NucNews - August 4, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
DOE fines Bechtel Jacobs for radioactive spills
OAK RIDGE (WATE) -- August 4, 2005
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=3683995
The Department of Energy is fining Bechtel Jacobs $247,500 for its responsibility in dangerous chemical spills in Oak Ridge.
In May 2004 , radioactive material leaked from a truck during an environmental cleanup mission. That leak spread to public roads and forced the officials to close the road until the material could be cleaned up.
Then in August 2004 , four workers were exposed to radioactive materials while working with contaminated metal storage baskets on the Oak Ridge reservation.
Though both accidents involved subcontractors of Bechtel Jacobs, the company is being fined the entire penalty.
Other corrective actions have already been taken, including Bechtel Jacob's acceptance of responsibility for the subcontractors' performance.
----
DOE fines Bechtel Jacobs for nuclear safety violations
August 4, 2005 Oak Ridge (WVLT)
http://www.volunteertv.com/global/story.asp?s=3683778&ClientType=Printable
The Department of Energy is fining Bechtel Jacobs more than $247,000 for violating the department's nuclear safety requirements.
The violation cites two events that happened in 2004.
On May 14th last year, leakage from a radioactive waste shipment caused contamination to spread to public roadways.
Authorities had to close the road and remove the contaminated sections.
The second incident happened at the Hot Storage Garden.
Authorities say four workers were exposed to radioactive materials while working with some contaminated storage baskets.
The radiation exposure was below the DOE regulatory limits, but authorities say it could have been higher.
----
Contaminated worker spreads radioactive material to Colorado
8/4/2005 Associated Press
http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=81ce2b26-0abe-421a-01d7-298fc5a00903&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Investigators have determined that a Los Alamos National Laboratory worker exposed to radioactive material spread the contamination to homes in Colorado and Kansas while visiting family, according to a lab spokeswoman.
The employee was exposed to americium 241 while working at the northern New Mexico lab, and the contamination was detected on his skin and personal clothing July 25.
The employee's home in Los Alamos was decontaminated and items were removed from the homes in Colorado and Kansas and cleaned by U.S. Energy Department's Radiological Assistance Program.
The levels of americium 241 found at the homes pose no health hazard, lab spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said Wednesday.
"The levels, of course, are very, very low," DeLucas said. "They are easily detected by our instruments, but they present no health hazard. We now believe that we have captured all material that has traveled off site."
It's unclear how and when the worker was exposed to americium, which is produced when plutonium atoms absorb neutrons in a nuclear reactor or during a nuclear explosion. The resulting metal is mostly used in household and industrial smoke detectors.
DeLucas said the employee was working with uranium pellets, not americium, when he was exposed. The employee's skin and personal clothing were contaminated.
The health of the exposed worker and five others working in the same room are being monitored, DeLucas said.
One other lab worker's home was also decontaminated, she said.
-------- asia
U.S. will monitor Beijing-Moscow military exercises
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 4, 2005
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050803-102024-7672r.htm
U.S. military officials said yesterday they will be watching closely as China and Russia prepare for unprecedented joint military exercises later this month to be staged on a Chinese province close to the Korean Peninsula.
Dubbed "Peace Mission 2005," the Aug. 18 to 25 exercises between the two Cold War rivals will involve about 10,000 troops, as well as Russian fighter planes and paratroopers and China's growing nuclear submarine fleet.
Officials from the U.S. Pacific Command hope to observe the games, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham of the U.S. Joint Staff told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday.
"Clearly, there's interest in anything that affects security in the Pacific region," the general said.
"I wouldn't say that it's something they're particularly worried about, but certainly as it may potentially affect security, they're very interested," he added.
The exercises, seen as hard evidence of a warming alliance between the two powers against U.S. influence in Asia, have sparked concern across the region, particularly in Taiwan, which China claims is a breakaway province.
The Chinese defense ministry said this week that the exercises are designed to "strengthen the capability of the two armed forces in jointly striking international terrorism, extremism and separatism."
Russian officials have been wary of being dragged into the Taiwan dispute, insisting that the war games are not directed against any third party.
But Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov rejected suggestions that the war games be scaled back to ease the concerns of others in the region.
"If this arouses their interests or concerns, that's their problem," he told the Russian Interfax news agency in Vladivostok, where the first part of the joint exercises will take place.
He noted that Russian troops carry out similar training exercises with U.S., NATO and Indian forces. "Why can't we hold military exercises with China?"
Moscow and Beijing share an interest in curbing U.S. influence in Central Asia, where the Pentagon has established several military bases in the wake of the war in Afghanistan. More generally, both capitals have endorsed a "multipolar world" -- an implicit challenge to U.S. economic and military dominance.
Defense ministers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a new grouping of six Central Asian nations dominated by China and Russia, have been formally invited to observe the games.
Nikolas K. Gvosdev, senior fellow at the Nixon Center and editor of the National Interest, said the exercises represented a "qualitative step" in improving China-Russia ties, but said the United States should not overreact.
"Yes, they both would like to reduce U.S. influence in their region, but both also have a strong interest in improving their relations with us," he said. "It is something for us to monitor, but if we make too much of it, we could end up just pushing China and Russia closer together."
Asked whether the joint mission signals a closer Chinese-Russian military alliance that could challenge U.S. interests, Gen. Ham said, "I'm not sure we know yet, and that's why we are interested in monitoring."
-------- australia
Shadow of the bomb
August 4, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/shadow-of-the-bomb/2005/08/03/1122748700570.html?oneclick=true
Sixty years ago the atom bomb forced Japan's surrender. Memories fade but we should heed its power then and the potential now, writes John Huxley.
FOR the crew of the Australian destroyer HMAS Quiberon, stationed about 100 kilometres off the Japanese coast, August 6, 1945, began much like most other war-duty days: looking and listening for the tell-tale whine of fighter planes.
British planes, whose pilots would need rescuing if forced to ditch before they could land safely on their aircraft carrier. And Japanese planes, whose Kamikaze pilots - like modern suicide bombers - would crash into Australian and British ships attached to the United States Third Fleet.
But some time after breakfast that morning, a different sound was heard: a distant rumble, that turned into a deep drone, recalls Sydney man Morris Willcoxson, who was working below deck as a communications coder. "Then, a few minutes later they flew over us. One after another. These big bombers. It was really odd." It was history in the making.
Not until a few days later did Willcoxson, now 80, learn that among the big Boeing B-29s was a plane called Enola Gay and that it was carrying a 12.5 kiloton atom bomb.
Shortly after 8.15am the bomb, ironically dubbed "Little Boy", would be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. By nightfall, about 50,000 would be dead. Within days, Japan would have surrendered.
Like most people in the allied countries, Willcoxson was initially elated the war was over. "At the time we didn't realise the intensity and brutality of the bomb," he says from his Eastwood home.
His crewmate, Jack Salvado, did. In 1946, he visited the ruins of Hiroshima. "It was devastating, disastrous," says Salvado, 82, who lives in Anglesea, Victoria. "Something you never forget."
Sadly, those who were there at the dawn of the atomic age, like Willcoxson and Salvado, and thousands of other Australians who served in the Pacific campaign, are disappearing fast. Of the NSW members of the Quiberon Ex-Servicemen's Association who served in World War II, only a handful remain.
And those "pre-boomers" who grew up in the shadow of the bomb, who squirmed at apocalyptic movies such as Dr Strangelove, marched in Sydney's huge Palm Sunday peace protests and still recall Cold War crises with a shiver, are ageing. Or at least, losing their public voices.
As Dr David Walker, professor of Australian studies at Victoria's Deakin University, suggests, the momentous events of the 1940s and '50s must sometimes seem like "something from a neolithic age" to today's children.
So, as Australia commemorates their 60th anniversary, what do the dropping of the first atom bomb and Victory over Japan (or Victory in the Pacific, as many now prefer to call it) mean to today's generation of young men and women? And to children in schools?
Has the memory of the bomb, to adapt the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, become more of a whimper than a bang? Does Hiroshima still resonate? Or does it seem, like VP Day, remote, almost unrecognisable?
Though linked, the two events are, of course, separate issues. As a former NSW RSL president, Rusty Priest, says: "Hiroshima was a means to an end, the defeat of Japan, costing lives on one hand and saving lives on the other hand. The celebration is really for victory in the Pacific, the end of a dreadful war and the return of loved ones, while remembering those who did not return and those left behind. They'll carry the scars of war forever."
Regrettably, the commemoration of these events now barely within living memory has never been as widespread, as wholehearted, as that reserved for the far more distant, globally less significant, Gallipoli campaign of 90 years ago.
"More people now embrace the story of Kokoda Track," says David Low, who has been working with Walker on a project called Memories of War. "But, sadly, so much of the Pacific campaign was a messy, unholy slog.
"As well, Australia was marginalised [by the Americans]. It's somehow difficult to make a good nation-building story out of it all. Even the treatment of Australian prisoners of war doesn't sit easily with the notions of bravery and mateship in action that you got with Gallipoli. It's almost like a competing notion of what constitutes bravery."
Similarly, Low says, Australia's perception of Hiroshima has been ambivalent, and its willingness to embrace the message in its mushroom cloud has been intermittent and, as far as the abandonment of nuclear weapons is concerned, ineffectual.
As self-styled "old lefties" such as Bronwyn Marks and young activists such as Kieran Longridge acknowledge, in crude marketing terms, "the bomb" - as symbol of mass, potentially total, destruction - remains a difficult concept to sell. "It's a potent image, but one that for many people engenders a feeling of helplessness - especially when there are so many other issues to worry about," says Marks, president of the local Hiroshima Day Committee.
Longridge, a peace and nuclear disarmament campaigner for Greenpeace, agrees. "The problem is: how do you take a place of fear and make it empowering?"
Australians have been asking themselves the same question since August 1945 as they ran through what the historian Tim Sherratt, from Canberra, has called the "the good atom, bad atom routine".
Utopia or apocalypse? Relaying the news from the ruins of Hiroshima, the Herald posed the appalling dilemma in two subheadings: "Terrifying new weapon" and "Big possibilities in peace." Humour was used to soften the horror. A cartoon showed a typical Aussie bloke reading the newspaper while his wife, bent on hands and knees, cleaned the kitchen floor.
"The release of atomic energy is the most stupendous event in the history of mankind," the husband remarks. "That's all right," replies
his long-suffering wife. "But will it scrub floors or stand in the butcher's queue for me?"
In fact, over subsequent years, Australia embraced the atom - the good atom, that is - more enthusiastically, perhaps, than any other Western nation. At times the mood was positively gung-ho. As Sherratt recalls, when Sydneysiders turned on their radios at 8am, on July 1, 1946, for live coverage from Bikini Atoll of the testing of the world's fourth atomic device, they were greeted with excited cries of "Bombs away! Bombs away!"
Two years later, Sydneysiders flocked to the Royal Easter Show to see an Atomic Age exhibition, starring an "atomic genie", who emerged from nuclear clouds with electrons "whizzing around his head like bush flies", and featuring a three-minute re-enactment of Hiroshima.
"There was genuine fascination with nuclear power, not just among the scientific community but the public generally," says Low, recalling how a racehorse was named Hydrogen (favourite for the 1953 Melbourne Cup, it came sixth). The following year, the Duke of Edinburgh, on a visit to Australia, was presented with a lump of uranium in a metal casket. "It was a symbol of Australia's modernity, and of its power," Low says. A power not just to generate electricity, but to "turn deserts into green, lush fields", to conquer the tyranny of distance.
There were, too, serious defence and economic considerations. Suddenly, Australia was sitting on a uranium mine. Nuclear testing on Australian soil - on the little-remembered Monte Bello Islands, off the Pilbara coast of Western Australia, and at Emu Plains and Maralinga in South Australia - encountered little or no opposition. Rather it was a source of national pride.
Even movies, such as On the Beach - shot in the late 1950s in "end of the world" Melbourne, failed to spook Australians. "It almost reinforced the feeling that we were bystanders of events happening a long way away," Walker says.
Little wonder that movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, so popular in Britain and, on a smaller scale, in New Zealand, made little impression in Australia.
"It wasn't really until the Vietnam War that the bomb, the peace issue, were subsumed into mass protest marches," says Marks, who recalls the impact of being taken by her mother to the Art Gallery of NSW as a child to see the Hiroshima Panels. These were stark, charcoal drawings far removed from more recent "nuclear porn" representations that seem almost to celebrate the grandeur of giant mushroom clouds.
Since the 1960s, Marks suggests, the nation's engagement with the nuclear issue has oscillated, peaking during times of emergency - notably the Cold War and Star Wars stand-offs between the US and the Soviet Union - levelling off as perceived threats recede.
When the Cold War ended, when symbolically the Berlin Wall was pulled down in 1989, when the superpowers started talking disarmament, the world again breathed a sigh of relief. But subsequent crises - such as the French resumption of testing in the Pacific, border conflict between the neo-nuclear powers India and Pakistan, and even recent stockpiling by North Korea and Iran - have shown that "Hiroshima" is not dead. More like dormant: waiting to be reignited by new international flashpoints, or domestic issues, such as uranium mining or nuclear power.
"One thing is clear," Marks says, hopefully. "The lack of mass protests should never be mistaken for apathy. People do care." It's a view confirmed by a recent Lowy Institute report which revealed community-wide insecurity about nuclear weapons. Even young Australians - so often stereotyped by baby boomers, especially, as being more conservative than previous generations, more focused on homework than on world politics - care.
Morris Willcoxson's three grandchildren, aged 18 to eight, know all about the bomb. And so, it can be assumed, do most Sydney schoolchildren. At the request of the Herald, Andy Graham, a member of the Hiroshima Day Committee and a teacher at Sydney's Chester Hill High School, conducted a straw poll of students. Of a roll call of year 7-12 pupils, only about a fifth knew of Hiroshima and its significance. In a year 11 class of average ability the split was almost 50-50. But significantly, in a year 10 class studying modern history everyone knew about the first bomb.
So they should, Graham believes. "It's a fundamental thing in history. It's a hoax that the bomb ended World War II," he says, referring to the continuing mathematical debate over lives lost, lives saved by the bomb.
"The basic fact is that it was the moment when people went to a new level of bastardry … where man distanced himself nicely from the killings."
For those like Stuart Rees, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University, who believes that "the terrible lessons of Hiroshima are still waiting to be learnt", the continuing challenge is to transform youthful awareness into activism.
Translating passive community fear into a proactive push to disarm will not be easy. But Longridge believes the 60th anniversary commemorations offer an opportunity to highlight the brutal fact that, far from being defused, the bomb continues to represent a "clear and present danger" to Australia.
"There are still an estimated 30,000 nuclear weapons worldwide, 96 per cent of them controlled by the US and Russia," says Longridge. "Sixty years after Hiroshima, our sense of security is illusory."
----
Public's fear of radioactive waste 'unreasonable'
Thursday, August 4, 2005. 3:29pm (AEST) Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1430325.htm
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) says there is little chance radioactive waste could spill while being transported to a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.
ANSTO says much of the debate about the dump is not based on fact.
ANSTO's chief executive, Ian Smith, says the public's fear of radioactive waste is understandable but technically it is unreasonable.
He says there are much more dangerous materials being stored and transported in the Northern Territory.
"If you gave me the opportunity of driving behind a truck transporting low-level radioactive waste or a truck transporting cyanide I know which one I would choose," Dr Smith said.
Dr Smith says history shows there is little chance of an accident during the transportation of intermediate-level waste, which he says is solidified so there is no potential for fires or explosions.
-------- britain
UK Nuclear staff suspended over leak
The Thorp managers were suspended in April
Thursday, 4 August 2005, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/4745145.stm
A senior manager has been disciplined and another is facing action after a leak at the Sellafield nuclear plant.
The pair were suspended in April at the time of the leak at the plant's Thorp reprocessing complex, but details have only just emerged.
The action was taken after acid containing 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium leaked from a pipe.
One of the managers has now returned to work, while the other remains suspended pending a disciplinary hearing.
'Significant deficiencies'
A statement issued by Sellafield operator British Nuclear Group, said: "Two senior managers in Thorp were suspended in relation to the discovery of dissolver liquor in the plant's feed clarification cell.
"One has been through disciplinary process and has now returned to work.
"The outcome of the process is between the company and the individual and it is not considered appropriate to comment further.
"The second individual remains suspended pending the disciplinary hearing."
In June an investigation into the leak by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) found "significant deficiencies".
It ordered improvements, which must be introduced by October.
Work at the Thorp complex was halted when the leak, which could have occurred as long ago as August 2004, was discovered in April.
-------- china
China's nuclear might under US scrutiny after Taiwan threat
WASHINGTON (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050803224712.2zf1ufuu.html
China's nuclear weapons arsenal is coming under increasing American scrutiny after an influential general in Beijing warned of a nuclear strike on the United States if China is attacked over Taiwan.
General Zhu Chenghu's remarks made last month have been rejected as personal view by the Chinese government, which insists it would not be the first to unleash its nuclear firepower under any circumstances.
But US experts interpreted Zhu's comments as a tacit warning by Beijing to Washington of cataclysmic consequences if it confronted China over Taiwan.
"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, warned Zhu, dean of China's National Defense University.
He then went on to say this could lead to the destruction of "hundreds" of of American cities.
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing Li insisted the general was speaking in a personal capacity, saying Beijing would not be the first to use nuclear weapons "at any time and under any condition."
But considering China's nuclear might, there is a possibility of it launching an atomic strike even before coming under attack, said Eric McVadon, an ex-defense attache at the American embassy in Beijing.
"It is not a simple straight forward question as to whether under all circumstances, China would never under any situation use nuclear weapons first," he told AFP.
"So, we probably shouldn't completely ignore General Zhu's words and remember in that context," said McVadon, a part-time director of Asia-Pacific studies at the US Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.
Zhu's comments came five months after China adopted a law allowing it to use force against any secession moves by Taiwan, triggering concerns in Washington, which is bound by law to offer the island the means of self-defence if its security were threatened.
"There is little doubt that Chinas military leadership wants the US to believe that it will use nuclear weapons against the US should it rise to defend democratic Taiwan from Chinese attack," said Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a Washington-based think tank.
Zhu is the grandson of late Chinese leader Mao Tsu-tung's long time chief of staff, an important pedigree in the People's Liberation Army, Fisher said, describing China's nuclear deployments as having "coercive" potential.
The PLA, he said, now deployed a new fixed and a new mobile nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile system, he said.
In addition, China would soon deploy a longer-range mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, and about the same time, deploy a new long-range submarine-launched ballistic missile.
These new nuclear missiles -- three of which may contain multiple warheads -- would be active within five years, he said.
China is also on its way to acquiring 50 to 60 nuclear and conventional attack submarines, Fisher said.
At present, Chinese nuclear-tipped missiles are capable of reaching the US mainland without being intercepted. Zhu's remarks could draw greater support for a US missile defense system.
The size and pace of China's weapons acquisitions, estimated at 90 billion dollars this year, could threaten the military balance with Taiwan, a Pentagon report warned recently.
China considers Taiwan a part of its territory that must be brought back under its rule even though the island has been ruled as a de facto independent state since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
The United States, on the other hand, is the leading arms supplier to Taiwan.
Chas Freeman, a former senior Pentagon official who helped reopen defense dialogue with Beijing, said Zhu had made "a serious point which needs to be taken seriously by planners on both sides.
"I don't think it was a threat of any kind or represents policy. I think it represented an analytical point," he said.
"What it shows is that there has not been enough thinking on both sides about the implications of an escalation in a Taiwan crisis," Freeman said.
-------- depleted uranium
Army’s lack of action at JPG angers Huntington
Peggy Vlerebome
Madison, Indiana, Courier Staff Writer
8/4/2005 3:00:00 PM
http://www.madisoncourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=253&ArticleID=25269&TM=54256.92
The U.S. Army has done a disservice to the public by not promptly decontaminating and decommissioning Jefferson Proving Ground, Save the Valley and Madison Mayor Al Huntington told the federal agency that oversees what happens to radioactive and toxic depleted uranium at the former munitions testing site.
“We are frustrated and angry with the cavalier attitude exhibited by the Army regarding the decommissioning of JPG and the environment of Southeastern Indiana,” Huntington wrote in a letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Save the Valley contends in paper work recently filed with the NRC that by letting the Army frequently change its proposals for what it plans to do at JPG, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is violating a long-standing NRC rule on timely decommissioning and putting the burden of proof on Save the Valley and similar citizen organizations, instead of on the Army.
And, Save the Valley said, what the Army is now proposing doesn’t begin to be adequate for determining whether toxic or radioactive material is leaving or could leave the site, and what kind of danger that poses or could pose to people. Also, Save the Valley wrote, the Army’s latest plan for going in to collect samples for testing contradicts its previous position that it’s too dangerous to enter the DU area because of the presence of unexploded ordnance. And yet, Save the Valley said, the Army’s safety plan for retrieval is weak.
The impetus for their letters was partly from within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where the presiding officer of the judicial arm of the agency brought to the full commission’s attention a few months ago that the JPG license issue was lagging and suggesting the commission demand an explanation from the Army and from the NRC staff. The commission did so.
The Army tested munitions containing depleted uranium at Jefferson Proving Ground from 1984 to 1994, leaving behind about 220,000 pounds of projectiles and fragments made with DU. The depleted uranium area at JPG is fenced and also contains tons of unexploded ordnance. Depleted uranium is left over from the process of making fuel for nuclear power plants and is used to strengthen metal.
Save the Valley detailed more than two dozen problems it found with the Army’s latest proposal in paper work submitted during a comment period on the proposal, which the Army made in May to replace the proposal it submitted in 2003. The current proposal is to decommission JPG in five years.
“Taken together, these concerns lead STV to question the seriousness and sincerity of the Army’s intentions with respect to its most recent (license amendment) request,” Save the Valley wrote.
Save the Valley had sought a hearing on the earlier proposal, but the Army has asked that STV’s request be denied because the plan was withdrawn. Save the Valley contends that it could get bumped out of the way of having any role in what the Army proposes if the Army succeeds in getting the denial.
Save the Valley also criticized the Army’s lack of a budget for decontamination and decommissioning; the Army proposal says only that “all actions under the plan are subject to funding of course.”
Some of Save the Valley’s recent filings are in response to an NRC judge’s asking the Army and the NRC staff to explain why decommissioning of JPG has taken so long.
The delays mean that if there are threats to the public, they aren’t being addressed, the mayor wrote.
“It is with great concern for the environmental health and safety of the residents of our region that I express my extreme displeasure and impatience regarding the fate of the depleted uranium at the Jefferson Proving Ground,” Huntington wrote.
“The Army has extensively delayed (five years) any real action associated with this (Save the Valley) request for a hearing” on the Army’s termination of its federal license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Huntington wrote. “It appears to us that the Army has essentially ignored the order of the NRC to comply with a request to supply additional information, offering instead insufficient data which further delays any realistic determination of the risks threatened to the citizens in Madison, Indiana, and others in the Wabash Valley watershed.”
In one of its filings, Save the Valley wrote that while it isn’t making light of what it called a “pathetic” situation in which the Army and the NRC staff are getting nowhere on the Army’s plans for Jefferson Proving Ground, “it seems to STV that the (NRC) staff has largely played Elmer Fudd to the Army’s Bugs Bunny, busily shoveling dirt into the rascally rabbit’s last escape hole while its wily rival is already emerging from another one either newly dug or recently reopened.”
-------- europe
Greenpeace Urges Bulgaria To Halt Nuclear Plant Project
August 04, 2005 — By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8421
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Greenpeace activists urged Bulgaria on Thursday to halt a project to build a second nuclear plant on the Danube River and instead opt for renewable energy sources, the environmental organization said.
The Balkan country, with one nuclear plant in the Danube town of Kozlodui, has also launched a euro2 billion (US$2.46 billion) tender to build a second plant in Belene.
Two consortiums -- one led by the Czech Skoda company and another by Russia's Atomstroyexport -- have submitted bids in the Belene project, and the winner was expected to be chosen by year-end.
Amsterdam, Netherlands-based Greenpeace International, however, urged Bulgaria to review renewable energy alternatives.
"Bulgaria's Energy Ministry is rather tightly bound with nuclear energy, which makes it blind to the country's opportunities for real energy independence," Greenpeace activist Jan Havercamp told reporters in the western Danube port town of Vidin. "An environment-friendly alternative exists."
Greenpeace believes safe nuclear power is a myth and the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste has led to severe environmental and health problems around the world, according to the group's Web site.
The Energy Ministry rejected the environmentalists' calls, saying in a statement that "nuclear energy development ... guarantees not only the protection of the environment, but also stability in southeastern Europe, where Bulgaria is the main electricity exporter."
Havercamp and other Greenpeace activists arrived in Vidin on board a Greenpeace ship sailing down the Danube to promote the group's ideology that would exchange fossil fuels and nuclear energy for other sources like wind and solar energy.
The Greenpeace ship left from Poland in May and has visited 10 countries so far. It is also scheduled to cross the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to reach Egypt in October.
----
Belgian authorities stop firm exporting to Iran over nuclear fears
BRUSSELS (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804112055.qkeb5lry.html
A Belgian-based company has been denied a licence to export materials to Iran to build a phosphoric acid factory over fears it could be used to enrich uranium, authorities in Brussels said on Thursday.
Phosphoric acid is part of "fertilizer for use in agriculture, but with a few modifications it could be used to enrich uranium for a nuclear programme," said a spokesman for the Brussels region external relations ministry.
The move comes amid rising tensions between Iran and the so-called European Union three -- Britain, France and Germany -- as they negotiate the future and scope of the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme.
The ministry decided in mid-July to refuse the licence to the Lavalin Europe company, a subsidiary for Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, after consulting industry experts and federal government authorities.
In a letter to Lavalin explaining the decision, the ministry said "all of the foreign interlocutors expressed great concern over the delivery of this production facility to Iran."
"The complex process of negotiation between the EU-3 and Iran has reached a crucial phase and maximum care is counselled," it said, adding it had refused the licence "given the international context and the real danger of misuse."
Lavalin Europe's legal adviser confirmed the move but could not immediately say what action the company would be taking.
-------- india
India, Pakistan in talks to avoid 'accidental war' as peace drive falters
NEW DELHI (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804014802.fywzj8br.html
Officials of India and Pakistan will meet in New Delhi Friday to pursue discussions on nuclear safeguards aimed at cutting risks of accidental war between them amid a faltering peace drive.
Analysts say the mood has changed from the heady optimism three months ago when leaders of the nuclear-armed neighbours declared the peace process aimed at ending nearly 60 years of mutual hostility "irreversible."
Fuelling tensions at Friday's talks on confidence-building measures (CBMs) involving nuclear and conventional arsenals will be Islamabad's unhappiness over a US decision last month to share nuclear technology with India.
"Pakistan's reaction has not been very positive and that is a major factor to be taken into account when dealing with nuclear CBMs," said Kalim Bahadur, who teaches Asian studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
"Pakistan's position also is it should have arms parity with India in spite of the vast differences in population and economies," he said.
New Delhi has rejected such proposals on the grounds Pakistan's arsenal buildup targets India specifically. India says it does not base its defence capacity on any country or threat and "does not want to be restrained in developing its arms capability," Bahadur said.
On the table will be draft agreements thrashed out last year to set up nuclear hotlines and early notification of missile tests. India and Pakistan, which often test-fire nuclear-capable missiles, already have an informal deal to warn each other before such tests but have been seeking to make it formal.
"But even on these it will be very difficult to reach any conclusion in light of the domestic Pakistan context. This will overshadow the talks," said Bahadur.
Pakistani analysts agreed there was scant chance of progress in the talks.
Pakistan's The News, which usually reflects the views of the Pakistani establishment, reported last month that Islamabad plans to emphasize military balance at the meeting.
"Pakistan will insist on a strategic regime to be put in place which covers the nuclear as well as conventional force balance," said Riffat Hussain, head of strategic studies at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University.
"This will be yet another round of talks without any agreement."
Underlying the chillier atmosphere is the longstanding row over the future of scenic Kashmir which sparked two of three wars between the countries and brought them to the brink of another conflict in 2002.
In Islamabad, irritation is growing with what Pakistan sees as India's reluctance to move decisively to resolve the issue of Kashmir. Islamabad sees such a settlement as central to mending ties.
In New Delhi, after a wave of spectacular militant attacks in Kashmir, Premier Manmohan Singh has been telling Pakistan to rein in militants based on its soil that are fighting New Delhi's rule in the Indian zone of Kashmir.
Still, analysts say the faltering peace process pace does not herald its collapse.
"The desire for peace is there among the people," said Pranay Sharma, foreign correspondent of The Telegraph, based in Calcutta.
Also, both governments are aware of the consequences of a breakdown.
India does not want its economic boom reined in by worries the two nations are sliding toward nuclear armageddon.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf "is facing a lot of problems with Al-Qaeda regrouping, Islamic extremism. Also the London bombings have brought the focus back on him," Sharma said.
"This not the right time for him to break away from the talks process."
Mindful of these concerns, Musharraf and Singh agreed in a telephone conversation last weekend to "eschew statements" that "vitiate" the peace process, news reports from Islamabad said.
While Pakistan is unhappy over the nuclear deal, "it knows, despite being a close US ally, it can't get what India is getting after the Khan episode," said Sharma, referring to the scandal in which the architect of Pakistan's nuclear capability, Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"They may bargain for more debt write-offs or other things but they have to grudgingly accept what India got," Sharma said.
-------- iran
Iran president to pick cabinet, nuclear team
Thu Aug 4, 2005 7:16 AM ET
By Jon Hemming (Reuters)
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=138558+04-Aug-2005+RTRS&srch=nuclear
TEHRAN - Iran's new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises to deliver a "new era of justice", but for now he has to pick a cabinet accepted by hardliners who helped elect him and deal with a diplomatic row over nuclear policy.
Ahmadinejad inherits a diplomatic stand-off the European Union has warned could end in Iran referred for U.N. sanctions if it does not back down from its threat to restart nuclear work the bloc suspects might be aimed at building an atomic bomb.
The former Revolutionary Guard began his first day in office on Thursday issuing austere edicts asking for his picture not to be put up in government offices and ordering civil servants not to waste money sending him letters of congratulations.
The real work of his government begins after Saturday when he takes the oath of office and announces his cabinet which is expected to contain a blend of conservatives and technocrats.
His choices are likely to be determined by deference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, whose hand Ahmadinejad bent over and kissed as his first act as president.
"He has to consult with the Supreme leader," said a political analyst who declined to be named. "He came to power with the hardliners' backing, now he has to satisfy them."
The nuclear issue is set to dominate the opening of Ahmadinejad's presidency.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani said on Wednesday he might be removed by Ahmadinejad, but said there would be no policy change under a new negotiating team.
"Iran's nuclear policy is ... decided by top officials. It will not be changed," he told state television.
Local media have said former state broadcasting chief Ali Larijani, a hardliner close to Khamenei, would replace Rohani and take charge of the nuclear negotiations with the EU.
CONTINUITY
A nuclear expert is also tipped for the Foreign Ministry. Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with a doctorate in nuclear physics, is a strong contender for foreign minister, newspapers said.
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, after eight years heading the oil ministry and 22 years as a minister, is also due for a change, something he hinted strongly at last week.
"This is the last news conference I am attending as the oil minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.
Establishment hardliners have repeatedly criticised Zanganeh for what they call rampant corruption, especially in the negotiation of Iran's buy-back oil deals.
Ahmadinejad's candidates for oil minister of OPEC's second biggest producer have provoked mixed emotions in foreign executives, though they do not expect radical change in policy.
The list of five possible successors includes several unknown quantities to oil multinationals -- among them acting mayor of Tehran Ali Saeedlou, Hossein Nejabat -- a member of the parliamentary energy commission and Kamal Daneshyar who heads the energy commission.
The safest bets for foreign energy investors are deputy oil minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, who heads the state-run National Petrochemical Company (NPC) and Ali Beheshtian, a former deputy oil minister for onshore affairs who manages the petrochemical industry's investment company.
The new ministers are expected get the necessary approval in cabinet with few hitches, though some of Ahmadinejad's allies who dominate the assembly have warned him not to think of incorporating any reformers from the ousted government.
Reformers too say they want nothing to do with the new government so as not to be tarred by any its failures.
"The cabinet should be from the same political group. Such cabinet will take full responsibility for its actions," the Aftab-e Yazd newspaper quoted the brother of the last president and leading reformer Mohammad Reza Khatami as saying.
----
EU prepares U.N. Iran nuclear warning -diplomats
By Francois Murphy and Louis Charbonneau Thu Aug 4,12:33 PM ET (Reuters)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050804/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc_47
VIENNA/BERLIN - The European Union will call a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's governing board early next week to warn Iran against restarting nuclear work that could be used to develop bombs, diplomats said on Thursday.
Iran threatened repeatedly to resume uranium processing this week. The EU responded by saying any resumption of nuclear fuel activities would mean an end to two years of talks on Iran's nuclear program.
Tehran says it only wants to generate electricity but the West suspects it is trying to make bombs.
"This board meeting is just to warn the Iranians," a diplomat close to negotiations between Tehran and the EU's three biggest powers -- France, Britain and Germany -- said, adding the meeting was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.
He said the EU was not aiming at this meeting to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
"We want to have a resolution before they can take off the (IAEA) seals. It has nothing to do with the Security Council," the diplomat close to the talks said.
A second diplomat confirmed there would be a meeting early next week.
Iran said on Monday it would restart a uranium conversion plant in the central city of Isfahan, one of the nuclear activities it agreed to suspend under a November deal with the European Union.
Conversion is the step before enrichment, which can purify uranium to the level needed to fuel nuclear reactors or bombs.
The Islamic republic initially rejected calls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to wait until next week for surveillance equipment to be installed before restarting the Isfahan facility.
APPARENT CLIMBDOWN
In an apparent climbdown, chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani said on Wednesday that Tehran hoped to restart work at Isfahan by early next week.
The European trio is due to present proposals for economic, political and nuclear incentives to Iran this weekend, in exchange for which it hopes Tehran will scrap its most sensitive nuclear activities.
In a letter to Rohani on Tuesday urging Iran not to resume conversion, the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany said they would be seeking a special session of the IAEA board of governors "in the next few days" to discuss the way ahead.
For two years, Washington has tried to have Iran referred to the Security Council for violating its obligations under the global pact against the spread of nuclear weapons.
Its efforts were, however, blocked by other countries including the European trio, which wanted to persuade Iran to voluntarily give up all potentially weapons-related technology.
----
European diplomats seek emergency UN atomic agency meeting next week
VIENNA (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804164601.ulkvn7dh.html
European diplomats have asked for an emergency meeting of the UN atomic agency next Tuesday in order to keep pressure on Tehran not to resume sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work, diplomats said Thursday.
"The instruction has been sent" to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a diplomat from one of the three European Union countries negotiating with Iran told AFP.
The Vienna-based IAEA is the agency which would refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions, but the diplomat said the purpose in calling a meeting next week was to warn off the Iranians from their announced intention to resume fuel cycle work possibly related to nuclear weapons development.
The diplomat added, however, that "this might be a meeting where something else happens," a reference to Iran presenting the IAEA with a fait accompli of having already started uranium conversion, a first step in enriching uranium.
Meanwhile, diplomats said some nations were trying to get EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany to back off on holding the meeting over worries about lack of support on the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors for a hard line against Iran.
The diplomatic jockeying comes amid a high-stakes confrontation between Iran and the West over an Iranian nuclear program which the United States claims hides an attempt to develop atomic weapons but which Iran says is peaceful power plant work allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The European trio is to hand over proposals in Tehran, possibly as early as Friday, on resolving the crisis, an EU diplomat told AFP.
But Iran said Thursday it would be resuming within one or two days uranium conversion work it had suspended in November to start talks with the EU.
The EU and the United States are expected to call for Iran to be brought before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if Tehran resumes the conversion activities, the first phase in enriching uranium into fuel that can be used in civilian nuclear reactors but could also serve as the explosive core of atom bombs.
----
Taking Iran to the UN: A dangerous game
By Ian Davis International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2005
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/03/news/eddavis.php
LONDON In principle the United Nations Security Council is the right forum for resolving international security disputes. But in the case of Iran's nuclear program, the looming threat by Britain, France and Germany (known as the EU-3), to refer the issue to the UN could seriously backfire.
The Iranians insist they want to build a modern nuclear energy industry, including the capacity to enrich uranium into nuclear fuel. The EU-3, fully aware that this technology can also be used to develop nuclear weapons and concerned by Iran's extensive record of concealing nuclear activities, is demanding that Iran permanently shut down key elements of its nuclear program.
Hopes were raised last November when the EU-3 and Iran arrived at the so-called Paris Agreement, which saw Iran agree to suspend enrichment as "a voluntary confidence-building measure" while the EU-3 offered to negotiate financial, political and security incentives to make the arrangement permanent.
Nine months later the talks are nearing crunch point. The Europeans have said that by Sunday they will present a detailed proposal to try to persuade Iran to abandon high-risk nuclear activities. But Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will resume enrichment anyway, and there is little optimism that a deal will stick.
The elephant on the sofa is the U.S. government. Washington claims to support the EU-3 talks, but U.S. insistence on the complete and total end to enrichment activities leaves little room for compromise. George W. Bush's refusal to rule out military action hinders progress, and the Iranians see double standards in his recent agreement to assist nuclear-armed India. As a consequence of U.S. pressure, the EU-3 decided earlier this year to threaten to refer Iran to the Security Council if it resumes uranium enrichment activities. But if this threat is applied, it could lead to dramatic and dangerous escalation.
First, it is the IAEA's responsibility to refer Iran to the council. But without conclusive evidence of a nuclear weapons program, it is doubtful the IAEA board will support referral. Claims by the Americans that enrichment activities are "forbidden" and by Tony Blair that Iran would be in breach of its "obligations and undertakings" should it end its voluntary suspension are a legal nonsense.
But more importantly, even if the EU-3 and the United States can engineer a referral by the IAEA and a successful resolution at the Security Council, they will almost certainly be unable to get Russia and China to agree to the biting sanctions needed to force rapid Iranian concessions. Russia is actually building Iran's Bushehr light-water nuclear power plant, and energy-hungry China last year signed a $70 billion oil and gas deal with Tehran.
The risk of referral is that it will lead to stalemate at the UN, provoke the Iranians into blocking international nuclear inspections, and ultimately strengthen the hand of U.S. hardliners who are pushing for the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities. Faced with this prospect, the EU-3 should drop their UN threats at the same time as they offer their incentives, and for the time being accept some limited enrichment by Iran subject to tough IAEA inspections.
Short of military action, which would be a disaster, the best leverage the EU has over Iran are time and trade. Iran's young population is demanding economic reform, which requires export growth and investment.
This dynamic hints at a solution. If Tehran can be persuaded to go slow on its nuclear work under heavy and intrusive IAEA inspection, the lure of further EU economic ties may in time lead to a lasting agreement. Indeed, the EU should look to the six-nation partnership on development of technologies for clean energy that the United States concluded in the Asia-Pacific region last week as a possible model for Iran and the wider Middle East. However flawed a response this might be to the problem of climate change, if properly resourced and managed, an EU-led technology transfer partnership of this nature could help accelerate much-needed energy diversification away from oil.
This may never result in the total capitulation that the Bush administration appears to be seeking from Tehran and carries risks that Iran could pursue nuclear weapons in secret. But with U.S. intelligence now putting the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb a decade away, it is a far better option to keep talking than to start down a path toward military confrontation: That would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.
(Ian Davis is the director of the British American Security Information Council)
-------- israel
Israeli Nuclear Weapons 2005
FAS Website, August 4, 2005
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/index.html
The Israeli nuclear weapons program grew out of the conviction that the Holocaust justified any measures Israel took to ensure its survival. Consequently, Israel has been actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days. In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF's Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.
The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure "that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter." Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense's Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC. By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials.
For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.
In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically. Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations. This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel.
On 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement calling for France to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the IAEA inspection regime, by French and Israeli technicians at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps.
Both the scale of the project and the secrecy involved made the construction of Dimona a massive undertaking. A new intelligence agency, the Office of Science Liasons,(LEKEM) was created to provide security and intelligence for the project. At the height construction, some 1,500 Israelis some French workers were employed building Dimona. To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America. In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the substance to Israel.
Trouble arose in May 1960, when France began to pressure Israel to make the project public and to submit to international inspections of the site, threatening to withhold the reactor fuel unless they did. President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria.
At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not. Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections. In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance. In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.
The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes."
There followed two decades in which the United States, through a combination of benign neglect, erroneous analysis, and successful Israeli deception, failed to discern first the details of Israel's nuclear program. As early as 8 December 1960, the CIA issued a report outlining Dimona's implications for nuclear proliferation, and the CIA station in Tel Aviv had determined by the mid-1960s that the Israeli nuclear weapons program was an established and irreversible fact.
United States inspectors visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s, but they were unable to obtain an accurate picture of the activities carried out there, largely due to tight Israeli control over the timing and agenda of the visits. The Israelis went so far as to install false control room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility. The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of a plutonium reprocessing plant.
Although the United States government did not encourage or approve of the Israeli nuclear program, it also did nothing to stop it. Walworth Barbour, US ambassador to Israel from 1961-73, the bomb program's crucial years, primarily saw his job as being to insulate the President from facts which might compel him to act on the nuclear issue, alledgedly saying at one point that "The President did not send me there to give him problems. He does not want to be told any bad news." After the 1967 war, Barbour even put a stop to military attachés' intelligence collection efforts around Dimona. Even when Barbour did authorize forwarding information, as he did in 1966 when embassy staff learned that Israel was beginning to put nuclear warheads in missiles, the message seemed to disappear into the bureaucracy and was never acted upon.
In early 1968, the CIA issued a report concluding that Israel had successfully started production of uclear weapons. This estimate, however, was based on an informal conversation between Carl Duckett, head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology, and Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. Teller said that, based on conversations with friends in the Israeli scientific and defense establishment, he had concluded that Israel was capable of building the bomb, and that the CIA should not wait for an Israeli test to make a final assessment because that test would never be carried out.
CIA estimates of the Israeli arsenal's size did not improve with time. In 1974, Duckett estimated that Israel had between ten and twenty nuclear weapons. The upper bound was derived from CIA speculation regarding the number of possible Israeli targets, and not from any specific intelligence. Because this target list was presumed to be relatively static, this remained the official American estimate until the early 1980s.
The actual size and composition of Israel's nuclear stockpile is uncertain, and is the subject of various estimates and reports. It is widely reported that Israel had two bombs in 1967, and that Prime Minister Eshkol ordered them armed in Israel's first nuclear alert during the Six-Day War. It is also reported that, fearing defeat in the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs.
Israel could potentially have produced a few dozen nuclear warheads in the period 1970-1980, and might have possessed 100 to 200 warheads by the mid-1990s. In 1986 descriptions and photographs of Israeli nuclear warheads were published in the London Sunday Times of a purported underground bomb factory. The photographs were taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a dismissed Israeli nuclear technician. His information led some experts to conclude that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear devices at that time.
By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates. The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types. Some published estimates even claimed that Israel might have as many as 400 nuclear weapons by the late 1990s. We believe these numbers are exaggerated.
The Dimona nuclear reactor is the source of plutonium for Israeli nuclear weapons, and the number of nuclear weapons that could have been produced by Israel can be estimated on the basis of the power level of this reactor. Information made public in 1986 by Mordechai Vanunu indicated that at that time, weapons grade plutonium was being produced at a rate of about 40 kilograms annually. If this figure corresponded with the steady-state capacity of the entire Dimona facility, analysts suggested that the reactor might have a power level of at least 150 megawatts, about twice the power level at which is was believed to be operating around 1970. To accomodate this higher power level, analysts had suggested that Israel had constructed an enlarged cooling system. An alternative interpretation of the information supplied by Vanunu was that the reactor's power level had remained at about 75 megawatts, and that the production rate of plutonium in the early 1980s reflected a backlog of previously generated material.
The upper and lower plausible limits on Israel's stockpile may be bounded by considering several variables, several of which are generic to any nuclear weapons program. The reactor may have operated an average of between 200 and 300 days annually, and produced approximately 0.9 to 1.0 grams of plutonium for each thermal megawatt day. Israel may use between 4 and 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon [5 kilograms is a conservative estimate, and Vanunu reported that Israeli weapons used 4 kg].
The key variable that is specific to Israel is the power level of the reactor, which is variously reported to be at least 75 MWt and possibly as high as 200 MWt. New high-resolution satellite imagery provides important insight this matter. The imagery of the Dimona nuclear reactor was acquired by the Public Eye Project of the Federation of American Scientists from Space Imaging Corporation's IKONOS satellite. The cooling towers associated with the Dimona reactor are clearly visible and identifiable in satellite imagery. Comparison of recently acquired commercial IKONOS imagery with declassified American CORONA reconnaissance satellite imagery indicates that no new cooling towers were constructed in the years between 1971 and 2000. This strongly suggests that the reactor's power level has not been increased significantly during this period. This would suggest an annual production rate of plutonium of about 20 kilograms.
Based on plausible upper and lower bounds of the operating practices at the reactor, Israel could have thus produced enough plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200 weapons.
Some type of non-nuclear test, perhaps a zero yield or implosion test, occurred on 2 November 1966 [possibly at Al-Naqab in the Negev]. There is no evidence that Israel has ever carried out a nuclear test, although many observers speculated that a suspected nuclear explosion in the southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint South African-Israeli test.
Sources and Resources
* Bibliography of Israeli Nuclear Science Publications by Mark Gorwitz, June 2005
* The Third Temple's Holy Of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army, September 1999
* The Bomb That Never Is by Avner Cohen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2000, Vol 56, No. 3 pp.22-23
* Israel and the Bomb Avner Cohen has provides a detailed account of of the political aspects of Israel's nuclear history that draws on thousands of American and Israeli government documents-most of them recently declassified and never before cited-and more than one hundred interviews with key individuals who played important roles in this story.
* Obsessive secrecy undermines democracy By Reuven Pedatzur Ha'aretz. Tuesday, August 8, 2000 -- Cohen published "Israel and the Bomb" in the United States, and a Hebrew translation of the book has appeared here. In the eyes of the defense establishment, Cohen has committed a double sin.
* Fighting to preserve the tattered veil of secrecy By Ronen Bergman The publication of Dr. Avner Cohen's book and of the Vanunu trial transcripts set off alarm bells for the Defense Ministry's chief of security, who is striving to protect the traditional opacity regarding Israel's nuclear affairs.
* Blast, from the past to the present By Yirmiyahu Yovel Ha'aretz. 28 July 2000 -- If, in the context of the peace agreements and talks with the United States, Israel were to confirm its nuclear capability - while committing itself to no nuclear testing and pledging to build its defense system on conventional weapons as in the past - maybe then it might achieve at least de facto recognition, if not international legitimacy, for its nuclear weaponry, to be used only as a "last resort" and a tool for safeguarding peace after Israel withdraws.
* Israel The Nuclear Potential of Individual Countries Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons Problems of Extension Appendix 2 Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service 6 April 1995
* The Samson Option. Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy Seymour M Hersh, [New York: Random House, 1991]
* Israel: Plutonium Production The Risk Report Volume 2 Number 4 (July-August 1996).
* Israel: Uranium Processing and Enrichment The Risk Report Volume 2 Number 4 (July-August 1996).
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
Maintained by Steven Aftergood
Originally created by John Pike
Updated Thursday, August 17, 2
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US kept in the dark as secret nuclear deal was struck
David Leigh
Thursday August 4, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1542129,00.html
Israel's acquisition of nuclear bombs has been one of the most sustained pieces of deceit in recent history. The project was guarded with such passion that in the 1980s the technician Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped and spent 11 years in solitary confinement for blowing some of its secrets.
It is remarkable then, that documents lying unnoticed in the public records office at Kew should reveal Britain's hitherto unknown role 47 years ago in deceiving the US and supplying Israel with the means to go nuclear.
The main files on the subject, from the UK Atomic Energy Authority, are still classified. But BBC Newsnight producer Meirion Jones says he found a handful of key copies in a routinely declassified but obscure Foreign Office counter-proliferation archive.
Apart from a passing mention of a British connection in 1998 by Israeli academic Avner Cohen, the UK's key role seems to have been completely unknown to historians.
What the documents still fail to reveal, however, is how high up in the Macmillan government the decision was taken to go behind the back of President Eisenhower and load 20 tons of heavy water from Britain on to Israeli ships, thus enabling Israel to start up its Dimona reactor.
On the face of it, the decision was mere avarice. Britain's own highly secret nuclear weapons project had spent in the region of £1.5m on barrels of heavy water from Norway.
But a different technological route had been chosen for the UK in the end, using graphite as a moderator to bring about nuclear reactions. Norway refused to cancel the heavy water contract. It must have been tempting for those in charge of Whitehall budgets to be offered a chance to get their money back.
In the days of the cold war, the Official Secrets Act ensured that there was little danger of civil servants being held to account by MPs or the public for what they had done. They could scrawl without anxiety, as one did, "I would prefer not to mention this to the Americans", or "It would be somewhat over-zealous for us to insist on safeguards".
Only the US, Russia and the UK had nuclear weapons at the time, shortly to be joined in the "nuclear club" by France. The west was, officially at least, dedicated to preventing nuclear proliferation to small, unstable countries. But Israel was to be the first to break through this embargo.
In 1958, Israeli bulldozers had just started to break the ground at Dimona in the Negev desert for a top-secret French team to start constructing what France was later to claim it believed to be a small "research reactor".
France supplied Israel with a small quantity - four tons - of heavy water, but Israel needed much more if it was to to start a reactor that could manufacture weapons quantities of plutonium.
In September 1958, Israel offered, via the Norwegians, to buy 25 tons of heavy water which Britain possessed.
David Peirson, secretary of the UKAEA, wrote to Whitehall officials that he intended to sell "without restrictions". It was clear from his letter that there had already been discussions within the British government about the proposed sale.
It could be argued, he wrote, that if Britain was a party to the sale to Israel, there should be safeguards to prevent Israel using the heavy water to make bombs.
On the other hand, Britain had got the heavy water from Norway for its own military purposes: "It might be regarded as somewhat unreasonable that we should now stipulate for conditions we did not accept ourselves."
Technically, Britain would be selling back to Norway, and Norway would re-sell to Israel: "It would be primarily for [the Norwegians] to consider the issue ... It would be somewhat over-zealous of us to insist on safeguards."
At the Foreign Office, Alexander Stirling suggested: "We might make the gesture of informing the Americans ... unless there was any risk of a US firm stealing the Israeli orders."
He was rapidly overruled by Douglas Cape, first secretary at the FCO in charge of nuclear security, in terms that made it clear the fear was the US would demand too many safeguards: "I would prefer not to mention this to the Americans lest it lead them to ask us to take up what would in fact be an untenable position vis-a-vis the Norwegians."
The cover story was that the heavy water was "understood to be required by Israel for peaceful use in a reactor connected with desert irrigation".
Accordingly in June 1959, and again the following June, two lots of heavy water of 10 tons each were, according to a note by Alan Brooke-Turner, then first secretary at the FCO in charge of disarmament, "put on board Israeli ships at a UK port" and shipped out to Dimona.
But Israel never got its final five tons of the British consignment, and had to turn elsewhere. To Whitehall's discomfiture, news of Israel's activities started to leak and there was an international row.
A US spyplane, the U2, had been taking high-level photos of the activities in the Negev desert. US intelligence had become suspicious, and summoned the Israeli ambassador in Washington to question him.
In December 1960, a story was planted in the British press, via the Daily Express veteran defence correspondent Chapman Pincher, that Israel was trying to make atomic bombs.
The following March, the UKAEA told the Norwegians they thought it was unlikely Israel could have the outstanding five tons, although the deal was commercially "attractive". This was, wrote Peirson, because of "the political sensitivity of Israel's nuclear activities".
Henry Hainsworth, head of the FCO's atomic energy department, noted sternly: "We have been far from satisfied by the assurances so far furnished by the Israelis of the exclusively peaceful nature of their operations. I should be strongly opposed to letting them have a further five tons."
One of the FCO's most senior officials, Sir Hugh Stephenson, finally stamped on the idea. "I am quite sure we should not agree to this sale. The Israeli project is much too live an issue for us to get mixed up in it again."
Rehearsing the history of the earlier shipment from British ports, another official warned: "This information should not be used in response to inquiries about the heavy water."
By the time the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, arrived in London on an official visit that June, Whitehall had arranged itself into a position of high-minded disapproval of Israeli behaviour.
The British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, wrote in a minute classified "secret": "I saw Mr Ben-Gurion this afternoon and told him of our concern about the Israeli nuclear reactor in the Negev. Mr Ben-Gurion explained that its object was to train personnel in preparation for an atomic energy programme in 10 or 15 years' time aimed at providing cheap power for taking the salt out of sea water to irrigate the Negev.
"I asked Mr Ben-Gurion whether he could not accept international inspection ... Mr Ben Gurion said he did not think he could since this would mean bringing in the Russians and Arabs."
British concern came too late. Israel is now believed to have a secret stockpile of up to 130 nuclear missiles.
---
Report: Britain sold Israel ingredient for nuclear project
8/4/2005 7:03 AM USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-08-04-britain-israel_x.htm
LONDON (AP) — Britain secretly sold Israel a key ingredient for its nuclear program in the 1950s, according to official documents uncovered by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The BBC's Newsnight program, broadcast late Wednesday, said government papers held at the National Archive show Britain shipped 20 tons of heavy water to Israel in 1959. The program said the water was vital for the production of plutonium at Israel's secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert.
Newsnight said British officials did not impose any conditions on the sale, such as stipulating the heavy water could be used only for peaceful purposes. The BBC report said the United States had refused to supply heavy water to Israel without such safeguards.
Robert McNamara, who became President Kennedy's defense secretary in 1961, told the BBC that Britain didn't inform the Americans it had sold heavy water to Israel.
"The fact that Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should not have come as any surprise .... But that Britain should have supplied it with heavy water was indeed a surprise to me," he said.
In one of the documents, a British Foreign Office official cautioned against informing the United States of the sale.
"On the whole I would prefer NOT to mention this to the Americans," Foreign Office official Donald Cape wrote in an official paper at the time, the BBC said.
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who was director general of Israel's defense ministry from 1953 -58 and was instrumental in building Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona, refused to comment on the report Thursday.
There was no immediate comment from Britain's Foreign Office.
The Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert is one of the most sensitive sites in Israel. Israel maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear program, neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons. It has said that the Dimona reactor is used only for peaceful purposes.
In 1986 former technician Mordechai Vanunu gave information and pictures of the Dimona facility to London's Sunday Times. On the basis of his revelations, experts concluded that Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, consisting of hundreds of warheads. Vanunu was freed in April after spending 18 years in prison for espionage and treason for divulging that information.
Because it has resisted international pressure to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Israel does not formally have to declare itself as a weapons state or agree to any curbs on its nuclear activities.
In 1995, Peres declared, "Give me peace, and we will give up the atom. If we achieve regional peace, I think we can make the Middle East free of any nuclear threat."
Newsnight said it had found no evidence that ministers in the government of then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan were aware of the sale and believed the decision was taken by civil servants, mainly in the Foreign Office and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
The documents reveal the heavy water was transported from a British port in Israeli ships in two consignments, half in June 1959 and half a year later.
----
Britain secretly supplied key component for Israeli nuclear reactor: report
LONDON (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050803222510.mlj3tapk.html
Britain secretly sold Israel a key component for its then-fledgling nuclear programme in the late 1950s, not even telling key ally Washington, a report based on British archives said on Wednesday.
Astonishingly, the decision in 1958 to sell 20 tonnes of heavy water, a vital ingredient for the production of plutonium, appears to have been made by British civil servants with no input from ministers, the BBC report said.
The documents unearthed by BBC television's Newsnight programme, broadcast late Wednesday, show British officials decided that it would be "over-zealous" to insist Israel use the heavy water only for peaceful purposes.
Previously, America had refused to supply heavy water to Israel without such safeguards.
Heavy water is chemically the same as normal water, but where the hydrogen atoms are of the heavy isotope deuterium, in which the nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the proton found normally.
It can be used to turn natural uranium into plutonium, needed for nuclear weapons.
According to Newsnight, the 20 tonnes of heavy water was part of a consignment which Britain bought from Norway -- a pioneer in heavy water production -- in 1956, but which was later deemed surplus to requirements.
Although official papers initially presented the sale as a direct deal between Norway and Israel, memos in the National Archives in London reveal that the heavy water was shipped from Britain in Israeli ships in 1959 and
It was used for the production of plutonium at Israel's top secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert.
The archives appear to show that the decision to sell the heavy water was taken only by civil servants, mainly in the Foreign Office and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, perhaps for economic reasons.
Newsnight said it had found no evidence that ministers in the then-British government of prime minister Harold Macmillan were ever consulted about the sale, or even told about it.
After a British newspaper exposed the Israelis' work at Dimona in 1960, Britain refused a second Israeli request for more heavy water.
The records show an explicit decision not to inform the United States, the report said.
"On the whole I would prefer NOT to mention this to the Americans," concluded a document written by Donald Cape, a Foreign Office official.
Robert McNamara, who served as President John F. Kennedy's defence secretary from 1961, shortly after the sale, told Newsnight he was "astonished" at the revelation.
"The fact that Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should not have come as any surprise... But that Britain should have supplied it with heavy water was indeed a surprise to me," he said.
"It's very surprising to me that we weren't told because we shared information about the nuclear bomb very closely with the British."
----
Britain made 'secret nuke deal' with Israel
04/08/2005 DeHavilland Information Services
http://www.dehavilland.co.uk/webhost.asp?wci=default&wcp=NationalNewsStoryPage&ItemID=14017168&ServiceID=8&filterid=10&searchid=8
Britain sold Israel 20 tons of deuterium or heavy water, a substance used to produce nuclear bombs in 1958, according to official documents unearthed by the BBC's Newsnight programme.
Heavy water is used in the production of plutonium.
Former Conservative defence and foreign office minister Lord Gilmour said the findings were "extraordinary".
The decision to export £1.5 million worth of heavy water was made without the prior consent of Harold Macmillan's government and the United States, according to papers in the British National Archives.
Donald Cape, a Foreign Office official at the time, was quoted as writing in the papers: "On the whole I would prefer not to mention this to the Americans."
The US at the time would only sell the material on the condition that it would be used for "peaceful use only".
Britain did not impose any such stricture.
When Israel asked Britain for more heavy water in 1961, the Dimona nuclear reactor and the assumed nuclear weapons programme had already been revealed by the Daily Express newspaper, compelling the Foreign Office to block the sale, the archives show.
Norway supplied 20 tons of deuterium to Britain in 1956 but nuclear scientists decided they did not need it, documents show.
Israel has long refused to admit or deny it built the Dimona reactor in the Negev desert.
The Israeli government refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
-------- japan
Declaration of the 2005 World Conference against A & H Bombs: Abolish All Nuclear Weapons!
From: Sukla Sen
Declaration of the International Meeting
August 4, 2005
The 2005 World Conference against A & H Bombs
60 Years since the Atomic Bombing:
Time to Develop Actions and Cooperation for a Nuclear Weapon-Free, Peaceful, Just World
In August 1945, two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. instantly devastated the two cities, killing over 200,000 people by the end of that year, and leaving many surviving Hibakusha tormented both mentally and physically. It was a crime against humanity and raised the alarm of annihilation of humankind. Henceforth humans have had to struggle for their own survival. In the 60 years since then, Hibakusha, amidst their own suffering, have made an appeal, "Humans cannot co-exist with nuclear weapons". This call developed into a global demand for the abolition of nuclear weapons, that prevented the outbreak of nuclear war many times.
Assembled at the 2005 World Conference against A & H Bombs, joined by a record number of 264 overseas delegates from 29 countries, we take this 60th anniversary to renew our call to the citizens of the world to respond to the Hibakusha's wishes and in solidarity renew their determination to achieve a peaceful world free of nuclear weapons. Despite public opinion calling for nuclear weapons to be abolished, 30,000 nuclear weapons are still deployed or stockpiled, jeopardizing human survival. With its policies and behavior the nuclear superpower, the U.S.A., s given rise to strong protest in every corner of the world.
At the NPT Review Conference held in May 2005, the U.S. government, using the emerging "threats" of "terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction", refused to honor the "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons and other disarmament agreements, the commitment to the renunciation of the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, and the commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Having persisted in its commitment to attack Iraq in dire disregard of worldwide opposition, the Bush Administration continues the policy of responding to "new threats" with pre-emptive attacks. By inciting fear to these "threats", it is pressing the international community to help carry out U.S.-initiated war. It is developing "usable nuclear weapons", promoting the first strike related "Missile Defense" program and weaponization of outer space, and reinforcing its nuclear weapons monopoly ostensibly to counter "proliferation".
This U.S. policy is based on dangerous unilateralism that undermines the U.N. Charter and other international law and agreements. The aim is to control the world by its overwhelming nuclear supremacy and monstrously swollen military power. But as seen in the continuing war and quagmire in Iraq and the spread of terrorism throughout the world, this so-called "solution" only aggravates the problems of terrorism and nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
Thwarting the nuclear superpower's move to rule the world through military power, the international community must hold to the universal principle of resolving international conflicts through peaceful means and earnestly pursuing the abolition of nuclear weapons. This should apply to the efforts to make the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East/West Asia zones free of nuclear weapons.
In this 60th year, the voices and actions of the people of the world for a nuclear weapon-free and peaceful world have gathered momentum in defiance of persistent backlash: cooperation and solidarity developed as demonstrated in the major New York action on the eve of the NPT Review Conference. In addition to the efforts made by the Mayors for Peace, Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones countries, the Non-Aligned Movement and the New Agenda Coalition, support for the implementation of the "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons is gaining ground among countries affiliated with military alliances.
The world's NGOs and both local and national governments are increasing their cooperation, leadership and initiatives. In order to restore peace and security to the world, we must accelerate this positive trend. We will strengthen the movement to demand a total ban and the elimination of nuclear weapons, the movement to establish a peaceful order based on the U.N. Charter, international law and reason in opposition to the use of force, and the movement to create a just world without poverty, discrimination, suppression of human rights and environmental destruction. We will build solidarity between all these movements respecting their diversity. Today, the world is looking to Japan as the only nation that has suffered from the use of nuclear weapons in war, and that has a Constitution prohibiting the use of force and the possession of war potentials. The government of Japan, while talking about the elimination of nuclear weapons, actually seeks security provided by the U.S. "nuclear umbrella". It cooperates in the reorganization and strengthening of U.S. military bases in Japan, in line with the U.S. preemptive attack policy, and in "Missile Defense" deployment. It even supports the policy of using nuclear weapons as "part of deterrence". Also, we are witnessing the Self-Defense Forces' increasing deployment abroad, ongoing preparation for war, the eulogizing of Japan's past wars, and further, the possible revision of the Constitution. These moves are arousing deep concern and anger especially among the peoples of Asia.
The world wants Japan to honor its pacifist Constitution and Three Non-Nuclear Principles (not to possess, produce or allow introduction of nuclear weapons) in resolving international conflicts through peaceful means and abolishing nuclear weapons. Facing the moves to negate these, we in the World Conference express our warmest support for and solidarity with the people of Japan in their opposition to the revision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which has pioneering significance for world peace. Let us make the 60th year since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 50th year of the World Conference against A & H Bombs a turning point to achieve a nuclear weapon-free, peaceful and just world.
The United Nations, having declared as its purpose to save humanity from the scourge of war and pledged in its First Resolution to eliminate nuclear arms, must play a unique and vital role to free humanity from the threat of nuclear weapons. We call on all U.N. member states to make special efforts so that the U.N. Summit in September 2005 and the General Assembly session that follows, will open a path to achieve without delay a treaty totally banning and eliminating nuclear weapons. To this end, let us start a major campaign in the nuclear powers and their allies to press the governments to fulfill their obligation to abolish nuclear weapons. As the 55th Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs held in Hiroshima on the eve of this World Conference pointed out, we must firmly convince the public of the fact that "the security of each state is best served by concluding a Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibiting such weapons".
The anti-nuclear and peace movement has been a driving force to expand and strengthen the current for the abolition of nuclear weapons in world politics. We must rally the broader public through grassroots campaigns, invigorate anti-nuclear peace forces in each country, and develop worldwide solidarity and joint actions. Let us stage a variety of activities all over the world, including signature campaigns to demand the abolition of nuclear weapons, placing opinion ads in newspapers, peace marches, seminars and discussion meetings, grassroots actions on August 6 and 9, A-bomb photo exhibitions and events to listen to the Hibakusha testimonies. In support of the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear victims in different countries, let us promote international solidarity and exchanges, calling on the people of the world to take action for nuclear weapons abolition and the creation of a culture of peace.
In this 60th year, by reaffirming the historical significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and confirming that the abolition of nuclear weapons is essential for the survival of humanity, let us develop voluntary, grassroots movements on every continent and all around the world. Aiming at a peaceful world without nuclear weapons and wars, let us encourage young people to take action, create new hope and build up these massive movements.
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Remembering Hiroshima holocaust a personal journey through pain
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804051155.fj5zey3k.html
The world's first nuclear attack has been immortalised in museums, books and movies but for many, the Hiroshima holocaust represents a personal struggle between reawakening painful memories and letting them lie.
For Keiji Nakazawa, whose works include Japan's best-selling war cartoon, "Barefoot Gen," drawing the atomic bomb attack that took place 60 years ago Saturday was like going through it all over again.
"I was writing Barefoot Gen for a weekly cartoon magazine, so it was like being trapped in the horrifying memories of the atomic explosion week after week. It was just painful," said Nakazawa, 66.
He lost his father, sister and younger brother at once in the nuclear attack on August 6, 1945 that killed some 140,000 people in Hiroshima.
While the children's book narrates the times of six-year-old Gen, it portrays some of the most graphic and sickening effects of the bombing such as melting and burned bodies covered with lice.
"Gen is me. I wrote what I saw and didn't want to sugarcoat war and human suffering. While personally I want to stay away from the atomic experience as much as possible, I believe a cartoon is one tool for us to remember the war experience," Nakazawa said.
Like the boy in the cartoon, six-year-old Nakazawa tried in vain to rescue his father, sister and brother who were trapped in their collapsed house after the attack.
As a raging fire swept through the house, the author and his pregnant mother helplessly watched their loved ones dying. Days later, Nakazawa returned to the burned house and found three skulls.
The book has sold more than six million copies in Japan since its first publication in 1975 and has been translated into English, French, German, Indonesian, Korean and Russian.
"I want my readers to stand up against war and nuclear weapons," Nakazawa said.
-- The movie director --
For director Kazuo Kuroki, 74, making films on the war including on Hiroshima has been an agonizing effort to overcome his guilt. He fled when his classmates died in a US air-raid on the southern island of Kyushu in 1945.
"I always feel guilty for having survived in the US raid. I was working at a factory making war planes and suddenly the US military attacked us. I ran and ran and ran," Kuroki said.
"I saw my friends were helping their dying friends but I kept running. A total of 11 classmates were killed. I have been so traumatized by the experience. But it is my duty as a war survivor to tell painful stories."
Kuroki said he was greatly influenced by French movies including Alain Resnais' 1959 "Hiroshima Mon Amour," a tale based on the Marguerite Duras novel of a 24-hour fling in the devastated city between a young French woman and a Japanese man.
Kuroki's latest film, "The Face of Jizo," is about a young Hiroshima woman's struggle to overcome her guilt for having survived the atomic bombing and her journey to find love and happiness.
Based on the work by renowned Japanese writer and peace activist Hisashi Inoue, the film, which was released in 2004, won 16 movie awards in Japan and has been shown in China and the United States.
"The theme of the movie is to have courage to live. Like the female character in the movie, I, too, must live while harboring tremendous guilt toward my dead friends," Kuroki said.
-- The museum curator --
For Minoru Hataguchi, being the director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has forced him to confront his most painful war memory: losing his father in the nuclear attack before he was even born.
"From birth, I didn't have my father. All my life, I tried to avoid the topic of the atomic bombing," said Hataguchi, 59.
His father was vaporized, with the only remaining mementoes being a burned belt buckle and a pocket watch, which his mother discovered at the train station four days after the bombing and symbolically buried in the absence of a body.
Hataguchi was working in the city's education, public health and taxation bureau when the mayor appointed him in 1997 to head the museum. He recalled feeling completely unprepared.
"As the head of the museum, I had to speak about peace. But honestly speaking, I didn't know what to say. My colleagues suggested I speak about my father," he said.
"It was extremely painful to talk at home and abroad about my own experience. I even dug my father's grave to retrieve his buckle and pocket watch and displayed them when we held an atomic exhibition in India" in 1998.
But just a few days before the exhibition was about to end, India conducted a nuclear test and declared itself an atomic power, a move quickly followed by rival Pakistan.
"I felt very sad and disappointed. It is so hard to convince world leaders that nuclear weapons are horrible and should be abolished for good," Hataguchi said.
Built in 1955, the museum has collected some 18,000 A-bomb items ranging from burned fingernails to a charred lunchbox to a pocket watch with its hands pointing at 8:15 am, the moment the US atomic bomb exploded.
Each year some 1.1 million people visit the peace museum. Some 10 percent of them are foreigners and have included late pope John Paul II, Cuban President Fidel Castro, guerrilla Che Guevara and former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.
No US president has visited the museum.
"When I told Mr Castro that Che Guevara had visited the museum, he looked very surprised. I also talked about how my father was killed in the bombing. Before parting, Mr. Castro hugged me three times," Hataguchi said.
"I want visitors to believe that the nuclear horror should never happen again. If Hiroshima does not serve as an appeal to the world against nuclear weapons, what would?"
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Hiroshima a pacifist bastion 60 years after A-bomb
Thu Aug 4, 2005 1:10 AM ET
By George Nishiyama (Reuters)
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=64063+04-Aug-2005+RTRS&srch=nuclear
HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug 4 - Sixty years after the atomic bombing that killed thousands in the blink of an eye and devastated his home city of Hiroshima, Sunao Tsuboi is worried Japan may again be headed down the path of militarism.
The survivor of the world's first atomic bombing has vowed, like many other Hiroshima residents, to keep the city a bastion of pacifism.
"Everything I hear these days makes me really upset," said Tsuboi, 80, who was a university student when the bomb exploded over Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945.
Tsuboi, who was about 1 km (0.6 miles) from ground zero -- the point where the bomb detonated -- was hurled 10 metres (30 feet) through the air and suffered burns over much of his body.
"I get a strong feeling that Japan is leaning to the right, that we're going down a road that we've been down before," he said, his face still visibly scarred from the burns.
Japan's ruling party, in its latest call for a more assertive security stance, this week proposed that the military should not be limited to a self-defence role but should take part in international efforts to secure peace overseas.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has made annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine for war dead, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism, and a school textbook written by nationalist historians has stirred criticism of a whitewash.
Thousands died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing, with the toll rising to some 140,000 by the end of 1945 out of the city's estimated population of 350,000. More have succumbed to cancer and other radiation-related ailments since then.
On Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the Hiroshima attack, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, bringing to an end the military aggression that had culminated in its entry into World War Two.
Proposals laid out in a draft for a new constitution by Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) mark a drastic departure from the principles of the pacifist constitution, unchanged since it was drafted by the postwar Occupation authorities.
A key section of the constitution, Article 9, renounces the right to maintain a military or wage war, though Japanese governments have interpreted it as allowing forces for defence, the now-240,000 member Self-Defence Forces.
"We must by all means save Article 9. It may be idealistic, but it's something that the world should strive to achieve," said Tsuboi, who heads a group of Hiroshima victims.
Recent administrations have stretched the constraints of the constitution to allow non-combat support for the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but many members of the conservative LDP have long chafed at the limits of the U.S.-drafted document.
A DIFFERENT MOOD
Faced with the threat of North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes, Japanese public opinion has shifted away from once-overwhelming opposition to revising Article 9, although those backing a change still fall short of a majority.
Some politicians have even broken a decades-old taboo to suggest Japan should possess nuclear arms.
"Japan is clearly leaning to the right and the trend has become very strong," said Motofumi Asai, a former diplomat who is president of the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
In Hiroshima, now a modern, bustling city of 1.2 million, the mood is different.
"In places like Tokyo, pacifism is no longer 'fashionable'. But in Hiroshima, it's still very much alive," Asai said.
"In Hiroshima, people have a strong sense of identity as victims of the A-bomb. They feel they have to be a beacon of pacifism and of efforts to abolish nuclear weapons."
The Peace Memorial Park and the A-bomb Dome -- the ruined shell of a building that was near ground zero -- have become synonymous with the city and serve as reminders of the bombing 60 years ago this week.
Faced with the passing of the generation who experienced the bombing, most schools in Hiroshima have "peace studies" courses to keep memories of the tragedy alive.
Students learn about it by listening to survivors' accounts.
"We should stick with Article 9," said 16-year-old Madoka Tamura, a student at the private Notre Dame Seishin High School. "Someone has to give up weapons, because otherwise others won't."
Some of her classmates said Japan may need a military for self-defence but should keep to its pacifist principles.
"As a country which suffered war and as one of only two cities to have suffered an atomic bombing, we need to have a strong desire for peace," said Haruka Daimyoji, 17.
"If the military were to get out of control, we are the ones to stop it."
Others said debate on the constitution and the military's role was fine as long as politicians recognised the consequences of war.
"They should first visit the peace museum, and then think about it," said Keitaro Nomura, president of Hiroshima Junior Chamber, an organisation of young business executives.
----
Officer's Letters Describe WWII Bombings
By WILLIAM C. MANN
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 4, 2005; 2:47 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080400165_pf.html
WASHINGTON -- In two years of submarine combat duty, U.S. naval officer Thomas O. Paine thought he had seen the worst of World War II. Then he saw what atomic bombs did to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"I'll just say that no description seems ample to describe the power that was unleashed," the 24-year-old wrote to his parents.
"It is beyond belief almost, and makes what we did to Germany and Tokyo and Sasebo and Agana at Guam as nothing," according to one of dozens of letters in his file in the Library of Congress.
In describing the aftermath of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and three days later on Nagasaki, the letters reveal a young man wrestling with the awesomeness of the deed.
"Perhaps you wouldn't like to hear about it, but I think more people should know about it," he wrote home on Oct. 7, 1945, from Sasebo, 30 miles north of Nagasaki. He underlined "should."
Paine's letters are preserved because of a later service to his country. As NASA director in 1969-70, he sent up the first seven Apollo manned missions, culminating with the first footprints on the moon.
Still, he never forgot the devastation he saw from the bombs nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man, the only nuclear weapons used in war.
Paine, who died in 1992, was no peacenik.
His father was a Navy commodore and Paine volunteered for the Naval Reserve. After becoming an officer on the fast track, Paine joined the submarine service.
Submariners had the second-highest casualty rate of any U.S. wartime naval service behind merchant mariners, the targets of enemy submarines.
Duty took Paine to Japan little more than a month after the bombs forced the Japanese to surrender and avoided what would have been an extremely bloody U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands. Paine's job was to inspect and document enemy submarines left from the war before they were to be destroyed or impounded.
"If you can visualize a molten street car, or an area miles square with no object bigger than a fireplace log in it, where it is impossible to tell where the streets and buildings were located, where some 80,000 people were living one second and completely disintegrated along with all their buildings the next, if you can visualize this, you can imagine the process of the Atomic Bomb," he wrote.
"Then imagine a town with all doctors, all policemen, all firemen, the total military garrison and every hospital wiped out, and further imagine it saturated with dead and the dying, and you have visualized Nagasaki.
"The details are even worse, and I'll spare you that anyway," Paine wrote.
Paine's elder son, George T. Paine, born seven years after the war, said his father was struck by "the scope of destruction by fire bombs" dropped on Japan near the war's end.
The lingering effects of nuclear bombs _ which kill with radiation for years after their use _ later convinced him that nuclear war was far worse, George Paine said.
During the presidential campaign of 1964, Paine, then a General Electric Co. executive in Santa Barbara, Calif., founded Scientists and Engineers for Johnson to raise money for President Johnson's campaign against the conservative Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
In a 1970 interview, Paine said he generally was apolitical but had been swayed by the "casual way that Goldwater was talking about nuclear weapons. ... I just didn't think, as a citizen who knew about the power of nuclear weapons, I could sit on the sidelines while this sort of thing went on."
Generally, Paine's letters were small talk about family and the frustration of his inability to wangle a way for the woman who would become his wife, Australian Barbara Pearse, to go to his parents in California to await his arrival and their marriage.
But when he spoke of the post-bomb Japan, the words flowed.
On Oct. 23, in a letter from Kure, 10 miles south of Hiroshima, Paine writes of the destruction around his ship caused by wave after wave of U.S. warplanes in the weeks before atomic bombs were used: battleships listing or sunk; battered aircraft carriers left as hulks in the water; twisted steel; and blackened dockyards.
"Inside Kure Wan (Harbor) lie about 20 destroyers, with guns removed. ... The town of Kure lies before us, with the middle 80 percent of the town as level as a golf course, completely burnt out by B-29s. Over the hill lies an enormous scar on the face of the earth, where 100,000 people lived in a place called Hiroshima a few months ago," he wrote.
"Well, we said we'd make them regret Pearl Harbor _ and we did."
----
Letters From World War II
By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 4, 2005; 2:47 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080400164_pf.html
-- Excerpts from Navy Lt. Thomas O. Paine's letters to his parents:
_About the war's end
Aug. 16, location unspecified
"Nobody can believe it, nobody can really comprehend it _ but the war is over. We are as taken aback by peace as we were by war. This place is in an uproar of celebration and confusion. Orders follow orders, conflicting, superseding, canceling. We thank God, each of us, that we've returned from our last war patrol now and are safely through the darn thing. We sing `Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here,' and soberly think that some of the gang are not here and will never be."
_About his duty in Japan shortly after the U.S. attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs:
Oct. 7, 1945, from submarine tender USS Euryale off Sasebo, Japan, south of Nagasaki:
"Since all records and town officials are gone, 80,000 (dead) is just the estimate of other people. The exact total will never be known. They are still dying, of burns and other manifestations, though there is no radiation anymore. I have been told that the Nagasaki bomb is now obsolete, and that a third, more powerful bomb has been produced. The fight was all knocked out of the (Japanese) in that area, and none of the expected resentment was found, only wonder that the Americans, who had beaten them already, should have done that.
"Well, I can't judge a thing like that. Perhaps if the war had gone on I wouldn't have been so lucky, and thus my life would have been saved by it. Let's hope so; it makes it much easier to think about it if you look at it that way."
Oct. 23, from USS Euryale anchored in Hiro Wan (Harbor) outside Kure, south of Hiroshima:
"This anchorage is an interesting one. I'll tell you some of the sights. A few thousand yards off our port quarter the battleship Hyuga is sitting in bitter defeat on the bottom, with her main deck awash. ... Going through the Ondo Narrows toward Kure we pass the battered battleship Ise to port, lying on the bottom with a heavy list to starboard, in about 35 feet of water, and the remains of a heavy cruiser to starboard with a large port list. On the rocks, possibly a Mogami (a class of cruisers). Several carriers with battered flight decks are in sight and across the bay the much sunk Haruna BB (battleship) lies burnt out, but afloat, I believe. The dockyards lie to starboard as we enter Kure Wan, and twisted steel and blackened areas bear witness to the destructive effects of air power. ... A pillar of smoke from the corner of the dockyard marks the position of a coal pile which has been burning, despite all efforts to put it out, since the raid by B-29s early in June.
"Inside Kure Wan lie about 20 destroyers, with guns removed. ... The town of Kure lies before us, with the middle 80 percent of the town as level as a golf course, completely burnt out by B-29s. Over the hill lies an enormous scar on the face of the earth, where 100,000 people lived in a place called Hiroshima a few months ago.
"Well, we said we'd make them regret Pearl Harbor _ and we did.
"See you all soon, I hope. Love, Tom"
----
Consequences of Hiroshima yet unseen
By TED VAN DYK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Thursday, August 4, 2005
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/235129_vandyk04.html
On Saturday, we will observe the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Seattle, in 1945 as now, was enjoying glorious summer weather. After Hiroshima, and the strike three days later against Nagasaki, sunsets here and across the Pacific became vividly red.
War in Europe had ended, but war with Japan had not. Many local families' kids had been killed or wounded in the fierce Okinawa and Iwo Jima battles just completed. Heavy bombing raids over Japan were exacting a frightful toll. Yet Japanese resistance remained stiff. It generally was estimated that a million casualties would result when U.S. and allied troops mounted an invasion of the Japanese homeland.
Only a few in the U.S. government and scientific communities knew nuclear weapons were being developed. Thousands were laboring at the secret Hanford Works in the Eastern Washington desert. President Harry Truman, when he assumed office in April 1945, after President Franklin Roosevelt's death, was briefed for the first time on the weapons and their potential.
Three years ago I wrote a column questioning the rightness of Truman's decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most readers responding argued that Truman had no choice. A land invasion of Japan would have taken far more lives. The use of the bombs shortened and ended the war.
Yet there were other options. The prevailing mind-set prevented their serious discussion at the time.
A blockade of the home islands would have cut off Japan's depleted petroleum and other vital supplies and ended its war-making capability. A nuclear weapon dropped on a lightly inhabited northern Japanese island could have demonstrated dramatically to Emperor Hirohito and his government the weapons' potential for destruction and led to peace negotiations.
There also is a legitimate question as to why the Nagasaki bomb was dropped so soon after the one on Hiroshima. The Japanese government needed time after the first bomb to absorb its implications and reach an obvious decision to sue for peace. The Nagasaki strike simply took additional lives without reason. Some 120,000 mostly civilian lives were claimed immediately in the two strikes. A larger number died later, sometimes years later, from the effects of radiation.
The main thrust of U.S. thinking was that nuclear weapons were like other weapons -- only more powerful. During the Cold War period, school kids practiced "duck-and-cover" drills in anticipation of Soviet nuclear attacks on the United States. Gen. Douglas MacArthur urged use of nuclear weapons against North Korean and Chinese targets in the Korean War. Vice President Richard Nixon unsuccessfully lobbied President Eisenhower for their use to bail out French colonial forces at the decisive Indochinese battle of Dienbienphu.
Doing reserve duty as an Army intelligence analyst, I helped prepare a1960 report on the anticipated effects of nuclear attacks on U.S. regions and metropolitan areas. It found that only Oregon and northern Maine would be spared from both blast and lethal fallout. Neither contained a target or would be swept by prevailing radioactive winds. Post-attack aerial photos of Seattle would have resembled those of Hiroshima.
Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his 1960 campaign charged the Eisenhower administration with dereliction in allowing Soviet ICBM production to exceed our own. (As it turned out, this "missile gap" charge was false.) Then, in 1961, while serving at the Pentagon during the Berlin Crisis -- when the Soviet Union erected a wall between East and West Berlin -- I took part in planning based on the presumption that a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe could be stopped only with tactical nuclear weapons. Use of the weapons would have devastated Germany. It also could have led to an exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962, again almost resulted in use of nuclear weapons.
Since those years, we have been leaders in trying to limit nuclear weapons proliferation and risk. Yet, because technology cannot be contained, additional countries continue to acquire the weapons. Most of the new and aspiring nuclear powers -- countries such as North Korea and Iran -- hold the view that we once held: Namely, that nukes are like other weapons, only more powerful. Al-Qaida and other groups want them not only to terrorize the West but to exert leverage on behalf of their political aims.
There is menacing news: Sixty years into the nuclear age, we and others not only have been left with self-inflicted wounds of nuclear contamination, we also must face the reality that the nuclear-weapons genie is not in its bottle, after all. The danger that nuclear weapons will be used is again growing, not receding.
Our conventional bombing attacks on Japan killed far more civilians in 1945 than did the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Yet, in deciding to use them, we set in motion later consequences not yet fully seen. Saturday will be not be a time for celebration.
Ted Van Dyk has been involved in national policy and politics since 1960. E-mail: t_van_dyk@hotmail.com.
-------- korea
Talks flounder as N Korea delays decision on abandoning nuclear weapons
BEIJING (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804035423.zq2u3xei.html
North Korea was delaying Thursday a crunch decision on whether it was ready to abandon its nuclear weapons programs, forcing drawn-out six-nation negotiations on the issue into a 10th day.
The Stalinist state is the only one among the countries at the talks -- China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States -- that has not signed off on a draft of a statement on it dumping its atomic arsenal and what it would get in return.
It had been expected to deliver its verdict on Wednesday but snubbed a meeting of the chief envoys to the talks, the fourth round of which began Tuesday last week.
"I think everybody knows the score right now. We are waiting for the North Koreans to give an answer to the Chinese on the draft," the US chief delegate, Christopher Hill, told reporters.
"They have got to make real decisions. We need to have a situation where we know precisely what they have agreed to do, what they have agreed to abandon.
"We cannot have a situation where the DRPK pretends to abandon its nuclear programs and we pretend to believe them," he said referring to the North by its official name Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea.
China, the North's closest ally, has been driving the negotiations and was working to salvage something from the discussions, holding talks with all the delegations late into the night Wednesday.
Hill was due to meet the Chinese negotiators later Thursday but he said he had no plans to talk again with the North Koreans, who were seen entering the talks venue in a convoy early Thursday.
"There is no reason to meet them now. They are talking to the Chinese," said Hill, the assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs, who has held eight one-on-one meetings with North Korea's envoy Kim Kye-gwan.
"They know exactly what the situation is. We responded, the Russians responded, the South Koreans responded and the Japanese responded. So let's see what the North Koreans have to say."
South Korea's chief delegate Song Min-Soon has said the framework agreement centered around North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapons in return for a normalization of ties with the United States and Japan.
Japanese and South Korean media reports said it included the provision of a security guarantee and electricity and fuel oil aid to the impoverished North.
But it does not include a key North Korean demand that concessions be delivered simultaneously with the dismantling of its atomic weapons program, they said, citing sources.
The United States has persistently demanded that the North give up its weapons programs before it gets aid and energy.
"As Mr Hill said, China is expected to continue making coordinating efforts and we are going to have talks with China," said Japan's chief delegate Kenichiro Sasae.
"The matter largely depends on whether or not North Korea is prepared to make an important decision."
A key sticking point is believed to be North Korea's unwillingness to acknowledge having a uranium enrichment program. The United States accused the North in 2002 of running such a program.
The communist regime raised the stakes in February when it said it already had nuclear bombs.
The fourth round of talks, which come after a break of more than a year, have been the longest since the process was initiated in 2003. All previous rounds ended inconclusively.
----
Complex legacy of Korean victims of Hiroshima
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804051100.7zq5ltik.html
Park Nam-Joo was heading to the safety of the countryside when the world's first nuclear bombing obliterated her hometown.
Two weeks later when a traumatized nation heard Emperor Hirohito's voice announce surrender, Park, then a 12-year-old schoolgirl, found her father quietly rejoicing that his homeland was about to emerge from 35 years of Japanese Imperial occupation.
"As my father listened to the radio announcement on the end of the war, he started speaking to himself, saying 'Hooray, hooray,' in Korean," Park says.
"Then I heard him whispering: 'The liberation has come.'"
Out of the 140,000 people who died 60 years ago from the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, some 27,000 of them were Korean, many brought to Japan as slave laborers, others, like Park's family, to look for employment.
For Park and other Koreans, the legacy of the bombing has been more complex than for many Japanese survivors. While the Koreans suffered in huge numbers, they also went on to endure intense discrimination, much as they had done during the period of Japanese occupation.
Before the nuclear attack, she watched her father, a hard-working laborer, be humiliated by the military police in Hiroshima.
"My father was speaking to his friend in Korean on the street and an officer yelled at them, 'Don't you speak in Korean in public, you bastards!'"
Park was forced to use a Japanese name, Namiko Arai, but her Korean origin was no secret. To escape the vicious taunts from her classmates, Park would avoid wearing Korean clothes and begged her mother to cook her Japanese food.
"I wouldn't eat her kimchee because the other kids would tell me that I reeked of Korean food," says Park -- who, now a 72-year-old grandmother, wears her exquisite blue and white Korean chima-chogori with pride in Hiroshima.
-- "It was eerie. There were no buildings in Hiroshima" --
On the fateful morning of August 6, 1945, Park had just boarded a train with her younger brother and sister to take them to a rural village as part of a wartime evacuation for toddlers.
Just as the train was about to cross a metal bridge at 8:15 am, Park saw a flash and seconds later a fire raged through the carriages with a piercing and roaring sound.
"My sister and I immediately jumped off the train. A Japanese soldier grabbed my little brother and jumped off the train. I didn't know what happened."
"I saw dark clouds over the sky and wondered why it was so dark even though we had such a beautiful morning," she says.
"I was bleeding because fragments of glass were stuck in my head. But I didn't feel any pain. I was too frightened to feel pain."
Park and her young siblings were just two kilometers (one mile) from the center of the nuclear blast. They managed to return home on foot and found their mother standing outside their demolished house.
"She was holding our baby brother. She had cuts all over her body and was completely dazed," she says.
Her mother, who barely spoke Japanese, told Park later that she saw a fireball inside the house and did not remember how she got out of the house with her six-month-old baby.
Around 8:25 am, Park walked up a hill behind her house and saw the town of her birth in flames.
Soon Park started seeing men, women, children coming from all over the city, staggering and asking for water before collapsing to the ground.
"Their faces were so red and burned with skin hanging from their arms and legs. One by one, they collapsed and never got up," she says.
By 9:00 am, Park was reunited with her father who was in downtown Hiroshima at the time of the atomic explosion but miraculously survived with minor cuts to his forehead.
Despite the utter destruction in the city, the Japanese military resumed food supply, mostly from their rations, on August 7. But Park was always starving.
"Just to survive, I was constantly looking for food. I stole tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants from somebody's gardens. I didn't feel any guilt. Whenever I heard there was food supply, I ran to the place barefoot."
Three days after the bombing she waited her turn for a share of soy sauce when she noticed that two human bodies were floating inside the tank.
"I wasn't scared at all. Everyone was taking soy sauce from the tank," she says.
"For the two dead, I'm guessing that they must have suffered severe burns and jumped into the tank due to unbearable heat."
Unshaken as she headed home, she then spotted a charred freezer that had belonged to the Japanese army, opened it up and took some meat.
"I dipped that soy sauce on the meat and baked it. It tasted so good. It was so delicious."
-- "We started our lives from scratch" --
Park's parents came to Hiroshima from southern Korea shortly after imperial Japan invaded the neighboring peninsula in 1910. They came by choice to make a living, with her father taking jobs building homes and constructing dams.
"He worked so hard that our standard of living was up to that of Japanese," Park says.
About a month after the war ended, Koreans started fleeing Japan on hearing rumors that crazed Japanese officers would kill them to vent their anger for Japan's surrender.
The mutterings proved to be unfounded, but Koreans had reason to be afraid: several thousand were killed by Japanese neighborhood vigilantes in Tokyo in the aftermath of the 1923 earthquake because of rumours that Koreans were starting fires and poisoning wells.
Like tens of thousands of Koreans who left Japan after the war, Park's husband and her future father also planned to return to Korea.
But in 1950 the Korean War broke out, aborting her family's plan to resettle in their native country for good.
"My husband's nephews and sister, as well as the wife of his older brother, were killed by US bombings. My husband tried to go home but received letters from his brother saying 'Don't come home now.'"
"My husband's elder brother went mad after losing his family members in the Korean War."
After the war, Park was able to dispense for good with her Japanese name. But discrimination was still everywhere.
At 17, Park married a Catholic Korean, Cho Min-Jae, and converted to Catholicism. Soon she gave birth to twin girls, who only lived for two weeks due to malnutrition.
Park would have four more children and by 1955, she was a young mother desperate for work to support the family.
"I applied for jobs at banks and shops but they all rejected my applications because of my Korean origin. The only jobs available for Koreans were the ones loathed by Japanese such as picking up junk metal, manufacturing illegally distilled spirits and raising hogs."
"I did all of them just to survive and support my family."
-- 'An eye-opening experience' --
Aged 72, Park struggles to speak Korean, the language of her childhood home. But her identity was awoken by her husband, a native Korean whom she met when he was in Hiroshima as an exchange student.
She went to South Korea for the first time in 1970 to meet her mother-in-law.
"It was an eye-opening experience," she says. "Because of my husband, I was able for the first time to understand Korea."
When she returned she began to learn Korean cooking and dancing and eventually came to head an association of Korean women aimed at passing on traditions to a new generation of Koreans born in Japan.
Besides preserving culture, she also focused her attention on how Koreans were treated after the atomic bombing.
Six decades after the bombing, Park is still in Hiroshima and leading a comfortable life, with a pork business bringing her enough for a retirement and her children successful in their professions.
She has used part of her money to set up a program in Hiroshima to help Korean victims of the nuclear bombings be treated for radiation sickness.
Japan gives generous medical benefits to survivors of the bombings, which remain so etched in the national memory, but it was not until 2001 that it extended the benefits to the roughly 4,500 people who live overseas, most of whom are Korean.
The mixed Japanese response is also seen in how it commemorates Korean victims. Japan's Korean community, which today numbers about 700,000, in 1970 floated plans to set up a memorial at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial park.
But the city repeatedly turned down the requests, saying the peace park was already too cluttered and instead allowed it to be built on a river bank opposite the park.
It was not until 1999 that the Korean memorial was finally transferred to the peace park thanks to a decision by then Hiroshima mayor Takashi Hiraoka.
On Friday, a day before dignitaries mark the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Park will attend a separate ceremony of remembrance at the Korean memorial.
"I will never forgive the people who dropped the atomic bomb," Park says.
"But I do think the war ended earlier because of it, and because of it we were able to get our homeland back. When it comes to the war, my feelings are always complicated."
----
Chief Russian delegate returns for NKorea talks which could end Saturday
BEIJING (AFP) Aug 04, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050804052510.c3jp1ufg.html
Russia's chief delegate to talks here to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program returned to Beijing on Thursday as a Russian diplomat said the negotiations could wrap up on Saturday.
Russian chief delegate Alexander Alekseev left Beijing over the weekend saying he had to attend to domestic affairs and would return when it was necessary.
"He's staying only two days, maybe three days. ... I don't know when the talks will be closed, probably Saturday," a Russian diplomat told AFP, refusing to elaborate.
The six-nation talks, which entered their 10th day Thursday, also involve the two Koreas, Japan, China and the United States.
The talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear drive have been stalled by the Stalinist state's indecision over whether to sign a preliminary draft agreement that maps out how it would eventually dismantle its atomic weapons.
-------- security
Is U.S. up to task of preventing attacks on homeland?
By DAVID WESTPHAL
McClatchy Newspapers
04-AUG-05
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=SECURITY-08-04-05
WASHINGTON -- As the nation approaches the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there is fresh unease about the government's ability to prevent another strike on American soil.
The recent bombings in London and Egypt, yet another overhaul of the federal Homeland Security Department and nervousness about the Iraq war are prompting fresh debate about whether the country is making sufficient progress against the terrorist threat.
"Th