistently identify the discourse of human rights, proportionality, rule of law, etc., with unpatriotic left-wing defeatism, who have been raping democracy for decades in order to advance their illegal project (all Israeli governments were willingly raped, to be sure) – resorting to the very discourse they always defamed. Some of them even warn that the measures taken against them might be used against other sectors in future – a ridiculous attempt to gain sympathy, which only proves how detached the settlers are from the violent Israeli reality, in which so many demonstrations are dispersed by excessive police violence. The shift from a state-sponsored thug to an ordinary criminal is not easy to stomach either. Pervasive Colonialism But why complain about the settlers? Last week, having closed the Gaza settlements for noninhabitants, General Gershon Hacohen, the highest military commander of the eviction operation, said that stopping people at checkpoints on their way home was "humiliating and breached their democratic liberties and human rights" – an interesting announcement coming from within an army running hundreds of checkpoints against Palestinian movement in the occupied territory for years. The odd constellation makes even Israel's respectable liberal judges utter unforgettable slips of tongue: the celebrated president of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, ruling in the case of a settlers' group charged with blocking roads all over the country, wrote last week that "no moral argument could justify stopping a woman in labor on her way to hospital." A great insight indeed, but a strikingly sudden one: Where was Justice Barak when so many Palestinian women have been forced to give birth in open field, unable to cross an Israeli checkpoint? Hasn't he watched even the recent television series by mainstream Israeli journalist Hayim Yavin, who documented such a forced "natural" birth? Didn't he notice how ridiculous his words sounded? Couldn't he phrase it differently, just to save his face from the inevitable scorn? Apparently, this wider context didn't even occur to the judge. The blindness-struck formulation of the Supreme Court shows that the dehumanization of Israel's subaltern subjects is deeply anchored even in what many consider the purest incarnation of the State's democracy. Consensus Behind Dispute The clashes between army and settlers should not mislead us. Just like the competition between too ice-cream producers conceals their common interest – getting people to buy more ice-cream – one should remember that the tactical differences between the Sharon government and the settlers conceal a common vision: that of entrenching the occupation of the West Bank. The withdrawal from Gaza – Sharon never made a secret of it – is to be generously compensated by de facto annexation of some 40-60 percent of the West Bank – the so-called settlements blocks, plus the Wall, plus the areas between the Green Line and the Wall, plus so-called strategically important areas, plus Greater Jerusalem – all according to maps prepared by Sharon in the 1970s. The planned eviction should serve this cause. The more difficult it looks, the more useful it would be for rejecting pressures for future withdrawals. As the "moderate settler" Yoel Bin-Nun explained last week, the settlers know very well that their battle for Gaza was lost; by maintaining the struggle, he said, they want to save the other settlements. Sharon shares the same strategy and vision; the very generous economic compensations offered to the evicted settlers also have the same objective: to make any future withdrawal politically and economically impossible. For the same reason, history is now rewritten: the expected withdrawal is portrayed as an apocalyptic, unprecedented event. Never before has "a Jew deported a Jew," never before had the State of Israel withdrawn from the Land of Israel. Rabbis are consulted as if a new Halakhic situation suddenly emerged. Nonsense, of course: Israel occupied Sinai and the Gaza Strip in 1956 and withdrew shortly after. Israel re-occupied Sinai in 1967 and withdrew in the early 1980s, evacuating thousands of settlers. But both Sharon and the settlers can gain little by portraying the eviction as one more phase in the fluctuating border history of Israel, as just another compromise between expansionist desires and political, military, and economic realities. Accordingly, and just like in the worst days of previous Likud governments, when every American envoy was welcomed by establishing yet another illegal settlement in the occupied territories, Sharon welcomed Condoleezza Rice on her urgent visit to Israel last week by announcing, just a few hours before her landing, Israel's intention not only to keep the illegal settlement of Ariel "for ever," but also to expand it and connect it to Israel proper: a slap in the face of President Bush and his roadmap. Portraying the withdrawal as a big bang thus serves both Sharon's image as "man of peace" – the Israeli de Gaulle who withdraws from the colonies – and his colonialist project, which he hasn't given up for a single moment, except for realizing that one may have to give up a hill in order to keep the mountain. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence US Senate OKs anti-terror USA Patriot Act renewal 30 Jul 2005 01:10:37 GMT Source: Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29463803.htm WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday passed a bill reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act, which gave the government new powers to hunt down suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Several provisions of the 2001 law are set to expire at the end of this year, and President George W. Bush has urged Congress to make it permanent. The House of Representatives passed its version of the legislation earlier this month. Differences between the two must be reconciled before a final measure can be sent to Bush to sign into law. Seeking to tighten provisions criticized by civil liberties groups, the Senate bill would require the federal government to report how it uses its authority to view library and medical records, one of the most controversial powers granted by the law. "Like all compromises, it includes provisions that are not supported by everyone in this body," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. "However, Democratic and Republican members of the Judiciary Committee came together in a spirit of cooperation and compromise to agree on this bill, and I strongly support it," Reid said. The Senate bill, passed without opposition, would renew for four years law enforcement's ability to go to a secret court for permission to seize suspects' records from libraries and bookstores. The House bill has a 10-year sunset for this provision. Separate legislation, passed in June in the House, would end the government's easy access to library and bookstore records by making law enforcement revert to traditional search warrants. That measure, attached to a fiscal 2006 spending bill, has drawn a veto threat from the White House. Similarly, the Senate has a four-year extension for allowing roving wiretaps, which let the government eavesdrop on suspects as they switch from phone to phone. The House bill has a 10-year extension. The legislation advanced in Congress shortly after the July 7 suicide bombings of London's subway and a bus that killed 52 people and injured hundreds. That was followed by a July 21 failed bombing attempt on London's transportation network. Still to be considered by the full Senate is separate legislation by its Intelligence Committee that would give the government even broader powers to get records without a judge's permission. Those provisions have drawn heavy opposition. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars A Costly Education for America Watching neocons spin the collapse of "the Bush doctrine" by Chris Moore, July 30, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cmoore.php?articleid=6808 In a desperate 11th-hour bid to save face and salvage credibility amid the violent collapse of their predictions of a "cakewalk" victory over Iraq, neoconservative opinionmakers appear to be preparing to spin America's likely troop drawdown as just another stage in the fulfillment of their larger plans for the region. "In Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere in the Arab world, the forces of democratic liberalization have emerged on the political stage in a way that was unimaginable just two years ago," Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, perhaps the most widely read neocon pundit, recently wrote on The Wall Street Journal editorial page. "They have been energized and emboldened by the Iraqi example and by American resolve." Krauthammer's determined ignorance of an Iraq on the cusp of civil war follows the declaration by Karl Zinsmeister, the editor-in-chief of the neoconservative The American Enterprise magazine, that "the war is over, and we won." "What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over," Zinsmeister wrote in June. "Contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq." Backing their claims of victory with few relevant facts, Zinsmeister, Krauthammer, and other neoconservative pundits appear to be attempting to use their platforms to counter reporting that indicates the situation in Iraq is deteriorating for the American occupiers. One such article published July 27 by United Press International was titled "U.S. Plans Iraq Troop Cuts as Revolt Rages." "The struggle against the Iraq insurgency passed a crucial tipping point Wednesday with the current prime minister calling for major U.S. troop withdrawals and the U.S. ground commander there acknowledging they will probably come next year. The commander, however, made clear he did not expect the insurgency to have dropped by then significantly below its current level," the report said. "In Washington, well-placed military sources told UPI that 'as many as' '20,000 or 30,000' U.S. troops might be withdrawn from Iraq next year. That would bring the current force levels of around 140,000 – which many U.S. military officers privately, and most counterinsurgency experts publicly agree are already far too low to deal with the insurgency – down to only 120,000 or 110,000 troops." There are also the reports, given more coverage in the mainstream media after the London bombings, that rather than diminishing the threat of terrorism, the invasion and occupation of Iraq have actually increased the West's vulnerability. "We're being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live," Michael Scheuer, a retired CIA Middle Eastern specialist and author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, recently told CNN. An American drawdown from Iraq under these circumstances would be seen in the United States and around the world as a major blow to the neoconservative school of foreign policy, which Krauthammer defines as "an unashamed assertion and deployment of American power, a resort to unilateralism when necessary, and a willingness to preempt threats before they emerge." Which is why, in order to minimize the damage to their future ambitions for American-underwritten or -initiated military action in the Middle East, and to preserve the image of "the Bush doctrine" (which Krauthammer says is really "a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy"), the neocons are furiously spinning their way to victory in Iraq – but not necessarily out of the neighborhood. "There are too many entrenched dictatorships and kleptocracies in the region to declare anything won," says Krauthammer, who is now pushing for "relentless and ruthless" American actions against Syria. "What we can declare, with certainty, is the falsity of those confident assurances before the Iraq war, during the Iraq war, and after the Iraq war that this project was inevitably doomed to failure because we do not know how to 'do' democracy, and they do not know how to receive it." Tough talk that doesn't square with their new (and probably wise) plans to cut and run. But if Iraq ends up in civil war, or as a Shi'ite dictatorship with Iran as the ultimate beneficiary of America's neocon engineered project (another increasingly likely scenario), all the spinning in the world won't be able to sell Iraq as a victory for "democracy" – or to hide the failure of neoconservative foreign policy. At nearly 2,000 American lives and $350 billion so far spent, learning that the neocons are terrible at making foreign policy assessments and dangerous when put into positions of authority is proving to be a costly American education. The additional realization that they are also dishonest historians who play fast and loose with the facts may be one of the few benefits of the expense. -------- ENERGY Senate passes energy bill The legislation creates incentives for creation of nuclear power plants By STEPHEN NERY Medill News Service Saturday, July 30, 2005 http://ydr.com/story/business/79216/ WASHINGTON — The Senate passed the energy bill Friday, ending years of pressure from the White House and providing valuable incentives for the creation of new nuclear power plants as part of the $12.3 billion legislation. The legislation provides billions in tax breaks for new energy, creates incentives for efficiency and establishes industry guidelines. Energy bills have passed the House for four straight years only to stall in the Senate. No nuclear power plants have been built in the U.S. since the Three Mile Island scare in 1979. Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the industry could not guarantee there would be no repeats of the incident, but security and knowledge-sharing have improved since then — which was not a complete failure in itself. “We have a defense-in-depth design which was proved at Three Mile Island,” he said. “You had human error, but the facility functioned like it was designed to.” The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides up to $1 billion over eight years to each of the first six new power plants built. It also provides hundreds of millions of dollars in potential delay costs for future plants, as well as an insurance pool in case of emergency. Industry experts do not expect a rush to build. Kerekes said construction would start in 2012 at the earliest. Investors want to see headway made in the creation of a national geological depository for nuclear waste before committing to new plants. Progress has been made in examining such a site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but it still isn’t being used as a waste depository 27 years later. Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear Operations, which runs Three Mile Island, said the 103 reactors in the country will likely only last for another 40 years. Plants are granted a 40-year operating license upon creation, with the option to renew for a 20-year term. After that, it is unknown how well the plants will continue to operate. “The U.S. is one of the only major industrial nations that doesn’t have a nuclear power program going,” Nesbit said. BACKGROUND The Energy Policy Act of 2005 also provides tax breaks for construction of cleaner-burning coal facilities, oil and natural gas production and wind and other renewable energy sources. -------- ACTIVISTS In Praise of Kevin Benderman by Norman Solomon, July 30, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=6806 Conscience is not in the chain of command. "Before being sentenced to 15 months for refusing to return to Iraq with his Army unit, Sgt. Kevin Benderman told a military judge that he acted with his conscience, not out of a disregard for duty," the Associated Press reports. Benderman, a 40-year-old Army mechanic, "refused to go on a second combat tour in January, saying the destruction and misery he witnessed during the 2003 Iraq invasion had turned him against war." Three weeks ago, his wife Monica Benderman wrote: "He returned knowing that war is wrong, the most dehumanizing creation of humanity that exists. He saw war destroy civilians, innocent men, women, and children. He saw war destroy homes, relationships, and a country. He saw this not only in the country that was invaded, but he saw this happening to the invading country as well – and he knew that the only way to save those soldiers was for people to no longer participate in war. Sgt. Kevin Benderman is a conscientious objector to war, and the Army is mad." On Thursday, at his court-martial, Kevin Benderman spoke. "Though some might take my actions as being against soldiers, I want everyone to be home and safe and raising their families," he said. "I don't want anyone to be hurt in a combat zone." But the Pentagon is imposing its power to enforce the unconscionable. And words that were written by Monica Benderman in early July are now even more true: "The Army has removed itself so completely from its moral responsibility, that its representatives are willing to openly demand, in a court of law, that they be allowed to regain 'positive control over this soldier' by finding him guilty of crimes he did not commit, and put him in jail – a prisoner of conscience, for daring to obey a moral law." And, she added: "It is 'hard work' to face the truth, and it is scary when people who are not afraid to face it begin to speak out. Someone once said that my husband's case is a question of morality over legality. I pray that this country has not gone so far over the edge that the two are so distinctly different that we can tell them apart." Monica Benderman is correct. Facing truths about the priorities of our country's government can be very difficult. During the Vietnam War – also based on lies, also methodically murderous – an extraordinary U.S. senator made the same basic point. "We're going to become guilty, in my judgment, of being the greatest threat to the peace of the world," Wayne Morse said at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It's an ugly reality, and we Americans don't like to face up to it." Moments before the Senate hearing adjourned, on Feb. 27, 1968, Morse said that he did not "intend to put the blood of this war on my hands." In the summer of 2005, while the horrors of the Iraq war continue, not a single United States senator is willing to speak with such moral clarity. As an astute cliché says, truth is the first casualty of war. But another early casualty is conscience, routinely smothered in the national media echo chamber. On the TV networks, the voices are usually smooth, and people often seem to be speaking loudly. In contrast, the human conscience is close to a whisper. Easily unheard. Rarely explored in news media, the capacity for conscience makes us human. Out of all the differences between people and other animals, Darwin wrote, "the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important." And that's why Kevin Benderman, now in prison, is providing greater moral leadership than any member of the United States Senate. ---- 'Gates of Peace' dedicated in Hiroshima HIROSHIMA, Japan (AFP) Jul 30, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050730035740.7mfbtbbm.html Hiroshima on Saturday dedicated a "Gates of Peace" monument one week before the city marks the 60th anniversary of the world's first nuclear bombing. The monument, designed by French artist Clara Halter and architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, features 10 translucent nine-meter (30-feet) arches spread over a stone walkway with the word "peace" inscribed in 49 languages. The Gates of Peace stretch some 100 meters (yards) along a boulevard facing the Peace Memorial Park, which will be the main venue for commemorations of the August 6, 1945 nuclear attack. The privately funded monument was dedicated by Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, who came up with the idea of 10 gates symbolizing Dante's nine circles of Hell plus one more: Hiroshima. It is the third collaboration between Halter and Wilmotte after the Wall of Peace dedicated in Paris in 2000 and the Tower of Peace in Saint Petersburg which marked the Russian city's tricentennial in 2003. "After the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, I found it impossible to do nothing to pay tribute to Hiroshima's dead and remind people what barbarism men are capable of," Halter said. "We have a duty to remember but also to ensure that memory does not lead us to bitterness," she told AFP. "These doors symbolize a crossing of the threshold into another universe, toward our desire for peace." Halter is already working on her next project, a peace monument in Jerusalem. Around 140,000 people, or more than half of Hiroshima's population at the time, died in the atomic bombing, either immediately or in the months that followed from horrific burns or radiation. Three days after Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000 people. Emperor Hirohito went on the radio for the first time on August 15, 1945 to announce Japan's surrender.