NucNews - August 27, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- canada Nuclear Renaissance Threatens Canada’s Green Future: Environmentalists By Matthew Little Epoch Times Calgary Staff Aug 27, 2005 http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-8-27/31654.html Provincial and federal governments are looking to spend big bucks on refurbishing Canada’s aging fleet of nuclear reactors. Critics of the controversial energy source say such investment lacks vision and is unnecessary if governments encourage energy conservation and new technologies. At the recent council of the federal meetings in Banff, Alberta, Canada’s Premiers discussed, among other things, Canada’s energy prospects. New Brunswick Bernard Lord sought support from his peers for a national nuclear energy strategy. Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty also expressed interest in the nuclear energy option. Critics say such a strategy is a mistake. “It’s just a very slow-burning nuclear bomb that boils water,” says John Bennet of the Sierra Club Canada. “It’s about the most round-about, inefficient and environmentally dangerous way to boil water that has ever been conceived.” Canada’s nuclear industry earned a bad name through the 80s and 90s after many CANDU reactors had premature efficiency drops and technical failures. In 1997, Ontario shut down its seven oldest reactors because of safety concerns and poor performance. It was the largest long-term nuclear shutdown by any nuclear utility in the world. Ontario’s nuclear reactors are also blamed for bankrupting Ontario Hydro and leaving Ontario residents to pay $20 billion in stranded debt. But all that has changed, says Dale Coffin of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), builder of the CANDU reactor. “Right now, the CANDU six line of our technology, which is our newest line of reactors, are among the top performing technologies in the world. In fact we have 3 stations that are in the top ten performance-wise in the world.” Coffin says comparing the old reactors to the new is like comparing a black and white television to a high definition plasma TV. None of the new reactors—built in Korea and elsewhere—have been on-line long enough to see what their final performance will be. But even without cost overruns, Canadians are still sensitive about the by-products of nuclear energy – highly radioactive used fuel bundles that remain lethal to humans for a million years. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a self-proclaimed neutral-on-nuclear-use organization funded by Canada’s three nuclear utilities, has been asked to give the federal government a nuclear waste management strategy that is palatable for Canadians. The organization asked 15,000 Canadians what they could accept in terms nuclear waste and found safety and security were non-negotiable. The organization is recommending an “adaptive phased approach” that would see nuclear waste be buried deep underground and monitored for 300 years. The cost? $24.4-billion. “Canadians are hopeful there might be new technology that might render [the waste] less harmful to humans and the environment [in the future]” said organization spokesperson Mike Krizanc. There is also hope the waste may become a valuable resource to future generations. Currently however, the waste is simply a liability. Besides risks to humans and the environment, spent fuel bundles can also be used to create dirty nuclear bombs. The issue of nuclear energy use heated up with the recent announcement that New Brunswick will spend $1.4 billion dollars to refurbish their Point Lepreau reactor. The reactor generates nearly a third of New Brunswick’s electricity. Marc Belliveau, director of communication for the department of energy in New Brunswick says the refurbishment is unlikely to go over budget like the Pickering Stations, which are three and five years behind schedule and four and five times over-budget. Belliveau says the province decided to go forward with the refurbishment after AECL agreed to cover a portion of potential cost overruns this time around. AECL is the crown corporation that first built the reactor at cost overruns of 300 percent in 1983 and is heaviy subsidized by the federal government. New Brunswick is also looking into energy efficiency projects and wind power. “By 2016, 33 percent of energy use in New Brunswick will come from renewable energy, [We’re] taking more and more steps on wind energy and looking into tidal energy…. We’re also looking into making changes to acts that make it necessary to have more energy efficient appliances.” New Brunswick will also create an energy efficiency organization funded by the provincial utility company. The new organization will aim to reduce energy use through efficiency programs. Critics of nuclear energy, like Dave Martin, Energy coordinator for Greenpeace Canada, aren’t buying New Brunswick’s pledge to energy reform. “I’ve heard all this before and the fact is if a utility makes an overwhelming investment in nuclear power, that money will not be spent on either conservation or renewables.” Martin suggests that old-style utility companies have a hard time adapting to the decentralized nature of conservation efforts. While the companies are very good at developing large centralized generating stations, they have a harder time adapting programs that depend on “thousands of small efforts, sometimes tens or hundreds of thousands of small efforts.” Martin is concerned that by investing large amounts of money in nuclear energy, New Brunswick will be less inclined to move towards conservation. The refurbishment may even be unnecessary. In 2002 the Sierra club commissioned a study of Canada’s energy use and found that with conservation and energy efficient technologies that were already marketable on a large scale, Canada could easily meet Kyoto protocols and eliminate nuclear and coal-based energy use. “If we approach [the energy issue] with the right technology and regulations, we don’t need these nuclear reactors,” says John Bennet, Director of Climate Change and Energy for the Sierra Club of Canada. Bennet notes that although there could be some problems with the west to east electricity transmission, with wider use of new technologies like co-generation, Canada could still maintain all exports of electricity and gas. Bennet says provincial governments need to legislate better building standards for new homes. This would include better insulation and energy-efficient appliances. Currently the average refrigerator uses one third of a home’s electricity and new energy efficient fridges could cut that down by half. Home builders have resisted any proposed legislation saying it could hurt the market, an argument that seems less reasonable as real-estate prices continue to rise and the cost of better houses is around $5000. “It doesn’t cost anything to be more efficient, we do have to make some investment, but when you make that investment … it pays off in a return,” says Bennet. Martin agrees. He recently invested $10,000 dollars refitting his home with a solar hot water system. He says the system will pay for itself in ten years. His last gas bill was under $3. While admitting it was summer and he was not paying for heating he says that gas use covered his gas clothes dryer, stove, oven and barbeque. However, there are obstacles to the acceptance of these new technologies. “Even though it makes economic sense and you save money with the technology [such as compact fluorescent light bulbs], most people don’t buy them because you have to put up more money upfront.” To usher in the popular use of these new technologies, new-energy proponents say Canadians need regulatory help, incentives and systems to finance energy efficient technology. In Martin’s case, the solar hot water system could have been financed by a green energy corporation while he was billed slightly less than his regular gas bill. After 10 years the system would be paid for, including interest on the loan. “Conservation and energy efficiency technologies make sense and save money,” says Martin. “It’s not just about being altruistic about the environment.” -------- russia Progress reported on securing Russian nuclear warheads - David Holley, Los Angeles Times Saturday, August 27, 2005 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/27/MNGHKEE6KO1.DTL Moscow -- Joint U.S.-Russian efforts to boost security against potential terrorist attacks on Russian storage sites for nuclear warheads have accelerated in recent months, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said here Friday. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., credited the stepped-up pace of activity to a new commitment by Russian President Vladimir Putin after a February summit with President Bush in Bratislava, Slovakia. "We've had an agreement for inspections at the warhead storage sites that has broken the logjam of misunderstanding there," Lugar said at a news conference. "This is an important breakthrough." Under the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, the United States has spent billions of dollars to help destroy nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles, bombers, submarines and other weapons in former Soviet states. But efforts to work together to ensure that terrorists cannot obtain nuclear weapons by raiding Russian storage facilities have been largely stymied by Russian unwillingness to allow U.S. monitoring of how American taxpayer money would be used to upgrade security, Lugar said at the news conference and in a subsequent interview. In June, however, the Russians presented the United States with a list of 25 to 30 nuclear warhead storage sites and said three U.S. inspections would be allowed at each, Lugar said. "Terrorists have become tougher," Lugar said. "This is a Russian-American response to toughen the targets, too." Lugar said that until the February summit, "things were, if not on dead center, certainly not going very fast in this area." "I think that President Bush and President Putin, taking a look at the war on terror -- and this is the point we're making anecdotally about how terrorists sometimes are becoming more proficient in their craft -- I think the two presidents recognized we needed to upgrade so we were more proficient in our protection," Lugar said. "The Russians in the past had placed severe limitations upon inspection of the storage sites, so this was an important breakthrough," he added. "The Russians in essence are saying, 'Your privileges to inspect are not unlimited, but at least you have three opportunities.' " Lugar is in Russia with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to visit several sites associated with the program. ---- U.S. focuses on Russian WMD By Jeff Zeleny Chicago Tribune correspondent Sat Aug 27, 9:40 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/chitribts/20050827/ts_chicagotrib/usfocusesonrussianwmd The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and its newest member, Barack Obama of Illinois, began a weeklong tour of former Cold War weapons sites Friday to inspect the progress of dismantlement and highlight what they fear is a growing global threat from stolen nuclear material. Poor security at aging nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities across the former Soviet Union has been a longstanding worry. But Lugar said he was encouraged that Russia recently agreed to open warhead sites to three U.S. inspections, which would allow for specialized training, stronger oversight and a better idea of what risks lie inside. "It has broken a logjam of misunderstanding," said Lugar, who for more than a decade has been traveling here at least once a year to measure the advances that countries have made in eliminating their nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. "This was an important breakthrough." Sen. Obama's first foreign trip Obama, making his first foreign trip as a senator, said until the weapons were destroyed or properly safeguarded, the U.S and other nations were vulnerable to a nuclear attack. Neither the government nor the public, he said, views the threat with sufficient urgency. "People can sort of put it off, and it's not confronting you day-to-day in an immediate sort of way," Obama said. "The consequence of inaction can be enormous, but I think it's one of those issues where until it's too late, you don't see a problem." Obama, a Democrat, and Lugar, a Republican, also will travel to Ukraine and Azerbaijan. And they will meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair next week in London. Lugar, along with former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, authored the Nunn-Lugar Act in 1991 to begin dismantling large stockpiles of weapons in the former Soviet Union. Since then, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has deactivated or destroyed nearly 7,000 nuclear warheads and hundreds of missiles and bombers. But nearly 15 years after Nunn-Lugar, some goals of the program have not been realized, and funding has fallen short. The Russian government has given security upgrades to only a dozen weapon sites, officials said, leaving the majority of locations untouched and their weapons not properly cataloged. "The Russian government is in denial to the nuclear threats that exist everywhere," said Laura Holgate, who managed portions of the Nunn-Lugar program at the Pentagon and Department of Energy during the Clinton administration. "They think that everything is fine in Russia, that no one could possibly steal from us." Nonetheless, Lugar said he started the tour Friday with a "sense of goodwill," though he acknowledged numerous challenges with Russian officials. "There were years where the friendship was up or the friendship was down," he said, "but this has been a program that has been solid in terms of our understanding." Although a new economy was born in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government hasn't invested much in dismantling weapons. At a news conference in Moscow, Lugar was asked why it is still necessary for the U.S. to carry the bulk of the program's expense. U.S. responsibility "That question is raised frequently by members of the House and Senate of the United States and probably by a number of American taxpayers who would hope that perhaps Russia would assume more and more of the responsibility and expense," Lugar said. "It's true that at this point the Russians have not been forthcoming with the level of funds that would maintain the pace of the programs, so we are going to be visiting about that." The weapons dismantlement, he said, is too significant to change course. "Being involved in cooperative reduction really implies expense on our part, which we had felt, in terms of the United States security, was money well spent," Lugar said. "And we think the momentum of the program is important to continue." Another topic of joint concern between the two countries, Obama said, is trying to prevent the spread of the avian flu. So far, the disease has killed about 60 people in Asia, and health experts warn that the strain could be spreading to Russia. Obama, who several months ago was among the first U.S. senators to raise concern about avian flu, said he fears it is becoming a pandemic. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- nevada Lawmakers go on nuclear waste tour at Nevada facility CNA , LOS ANGELES Saturday, Aug 27, 2005, Page 3 Taipei Times http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/08/27/2003269336 A group of Taiwanese legislators paid a visit to a permanent nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada Thursday in an effort to collect tips on handling radioactive waste. Accompanied by officials from the US Department of Energy, the lawmakers, headed by Legislator Chiu Yung-jen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), spent several hours touring the Yucca Mountain Repository, located about 160km northwest of Las Vegas, and being briefed by the facility's authorities. According to these authorities, the nuclear waste dump is built in an area not only far from densely populated cities but also an area where geological conditions is stable, making it suitable for storage of hazardous materials. So far, they said, the Department of Energy has spent US$8 billion developing the underground dump, which is planned to be fully completed in 10 years. After it is finished, the Yucca Mountain Repository will be used to store all nuclear reactors and radioactive waste that is currently stored in 131 smaller facilities scattered across the US. It is estimated that it will remain safe for 10,000 years. Nuclear power plants provide about 20 percent of the electricity used in the US. Chiu said the visit by the legislators, all members of the Legislative Yuan's Science and Information Technology Committee, is aimed at emulating the US experience and working out a policy that will solve Taiwan's nuclear waste problems once and for all. State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) has in recent years prepared to remove over 97,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste from Lanyu (??), which lies off the southeastern Taiwan coast, as the lease on its storage site has expired. The waste, produced by Taipower's three nuclear power plants over 20 years, is scheduled to be inspected and repacked by the end of 2010. Taipower has contacted authorities from home and abroad for the treatment and disposal of its nuclear waste over the past several years, including Russia, North Korea and Taiwan's outlying islet of Wuchiu. After the visit to Yucca Mountain, Chiu and his group proceeded to the Hoover Dam, also in Nevada, to see whether Taiwan can borrow any ideas from the dam that can help Taiwan streamline water conservation and related efforts. -------- washington Construction slowdown on Hanford plant worries industry insiders By SHANNON DININNY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER Saturday, August 27, 2005 · Last updated 12:43 p.m. PT http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WST%20Hanford%20Problems RICHLAND, Wash. -- Amid blowing dust and miles of sagebrush, giant construction cranes sat still one recent day at the Hanford nuclear reservation - silent sentinels over the government's largest construction project. The goal is to build a plant to treat highly radioactive waste left from Cold War-era nuclear weapons production. Achievement is a long way off. The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages the south-central Washington site, has encountered an endless stream of problems with the project since the contract was first awarded in 1998. Billions of taxpayer dollars already have been spent, yet the project is only about 30 percent complete. Now, the U.S. Department of Energy plans to slow construction following a new seismic study that found the federal government had underestimated the impact a severe earthquake could have on the plant. Agency officials have repeatedly refused to say how much the price tag - already at $5.8 billion - will rise or when the plant may open as a result. Regardless, industry insiders contend problems with the Hanford plant come with repercussions far beyond rural Washington state. "This plant is the world's largest and most expensive environmental remediation project, and there's a lot of focus and attention in Congress on DOE's ability to manage this project," said Tom Carpenter, nuclear oversight program director for the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower group that has been critical of the Energy Department. "If this project were to fail, I think Congress would finally recognize this is the wrong agency to manage these types of projects," Carpenter said. "There's just too much at stake to continue on a failure path." The waste treatment plant has long been considered the cornerstone of cleanup at the highly contaminated Hanford site, which was created in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Using a process called vitrification, the plant will turn decades-old radioactive waste into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste repository. The waste, about 53 million gallons, is brewing in 177 aging underground tanks at Hanford. Nearly 150 of the tanks have a single-wall construction, some of which are known to have leaked into the aquifer, threatening groundwater and the Columbia River less than 10 miles away. Many tanks have outlived their design life, which makes retrieval of the waste a top priority. "Without the vit plant, we don't clean up Hanford," said Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology. "The problem is going to get worse. It's not going to get better. The plant is the critical step that has to happen." The one-of-a-kind plant is massive: Once completed it will stand 12 stories tall and be the size of four football fields. Its problems have been large, as well. The operating deadline already has been pushed back three times from the original deadline of 1999, with another delay likely. The Energy Department has levied fines against and withheld part of the fee for contractor Bechtel National over safety concerns. A watchdog group released a report last year concluding that the plant has a 50 percent chance of a chemical or radiological accident - a report the Energy Department disputed. Critics argue the current slowdown could have been avoided if the federal government had conducted a more thorough seismic review. Three years ago, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised concerns that the agency's seismic review was inadequate. In addition the plant is being designed as it is being built - the design is about 75 percent complete - a method that has proven costly. The price tag on the plant has grown from $4.3 billion to the current $5.8 billion, and Energy Department officials have said the cost will grow at least an additional 10 percent due to the seismic issue and other construction problems. Congress has estimated the new cost could be as high as $10 billion - a number closer to the $15.2 billion estimate former contractor BNFL Inc. proposed in 2000. The Energy Department fired the company shortly thereafter, pushing the operating deadline from 2007 to the current 2011. The latest slowdown leaves state officials believing the problem is more about money than safety. This is the fourth try for the plant, Manning said, and every time the cost goes up, the federal government decides to go back to the drawing board and revisit the approach. Manning said he understands that new Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman does not want to have to go to Congress twice to explain the rising cost of the plant. But giving elected officials another chance to question the viability of the project is dangerous, he said. "What we really have heartburn with is stopping construction or even significantly slowing it down," Manning said. "This would be a colossal waste of taxpayer money if we were to change course dramatically or abandon this plant entirely. It would be the absolute worst thing we could do." Abandoning the waste treatment plant is not an option, said Joonhong Ahn, associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. The waste needs to be removed and treated for long-term storage, and the process needs to happen at Hanford because of the large volume and high radioactivity of the waste, he said. "DOE's hand is full," he said. Energy Department officials have said they remain committed to the plant. Mistakes may have been made, but only a review can determine that, and a slowdown will allow the design process to get further ahead of construction, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said in an interview with The Associated Press during a recent visit to Hanford. "Stopping the construction is only going to cost money, so I don't think that's a credible criticism of what's going on," Sell said. "The dollars matter, but we are not going to build an unsafe plant." At the same time, Sell said he understands the heightened scrutiny. With nuclear waste cleanup remaining a hot topic in environmental communities - and the Bush administration seeking additional nuclear plants to diversify the nation's power supply - the Hanford plant's role in national policy becomes even more dear. "This project is central to our success in environmental cleanup, not just here at Hanford, but around the country. It is central to the success of this department in demonstrating that we can build major nuclear facilities at a reasonable cost and a reasonable schedule. That is something we have not historically done well," Sell said. On the Net: Hanford nuclear site: http://www.hanford.gov Washington state Department of Ecology: http://www.ecy.wa.gov Government Accountability Project: http://www.whistleblower.org -------- MILITARY -------- mideast Egypt police hit by landmine in Sinai Saturday 27 August 2005 Reuters http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A2104F4A-DEC4-406E-9C7C-CA38A3098FED.htm A landmine has damaged an Egyptian police vehicle in northern Sinai, injuring a police colonel and a civilian helping police track the group suspected of seven bombings in the area, a security source said. Saturday’s blast was the third in Sinai since police last week launched a large-scale search operation for the group, thought to be Sinai Bedouin under the influence of militants. The security sources, who asked not to be named, identified the officer as Lieutenant-Colonel Rushdi el-Sayed and the tracker as Hassan Eid, a Sinai Bedouin. The landmine exploded near Mount Halal, the area which has been at the centre of the search, the source added. Mount Halal is 892m high and about 60km south of the Mediterranean town of el Arish, the home area of several named bombing suspects. Red Sea bombings Police say they were looking for the remaining members of the group that killed 98 people in bombings in the Red Sea resorts of Taba in October and Sharm al-Shaikh in July. Landmine explosions in Sinai on Wednesday and Thursday damaged three police vehicles, killed two police officers and injured at least five officers and a civilian. Thousands of police with armoured vehicles are taking part in the operation, security sources said last week. Parts of Sinai still have landmines from wars between Egypt and Israel, but the number of explosions this week suggests the fugitives laid them recently, a security source said. Police held 34 local people for questioning on Friday, but it was not known whether they were part of the group, the source added. Social factors Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said the government was looking at social factors in north Sinai that might have contributed to inspiring people to become bombers in Sharm al-Shaikh. "We need to see why this happened and how this happened," he told Tuesday's New York Times. "Is it just people frustrated, or are they people with connections?" He said the authorities were working with two theories about who was behind the Sharm al-Shaikh bombings - that security forces were so aggressive after the Taba blasts that they prompted retaliation by locals or that the group had international connections such as to al-Qaida. -------- un Britain heads for clash with US Disagreement over America's bid to derail UN reform Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor Saturday August 27, 2005 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1557552,00.html Britain will join an international alliance to confront George Bush and salvage as much as possible of an ambitious plan to reshape the United Nations and tackle world poverty next week . The head-to-head in New York on Monday comes after the revelation that the US administration is proposing wholesale changes to crucial parts of the biggest overhaul of the UN since it was founded more than 50 years ago. A draft of that plan had included a review of progress on the UN's millennium development goals - poverty eradication targets set in 2000 for completion by 2015 - and the introduction of reforms aimed at repairing the damage done to the UN's reputation by Iraq, Rwanda and the Balkans. -------- ENERGY Quest for nuclear fusion in the forest By James Kanter International Herald Tribune SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 2005 http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/08/26/business/wbiter.php CADARACHE, France Scientists seeking to capture the power of the sun could soon stumble over one of humankind's earliest quarries - the wild boar - as they hunt for a new source of clean and abundant energy in this forest in southern France. Chestnut-haired pigs streak among the oak trees of Cadarache, at the confluence of Verdon and Durance rivers, 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, from Aix-en-Provence. Hunters gather two or three times a year to keep the animals' numbers in check, and some residents still decorate the outsides of their houses with hooves and tails as signs of boar-hunting prowess. But ever since President Charles de Gaulle designated Cadarache a center for atomic research in the late 1950s, the main business of the forest has been testing the nuclear reactors that supply France with 80 percent of its electricity. Now Cadarache is to be the site of one of the most ambitious scientific quests ever undertaken. Six partners - the European Union, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea - agreed in June to build a facility here called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER. The goal is to use nuclear fusion to reduce the world's reliance on fossil fuels and replace many existing nuclear power plants with far cleaner models powered by abundant materials found in the ocean. The choice of Cadarache was a victory for President Jacques Chirac, who led a determined campaign to beat rival bids from Spain and Japan. The project - worth about 10 billion, or $12.2 billion, over the next 30 years - is a shot in the arm for France, where unemployment is on the rise and national pride took a beating after losing a bid to host the Olympics to Britain. But for scientists at Cadarache, a project to create a source of virtually unlimited energy transcends national interest at a time when reserves of oil and gas are dwindling even as consumption rises, fueling global warming. "The situation today is one in which people even go to war over increasingly scarce supplies of petrol," said Pascal Garin, the ITER project leader at Cadarache. "We are modest engineers, but making the benefits of fusion available to humankind is powerful element for us to push this project forward." Scientists like Garin already know how to make a reactor like ITER work but say they need 15 years of further experiments to learn how to keep it running and to test materials under extreme conditions. All modern nuclear plants generate power through fission, splitting heavy uranium atoms. ITER will use a different process, fusion, which involves heating very lightweight atoms to around 150 million degrees Celsius - or 10 times the temperature of the sun. This process creates a "plasma" gas in which normally repelling particles combine and yield vast amounts of additional energy. By confining the hot plasma with powerful magnets, scientists aim to keep the process going in much the same way that the sun, confined by gravity, continues to burn in the shape of a ball. On Earth, the easiest way scientists generate fusion is by combining small amounts of deuterium, which is a form of the element hydrogen extracted from sea water, and tritium, produced by bombarding with radiation the element lithium, which is also found in sea water. Scientists say fusion could eventually be used to drive electrical turbines with steam. Fusion creates no greenhouse gases and produces far less hazardous waste than fission, although reactors do become radioactive and waste would still require special disposal. Scientists have already heated deuterium plasma and produced fusion lasting more than six minutes in a reactor at Cadarache called Tore Supra, a sort of mini-ITER. But that experiment yielded less energy than was used to trigger the reaction in the first place. Critics say ITER is destined to drain more power from the French electricity grid than it ever will produce. They also say it distracts from proven ways of producing power from renewable sources and discourages conservation. "There's a hidden message behind the ITER project," said Stéphane Lhomme of the French group Sortir du Nucléaire (Get Out of Nuclear). "That message is, 'Don't change any of your consumption patterns because you'll soon have unlimited amounts of free power.' That's a big gamble." But results from a reactor called JET, near Oxford, England, show that it is possible to extract nearly the same amount of energy used to reach fusion. With ITER, scientists aim to produce 500 megawatts, or 10 times the energy used to trigger and heat the plasma, over a period of nearly seven minutes - enough time, say scientists, to show that the burning plasma can sustain itself. Plans for ITER show a casing 28 meters, or 92 feet, wide in the form of a doughnut, with a metal chamber inside. Eighteen D-shaped magnets, each weighing about 450 tons, hug the tube in much the same way snow chains hug a car tire. Liquid helium will course through tiny, precision-engineered pipes inside the magnets to maintain their superconductive properties. ITER will be housed in a building 25 stories high, 18 stories above the forest floor. Massive components, including the magnets, will arrive by boat from other European countries and Japan at a port near Marseille and then move inland by barge. The final leg will be by road. The same engineering team that oversaw the shipment of parts for the new superjumbo Airbus passenger aircraft is helping to plan the required bridge and highway projects surrounding Cadarache. Some residents see the project as a boon. Aurore Paris, 27, works in a logistics company in Marseille but frequently helps her brother at his restaurant, the Palais de la Bière, in the town of Vinon-sur-Verdon, about seven kilometers from Cadarache. She is considering moving permanently to the area to take advantage of employment opportunities created by the influx of 1,000 scientists and their families. Other residents are more skeptical. Stéphane Bertusi, 36, foresees years of disturbances from construction and heavy-truck traffic, and he complains about skyrocketing property prices. Bertusi, who writes software for one of the laboratories at Cadarache, owns his home in the village nearest to ITER, Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, but said he could not afford to buy a new plot of land for his growing family. Rampant land speculation is a phenomenon that the mayor of Saint-Paul, Roger Pizot, attributes to buyers of second homes in sunny Provence rather than on ITER. Even so, the local authority has taken measures to control local land prices, steps that could help scientists from less prosperous countries like Russia afford to move in. Odette Navarro, 61, expects a flood of new customers at the Bar de la Mairie in Saint-Paul. But she warned that newcomers would probably have to wait if they wanted a table. Local zoning rules prevent her from expanding. "I won't see the benefits as I'm near retirement," Navarro said, "but this is important for the next generation." To win the right to have the reactor in Europe, the EU authorities gave Japan the right to appoint a director general and build additional test facilities in Japan. Those details still must be finalized during talks that are scheduled to begin this autumn. All the partners are free to use the knowledge gained at ITER to push forward with their own fusion power projects. Even then, proof that fusion will work commercially is not expected until at least 2020. Construction of power plants is unlikely to begin before 2050. With rising energy prices and continuing turmoil in oil-producing regions, pressures could grow to accelerate the timetable. "There are a certain number of people who favor a fast track, and a lot of scientists say we only need a single step after an experimental reactor before building an actual power station," said Pascale Amenc-Antoni, the director of Cadarache. "There will be further international discussions about this and certainly Japan will be given its chance" to lead ITER-related projects, she said. There are few obvious dangers in fusion. Reactions come in bursts and the introduction of any impurities in the plasma would stop the process immediately. But the antinuclear lobby in France has long warned of the danger of earthquakes from a fault line near Cadarache. Pizot, the mayor, who formerly worked at Cadarache as a maintenance engineer, dismissed those fears and said a nuclear reactor, because of its solid construction, would be the safest place to shelter during an earthquake. For Garin, the ITER project leader, the only real danger at Cadarache is likely to occur early in the morning and leaving late at night - when newcomers must be careful to avoid collisions on the roads with bolting wild boars. -------- OTHER -------- environment Parliament fails to silence protester Annoyed lawmakers' neglect leaves foe of British policies in Iraq free to bellow. By JONATHAN ALLEN The New York Times Saturday, August 27, 2005 http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/08/27/sections/news/iraq_transition/article_651398.php LONDON – It is just over four years since Brian Haw began camping across the street from Parliament to protest government policies in Iraq. Since then, his placard has blossomed into several dozen banners, sculptures and photo displays that stretch about 20 yards across the green at Parliament Square. Initially, his protest was directed at the impact on children of U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. After the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, supported by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, it became, as Haw sees it, a peace protest. Haw, 56, a former carpenter, may seem the embodiment of free speech to the tourists who photograph him. But some lawmakers saw it differently, complaining that his bullhorn was distracting them from their work. So, they designed a law requiring anyone wishing to demonstrate within roughly a half-mile radius to seek written permission at least six days in advance (24 hours in exceptional cases). Organizers of a rogue protest face up to 51 weeks in jail and a fine of up to the equivalent of $4,500. But the drafters neglected to make it retroactive, so Haw remains the only individual exempt from the new rules. Indeed, the law inspired a renewed burst of bullhorn activity as other people gather to protest the restrictions. "Parliament makes itself look utterly ridiculous when it claims to be the mother of parliaments and the cradle of democracy and yet tries to ban protests like Brian's," said Jeremy Corbyn, a legislator from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party, who opposed the new law. Since it went into effect on Aug. 1, 11 demonstrators have been arrested. That the lawmakers missed their target gives Haw little pleasure. "It's not about the messenger; it's about the message," he said in an interview, pointing to a display of weather-bleached photographs showing Iraqi children born with deformities, which his exhibit contends is a result of depleted uranium munitions used by U.S. and British forces in the Persian Gulf War. "Doesn't that move you?" he said.