NucNews - August 7, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- africa South African Karoo farm 'rich in natural uranium deposits' Thabo Masemola August 07 2005 at 03:05PM Sunday Argus, South Africa http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20050807145125418C286176 Uranium, which can be enriched to make nuclear bombs or nuclear fuel, has been discovered for the first time in the Western Cape on a remote farm in the Karoo, near Beaufort West. The highly valuable mineral was discovered on a farm which was part of South Africa's land restitution process in which land was returned to people dispossessed under apartheid and earlier. Solomon Ngondo, who got his family's land back, has now struck it rich if he sells the uranium mining rights. Barely a year after taking ownership, Ngondo has been told that his 6 000 hectare farm bears substantial natural uranium deposits. Highly enriched uranium can be used for the production of nuclear weapons. But in a less-enriched form, the mineral can be used for the generation of electricity. It is the fuel used by nuclear power stations such as the one at Koeberg, to generate electricity by the process of nuclear fission. Ashok Damarupurshad, a uranium expert at the department of minerals and energy, said world uranium consumption exceeded its production, making it extremely sought-after and expensive. Ngondo has been besieged by offers since the discovery of uranium on his land. A source in the department of land affairs, who wished to remain anonymous, said Ngondo had been offered as much as R20-million for the land. But the landowner refused to divulge details, saying only that he had accepted a "reasonable offer" - not to sell his land, but only the mining rights. Speaking to Sunday Argus this week, Ngondo said he kept some livestock. "Nothing is happening on the land at present. I have been approached by mining concerns and a reasonable offer has been made. Yes, the deal has been finalised but I am not selling the land. All they are buying are mining rights to the land." Damarupurshad warned that whether it would be profitable in Ngondo's case would depend on "the economics of its occurrence and indeed the prevailing uranium price". -------- britain Full-time armed guards for nuclear power stations MURDO MACLEOD POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT Sun 7 Aug 2005 Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1740662005 SCOTLAND'S two nuclear power stations are to have their own dedicated teams of armed police to protect them from attack by terrorists. Armed guards will be stationed at the power stations at Hunterston in Ayrshire and Torness in East Lothian, which between them produce about 40% of Scotland's electricity. It will be the first time that working power stations in Scotland have had their own armed guards. Scotland's two decommissioned nuclear installations, Dounreay in Caithness and Chapelcross near Dumfries, already have armed guards on call. Until now, the two functioning power stations have had to rely on officers from an English-based firearms section which would be moved to Scotland only on the basis of intelligence or fears of a threat. For example, the unit - called the Tactical Firearms Group - was moved to Scotland in the run-up to the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July in order to protect Torness and Hunterston from possible attacks by anti-globalisation militants and anarchists. A spokesman for British Energy, which operates the two installations, said the move had been ordered by the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS), which decides on security at atomic power stations. The new teams of guards will be in place at the two power stations from early next year at the latest. A British Energy source added that the step had been ordered before the London bombings as a general move to boost security at Scotland's nuclear plants in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and that it was not related either to the London attacks or any specific intelligence of a direct threat to the Scottish stations. The spokesman added: "The safety and security of all British Energy sites is our number one priority and we work closely with our regulator at the OCNS." Explaining the move, a senior police source said: "There has been growing concern that there might be some kind of an attack on power stations, especially the nuclear plants. While there is not very much chance of actually blowing anything up, they would want to make a big impact by disrupting power supplies, that would spread the terror by showing that no one can escape from them." Scotland's two decommissioned nuclear power plants, Dounreay and Chapelcross, already have teams of armed guards aimed at protecting the installations from the possibility that terrorists will attempt to break in and steal radioactive material to use in an attack. Security experts fear that while terrorists would be unlikely to be able to build a bomb from anything taken from a nuclear plant, they might use radioactive material in a so-called "dirty bomb" in which conventional explosives would be used to spread nuclear contamination over a widespread area. In the immediate aftermath of the London bombings all the UK's nuclear power stations were placed on amber alert, the second-highest state of readiness. It was the first time they had been placed on amber alert since just after the New York attacks in September 2001. The alert saw non-essential staff asked to stay away from work, and car searches stepped up. The car-free exclusion zones around key buildings were also widened. The most intense security has been mounted around the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, which is responsible for the production of plutonium to be used in atomic weapons. If a terrorist were able to cause damage to the plant it would be seen as a huge victory against the UK military establishment and an indication that no one - not even the most secure parts of the UK - could hide from extremists. Security systems are set to include an automatic vehicle number plate recognition system. Earlier this year, government investigators unveiled a host of security failures at British nuclear sites. The incidents, which even included a burglary, were uncovered by the OCNS. During the 12 months ending April 2004, the agency recorded more than 40 security breaches, including eight incidents it classified as "failures of security leading to unacceptable or undesirable consequences." The security failures identified in the report included: security guards at nuclear plants failing to respond to intruder alarms when a burglary was in progress; two unauthorised people being able to walk unchallenged around restricted areas; classified information being left exposed to theft or electronic interception. In addition, several laptops and at least one CD containing restricted data were stolen. While the breaches were not violations of security around nuclear material itself, access to information about the operations and lay-out of nuclear sites could make the difference between a terrorist attack succeeding and failing. The OCNS report said at least one attempt to gain access to restricted sites was foiled when two individuals with forged papers were turned away as they tried to enter a rail yard. While it was not revealed which plants were involved in the security breaches, it is understood that the incidents were spread across all civil atomic facilities in Britain. It emerged last year that an emergency planning exercise, run in 2003, exposed a number of flaws in the UK's ability to deal with a major terror attack against seaports and airports. And a simulated terror attack on a nuclear power station in 2002 found confusion and slowness in the emergency response. Experts said the emergency services needed more equipment and training and the public needed better information on what they should do in the case of a disaster. In November 1999 an RAF Tornado fighter came down in the sea near the Torness nuclear power station leading to fears that a terrorist might be able to land on it. -------- canada Opposition mounting to Canadian nuclear incinerator PAM DOUGLAS, North Peel, Ontario, Staff Writer 08/07/05 00:00:00 http://www.northpeel.com/br/news/v-printbrampton/story/2956208p-3425921c.html There is mounting opposition to a Brampton company's application to build a nuclear waste incinerator in the city's east end. A group of residents has formed The Coalition for a Nuclear Waste Free Peel to fight the proposal. They will hold a meeting Thursday and everyone in Brampton opposed to the plan is invited. A core group of 17 concerned residents are looking for support, preparing a petition, planning ways to alert the community, and working on formal responses to the application. A deadline for written comment to the Ontario Environmental Bill of Rights is Aug. 18. "We don't want to get hysterical. We want to look at the facts and the location," said coalition organizer Dora Jeffries, pointing out radioactive waste would be trucked along congested roads to a built-up area close to homes and five-km from the new hospital. The bottom line: "We don't want it here. Obviously, something has to be done with this waste, but that's not our problem." Mississauga Metals & Alloys has applied for a licence to build and operate a natural gas-powered incinerator at 75 Sun Pac Boulevard, in the area of Williams Parkway and Goreway Drive. The incinerator would burn waste such as paper, gloves, rugs, wood, and construction materials contaminated with low levels of radiation, according to President David Sharpe. Although it must go through an environmental assessment and approval from federal regulators, city councillors will weigh in on the issue first. The metal recycling company must apply for a rezoning in order to expand. It is currently operating as a legal, non-conforming use, according to Planning Commissioner John Corbett. The company opened in 1993, three years before a bylaw was passed restricting "waste processing" from any site within 120 m of non-industrial uses. Homes located on nearby Goreway Drive are within 120 m of the facility, according to Corbett. There are also senior's condominiums and housing east of the site. The company has been recycling metal on Sun Pac for the past 12 years. For the past seven years it has been recycling metal contaminated with low levels of radiation, under licence from the federal government. The Ministry of the Environment will not issue a certificate of approval to operate an incinerator unless the plan is approved under the city's zoning bylaws, according to Corbett. To get that rezoning, the company will have to show the incinerator will not have a negative impact on the surrounding homes and businesses, whether that's noise, dust, odour, vibration or other emissions, according to Corbett. There have been some informal discussions with the city, but the company has not yet applied for rezoning, Corbett said. The company held a public information session last month as part of the environmental assessment application made by the company. There will be another session next month, according to Sharpe. The radioactive material for the incinerator would come from manufacturers that supply nuclear power plants with pellets and tubing, he said. "These are materials that were located in the areas where they would be processing the fuel (pellets)," Sharpe said. The material would be trucked in to the local facility, then screened. Anything exceeding the government-regulated guidelines for low-level radioactivity would not be incinerated and would be returned to the source, he said. The proposal is for a natural gas incinerator that would burn a maximum of 250 pounds per hour. The ash would then be shipped back to the source of the original garbage, where the radioactive material would be separated and re-used, he said. The Coalition for a Nuclear Waste Free Peel meeting will be held at 5 Dayspring Circle at 7 p.m. For more information, call 416-779-6359 or 905-451-9077. For information on the Mississauga Metals & Alloys proposal, call Sharpe at 905-790-0796, or email davidsharpe@mm-a.com./a> To comment in writing on the proposal under the Ontario Environmental Bill of Rights before Aug. 18, call the application processor at 416-212-3679. -------- china China accelerates push for more nuclear power plants Sunday, August 07, 2005 Elaine Kurtenbach Associated Press http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/business/1123419305228940.xml&coll=2 Qinshan, China - The shadows of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island no longer reach to the pine-crested hillsides of Hangzhou Bay, where China is rushing to expand a nuclear power station to meet soaring demand for electricity for its economic boom. Driven by crushing fuel shortages, smog and ambitions to profit from its hard-won nuclear prowess, Beijing has embarked on a quest to more than double its nuclear power generating capacity by 2020. The push for more nuclear power means opportunities for U.S., French and Russian technology suppliers that are competing for up to $8 billion in contracts for two new nuclear power plants - the biggest deals in years for the industry. The French nuclear group AREVA, Russia's AtomStroyExport and Westinghouse Electric Co. - the U.S. unit of British Nuclear Fuels PLC, which Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has offered to buy - are awaiting a Chinese decision on bids. The bids are for facilities at Sanmen, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and Yangjiang in Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong. "We are fully committed to transferring our advanced nuclear technology to China," Paul Felten, a senior vice president of AREVA's Framatome unit, said at a recent conference in Shanghai. At Qinshan, a two-hour drive southwest of Shanghai and its 20 million residents, sites are being prepared for four new reactors, in addition to the five already operating at three other facilities. "The excavation is almost finished," said Yang Lanhe, general manager for Qinshan Phase II, China's showcase for domestically developed nuclear technology and equipment. He pointed out the window to a site cleared and waiting for construction to begin. Yang and other executives at Qinshan speak of nuclear power with the conviction of true believers. They point to China's own accident-free record after 14 years of nuclear power generation. They also say technology has advanced far beyond that used decades earlier, when the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine decimated public support for atomic energy in the West. "We know and understand that nuclear power is a clean and good energy, and we think it would be good to increase its share, [of China's total power production]," said Hu Haiyun, Communist Party boss for the Qinshan Nuclear Base. China's nuclear program, dating back to the 1950s, began commercial operations only in 1991, at Qinshan. For six years, beginning in 1997, dozens of potential projects were put on hold amid concerns over excess capacity, safety and the relatively high costs of nuclear-generated electricity. The race to build more plants resumed last year, as China struggled with blackouts amid its worst energy crisis in decades. From the highest levels of Chinese government to the technicians running Qinshan and other plants, there is a newfound conviction that nuclear power is the most practical option for reducing the country's reliance on heavily polluting coal-fired power plants. "Build Nuclear Power, Enrich the People," says a slogan on billboards throughout the sprawling facility, built into a peninsula surrounded by farms and fishing villages. China expects the share of its power supplied by nuclear generation to grow to 4 percent by 2020 from 2.3 percent today. To meet that goal, it must build about two new facilities every year. "After 2020, nuclear power's growth will increase much, much faster. Its importance in China's energy framework will be indisputable," Shen Wenquan, vice chairman of China National Nuclear Corp.'s science and technology committee, said at an industry conference in Shanghai. Shen showed a chart forecasting that by 2060, nuclear power could provide about a third of the country's energy needs. China is concentrating its nuclear power facilities in heavily populated, industrialized coastal regions, where demand is highest and pollution levels are too severe to burn more coal. "Much of the new nuclear power will be built in the south and east where they lack their own supplies of coal, gas, oil and large hydro," says Philip Andrews-Speed, director for the Center for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee, in Scotland. "Nuclear will grow to form a large part of the power supply in certain areas," he said. Industry officials point to Qinshan's success in exporting technology to Pakistan to build a nuclear plant as evidence of China's own capabilities. But they are frank about their need for foreign help in developing future generations of technology. China has been developing its own reactors, based on technology originally acquired from France, but is focusing on developing so-called fast reactors that its experts say use uranium more efficiently. China hopes to begin operating a prototype fast reactor by 2008, with commercial operations anticipated by 2020, CNNC's Shen said. It is the center of a top-priority $167 million national research project. Chinese researchers also have been preparing to build a pebble- bed nuclear reactor, using a new technology fueled by small graphite spheres with uranium cores. Since the uranium is spread among small spheres, dissipating heat, risks of a meltdown are smaller and radioactive waste is less likely to be useful for building nuclear weapons. "Rest assured, we certainly will continue our international cooperation for a long time to come," said Xu Lianyi, an official from the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. He said the more than 100 manufacturers making nuclear power equipment were keen to introduce technology from overseas. But like other countries, China is still struggling over how to handle the radioactive waste from its plants. CNNC's Shen said research was focusing on fast reactor technology that can reduce the amount of waste and boost efficiency of uranium usage by up to 70 times - a bonus for China, which will eventually need to import most of the uranium it needs as its nuclear program expands. Managers at Qinshan refused to say how much waste is stored there. "We have enough space to hold it," said Hu, the Communist Party secretary. "I trust our country has the ability to resolve this problem." -------- europe How close was Hitler to getting the Bomb? By Richard Ingham Sunday, August 07, 2005 Pakistan Daily Times http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_4-8-2005_pg4_13 By the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, the Nazis had advanced farther down the nuclear road than is conventionally thought and had struck out in unexpected directions PARIS: The history books say the United States and Britain comfortably won the race against Nazi Germany to build the world’s first nuclear bomb. Today, that reassuring view is being nibbled away by the evidence from secret documents trickling out of private or former Soviet archives. Hidden for six decades, these papers confirm that Hitler’s scientists indeed were way behind their Manhattan Project counterparts in building a Bomb, an initiative that culminated in the inferno of Hiroshima on August 6 1945. But the documents also suggest that by the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, the Nazis had advanced farther down the nuclear road than is conventionally thought and had struck out in unexpected directions. As early as 1942, the Germans had already cracked some of the biggest conceptual problems behind making an atomic bomb, they say. And, as their foes closed in on them in the final months of the war, the scientists made some extraordinary technical strides. Using a prototype reactor hastily assembled in a disused beer cellar in south-western Germany, a team nearly achieved a self-sustaining chain reaction, the key step to manufacturing nuclear explosive. According to two new documentary finds unveiled this year, Hitler’s scientists even tested a nuclear weapon — a device that these days would be called a “dirty” bomb — and sketched plans for the world’s first mini-nuke missile. “The Nazis were not at all close to having an atomic bomb like those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The German progress towards such weapons was comparable to what the Americans had achieved by the summer of 1942,” Mark Walker, a professor of history at Union College in Schenectady, New York, told AFP. Even so, “during the last desperate year-and-a-half of war . . . a group of physicists who had been working on nuclear reactors, nuclear reactions and hollow-point arrangements of high explosives put them together to test a nuclear device”. Work in atomic physics before World War II led scientists in Germany, as well as in Britain and the United States, to speculate that an awesome release of energy could be obtained if the nucleus of a heavy atomic isotope was split apart, its neutrons whacking into other atoms in a chain reaction. Prompted by warnings from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D Roosevelt of the Nazis’ interest in a bomb, the United States launched the Manhattan Project on December 7 1941 — coincidentally the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbour that prompted its entry into World War II. The scheme would cost the equivalent of some 30 billion dollars and muster thousands of scientists and engineers, some of them brilliant Jewish émigrés who had fled Nazi persecution. That same winter, the German military looked into the prospects for a Bomb and concluded the goal was so tough it was not worth a huge investment. As a result, Germany’s so-called “Uranium Project” was a diffuse affair, gathering between 50 and 100 scientists, scattered across the country and prone to organisational squabbles. Many of them did not devote their efforts full-time to nuclear weapons research and their access to raw materials and brainpower was constrained by allied raids and conscription. After the war, American physicist Samuel Goudsmit investigated the Nazi nuclear effort. In his account, published in 1947, Goudsmit said the lead German physicist, the world-renowned theoretician Werner Heisenberg, had vastly overestimated the amount of uranium 235 needed for an explosion, or critical mass. Heisenberg also failed to understand that plutonium, a by-product of enriching uranium, could also be a fissile material and in fact was an even better fuel for a bomb than uranium 235, Goudsmit said. (Plutonium was used for the Nagasaki bomb.) But this picture of German incompetence has been made out of date by documentary finds, says Walker. As early as February 1942, a German military overview of the Uranium Project concluded that critical mass could be achieved with “around 10-100 kilos” (22-220 pounds) of enriched uranium, a figure comparable to the Manhattan Project’s own early estimate, of two to 100 kilos (4.4 to 220 pounds). And newly unearthed Russian documents show that in 1941 Heisenberg drafted a de-facto patent application for a plutonium bomb, although he referred to the substance as “element 94” in relation to its position on chemistry’s periodic table, says Walker. What is already known is that Heisenberg’s organisational rival, German army physicist Kurt Diebner, pushed ahead with a design for a reactor which was tested in February 1945 in the village of Haigerloch, near Tuebingen. It came within a whisker of achieving a self-sustaining chain reaction, although if it had worked, the scientists would have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, allied experts who discovered the device found. In a controversial book, “Hitlers Bombe”, published this March, independent German historian Rainer Karlsch said Diebner’s team also tested a nuclear device in Thueringia, eastern Germany, on March 4 1945, killing several hundred prisoners-of-war and concentration-camp inmates who were used as guinea pigs. The device was not a weapon in the Hiroshima style, Karlsch says. Instead, it appears to have been an attempt to use high explosives to provoke fission in a hoard of enriched uranium and fusion in a batch of deuterium compounds, creating a fierce, localised, highly radioactive blast. Karlsch bases his claim on eyewitness accounts and a Soviet military espionage report. But the details are sparse and Karlsch has been savaged in some quarters. Even so, this astonishing tale is clearly not over. “More archival material continues to be found, and is still trickling out of Russian archives right now,” says Walker. “I do not expect any more major surprises — but that is what I thought in 1989, when my first book, ëon the Nazis’ nuclear programmeû, was published.” afp -------- india Indo-Pak to notify before missile tests August 07, 2005 01:42 IST http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/aug/07pak.htm India and Pakistan on Saturday night reached an understanding on the proposed agreement on pre-notification of flight-testing of ballistic missiles. After days of intensive discussions on nuclear confidence-building measures, the two countries also decided to establish by September the hotline between their foreign secretaries, Additional Secretary in the External Affairs Ministry Meera Shankar told reporters. The two sides also decided to upgrade by next month the existing hotline between their directors general of military operations. The agreed text of the proposed agreement on pre-notification of the tests will be referred to the foreign secretaries of the two countries for formalisation, Shankar said after the talks with Pakistan's additional secretary. "The proposed agreement commits both sides to pre-notify in a structured format flight testing of ballistic missiles with the objective of enhancing mutual confidence and engendering predictability and transparency of intent," a joint statement said. Noting that both India and Pakistan were nuclear states, Hyder described the agreement on prior notification as a 'good step in the right direction'. He said he looked forward to the talks on conventional CBMs to be held here on Monday hoping that a similar agreement will be reached in those parleys also. On operationalisation of the hotlines between the foreign secretaries, the joint statement said it was aimed at 'preventing misunderstandings and reducing risks relevant to nuclear issues'. "In this connection, discussions on related technical parameters were held," it said adding details about implementation and testing schedules were also exchanged. On upgradation of hotlines between the DGMOs of the two countries, Hyder said it would involve making lines better. The Pakistani official pointed out that relations between the two neighbours have been "complex" for several years and said achieving of results was important. To a question about the recent nuclear deal between the US and India, Hyder said Pakistan also was discussing the issue with Washington. He said the US should give the nuclear energy to both India and Pakistan so that the "balance is not disturbed" in South Asia. ---- India and Pakistan agree measures to avoid nuclear war NEW DELHI (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807074749.iay2tugh.html India and Pakistan took important steps towards reducing the risk of an accidental nuclear war and pushed forward their peace process with a series of weekend agreements, commentators said Sunday. After two days of discussions in the Indian capital, the rivals agreed Saturday to set up a telephone hotline to prevent accidental nuclear conflict and also agreed to notify each other before testing ballistic missiles. The hotline would be established in September 2005, said a joint statement after the talks, the third such meeting since a peace process was launched in January last year. "The two sides emphasized the importance of early operationalization of the hotline link proposed to be established between the foreign secretaries... to prevent misunderstandings and reduce risks relevant to nuclear issues," the statement said. The foreign secretaries are second to the foreign ministers in both countries. In a separate agreement India and Pakistan decided formally to notify each other before flight-testing ballistic missiles, most of which can carry nuclear warheads. The neighbouring countries conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998 and came to the brink of war in 2002. The historical rivals, who fought three earlier wars, routinely carry out tests of nuclear-capable missiles. "It was important to convey to the international community that India and Pakistan can arrive at confidence-building measures so that the nuclear capability is embedded in a statement of stability and confidence," said C.U. Bhaskar, interim head of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. "It is a formalisation of a practice that is de facto. It may be modest but it is an important step," he added. The agreements were hailed in the Indian media Sunday, although they came too late in the night for editorial comments. "Neighbours' N-confidence up by a notch" said the Hindustan Times headline, while The Hindu ran a front-page lead under the headline, "India and Pakistan take a step forward." The Tribune said the agreements would enhance "mutual confidence" and transparency. "(The) development does not change much, operationally speaking. But it marks a major diplomatic symbolism between the two countries..." the paper said. Analyst Bhaskar said past attempts to build nuclear confidence had become bogged down, with the two sides merely restating their hardline positions on the disputed state of Kashmir. "So what you are seeing here is a transmutation of positions -- not tranformation. It is substantive and if it had not happened it would led to some degree of disappointment," he told AFP. Jane's Defence Weekly analyst Rahul Bedi said the hotline link was important and likely to be similar to the one between the United States and the former Soviet Union. "These hotlines are meant to avert a nuclear accident," he told AFP. "The blueprint, I think, is what the Russians and the Americans have. It was important because the flight time of missiles between India and Pakistan is just three to four minutes. So you need very, very quick action," he added. Pakistani delegation leader Tariq Osman Hyder called the agreements "a step in the right direction." "It's a good step," he said. "Pakistan and India are nuclear states, living side by side. We have to evolve the modality for confidence building (and) nuclear restraint for resolution of all disputes between us." The ongoing peace process aims to resolve disputes including the core problem of Kashmir, the Himalayan state claimed by both countries, where an Islamic insurgency on the Indian side has killed tens of thousands of people since 1989. Bedi said the results of Saturday's talks were a "signpost" towards future progress in bilateral relations. "This would help the peace process. It's a signpost for progress," he said. Next week negotiators are due to meet in New Delhi to discuss other confidence-building measures and ways to expand commercial ties. -------- iran Iran to resume uranium conversion once checks in place TEHRAN (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807071137.s000sjub.html Iran on Sunday insisted there was no going back from its decision to resume uranium conversion in defiance of the European Union, saying the activity would start once the UN nuclear watchdog had put surveillance equipment in place. "The IAEA inspectors will be in Iran by tomorrow (Monday) and by tomorrow we will be in a position to give information" on the restart of the uranium conversion plant in Isfahan in central Iran, foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. "They need to install additional surveillance cameras and the work will resume once they have been installed," he said. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has placed metal seals at the plant, has said that its inspection team will put in place the equipment by the middle of the week. Iran's decision to resume uranium conversion after rejecting a deal on nuclear cooperation with the European Union sparked warnings the move would spell the end of talks with the bloc and cause UN Security Council action. But Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi reaffirmed Tehran's position that the offer from the Europeans of nuclear assistance in exchange for guarantees its nuclear programme is peaceful was unacceptable. "The main elements that we wanted to see in these proposals, like (the right to) enrichment are not there and thus these proposals are for us without value," he told state television. -------- japan 60 Years After A-Bomb, Old Foes Meet Over a Deep Divide By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, August 7, 2005; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080600850_pf.html TINIAN, Northern Mariana Islands, Aug. 6 -- Sixty years ago today, the world went black for Keijiro Matsushima, then a 16-year-old Hiroshima schoolboy. He vividly recalled an airplane he now knows was the Enola Gay shimmering in the sky like a "flying Popsicle" before the great flash from the atomic bomb vaporized tens of thousands and left a ghostly parade of "the half-living covered in ash and burns" to die in the months ahead. Since those days, Matsushima said he has felt a "deep if troubled" connection to this Pacific island, about the size of Manhattan, that housed the runways and staging area for the U.S. atomic strikes. The same can be said for Michael Kuryla, 79. He is among the few remaining survivors of the USS Indianapolis, sunk on July 30, 1945, by a Japanese submarine after delivering parts of the bomb to Tinian. Kuryla spent five days adrift before being rescued, watching scores of his fellow crewmen drown while others were devoured by sharks. On opposite sides of the fateful mushroom cloud, Matsushima and Kuryla are bound by invisible links that drew them and 200 others this week to an extraordinary and controversial commemoration here. Few questions in modern history remain more divisive than whether the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. Six decades after the war, and with their countries now the closest of allies, no two groups remain more polarized on the issue than U.S. Pacific war veterans and Japanese survivors of the attacks. At what most participants described as the last major gathering at this historic site for a vanishing generation of World War II vets, the local organizers did the once-unthinkable -- they brought the two sides together. For some, like Kuryla, who raptly listened to Matsushima's accounts, the event became the final act of cleansing of a long-harbored hatred. The stocky Chicago resident staunchly believes that dropping the bombs saved countless lives by forcing Japan's early surrender. He gradually came to forgive, he said. And after hearing Matsushima's recollections in a conference room, Kuryla stood up in tears to offer his hand in friendship. "Yes, it was a horrible thing," Kuryla said. "You suffered the bomb effects, and I wish we didn't have to do it. We feel sorry about that. Believe me. But it was war." "I did not come here to blame," said Matsushima, a slight man with a strong command of English. "You veterans did your job. But at the same time, what you dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was very horrible. Now, if possible, please, just a drop of your tears, and a prayer that this never happens again." The two men then embraced, taking one step toward a reconciliation that -- like the ultimate question of the bombings itself -- is not that simple. The unprecedented attempt had successes and failures. Most here reached their limits at agreeing to disagree. The Japanese remain on a campaign to force the world -- and Americans in particular -- to remember and reflect on the horror of those bombings. But many no longer see merit in discussing it. Dozens of American veterans of the Pacific theater chose not to attend the event, including the surviving crew members of the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, which delivered the Aug. 9, 1945, bomb on Nagasaki. Some cited ill health. Others bitterly opposed the mayor of Tinian's proposal to turn this commemoration into a "peace conference" by inviting the Japanese delegation. It included Japanese veterans who fought here and on nearby Saipan -- Tinian's sister island in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Those who did come, including 38 U.S. vets involved in some way with the atomic bomb missions, mostly welcomed the chance to engage the Japanese. But U.S. military authorities did not attend. One poll by a Saipan newspaper indicated that only one in three island residents supported the event, some claiming it would dishonor the memory of American veterans. "This was not easy for us to pull off -- a lot of people were against this idea," confessed Francisco M. Borja, mayor of Tinian, a lush island with 4,500 residents. His mission is to create a museum here "that will tell both sides" of the atomic legacy, he said. That legacy remains the last major sore spot in the extraordinary peacetime relationship of the United States and Japan. As the 60th anniversary of World War II's end in the Pacific is marked on Aug. 15, Japan is still struggling to mend fences with China and South Korea over charges that the Japanese have yet to fully atone for wartime atrocities. In stark contrast, the United States and Japan are jointly developing a missile defense system and beefing up strategic cooperation with the long-term goal of serving as a counterbalance to China's growing might. Japan, which has embraced pacifism since the bombings, now seeks to play a major role on the world stage. The government is moving toward changing its constitution, which renounces war, and hopes to gain a permanent seat on the United Nation Security Council. Yet the atomic bombs -- which killed about 140,000 in Hiroshima and about 80,000 in Nagasaki while leaving tens of thousands survivors maimed or plagued by radiation sickness -- still haunt the United States and Japan. A joint poll last month by the Associated Press and Japan's Kyodo News Service found 75 percent of Japanese still feel the bombings were unnecessary, while 68 percent of Americans called them unavoidable. Matsushima said many in Hiroshima were also opposed to his visit. But he said he thought it was a chance to share his story with American vets and "see this place in honor of the bomb's victims." He and Kiyoshi Nishida, a 76-year-old Nagasaki survivor, were driven by event organizers to the now-overgrown runways where the U.S. B-29s carrying the bombs took off. They stoically studied the condition and quality of what in 1945 was the world's largest airfield. But at the now glass-encased pits that had stored Little Boy, the bomb that hit Hiroshima, and Fat Man, which hit Nagasaki, their reserve shattered. "So this is where it came from. Somehow, I am glad to have seen it with my own eyes," Matsushima said, softly crying and clutching a bracelet of wooden Buddhist prayer beads. "This is what human did. So many dead. Maybe they were doing their jobs, but for us, it was hell." Matsushima later participated in a panel discussion with one of the best-known American vets here, Harold Agnew, 84, who measured the yield of the Hiroshima bomb while in flight alongside the Enola Gay. During the 1970s, he was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the bombs were developed. "So, you saw the mushroom cloud. I was underneath it," Matsushima said. "Yes, you're lucky to be here," Agnew said. Agnew nodded in agreement when Matsushima seemed to concede that the bomb, at least, had helped shorten the war. Last month, Agnew was flown by a Tokyo television station to Hiroshima, where he held a discussion with bomb survivors who had demanded an apology. Agnew, a tall, blunt man, had stood up in disgust and proclaimed "Remember Pearl Harbor!" The discussion abruptly ended. "There is nothing to apologize for," Agnew later said in an interview. "This is exactly why the Chinese are still upset with them. Many Japanese still refuse to take responsibility for what they did, for starting that war. They can point at us. But believe me, they did some awful bad things. We saved Japanese lives with those bombs -- an invasion would have been worse." Such tensions rarely flared at this reunion, perhaps because the organizers divided the Japanese and Americans into different dining times and distinct tours. There were carefully arranged encounters between both sides -- but many impromptu ones, too. Fumiyaki Kajiya, 66, who saw his 3-year-old sister impaled by searing steel in Hiroshima, was visiting the pit where Little Boy was stored when he came across Leon Smith, the weapon's test officer who had been in charge of maintaining the bomb in Tinian. The men struck up a conversation through interpreters about the horror of the victims, the American rationale for dropping the bomb, and the paradox of Japan's ongoing protection under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Beside the atomic pit, the two shook hands. "This is not something that can be resolved or agreed upon," Kajiya said. "But I feel that we've achieved something very important. We've finally started talking." Special correspondent Taeko Kawamura contributed to this report. ---- Hiroshima and today's nuclear threat Editorials Sunday, August 7, 2005 http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050807/EDIT01/508070339 Sixty years ago this weekend, the era of nuclear terror began with instruments of silent slaughter from the skies that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it is appropriate to reflect today on the horrors unleashed by the only two nuclear bombs exploded in anger - and to wish that they never again be used as instruments of national policy - perhaps the most sobering lesson is that this era of terror has not ended. Not by a long shot. In fact, we may be in greater danger of a nuclear event than at anytime since the end of World War II in 1945. That's the conclusion several experts point to in an Aug. 1 San Francisco Chronicle article that details a frightening new nuclear proliferation among second-tier nations, shadowy arms networks and terrorist groups. Their arguments make horrible sense. And they make it clear that America must recognize the threat and push hard on all possible fronts - in concert with all other civilized nations - to at least reduce that threat. The stuff of history For Americans who grew up in the time of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, it's almost hard to believe that this is now the stuff of dusty history: On Aug. 6, 1945, an American plane dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. It was followed by a bomb that fell on Nagasaki Aug. 9. Under the granite arch in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Museum today is a stone chest containing the names of the bomb's victims - all 237,062 of them. It is inscribed: "Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil." The bombings changed the world forever, and launched a six-decade debate over whether it was necessary for the U.S. to use the nuclear option. Historians disagree sharply. Some say that Japan was about to surrender, fearing a Soviet invasion, and that President Harry Truman's decision to use the bomb was more to head off the Soviets than to vanquish the Japanese. A new book by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of the University of California, Santa Barbara, faults Truman and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin for not pushing for a Japanese surrender. Others say that's nonsense. "It is fantasy, not history, to believe that the end of the war was at hand before the use of the atomic bomb," writes historian Richard B. Frank. Recent study of communications among the Japanese command indicates they were girding to fight on, with an army of 2.5 million ready on the mainland and public calls for " a hundred million deaths with honor." An invasion could have cost a quarter million or more American troops, and perhaps millions more Japanese civilians than perished in nuclear explosions (more than 100,000 already had died in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, for example), not to mention civilians in various territories occupied by Japan. U.S. 2nd Lt. Paul Fussell was among the 1 million Allied troops being moved in preparation for the invasion. On hearing the news of Hiroshima, he later recalled, "We broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live." "How could a president," Truman biographer David McCullough asked, "answer to the American people if ... after the bloodbath of an invasion of Japan, it became known that a weapon sufficient to end the war had been available by midsummer and was not used?" Cold War standoff Not long after the war, the Soviets acquired nuclear technology, which ushered in a Cold War standoff that eventually saw each nation with thousands of warheads aimed at each others' cities and bases, ready for mass launch at any time. The Baby Boom generation may have grown up under a nuclear sword of Damocles, but holding that sword up was the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. Both sides knew that any attack would mean total annihilation. And the societies involved - America, the Soviet Union, France, England, later China - all had the ethical underpinnings and instincts for self-preservation to make them hesitate at the nuclear trigger. In a sense, the more powerful the nuclear arsenals became, the more stable the world became. They guaranteed the geopolitical status quo. Ironically, the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which shattered that status quo, has lulled Americans into a false sense of nuclear security. The world now has fewer nuclear weapons than in the 1960s, but the danger is greater. It is as though history has turned back on itself. As in 1945, when "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" were the world's entire nuclear arsenal, we live in a time where a single, hostile nuclear explosion is possible and feasible. "The likelihood of a single attack in a single city is greater than ever," Graham Allison, a senior Defense Department official in the Clinton administration, told the Chronicle. "People take a false comfort from the Cold War experience. Nuclear weapons (now) are the equalizer for the weak, not the stronger." The technology to make nuclear devices is spreading. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, about 40 nations have the know-how. Supra-national arms networks are selling the materials and plans to yet other nations - and possibly terrorist groups. Nuclear terrorism is the scenario that most worries defense experts. It would be the ultimate terrorist tool. Imagine small, portable nuclear devices in the hands of an enemy for whom the concept of deterrence has no meaning. Imagine al-Qaida suicide bombers with suitcases that could level entire cities. Fighting the spread "The hope of civilization lies in international arrangements looking, if possible, to the renunciation of the use and development of the atomic bomb," Truman wrote two months after Hiroshima. His hope of a "renunciation" was soon dashed, but Truman's vision of an international push against the nuclear spread is more urgent than ever. We cannot, as the saying goes, "put the nuclear genie back in the bottle." Even if the United States and all acknowledged member nations of the nuclear club dismantle all their own weapons, there are plenty of shadowy groups out there that will seek to acquire the "great equalizer." Perhaps the real war on terror is civilization's struggle to root out the nuclear weed wherever it can be found. The bomb will remain. The danger will persist. But the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - all the lessons - should inform our actions. ---- Hiroshima Survivors Call for Ban on Nukes By BARRY MASSEY The Associated Press Sunday, August 7, 2005; 5:24 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700095_pf.html LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Survivors of the deadly blasts that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago joined hundreds of activists in support of a global ban on nuclear weapons. They rallied Saturday at the birthplace of the atomic bomb, outside the national labs that feed today's nuclear arsenal, on the tiny island where the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima with its deadly payload, and in the nation's capital. Bombing survivor Koji Ueda attended a rally in the Los Alamos park where there were research laboratories when the Manhattan Project developed the world's first atomic bomb. "No more Hiroshimas. No more Nagasakis," Ueda said. "We send this message to our friends all over the world, along with a fresh determination of the 'hibakusha' (atomic bomb survivors) to continue to tell about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aiming at a planet set free of wars of nuclear weapons." In Oak Ridge, Tenn., 15 protesters from a group of more than 1,000 were arrested for blocking a road outside the heavily guarded weapons factory that helped fuel the bomb during World War II. At the Nevada Test Site, about 200 peace activists, including actor Martin Sheen, gathered for a nonviolent demonstration outside the gates. Dozens were given citations and released after crossing police lines. There was no immediate count of exactly how many were detained. In California, hundreds of activists marched to the gates of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, some holding sunflowers and others hoisting a 40-foot inflatable "missile." The city of Hiroshima, meanwhile, marked the anniversary with prayers and water for the dead. At 8:15 a.m., the instant of the blast, Hiroshima's trolleys stopped and more than 55,000 people at Peace Memorial Park observed a moment of silence that was broken only by the ringing of a bronze bell. Ueda, who was 3 when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, was joined at Los Alamos by Masako Hashida, who was 15 and working in a factory a mile from where the second bomb fell three days later on Nagasaki. In an interview with The Associated Press, Hashida recalled hearing a loud metallic noise and then seeing waves of red, blue, purple and yellow light. She said she lost consciousness and awoke outside the twisted metal ruins of the factory, which had made torpedoes used in the attack on Pearl Harbor. She saw a person trying to stand, with burns and swelling so severe it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. In the Los Alamos park where research laboratories stood during the Manhattan Project, placards carried anti-war slogans including "No More War for Oil and Empire." A group of veterans offered an opposing message across the park from the more than 500 activists. One sign read: "If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn't have been a Hiroshima." In Washington, G.R. Quinn, 54, of Bethesda, Md., held a sign across from the White House reading: "God Bless the Enola Gay," referring to the B-29 that dropped the first bomb. Nearby, about three dozen peace activists declared President Bush was not doing enough for nuclear disarmament. More than 300 activists marched to the gates of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about 50 miles east of San Francisco, some planning to plant the sunflowers they outside its fence. The facility was created years after the bombs were dropped, but it has helped develop nuclear weapons in the nation's current arsenal. A group of U.S. veterans met with atomic bomb survivors on the tiny island of Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands to commemorate the anniversary. The island was the launching off point for the plane Enola Gay, which dropped its deadly payload over Hiroshima in 1945. About 70 veterans and several survivors agreed to use their final years to advocate world peace and call for an end to nuclear proliferation. The uranium for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was supplied by the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, which continues to make parts for every warhead in the country's nuclear arsenal. More than 1,000 demonstrators carrying signs and beating drums marched outside the Y-12 gates in the largest peace protest ever in the city, which was built in secrecy during World War II. Fifteen protesters were arrested for blocking the road about 100 yards from the entrance, a misdemeanor. "Those of us who live here have a special, maybe accidental, responsibility to think about the hard sides of these questions," said Fran Ansley, a University of Tennessee law professor. Associated Press writers Christina Almeida in Las Vegas, Duncan Mansfield in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report. ---- Sixty years and 242,437 lives later, Hiroshima remembers Justin McCurry in Hiroshima Sunday August 7, 2005 The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1544096,00.html As they lay dying amid the ruins of their city, the victims of the Hiroshima bomb craved one thing above all - water. Yesterday morning cups of water were brought as symbolic offerings as, 60 years to the day after the city was vapourised, Hiroshima remembered its dead. At 8.15 am, the exact moment the bomb exploded 600 metres above the city in 1945, the 55,000 packed into the peace memorial park bowed their heads in honour of the 240,000 who died. Passengers on streetcars fell silent, a temple bell tolled and a thousand doves were released into the skies from which the horror had fallen. Peace activists held a 'die-in' at the A-bomb dome, the remains of a local government trade promotion office near the centre of the blast. The ceremony began with the addition to the cenotaph of the names of the 5,375 people who died in the past year. The total now stands at 242,437. Hiroshima's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, said the day was a 'time of inheritance, of awakening and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the hibakusha [A-bomb survivors] to the abolition of nuclear weapons and recommit ourselves to take action.' But that commitment has produced few results. In the days leading up to the anniversary, negotiators from the US, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea were fighting a losing battle to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme, and yesterday Iran rejected the EU's proposal for ending the stand-off over its own nuclear programme. Even in Japan, the message from Hiroshima is becoming marginalised as the events of 60 years ago lose their resonance - the number of visitors to the peace park has dropped significantly in the past 15 years. In a low-key address, Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's most hawkish Prime Minister for years, paid tribute to the victims. But his LDP colleague Yohei Kono, a former Foreign Minister, said the anniversary was a reminder that Japan should never revisit its militarist past. 'We made a mistake in choosing our path in Asia and followed a road to war,' Kono said. 'We took away the independence of Korea and we intervened in China using the military. One of the results of fighting against the international community was the dropping of the atomic bomb.' About 40,000 people in Hiroshima died instantly when the B-29 Enola Gay dropped 'Little Boy' (by the end of 1945, another 100,000 had died). Three days later, a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 80,000. ---- Hiroshima tells the 'nuclear club' to stop jeopardising the world At the site of the world's first atomic attack, thousands remember the 240,000 killed amid emotional calls for peace By David McNeill in Hiroshima Published: 07 August 2005 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article304302.ece Tens of thousands of people from around the world gathered in Hiroshima yesterday to renew calls for the abolition of nuclear arms on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city. Under a blazing summer sun, survivors and families of victims assembled at the Peace Memorial Park near the spot where the bomb detonated on 6 August 1945, killing thousands and levelling the city. The anniversary came as regional powers met in Beijing to urge North Korea to give up its nuclear programme, seen by Tokyo as a threat and one of the reasons behind calls within Japan to strengthen its defence and seek closer military ties with the US. At 8.15am, the time when the US B-29 warplane Enola Gaydropped the bomb, people at the park and throughout the city observed a minute's silence in memory of those who perished. Bells at temples and churches rang and passengers on the trams that run across the city bowed their heads in remembrance. The Hiroshima bomb unleashed a mix of shock waves, heat rays and radiation that killed thousands instantly. By the end of 1945, the toll had risen to some 140,000 out of an estimated population of 350,000. Now, after years of illness, the official death toll from Little Boy stands at 242,437 and rising. On 9 August, three days after the Hiroshima attack, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Tadatoshi Akiba, the Mayor of Hiroshima, told the gathering that the five established nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - as well as India, Pakistan and North Korea were "jeopardising human survival". The members of the "nuclear club" were "ignoring the majority voices of the people and governments of the world", he said, before adding another 5,375 names to the Peace Park cenotaph. He appealed for the United Nations to work towards the "elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020". Near the iconic A-Bomb Dome, which was 600 metres from the blast's epicentre, a group of elderly anti-war campaigners from across the world appealed for a nuclear-free planet. Children released floating lanterns on to the Motoyasu river to pray for victims of the bomb. On stage in the Peace Park, a statement read out on behalf of the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, said the world must work to prevent a "cascade of nuclear proliferation". A speech by Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, expressed hope that "Hiroshima will continue to be the symbol of global peace". The speech angered a small group of Japanese anarchists. "Down with this fake peace ceremony!" shouted one, as they scuffled with police who tried to prevent them distributing leaflets. One of the anarchists explained: "Koizumi is Bush's lapdog and he should go home. He has no right to be here talking about peace." The anarchists were escorted away from the Dome by riot police. In the old Bank of Japan building, one of a handful to survive the blast, Yoshimichi Ishimaru screened Steven Spielberg's film Empire of the Sun. "The flash that the young hero sees of the bomb symbolises the start of a terrible new world. The level of destruction destroys everyone, regardless of which side we are on. That is what we have to learn," said Ishimaru, the child of survivors, or "hibakusha". The hibakusha, whose average age is now 72, know their time for teaching is limited. "We come here every year to try to bring an end to this horror," says Michiko Yamaoka, who was badly disfigured in the blast. "I hope the world is listening." MEMORIES OF A SCENE FROM HELL 'I pray nobody will experience it again' Sixty years ago, Tsunao Tsuboi was, like thousands of survivors of the world's first nuclear attack, wandering this shattered city in search of water. "People had eyeballs dangling out of their sockets and skin hanging from bones," he says, describing the scene as a living hell. Hiroshima had been known as the City of Water when the bomb nicknamed Little Boy detonated in a piercing blue sky at 8.15am on 6 August 1945. It caused a searing fireball that left him burnt so badly he later fell into a month-long coma. "When I came to, the war was over. I thought it was a trick." Today he is an 80-year-old man with cancer and burn scars across his body and face, but happy to be alive among the estimated 55,000 people commemorating the bomb victims in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. "Every year I come to pray that nobody else will have to experience what we did," he says. "I pray that the world will abandon these weapons for ever." A fellow survivor, or hibakusha, Isao Aratani, says he has come to pay respects to his dead schoolfriends, more than two-thirds of whom died in the explosion. He remembers a "thunderous boom" and being thrown to the ground by a blast of "yellow heat". Later he saw enraged locals beating the body of a downed US pilot that had been strapped to a bridge near the centre of the city. "Some people continued to lash the body even after the soldier was dead." -------- korea Stalled North Korean talks break off for three weeks BEIJING (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807074054.voayduom.html North Korean nuclear weapons talks were broken off for three weeks Sunday with no sight of progress over Pyongyang's insistence on having atomic reactors for energy, a demand the United States rejected. The six-nation talks with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia went into the recess still deadlocked over the Stalinist north's nuclear ambitions, despite a fortnight of intense and wearying negotiation in the Chinese capital. Talks were to resume the week of August 29 but with the US and North Korea again trading barbs, it was unclear how to move forward in the three-year standoff with North Korea, which again said it was making nuclear weapons. "We decided to have a brief recess so delegations can go back to report to their respective governments, further study each other's positions and resolve differences which still exist," China's chief envoy, Wu Dawei, told reporters. This was the crux of a statement winding up 13 days of talks, and fell short of the original plan for some kind of joint agreement setting out how North Korea would abandon nuclear weapons and what it would get in return. After nearly two weeks of sometimes heated and late-night negotiations, the key sticking point boiled down to whether the North should be allowed to run nuclear programs for peaceful, energy use. "They not only want the right to use nuclear energy, but the right to use light-water reactors. That is simply not on our table," the US envoy to the talks, Christopher Hill, told reporters. "Frankly, the DPRK (North Korea) would like to put in the light-water reactors (to a proposed joint document) but no one else wants to do that. "It is quite appropriate for them to go back to their capital to tell them that the light-water reactor is simply not on the table," he said. A Japanese government official said all five other nations agreed that now was not the time for Pyongyang to insist on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. "There is no major discrepancy among the five," the official said. The construction of two light-water nuclear reactors for the power-starved North is part of a 1994 agreement between the reclusive state and the United States. That deal committed Pyongyang to freezing and eventually dismantling its graphite-moderated nuclear reactors, which can produce weapons-grade nuclear material more easily. But the project was suspended in October 2003 following the eruption of the current crisis one year before, when the United States said North Korea admitted to having a secret uranium enrichment program. It prompted North Korea to withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). It has since claimed to have nuclear bombs. North Korea's chief delegate Kim Kye-gwan said it was the right of every country to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes and put the onus on the United States to back down if it wanted to see progress. "During this round of talks I had expected the United States to accept our demand (for peaceful nuclear activities) but the United States did not make such a decision," he told reporters. "During the recess I hope the United States will change its policy," he said. Kim added that the United States must also commit not to attack and remove the so-called nuclear umbrella for South Korea, repeating that his country was building nuclear bombs as a deterrent. Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae said North Korea must build trust by rejoining the NPT before expecting any agreement on nuclear programs for civilian use. "North Korea should first regain trust of the international community by such measures as its return to the NPT," he said. Pyongyang has offered to do this but only "if the nuclear issue finds a satisfactory solution." The talks are also struggling to overcome another hurdle -- in exchange for dismantlement, the North has also demanded normalization of ties with the United States as well as economic assistance and security guarantees. The United States has repeatedly said that the North needs to give up its weapons programs before it gets aid and energy. A collapse of the negotiations could tempt Washington to take the issue to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Pyongyang has warned that sanctions would be viewed as a declaration of war. ---- US rules out light-water reactors for N.Korea BEIJING (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807060416.vgp11gi6.html The United States on Sunday ruled out North Korea being allowed to have light-water nuclear reactors for energy purposes, and said Pyongyang's insistence on them blocked an agreement in six-way talks. "The issue came down to the DPRK (North Korea). They not only want the right to use nuclear energy, but the right to use light-water reactors. That is simply not on our table," the US envoy to the six-nation talks, Christopher Hill, told reporters. "Frankly, the DPRK would like to put in the light-water reactors (to a proposed joint document) but no one else wants to do that. "It is quite appropriate for them to go back to their capital to tell them that the light-water reactor is simply not on the table," he said. The construction of two light-water nuclear reactors for power generation in North Korea is part of a 1994 agreement between the reclusive state and the United States. The Agreed Framework committed Pyongyang to freezing and eventually dismantling its graphite-moderated nuclear reactors, which can produce weapons-grade nuclear material more easily. The project has been suspended since October 2003, following the eruption of the current nuclear crisis one year before, when the United States said North Korea admitted to having a secret uranium enrichment program. Despite the apparent deadlock, Hill said the United States was determined to press on and find a solution. "We really want to solve this so when when we meet again the week beginning August 29, we will not have to spend another 13 days but more like 13 hours or even 13 minutes," he said, referring to when six-party talks wil resume after a break. "But what we can't do is to spend another 13 months doing nothing." This latest round of talks resumed after a 13-month stalemate, following the North Korean regime raising the stakes in February by declaring it already had nuclear bombs. ---- Chairman's statement as N.Korea nuclear talks recess BEIJING (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807043941.54mj7o8w.html Herewith is China's chairman's statement Sunday as the six nations involved in talks on how to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs began a three-week recess: "The first phase of the fourth round of the six-party talks was held in Beijing from July 26 to August 7. "The six parties, in the spirit of mutual respect and equality, held serious, practical and in-depth discussions and consulations in a good atmosphere on the goal of the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which led to better mutual understanding, broader common ground and positive progress. "They reaffirmed the goal of the six-party talks is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner and agreed to issue a common paper to this end. "The six parties conducted in-depth and useful discussions on the paper and reached agreement in many aspects. "They decided to have a brief recess so that the delegations can go back to report to their respective governments, further study each other's positions and resolve their differences which still exist. "During the recess, the parties will continue mutual communication and consultation. "The fourth round of the six-party talks will resume in the week starting from August 29, 2005 at a date to be agreed upon. "The six parties reaffirmed their commitment to promoting the six-party process." ---- Chronology of US-North Korea ties BEIJING (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807041605.jsn3i5fw.html As North Korean nuclear talks entered a three-week recess after 13 days of negotiations failed to narrow major differences between the Stalinist state and the United States, here is a chronology of key moments in their relationship. 1945 -- Japan's 35-year colonisation of the Korean peninsula ends with its defeat in World War II. Korea is divided at the 38th parallel into the Soviet-backed North under leader Kim Il-Sung and the US-protected South. 1950 -- The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union erupts into battle after North Korea launches a surprise and successful attack across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950. A US-led coalition fights back and retakes Seoul, but its invasion of North Korea drags China into the war. 1953 -- After two years of protracted talks, an armistice is signed on July 27, with the frontline marking the new border between North and South. No peace settlement is signed, however, and the two sides remain technically at war. 1968 -- The USS Pueblo, an intelligence-gathering vessel, is seized by North Korean gunboats, bringing delight to Pyongyang but sparking a tense standoff with the US. The crew of 83 Americans were detained for 11 months before being released. 1969 -- North Korea shoots down an American reconnaissance plane. 1988 -- US imposes sanctions on North Korea after putting the country on its list of nations supporting terrorism. 1989 -- US satellite pictures reveal a reprocessing plant at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex. Washington accuses North Korea of actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Pyongyang denies the charge. 1994 -- North Korea and the US sign a nuclear safeguard accord after Pyongyang vows to freeze and dismantle its nuclear weapons program in return for the construction of safe nuclear reactors for the impoverished country. 1995 -- US formally agrees to help provide two modern nuclear reactors designed to produce less weapons-grade plutonium. 1999 -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il declares a moratorium on missile tests. US eases sanctions against the Stalinist nation. 2000 -- High level visits between US and North Korean officials indicate a warming of ties. January 2002 -- US President George W. Bush names North Korea among an "axis of evil", alongside states such as Iran and Iraq. October 2002 -- North Korea reportedly admits to US special envoy James Kelly that it is running a uranium enrichment program in violation of the 1994 accord. The United States responds by suspending oil shipments to North Korea promised under the 1994 accord. August 2003 -- Six-way nuclear talks start in Beijing. North Korea threatens to conduct a nuclear test and declare itself a nuclear power. North Korea calls the talks "useless". June 2004 -- The third round of six-way talks ends with little progress and North Korea pulls out of further negotiations, accusing the US of an aggressive stance and demanding bilateral talks. July 26, 2005 -- As six-party talks resume the United States said it recognised North Korea as a sovereign nation and had no intention to attack, while the Stalinist regime announced it wanted to work towards a nuclear-free peninsula. Aug 7, 2005 -- The fourth round of six-party talks enter a three-week recess after intense negotiations fail to broker a compromise with the North insisting it retain the right to operate nuclear programs for peaceful purposes. The talks were highlighted by at least nine bilateral contacts between the two sides. Six-party talks scheduled to resume Aug 29, 2005 -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- arizona Palo Verde to step up power Other nuclear plants nationwide following suit Ken Alltucker The Arizona Republic Aug. 7, 2005 12:00 AM http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0807nuke07.html The country's most powerful nuclear plant, Palo Verde west of Phoenix, will soon grow more powerful, joining dozens of other nuclear plants whose upgrades are adding the equivalent of up to five new reactors across the nation. The $700 million project at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station - its most expensive investment since it opened in the mid-1980s - would boost available power for customers in Arizona and other fast-growing Western states. "It's a proven way to help maximize the value of these facilities," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. The power "uprate," as it is called, is becoming an increasingly popular and at times controversial option for nuclear plant operators from New England to California. The goal: wring out more power from aging reactors as safely and as cheaply as possible. Industry watchdogs have been critical of the process, saying it has led to emergency repairs at some plants and can compromise safety. "My view is that these plants are shaking themselves apart," said Ray Shadis, technical adviser for the New England Coalition, an anti-nuclear group. "They are pushing them beyond their limits." Several experts and watchdogs said that Palo Verde's expansion is relatively safe. It involves replacing steam generators and improving turbines for each of its three reactors, which would add nearly 3 percent in total energy output. "They are not pushing safety at all," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "That is actually a prudent business decision." At several other plants with expansion applications before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, power output would expand by as much as 20 percent. Those moves would add the equivalent of one large nuclear plant to a nation struggling with issues of power supply and reliability. Already, more than 100 small expansions since the late 1970s have provided about four new power plants' worth of electricity. Most have been given the green light over the past five years as many of the nation's reactors seek new operating licenses. In 2001 alone, nearly one out of every five reactors went through some type of power uprate, generating enough extra juice to keep the lights on for a city the size of San Francisco. The expansions have quietly occurred while memories of Three Mile Island and Cherynobl faded, and now the federal government's energy policy is focused on subsidies to encourage construction of new reactors. New generators At Palo Verde, located 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, crews will shut down Unit 1 this fall and drop in two 806-ton generators through a narrow hatch that will allow the reactor to churn out more power. The repair job is needed because the reactor's steam generators have worn at a faster pace than expected, and the new equipment, built with more resilient material, will allow operator Arizona Public Service Co. to crank up the reactor's output by a small margin. APS owns the plant along with four other owners. Steam generators convert superheated water from the reactor's core into steam, which is sent through turbines to produce electricity. Like other plants that use steam generators, though, APS discovered in the early 1990s that its original equipment wouldn't survive the plant's 40-year license. Heat and corrosion badly damaged hundreds of tubes in the generators. The most serious damage was found in Unit 2, where a tube ruptured in 1993 The damaged tubes proved to be a steep cost to APS both in down time and lost efficiency. APS was forced to turn down the reactor's heat and plug damaged tubes, costing valuable energy. "When it was first being used, it was thought to be a hearty, resistant material," said Jim Levine, APS' executive vice president overseeing generation. "We learned temperature had an effect on how fast the tubes degraded. So we ran at reduced temperatures, which cost us a few megawatts." The new Westinghouse-designed generators, already installed at Unit 2, include more tubes and a larger surface area. That allows Palo Verde to run at higher temperatures, producing more energy. The plan calls for cranking up total electrical output at all three reactors by nearly 120 megawatts, or 3 percent. A single megawatt is enough to provide heat for about 250 Valley homes during summer. The process of inserting steam generators into the plant is a challenge in and of itself. APS will shut off Unit 1 in early October and use a giant crane to delicately insert the huge generators through the containment hatch on the western edge of the reactor's containment zone. At 73 feet long and 21 feet around, the generators will have a clearance of about a half-inch. Plans call for swapping Unit 3's generators in 2007. The NRC is scrutinizing Palo Verde's request to increase the power. "(APS) has to demonstrate they can operate under a variety of risks and temperatures," said Victor Dricks, spokesman for NRC's Region IV in Arlington, Texas. "They have to demonstrate they meet all of our requirements." State's role State regulators also must be informed about the massive repair job. But so far, the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency, which is responsible for measuring radiation levels outside the plant, has expressed little concern. "We don't see anything strange about it," said Aubrey Goodwin, director of the Arizona agency. "We don't look at in detail. We don't have a bunch of nuclear engineers standing by to do that. They are paying NRC several million dollars to do that." Nuclear industry advocates say these mini-expansions are a smart way for operators to get the most bang for the buck on big-ticket investments made decades ago. Some criticism Yet, as in nearly all aspects of nuclear power, the process has been the target of criticism from industry watchdogs. Saying federal regulators have been lax in oversight, critics cite instances where plants have significantly added power output only to be forced weeks later to shut down for emergency repairs. They also claim that in some cases the aggressive expansions compromise safety. The anti-expansion fervor has gained some traction in New England, where watchdog groups and the state of Vermont have objected to a proposed 20 percent expansion of Entergy's Vermont Yankee plant. "There are a lot of uncertainties," said Paul Gunter, director of reactor watchdog for Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "They are really increasing the bombardment of the equipment. Production agendas are driving up the uncertainty in terms of safety." Age makes a difference Shadis, of the New England Coalition, contends some of the plants - particularly ones that, unlike Palo Verde, generate electricity from boiling water reactors - are too old to handle a significant expansion. Problems surfaced at the Quad Cities nuclear plant on the banks of the Mississippi River soon after operator Exelon Corp. fired up the expanded reactors in 2002. Federal regulators had approved license changes that allowed the power plant, which opened in 1972, to operate its reactors at an expanded rate of nearly 18 percent. Soon after it began to operate, plant crews detected problems. An investigation showed that a hole had formed in the plant's steam dryer, which is used to remove excess moisture from turbine blades but is not considered safety-related equipment. A company-initiated investigation concluded that the failure was caused by a degraded steam dryer, exacerbated partly by the higher level of vibrations resulting from the power update. Exelon has since replaced steam dryers at its two Quad Cities reactors. Exelon Nuclear spokesman Craig Nesbit said the plant's safety was never compromised. Exelon has been one of the most aggressive companies, completing nuclear expansions at 12 of 17 reactors at seven nuclear power plants. Those expansions generated an additional 1,000 megawatts. "You're talking about additional megawatts you are generating that nobody thought you would get," Nesbit said. "It is essentially free product." Vermont plant criticized Nowhere have the anti-nuclear forces marshaled their efforts so aggressively as in the Vermont Yankee plant. Plant owner Entergy Nuclear wants to hike the plant's output by 20 percent, but federal regulators, and state officials who opposed the plan, have raised questions. Among the ones probed by the NRC include the condition of the plant's steam dryer and whether it can handle pressure. Federal regulators also have requested more details on how the expansion will affect the plant's emergency cooling system. The Vermont Department of Public Service has taken an active role in the request, hiring extra witnesses and firing off question to the feds. Lochbaum said the Vermont Yankee proposal is the only one in which a state has intervened. "Most uprates have not been contested by anybody," he said. Entergy spokesman Mike Mulling said the company will answer all questions to show the plant will maintain its safety. He added that customers benefit from the added levels. "These small gains can add up to a lot more power for customers on the grid," Mulling said. Reach the reporter at (602) 444-8285 or ken.alltucker@arizonarepublic.com. -------- colorado World's Shift to Atomic Energy A Boon for Town of Nucla, Colo. Demand for Uranium Prompts Return to Abandoned Mines By T.R. Reid Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 7, 2005; A03 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080601204_pf.html NUCLA, Colo. -- The uranium for the world's first atomic bombs was gouged out of the soaring red cliffs here on the Uncompahgre Plateau, and for decades uranium mining was the economic base for the rugged canyon country along the Colorado-Utah border. But then the arms race slowed, and public fears made civilian nuclear power plants unpalatable. "After Three Mile Island in '79, the price of uranium fell to near nothing," recalls Clifford Chiles, whose family has been mining here for decades. "The mines closed. We had our boom, and then we got our bust." The first years of the 21st century, though, have brought a new uranium boom -- a huge surge in global demand. The skyrocketing costs of fossil fuels, plus concerns about global warming, have prompted electric utilities around the world to move rapidly toward nuclear generating plants. And those plants run on uranium. "The price of uranium has just about tripled since 2003," said Energy Department analyst Ed Cotter. "The analysts all seem to agree that it's going to keep going up and up as the world moves more and more to nuclear power plants. And this time, the market is global." At the end of 2004, the International Atomic Energy Agency says, 440 power reactors were in operation around the world, the most ever. An additional 26 are under construction, and more than 100 are on the drawing board, with China, India and other developing economies strongly committed to nuclear power. In the United States, where 104 nuclear plants produce 20 percent of the nation's electricity, atomic power stations have been politically taboo for decades. President Bush is pushing for a sharp increase in atomic generating capacity, but the lack of a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste has slowed domestic development. The world's shift to atomic-powered electricity stems partly from the rising costs of the oil, natural gas and coal used to drive the turbines of a conventional power plant. Further, nations committed to the Kyoto accord on global warming -- the United States has not ratified the treaty, but more than 150 countries have -- are required to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that form when fossil fuels are burned. A properly functioning nuclear plant emits nothing into the air but water. The result is a global swing away from coal, gas and oil and toward nuclear fuel. That has created a chasm between supply and demand. The Energy Department says world uranium consumption is greater than 180 million tons a year, while the mining industry is turning out only 90 million to 100 million tons. The end of the Cold War provided a temporary supply of fuel in the form of uranium that was removed from nuclear weapons in the disarmament process. But that source is used up now and utilities' stockpiles are dwindling, analysts say. Soaring demand with restricted supply is the classic formula for a seller's market, and the major uranium-producing nations -- Canada, Australia, Russia and the United States -- are all moving to reactivate mines that were closed after the uranium bust of the 1980s. The point has not been lost on the veteran miners who live on the hardscrabble high desert country where southern Colorado and Utah meet. This region, a scattered collection of dusty villages separated by endless stretches of two-lane mountain roads, is known to geologists as the Uravan Mineral Belt. Both uranium and another industrial mineral, vanadium, are found in the red cliffs that tower 1,000 feet above the valley of the San Miguel River. Even before it supplied the Manhattan Project and the World War II bombs, the Uravan played a key role in nuclear history. Nobel Laureate Marie Curie came to Colorado to collect radium for her pioneering experiments. When this town was incorporated in 1904, it proudly took the name "Nucla" to reflect its role in the new science of nuclear physics. During the boom years, Nucla had a Uranium Cafe and a movie theater called the Uranium Drive In. In an area where people track the spot price of uranium the way Washingtonians track the president's approval rating, the global boom has sparked considerable interest. This year, county clerks say, thousands of mining claims have been staked -- a procedure that still involves driving four stakes into the ground to mark the corners of the plot. More than a dozen abandoned uranium mines have been reopened, and long-closed mills in Utah and Colorado are once again grinding the miners' rocks into the powder form called "yellowcake" that utilities use. "There could be hundreds of mines operating around here in a year or two," says Ernie Anderson, a veteran mining industry geologist. Anderson says he first "went underground" to mine uranium in the boom years after World War II. Although his age is "way north of 70," Anderson says, he has recently staked claims in 10 areas he judges to be uranium-rich. Like many miners, Chiles complains that regulatory and environmental restrictions make uranium mining a much tougher business than it used to be. "If President Bush could push a button and get rid of the red tape, that would be the best thing to happen to this industry," Chiles says. Still, he and his brothers have staked more than 50 mining claims in recent months, he says. And yet, the miners of the Uravan region display a clear ambivalence to the prospect of new boom in their old mines. "The problem with a boom is, you get a bust on the backside," Chiles says, reflecting a common viewpoint. "Yeah, you make money if everything goes okay. But if it ends, that puts a lot of hurting on people." One thing the locals are not worried about is the potential health or environmental risk from mining radioactive fuel. "There is nobody here who is anti-uranium," said Roger Culver, editor of the San Miguel Basin Forum, Nucla's newspaper. The more serious question for Nucla and the neighboring towns is whether they are being lulled into one more cycle of boom and bust. "All the global indicators tell us that uranium demand and prices are going to keep rising steadily," says Cotter, the Energy Department analyst. "And that's what we're telling our miners. But of course, they've heard it all before." -------- florida Florida Power & Light -- Nuclear Fright: Radioactive Waste Allegedly Mishandled -- In Landfills, Sewage Systems, Cow Pastures (Approx 1125 words) By Ed Slavin Date: Sun Aug 7, 2005 2:28pm On August 7, the New York Times reported that Florida Power & Light's St. Lucie County nuclear powerplant allowed radioactive waste to be disposed of in municipal landfills, sewage systems and cow pastures, with contamination never cleaned up. FP&L responded that it happened 23 or more years ago, as if time itself were an excuse for putting lives at risk. Dead children's surviving parents are suing FP&L, with trial set for January in South Florida. Matt Wald reports that FP&L "documents appear to show numerous shipments to multiple locations. In addition, while the company conducted a survey and cleanup in the one known location, it found only one kind of radioactive material, and nuclear experts involved in the lawsuits say there must have been other isotopes for which no tests were conducted. The overall level of contamination is difficult to determine." In 1982, FP&L said its shipments of radioactive waste to one landfill was done "mistakenly." The Times reported that FP&L "workers used a sink to wash mops, rags and other heavily contaminated materials, believing that the drain was connected to the plant's radioactive-waste system, but instead it drained into a sanitary-sewage system, according to the documents. The contaminants were then hauled away with sludge." Documents establish that "at one point the plant in St. Lucie County was shipping to regular landfills materials that were 10 times as radioactive as what it was shipping to a low-level waste dump." "It's a 23-year-old event," FP&L spokeswoman Rachel Scott told the Times. "It was thoroughly investigated at the time by both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC] and the Florida Department of Health, who determined that there was no health issue." Documents establish that "a week after the cleanup (sic) was completed at a dump site the company found contamination at a level 20 times what was proposed by the state of Florida, and thousands of times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency allowed for agricultural land; the surrounding area is used for cattle and citrus." Plaintiffs include surviving parents of "Zachary Finestone, an 11-year-old who grew up in the area and was diagnosed with cancer in March 2000, and of Ashton Lowe, who had brain cancer when he died at age 13 in May 2001." FP&L Negligent? -- "The Hell We Are" South Florida Business Journal reported in 2003 that "The Finestones' lawyer, Nancy La Vista of Lytal Reiter Clark Fountain & Williams in West Palm Beach, claims that FP&L was negligent for failing to monitor and detect dangerous levels of radioactive emissions, posing a significant public health risk. "The hell we are," FP&L lawyer Al Davis of Miami's Steel Hector & Davis said, summarizing the utility's response. FP&L, which also owns a third plant in Seabrook, N.H., this month moved to dismiss the suit as frivolous." Davis is managing partner of Steel, Hector and Davis, with over 150 lawyers in Florida, Latin America, London and Israel: it advertises itself as a multinational law firm providing "Global Guidance. Effective Solutions." Former Attorney General Janet Reno is listed among the firm's alumni. Efforts to reach Davis for comment have thus far been unavailing. Civil lawsuit defense lawyers ordinarily say that any accusation against a large organization is "frivolous." The documents appear to have proven FP&L to be lying about its radioactive negligence. FP&L's website includes information about "our environment," touting clean, safe, efficient nuclear power. FP&L claims to be one of the cleanest utilities in the world." FP&L admits to releasing 1.9 million pounds per year of sulfuric acid, 595,000 pounds of hydrochloric acid and 589,000 of vanadium (and more of other pollutants). FP&L's pro-nuclear, ratepayer-subsidized propaganda museum, The Energy Encounter" is located at FPL's St. Lucie nuclear power plant on A1A between Stuart and Ft. Pierce. FP&L says "the center contains hands-on exhibits on energy, electricity and nuclear power. Normal hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday through Friday. Admission is free." Take the family. Wear your lead gonad shields.. Turkey Creek Leaks Meanwhile, Mother Earth News reports that FP&L's Turkey Creek nuclear powerplant in South Florida may have to be shut down for two years because of longstanding leaks of radioactive cooling water. Time for Public Power Takeover of FP&L? FP&L is widely hated and reviled in Florida for its sloth and arrogance in restoring power after the 2004 hurricanes, apparently favoring neighborhoods with expensive homes (while taking weeks to restore power in working class neighborhoods and places like Hastings). FP&L took days to restore power to a nursing home across the street from its St. Augustine facility, claiming that it was not an urgent health care need, according to the St. Augustine Record. The Record has repeatedly blasted FP&L in editorials for its demand for high rate increases, some hurricane-related. FP&L resembles an unsophisticated, ethically challenged Barney Fife with nuclear powerplants. Will FP&L apologize, or continue stonewalling? Will FP&L eventually be taken over by public power -- by municipal and cooperative electric power companies -- like Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)? Is there an opportunity for JEA to expand into St. Johns County, so that local residents can say "the hell we are" about spending any more money on FP&L, its managers, polluters, lawyers and lobbyists? Or will FP&L play "business as usual," empowered by the Republican Governor, Legislature and Steel, Hector & Davis? Difficulties in Prosecuting Nuclear Crimes Will Florida and federal officials investigate FP&L and prosecute crimes, or will history repeat itself? Who will test milk to see if it is contaminated by dumping radioactive sewage sludge on cow pastures? Read FP&L's website to see how safe it wants Floridians to think we are. NRC is widely regarded as compliant to the wishes of nuclear powerplant operators. The old Atomic Energy Commission was split (like an atom) in two parts -- the NRC which is supposed to "regulate" nuclear companies and the Department of Energy (DOE), which makes nuclear weapons and is supposed to promote nuclear power. It turns out that both NRC and DOE are part of the revolving door system, bossed and run by nuclear powerplant companies and government contractors, respectively. AEC was responsible for the largest series of pollution events in world history, including the Oak Ridge, Tennessee mercury pollution -- largest mercury pollution event in world history (4.2 million pounds), declassified on May 17, 1983. No one was ever jailed for the Oak Ridge pollution. In 1993, the Justice Department and a Federal Judge allegedly prevented a Federal Grand Jury from bringing criminal indictments against the Rocky Flats, Colorado plutonium trigger plant. A 1989 FBI raid found hundreds of hazardous waste law violations. Grand jurors spoke out and their foreman, Wes McKinley has written a book and was in 2004 elected to the Colorado state legislature.. Read the complete, uncensored RF Grand Jury report. http://www.vote.org/flats/ Read "The Ambushed Grand Jury -- How The Justice Department Covered Up Nuclear Crimes and How We Caught Them Red-Handed" by Wes McKinley and lawyer Caron Balkany. http://ambushedgrandjury.com/ A wildlife refuge is slated for the former Rocky Flats site, and former Grand Jurors are hoping to prevent it from being opened to public access and exposure. ---- Atomic Waste Mishandled, Records Show By MATTHEW L. WALD August 7, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/national/07nuke.html?pagewanted=print WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - The operator of a Florida nuclear plant appears to have shipped radioactive waste to ordinary landfills, municipal sewage treatment plants and some unknown locations in the 1970's and early 80's, according to internal documents and government records obtained in lawsuits. Florida Power and Light said that in 1982 it had mistakenly made a shipment to a landfill, but the documents appear to show numerous shipments to multiple locations. In addition, while the company conducted a survey and cleanup in the one known location, it found only one kind of radioactive material, and nuclear experts involved in the lawsuits say there must have been other isotopes for which no tests were conducted. The overall level of contamination is difficult to determine. Plant workers used a sink to wash mops, rags and other heavily contaminated materials, believing that the drain was connected to the plant's radioactive waste system, but instead it drained into a sanitary sewage system, according to the documents. The contaminants were then hauled away with sludge. According to documents cited by the plaintiffs, at one point the plant in St. Lucie County was shipping to regular landfills materials that were 10 times as radioactive as what it was shipping to a low-level waste dump. A spokeswoman for Florida Power and Light said the company had mistakenly made two such shipments in the early 80's, but had disclosed it at the time and removed the waste afterward. "It's a 23-year-old event," said Rachel Scott, the spokeswoman. "It was thoroughly investigated at the time by both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Florida Department of Health, who determined that there was no health issue." Samples were tested in a lab and only one isotope, cobalt-60, was found, Ms. Scott said. Cobalt-60 is a material that becomes radioactive when neutrons from the reactor core are captured by atoms of metal. But the plaintiffs say records show that at the time St. Lucie's fuel was leaking fission products, like strontium and cesium, into the cooling water and thus contaminating the plant. Such contaminants would have been present in the mops and similar materials, they argue. According to documents obtained by the plaintiffs, however, a week after the cleanup was completed at a dump site the company found contamination at a level 20 times what was proposed by the State of Florida, and thousands of times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency allowed for agricultural land; the surrounding area is used for cattle and citrus. A state document quoted by the plaintiffs says that some contaminated material was transported to a "cow pasture." Another state document refers to daily sludge being "removed by Portolet to unknown site." The company has concealed the shipments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the lawsuits. The parents of Zachary Finestone, an 11-year-old who grew up in the area and was diagnosed with cancer in March 2000, filed suit in Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida in 2003. The case is scheduled to go to trial in January. The parents of Ashton Lowe, who had brain cancer when he died at age 13 in May 2001, filed suit in 2003 in the same court. That case is scheduled for trial early next year. The parents' lawyer, Nancy La Vista, said she planned to argue that tests of the boys' baby teeth showed abnormally high levels of radioactive strontium, which is produced when atoms are split and that when ingested binds to human bones. Older people have strontium in their bones that was created from atmospheric nuclear testing. But, Ms. La Vista said, "These kids were all born after Chernobyl, after Three Mile Island, and after atmospheric testing." ---- Florida Utility Accused of Nuclear Dumping Lawsuits Accuse Florida's FPL of Sending Nuclear Waste to Landfill, Sewage Treatment Plants The Associated Press Aug 7, 2005 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1016677&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 MIAMI— One of Florida's biggest electric utilities mistakenly sent a shipment of nuclear waste to a farm pasture, a spokeswoman acknowledged Sunday, but documents filed in two lawsuits appear to show it also sent the waste to sewage treatment plants and other, unknown locations. The New York Times reported in Sunday's editions that the internal documents and government records suggest Florida Power & Light made numerous shipments from its nuclear power plant in St. Lucie County to multiple locations in the 1970s and early '80s. The level of contamination is a point of contention between the company and the parents of two children afflicted with cancer who sued FPL. * The Shrinking Savings Account * Dow Drops 21, Nasdaq Loses 14 on Oil * Latest Market Details Company spokeswoman Rachel Scott said Sunday that the utility disclosed a mistaken shipment to Florida health and environmental officials and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the early 1980s and it cleaned up the waste. The contaminated materials were sent to a farm field that was licensed by the state for non-radioactive sludge disposal, Scott said. "It was contaminated with extremely low radiation levels," Scott said in a telephone interview. "It was comparable to a normal background radiation level. We were told by regulatory agencies that it was not an issue." Scott said Sunday that claims being made by the plaintiffs' lawyer have been disregarded by courts in the past. "Their attorneys are latching onto an incident that occurred 23 years ago," Scott said. "These children weren't born until a decade after the incident occurred." The two lawsuits are scheduled to go to trial early next year. One was filed by the parents of Zachary Finestone, an 11-year-old who was diagnosed with cancer in March 2000, and the other was filed by the parents of Ashton Lowe, who had brain cancer when he died at age 13 in May 2001. According to the documents cited in the lawsuits, the Times said, plant workers used a sink to wash contaminated mops, rags and other materials, believing the drain was connected to the plant's radioactive waste system. However, the drain went into a sanitary sewage system, Scott acknowledged. -------- nevada Regulators fault nuclear waste dump planning for hazards August 7, 2005 Associated Press http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=3686260 WASHINGTON Federal nuclear regulators say the Energy Department didn't assess the full risk of hazards for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump northwest of Las Vegas. In a memo released yesterday, nuclear regulatory staffers concluded the department left out risk factors related to potential airplane crashes and other hazards. The memo says the department undercounted the number of Air Force plane crashes at the Nevada site during the 1990s, and discounted the possibility that cruise missiles being tested nearby or other debris might crash into the dump. The Energy Department's readying its license application to operate the dump. Yucca Mountain is planned as an underground repository for 77-thousand tons of the nation's nuclear waste. -------- new mexico Nuclear birthplace New Mexico desert sites housed the nation's first atomic tests 60 years ago. BY RICHARD CHIN Sun, Aug. 07, 2005 Pioneer Press http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/12305024.htm 'Land of Enchantment," says the motto on New Mexico's license plates. I think it should say, "Birthplace of the Bomb." Just as North Carolina proclaims itself as "First in Flight," in honor of its most historic event — the Wright brothers' Kitty Hawk triumph — New Mexico should take note of the most earth-shattering experience that ever happened within its borders. I'm talking of course, about the first atomic bomb blast, the Trinity test that occurred 60 years ago, July 16, 1945, in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Trinity was the end product of a massive and secret industrial, scientific and technological effort by the United States during World War II to create an atomic superweapon before Germany and Japan. The Trinity explosion would be followed a few weeks later by two other atomic explosions, the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered shortly afterward, ending the most awful period of bloodshed the world has ever known. So when I got a chance to visit New Mexico recently, I bypassed the state's many scenic natural attractions like Carlsbad Caverns or White Sands National Monument. I also ignored cultural pleasures like the art galleries, opera, international art fair and jazz festival occurring in Santa Fe. Instead, I aimed to see where the atomic age was born, a remote and desolate patch of landscape that is the original Ground Zero. But first, I decided to warm up to the idea of being an atomic tourist by searching for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in a few other spots in the state. My first stop was close to the northwest corner of New Mexico in the Carson National Forest. That's where on Dec. 10, 1967, the United States detonated Project Gasbuggy, a 29-kiloton nuclear bomb buried 4,227 feet underground. Part of the Plowshare program to try to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives, Gasbuggy was a test to see if an underground nuclear blast could be used to aid in natural gas extraction. The test was a partial success, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, a research organization. The explosion created an underground cavity that filled with natural gas, but the gas was too radioactive to be used commercially. Nearly 40 years later, the experiment seems largely forgotten. I got shrugs when I stopped to ask for directions at the casino at the nearby Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation. One of the women at the reservation headquarters had heard of Gasbuggy, but she didn't know how to get there. I finally ended up getting directions from a forest service official. After bumping along a dirt road, I came to an open field, deserted except for a handful of workers installing an electric fence. It's to keep the cows out, explained forest service range specialist Stan Dykes. The agency was trying to reseed the field. As far as people, "It's pretty quiet. You could sit here a long time. You could starve to death waiting for someone to come see Gasbuggy. Even in the forest service, there's not a whole lot of knowledge that it's here," Dykes said. I walked across the field full of brown grass and cowpies to reach ground zero, a weathered concrete monument about the size of a television set. There was a plaque that briefly described the test and prohibited anyone from digging, drilling or removing any material from the site. "You might want to sit around and feel the aura of it," Dykes suggested. I spent a few minutes doing that. Then I jumped into the rental minivan and headed southeast. My destination was near Carlsbad, at the opposite corner of the state and the site of the Waste Isolation Pilot Project or WIPP. WIPP is the federal government's solution to how to get rid of millions of cubic feet of radioactive waste generated from nuclear weapons production. They decided to bury it nearly a half-mile underground in the salt beds that remained after sea that used to cover that part of New Mexico receded. After years of planning and regulatory and legislative hurdles, the WIPP project started taking waste shipments in 1999. It also started attracting tourists. The Department of Energy facility used to give three or four tours a week to everyone from school classes to out-of-town vacationers. "We had people signing up for tours six months in advance. It was the thing to do. You come to Carlsbad, go to the caverns and learn about nuclear waste disposal," said Roger Nelson, chief scientist at WIPP. But that ended on September 11, 2001. Security concerns now limit the tours to VIPs, government officials, people in the nuke business and journalists. That's a pity, because unless you're afraid of the dark or small places, going deep underground to see nuclear waste being buried is actually pretty fun. I ended up taking a tour with New Mexico state senator Vernon Asbill and a couple of executives from a company that hopes to build a uranium enrichment plant in the region. We put on hardhats and strapped on leather belts that carried the batteries for our headlamps along with emergency breathing gear. Then we crowded into a metal cage about the size of a bedroom closet and dropped into the darkness below, lit only by our bouncing headlamp beams. At the bottom was a maze of long underground corridors and storage spaces carved out of the salt bed. We explored while riding around in an electric cart. We peered at the white barrels full of contaminated debris stacked up in the storage alcoves. We passed through airlock doors that hissed open with the pull of a rope dangling from the ceiling. And we collected souvenir chunks of Permian age rock salt dating back about 250 million years. After the WIPP tour, I decided to search out another Plowshare blast site, project Gnome, which was detonated underground near Carlsbad on Dec. 10, 1961. The explosion was set off 1,216 feet underground to test the potential for electrical power production and the collection of useful radioisotopes from nuclear blasts. It also produced an unintended release of radioactive smoke and steam. Nelson said practically the entire town of Carlsbad camped out to watch the ground ripple during the Gnome blast. But when I got there, the Gnome site was just a lonely patch of scrubby desert at the end of the narrow jeep track. All there was to see was a bored cow, another concrete monument, a plaque with what looked like a few bullet holes and some discarded shotgun shells. The next day, July 15, the eve of the Trinity blast anniversary, I headed to Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Bradbury Science Museum. The museum documents the history of the Manhattan project — the code name for the U.S. atom bomb development effort — which turned Los Alamos from the site of a boys ranch school into a secret city of scientists, technicians and soldiers during World War II. Displays there show how an atom bomb works, what the first atom bombs looked like (about as big as a Mini Cooper) and artifacts from the bomb's birth, like the desk chair of physicist and Manhattan project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer lovingly preserved in a clear plastic case. The museum also has displays on what modern nuclear weapons look like (small enough to fit in a backpack in some cases) and the current work of the laboratory maintaining and testing those weapons. The museum gift shop and bookstore was sponsoring a midnight event. I first thought it might be a Trinity commemoration. It turned out to be a release party for the new Harry Potter novel. Instead, I headed toward Albuquerque and the National Atomic Museum, another New Mexico institution devoted to nuclear history and science. The museum was sponsoring a dinner, panel discussion and bus tour of the Trinity site. When I arrived, a few dozen protesters were outside holding up signs that said "Atomic Museum Glorifies War" and "Jesus Would NOT build bombs." The protesters said the museum was celebrating the bomb's creation, an event which they believed should inspire mourning and shame. "These people are having a party with costumes and food and catering," said John Dear, a Catholic priest and peace activist. He had a point. Dubbed the "Blast from the Past," the museum literature on the event said, "We hope your experience will be interesting, insightful and FUN!" More than 100 people paid $125 per person to be there. They were encouraged to wear vintage clothing. I saw one guy dressed up like General Douglas MacArthur. Dinner (chicken enchiladas with green chile) was served under twinkling lights and an Air Force missile suspended from the ceiling. The centerpieces at each table were wine bottles with corks decorated with little pewter models of the bombs called Fat Man and Little Boy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the B-29 bomber that dropped those weapons. The cash bar served special mixed drinks called Manhattan, Oppenheimer and Trinity. There was a fashion show of World War II era garb. And everyone also got ID badges with names of people of involved in the bomb's development or the war effort. I was assigned to be Winston Churchill. We also got souvenir backpacks and bomb flash protective goggles. Guest speakers included people who worked on the first bomb and later bombs developed in New Mexico at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. The people at my table included people who worked in the nuclear weapons development industry in New Mexico, as well as a World War II veteran who came to commemorate the event that he felt saved his life. If the bomb hadn't been developed and used against Japan, he would have been among the U.S. soldiers sent to invade Japan, the man said. During the question-and-answer session, it turned out some of members of the peace activism community also bought tickets to the event. They challenged the speakers and the audience to acknowledge that the bomb wasn't necessary to end World War II. The activists also brought Shigeko Sasamori. She was a 13-year-old Hiroshima resident when the city was destroyed. Her face and hands are still disfigured from the blast. She wanted to know why a second bomb had to be dropped on Nagasaki. "Please don't make any more nuclear weapons," said Sasamori, who now lives in California. "I beg you. That's why I came here today." The members of the panel listened earnestly, but at one point the discussion dissolved into a shouting match between the hawks and doves in the audience. It was still dark at 5:30 a.m., the next morning, July 16, the actual time the Trinity bomb was set off 60 years before . At that moment, I and the other people taking the museum tour were loading onto buses, some carrying breakfast. A handful of protesters and Japanese TV saw us off as we headed to the Stallion Gate entrance of the White Sands Missile Range, where the Trinity site is located. Under the watchful gaze of military guards, Japanese and German TV and onlookers from our bus, the atomic museum restaged the moment when technician Herb Lehr delivered the plutonium core to the site. It was the first time Lehr had been back in 60 years. "There are things I remember and things I don't remember, if you know what I mean," Lehr said. "In my lifetime I saw three bombs go off. Three too many." There were a bunch of cars in the parking lot already. Vendors sold T-shirts, hamburgers and souvenirs. A Russian TV crew was there, a guy with a hat shaped like a mushroom cloud, pro-nukers and anti-nukers. "I think this whole thing is just nuts," said Santa Fe peace activist Bud Ryan. "This is the worship of something that turned into evil." "I don't think Hiroshima or Nagasaki people will like to see Little Boy earrings," said Japanese TV news producer Ryo Sasayama. "No matter how you feel about this, this is a historic site," said Al Garblick, an engineer who has worked on atomic weapons. Ground Zero is an area about the size of three or four football fields surrounded by a chain link fence. Inside the fence, you see nothing. Well, almost nothing: a couple of interpretive signs, some historic black and white photos hanging on the fence. There's a Fat Man bomb casing. There's a low-slung shed-like building that shelters some of the desert sand that was fused into radioactive glass called Trinitite. There's a tiny remnant of the base of the steel tower that held the bomb. There's a modest volcanic rock obelisk with a plaque right under the point where the bomb was placed. But other than that, it's just a dusty field with a slight, almost imperceptible depression. No place to sit. No trees. No shade. Ten years ago at the 50th anniversary, protesters threw fake blood on the Ground Zero monument. This year, missile-range authorities explicitly prohibited demonstrations. So the few hundred people that were there milled about, listened to tour guides lecturing, squatted in the dirt looking for bits of Trinitite that they were forbidden to remove or took turns posing for pictures in front of the rough, rather homely obelisk. Many people are "disappointed because there's not a hole in the ground," said Gerry Taylor, an Atomic Museum board member who said he has visited the site about 30 times. "Part of what's striking about it is there's no actual signature of the bomb here," said Erik Henriksen, a graduate student in physics from Columbia University. He happened to be attending a conference in New Mexico, and decided to see where the atomic age began. "A lot of emptiness. There's a lot of nothingness here," he said. IF YOU GO: NEW MEXICO'S NUCLEAR SITES The White Sands Missile Range normally opens the Trinity site to the public just twice a year, on the first Saturday in April and October. For more information, see www.wsmr.army.mil. For information on the Los Alamos National Laboratory Bradbury Science Museum, see www.lanl.gov/museum. For the National Atomic Museum, see www.atomicmuseum.com. ---- Plant might enrich locals By Dennis Domrzalski New Mexico Business Weekly Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Aug. 7, 2005 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8866516/ Louisiana Energy Services is looking for a few good New Mexico contractors. It has about $400 million worth of work to bid out. If all goes as planned, by this time next year LES will be breaking ground on a $1.4 billion, 800,000 square-foot National Enrichment Facility uranium enrichment plant in Lea County in southeastern New Mexico. About $400 million of that money will be used on actual construction, and LES officials want New Mexico businesses to know that if they think they can do the work, they need to start preparing now. Because by early 2006, the company expects to begin soliciting bids for the work, and it is looking to hire as many local companies as possible. "We are on schedule for receiving a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by the end of the first quarter or early in the second quarter of 2006," says LES Vice President of Communications and Government Relations Marshall Cohen. "Once that happens we have just a couple of steps to get private debt financing, and we are looking at breaking ground in August 2006. We have made a strong commitment that we want New Mexico companies. And the companies, no matter how big or how small, should not feel that they will be excluded, because there is a wide spectrum of jobs." Once that ground is turned, construction will continue through 2013 at the site five miles east of Eunice. The project will be the largest construction project in the state at the time, employing about 400 construction workers for several years. The plant will use thousands of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, or make it more concentrated, so it can be fabricated into fuel rods for the 102 nuclear power plants in the U.S. Those plants supply about 20 percent of the nation's electric supply. LES will let three major contracts for the building's shell and for the electrical and mechanical work. In turn, those contractors will select hundreds of subcontractors, says LES Vice President and New Mexico Project Manager Mike Lynch. Most of the work will be standard construction, but some of it will be specialized, and Lynch has been scouting southeastern New Mexico looking for small companies that have the expertise to handle the jobs. For instance, LES will need more than 25,000 three-foot by three-foot by 18-inch concrete blocks on which to mount the centrifuges. "The blocks are made to very tight tolerances. We have a European supplier (who has manufactured the blocks for similar plants in Europe), and they are happy to partner with a local company to begin working on casting the blocks," Lynch says. The facility will also need 250,000 threaded metal pins that will have to be machined. It will have thousands of miles of aluminum pipes, and so LES will need aluminum, as well as stainless steel welders, Lynch says. "We will need aluminum and stainless steel welders on-site. Aluminum pipe welding is a specialty and we will need the best welders to be qualified and to maintain the qualifications," Lynch says. "I'm looking for workshops that can produce subassemblies away from the site and bring them to the site and do the welding to put them in place." The project is so big that the lighting contract alone will probably go to 20 firms. "We will have a factory of almost a million square feet, and so we will need all of the normal, standard construction materials multiplied by some big factor," Lynch says. The search to find New Mexico companies that would be able to do the work has already begun, Lynch says. "It's mixed. We are finding a lot of contractors that are used to doing oil and gas work," Lynch says. "And although oil and gas technology is not actually a part of what we will be doing, some companies have given us some insight and have expressed an interest in diversifying. I'm finding it encouraging." LES has hired Nuclear Technology Solutions of Cherryhill, New Jersey, as its architect, but it has let no other contracts, Cohen says. Most of the project's funding will come from LES's partners: Urenco, Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, Duke Power, Entergy and Exelon, Cohen says. The project must also get approval from the New Mexico Environment Department. Critics have raised concerns about the storage of depleted uranium on the site, and LES has been working with Gov. Bill Richardson's and the New Mexico Attorney General's office to clarify environmental standards. "We have come to an agreement with the state on a number of issues that the governor and the attorney general and the Environment Department have raised," Cohen says. "We have a settlement agreement that has been signed that limits the storage of byproduct on the site. It has been six or seven months in negotiations, and it is a good agreement." Cohen says that any companies that want to learn more about the project should call Contract Manager John Lowther at 505-944-0194. -------- MILITARY -------- us WHAT HAVE WE BECOME ? Bush has morphed wickedness into righteousness by Allen L Roland, Ph.D August 7, 2005 OpEd News http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_allen_l__050807_what_have_we_become_.htm " How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right:" Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845 When I hear George Bush say ( yesterday in Crawford, Texas ) " We will stay on the offensive against these people. They're terrorists and they're killers and they will kill innocent people .. so they can impose their dark vision on the world " ~ I realize it is the ultimate projection of our own wickedness which has been morphed, by this deceitful administration, into righteousness. Let's get something straight, George ~ We have become world outlaws, we have become globally hated, we have become the illegal occupiers and killers of innocent people ( over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed and wounded ) and it is our imposed dark neocon empire building vision that they are rebelling against. But don't just take my word on this ~ Dahl Jamail interviews a roomful of veterans from the current Iraq quagmire at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Dallas this week and they speak their minds with an obvious sense of betrayal, disgust and mistrust ~ in regards to George W Bush. Excerpt: “When I went back to Iraq in October of 2003, the Pentagon said there were 22 AWOL’s. Five months later it was 500, and when I got out of jail that number was 5,000. These are the Pentagons’ numbers for the military. Two things are significant here-the number went from 500-5,000 in 11 months, and these are the numbers from the Pentagon....You need to resign,George Bush ~ take the billions of dollars you’ve made off the blood and sweat of US service members….all the suffering you’ve caused us, and put those billions of dollars into the VA to take care of the men and women you sent to be slaughtered. Yet all those billions aren’t enough to even try to compensate all the people who have been affected by this.” Allen L Roland What Have We Done? Dahr Jamail http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000271.php As the blood of US soldiers continues to drain into the hot sands of Iraq over the last several days with at least 27 US soldiers killed and the approval rating for his handling of the debacle in Iraq dropping to an all-time low of 38%, Mr. Bush commented from the comforts of his ranch in Crawford, Texas today, “We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq.” Just a two hour drive away in Dallas, at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Dallas, I’m sitting with a roomful of veterans from the current quagmire. When asked what he would say to Mr. Bush if he had the chance to speak to him, Abdul Henderson, a corporal in the Marines who served in Iraq from March until May, 2003, took a deep breath and said, “It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor. I see this guy in the most prestigious office in the world, and this guy says ‘bring it on.’ A guy who ain’t never been shot at, never seen anyone suffering, saying ‘bring it on?’ He gets to act like a cowboy in a western movie…it’s sickening to me.” The other vets with him nod in agreement as he speaks somberly…his anger seething. One of them, Alex Ryabov, a corporal in an artillery unit which was in Iraq the first three months of the invasion, asked for some time to formulate his response to the same question. “I don’t think Bush will ever realize how many millions of lives he and his lackeys have ruined on their quest for money, greed and power,” he says, “To take the patriotism of the American people for granted…the fact that people (his administration) are willing to lie and make excuses for you while you continue to kill and maim the youth of America and ruin countless families…and still manage to do so with a smile on your face.” Taking a deep breath to steady himself he continues as if addressing Bush first-hand; “You needs to resign, take the billions of dollars you’ve made off the blood and sweat of US service members….all the suffering you’ve caused us, and put those billions of dollars into the VA to take care of the men and women you sent to be slaughtered. Yet all those billions aren’t enough to even try to compensate all the people who have been affected by this.” These new additions to Veterans for Peace are actively living the statement of purpose of the organization, having pledged to work with others towards increasing public awareness of the costs of war, to work to restrain their government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations and to see justice for veterans and victims of war, among other goals. I type furiously for three hours, trying to keep up with the stories each of the men shared….about the atrocities of what they saw, and committed, while in Iraq. Camilo Mejia, an army staff sergeant who was sentenced to a year in military prison in May, 2004 for refusing to return to Iraq after being home on leave, talks openly about what he did there: “What it all comes down to is redemption for what was done there. I was turning ambulances away from going to hospitals, I killed civilians, I tortured guys…and I’m ashamed of that. Once you are there, it has nothing to do with politics…it has to do with you as an individual being there and killing people for no reason. There is no purpose, and now I’m sick at myself for doing these things. I kept telling myself I was there for my buddies. It was a weak reasoning…because I still shut my mouth and did my job.” Mejia then spoke candidly about why he refused to return: “It wasn’t until I came home that I felt it-how wrong it all was and that I was a coward for pushing my principles aside. I’m trying to buy my way back into heaven…and it’s not so much what I did, but what I didn’t do to stop it when I was there. So now it’s a way of trying to undo the evil that we did over there. This is why I’m speaking out, and not going back. This is a painful process and we’re going through it.” Camilo Mejia was then quick to point towards the success of his organization and his colleagues. “When I went back to Iraq in October of 2003, the Pentagon said there were 22 AWOL’s. Five months later it was 500, and when I got out of jail that number was 5,000. These are the Pentagons’ numbers for the military. Two things are significant here-the number went from 500-5,000 in 11 months, and these are the numbers from the Pentagon.” While the military is falling short of its recruitment goals across the board and the disaster in Iraq spiraling deeper into chaos with each passing day, these are little consolation for these men who have paid the price they’ve had to pay to be at this convention. They continue to pay, but at the same time stand firm in their resolve to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq and to help their fellow soldiers. Ryabov then begins to tell of his unit firing the wrong artillery rounds which hit 5-10 km from their intended target. “We have no idea where those rounds fell, or what they hit,” he says quietly while two of the men hold their heads in their hands, “Now we’ve come to these realizations and we’re trying to educate people to save them from going through the same thing.” After talking of the use of uranium munitions, of which Ryabov stated 300 tons of which were used in the ’91 Gulf War, and 2,200 tons and counting having been used thus far in the current war, he adds, “We were put in a foreign country and fire artillery and kill people…and it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. It’s hard to put into words the full tragedy of it-the death and suffering on both sides. I feel a grave injustice has been done and I’m trying to correct it. You do all these things and come back and think, ‘what have we done?’ We just rolled right by an Iraqi man with a gunshot in his thigh and two guys near him waving white flags….he probably bled to death.” Harvey Tharp sitting with us served in Kirkuk. His position of being in charge of some reconstruction projects in northern Iraq allowed him to form many close friendships with Iraqis…something that prompts him to ask me to tell more people of the generous culture of the Iraqi people. His friendships apparently brought the war much closer to home for him. “What I concluded last summer when I was waiting to transfer to NSA was that not only were our reasons for being there lies, but we just weren’t there to help the Iraqis. So in November of ‘04 I told my commander I couldn’t take part in this. I would have been sent into Fallujah, and he was going to order me in to do my job. I also chose not to go back because the dropping of bombs in urban areas like Fallujah are a violation of the laws of warfare because of the near certainty of collateral damage. For me, seeing the full humanity of Iraqis made me realize I couldn’t participate in these operations.” Tharp goes on to say that he believes there are still Vietnam vets who think that that was a necessary war and adds, “I think it’s because that keeps the demons at bay for them to believe it is justified…this is their coping mechanism. We, as Americans, have to face the total obvious truth that this was all because of a lie. We are speaking out because we have to speak out. We want to help other vets tell other vets their story…to keep people from drinking themselves to death.” When he is asked what he would say to Mr. Bush if he had a few moments with him, he too took some time to think about it, then says, “It is obvious that middle America is starting to turn against this war and to turn against you…for good reason. The only thing I could see that would arrest this inevitable fall that you deserve, is another 9/11 or another war with say, Iran. There are some very credible indications in the media that we are already in pre-war with Iran. What I’m trying to do is find a stand Americans can take against you, but I think people are willing to say ‘don’t you dare do this to us again.’ My message to the American people is this-do you want to go another round with these people? If not-now is the time to say so.” The men are using this time to tell more of why they are resisting the illegal occupation, and it’s difficult to ask new questions as they are adding to what one another share. “I didn’t want to kill another soul for no reason. That’s it,” adds Henderson, “We were firing into small towns….you see people just running, cars going, guys falling off bikes…it was just sad. You just sit there and look through your binos and see things blowing up, and you think, man they have no water, living in the third world, and we’re just bombing them to hell. Blowing up buildings, shrapnel tearing people to shreds.” Tharp jumps in and adds, “Most of what we’re talking about is war crimes…war crimes because they are directed by our government for power projection. My easy answer for not going is PTSD…but the deeper moral reason is that I didn’t want to be involved in a crime against humanity.” Ryabov then adds, “We were put in a foreign country to fire artillery and kill people…and it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. It’s hard to put into words the full tragedy of it-the death and suffering on both sides. I feel a grave injustice has been done and I’m trying to correct it. You do all these things and come back and think, what have we done?” Michael Hoffman served as a Marine Corps corporal who fought in Tikrit and Baghdad, and has since become a co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. “Nobody wants to kill another person and think it was because of a lie. Nobody wants to think their service was in vain,” says Hoffman. His response to what he would say to Mr. Bush is simple, “I would look him straight in the eye and ask him ‘why?’ And I would hold him there and make him answer me. He never has to deal with us one on one. I dare him to talk to any of us like that, one on one, and give us an answer.” Hoffman then adds, “What about the 3 year old Iraqi girl who is now an orphan with diseases and nightmares for the rest of her life for what we did? And the people who orchestrated this don’t have to pay anything. How many times are my children going to have to go through this? Our only choice is to fight this to try to stop it from happening again.” Earlier this same day Mr. Bush said, “We cannot leave this task half finished, we must take it all the way to the end.” However, Charlie Anderson, another Iraq veteran, had strong words for Bush. After discussing how the background radiation in Baghdad is now five times the normal rate-the equivalent of having 3 chest x-rays an hour, he said, “These are not accidents-the DU [Depleted Uraniaum]-it’s important for people to understand this-the use of DU and its effects are by design. These are very carefully engineered and orchestrated incidents.” While the entire group nods in agreement and two other soldiers stand up to shake his hand, Anderson says firmly, “You subverted us, you destroyed our lives, you owe us. I want your resignation in my hand in the next five minutes. Get packin’ Georgie.” Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/ and website www.allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- death penalty Supreme Court's Stevens criticizes death penalty use Posted 8/7/2005 12:06 AM USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-07-aba-stevens_x.htm CHICAGO (AP) — Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens issued an unusually stinging criticism of capital punishment Saturday evening, telling lawyers that he was disturbed by "serious flaws." Stevens stopped short of calling for an end to the death penalty, but he said there are many problems in the way it is used. Recent exonerations of death row inmates through scientific evidence are significant, he told the American Bar Association, "not only because of its relevance to the debate about the wisdom of continuing to administer capital punishment, but also because it indicates that there must be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice." Other Supreme Court justices, including Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have also spoken out about concerns that defendants in murder cases are not adequately represented at trial. But Stevens, 85, made a much harsher and sweeping condemnation. He said the jury selection process and the fact that many trial judges are elected also work against accused murderers. He also said that jurors might be improperly swayed by victim-impact statements. Stevens, named to the high court by President Ford in 1975, is one of the most liberal justices. In recent years he has been influential in votes that barred states from executing mentally retarded killers and those who were juveniles when they committed their crimes. The Supreme Court frequently splits 5-4 in capital cases, and often O'Connor is the pivotal vote. O'Connor, 75, announced last month that she was retiring, and Stevens told lawyers that her departure was "sad news for me." "It's really a very, very wrenching experience," he said. President Bush has nominated as her successor appeals court judge John Roberts, a former lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administration who would likely make the court more conservative. Stevens made his exceptionally frank and surprising comments in Illinois, his home state and a place that has been roiled by controversy over the death penalty. In 2000, wrongful convictions led then-Gov. George Ryan to halt all executions. It also came just a day after a Virginia jury decided against the inmate whose case led to the 2002 ban on executing the mentally retarded. The jury said Daryl Atkins was mentally competent and could be put to death. The judge immediately scheduled a December execution date. Stevens' audience included his wife and Cecilia Marshall, widow of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, the Supreme Court's first black member before retiring in 1991, was a critic of the death penalty and argued that it was unconstitutional under any circumstances. "Since his retirement, with the benefit of DNA evidence, we have learned that a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed erroneously," Stevens said during a dinner named for Marshall. He said Supreme Court cases have revealed that "a significant number of defendants in capital cases have not been provided with fully competent legal representation at trial." In addition, Stevens said he had reviewed records that showed "special risks of unfairness" in capital punishment. Juries might not be balanced because people who have qualms about capital punishment can be excluded by prosecutors, he said. And he questioned whether potential jurors are distracted by extensive questions about their views on the death penalty. In addition, Stevens said a statement from a victim's family sometimes "serves no purpose other than to encourage jurors to decide in favor of death rather than life on the basis of their emotions rather than their reason." -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars The A-Bomb as lifesaver By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist | August 7, 2005 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/07/the_a_bomb_as_lifesaver?mode=PF THE 60TH anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has arrived with little of the fury that accompanied the 50th. A decade ago, a bruising battle broke out over the Smithsonian Institution's plan for an exhibit suggesting that the American use of atomic weapons had been a racist war crime and served no legitimate military aim. With a restored Enola Gay -- the B-29 that delivered the first bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 -- as a centerpiece, the Smithsonian's curators had intended to tell a story of American brutality and Japanese victimhood. ''For most Americans," their original script declared, ''this war was fundamentally different from the one waged against Germany and Italy -- it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism." Such slanted revisionism pervaded the text, which The Washington Post rightly summed up as ''incredibly propagandistic and intellectually shabby." To convey the human suffering in the Pacific theater, for instance, museum officials selected 103 photographs -- 96 depicting Japanese victims, seven of Americans. By contrast, of the 70 photos that showed armed combatants, 65 were of Americans, only five of Japanese. While the original script quoted just one (anonymous) Japanese statement of anti-American hostility, it included no fewer than 10 American expressions of enmity toward Japan. Comparing the two ''home fronts," the script sketched an America of high wages, Frank Sinatra, and entrenched racism, while Japan was described in terms of hungry children, noble kamikaze pilots, and imported slave labor made necessary by ''severe manpower shortages." Not surprisingly, the proposed exhibit evoked furious protests from veterans groups, military historians, and Congress, and after months of controversy the Smithsonian agreed to scrap its tendentious account. When the Enola Gay finally went on display, the accompanying text played the history straight. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ''destroyed much of the two cities and caused many tens of thousands of deaths," it noted. ''However, the use of the bombs led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. Such an invasion, especially if undertaken for both main islands, would have led to very heavy casualties among Americans, Allied, and Japanese armed forces and Japanese civilians." Ten years later, the revisionists are still going strong. An article in the radical journal CounterPunch, for example, labels the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ''the worst terror attacks in history," and trots out the old canard that their real purpose was to intimidate the Soviet Union. But the vast majority of Americans who lived through World War II would have regarded such glib judgments as preposterous. Paul Fussell, the historian and literary critic, spoke for millions when he titled his famous essay on the end of the Pacific war ''Thank God for the Atom Bomb." Like countless young men in August 1945, Fussell was waiting to be shipped off to Asia for the planned invasion of Japan. He didn't expect to survive it. The fighting in Okinawa and Iwo Jima had already resulted in a horrific bloodbath and that was but a fraction of the toll that could be expected in the battle for Japan itself. ''On Okinawa, only weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other," Fussell wrote. A 21-year-old infantry officer, he had already been wounded twice in Europe; ''the very idea of more combat made me breathe in gasps and shake all over." So when the atom bombs were dropped, ''we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all." More than ever before, the historical record confirms what those soldiers knew in their gut: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hideous as they were, shortened the war that Japan had begun and saved an immensity of lives. Far from considering itself essentially defeated, the Japanese military was preparing for an Allied assault with a massive buildup in the south. It was only the shock of the atomic blasts that enabled Japanese leaders who wanted to stop the fighting to successfully press for a surrender. ''We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war," Kido Koichi, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, later recalled. Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief Cabinet secretary, called the bomb ''a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." That is still the right way to see it. President Truman's decision to use the new weapons stopped a war that would otherwise have raged savagely on, and made possible the transformation of Japan from vicious aggressor to peaceful democracy. Six decades after August 1945, it is clear: The bomb made the world a better place. Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com. -------- ENERGY Nuclear energy can't solve global warming Other remedies 7 times more beneficial Mark Hertsgaard Sunday, August 7, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/07/ING95E1VQ71.DTL During a public lecture in San Francisco last month, Jared Diamond, the mega-selling author of "Guns, Germs and Steel,'' became the latest and most prominent environmental intellectual to endorse nuclear power as a necessary response to global warming. Addressing an overflow crowd at the Cowell Theater about why some societies fail and others don't (the theme of his most recent book, "Collapse''), Diamond three times cited global warming as a threat that could ruin modern civilization. During the question period, he was asked if he agreed with Stewart Brand, whose Long Now Foundation was sponsoring the lecture, that global warming posed such a grave threat that humanity had to embrace nuclear power. It was a delicate moment, because Brand, the former editor of the Whole Earth Catalogue, was on stage with Diamond. "I did not know that Stewart Brand said that," Diamond replied. "But yes, to deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power." Nuclear, he added, should simply be "done carefully, like they do in France, where there have been no accidents." "I did not expect that answer," Brand said. Neither, it seemed, did much of the audience. Overwhelmingly white and affluent, they had nodded reverentially at everything Diamond said -- about the self-destructiveness of ancient civilizations that leveled forests (Easter Island) or eroded soils (the Mayans) in pursuit of short-term gain, about the need for America to rethink its "core value" of consumerism if it hopes to survive. They had applauded when Diamond mocked President Bush's see-no-evil approach to environmental protection. Yet here was Diamond urging an expansion of nuclear power, a technology most environmentalists regard as irredeemably evil. "Deal with it," crowed Brand as the crowd sat in stunned silence. It was smug but useful advice, for this debate is bound to intensify. The Bush administration and much of Congress are pushing hard to revive the nuclear industry, which provides 20 percent of America's electricity but has not had a new reactor order since 1974. In June, Bush became the first president in 26 years to visit a nuclear power plant, the Calvert Cliffs facility near Washington, D.C., where he endorsed nuclear as an "environmentally friendly" energy source. His administration's 2006 budget increased nuclear power funding by 5 percent, even as it cut overall energy funding. Congress followed suit in its recent energy bill. Besides giving the nuclear industry $7 billion in research-and-development subsidies and $7.3 billion in tax breaks, the bill contains unlimited taxpayer-backed loan guarantees and insurance protection for new reactors. Diamond may not agree with Bush about much, but their shared support for nuclear power hints at the other factor that will drive the future debate. As the United States experiences more killer heat waves and out-of season hurricanes like this summer's, more Americans will recognize what the rest of the world has long accepted: Global warming is here, it will get worse, and the costs will be enormous. As we cast about for alternatives to the carbon- based fuels that are cooking our planet, nuclear power seems to be an obvious answer. As Vice President Dick Cheney observed in 2001 when defending the administration's energy plan, which urged constructing hundreds of new nuclear plants, fission produces no greenhouse gases. But the truth is that nuclear power is a weakling in combatting global warming. Investing in a nuclear revival would make our global warming predicament worse, not better. The reasons have little to do with nuclear safety, which may be why environmentalists tend to overlook them. Environmentalists center their critique on safety concerns: Nuclear reactors can suffer meltdowns from malfunctions or terrorist attacks; radioactivity is released in all phases of the nuclear production cycle from uranium mining through fission; the problem of waste disposal still hasn't been solved; civilian nuclear programs can spur weapons proliferation. But absent a Chernobyl-scale disaster, such arguments may not prove to be decisive. In an atmosphere of desperation over how to keep our TVs, computers and refrigerators humming in a globally warmed world, economic considerations will dominate. This is especially so when dissident greens like Diamond and Brand say nuclear safety is a solvable problem. Diamond is correct that France has generated most of its electricity from nuclear power for decades without a major mishap. Dissident greens concede there are risks to nuclear power. But those risks, they say, are less than the alternatives. Coal, the world's major electricity source, kills thousands of people a year right now through air pollution and mining accidents. Coal is also the main driver of climate change, which is on track to kill millions of people in the 21st century -- not in the sudden bang of radioactive explosions but the gradual whimper of environmental collapse as soaring temperatures and rising seas submerge cities, parch farmlands, crash ecosystems and spread disease and chaos worldwide. Fear of such an apocalypse led the British scientist James Loveluck to become the first prominent environmentalist to endorse nuclear power as a global warming remedy, in 2003. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace (who left the group a decade ago), soon echoed Loveluck's apostasy, as did Hugh Montefiore, a board member of Friends of the Earth, UK. All three were criticized by fellow greens. Likewise in the United States, the movement's major organizations remain adamantly anti-nuclear. But environmentalists on both sides of this argument are overlooking the strongest objection to nuclear power, even as the nuclear industry hopes no one notices it. The objection is rooted in energy economics, hence the oversight. As energy economist Joseph Romm argued in a blog exchange with Brand, "It is too often the case that experts on the environment think they know a lot about energy, but they don't." The case against nuclear power as a global warming remedy begins with the fact that nuclear-generated electricity is very expensive. Despite more than $150 billion in federal subsides over the past 60 years (roughly 30 times more than solar, wind and other renewable energy sources have received), nuclear power costs substantially more than electricity made from wind, coal, oil or natural gas. This is mainly due to the cost of borrowing money for the decade or more it usually takes to get a nuclear plant up and running. Remarkably, this inconvenient fact does not deter industry officials from boasting that nuclear is the cheapest power available. Their trick is to count only the cost of operating the plants, not of constructing them. By that logic, a Rolls-Royce is cheap to drive because the gasoline but not the sticker price matters. The marketplace, however, sees through such blarney. As Amory Lovins, the soft energy guru who directs the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado think tank that advises corporations and governments on energy use, points out, "Nowhere (in the world) do market-driven utilities buy, or private investors finance, new nuclear plants." Only large government intervention keeps the nuclear option alive. A second strike against nuclear is that it produces only electricity, but electricity amounts to only one third of America's total energy use (and less of the world's). Nuclear power thus addresses only a small fraction of the global warming problem, and has no effect whatsoever on two of the largest sources of carbon emissions: driving vehicles and heating buildings. The upshot is that nuclear power is seven times less cost-effective at displacing carbon than the cheapest, fastest alternative -- energy efficiency, according to studies by the Rocky Mountain Institute. For example, a nuclear power plant typically costs at least $2 billion. If that $2 billion were instead spent to insulate drafty buildings, purchase hybrid cars or install super-efficient lightbulbs and clothes dryers, it would make unnecessary seven times more carbon consumption than the nuclear power plant would. In short, energy efficiency offers a much bigger bang for the buck. In a world of limited capital, investing in nuclear power would divert money away from better responses to global warming, thus slowing the world's withdrawal from carbon fuels at a time when speed is essential. Mainstream environmentalists do argue that energy efficiency, solar, wind and other renewable fuels are better weapons against global warming than nuclear is. But they will fare better if they go a step further and point out that embracing nuclear is not just unnecessary but a step backward. Even so, a tough fight lies ahead. As the energy bill illustrates, the nuclear industry has many friends in high places. And the case for nuclear power will strengthen if its economics improve. The key to lower nuclear costs is to reduce construction times, which could happen if the industry at last adopts standardized reactors and the Bush or a future administration streamlines the plant approval process. On a more fundamental level, any defeat of nuclear power is likely to be short-lived if America does not confront what Diamond calls its core value of consumerism. After all, there is only so much waste to wring out of any given economy. Eventually, if human population and appetites keep growing -- and some growth is inevitable, given the ambitions of China and other newly industrializing nations -- new sources of energy must be exploited. At that point, nuclear power and other undesirable alternatives such as shale oil will be waiting. (For the record, that is Brand's rejoinder: future demand growth makes nuclear, as well as efficiency and renewables, necessary. Diamond did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.) Environmentalists have been afraid to talk honestly about consumerism ever since a cardigan-clad Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for urging people to turn down their thermostats in the 1979 oil crisis. But now that our species, through our carbon-fueled pursuit of the good life, has turned up the planet's thermostat to ominous levels, it's time to break the silence. We don't have to freeze in the dark, but neither can we keep consuming as if there's no tomorrow. Mark Hertsgaard's books include "Nuclear Inc." and "Earth Odyssey." Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com. -------- ACTIVISTS Soldier's mother keeps protest vigil at Bush ranch By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 8/7/2005 10:58 PM http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-06-bush-protest_x.htm CRAWFORD, Texas — Biting bugs. Baking sun. The cold shoulder from residents. To Cindy Sheehan, they're just obstacles to overcome in her quest to meet with President Bush at his ranch here. The mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., is camping near the president's ranch. She's set up on a narrow strip of land between the hardtop of Prairie Chapel Road and a drainage ditch. "I plan on staying here the entire month of August or until he comes out to talk to me," she says. Bush is spending five weeks at his ranch. Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Baghdad on April 4, 2004, five days after he arrived in Iraq. An Eagle Scout who trained as a Humvee mechanic, he volunteered to help bring in soldiers wounded in an ambush. He died after his convoy came under attack. Bush met with the Sheehan family and other families of fallen troops in June 2004 at Fort Lewis near Seattle. Cindy Sheehan has said she didn't get across to Bush how misguided she believes his policies are, so she decided to act against him. Sheehan has been involved in protests against Bush since last year. She founded Gold Star Families for Peace, described on its Web site as made up of "families of soldiers who have died as a result of war." She helped form a political group that ran TV ads in the fall of 2004 asking people to vote against Bush. The ads were picked up by MoveOn.org, an anti-Bush group, and were broadcast in several states. She tried to crash a Bush fundraiser in St. Petersburg, Fla., in October. And she spoke around the country against the war, including at a protest in Washington before the election in which anti-war activists carried cardboard coffins to Arlington National Cemetery. After Bush was re-elected, she joined protesters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington who turned their backs on his motorcade during his inaugural parade. She said she decided to seek another audience with Bush when she heard his comments about the war last week, after a spike in American deaths. The fallen men and women "died in a noble cause," Bush said Wednesday. "Their families can know that we will honor their loved ones' sacrifice by completing the mission." Sheehan said she wants to tell Bush not to use her son's death as a reason to continue the war, and to ask "why (Bush's twin daughters) Jenna and Barbara and the other children of the architects of this disastrous war are not in harm's way, if the cause is so noble." She is being supported by the Crawford Peace House, which has facilitated about two dozen protests in the town since 2002. Bush's deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley met with Sheehan about 45 minutes at her campsite Saturday afternoon, but Sheehan remained dissatisfied. She said Hadley told her the president "really cares" about men and women in uniform. "And I said, 'You can't tell me that because I've met with him and I know that he doesn't care,' " she told CNN. "I think they thought I'd be very impressed and intimidated that these two high-level officials came to talk to this little grieving mother and that I'd leave," she said. ---- Muslim leader calls for end to Iraq war at Australian Hiroshima rally MELBOURNE (AFP) Aug 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050807071219.yzholo8q.html A Somali-born Islamic cleric on Sunday used a rally commemorating the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to call for an end to the United States-led war in Iraq. Sheikh Issa Musse told the 500 people gathered in the southern Australian city of Melbourne that Australia should pull its troops out of Iraq. The imam at the city mosque in West Melbourne also likened America's wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to the use of atomic weaponry against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. "It is ironic that since 1945 the Americans are still dropping bombs," he said. "How many people have died as a result of American intervention in the world? Countless, countless people have died. "What we are witnessing is peace being removed from the lives of people, my fellow Australians. We believe the struggle goes on to bring back peace to the world." Musse said Canberra's decision to deploy hundreds of troops to Iraq had hurt Australia's global standing. "We say to the Australian government to bring our troops home very, very soon... we want our country to be respected," he said. "We have to continue to tell the superpower to shrink from aggressiveness and occupying other people's land." The Melbourne rally followed those attended by hundreds of Australians around the country on Saturday, including one in Sydney which attracted some 1,000 marchers and called for the end to the war in Iraq and to nuclear proliferation.