NucNews - October 7, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR Nuclear power quietly confident in energy debate By Jeremy Lovell 10/07/05 09:54 (Reuters) http://channels.netscape.com/tech/story.jsp?floc=ne-sci-8-l0&flok=FF-RTO-romta&idq=/ff/story/0002%2F20051007%2F0954091424.htm&sc=romta SELLAFIELD - The nuclear power industry is quietly confident that the world is about to beat a path to its door in an increasingly desperate search for "clean" energy that doesn't heat up the planet. Soaring oil prices and new data on global warming -- brought into sharp focus by devastating hurricanes in the United States -- have heated up the nuclear debate and outraged the environmental lobby, which says nuclear power is not the answer. China plans to invest some $50 billion to build around 30 new nuclear reactors by 2020, there are investment incentives in the United States and nuclear power was back on the agenda at a summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations in July. The nuclear industry now feels it is on a roll -- 20 years after an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor spread a cloud of radioactivity over Europe and dealt a severe blow to the reputation of a sector long denounced by environmentalists. "Nuclear power is in the ascendant world-wide -- less so in the (United Kingdom) than elsewhere, but that will change," said Ian Hore-Lacy of the World Nuclear Association (WNA), which aims to promote nuclear power as a sustainable energy resource. Last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged a review of the country's climate change commitments which he said must include looking at the nuclear option. A few days later, a government minister said Britain must decide within a year whether to invest in a new wave of nuclear power generation but added no decision had yet been made. Scientists' warnings about global warming have increased the pressure on rich nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Experts have said that the earth's temperature will rise by at least two degrees centigrade by the end of this century due to greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, putting millions of people at risk from floods and droughts. It is difficult to tell if global warming caused hurricanes Katrina and Rita, scientists say but they forecast more unpredictable weather as the world gets hotter. CLEANING UP ITS IMAGE The nuclear debate has long stirred passions in Britain, home of one of the most intensively used nuclear sites in the world at Sellafield, northwestern England. In the late 1990s, Sellafield found itself in the firing line after a report criticised safety standards at the nuclear reprocessing plant which has been operating for some 50 years. Now, workers understand the public relations challenge. "We have got to demonstrate that we can clean up the legacy of the past. That way we can show we can deal with the waste of the future," said Tony Price, head of the clean-up programme. Waste has long been an industry black spot. The enriched uranium used in atomic reactors in nuclear plants is highly radioactive and spent fuel remains hazardous for 100,000 years. "As we show we are dealing with the legacy waste, people are starting to get more confident," Price said. The nuclear industry's most optimistic projection, from the WNA, sees global nuclear power capacity doubling to around 750 gigawatts over the next 25 years but its share of world electricity supply only edging up to 18 percent from 16 due to booming demand, expected to double between 1990 and 2020. To put that in context, 750 gigawatts of capacity could produce up to 5.2 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity which would be enough to supply every person in the United States, Britain, Russia, France and Germany for a year. "Between 2030 and 2050 you could see nuclear as a percentage of world electricity supply rising sharply," Hore-Lacy said. "It is not hard to envisage a scenario where nuclear could provide 50 percent of world electricity." "THE WRONG ANSWER" Environmentalists say the true costs of nuclear power are three times those stated, there is a risk terrorists could get hold of deadly plutonium, and waste is a problem for the future. "We are not taking an ideological view ... We have analysed the pros and cons ... and we have concluded that (nuclear power) is the wrong answer," said Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. "A much more positive set of options are there," he said, citing a combination of energy efficiency, microgeneration, renewables, carbon capture, and more sustainable transport. Greenpeace told the European Parliament last week that far from being the answer, nuclear power should be phased out. "To replace one environmental catastrophe -- polluting fossil fuel power -- with another environmental disaster -- nuclear energy -- is clearly not the answer," it said. Environmentalists want more use to be made of renewable energy like solar, wind and waves. The wind power industry says that by 2020 wind could provide 12 percent of the world's electricity, but it complains of administrative barriers. It says wind power has no carbon emissions, employs many and is good for local economies -- although most complaints come from people who don't want wind farms in their back yards. In Europe, Germany takes the lead with renewable energy sources supplying 10 percent of electricity while in neighbour France, nuclear power provides nearly 80 percent of electricity. In Britain, where Blair advocates tackling global warming, renewables provide only 3 percent of electricity with 19 percent coming from nuclear power but plants are getting old, hence the need for a prompt decision on whether to build new ones. WNA's Hore-Lacy argues that the nuclear industry has high start-up costs but low running costs and dismisses the notion that waste causes any problems. "We have to dispel the myths, the suspicion and the fear." -------- business British intelligence report shows scale of 'nuclear supermarket' Fri Oct 7, 2005 8:40 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20051008/wl_uk_afp/britainnuclear_051008004013 LONDON - British intelligence has identified more than 350 companies, university departments and government organisations in eight countries seeking to acquire technology or materials for weapons of mass destruction, a report said. The confidential report by security service MI5 revealed the scale of the global "arms trade supermarket," The Guardian said. The document, which identifies the Pakistani embassy in London among organisations seeking nuclear materials or information, was produced to try and prevent British firms inadvertently aiding weapons proliferation. Titled "Companies and Organisations of Proliferation Concern", it warns against exports to groups in Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, Syria and Egypt, as well as counselling about front companies in the United Arab Emirates, which appears to be a hub for the trade. "It is not suggested that the companies and organisations on the list have committed an offence under UK legislation," the 17-page document says. "However, in addition to conducting non-proliferation related business, they have procured goods and/or technology for weapons of mass destruction programmes." The two-year-old report lists 95 organisations in Pakistan as having assisted the country's nuclear programme, the newspaper said. With Iran, 114 bodies -- including chemical and pharmaceutical companies and university medical schools -- are named as having acquired nuclear, chemical, biological or missile technology. As well as UAE, which is named as "the most important" of countries where front companies are based, Malta and Cyprus were also identified as possible intermediary locations. -------- china China to Explore Nuclear Fusion Source on the Moon Friday, 7 October 2005 Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific http://www.rednova.com/news/space/263687/china_to_explore_nuclear_fusion_source_on_the_moon/index.html China is likely to send a man to the Moon and set up a space station by 2020, a designer with the nation's lunar exploration programme said yesterday. Jiang Jingshan, a designer with the Chinese Lunar Orbiting Exploration programme, said solving the country's long-term energy shortage would be among the aims of the three-phase Moon- exploration programme. Professor Jiang said the first stage would involve sending a satellite to orbit the Moon in the first half of 2007. In the second phase, robots would be sent to land on the moon's surface to collect samples over four to five years. "Then we'll spend the next seven years mastering technologies that can send our astronauts to and from the moon safely. We have to guarantee that they'll be safe ... if things go well, we will send astronauts to the moon by 2020," he said. Professor Jiang said a unique feature of China's lunar mission was to measure the depth and density of helium-3 coating the Moon's surface. Helium-3, regarded as a clean, safe and cheap energy resource for nuclear fusion by scientists, is abundant on the Moon, but scarce on Earth. "By measuring the depth of the helium-3 coating, we can have a clearer picture of its exact amount. According to the US, there are 3m tonnes of helium-3 on the Moon. This amount could satisfy the globe's energy needs for millions of years," he said. Professor Jiang said the space station would be built "in line with China's situation". "We would tend not to build a very big one, like that of the US," he said. "It's not necessary to spend that much money. It will be big enough for three to five people to work inside." With Shenzhou VI, China's second manned spacecraft, expected to take off next week from Jiuquan , Professor Jiang said the flight would break new ground in China's space programme. "Shenzhou V was a breakthrough because it was our first manned mission. Shenzhou VI is another as we are sending two astronauts into space for five days." -------- depleted uranium Belgium to pioneer blood tests on soldiers 7 October 2005 [Copyright Expatica News 2005] http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=24313&name=Belgium+to+pioneer+blood+tests+on+soldiers BRUSSELS – Belgium is to become the first country in the world to introduce blood testing on soldiers being sent into combat, it was revealed this week. Defence minister Andre Flahaut announced that an analysis clinic would open early next year at the military hospital Neder-over-Heembeek. The socialist minister said the move would be "a world first" since no other country has opted to create such a centre. Both professional and reserve soldiers will be offered the chance "on a voluntary basis" to have blood samples taken before and after they head to a mission abroad. The testing is being introduced after ongoing complaints by soldiers about 'Balkan syndrome'. Some soldiers claim they contracted cancer after contact with depleted uranium weapons used in fighting in the ex-Yugoslavia. Taking blood samples from soldiers would allow experts to look for changes in their systems, which could have been caused during their time in action. Flahaut said the Neder-over-Heembeek centre would have facilities for stocking soldiers' blood samples "in optimal conditions", freezing the samples. The minister also said that an epidemiological study had been published earlier this month on the health of 30,000 retired soldiers who had worked on radar installation systems using 'Hawk' missiles since 1963. "To this day, no other country where this type of radars were used has carried out a study on this scale," said Flahaut. He said the research, conducted by the defence minstry's epidemiology and biostatistics department, showed that there had been no increase in mortality rates among those who had used the radar, compared to the rest of the Belgian population and to a control group of 15,000 other soldiers who had not been exposed to the radars. The full study is to be published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. -------- iran Chemical Weapons, Nuclear War What's at stake in a war on Iran by Jorge Hirsch, October 7, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=7542 The Bush administration started a conventional war over imagined chemical weapons in Iraq. It is getting ready to start a war over imagined nuclear weapons, and real chemical ones, against Iran. This time it may be a nuclear war. It is well known that Iran has chemical weapons (1), (2), (3) , as many other countries do. However, there has not been a single mention of this fact in the aggressive rhetoric of the Bush administration against Iran. Why? Because it is being deliberately silenced up to the last moments before a U.S. attack against Iran is launched. At that time, this fact will be trumpeted as "proof" that Iran is an evil country and a threat to the world. As the U.S. bombers are about to take off, there will be no time to talk about the fact that Iran has signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (in 1993 and 1997, respectively) that requires it to terminate production and eliminate stockpiles over a period of years. Instead, it will be emphasized that Iran used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war (conveniently omitting the fact that it was responding to chemical attacks by Iraq) and that it could use them again against U.S. troops next door. The administration will present proof (real this time) that Iran has chemical weapons, and will also suggest that terrorists in bed with Iran could get hold of those weapons and attack the U.S. homeland. An ultimatum will be given to Iran to destroy all its chemical weapons and abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) within 48 hours, lest it face the wrath of U.S. bombers. Bush's statements of March 17, 2003, will be copied and pasted replacing Iraq with Iran, and this time it will be less false than last: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iranian regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iran's neighbors. … "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iran, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other." The IAEA resolution of Sept. 24, which found Iran in violation of the NPT, will be at the center of the argument. All the diplomatic avenues will have been closed when Russia and China exercise their veto powers at the Security Council meeting that will consider imposing sanctions on Iran, and the military option, explicitly not ruled out by Bush, will be all that remains. U.S. planes launched from Iraq will bomb Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile installations. Many of these facilities are underground. Conventional bunker-busters will be used, as well as some nuclear bombs. Why will nukes be used? As stated in the recently released draft document "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," the Pentagon is prepared to "demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD." If only conventional bombs are used in such an unprovoked U.S. attack, Iran is likely to retaliate violently, launching a barrage of missiles against U.S. forces in Iraq and possibly Israel, as well as a possible ground invasion of Iraq that the 150,000 U.S. troops there would not be able to withstand. Bunker-busting nuclear gravity bombs (B61-11 or similar) will be more effective than conventional ones in destroying Iranian underground installations, and at the same time will send a clear message to Iran that any response would be answered with an immensely more devastating nuclear attack. How will the U.S. Senate go along? It probably has already approved the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, in particular low-yield gravity bombs and short-range missiles, in the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration is likely to have presented to senators entirely credible "secret" information that Iran has missiles with chemical warheads, and suggested that Iran could launch a chemical attack against U.S. forces in Iraq at a moment's notice. Reasonable senators would certainly approve such measures to protect U.S. forces in Iraq against a devastating actual or "imminent" Iranian attack. Using the argument that making this information public would endanger U.S. troops in Iraq, Bush may have been able to convince senators to approve such a grave measure without public disclosure. Once the military action starts, the use of nuclear bombs will follow the script in the "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations": "Against an adversary using or intending to use WMD against U.S., multinational, or alliance forces or civilian populations… "[T]o counter potentially overwhelming conventional forces… "For rapid and favorable war termination on U.S. terms… "To ensure success of U.S. and multinational operations… "[O]n adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons or the C2 infrastructure required for the adversary to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies." Given these prospects, the U.S. should be focusing on low-key negotiations with Iran to reach a mutually acceptable agreement with respect to Iran's nuclear ambitions (which are, at least in the view of Russia and China, entirely legitimate), instead of issuing strident denunciations. The fact that it has chosen the latter rather than the former path (even refusing to discuss the issues directly with Iran) suggests that a decision to attack Iran was made long ago. This would parallel the scenario played out in Iraq as proved by the Downing Street memos, and is also supported by the information revealed by Seymour Hersh in his January 2005 article in the New Yorker. Whether by accident or by design, the Bush attack against the toothless Saddam will not have been an end in itself but only a necessary intermediate step toward the real goal, the subjugation of the far more powerful Iran. Such an attack will usher in a different, much more frightening world. After the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has relied on a universally agreed-upon taboo against the use of all nuclear weapons, no matter how small. Once that taboo is broken, the NPT is likely to fall apart, a new nuclear arms race will ensue, and any regional conflict will have the potential to explode into all-out nuclear war, with unimaginable consequences. -------- japan Aomori OKs fuel-rod plan 10/07/2005 The Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200510070147.html AOMORI-The Aomori governor on Thursday approved a plan to build a temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods in Mutsu city. Shingo Mimura's approval will likely pave the way for Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Japan Atomic Power Co. to go ahead with procedures to start construction of the facility, which will be the first of its kind in Japan. An official announcement on the decision is expected shortly. ---- Japan to pay benefits to atom bomb survivors abroad TOKYO (AFP) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051007064305.0i6vbrz5.html Japan paved the way Friday for more than 1,000 survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki living overseas to claim state benefits, after criticism over discrimination against Korean victims. The government said it would not seek to overturn a court ruling last month ordering Nagasaki city to pay allowances for a South Korean who survived the nuclear bombing and died last year in his homeland. "I made a political decision ... given the aging of atomic bomb survivors and the grave fact that they were exposed to the bombs in Japan," Health and Welfare Minister Hidehisa Otsuji told reporters. The welfare ministry as early as next month will allow survivors abroad to apply for state benefits through Japanese diplomatic missions where they live, he said. Japan's government, which provides benefits for atomic bomb survivors, decided in 2001 to extend more support to those living overseas after an official panel argued it was unfair to offer less help to victims abroad. But the system still required survivors to come to Japan to apply in person for medical assistance and allowances -- a huge hurdle for those who are aged and sick. Thousands of victims of the world's only nuclear bombings were Koreans, many of them forced laborers brought during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The welfare ministry estimates some 3,600 atomic bomb survivors now live outside of Japan with about two-thirds of them believed to be South Koreans. Of the 3,600, some 1,300 people have not received help as they cannot come to Japan. Supporters for North Koreans say another 900 survivors are in the seclusive Stalinist country, which has no diplomatic relations with Japan. The government decision came hours ahead of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, with speculation rife that it could be awarded to opponents of nuclear weapons to mark the 60th anniversary of the world's only atomic attacks. In the case leading to Friday's decision, the Fukuoka High Court on September 26 ruled Nagasaki must pay funeral expenses and other allowances to the widow of Choi Gye-Chol, a bomb survivor who died a year earlier in the South Korean city of Busan at age 78. Paek Nak-Im, the widow of Choi, said she was "relieved" by the government's change of stance. "I only wish my husband were alive. I want to report this to his grave," Jiji Press news agency quoted her as saying. His daughter, Choi Mi-Sook, said she was "filled with deep emotion, considering the hardship my father had gone through." Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Ito, who had urged the central government not to appeal, hailed Friday's decision, calling it "very gratifying." The city is obligated to accept the legal advice of Tokyo, which funnels funds for nuclear survivors to local governments. The US bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 killed about 140,000 people, almost half the city, either immediately or in the months that followed from radiation injuries or horrific burns. Three days later, an even more powerful nuclear bomb flattened Nagasaki, killing another 70,000 people. Japan surrendered less than a week afterward. ---- Gov't Pledges Planned Aomori Nuclear Fuel Storage to Be Temporary By Kyodo News International, Tokyo Oct. 7, 2005 http://www.rednova.com/news/science/264066/govt_pledges_planned_aomori_nuclear_fuel_storage_to_be_temporary/index.html?source=r_science TOKYO -- Industry minister Shoichi Nakagawa on Friday pledged that a spent nuclear fuel storage facility which two energy companies plan to build in Aomori Prefecture will never be used as a permanent dumping site. "(Spent fuel) will be all reprocessed eventually. It won't be stored (in the envisioned facility) forever," the minister of economy, trade and industry told Aomori Gov. Shingo Mimura in a meeting at the ministry headquarters. Nakagawa also told Mimura, "It is guaranteed by law" that spent fuel will be moved out of the facility. Mimura intends to give the green light possibly later this month to the plan by Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Japan Atomic Power Co. to build the storage facility in Mutsu in the northern Japan prefecture, Aomori prefectural government officials said earlier. But Mimura's agreement to the construction of the facility is conditional on the commitment to temporary use by the central government due to environmental concerns, the officials said. The two companies plan to construct a facility to temporarily keep up to 5,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants for 50 years. Faced with an increasing stockpile of spent fuel at a reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, also in the prefecture, the companies hope to start the storage facility's operation by 2010. Mutsu Mayor Masashi Sugiyama expressed readiness to accept the plan in June 2003, hoping that state subsidies from such a project would help reduce the city's fiscal deficit. -------- pakistan Britain is willing to cooperate with Pakistan in the field of civilian nuclear energy Oct. 7, 2005 India Daily http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/47665.asp Britain is willing to cooperate with Pakistan in the field of civilian nuclear energy, British Defense Secretary John Reid said Oct. 5. Reid made the announcement after meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz after reports indicated that Pakistan had approached the Nuclear Suppliers Group seeking a civilian nuclear energy deal. -------- russia Adamov case won't affect U.S.-Russia nuclear cooperation - official Oct 7 2005 3:50PM (Interfax) http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11403757 SEVERSK. Oct 7 - The arrest of former Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov and the charges brought against him won't affect American-Russian cooperation programs that seek to enhance security in the area of nuclear materials and technologies, senior official from the U.S. Department of Energy, David Huizenga, told reporters in Seversk, Siberia. The official said that the program the U.S. side is carrying out with Russia, namely with the Siberian Chemical Combine, are vital for both Russia and the United States, and that both countries will benefit from the partnership. ---- Sergey Kirienko can become nuclear minister Plenipotentiary of the Russian President in Privolzhye Federal District Sergey Kirienko can be promoted to the position of the head of the Federal Nuclear Agency. 2005-10-07 12:12 Bellona http://193.71.199.52/en/international/russia/nuke_industry/40168.html According to the daily Novoe Delo from Nizhny Novgorod, Sergey Kirienko should get a new position by the end of the year. The current head of the Russian nuclear agency Alexander Rumyantsev is going to retire, so it was decided Kirienko fits the position, as he used to be the head of the Fuel and Energy Ministry in 1997. The journalists of the Novoe Delo phoned both the Federal Nuclear Agency and Sergey Kirienko’s office in Nizhny Novgorod, but received no confirmation to these rumours. However, the newspaper’s source in the Lower House of the Russian Parliament, or State Duma, confirmed that some changes are really planned in the Federal Nuclear Agency, and Sergey Kirienko is likely to get the top position there. -------- security Kyrgyz hunt for radioactive matter Authorities are unsure where some radioactive material ended up By Rob Broomby BBC News, Kyrgyzstan Friday, 7 October 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4315928.stm The Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan is battling to stop terrorists from getting hold of deadly radioactive materials. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the centralised control of dangerous materials melted away, and many were simply lost or abandoned. The cash-strapped republic has no real radioactive inventory and little idea where to look. The rugged, mountainous country is now struggling to regain control before the materials are scooped up by the likes of al-Qaeda's bomb makers. Needle in a haystack The Kyrgyz authorities have confirmed that in the last 12 months, they have secured or disposed of a staggering 1,000 items of known radioactive material, judged to be vulnerable to theft or terrorism, acting with American help. They still have 500 items left to deal with. But it is the material which is still missing that presents a greater challenge. With Islamic extremism on the march in the region, and drugs money pouring through the country from Afghanistan, adding radioactive materials to the mix is a dangerous combination. "These materials need to be secured," said Carolyn MacKenzie of the UN's nuclear watchdog the IAEA, during a quick tour of the country. "People are killed or injured each year because large sources of radiation are around the world," she said. "They should not be available for people to use maliciously." Ms MacKenzie's task is gargantuan. She needs to coax and cajole the Kyrgyz authorities to look for lost radioactive material, so called "orphan sources" - items forgotten or abandoned with little or no documentation. It is a race to find a needle in 10,000 haystacks. "The person finding the materials," she said, "[is] typically an illiterate scrap worker." "They see the precious metals around the radioactive source, and they think... money". But if they try and open it, "the radiation is so intense it can kill them," she said. Porous borders Klara Mamushkina of the Kygyrz health ministry is responsible for radiation monitoring. The ministry is chronically short of funds, and its equipment is obsolete. She said she had no idea how many radioactive sources were still unaccounted for, but added: "We do need to search for these sources". Officials also need to make an inventory, but even that costs money they do not have. According to Carolyn MacKenzie, the authorities need a plan of action. "We can't search the whole country," she said. Obvious areas of concern are the nation's borders. Kuban Noruzbaev, of Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Ecology and Emergency, said there were "concrete examples" of unaccounted radioactive sources which people tried to illegally import into the country. "People have sometime tried to sell them or illegally import them into the country to re-sell. Scrap metal passing through our territory is (also) sometimes polluted with radioactivity," he said. Along the porous border with Kazakhstan, frontier guards are few and far between. Radiation monitoring of the scores of scrap metal trucks crossing in and out of the country is patchy. The area is a smugglers' paradise. Villagers along the border claim the corruption that acts as a lubricant for terrorism is rife. A customs official told me that Afghan heroin, with a street value of up to $250bn, flowed through Kyrgyzstan. If just a tiny percentage is spent of that is on bribes to policemen and others, he said, "the impact could be huge". "It gives you enormous influence, and the ability to buy what you want, whether it be drugs, weapons or weapons-grade plutonium." The largest missing radioactive sources are Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs), which traditionally powered mountain top radio transmitters or remote lighthouses. If dispersed by a simple explosion, the deadly Strontium 90 inside would take over 200 years to decay. Such a radioactive bomb might kill few people directly, but it could cause panic, as well as widespread economic damage rendering a target area unusable for years. An Oslo-based environmental group called the Bellona Foundation estimates that there are more than 1,500 unguarded RTGs in the former Soviet Union. "They are not that big, and it is easy to carry them with you," said Bellona spokesman Nils Boehmer, adding that they are therefore ideal for a terrorist wanting to build a bomb. It is a chilling combination - radioactive material which is portable and available. Thieves would probably succumb to the intense radiation, but a suicide team may be prepared to try. But at the end of her trip of remote mountain airfields and crumbling factory complexes of Kyrgyzstan, Carolyn MacKenzie was upbeat. "They realise that they have some problems" she said. "There are sources they have lost, and they want to address that now." "The good news is they are very anxious to start. My challenge will be to get them the tools quickly enough." ---- Experts Weigh in on Nuclear Security; 100 People Attend LWV Forum on Plant Relicensing By Tamara Race; TAMARA RACE Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger Friday, 7 October 2005 http://www.rednova.com/news/science/264075/experts_weigh_in_on_nuclear_security_100_people_attend_lwv/index.html?source=r_science The prospect of Plymouth's Pilgrim nuclear power plant being operated for 20 additional years has kindled new local debate about the safety of nuclear energy in a post-Sept. 11 world. Plant security and storage of nuclear waste are not issues for consideration during review of the upcoming request for a 20-year extension of Pilgrim's license, but about 100 people attended a League of Women Voters forum last night to hear those issues discussed. "Security is a legitimate issue for relicensing plants that were sited in rural areas more than 40 years ago," said Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Union for Concerned Scientists. "Populations have changed dramatically around some of these plants, as well as the traffic conditions. Design flaws make some of the older plants more vulnerable to terrorist attack." Lyman was one of four experts who participated in the forum, which was held at Plymouth Community Intermediate School. He said his organization takes no position on nuclear power but does not believe that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission can ensure safety and security at the nation's nuclear power plants. The issue of security should be part of the NRC's review process, Lyman said. The NRC revised the threat threshold for nuclear plants after the terrorist attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, but the threshold still falls far short of the threat that exists, he said. Pools filled with spent fuel rods are an attractive and vulnerable target, said Gordon Thompson, director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge. Thompson collaborated on a book about ways to minimize the hazards of storing spent fuel rods. If a small airplane carrying a cruise missile was flown into a spent-fuel pool, the resulting release of radiation would kill thousands of people and poison acres of land for decades, he said. Two pro-nuclear experts downplayed Lyman and Thompson's statements, calling them "doomsday scenarios" and "boogieman" scare tactics. A renegade plane with a cruise missile also might fly into Fenway Park or some other densely populated place, said Gilbert Brown, professor and coordinator of the nuclear engineering program at the University of Massachusetts. "You can't think about the scenario without considering the probability," Brown said. "We need to make decisions based on some sense of reality." Nuclear power is a clean, efficient, economical way of producing electricity, and nuclear power plants are among the most robust facilities in the country, he said. "If you don't want to burn uranium, you can burn coal or gas and melt the ice caps and break the bank," Brown said. "A truckload of uranium fuels a nuclear plant for two years, as compared to a trainload of coal every day." Although he provided no details, security expert Richard Sheirer said Pilgrim meets or exceeds NRC security standards. "It's preposterous to say they (security forces) are not prepared," he said. "They are well-practiced and very serious about what they do." Terrorists, while focused on producing spectacular feats of death and destruction, also strike at what is vulnerable, Sheirer said, offering subways, trains and buses, as examples. Compared with the World Trade Center towers, nuclear power plants are postage stamp-size targets, he said. Some audience members had questions about storing spent fuel rods in concrete bunkers rather than water-filled pools made of concrete and steel. Brown said both methods are safe. Others questioned the NRC's decision to allow Wackenhut Corp., a security company that services about half of the country's 100 nuclear power plants, including Pilgrim, to test its own security forces. Sheirer, who has witnessed several live mock attack drills, says it makes no difference. The forum will be broadcast on area local-access cable TV channels, and recordings of the broadcast will be available at local libraries. The forum was the first of three that the Plymouth League of Women Voters plans to host to educate local residents about the relicensing process. Entergy Corp., the company that operates Pilgrim, has announced that it will apply for a 20-year license extension in January. Unless it is extended, the license will expire in 2012. Tamara Race may be reached at trace@ledger.com. -------- u.n. Former U.N. Inspector Speaks to Students By JULIA BODENEAU Contributing Writer Friday, October 7, 2005 Berkeley, California Daily Californian dailycal@dailycal.org http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=19838 UC Berkeley alumnus and former United Nations weapons inspector Cal Wood spoke to nearly 15 students yesterday, sharing his experience as an inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1994 and stressing the importance of the organization as a peacekeeping institution. The brown-bag lunch, which took place in the ASUC senate chambers, was part of the ASUC's monthlong observance of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations. "I've had a connection with the U.N. right from the start. I have always been awed by the concept and the realization of it," said Wood, who saw a gathering of U.N. ambassadors at the Claremont Resort and Spa when he was 12 years old. During his graduate studies at UC Berkeley, which he began in 1961, Wood worked on the development and design of nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "I believe strongly in peace through strength and my sincere hope is that these things would never be used, but that they would give us a credible threat which would allow world peace at least at the world war level," Wood said. Wood began his work for the United Nations after Saddam Hussein's initial invasion of Kuwait in 1991, when he was asked to join an investigative task force formed with the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate Iraq's nuclear weapons capabilities. "I believe in the organization and its ideals, but like any other human institutions it has its imperfections, but it is still, I believe, one of the great hopes for peace in the world," Wood said. According to Wood, after he went to Iraq in July of 1991, he found remnants of nuclear reactor equipment throughout the course of his travels to various alleged testing sites. Wood also said he found one nuclear reactor intact and retrieved 35 kilograms of uranium. Wood said the Iraqi government said that the sites were simply research facilities, not meant for the production of nuclear weapons. But he said he found evidence of large power reactors, cooling tanks and large 18-foot-wide magnetic disks meant to create a magnetic field to separate uranium isotopes, which can be used in bombs. "We discovered an extensive nuclear program, we dismantled it and things were put in place which allowed us to monitor the dismantling," Wood said. This made it very difficult for Hussein to be able to reconstitute the isotope separation program, he said. Students present at the event said the talk drew parallels to current political issues in Iraq. "I appreciated the fact that he drew a connection with the current and ongoing war in Iraq that from his perspective that was unjust, it didn't need to happen, because he knew that Iraq had dismantled its weapons of mass destruction," said senior Chelsea Collonge. Other students said Wood's story was interesting because it revealed what life is like as a U.N. inspector with a firsthand account. "I think it was a great opportunity for us to educate the students about important issues in the world as well as the U.N. and what the U.N. is about," said sophomore Amit Jain, an ASUC event coordinator. Contact Julia Bodeneau at news@dailycal.org ---- IAEA, ElBaradei share Nobel Peace Prize By Alister Doyle Fri Oct 7, 2:21 PM ET (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051007/ts_nm/nobel_peace_dc OSLO - The U.N. nuclear watchdog and its head Mohamed ElBaradei, who clashed with Washington over Iraq, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting the spread of nuclear weapons. The Nobel Committee praised the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and ElBaradei, a 63-year-old Egyptian, for their battle to prevent states and terrorists from acquiring the atom bomb, and to ensure safe civilian use of nuclear energy. In Vienna, ElBaradei said the $1.3 million Nobel award, widely viewed as the world's top accolade, would give him and the agency he has led since 1997 a much needed "shot in the arm" to tackle nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea. Many governments, including Washington, publicly praised the award. Pyongyang and Tehran were silent. ElBaradei said he had been sure someone else had won because he did not receive a traditional advance telephone call from the Committee, which has been worried by media leaks. He learned of the prize at home while watching television with his wife, Aida. He said he jumped to his feet and hugged and kissed her in celebration. The Vienna-based IAEA had been a favorite from a list of 199 Nobel candidates in a year marking 60 years since the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. And the five-member Nobel Committee expressed hope that the award would spur work to outlaw atomic weapons. "At a time when disarmament efforts appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role, IAEA's work is of incalculable importance," it said in a statement. Set up in 1957, the IAEA polices a U.N. nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), conducting inspections to ensure that nuclear facilities and materials intended for peaceful purposes cannot be diverted to produce weapons. Despite past differences over Iraq's weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned to congratulate ElBaradei and plaudits came from world leaders including Britain's Tony Blair and France's Jacques Chirac, who said he was "delighted." U.S. OPPOSED REAPPOINTMENT The United States played down suggestions that the award was a slap at Washington, which initially opposed ElBaradei's reappointment to a third four-year term this year because of fears he was too lenient on Iran. Asked if the award was a rebuff, the No. 3 State Department official, Nicholas Burns, said: "On the contrary ... we have great respect for him (ElBaradei) and we are genuinely pleased that this very important international institution is being recognized ... it's well-deserved." U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the 2001 peace laureate, said the award should be a wake-up call. At last month's U.N. summit "We couldn't even agree on a paragraph on non-proliferation or disarmament. It was a disgrace. I hope that this award will wake us all up," he said. ElBaradei came to prominence before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 by challenging Washington's argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found after Saddam's overthrow. Some experts say the IAEA has achieved too little in Iran or North Korea to merit the 2005 prize. But ElBaradei was unbowed. "The award sends a very strong message: 'Keep doing what you are doing -- be impartial, act with integrity', and that is what we intend to do," ElBaradei said after applause from U.N. staff. North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors on December 31, 2002 and pulled out of the NPT before announcing it had nuclear weapons. And the IAEA has been probing Iran's nuclear program for 2-1/2 years to determine whether its aims are peaceful as Tehran says or aimed at producing atomic weapons as Washington charges. In Tehran, thousands rallied on Friday to back the country's right to an atomic program for electricity production. While officials declined comment, a source close to the government said the prize was a "political move directed at Iran." Few others voiced disagreement with the prize. A Japanese group representing aging survivors of the 1945 bombs expressed regret that they had not won. Environmental Greenpeace said it was shocked by the prize, saying the IAEA spreads technology that has military uses. The award, named after Sweden's Alfred Nobel, a philanthropist who invented dynamite, was first awarded in 1901 and is due to be handed out in Oslo on December 10. Contenders had ranged from presidents to Irish rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof. The 2004 prize went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai. ElBaradei was the first Egyptian winner since President Anwar Sadat in 1978. Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes rejected suggestions that the prize was anti-American. "This is not a kick in the legs to any country," he told a news conference. A former chairman described the 2002 prize to ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter as a "kick in the legs" to U.S. President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq. The 2005 award seemed to confirm an anti-nuclear trend on major anniversaries of Hiroshima. In 1995 the prize went to late British ban-the-bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash group and in 1985 to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. (Additional reporting by John Acher, James Kilner and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Richard Waddington in Geneva) ---- UN Nuclear Watchdog ELBaradei Wins Nobel Peace Prize Months After U.S. Tries To Force Him From Job as Head of IAEA Friday, October 7th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/1344244 The International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei have won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. We speak with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute of Policy Studies. [includes rush transcript] The announcement was made earlier today in Oslo Norway. The Egyptian-born ElBaradei has served as Director General of the IAEA since 1997. He won the prize just months after the United States tried to force him from his job after the Bush administration repeatedly clashed with him over Iraq and Iran. In February 2003 – a month before the U.S. invasion – ElBaradei told the United Nations that nuclear experts had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said “We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.” John Bolton – who is now the US ambassador to the United Nations – responded by saying this is “impossible to believe.” Vice President Dick Cheney said “I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.” But it turned out ElBaradei was correct. He was also correct when he publicly cast doubt on President Bush's claim that Iraq was purchasing tons of enriched uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program. Days before the U.S. invasion, ElBaradei revealed that the U.S. had relied on fabricated documents to come to that conclusion. Now the U.S. and ElBaradei are at odds again. This time it is over Iran. ElBaradei says the IAEA has no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. But the Bush administration rejects this view and went so far as to spy on him in an attempt try to block his re-election. Last year the Washington Post revealed that the U.S. listened in on dozens of phone calls between ElBaradei and Iranian diplomats in search of ammunition to use against him. When his re-election was initially put for a vote, 34 nations agreed to keep him as head of the IAEA and only the U.S. expressed opposition. ElBaradei has also called on Israel to disarm its secret nuclear weapons program and called for a nuclear-free Middle East. Last year in an interview with the New York Times he warned “"If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction.” * Phyllis Bennis, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, specializing in Middle East and United Nations issues. She is the author of the book “Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis.” RUSH TRANSCRIPT JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, who have won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. The announcement was made earlier today in Oslo, Norway. NOBEL COMMITTEE SPOKESPERSON: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005 is to be shared in two equal parts between the International Atomic Energy Agency, I.A.E.A., and its Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way. At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the I.A.E.A., and its Director General. In the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it's the I.A.E.A. which controls that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the Director General has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime. At a time when disarmament efforts appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role, I.A.E.A.'s work is of incalculable importance. In his will, Alfred Nobel wrote that the peace prize should, among other criteria, be awarded to whoever had done most for the abolition or reduction of standing armies. In its application of this criterion in recent decades, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has concentrated on the struggle to diminish the significance of nuclear arms in international politics with a view to their abolition. That the world has achieved little in this respect makes active opposition to nuclear arms all the more important today. JUAN GONZALEZ: The Egyptian-born ElBaradei had served as Director General of the I.A.E.A. since 1997. He won the prize just months after the United States tried to force him from his job, after the Bush administration repeatedly clashed with him over Iraq and Iran. In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion, ElBaradei told the United Nations that nuclear experts had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said, quote, “We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.” John Bolton, who is now the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, responded by saying, “This is,” quote, “impossible to believe.” Vice President Dick Cheney said, quote, “I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong.” But it turned out ElBaradei was correct. He was also correct when he publicly cast doubt on President Bush's claim that Iraq was purchasing tons of enriched uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program. Days before the U.S. invasion, ElBaradei revealed that the U.S. had relied on fabricated documents to come to that conclusion. Now, the U.S. and ElBaradei are at odds again. This time it is over Iran. ElBaradei says the I.A.E.A. has no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, but the Bush administration rejects this view and went so far as to spy on him in an attempt to try to block his re-election. Last year, the Washington Post revealed that the U.S. listened in on dozens of phone calls between ElBaradei and Iranian diplomats in search of ammunition to use against him. When his re-election was initially put for a vote, thirty-four nations agreed to keep him as head of the I.A.E.A. and only the U.S. expressed opposition. ElBaradei has also called on Israel to disarm its secret nuclear weapons program and called for a nuclear-free Middle East. Last year, in an interview with the New York Times, he warned, quote, “If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction.” To talk about the selection of Mohamed ElBaradei as the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner, we turn to Phyllis Bennis, who is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, specializes in issues involving the Middle East and the United Nations. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Phyllis. PHYLLIS BENNIS: Thanks, Juan. Great to be with you. JUAN GONZALEZ: Your reaction, the meaning of this selection, as you will, of Mr. ElBaradei and of his organization? PHYLLIS BENNIS: I think this is an extraordinary choice by the Nobel Committee. It was not only a slap in the face to U.S. focus on unilateral efforts to deal with nuclear issues and particularly the U.S. efforts to focus solely on what they call proliferation as the main problem, that being the possibility that others might get access to nuclear technology, as opposed to dealing with the issue of disarmament. This decision by the Nobel Committee puts center stage and with a great deal of publicity, as always attends the winner of the peace prize, the importance of focusing on international cooperation. And it was very interesting, Juan, as you mentioned just now, when the Nobel Committee called Mohamed ElBaradei “unafraid.” I think it was very clearly linked to his refusal to give in to the U.S. pressure that has been so endemic against the I.A.E.A. in recent years, particularly, of course, led by John Bolton, who had, as the Undersecretary of State for Disarmament Affairs, an oxymoronic position if ever there was one, a real obsession with Mohamed ElBaradei, particularly after ElBaradei's role along with the director of the other U.N. arms agency at the time of the immediate run-up to the war in Iraq, when ElBaradei took the lead in saying, ‘No, we are not finding any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. No, we are not going to give the U.S. the kind of report they wanted that would have served as a legal justification for war against Iraq.’ And he stood his ground. He stood his ground again when he was under attack, again led by Bolton, for the – in the effort to replace him, to prevent him from getting a third term. As you said, the U.S. didn't get any support for that effort. Even Tony Blair's Britain, usually such a loyal follower of the Bush administration, wouldn't back the U.S. in that one. Although in the last couple of months, ElBaradei has used some language against Iran that has been somewhat harsher than before, despite the fact that there is still no evidence of actual Iranian violations, and I have assumed that that harsher language is his – is the result of the U.S. pressure that has continued to escalate against ElBaradei, but importantly, he has not caved in on the substance. He has not provided any false claims of Iranian violations. And I think that's been very important, because it's kept the issue of disarmament central, in calling for Israel to end its known, but unacknowledged nuclear arsenal and calling for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, something that we should note that was part of the U.S. crafted resolution back in 1991 that ended the Gulf War, Article 14 of that massive resolution, also talked about the need to create a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction across the Middle East. But ElBaradei is the first U.N. official to call explicitly for such a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and call on Israel to give up its nuclear arsenal. What he has not called for yet, and I would hope that the kind of stature that the Nobel Peace Prize gives, is to call directly on the five nuclear powers, and of course, most importantly, the United States, which is by far – has the largest and most dangerous nuclear arsenal, to call on the five official nuclear powers, those, of course, being the same members as the permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council -- the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia -- to give up their nuclear arsenals, as is called for in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which says explicitly that in return for non-nuclear countries agreeing not to seek nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states agree to move towards full and complete nuclear disarmament. That's never been taken seriously in U.S. policy circles, certainly not by the U.S. government. But the fact that Mohamed ElBaradei has come very close to that, this may push him to take that additional step. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, also, in terms, you mentioned Iran, clearly now with the increased stature that he will receive as a result of this award -- it will be a process of time; he’s got to go and receive the award and obviously speak at that time -- what impact do you think this is going to have on the current crisis and conflict between the U.S. and Iran? Because clearly, the Bush administration is zeroing in every day more and more on Iran as the next great danger that the United States must confront. PHYLLIS BENNIS: Well, I think that there's two ways, Juan, that that may emerge. One is with ElBaradei himself, who, of course – he is the director of the I.A.E.A. His job is to implement the decisions made by the board of the I.A.E.A., which is made up of governments, thirty-five governments. And it's in that context that the U.S. has been trying to escalate its attacks on Iran, so far, unsuccessfully. So ElBaradei will be, as I mentioned, I hope, strengthened to continue and even ratchet up his resistance to this effort. But also the Nobel Committee was very clear that the award is also to the I.A.E.A. itself. And they spoke directly about the importance of international cooperation as the basis of dealing with the problem of nuclear weapons. And that's a direct statement against the U.S.-style unilateralism that has shaped Washington's approach in the I.A.E.A. I would hope that in the coming debates over Iran's nuclear program and the whole question of whether to refer it to the Security Council in the hopes that they would then take the next step of imposing some kind of sanctions on Iran, that the I.A.E.A., as a collective body of governments, governments which individually and collectively are also under extraordinary pressure from the United States to cave in on this anti-Iranian campaign that Washington is running, that the I.A.E.A. itself will gain some strength and some backbone as a result of the action of the Nobel Committee and continue to resist, perhaps even more strongly than they have so far. There has been some waffling in the I.A.E.A. They passed a resolution a couple of weeks ago that talks about sending the issue of Iran to the U.N. Security Council, without doing it, but taking a step towards that. I think that this Nobel Prize may give them the backbone to stand up to the U.S. pressure to continue that process, and instead, to look at it in the context of demanding enforcement of all aspects of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, certainly from Iran, but only equally with all other countries. So, for example, the fact that at least five other countries that are non-nuclear weapons states are engaged in exactly the same nuclear programs as Iran in an effort to create their own independently controlled nuclear fuel processes, those include South Africa, Brazil, a couple of others, which have been accepted by the rest of the world as perfectly legitimate, because it's legal under the terms the N.P.T., that Iran should be treated in the same way. The fact that the United States government doesn't like the government of Iran doesn't give them the right to impose their own version of what the N.P.T. requires and doesn't require, at the same time moving towards implementation of the requirements of the N.P.T. on the nuclear weapons states themselves, meaning the official nuclear weapons countries, as well as India, Pakistan and Israel, the others that have known nuclear weapons capacity. So, I think that this decision by the Nobel Committee may give to the I.A.E.A., as well as to Mohamed ElBaradei personally, the ability to move into a higher visibility kind of work in the world, gain more popular support. We should not forget, Juan, as you mentioned, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the position of the I.A.E.A. was very much at the core of being part of the global mobilization against that war, that included both demonstrators and social movements around the world and some governments and the I.A.E.A., as well as other parts of the United Nations, which were together standing up to this U.S. effort to go to war in Iraq with the imprimatur of the United Nations and the world. JUAN GONZALEZ: Phyllis Bennis, we are going to have to leave it there, because we’re running out of time for this segment. But thanks very much, Phyllis Bennis, at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., a specialist in the Middle East and United Nations issues. She’s the author of the book, Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis. ---- Lugar praises Nobel Peace Prize winners Associated Press Fri, Oct. 07, 2005 http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/12843392.htm INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar said Friday that the winners of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize are doing critical work to help stop the spread of nuclear weapons. The Nobel committee picked the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Egyptian chief Mohamed ElBaradei for addressing what it said is one of the greatest dangers facing the world. Lugar and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn for several years have been nominated for the award and were considered among this year's favorites for their program for dismantling weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union and finding work for former weapons scientists. Lugar, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the proliferation of weapons is the most pressing global security issue. "Since the dawn of the nuclear age 60 years ago, the international community has faced the challenge of containing and controlling the development and proliferation of fissile materials," Lugar said. "Dr. ElBaradei's leadership in this struggle, and an invigorated IAEA, are critical in this cooperative initiative." Although Lugar did not win the award, he said discussions about it in recent days has drawn attention to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which began in 1991. "It is an honor to be the subject of such extensive attention," Lugar said. "Our work in non-proliferation requires constant vigilance in keeping the program going, gaining additional cooperation and expanding partnerships With so much more work ahead of us, I am hopeful that many partners in peace will make progress both possible and inevitable." A report this year credited the Nunn-Lugar program with deactivating or destroying 6,564 nuclear warheads, 568 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 761 nuclear air-to-surface missiles, 543 submarine-launched missiles, 28 nuclear submarines and other parts of the Soviet Union's nuclear program. ON THE NET Nunn-Lugar program: http://www.nunn-lugar.com ---- Chirac hails 'indispensable' work of Nobel laureate ElBaradei PARIS (AFP) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051007201720.m78q0fz9.html French President Jacques Chirac on Friday congratulated Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei and hailed as essential the work of his International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) against nuclear proliferation. "The award of this prestigious prize is a just reward for the action carried out by yourself and the IAEA," Chirac said in a letter to ElBaradei, released by his office. He said the agency played an "indispensable role, within the multilateral system, as a pillar of nuclear non-proliferation, for the promotion of nuclear safety and security, and the development of nuclear energy for peaceful ends." Chirac had earlier congratulated the IAEA and its director, at a joint press conference following talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. France and Britain, with Germany, have led EU negotiations with Iran to try to curtail the latter's nuclear development programme, which Europe and the United States fear could be used to build a nuclear arsenal. Those talks broke down in August when Iran decided to go ahead with uranium enrichment in violation of a deal with the European Union. Chirac said the peace prize was "an encouragement to actively pursue, with the IAEA, efforts towards a lasting political settlement of the crisis of confidence created by this country's (Iran's) clandestine activities." ElBaradei -- who was deeply involved in the discussions -- has said he hopes the talks will resume in the near future. ---- World leaders hail, activists criticize IAEA as Nobel choice PARIS (AFP) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051007143502.q6kfogmx.html World leaders hailed Friday's award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN nuclear watchdog and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei but activists were aghast, saying the IAEA had unwittingly helped the spread of atomic weapons. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the leaders of France, Britain and Germany greeted the award as an endorsement of the global anti-nuclear arms struggle waged by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general. The prize, given 60 years after the first use of an atom bomb, came against as the world struggled with North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and an Iranian nuclear energy program that the United States and Europe fear may be cover for a weapons program. "The prize is a welcome reminder of the acute need to make progress on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament at a time when weapons of mass destruction continue to pose a grave danger to us all," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said through a spokesman. But anti-nuclear activists were angry. George Monbiot, a radical author and commentator with the British daily The Guardian, said the 2005 prize given to the IAEA and its boss "was a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation." A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by "promoting" civilian nuclear power, it had given countries the means to build atomic bombs. It pointed to the development of nuclear weapons by India, Pakistan and Israel. "The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty," Sortir du Nucleaire said in a press statement. "Recent developments (Iran, North Korea etc.) have confirmed the IAEA's patent failure," it said. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, however, described the award as "a very intelligent decision." He singled out the IAEA's "excellent work" to establish whether Iraq harboured nuclear arms in the runup to the US-led Iraq war in 2003 and its efforts to defuse the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program. Germany, France and Britain have led EU negotiations with Iran to try to persuade the Islamic Republic to curtail its nuclear development program. Those talks broke down in August when Iran decided to go ahead with uranium enrichment in violation of a deal with the European Union. The IAEA's board of directors voted last month to start a process to report the country to the UN Security Council which could impose sanctions. French President Jacques Chirac said: "I'm happy to see the Nobel Peace Prize to go to the IAEA and its director general, Mr ElBaradei, who has for a long time, and through the current difficult period, made a decisive contribution to the search for peace." British Prime Minister Tony Blair, at a joint news conference with Chirac in Paris, said the award was "well-deserved and very important and shows the significance that is attached to the work that agency does." Even Israel, which neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons, welcomed the Nobel committee's decision. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1994, called the award "a warning to Iran because Iran is today the biggest and most dangerous problem," in comments to Israeli public radio. But another Nobel Peace Prize candidate appeared bitter. Senji Yamaguchi, an activist whose face was disfigured by the Nagasaki bombing, openly criticized the Nobel judges, accusing them of passing over his group so as not to offend the United States and being biased against grassroots groups. The 75-year-old, captured in a 1945 photograph showing gruesome radiation burns, has lectured across the world to urge an end to nuclear weapons. He helped found Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese confederation of nuclear survivors. "I don't understand why Nihon Hidankyo didn't get the award this year. It makes me wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is paying special consideration to a certain country," Yamaguchi said. "The United States is responsible for not being able to stop other countries from possessing nuclear weapons," he told reporters at his Nagasaki nursing home where he has spent the past two years. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Nuke evacuation plans under fire NRC engineer supports claim that nuclear plants lack proper plans for preschools and day-care centers. By TOM JOYCE York, PA Daily Record/Sunday News Friday, October 7, 2005 http://ydr.com/story/business/88784/ Larry Christian has been arguing for years now that the state doesn’t have adequate evacuation plans for day-care centers and preschools in the immediate vicinity of nuclear power plants. And he’s hardly alone in that assessment. He has collected thousands of signatures on a petition making that same claim. But he hopes the latest person to side with him can give his argument more heft. That would be Michael Jamgochian, an engineer with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Jamgochian, a 40-year NRC veteran, helped draft the original public evacuation plans that the federal government developed after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Within the NRC, Jamgochian recently filed a memo called a “differing professional opinion,” essentially meaning that he disagrees with an official policy or practice within the agency. In that memo, Jamgochian alleges that nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania lack proper evacuation plans for preschools and day-care centers. They are thus, Jamgochian argues, noncompliant with their requirements under the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And as such, they’re falling short of the standards they must meet for their NRC licenses. Jamgochian goes so far as to suggest that the NRC start a 120-day countdown, at the end of which power plants must shut down if they don’t comply. The whole thing started a few years back, when New Cumberland resident Christian sent his daughter to a nursery school near Three Mile Island. It was soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and he wanted to know what the nursery school’s plans were in case of an emergency involving the nuclear plant. He learned that, although schools within a 10-mile radius of nuclear plants must have an emergency evacuation plan, no such requirement exists for preschools and day-care centers. He started a personal crusade to change that, finding allies in nuclear-safety activists and some state lawmakers. In 2002, he and local nuclear safety activist Eric Epstein filed a petition with the NRC, asking that mandatory evacuation plans include day care and preschool. Jamgochian, who is based in Washington, D.C, said he was the one ultimately assigned to review that petition. “There is no evidence that I found to show me that Mr. Christian is wrong,” Jamgochian said. In 2004, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law addressing day-care and preschool preparation for an emergency response in general — not specifically for an emergency involving a nuclear plant. That law stated that each for-profit day-care center in the state must have an emergency plan, and that the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency must develop guidelines and provide assistance if asked. But according to federal law, that isn’t enough, Jamgochian said. According to Jamgochian, federal law says that state and local government must have an emergency response plan for schools within a 10-mile radius of the plants. And the law doesn’t differentiate between preschool or high school, private or public. It’s up to state and local governments to put those plans in place, Jamgochian said. It’s up to the owners of nuclear plants to make sure they’re in place. And it’s up to FEMA to confirm they’re in place as well, before recommending to the NRC whether or not the plants should be licensed. And that didn’t happen anywhere along the chain in Pennsylvania, Jamgochian said. He describes himself as “just a peon” in the NRC, and said that any decisions regarding Christian’s petition, agency policy or the continued operation of nuclear plants are not, ultimately, up to him. Even if the NRC did act on his recommendation and institute the 120-day countdown to compliance or closure, he strongly doubts closure would be necessary. All state or local government has to do, he said, is make arrangements for buses to pick up the kids in the event of a radiation leak, and designate a drop-off point where parents could pick them up. Maria Smith, a spokeswoman for PEMA, said the agency has heard about the memo. But since it’s been distributed in an “unofficial fashion,” PEMA is unable to vouch for its legitimacy. She did say, however, that PEMA and the state Department of Public Welfare have been working to make sure that day-care centers develop their own emergency preparedness plans. Christian has seen both of his children outgrow preschool in the years since he started on this. But he still wants to see it corrected for the sake of other people’s children. THE ISSUE Activist Larry Christian says: Pennsylvania does not have adequate evacuation plans for day-care centers and preschools near nuclear power plants. Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer Michael Jamgochian’s response: “There is no evidence that I found to show me that Mr. Christian is wrong.” The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency’s view: PEMA and the state Department of Public Welfare have been working to make sure that day-care centers develop their own emergency preparedness plans. -------- alabama Worker dies after accident at North Alabama TVA nuclear plant October 7, 2005 Associated Press http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051007/APN/510070793&cachetime=5 A north Alabama man has died from injuries suffered in an accident while working in the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear plant near Athens. Richard "Bubba" Haynes, 42, of Killen, who had been on life support, died Thursday at Huntsville Hospital. He was injured Saturday at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant when struck by heavy equipment that he was helping move in the Unit 1 reactor, according to plant officials. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the accident, as is Haynes' employer, Illinois-based L.E. Myers. A second worker was injured but was treated and released from the hospital. Unit 1, which was shut down in 1985 amid safety concerns, is being prepared for a 2007 restart. TVA officials said the last fatal accident at Browns Ferry was in 1985 when a piece of a crane fell through an office roof and struck a man. Craig Beasley, a Browns Ferry spokesman, said the accident Saturday was away from any possible radioactive elements. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission classified it as an industrial accident and does not plan to investigate. -------- maine Feds Okay Public Use of Maine Yankee Site By Greg Foster October 07, 2005 Lincoln County News http://www.mainelincolncountynews.com/index.cfm?ID=14506 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) notified Maine Yankee on Monday that it has amended the company’s operating license to release about 167 acres of Bailey Point land in Wiscasset for unrestricted public use. The news signals the official federal recognition of the site’s being decommissioned in accordance with NRC procedures, according to company spokesman Eric Howes. Since it began operation in 1972 until it ceased in 1996, Maine Yankee produced 119 billion kilowatt hours of electricity for its New England customers. “Today’s milestone marks the first time a commercial nuclear power plant in the United States has been fully decommissioned with all plant buildings removed,” he said. “The nearly eight-year project was performed safely to a significantly higher radiological cleanup standard than federal regulations require and within the $500 million cost estimate to Maine Yankee’s electric customers.” However, nothing significant is expected to happen with the land as far as sale or use of it, Howes said. That fact tends to dampen any immediate hopes for use in the foreseeable future. “The NRC has released the land for unrestricted use, but we still have spent fuel there so Maine Yankee will restrict access to the peninsula,” he said. Maine Yankee completed transfer of the spent fuel from the spent fuel pool to the dry cask storage facility in February 2003. Meanwhile, there have been efforts from nuclear power companies to hasten the construction of a federal repository for high-level nuclear waste from decommissioning and operating plants throughout the United States. It is uncertain when that will happen, however. “The future of the property is uncertain unless the fuel is removed,” Howes said. Now, with the amended license, Maine Yankee’s operating property is the remaining 12 acres including the spent nuclear fuel storage installation and surroundings. There are 64 concrete canisters located there containing highly contaminated spent fuel rods as well as other high level nuclear waste. “We have security requirements regarding that,” Howes said. That fact precludes any immediate sale of the property for public use. Speculation has run high for potential uses such as expansion of Wiscasset’s current technology park on former Maine Yankee land, but is tempered by the reality. The NRC reported it has released the land, since it meets its requirements of a maximum radiation dose of 25 millirems per year, as well as the state’s cleanup standards of 10 millirems per year from all pathways and four millirems per year from groundwater sources of drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency standard is 15 millirems per year. “At the end of the day, the remaining dose is more like one millirem,” Howes said. According to the NRC, the average person in the United States receives about 300 millirems from background radiation each year. “Release of this land for unrestricted use poses no threat to public health and safety,” the NRC report states. Besides the federal repository proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a consortium of nuclear power companies have been pushing for the removal of their nuclear waste to Private Fuel Storage in Utah, which likely will soon receive an NRC license, according to Howes. Maine Yankee’s license in the meantime will still apply to the 12 acres related to the storage facility where spent fuel from the plant’s 23 years of operation still sits plus a small parcel of land adjacent to the installation. Maine Yankee actually completed the work of decommissioning this June. The company used that parcel as a loading area for excavated soil awaiting offsite shipment and disposal during the decommissioning of the plant that began in 2003 subsequent to its closure in 1996. “Congratulations to the dedicated Maine Yankee project team for safely restoring the plant site to an outstanding condition while overcoming many challenges along the way,” said Gerald Poulin, president and board chairman. “Maine Yankee’s decommissioning broke new ground in many areas and will be studied as a success story for years to come.” Poulin praised the efforts of the NRC, the State of Maine, the company’s Community Advisory Panel and other stakeholders who worked on the project. The company listed several accomplishments in the decommissioning including the low level cleanup, zero time lost for injuries in over three years, first ever use of explosives to safely demolish a containment building, 450 million pounds of waste safely removed from the site, largest single campaign to move spent nuclear fuel from wet to dry storage, creation of an upland marsh area, donation of 200 acres of land for conservation and environmental education, and sale of 400 acres for economic development. Maine Yankee is required to maintain a radiation monitoring program, according to the NRC. Recently Maine Yankee completed the last thing it had to do for cleanup, which was the removal of soil containing low levels of contamination. Howes said that Maine Yankee will be doing the monitoring where the company piled the soil for transportation to a low level nuclear waste dump site. The monitoring will be done on the model of subsistence farming on the land there and its safety for that purpose for humans and animals. Thus inspection of the soil for planting, drinking water, and feeding of animals from the land are part of the all inclusive pathways inspection, Howes explained. From now until the nuclear waste is transported elsewhere, Maine Yankee’s primary purpose will be the safe storage of the plant’s spent nuclear fuel and greater than Class C waste at the storage installation on Bailey Point while pursuing options for its removal. Maine Yankee will continue to hold its public Community Advisory Panel meeting periodically as a vehicle for public input and information. The next session is scheduled for Oct. 20 from 6-8 p.m. at the Chewonki Foundation. -------- nebraska Nebraska utilities to use nuke dump refund for new facility, refunds (AP) October 7, 2005 Information from: Lincoln Journal Star http://www.journalstar.com/latest_reg/?story_id=236473 LINCOLN, Neb. - Two Nebraska utility companies are planning ways to spend the multi-million-dollar settlement money they're receiving from the low-level nuclear waste compact. The Nebraska Public Power District will use the $18.4 million it received from the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission to help pay for building a dry cask storage facility for used nuclear fuel rods, said spokeswoman Jeanne Schieffer. That project, which is in the planning phase, is estimated to cost about $45 million. The Omaha Public Power District, which runs Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station, will use the $15.5 million to give residential customers credits on their utility bills. OPPD's customers will receive between $20 and $25 each. The utilities' money is part of the $145.8 million settlement the state of Nebraska paid the multistate compact in August to end a lawsuit. The lawsuit was over Nebraska's decision to reject a licensing application for a low-level radioactive waste dump. The dump was to be built in Boyd County in the northeast part of the state. Low-level waste from Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas was to be housed there. A federal judge in Lincoln ruled in 2002 that former Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated and orchestrated plot to keep the dump from being built in Nebraska. Nebraska officials argued that they didn't license the dump because of concerns about possible pollution and a high water table at the proposed site. In April 2004, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Nebraska's request to rehear the case and an appeal of the judgment. -------- nevada Caliente mayor frets over Yucca Mountain licensing By STEVE TETREAULT WASHINGTON BUREAU October 7, 2005 Pahrump Valley Times http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2005/10/07/news/ymp.html WASHINGTON - Intense politicking in Nevada coupled with government stumbles on Yucca Mountain are affecting the nuclear waste project's supporters in the state, Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips warned the Energy Department on Wednesday. Phillips and a Nye County consultant attending a Yucca Mountain conference pressed an Energy Department speaker for signs of progress in the repository program that might buoy backers in Nevada. Phillips said Nevadans' perceptions have been affected by last year's presidential campaign in which Yucca Mountain was an issue, coupled with licensing delays and the disclosure this spring of controversial emails that mention possible document falsification. He said it is harder for supporters to argue that Yucca Mountain is a certainty, and would bring jobs and economic benefits. "Those factors together has caused the 'inevitability concept' that many of us keep promoting to our friends to go down a little," Phillips said. "Everybody has to understand this impacts the supportive Nevadan's ability to bring others into the fold with a constructive approach," Phillips said. "Every time there is a slip, believability gets challenged," said Cash Jaszczak, a Las Vegas-based consultant to Nye County. The Nevadans and industry advocates of the proposed nuclear waste repository sought clues from Eric Knox, associate director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. But Knox said he could not offer new timelines for the delayed project as DOE works through licensing and technical issues. "It's quality over quickness," Knox said. "But if we get to the right quality, the quickness will follow." Any progress on the proposed repository continues to be slow and uncertain, Yucca advocates were told at the conference. About 30 executives representing nuclear utilities and waste transportation companies, and several rural Nevada repository proponents, met to assess the project. They were told: It could be next summer or fall before the Energy Department sends the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a repository license application to move the program forward, according to William Reamer, NRC director of the high level waste division. Reamer said appeals at the NRC over whether the Energy Department should post draft applications to a licensing database may extend to the end of the year, effectively delaying the project. DOE officials have said they would not file a final application until six months after the database is certified. Congress is unlikely to add Yucca Mountain provisions to energy bills being passed to help Hurricane Katrina recovery, said Clint Williamson, a professional staff member on the Senate Energy Committee. With lawmakers wanting to speed passage of Katrina bills, legislation to help Yucca Mountain "would prove to be very difficult to get through the Senate," Williamson said. Not the least of the opposition would come from Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "We all share the same concern. The program seems to be stalled," said Charles Pray, a nuclear waste adviser to the state of Maine and co-chairman of a Yucca Mountain advocacy group. Some officials said there is an added aura of uncertainty how Yucca Mountain might be affected by an Energy Department nuclear waste reprocessing initiative said to be in the works. The Energy Daily newsletter reported in July the office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management - which manages Yucca Mountain - was among DOE branches participating in the initiative. DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said Wednesday he could not confirm the participation but added, "individuals throughout this department are working on ways to expand the use of nuclear energy throughout the country and the implications of that." Paul Golan, Yucca Mountain acting director, also is conducting a comprehensive review of the project that could result in other changes. ---- Energy Dept. Chief Slams Yucca Spending Friday October 7, 2005 1:46 AM By ERICA WERNER Associated Press Writer http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5326990,00.html WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department paid incentive money to its managing contractor on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, Bechtel SAIC, even though Bechtel turned in late and low-quality work, an Energy Department inspector general report said Thursday. The inspector general questioned $4 million in incentives paid to Bechtel for work on the planned Nevada dump from 2001-2004 - nearly 10 percent of the total $43.4 million in incentives Bechtel received during that period. ``While the total cost of inappropriate incentive fee payments cannot be determined, we estimate that (the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management) paid approximately $4 million even though Bechtel delivered poor quality work and missed deadlines,'' said the report. The criticism comes as Yucca Mountain, approved by Congress in 2002 as the nation's repository for nuclear waste, has suffered a series of setbacks. The government was forced by an appeals court to rewrite its radiation safety standard for the dump, and internal e-mails surfaced last spring suggesting government workers on the dump had falsified data. The dump's opening date has been repeatedly delayed and is now expected in 2012 or later. Paul Golan, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said in a letter to the inspector general that he agreed with the report's findings and would take corrective action. A DOE spokesman on Thursday declined comment beyond Golan's letter. ``We stand by the work we've performed under our contract. We take the report seriously and we're going to review it carefully,'' said Jason Bohne, spokesman for Bechtel in Las Vegas. In one example, the report said Bechtel was paid the full fee to develop a system for tracking management issues and corrective actions, even though the system was determined to be unacceptable because it was not user-friendly. In another example, it said Bechtel was offered a $2 million incentive for on-time completion of a ``Licensing Support Network'' that would post documents related to the development of Yucca Mountain on the Internet. The Energy Department determined Bechtel would not meet the March 2003 deadline, but instead of eliminating the incentive it used the money to create new and different incentives for Bechtel. The total value of Bechtel's contract was $3.2 billion; it was eligible for $50 million in incentives and received $43.4 million of which the inspector general questioned $4 million. Yucca Mountain is meant to hold 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for 10,000 years and beyond. ---- Work Poor, But Yucca Mountain Contractor Paid Millions in Incentives WASHINGTON, DC, October 7, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-07-09.asp#anchor3 Nevada Senators Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican said in a joint statement Thursday they were "angry, but not surprised" by a new report showing mismanagement on the Yucca Mountain Project. The Audit Report on "Use of Performance Based Incentives by the Office of Civilian Waste Management" issued by the Department of Energy (DOE) Inspector General found that the DOE repeatedly gave bonuses to Bechtel Corporation in spite of poor work performance on the development of a permanent geological repository for the nation's high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The audit shows that DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) paid Bechtel $4 million in “incentive-based fees” since 2001 even though “Bechtel did not meet contract specifications.” Bechtel's five year contract with the OCRWM is valued at approximately $3.2 billion. One of the objectives of the fee plus approach was to encourage fast track submission of a license application for the operation of Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In a September 30 memo to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Inspector General Gregory Friedman wrote, "We initiated this review to determine if OCRWM's performance based incentives program was effective in maximizing Bechtel's performance." The audit found that OCRWM paid $4 million in incentives despite the fact that "additional time beyond the performance period was needed by the contractor to correct poor quality work; work scope was reduced due to poor contractor performance; delivered products were not acceptable to OCRWM; and OCRWM eliminated incentivized work because of concerns about the contractor's performance." In addition, the audit found, Bechtel received a super stretch incentive fee for completing additional work when, in fact, it had not completed initial work package requirements. The audit faulted the OCRWM for not establishing a quality assurance plan as required by the DOE. The Inspector General said the Yucca Mountain problems are not the first in this area and the IG has identified the DOE's contract management as "a high risk area vulnerable to mismanagement." “Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. It’s just one more in a long string of examples of incompetence and sloppiness at Yucca Mountain,” said Reid, who is Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, and a longtime opponent of the Yucca Mountain Project. “We’ve seen the DOE cut corners on vital scientific experiments, compromise safety, punish whistleblowers, and spend far beyond their budget," said Reid. "This is not sound science and it’s not sound business, but it is more proof that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump needs to be stopped.” “This demonstrates once again that the DOE is forging ahead with Yucca Mountain despite unanswered safety concerns and huge cost overruns,” Ensign said. “The government should never be in the business of paying top dollar for shoddy work, and Americans should be outraged by this continued arrogance and waste of their money.” The OCRWM management agreed with the findings of the audit and stated that "the report would be used to develop a comprehensive corrective action plan." -------- new hampshire 'Dirty bomb' source removed from UNH campus By TONY BERTUCCA Special to the NH Union Leader October 7, 2005 http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=61449 WASHINGTON — A federal nuclear security agency has removed a radiological device from the University of New Hampshire that could have been used in the construction of a "dirty bomb," according to federal and university officials. It was one of 13 such devices recovered across the country this summer. The removal was part of a continuing national project to recover little-used radioactive materials that pose a threat to public health and national security, according to a statement the agency made on Monday. Over the summer, the National Nuclear Security Administration recovered 13 gammators, heavily shielded devices that house a radioactive substance called cesium-137, a highly radioactive isotope used in medical and industrial radiology. The agency did not want to publicize the project until its completion this week, spokesman Bryan Wilkes said. The University of New Hampshire sought out the agency to have its gammator removed because it had not been used in experiments for several years and was an unnecessary safety and security risk, said Sam Siegel, the university's radiation safety officer. "I would consider it a large source of cesium," he said. "In the gammator it was 100 percent safe because of the shielding. But the danger is that if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be used to make a dirty bomb." Dirty bombs combine radioactive material with conventional explosives and, when detonated, could spread harmful radiation throughout a concentrated area. The level of radioactivity from the cesium in the gammator, about 400 curies, would not be enough to cause major damage to a large vicinity but would certainly pose a risk if dispersed in a crowded area, according to Dr. Eberhardt Moebius, a science professor at the University of New Hampshire who helped arrange the gammator's removal. "It was a strong radioactive source," Moebius said. "If someone steals it, you can definitely pollute an area with radioactivity. If someone steals several of them, it would be worse." The now-antiquated gammators were first distributed to high schools and universities by the federal government decades ago under the Atoms for Peace Program designed to make the public more comfortable with nuclear energy, according to John Bass, a spokesman for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which disposes of radioactive material for the federal government. "Students could take plant samples and rotate them back to the source of cesium and see the effects of radiation," Bass said. The cesium is encapsulated in a 4-inch metal rod that sits behind heavy shielding and cannot be easily accessed, according to Bass. "The gammator weighs about 1,800 pounds, and you'd have to cut into it with a blow-torch to get the cesium out," he said. "But having it is not something you'd want to broadcast because any radioactive material you put into an explosive device could be harmful." The National Nuclear Security Administration, which has been collecting unused radioactive material for several years, did not see the gammator as a major security risk, but wanted to removal the potential threat, Wilkes said. "Removing radioactive substances from the community that were just lying around was a concern even before 9/11," Bass said. "Now, after 9/11, nobody in the federal government wants the wrong people to know where this stuff is." Gammators were also removed from sites in Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Utah, according to the agency. Tony Bertucca is an intern with the Boston University News Service in Washington, D.C. -------- north carolina Plant needs more insulation Will cost up to $10 million By JOHN MURAWSKI, Staff Writer Oct 7, 2005 6:52 AM Raleigh News Observer http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/2810715p-9255157c.html Progress Energy expects to spend at least several million dollars to fix insulation that fails federal fire-safety standards at its Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County, the company said Wednesday. The Harris plant uses 6,500 feet of the insulation, more than any other U.S. nuclear plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is awaiting Progress' proposal on how to fix the problem. Replacing the ceramic fiber could cost as much as $10 million, the utility has said. The insulation, called Hemyc, protects power cables that feed safety equipment used during emergencies and routine operations. "That could very well mean they would have to replace the Hemyc in this plant," said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell. The Harris plant is regarded as safe and not in immediate need of replacing the insulation, Burnell said. Hemyc has been used at the plant since it started running in 1987, but it fails stricter safety standards adopted this year, said Julie Hans of the company. In lab tests conducted this summer at 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, a 2-inch thick coating of Hemyc withstood the intense heat for a half hour, but failed to meet the one-hour requirement. As a ceramic, Hemyc does not melt or burn, but it can transfer heat to the electrical cables it's blanketing. "Thickness is the issue," Hans said, adding that Progress has surplus Hemyc available to increase the protective layer. In August, the utility said lab tests proved the insulation worked. Hans explained that the purpose of the lab test was to demonstrate that the Hemyc used at Shearon Harris doesn't shrink like the Hemyc tested by the NRC. Nonshrinking insulation leaves open the possibility of fixing the problem through partial reinforcement, rather than total replacement. The Raleigh-based utility will conduct more tests on reinforced Hemyc to determine whether power cables should be double-wrapped or the Hemyc should be replaced. Fourteen nuclear reactors around the nation use Hemyc. The NRC has been studying fire safety for three decades, since a major fire erupted at the Browns Ferry plant in Tennessee in 1975. Staff writer John Murawski can be reached at 829-8932 or murawski@newsobserver.com. -------- pennsylvania Beaver Valley reactor gets new lease on life with new parts Friday, October 07, 2005 By Jim McKay Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05280/584101.stm Employees of the Beaver Valley Power Station brought pocket cameras to work yesterday, eager to record the arrival of an oversized river barge that brings with it more job security. The barge was carrying nuclear reactor parts that should extend the plant's life at least three decades, ensuring that the birthplace of the nation's nuclear energy age will continue to go strong. "It's a rebirth, a renewal,'' Clifford Custer, an engineer with FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., said as a "Paul Bunyan" barge eased into a narrow slip at the plant along the Ohio River at Shippingport, the site of the nation's first large-scale nuclear power plant that opened in 1957 and was decommissioned in 1984. "It's a big day for Beaver Valley." The barge was carrying three 370-ton steam generators and an 80-ton nuclear reactor vessel head that are key parts of a $250 million project to extend the life of the power station's Unit 1, a pressurized water reactor designed by Monroeville-based Westinghouse Electric Co., which also designed the first reactor at Shippingport. Installation of the equipment is expected to temporarily employ at various times 2,000 construction and trades workers. FirstEnergy Nuclear's parent, Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., estimates the payroll for on-site workers during the project will exceed $100 million. The station, located 22 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, contains two nuclear power plant units. The one being refurbished began producing electricity in 1976 that is sold to consumers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Unit 2 began production in 1987. The replacement equipment designed by Westinghouse in Monroeville was fabricated in Maliano, Spain, by Equipos Nucleares S.A. The United States no longer has the capacity as it once did to produce such parts. But there are some local subcontractors. The Curtiss-Wright Electro-Mechanical Division in Cheswick, a former Westinghouse business, supplied control rod drive mechanisms. Penn State Tool & Die, of Mount Pleasant, also supplied components. The steam generators and reactor head, covered in a special blue shrink wrap to keep out moisture during the long voyage, were loaded into a special Dutch-operated large cargo ship that left Maliano on Sept. 3 bound for New Orleans. The shipment was headed for the Atlantic Ocean when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region, devastating New Orleans. The ship dodged storms across the Atlantic and, because of the damage to the Louisiana port, diverted course to Mobile, Ala., shunning Galveston, Texas, because of approaching Hurricane Rita. The double-sized barge used to move the equipment via the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers was lost temporarily during Hurricane Katrina. It later was found intact by a helicopter crew and transported to Mobile to meet the ocean ship. Lew Myers, FirstEnergy Nuclear's executive vice president in charge of special projects, kept close tabs on the weather during the ocean voyage and the subsequent trip by river barge from Mobile. Changes in course were made with the weather. "We were having to figure this stuff out every day,'' said Mr. Myers, who made the decision to choose Mobile as Hurricane Rita was approaching. "The hurricane did throw us a curve. It was interesting.'' After the cargo is inspected, the barge will be lowered or sunk to the river bottom, allowing the equipment to be driven off on a special transport vehicle. The parts will be installed during a scheduled refueling outage at the plant beginning in February. The steam generators, which use water heated in the nuclear reactor to make steam that drives electrical generating equipment, are each 68 feet long and nearly 15 feet in diameter. Plant manager Bill Pearce said the old generators were nearing the end of their useful life, and that the reactor head was being replaced as well since it is more economical to do it at the same time. The reactor head caps the heavy duty metal vessel where the nuclear reaction takes place and provides access for control rods that regulate the reaction. It is more than 15 feet in diameter. To replace the equipment, construction crews will create what Mr. Pearce called a $25 million hole -- a temporary opening in the Unit 1 Containment building, built of concrete several feet thick and poured around large interwoven steel rebar. A spray of water under very high pressure will then be used to remove the concrete walls, exposing the rebar and a liner plate that will be reused. The reactor head has been upgraded with special metal alloys to avoid problems of the type that occurred at FirstEnergy's Davis-Bessie nuclear plant east of Toledo, Ohio. When that plant was shut down for maintenance in 2002, workers discovered a leak had allowed boric acid to eat nearly through a 6-inch thick steel cap on the plant's reactor head. The existing steam generators and reactor head will be removed from the containment building through the hole and moved to a long-term storage facility with 30-inch thick concrete walls on the site. The replacement components will be installed in reverse order. To complete the job, the opening will be closed using the liner plate and reinforcing bars that were removed earlier. The hole will be sealed with concrete and tested to make sure it meets original design requirements. (Jim McKay can be reached at jmckay@post-gazette.com or at 412-263-1322.) -------- tennessee Toxic waste ready to burn Process begins to bring refurbished incinerator back into production By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com October 7, 2005 Knoxville News Sentinel http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_4138907,00.html OAK RIDGE — Workers will begin reheating the government's toxic-waste incinerator this weekend following its annual maintenance period, and operations should resume there within the next two weeks, a Bechtel Jacobs Co. official said. The incinerator has been shut down for the past month and a half for inspections and repairs, such as relining parts of the kiln and secondary combustion chamber, said Courtney Manrod, the project manager for Bechtel Jacobs. Bechtel Jacobs is the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental manager in Oak Ridge. Shaw Environment & Infrastructure operates the incinerator under a subcontract to BJC. The Oak Ridge facility is the only incinerator in the United States that's licensed to burn mixed wastes containing polychlorinated biphenyls, radioactive substances and other hazardous elements. More than 30 million pounds of waste have been burned there since 1990. Manrod said the incinerator appears to be good shape, but a number of checks must be completed before restarting waste operations. "We've got a lot of calibrations to do," she said. Manrod and Paul Clay, Bechtel Jacobs' deputy general manager, confirmed that waste activities were restricted earlier this year because of conflicting data on the uranium content in some wastes from the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. At one point, Bechtel Jacobs halted the burning of any wastes containing fissile material, such as enriched uranium, because of the uncertainties, Manrod said. She said that restriction probably lasted less than a month. The issue pertained to some stockpiled wastes at Y-12 known collectively as TSOIL-26. The wastes had been characterized in 1997 and rejected as not meeting criteria for burning at the Oak Ridge incinerator. The levels of U-235, the fissionable isotope of uranium, were too high for waste standards at the incinerator. So, the 98 drums of contaminated soil and absorbent materials remained in storage. However, because of new capabilities for "downblending" wastes to dilute the U-235 content, officials earlier this year reevaluated the stockpile and decided to burn some of the Y-12 waste. It was part of a regulatory commitment to get rid of legacy materials at the Oak Ridge nuclear facilities. During the project, some of the wastes again failed to meet the incinerator's criteria, even after the materials had been downblended to reduce the U-235 levels. It turned out that one of the source containers had a higher level of uranium than anticipated. Also, waste analyses by two subcontractors — Canberra and Fairfield Services — differed markedly on the uranium content. Fairfield's analysis showed much lower uranium levels than earlier tests performed by Canberra. That discrepancy prompted concerns that waste previously burned at the incinerator might have been inaccurately labeled, and Bechtel Jacobs launched an independent review. The discrepancy, according to Manrod, was attributed to a failure to give Fairfield all the needed information to do its "nondestructive assays" on the waste containers. The Fairfield analysts were not aware that waste drums had shielding or additional containers inside them, which affected the readings, she said. "Once they were provided with the information about the actual configuration inside the containers, they reran their analysis and got results that were similar," Manrod said. Ultimately, about half of the 98 drums of radioactive waste were sent to a nuclear landfill in Utah. The others were repackaged into smaller, cardboard boxes for burning at the Oak Ridge incinerator. The residues from those activities were then sent to the Utah landfill. Despite the problems, the outcome was positive, Manrod said. "What you found out is the waste-acceptance process (at the incinerator) worked," she said. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. -------- washington Government may miss Hanford cleanup deadline, despite three extensions BY SHANNON DININNY October 07, 2005 The Associated Press http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20051007&Category=NEWS05&ArtNo=51007007&SectionCat=&Template=printart YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy has notified officials in Washington state that the agency may be unable to meet the legal deadline for operating a multi-billion-dollar waste treatment plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation. If the Energy Department fails to have the plant up and running by 2011, it would mark the fourth time the federal government has missed a deadline to complete its largest construction project. The deadline already has been pushed back three times. The plant is being designed to treat highly radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. The Energy Department halted construction on major portions of the plant last month amid skyrocketing costs stemming from seismic issues and construction problems. Federal officials have repeatedly refused to release a new cost estimate for the plant -- currently tagged at more than $5.8 billion. Congress has estimated the latest problems could push the cost as high as $10 billion and delay the start by four years. The Energy Department notified state officials Thursday that a new cost estimate and schedule for completing construction on the plant will not be ready before June 2006, the state Department of Ecology said in a statement Friday. "We continue to be frustrated by this update, but at the same time agree that USDOE and the contractors should do the job right and not make promises they cannot keep," the statement said. An Energy Department spokesman did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. The Energy Department also notified the state that it may not meet two deadlines for cleaning up sludge from two leak-prone pools of water near the Columbia River. The K East and K West basins were built at Hanford to store spent nuclear fuel, but cleaning them up has proven more difficult than envisioned. The federal government was to have sludge removed from the K East basin by July 31, 2006, and all sludge from the K West basin in containers by June 30, 2006. The Energy Department warned it may miss both deadlines. The waste treatment plant has long been considered the cornerstone of cleanup at Hanford, which was created in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. The greatest risk is posed by 53 million gallons of decades-old radioactive waste brewing in 177 underground tanks. Retrieval of the waste is a priority because some of the tanks are known to have leaked, threatening the aquifer and the Columbia River less than 10 miles away. The plant will use a process called vitrification to turn the waste into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste repository. Once completed, it will stand 12 stories tall and be the size of four football fields. The operating deadline already had been pushed back three times from the original deadline of 1999. 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, and a scientific report in 2004 found that the force of the ground movements at the plant site during a severe earthquake would be 38 percent greater than previously estimated. Under the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact signed by the state Department of Ecology, Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department, which manages cleanup at Hanford, the plant was to have been fully operating by 2011. The plant is being designed as it is being built -- a method that has proven costly. Design of the plant is about 75 percent complete, while construction is only about 35 percent complete. The price tag already has grown from $4.3 billion to the current $5.8 billion. If the cost jumps to $10 billion as Congress estimated, that would push it closer to the $15.2 billion estimate former contractor BNFL Inc. proposed in 2000. The Energy Department fired the company shortly thereafter. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Catalogue of equipment failures (Filed: 07/10/2005) UK Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/07/wirq107.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/07/ixworld.html The past decade has seen a catalogue of equipment failures. SA80 rifle: the basic infantry weapon was plagued with faults such as magazines falling off, the firing pin breaking and constant jamming. A £100 million refurbishment was needed. Nuclear submarines: at one point the fleet was out of service because of cracks in nuclear reactor piping. Desert boots: troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have robust desert boots after the rubber soles of a cheaper version melted in the heat. Bowman radio: ten years late into service, it needed many overhauls after it was found to give soldiers radiation burns and was too heavy. The Army's radio system was in such difficulties that, during the Kosovo conflict, officers had to use personal mobiles. Challenger 2 tank: during an exercise before the 2003 Gulf war, 60 per cent of the tanks were stranded in the desert after four hours. The MoD had to spend £140,000 to "desertise" each vehicle with extra filters and sand skirts. -------- iraq Iraqi draft charter hits streets as vote approaches BAGHDAD (AFP) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051007161818.gd9osgww.html Iraqi authorities began Friday handing out millions of copies of a draft constitution in the run-up to next week's hotly contested referendum on the post Saddam Hussein charter. British forces, grappling with increased attacks on their troops in southern Iraq, announced the arrest of 12 Shiite militiamen and expressed grave concern that some of the detained were serving police officers. And the government has issued an arrest warrant for former defence minister Hazem al-Shaalan, suspected of involvement in the alleged disappearance of more than one billion dollars from the ministry during his term, a Saudi-owned London newspaper reported. In Iraq, many households received their copy of the proposed constitution along with subsidised foodstuffs in exchange for state-issued ration tickets, but the text was also available in public buildings, hospitals, universities and even jails. Up to five million copies were to be printed with the help of the United Nations ahead of the October 15 referendum. "The printing is rolling slower than expected but we will be able to finish by October 14," a senior official in charge of the process said Thursday. "There's a huge demand. Iraqis want to read the constitution, whether they favour or oppose it," the official said, adding that some Iraqis were going straight to printing shops to get their copies. In the southern city of Basra meanwhile, British troops arrested 12 people, including policemen and militiamen, on terrorist charges following recent attacks on their forces, a British commander said Friday. "Some of the individuals we have arrested are linked to militia groups in Basra ... some of the individuals are members of the Basra police service," Brigadier John Lorimer said in a statement following the arrests late Thursday. "It is very concerning to us that members of Basra police are involved in terrorism." Since the US-led March 2003 invasion of the country, 95 British military personnel have died in Iraq. British and US officials are also worried about the smuggling of weapons reported to include shaped explosive charges, capable of penetrating thick armour, and more sophisticated triggering devices into Iraq from Iran. One US official said the devices were destined for Iraqi militias in the south as well as in other parts of the country, but that Sunni insurgents and extremists were also interested in getting their hands on them. In London, the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat said that former Iraqi defence minister Shalaan's name appeared on a list of about 20 people accused of administrative corruption in the defence ministry. He is no longer living in Iraq and is reported to be in Jordan. "Those (on the list) who are abroad could be brought back to Iraq with the assistance of Interpol," the newspaper said, quoting "legal sources" in Baghdad. In western Iraq, US forces killed at least 29 rebels in fighting between late Wednesday and early Friday, the military said. Multinational force aircraft killed 20 when they bombed a hotel in Husaybah, near the Syrian border, which had been taken over by rebels loyal to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a US military statement said. Six US marines were killed in the fighting late Thursday, bringing to at least 1,946 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003 according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures. The latest large-scale US-led offensives in Al Anbar province aimed to pin down Al-Qaeda fighters and prevent them from influencing local populations, in particular ahead of the constitutional referendum. According to an opinion poll sponsored by the US-based International Republican Institute, 85 percent of Iraqis planned to vote. Rebel groups linked to Al-Qaeda have called for a boycott, but the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who opposes the text, said Friday his followers should consult local religious leaders. In addition to the official text, the document has been presented or debated on television, in newspapers, and in public conferences, and Iraqi TV stations, both state-controlled and private, are bombarding viewers with ads in a bid to bolster the vote. -------- pacific Australian Defence Releases Network Centric Warfare Roadmap To Seamless Information-Age Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to demonstrate the operational benefits to be derived from the enhanced information flows and consequent effects such as agility. Canberra, Australia (SPX) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/milspace-comms-05zzzo.html Chief of the Department of Defence Capability Development Group, LTGEN David Hurley, has officially released the updated Network Centric Warfare Roadmap which outlines the steps to achieve the goal of a combined joint seamless NCW force by 2020. Speaking at the at the Land Warfare Conference on the Gold Coast, LTGEN Hurley said that Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is about significantly enhancing the Australian Defence Force's (ADF) warfighting capability. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to demonstrate the operational benefits to be derived from the enhanced information flows and consequent effects such as agility. "The NCW Roadmap provides the vision by which the ADF will become further network enabled, and operationally more effective. It encompasses the whole of Defence and outlines the key responsibilities for NCW implementation by all NCW stakeholders within Defence. The NCW Roadmap is a dynamic document that provides an overview of the milestones that we view as critical to the realisation of our vision for NCW," LTGEN Hurley said. The NCW Roadmap will provide a framework to align the ADF's NCW capability development and identifies four key actions to set the ADF on the road to becoming a mature NCW force: # Set the NCW related targets and milestones for the ADF; # Establish the Network; # Initiate changes in doctrine, and education and training, and; # Accelerate the process of change and innovation through mechanisms such as RPDE in concert with industry. The NCW Roadmap also provides both industry and the wider defence audience with context of how Defence will implement the concept of Network Centric Warfare. It will alert industry where opportunities for future development exist. "When in its mature state, NCW will improve the integration of the Command and Control, Sensor and Engagement Systems to facilitate enhanced situational awareness, collaboration and offensive potential. Critical to achieving this potential are the networks we establish. The implementation of NCW is about capitalising on technology to be able to do things better. Equally it is understood that the human dimension, the way our troops interact and utilise the information, is just as important in achieving maximum effectiveness. NCW will change the ADF's training, education, organisation and culture. The path from the first generation NCW to a mature state is a complex and technological journey that will witness the most significant change in the way we do business than any other 15 year period in the history of the ADF," LTGEN Hurley said. -------- spies The first-ever case alleging a 'mole' in the White House By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the October 07, 2005 edition http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1007/p01s04-usfp.htm WASHINGTON - On the morning of Aug. 5, 2005, according to court documents, FBI intelligence analyst Leandro Aragoncillo downloaded a secret US document about the Philippines onto his computer, copied it to a disk, and stuffed the disk into a bag lying on the floor of his cubicle at the Fort Monmouth Information Center in New Jersey. He had reason to believe that his contacts in Manila would be pleased with the information. But there was something much more important that he didn't know: FBI surveillance agents were watching his every move. They watched as he picked up the bag and left the building. They watched him get in his car, and drive to his home in nearby Woodbury. And they spied on him as he used a personal e-mail account to forward the data to, not just one, but two Philippine government officials. "The attached documents are provided for your own consumption," read Mr. Aragoncillo's cover message to one of his contacts. "These are for tomorrow's daily morning briefings...." Aragoncillo is now in jail, and the investigation into his alleged espionage activities is continuing to widen. He worked in the office of the Vice President from 1999 to 2001, serving both Al Gore and Dick Cheney, and law enforcement officials are now studying whether he smuggled secret information out of the White House itself. That might be worrisome enough on its own. Combined with this week's guilty plea by ex-Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin, who admitted channeling secrets to an Israeli embassy official, among others, the US appears to be experiencing an unwelcome surge in espionage cases connected to friendly governments. If we can't protect ourselves against our allies, who can we defend against? "This is a major problem to say the least," says Jim Walsh, a security expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In the great game of geopolitics there is a tacit understanding that friends may try to spy on friends, say experts. Weapons plans and troop deployments aren't nations' only closely held secrets, after all. Going into trade negotiations, it might be useful to know what kind of positions other parties are holding. The US undoubtedly would like to know how its allies are planning to proceed in regard to such sensitive issues as the upcoming vote on the proposed constitution in Iraq. Besides the cases of Aragoncillo and Franklin, State Department official Donald Keyser earlier this year was charged with unauthorized dealings with Taiwan. Overall, the most active collectors of intelligence in the US include Japan, Israel, France, Korea, Taiwan, and India, according to an unclassified 2000 list from the National Counterintelligence Center, the latest such information publicly available. There is now no evidence that the Philippine government itself initiated the efforts of Aragoncillo, who was born in the Philippines but later came to the US and served in the Marines for 21 years before becoming an FBI intelligence analyst. But the ease with which Aragoncillo operated has raised concerns among US officials and outside experts. He was noticed only after he sought to help one of his main contacts, Michael Ray Aquino, after Mr. Aquino was arrested by US immigration authorities in March and charged with overstaying his visa. Aquino was a high official in the Philippines National Police under the administration of former President Joseph Estrada. Due to the demands of the worldwide struggle against terrorism, currently the FBI has only six two-man teams working on counter-intelligence in Washington, according to knowledgeable sources in and outside the government. That's a vulnerability the nation may need to worry about. "We need to have confidence in our ability to defend against these things," says Mr. Walsh of Harvard's Belfer Center. So far, the charges against Aragoncillo deal only with his activities after he joined the FBI in July 2004. After he tried to intervene in his friend's immigration problems, a routine FBI investigation quickly discovered that he had downloaded 101 classified documents relating to the Philippines - and that he had no good reason to have done so, since his work did not deal with that country. Ex-president Estrada of the Philippines has acknowledged in media interviews that he received some of this information, although he adds that he did not know it was illegally obtained. According to e-mails reproduced in court documents, some recipients of the documents were very grateful. "I find all the information you are sending me very useful. I hope you will continue sending me more.... Just for curiosity, who else at our end share these [sic] information," reads one. Cover notes appended by Aragoncillo indicate that the information contained in at least some of the documents may have dealt with internal Philippine politics. "Please note that the [US] is aware of your tribulations in passing an important bill," reads one e-mail. And Aragoncillo may have known he was playing a dangerous game. "Again, please protect the source - ME," concluded one message, according to court documents. ---- Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty in AIPAC-Israeli Spy Case Friday, October 7th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/1344239 Larry Franklin, a top Pentagon analyst, plead guilty to handing over highly classified intelligence to members of the pro-Israeli lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. Franklin also admitted for the first time that he handed over top-secret information on Iran directly to an Israeli government official in Washington. We speak with investigative reporter, Robert Dreyfuss. [includes rush transcript] Earlier this week, a top Pentagon analyst plead guilty to handing over highly classified intelligence to members of the pro-Israeli lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. The official, Larry Franklin, also admitted for the first time that he handed over top-secret information on Iran directly to an Israeli government official in Washington. Franklin said he personally met with an official from the Israeli Embassy in Washington eight times. As part of a plea agreement, Franklin pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and a third charge of possessing classified documents. He faces up to 25 years in prison. Franklin has agreed to testify against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former AIPAC officials, who are facing trial. The FBI has been investigating AIPAC for more than 2 years, looking into whether members of the organization helped to illegally pass on highly classified intelligence to the Israeli government. And as Robert Dreyfuss wrote in his article "Bigger than AIPAC" published in August on ZNET, "It is clear by probing the details of the case, the FBI has got hold of a dangerous loose end of a much larger story. By pulling the string hard enough, the FBI and the Justice Department might just unravel the larger story, which is beginning to look more and more like it involves the same nexus of Pentagon civilians, White House functionaries and American Enterprise Institute officials who thumped the drums of war in Iraq in 2001-2003 and who are trying to whip up an anti-Iranian frenzy as well." * Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His book, "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" has just been published. RUSH TRANSCRIPT JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined again by Robert Dreyfuss, the investigative reporter and author. Your take on the latest developments in the AIPAC case? ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, I’d put this in the same rank, sort of, as the Valerie Plame/Karl Rove investigation. You have two major investigations going on. I think the Franklin one has the potential to go much deeper than simply an investigation of a leak, as in the C.I.A. investigation. We know now that Franklin has plead guilty, and no doubt, the F.B.I. is trying to get him to cooperate in an investigation that goes far beyond just him. This investigation of AIPAC began actually in 1999. We don't know what caused the investigation to begin. So far, the F.B.I. hasn't said anything about why they began investigating AIPAC five years ago, but they did. Franklin stumbled into this investigation when he attended a lunch that was being already monitored by the F.B.I., and they nailed Franklin after they followed him into meetings and discussions with Israeli embassy officials and with AIPAC officials. So, Franklin is now in the bag. The question is: Can they turn Franklin to investigate, first of all, the larger story of AIPAC? And if we can eventually find out maybe with future indictments, what was the investigation about in 1999? What does the F.B.I. have on AIPAC, and how far are they willing to press that? And then, third, there's even a larger circle to investigate, which is -- and far more explosive and sensitive because it involves the question of supposed dual loyalties between American and Israeli loyalties, and it could involve numbers of people within this neoconservative circle, both inside and outside the administration, who kind of cavalierly treat the American government and the Israeli government as sort of interchangeable parts of the same apparatus. So, we don't know who else could be caught up in this investigation, but it certainly has the potential to become a much wider investigation, if the F.B.I. chooses to go down that road and if the prosecutor decides to really use his powers and his grand jury subpoenas and so forth to take this investigation as far as it might go. We certainly know, at least in my reporting I have noted, that there were circles in Israel in Ariel Sharon's office inside the Israeli government that fed information into the Pentagon the same way that Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans did, to create the, as we know now, wrong impression that Iraq was an urgent or imminent threat to the United States in 2002 and in 2003, leading up to the war. So, certainly, there were people in Israel, not all of them, but some, who wanted the United States to go to war in Iraq, and it is certainly a legitimate question to ask to what extent were there agents of influence in the United States who joined the war push. This is not a conspiracy theory. They didn't create the war, but there was certainly various forces coming together in the period before the war in Iraq began that led to that decision by President Bush to go to war. And it's worth investigating who they were. JUAN GONZALEZ: Robert Dreyfuss, I want to thank you. We have to leave it there, at least for today. I want to thank you, Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter and journalist, author of The Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. -------- us Capability Assessment Helps AF Prepare For Future 'Today, the Air Force has not fully developed persistent ISR that allows it to look deep inside enemy territory. Unmanned aerial vehicles that fly along a nation's borders cannot peer deep enough inside to see what the Air Force needs to see. In space, orbiting satellites' revisit rate is not enough to provide persistent ISR, and there are places where satellites cannot operate in a geosynchronous orbit.' by Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez Washington DC (AFPN) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/aerospace-05zze.html Air Force leaders use a future capabilities assessment to assist in planning for 2025 and beyond. More than 100 participants from the Air Force's planning, operations, research and development communities gathered Oct. 4 in Herndon, Va., to play out scenarios that may threaten the United States in years to come. Together, those leaders discussed how the Air Force of the future will defend America against threats with the tools it has now. They also discussed what new tools the Air Force will need to fight future threats, said Col. Gail Wojtowicz, division chief for future concepts and transformation of the Air Force plans and programs directorate. "We are looking at the 2025 time frame and asking what does the Air Force look like 20 years from now," she said. "In the next 20 years, we don't know exactly what it is we will be doing, but we know there are some challenges that we will have to focus on fixing." This year, those gathered at the assessment focused on two key areas the Air Force believes it can improve: long-range strike capabilities and persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Long-range strike capability is the ability to reach out across the globe and hit a target. That could mean a gravity weapon used by today's aircraft, or it could mean use of a space weapon 25 years from now. "Long range strike is the key to everything for us," Colonel Wojtowicz said. "We don't do it as well as we'd like, but we do it better than everybody on the globe. If I want to do long-range strike against country X, today it may be a B-2 [Spirit] delivering a gravity weapon. Twenty years from now it may be a space weapon. So I am calling space command, and they are going to go ahead and put hardware on targets. Our challenge is we need to reach across different stovepipes in the Air Force." Colonel Wojtowicz also said long-range strike could mean a computer attack on an enemy's command and control networks, or use of a high-powered microwave for the purpose of disrupting network systems. Persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is the ability to monitor an enemy 24 hours a day with an unblinking eye. It is a capability the Air Force is going to need in the future and something discussed at the assessment to end Oct. 6. "You are going to have to be able to stare in order to find the things we are looking for," Colonel Wojtowicz said. "If you can't find where the nuclear weapons are, if you don't have the eyes to do that, there is no way you can affect it later on." During the assessment, participants were given scenarios to play out that involve finding nuclear weapons inside enemy territory. Persistent ISR may be one capability they discover they will need to locate that weapon. Today, the Air Force has not fully developed persistent ISR that allows it to look deep inside enemy territory. Unmanned aerial vehicles that fly along a nation's borders cannot peer deep enough inside to see what the Air Force needs to see. In space, orbiting satellites' revisit rate is not enough to provide persistent ISR, and there are places where satellites cannot operate in a geosynchronous orbit. One solution to providing persistent ISR includes balloons floating in "near space," an area about 18 miles above the surface. That is significantly higher than where a UAV may fly, but not as high as a satellite. "Currently what we have is weather balloons," Colonel Wojtowicz said. "You have things that look down (with) cameras or we can use them as a communications relay point. Something that high up gives you an incredible amount of range that you can see." In the past, the future's capability assessment has been called a "war game." Today, it is more of a guided strategic discussion about the Air Force's future capabilities. Participants are challenged with any number of future wartime scenarios and will be called upon to find solutions to those scenarios. "These are challenges we have to have our senior leaders address today, so we have the tools to affect these things 20 years down the road," Colonel Wojtowicz said. ---- Army Reorganizes to Boost Its Combat Power Plan Aims to Add 40,000 Troops to Fighting Force, Reduce Support Personnel, Retain 12-Month Tours By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 7, 2005; A02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/06/AR2005100601715_pf.html The Army has embarked on a six-year plan to boost its combat power by 40,000 troops while reducing the number of noncombat jobs -- essentially giving the nation more forces to deploy without a costly increase in the active-duty Army's authorized strength of 482,000. But the plan is based on two key conditions that remain far from certain: That no major new demand will arise for U.S. soldiers at home or abroad, and that the Army will be able to recruit between 75,000 and 80,000 new soldiers each year through 2011 -- a target the service missed this fiscal year, when 73,400 signed up. Moreover, under the reorganization, the Army no longer plans to shorten tours for U.S. soldiers in Iraq from 12 months to six or eight. "We've found this year deployment to be optimum, and we don't have any plans to change it," Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told reporters yesterday. Another reason for retaining year-long tours is that Army statistics show most casualties occur in the initial and final phases of the deployments, he said. Shorter deployments mean a greater number of soldiers will spend time in those dangerous periods. The reorganization reflects an optimism within the Army leadership that progress in increasing the number of combat brigades -- along with an anticipated "ramp down" of forces in Iraq -- will allow a moderately sized Army to meet long-term global demands without undue strain. "Given our current missions as we understand it" -- and barring the outbreak of a large-scale war or a domestic catastrophe -- the Army will not ask Congress for an increase in its authorized troop level, Harvey said. Instead, the planned internal shifting of manpower "will give us the resources" the Army needs, he said. The Army has increased the number of active-duty brigades -- each with about 3,500 soldiers -- from 33 in 2003 to 37 today, with plans to reach 43 by 2007. With those numbers, the active-duty Army, National Guard and Reserve units should be able to meet the goal set by the Army leadership of sustaining a pool of 20 brigades for worldwide missions. The creation of the new brigades means that active-duty soldiers will replace many of the Army National Guard combat troops in the upcoming rotation in Iraq. Guard brigades in Iraq will fall from seven to two, Harvey said, as newly built brigades from the 101st Airborne Division, the 4th Infantry Division and other units flow in. The plan is a pragmatic response to tight budgets -- every 10,000 additional troops cost $1.5 billion a year -- as well as to war-time recruiting difficulties that constrain efforts to expand the Army overall. For example, Congress has authorized a temporary emergency increase of 30,000 soldiers in the Army's active-duty manpower, known as "end strength," in an effort to boost the force from 482,400 to 512,400 in fiscal 2007. But the Army fell short of the interim target of 502,400 for the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30. At the end of August, the active-duty ranks stood at 491,000. The Army's new plan calls for returning to the original size of 482,400 by 2011. Under the plan, the Army aims to increase its deployable combat forces by 40,000, to 355,000 in 2011. It intends to achieve this by reducing the number of noncombat, "institutional" Army jobs from 104,000 to 75,000, and by streamlining training and reducing turnover in units, Harvey said. So far, a recruiting shortfall has left the Army 7,000 to 10,000 soldiers short of reaching its goal of 335,000 combat troops by fiscal 2005, he said. "It's not a crisis," Harvey said. He added that this year should not prove any more difficult for recruiting than last year. The plan also assumes that the Army's ability to retain current soldiers will remain robust, at about 65,000 a year. In fiscal 2005, the Army surpassed its target, retaining 108 percent of the number sought, said Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, chief of Army operations. Solid retention came even though today's soldiers are busier than ever. Seventy-five percent of active-duty soldiers have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and 100,000 are on a second tour. "This is going to be a long war," Lovelace said, but he added: "We're holding it all together." -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals Patriot Act Appeal Fails at Supreme Court By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS October 7, 2005 Filed at 7:49 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Patriot-Act.html?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print WASHINGTON (AP) -- Connecticut libraries lost an emergency Supreme Court appeal on Friday in their effort to be freed from a gag order and participate in a congressional debate over the Patriot Act. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg denied the appeal and offered an unusually detailed explanation of her decision. Ginsburg said the American Civil Liberties Union had made reasonable arguments on behalf of its client, identified in a filing as the Library Connection, an association of libraries in Connecticut. However, Ginsburg said that the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should be given time to consider whether the Patriot Act, and its requirement of secrecy in records demands, is unconstitutional as applied to the libraries. ''A decision of that moment warrants cautious review,'' she said. The ACLU, with backing from the American Library Association, argued that a gag order prevents its client from taking part in debate on Capitol Hill about the Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after the 2001 terror attacks. Some key provisions expire at the end of the year. A federal judge said that the gag order on the libraries had silenced people ''whose voices are particularly important in an ongoing national debate about the intrusion of governmental authority into individual lives.'' The 2nd circuit put the decision on hold, and Ginsburg was asked to intervene. In turning down that request, Ginsburg said she expected the appeals court to hear arguments in the government's appeal and rule ''with appropriate care and dispatch.'' Arguments are Nov. 2. The case could still return to the Supreme Court. The Patriot Act authorized expanded surveillance of terror suspects, increased use of material witness warrants to hold suspects incommunicado and secret proceedings in immigration cases. Much of the Supreme Court appeal, filed earlier this week, was classified and blacked out. The Bush administration's published response consisted of blank pages. A filing by the American Library Association and other groups included some details, as did Ginsburg's seven-page opinion. She said that the library association member received an FBI demand for records but was told that it would be illegal to tell anyone about it. The group sued on free-speech grounds so that it could take part ''in the current debate -- both in Congress and among the public -- regarding proposed revisions to the Patriot Act,'' according to Ginsburg. Federal prosecutors have maintained that secrecy about records demands is necessary to keep from alerting suspects and jeopardizing terrorism investigations. Ann Beeson, the ACLU lawyer handling the case, said Friday that they would continue their legal fight. ''Ultimately, we believe that this broad power, which allows the government to seize library and Internet records without judicial authorization, is unconstitutional and offensive to American democracy,'' she said. The emergency appeal was filed with Ginsburg because she handles cases from the 2nd Circuit. The case is Doe v. Gonzales, 05-A295. On the Net: American Library Association: http://ala.org/ -------- homeland security / national intelligence Highlights of Homeland Security Budget By The Associated Press Friday, October 7, 2005 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/10/07/national/w082148D35.DTL&type=printable (10-07) 08:21 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Highlights of the $31.9 billion Department of Homeland Security budget adopted Friday: _ $9 billion for border security to fund 1,000 new border patrol agents, 250 new investigators and 460 new detention personnel. _ $5.9 billion for the Transportation Security Administration, about $2 billion of which is financed by aviation security fees. $2.5 billion is for salaries of passenger and baggage screeners. _ $3.3 billion for preparedness and first responder grants, including $2.5 billion for state and local governments, $765 million for high-risk, high-density urban areas and $150 million for rail- and transit-security grants. _ $7.8 billion for the Coast Guard. -------- human rights Ex-law UK lords say anti-terror proposals are 'intolerable' By Robert Verkaik and Nigel Morris Published: 07 October 2005 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article317811.ece The Government's proposals to fight terrorism have been attacked by two former law lords, who condemned them as"intolerable" and a breach of human rights laws. Lord Steyn and Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who until recently sat as full-time judges in the Lords, say they are particularly concerned about powers to hold terror suspects for up to three months without charge. Lord Steyn said such a long period of detention without trial could fall foul of the European Convention on Human Rights and Lord Lloyd said it amounted to internment. The Government has now announced a dilution of its new anti-terrorist legislation to be published next week. Under the new proposals, people will be charged with glorifying terrorism only if it can be demonstrated they intended to encourage their audience to commit similar atrocities. But Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said he was standing firm on his contentious proposal to increase the time terrorist suspects can be interrogated from 14 days to three months. The move has been fiercely opposed by the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives and could be defeated in the House of Lords. The law lords' comments were made to the BBC's Panorama programme, to be screened on Sunday, which also highlights an apparent difference of opinion between Tony Blair and Cherie Blair on striking a balance between protecting people against terrorism and infringing civil liberties. It quotes Cherie Blair, speaking as a human rights lawyer, on 26 July this year: "It is all too easy for us to respond to such terror in a way which undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and which cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilised nation." Lord Steyn, in his Panorama interview recorded before the Government announced its partial climb-down, said: "We live in a country that Voltaire called 'the country of liberty': isn't that being endangered?" Lord Lloyd, who presided over the inquiry into anti-terrorist legislation for the Conservative government in 1995-96, said of the new Bill: "It says that a person commits an offence if he glorifies, exalts, or celebrates an act of terrorism whether in the past or in the future. Now to me that is a very odd provision. "I have never seen anything like it in an Act of Parliament. And I pity the poor judge who's going to have to explain those words to a jury. Glorify, there again glorify, exalt or celebrate. "Presumably they all mean something different otherwise you wouldn't have three words instead of one. Somebody in the Home Office must have thought they mean something different. But how is a judge going to explain the difference between those three things ? "The essence of criminal law is that it should be clear and it must be certain. And having an offence couched in this language will in practice be unenforceable." On the detention proposal, Lord Lloyd said: "It begins to look ... a little like internment. And it would certainly be seen that way by some of the ethnic minorities. Fancy being kept for three months without being charged. Being questioned notionally and not being charged. I think that is intolerable. By, in a sense, stirring up the fear and then saying, 'Well this is what we're going to do about it by legislating here, there and everywhere', I think that's in a sense, irresponsible." Mr Clarke also set out plans to close mosques suspected of fostering extremism. People responsible for such places could be prosecuted, and even jailed, if they fail to act against extremist teachings. -------- torture Allard rejects anti-torture rules Colorado senator says he doesn't want to 'tie the hands' of military By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News October 7, 2005 http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_4138894,00.html WASHINGTON - Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., was one of nine U.S. senators who voted this week to oppose tough, new anti-torture guidelines, saying he did not want to "tie the hands" of the U.S. military. The Senate voted 90-9 for an amendment to a $440 billion defense spending bill backed by former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. It would put strict new limits on interrogation techniques the military can use in Iraq and elsewhere. President Bush has threatened to veto the entire spending bill if the amendment stays, saying the restrictions in it would hamper the war on terror. The amendment was inspired by reported abuses of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Allard said changing the regulations "does not right the wrong committed by those individuals who were clearly acting outside the Army's existing regulations and laws of our country." "In fact, all it does is tie the hands of the Department of Defense at a time when maximum flexibility within the boundaries of the U.S. law is needed," Allard said. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Denver, voted for the amendment, which still needs approval by the House of Representatives. "If soldiers across this world know there are these standards the American military is going to abide by, it provides additional protection to our soldiers" if they are captured, Salazar said. "I think it elevates the credibility of the United States of America as an international leader, where we can set forth to the world that we have standards with respect to how we treat prisoners of war." -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Bush Announces Renewed War on "Islamo-Facism," Rejects Demands for U.S. Troop Withdrawal From Iraq Friday, October 7th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/1344227 President Bush firmly rejected demands for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and tried to refocus America's attention on the threat from Islamic extremism. We speak with investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss, author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam." [includes rush transcript] President Bush firmly rejected demands for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and tried to refocus America's attention on the threat from Islamic extremism. In what the White House billed as a major speech, Bush addressed the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington on Thursday. He said the United States and its allies had disrupted 10 serious al Qaeda plots since 9/11, compared the war on terrorism to the struggle against communism and outlined what he said was a broad strategy by Muslim terrorists to dominate much of the world. * President Bush, October 6, 2005. President Bush's speech was part of a White House effort to rebuild waning support for the Iraq war amid an upsurge of violence ahead of an October 15 vote on an Iraqi constitution. In his speech, Bush sought to put the US occupation of Iraq in a global context and praised what he called steps towards democracy. * President Bush, October 6, 2005. President Bush speaking Thursday. The Shiite-led Iraqi government recently reversed last-minute changes that made to the rules for the October 15th vote on the constitution. On Sunday the parliament had made changes that would have made it nearly impossible for the Sunni minority to defeat the charter at the polls. * Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His book, "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" has just been published. RUSH TRANSCRIPT JUAN GONZALEZ: In what the White House billed as a major speech, Bush addressed the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington on Thursday. He said the United States and its allies had disrupted ten serious al Qaeda plots since 9/11, compared the war on terrorism to the struggle against communism and outlined what he said was a broad strategy by Muslim terrorists to dominate much of the world. This is an excerpt of what he had to say. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Many militants are part of global borders, terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, which spreads propaganda and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists and conducts dramatic and brutal operations like September 11. Other militants are found in regional groups often associated with al Qaeda, paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia and the Philippines and Pakistan and Chechnya and Kashmir and Algeria. JUAN GONZALEZ: President Bush, speaking on Thursday in Washington. We're joined now by investigative reporter and author, Robert Dreyfuss. He’s a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His new book is titled Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bob. ROBERT DREYFUSS: Thanks very much. Glad to be here. JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, you no doubt heard the President's speech yesterday, and he talked for the first time about Islamo-fascism and the threat of domination from extremists, fundamentalist extremists. Your reaction to some of his comments? ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, you know, in the political context of Bush's collapsing poll numbers and general deterioration in public opinion, I think it was a desperatist speech. I think he was reaching out to people to try to get across the idea that we're winning somehow the war against terrorism. Instead, what he did is he bought into this idea that was put forward by neoconservatives over the past, gosh, four years now, that this is a global struggle akin to the Cold War, that this is an unending struggle against tyranny that's going to preoccupy the United States for years or decades to come. He’s inflating tremendously the scope, basically, of the war on terrorism itself, and he is ignoring utterly the fact that the war in Iraq has done more than anything else to intensify the bitterness and resentment, even hatred of the United States all across the Muslim world, which is the prime recruiting tool for Islamic radicals. So, I think the idea that this is even a war that can be won in military terms has been rejected now by the military. A few weeks ago, when the generals tried to say -- and Rumsfeld even got into the act, saying that this is a struggle that involves primarily intelligence and diplomacy and cooperation of other countries. The President jumped into that debate to say that this was, in fact, going to be a continuing military struggle. I think he is finding it increasingly impossible to sell the idea that the war in Iraq is having any success whatsoever, and so he is making this again desperate effort to try to recast or to cast -- again to cast the war in Iraq as part of some struggle against terrorism. But as other people have observed, invading Iraq after 9/11 was the equivalent of Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. There's no relationship between the two, and by going into Iraq and by continuing to fight a hopeless battle there, we're making the problem of terrorism far worse and certainly not better. JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, he never mentioned at all, and we wouldn't expect him to, the role of the United States, as you document in your book, Devil's Game, in terms of feeding the development of fundamentalist movements throughout the Middle East. Could you talk about that a little bit? ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, you know, for 50 years during the Cold War, a lot of people in the United States in policy circles and in intelligence circles saw political Islam -- I call it the Islamic right, sort of analogous to the Christian right -- as allies in the struggle against the Soviet Union and also against -- in the struggle against nationalisms, that is, Arab nationalism and nationalism in India and Iran and elsewhere. So, in the sense that this was a Cold War battle, it carried over through Afghanistan into the present time. If I were worried about Islamic extremism, I would worry first and foremost about the current government of Iraq. It's the Shiite fundamentalist extremists, as represented by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and by Al Dawa, the two main Shiite parties in Iraq, which now again have the full support of the U.S. government to the tune of billions of dollars and 150,000 troops, that are promoting an extreme right wing, I would say, fascist Islamic ideology. So, if the President is concerned about Islamic fascism, he ought to do something about the Hakeem family in Iraq and others who are busily creating a theocratic state there, running death squads, attacking moderate Sunnis, bombing liquor stores and barber shops and movie theaters, and forcing women to adopt their distorted, weird version of what Islamic law requires women to look like, and, of course, on top of everything else, building ties to Iran's intelligence service and revolutionary guard. So, here we are, on the one hand, the President is talking about an “Islamic threat,” quote, unquote, to the United States, and on the other hand we're propping up the world's biggest extremist Islamic force in southern and central Iraq, and which is basically in control of the government in Baghdad. JUAN GONZALEZ: We're speaking with investigative reporter and author, Robert Dreyfuss. Well, President Bush's speech was part of a White House effort to rebuild waning support for the Iraq war, amid an upsurge of violence ahead of an October 15 vote on an Iraqi constitution. In his speech, Bush sought to put the U.S. occupation of Iraq in a global context and praise what he called steps towards democracy. President Bush speaking Thursday. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Some observers question the durability of democracy in Iraq. They underestimate the power and appeal of freedom. We have already suggested that Iraq's democracy must be on shaky ground because Iraqis are arguing with each other. But that's the essence of democracy: making your case, debating with those who you disagree, building consensus by persuasion, and answering to the will of the people. We have heard it said that the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds of Iraq are too divided to form a lasting democracy. In fact, democratic federalism is the best hope for unifying a diverse population, because a federal constitutional system respects the rights and religious traditions of all citizens, while giving all minorities, including the Sunnis, a stake and a voice in the future of their country. It is true that the seeds of freedom have only recently been planted in Iraq. But democracy, when it grows, is not a fragile flower. It is a healthy, sturdy tree. JUAN GONZALEZ: That was the President speaking on Thursday. The Shiite-led Iraqi government recently reversed last minute changes that were made to the rules for a October 15th votes on the constitution. On Sunday, the parliament had made changes that would have made it nearly impossible for the Sunni minority to defeat the charter at the polls. Robert Dreyfuss, you have written extensively about the political process in Iraq. ROBERT DREYFUSS: Yeah. I think that this constitution is pretty much a catastrophe. Most of the people who know anything about Iraq in Washington say that it's going to make the situation much, much worse, and not better. In fact, what's likely to happen on October 15 is that the Sunnis and the Sunni-led resistance all across the country will mobilize to defeat the constitution, and they'll fail. So, in other words, they will come out of this vote angry and bitter over the fact that this constitution, which was put together by the Kurdish and Shiite majority, is being rammed down their throats. There is, unfortunately, no effort by the United States, at least nothing approaching the scale of what's needed, to incorporate the Sunnis into this democracy. It's not that they're arguing with each other, as the President says. This is a civil war situation and one that could get astronomically worse next year. In other words, we could go from a situation where about a thousand Iraqis a month are dying in this civil conflict to one that would be ten or even a hundred times worse. It's not out of the question that several hundred thousand or a million Iraqis could die over the next two years if this falls into open civil war. So, the President's happy talk about Iraq and the constitution and the coming elections is completely wrong and misses the point that Iraq is teetering at the brink of absolute disaster. And the only way out of it is a 180-degree change in this stay-the-course philosophy, but so far, at least, there's no sense among anyone in Washington that the Bush administration is prepared to make that turnaround. JUAN GONZALEZ: We are talking with Robert Dreyfuss, an investigative reporter and a contributing editor at The Nation. We’ve got to take a break, but when we return, we'll look at the spy scandal in Washington involving the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. ---- Bush vows to never back down October 07, 2005, The Australian AP, AFP http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16842643%255E2703,00.html WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush last night reiterated his Government's determination to win the war on terror, likening Islamic extremism to the ideology of communism that was defeated by the US during the Cold War. In a major speech on the US commitment to continue the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan - and to prevent terrorism from "outlaw regimes" such as Iran and Syria - Mr Bush said he would fight extremists who wanted to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world". It was reported last night that Mr Bush said the US had foiled three terror strikes planned by al-Q'aida on US soil since the September 11 attacks in 2001, and seven others elsewhere. "We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory," he said in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy. He said the US would not quit Iraq, saying he would not turn the country over to Osama bin Laden and insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory," he added. Mr Bush stepped up his rhetoric against Iran and Syria, saying any government that chose to be an "ally of terror" was an "enemy of civilisation". "(The) US makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbour them because they are equally guilty of murder." Earlier, Vice-President Dick Cheney said the US had to be prepared to fight the war on terror for decades to bring peace to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort, and it will be resisted by those whose only hope for power is through the spread of violence," he said. "As the people of that region experience new hope, progress, and control over their own destiny, we will see the power of freedom to change our world, and a terrible threat will be removed." Mr Cheney did not specify how long he believed US troops would have to stay in Iraq. Some military commanders had expressed hopes that substantial US withdrawals could begin by the middle of next year, although they had edged away from such comments recently. The rhetoric from the US came as at least 25 people were killed and 87 wounded yesterday in a suicide attack near a mosque south of Baghdad, as up to 200 Shias gathered for prayers at the end of the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. -------- ENERGY Specter raised of 10 percent utility jumps By JOHN MURAWSKI, Staff Writer Oct 7, 2005 http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/2811319p-9256077c.html Not happy with Progress Energy's 4.4 percent cost increase this month? Regular cost increases could be a foretaste of things to come in the era of soaring fuel costs and rising energy demand. North Carolina electricity users could face paying 10 percent annual cost increases in the near future. That's the bleak scenario painted by energy consultant Lawrence Makovich, who spoke to 52 Progress Energy department managers during the utility's annual leadership retreat Thursday at the Pinehurst conference center. Makovich said Progress will have to make the case now for the expensive proposition of building a new power plant, to prepare customers for the inevitable price jolt. Making matters worse are record high prices for natural gas and coal used to generate electricity, costs that will be passed on to customers. Putting off tough choices could result in energy shortages and blackouts, such as those that crippled California five years ago, he warned. "They [customers] should brace themselves for price shocks," Makovich said an an interview after he spoke to the utility executives. "The most important issue that faces the power industry today is the timely solution of resource supply. Power supply is not cheap." Progress acknowledges the essential truth of Makovich's forecasts, but won't commit to concrete percentages. When the utility needed money to pay for the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County, it raised rates by 9 percent in North Carolina in 1988. "Our customers in North Carolina have enjoyed rate stability for almost two decades," said company spokesman Keith Poston. "In real dollars, they're actually paying less, when you look at the cost of other things that have gone up in price." In 1991, the farthest back for which Progress could provide data on Thursday, a typical household paid $84.74 a month, based on 1,000 kilowatt hours of usage. Today, it's $90.43, the increase all attributable to increasing costs of coal and natural gas used to fire power plants. The Raleigh-based utility, which is seeing energy demand grow 2 percent a year, has said it will need a new power plant in a decade, and the company is considering building another nuclear reactor, which could cost $2 billion. Poston said he couldn't predict when the rate increases might kick in. But this year the president approved an energy bill with financial incentives that industry experts say could cover up to half the cost of a new nuclear plant. Meanwhile, rising fuel prices are already taking their toll in Progress Energy's service areas. In Florida, the company is seeking an increase of 11 percent for residential customers, to offset fuel costs. Passing through increases in fuel costs is generally approved in full by regulators. Progress Energy's base rate hasn't been increased in 17 years and is frozen through 2007. Makovich, a regular on the utility stump circuit, is an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the think tank founded by Daniel Yergin, a former Harvard University historian and author of the Pulitzer-prize winning book, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power." The group takes a free-market orientation to energy and says that electricity deregulation has lowered prices everywhere but California. He predicted that several new power plants will be built by 2015 by utilities that strongly advocate nuclear power, including Progress Energy and Charlotte-based Duke Power. Staff writer John Murawski can be reached at 829-8932 or murawski@newsobserver.com -------- alternative energy GM Sees Long Drive to Hydrogen-Fuelled Cars Story by Stuart Penson REUTERS UK: October 7, 2005 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/32861/story.htm LONDON - General Motors Corp. is committed to building low-pollution cars which run on hydrogen but cost and design challenges mean commercial production is still about a decade away, the company said on Thursday. The world's biggest carmaker aims to have in place a viable fuel-cell powered car by 2010, with volume production possible two to three years later, said Matthew Fronk, GM's chief engineer of fuel cell systems. "GM is pushing very hard on fuel cells," Fronk told a conference in London. "We need to solve issues in performance, cost and durability," he said. "We have to see all these (solved) before we can pull the trigger and start commercial production," Fronk said. Fuel cells use a chemical reaction to produce electricity from hydrogen. The process emits only tiny amounts of carbon-dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. President George W. Bush has backed the use of hydrogen-fuelled cars as part of a strategy to tackle climate change by developing new energy technologies that curb the world's dependency on oil and gas. Commercial applications of fuel cells in laptop computers and mobile telephones could emerge within a few years, analysts say. But putting fuel cells into cars poses greater challenges. "We have noticed and taken care of a lot of problems in design but we are still doing a lot of learning," said Fronk. "Each of the car companies is taking a slightly different approach." Fuel cell designs with long enough life spans and the ability to power cars over long enough distances before refuelling will need to emerge before the new breed of hydrogen cars hits the showrooms. Storage and distribution of hydrogen raises big issues. "The number one barrier (to commercial use of fuel cells) is hydrogen storage," said Valri Lightner, fuel cell team leader at the US Department of Energy. The DoE estimates the cost of producing power from fuel cells needs to drop to $30 per kilowatt from a current cost of about $110, based on the production of half a million units per year. "Costs are critical for fuel cell commercialisation," said Fronk. -------- OTHER -------- environment New Orleans water drinkable for first time since storms: health officials NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051007135426.y1x5lhmw.html The city water in most of New Orleans is safe for drinking for the first time since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the city more than five weeks ago, the mayor's office said Friday. "It's wonderful for us," Sally Forman of the mayor's office told AFP. "It means citizens will have a more livable environment when they come back to homes that weren't destroyed." Water remained contaminated or unavailable in two of the city's hardest-hit sections, one of them the predominantly African-American, working-class neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward. City officials are hoping the return of clean water will hasten the revival of restaurants, hotels and other businesses in a city that raked in billions of dollars from tourists prior to the double blows of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Electric service in New Orleans "is still coming back," according to Forman, who estimated that the local utility company had restored power to about 40 percent of the city as of Friday. Destroyed homes and shuttered businesses have erased the city's tax base, prompting Mayor Ray Nagin to announce recently that he is laying off half of New Orleans's civil servants. -------- ACTIVISTS Environmentalists criticize Nobel Peace Prize choice 10/7/2005 8:20 AM (AFP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-10-07-iaeacritics_x.htm PARIS — Some green activists voiced outrage after the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency was named the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner on Friday and said the IAEA has helped military nuclear proliferation by encouraging civilian nuclear power. A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by "promoting" civilian nuclear plants, it had given countries the means to build atomic bombs. "The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty," Sortir du Nucleaire said in a statement."India, Pakistan and Israel have joined the five 'great powers' (the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain) in having an unjustifiable right to possessing nuclear weapons and in not meeting their pledges on nuclear disarmament.Recent developments (Iran, North Korea etc.) have confirmed the IAEA's patent failure." In Amsterdam, Greenpeace International spokesman Mike Townsley acknowledged that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had been "a voice of sanity" in his advocacy of a nuclear-free Middle East.But ElBaradei was trapped by the IAEA's "contradictory role, as nuclear policeman and nuclear salesman,"Townsley said, referring to the agency's dual functions of promoting civilian nuclear energy while trying to prevent countries from making nuclear bombs. The Nobel Committee said the IAEA's work was "of incalculable importance" at a time when disarmament efforts "appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role."(Related story: IAEA, ElBaradei win Nobel Peace Prize) George Monbiot, a radical author and commentator with the British daily The Guardian, said the 2005 prize to the IAEA and its boss "was a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation."He saw a parallel with the awarding of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who advised President Nixon to extend the Vietnam War to Laos and Cambodia before negotiating the conflict's end. "The currency (of the Nobel Peace Prize) is beginning to be devalued," Monbiot said. In Nagasaki, Senji Yamaguchi, a nuclear bomb survivor nominated for the peace prize, accused the Nobel jury of passing over his group so as not to offend the United States. He also called on the IAEA and ElBaradei to "work harder" to prevent the risk of another nuclear bomb attack. Yamaguchi's group, Nihon Hidankyo, which includes survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, has lobbied for the abolition of nuclear weapons and demanded the Japanese government provide compensation for nuclear bomb victims. In addition to their traditional worries about nuclear proliferation, environmentalists are concerned that the civilian nuclear industry -- dealt a crippling blow by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster -- is on the rise once more. Nuclear power is becoming eagerly pursued in China and India to help meet surging energy needs at a time of expensive, vulnerable oil supplies.And in Europe, some countries that vowed to scrap or freeze their nuclear power programmes are now discreetly looking at reviving them to meet their commitments on greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels. ---- Winning the Nobel Peace Prize: a blessing or a curse? OSLO (AFP) Oct 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051007172706.m98tfta9.html Winning the Nobel Peace Prize can be a blessing for some and a curse for others, and the pendulum could swing either way for this year's laureates, the UN's nuclear watchdog IAEA and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei, experts said on Friday. After receiving word that he and his International Atomic Energy Agency had won the prestigious award for their efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, ElBaradei said the prize would strengthen his "resolve and those of my colleagues to speak the truth to power". Judging from the effect the prize has had in the past, the IAEA and ElBaradei could find themselves propelled forward on a great wind of goodwill, but observers caution that the award's effect could also be neutral, or even negative. "ElBaradei's first comments today were very promising (and) could indicate that this prize will have a very motivating effect," Stein Toennesson, the director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, told AFP. The award could boost the organisation's efforts to ensure that Iran complies with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and might even lead to an agreement on the issue before the Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Oslo on December 10. If that happens, "this could turn into a huge success story", Toennesson said. "But unfortunately it's more likely that the opposite will happen and the conflict (over Iran's nuclear capacities) will escalate," he added. A number of previous laureates have emerged with stronger resolve, more resources and the international attention needed to get more done, and some have even inspired dramatic political changes. For Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta the prize in 1996 brought international attention to the drawn-out and virtually forgotten conflict in East Timor, helping the country achieve independence from Indonesia. "It is generally agreed that the Nobel Prize has had the greatest impact in East Timor, because it put the question on the international agenda and led to a happy and peaceful ending," Norwegian historian Asle Sveen told AFP. In other cases, the award has functioned as a protective buffer for prize-winners voicing unpopular opinions under oppressive regimes. "The most extraordinary effect (of the prize) is when it protects recipients, as in the case of Andrei Sakharov (a Soviet Union dissident honored in 1975) who said the prize had saved his life," Sveen said. Winning a Nobel in 1983 had also offered protection and an energy-boost to Polish dissident Lech Walesa, who later became Poland's first freely elected president. Opinions differ on the case of 1991-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held in house arrest for more than a decade in connection with her 1990 victory in Myanmar's elections. Some insist the award has protected her from a worse fate, but others say less international focus might have eased the pressure. "The prize recognized her as the rightful leader of Myanmar ... This may have contributed to worsening the conflict" there, Toennesson said, pointing out that her opponents may feel they either have to keep the pressure on or allow her to rule the country. Other Nobel jury picks have been seen as disastrous. "The main failure came in 1973 with the prize awarded to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho" for reaching a Vietnam ceasefire agreement that soon failed, Sveen said. That prize, dubbed the Nobel Prize for War by the New York Times, was so controversial that two of the Nobel Committee's five members resigned. The 1994 prize, awarded to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat for the now all but shelved Oslo peace accord in the Middle East, also led to the resignation of a committee member. This year's prize will not be seen as a great success or great disaster, experts said. "I don't think this year's prize will have a huge impact on its winners," Sveen said. ---- Silent campus protest draws 100 Friday, October 07, 2005 Massachusetts Republican By JEANETTE DeFORGE jdeforge@repub.com http://www.masslive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-1/112867116598100.xml&coll=1 HOLYOKE - In their second protest in as many weeks, Holyoke Community College students marched silently to protest the war in Iraq, military recruiters on campus and the expulsion of a fellow undergraduate. After marching through campus, about 100 demonstrators handed a list of demands to college President William J. Messner, who spoke to the group and answered questions. The demonstration was held after a protest against military recruiters last week grew hostile, with students from the Anti War Coalition trading barbs with the college Republicans, and ended with one student sprayed with a chemical and banned from campus. The group yesterday carried signs calling for an end to war but concentrated on holding a peaceful protest and starting a discussion to end or at least modify the policy of allowing military recruiters on campus. "The basic reason is, we want the troops home now. This is an unjust war," said Etienne Pierre Duguay, a music major from Northampton. Holyoke Community College students were joined by students from the Anti War Coalition at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and other groups. Before stepping off, Justin F. Jackson, a UMass graduate student and head of its anti-war coalition, asked protesters to march quietly through campus, refraining from chanting. "Remember this is a peaceful, non-violent march," he said. "There are people who don't like that we are here, and we don't want to provoke them." Jackson said he was surprised Messner met the students when they reached the center of campus and listened to them. "This is the kind of dialogue we should be able to have," Messner said. "In some situations we have not learned to be respectful of each other's opinions and to learn from each other." Messner said the first demonstration is being investigated, and the banned student, Charles Peterson, has been invited back to meet with campus officials. Students said they believe the school can legally ban military recruiters from campus without risking the $7 million in federal assistance. Messner disagreed, but said he was willing to continue discussing the issue. Not everyone was happy to see another demonstration. A half-dozen students from the Republican Club held signs supporting troops. Kevin J. Orzechowski, president of the Republicans, said he was annoyed the demonstrators disrupted normal campus activities. To accommodate, police blocked roads and closed off the main circle where buses drop off students.