NucNews - December 9, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- australia

Cattlemen's group neutral on nuclear dump debate

Friday, December 9, 2005 Australian Broadcasting

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1527626.htm

There has been a mixed reaction to the passing of legislation allowing for a nuclear waste dump to be built in the Northern Territory.

Horticulturalists near one of the proposed sites are threatening to take class action if the dump is built locally.

But the Territory's main rural lobby group, the Cattlemen's Association, remains neutral.

President John Armstrong says nuclear waste sites have already been established in agricultural regions overseas.

"The low level waste that they are talking about, really, the radiation coming out of that low level stuff would amount to significantly less than your very average bedside alarm clock with alumina sands on it," he said.

"That's not an issue at all. And the storage facilities that they put up and build are just so secure that radiation can't possibly be allowed to penetrate outwards into the local areas."

----

Little Indigenous support for nuclear dump, group says

Friday December 9, 08:31 AM Australian

http://au.news.yahoo.com/051208/21/x556.html

The organisation representing traditional owners near a proposed nuclear waste dump site in the Northern Territory says most Indigenous Territorians do not want the facility.

Legislation passed the Senate yesterday allowing the dump to be built at one of three sites in the Northern Territory.

The Northern Land Council (NLC) backed amendments allowing for an alternative dump site to be proposed by Aboriginal land owners.

But the Jawoyn Association's acting director, John Ah Kit, a former Labor government minister, says the NLC should not be speaking for others.

"I haven't heard of any other traditional owners that have been consulted yet," he said.

"The concern the Jawoyn people have with the Northern Land Council ... supporting a resolution, there was no consultation with the Jawoyn Association nor the traditional owners."

He says the proposed sites need to be scientifically assessed and the results made public.

"If they could prove that it's safe and secure there at Fishers Ridge they would be looking towards the Jawoyn traditional owners providing their blessings, but you know we need to wait and see whether that is something that the Commonwealth can convince the Jawoyn people that it is a safe and secure site," he said.

Mr Ah Kit says now the legislation allowing the facility has passed the Senate, the focus must be on finding the best site.

"I understand the Territory Government is now willing to cooperate with the Commonwealth and find a suitable site in the Northern Territory and that may not be Fishers Ridge, it may be somewhere else and personally I would certainly like to see that if it is in the Territory as the Commonwealth's stated, then it should be in the most secure and safest location in the Territory," he said.

'Good news for Lucas Heights'

The operators of the replacement nuclear reactor in Sydney have welcomed the news that a nuclear waste dump can now be built in the Northern Territory.

Dr Ron Cameron from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation says it is good news for the future of Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor.

"There's approximately 3,500 cubic metres of waste that's stored in about 30 different sites around Australia for low level waste," he said.

"About 50 per cent of that's at Lucas Heights. Then there's another about 400 cubic metres of intermediate level waste. About 80 per cent of that will be from Lucas Heights."



-------- britain

Longer-life Scottish power stations may aid Blair's pro-nuclear rethink

FORDYCE MAXWELL ENVIRONMENT EDITOR
Fri 9 Dec 2005 The Scotsman

http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=2374142005

SCOTLAND'S nuclear power stations could remain in operation long past their present decommissioning date, their owner, British Energy, agreed yesterday.

The company said that while Hunterston and Torness are set for closure in 2011 and 2023 respectively, it would be technically possible to keep them running for longer. It said a decision would need to be made three years before the closure dates.

Last week the Prime Minister indicated a rethink on energy policy by the government that might include replacing Britain's existing 14 nuclear power stations, at an estimated cost of £1 billion each, as they reach the end of their projected useful life.

If that happened, it would be against fierce opposition from environmental and conservation groups who see renewable energy from wind, wave, tide, hydro and biomass sources as the future - and disposal of nuclear waste a potential disaster hanging over the Earth for tens of thousands of years to come.

The added complication for Scotland, where about 50 per cent of present electricity needs are met by Torness and Hunterston, is that a decision to build more nuclear power stations would be up to the UK government.

Planning permission for any new nuclear plant, however, would be up to the Scottish Executive, within which pro- and anti-nuclear opinions are deeply divided.

A spokesman for the Executive said yesterday that the question of extending the life of existing nuclear plants was a decision for the owners and the industry's regulators.

It has been suggested that the original approval and planning consents for both Hunterston and Torness, built in the 1960s and 1980s respectively, would be permanent and allow new plants to be built alongside.

The Executive spokesman ruled that theory out. In each case, consent had been given for a single power station only. Land is available alongside Torness, but Executive planning permission would be needed to build a new station.

A senior member of staff at Torness told a newspaper yesterday that the working life of the East Lothian nuclear plant, now supplying about 25 per cent of Scotland's electricity, could be extended well beyond 2040.

Robert Gunn, Torness's system health manager, said: "There's no hard line to say we can't go beyond, say, 2040 or whatever date we pick, as long as we and the regulators are happy we've addressed all the safety issues."

However, Sue Fletcher, spokeswoman for British Energy in Scotland, said that while there was a theoretical possibility that the working lives of Hunterston and Torness could be extended, it did not mean it would happen.

She said: "Consideration of what is happening and what might happen is continuous. So there is nothing new in the suggestion that their working lives could be extended. But a decision on whether that might happen will not be made until three years before they are due to close. That is, a decision on Hunterston in 2008, for Torness in 2020."

Such a decision, she said, would not be taken in isolation. It would also have to satisfy the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, the government's nuclear safety watchdog.

There are examples of deciding to extend a station's working life, most recently adding ten years to the Dungeness plant in Kent to take it up to 2018. But British Energy says that was an individual decision, not a precedent.

Stuart Hay, head of policy at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "British Energy is saying that now, but it is talking about extending and replacing nuclear stations when our energy needs can be supplied by renewables if the political will is there.

"What we are saying is, 'Put the money in now' so that alternative sources like wind, hydro and biomass can eventually take over from nuclear."

At present Scotland has 570 megawatts of installed wind power capacity. A further 450 megawatts' potential is under construction, with planning approval in the pipeline for another 676 megawatts.

But wind power critics argue that - because wind power is intermittent - that total only counts as a potential 600 megawatts by 2011 when Hunterston is scheduled to close, with a loss of 2,000 megawatts of generating capacity.

It would take between seven and 13 years, from the point of decision, to build a new nuclear power station.



-------- canada

Nuclear Explosion at Montreal

By Ronald Bailey, 12/09/2005 Tech Central Station 

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1209055.html

MONTREAL -- "This is a dirty filthy industry," screeched Elizabeth May, head of the Sierra Club of Canada. Her outburst occurred during a panel discussion devoted to nuclear energy and climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Montreal. The panel was sponsored by the Heinrich Böll Foundation which is a think tank affiliated with the German Green Party. The panel was convened for the release of the Foundation's new study Nuclear Energy and Climate Change. The study was done by Felix Christian Matthes, a policy analyst from the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin.

What provoked May's eruption was that the report's findings were being vigorously challenged from the floor by a phalanx of representatives of the nuclear power industry. First, what did Matthes conclude? Matthes started by suggesting that the emissions of greenhouse gases will have to be cut by up to 60 percent by 2050 in order to prevent an increase in the earth's average temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial temperature levels. Accounting for projected increases in the demand for power, this means that between 25 and 40 gigatons of the chief greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (GtCO2) would have to be cut by the middle of this century.

At a previous United Nations Climate Change conference at The Hague, negotiators excluded nuclear power from receiving greenhouse gas emissions reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocol. The goal of Matthes' study was to find out whether or not increases in the production of electricity by nuclear energy are necessary to achieve the deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Unsurprisingly, the Böll Foundation study found that nuclear power was not necessary -- that deep emissions cuts could be achieved through increasing the energy efficiency of buildings (4 GtCO2), industrial plants (5 GtCO2), and transport (7 GtCO2) combined with new renewable energy sources (15 GtCO2), carbon capture and sequestration (4 to 10 GtCO2), fuel switching from coal to natural gas (3.6 GtCO2) and co-generation (GtCO2).

Matthes asserted that it would take tripling the size of the nuclear power industry to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 5 gigatons (5 GtCO2). To achieve this would mean that 25 gigawatts (25 GW) of new nuclear power plants would have to be built each year for the next 50 years. A gigawatt is enough energy to supply about 400,000 homes each year. Another panelist Michael Mariotte from the anti-nuclear group, Nuclear Information and Resource Services (NIRS), noted that it would mean that a new nuclear plant would have to be built every two weeks in order to achieve the goal of generating 25 GW more power each year.

Matthes argued that nuclear power has failed the "market test" because the industry depends on government subsidies in the form of caps on liability and funding for long term waste disposal of high level radioactive wastes. It was these claims that the industry representatives in the audience were keen to try to refute. However, it was clear that the anti-nuclear panelists did not believe that subsidies were per se bad., just that they did not want nuclear power to enjoy them. For example, panelist Oswaldo Lucon, an environmental activist from Brazil, claimed that tens of billions go to subsidize fossil fuels and nuclear power each year, but that industrialized countries spent only a total of $2.8 billion on renewable sources of energy.

First, Colin Hunt from the Canadian Nuclear Association dismissed the activist implication that the number of power plants needed to offset 5 GtCO2 of emissions cannot be built fast enough. "Building enough nuclear facilities to produce 25 GWs of additional power each year is equal to the construction worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s," he said.

So what about the subsidy claims made by Matthes and other anti-nuclear activists? Liability insurance for nuclear power plants is governed by the Price-Anderson Act in the United States. Sama Bilbao y Leon, a nuclear safety analyst with the U.S. electric utility Dominion Power and a representative the American Nuclear Society, explained the two-tier insurance scheme that operates in the United States. First, each nuclear power plant is required to purchase $300 million in private liability insurance from American Nuclear Insurers (ANI). ANI is a syndicate of stock property and casualty companies formed to write material damage and liability insurance on industry-operated nuclear reactors and related operations. If that turns out not to be enough to cover a loss, then the second tier kicks in. In such a case, each nuclear plant must pay a proportionate share of the loss, up to a maximum of $100.6 million per reactor per accident. Since there are 104 operating plants in the United States this amounts to a pool of $10 billion dollars in insurance.

The anti-nuclear activists scoff at this, suggesting that $10 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential losses. On the panel they repeatedly cited the damage caused by the 1986 Chernobyl reactor fire in the old Soviet Union which spread radioactive fallout across northern Europe. Make no mistake about it, Chernobyl was a huge disaster, but fortunately its consequences, bad as they are, are much less than had originally been feared. Nuclear supporters were quick to point out the many serious flaws in the Chernobyl reactor design, not the least of which was that it was not surrounded by a containment facility. Thus when it exploded, it belched radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Such containment is required for nuclear power plants in the United States and most of the rest of the world.

Pro-nuclear activists point to the 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in Pennsylvania. A tiny amount of radioactive gases escaped the containment. Epidemiologists estimate that perhaps one person over the course of his lifetime might get a fatal cancer from exposure to TMI accident radiation. Eventually, the private insurance pool paid out $71 million in claims and litigation costs for the TMI accident, well within the private liability limits set at that time. Pro-nuclear activists argue that current insurance scheme is not any different than other schemes in which the government acts as insurer of the last resort for activities that are socially beneficial but whose risks are hard to accurately quantify. For example, they point to the national Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund which is a no-fault insurance scheme that is designed to compensate people who have been harmed by bad reactions to childhood vaccines.

Nevertheless, Matthes and his fellow panelists may have a point. Would private insurers offer policies for higher liabilities if the federally imposed caps were removed?

What about the claim that the government subsidizes the disposal of nuclear wastes? Here the activists are wrong. The nuclear industry people point out that taxpayers do not subsidize nuclear waste disposal; ratepayers do. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires electricity consumers to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund a fee of one-tenth of a cent for every nuclear-generated kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed. That fund now totals $24 billion. It may be government mandated, but it is not government financed.

The current plan is to bury high level nuclear wastes at an underground facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. So far about $6 billion dollars have been spent on the facility and some estimates suggest that the ultimate cost might reach $58 billion. Nevertheless, the Nuclear Waste Fund mechanism seems adequate for covering the waste disposal costs.

Finally, it certainly should not be the case that nuclear power is pre-judged and excluded by international treaties dealing with climate change. If the activists are so sure that they are right that nuclear power will fail the market test, then they ought to give the market a chance to prove them right.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books. His email is rbailey@reason.com.

----

Report urges $70 billion for new nuclear and other power in Ontario

STEVE ERWIN Fri Dec 9, 5:51 PM ET (CP) TORONTO  

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20051209/ca_pr_on_bu/ont_energy_future_3

It will cost Ontario hydro users up to $2 billion a year to help finance a $70-billion expansion of the province's electricity supply - most of it for new nuclear plants and reactor refurbishments, say authors of a controversial report issued Friday.

The Ontario Power Authority's report calls for more renewable power sources such as wind and sun, plus some natural gas-fired supply. But the most expensive recommendation for ratepayers is a call for up to $40-billion worth of new nuclear power projects in Ontario that could require at least one new station with four units.

Altogether, between $1.5 billion and $2 billion would be "allocated every year to consumers," said Amir Shalaby, the OPA's vice-president of power system planning.

That's on top of the $12 billion to $15 billion all Ontarians already pay each year on their electricity bills, including commodity, transmission and distribution costs, he said.

Energy Minister Donna Cansfield said the 1,100-page report needed further study before she could comment on its recommendations.

She's giving the public 60 days to respond at websites for the Energy Ministry and the Environmental Bill of Rights. After that, the government will report back to the OPA, which will prepare an "integrated" power plan later in 2006.

However, many observers suspect the government got what it wanted from the OPA: a report recommending nuclear expansion.

Ontario has already approved an expansion of Bruce Power's nuclear station near Kincardine and sources say it's ready to begin environmental assessments for an expansion at the Darlington nuclear plant east of Toronto.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said this summer the province would proceed with nuclear expansion if the report called for it.

The report ignores what some business groups argue is the cheapest way to prevent electricity prices from soaring - using new technology to clean up air pollutants from coal plants that account for 17 per cent of Ontario's current power output.

The last of Ontario's four remaining coal plants is destined for closure in 2009 and the OPA was clearly directed to ignore the option of keeping coal plants open.

It includes a May 2 letter by former energy minister Dwight Duncan that issues "directives" to the independent body to prepare a report that "conforms closely" to government policy on coal promised by the Liberals in the 2003 election campaign.

"They've compromised the OPA," complained Power Workers' Union president Don MacKinnon, who argued that coal is cheap and abundant and that its plants can be made cleaner.

Without coal, "Ontarians are going to end up paying more for electricity than they need to," he said.

The OPA report warns that if new power isn't generated by 2013, the province's power system would be overwhelmed by increased demand amid lost coal-fired production.

But projects to replace coal in the near term with 6,000 MW of new natural gas aren't yet off the ground and one of them - a project near Sarnia - is said to be in danger because one of the project's partners is near bankrupt.

"If they go ahead with the timetable they're talking about, it's going to create a complete crisis" after coal plants close, said Conservative energy critic John Yakabuski.

Cansfield dismissed talk that there's technology to reduce coal plant emissions as coming from "fairly-tale land."

"It's not everything it's pumped up to be," she said.

The report does recommend keeping coal plants standing after they shut down in case "gasification" - a process of producing hydrogen and electricity from coal - becomes economically viable in the future.

But the report more strongly calls on Ontario to keep drawing 50 per cent of its power supply from nuclear projects - which can cost billions of dollars to build and take up to a decade to complete.

New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton noted that the majority of Ontario's $20-billion hydro debt - being paid off by ratepayers through a debt-retirement charge listed on bills - stems from past nuclear cost overruns.

"This is headed totally in the wrong direction," Hampton told reporters.

"It's going to mean very expensive electricity for the people of Ontario, it's going to continue to drive industry and jobs out of Ontario."

His sentiments were echoed by environmentalists concerned about where Ontario would store radioactive waste.

"We should be looking at how to get off our nuclear dependency instead of trying to maintain it," said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada.



-------- india 

From the ‘opaque’ prism
Complexity of N-deal with US throws India in a bind

By Mariana Baabar
The News International, Pakistan, December 9, 2005

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2005-daily/09-12-2005/main/main7.htm

ISLAMABAD: India will have to open its civilian nuclear facilities to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) so that the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the US Congress make the necessary accommodations that allow full civil nuclear trade with India. The task has been entrusted to its Department of Atomic Energy.

This step is being resisted by several lobbies in New Delhi and, for the Congress government, too, it is a difficult political decision. Congress would like the finalization of this deal when President George W Bush visits New Delhi, probably at the end of February next year.

On Wednesday the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned New Delhi that Congress would throw out any "opaque" plan by the Bush administration to forge unprecedented civilian nuclear cooperation unless there was complete separation of the two facilities.

The Indian media says the delay in evolving a separation plan arises from its complexity. New Delhi has resisted efforts to indicate some kind of capping on India’s production of fissile materials (nuclear fuel). This is despite India’s assertion that it was willing to accept the same kind of responsibilities as other nuclear powers.

These sources are also clear that whatever separation plan is presented to the Americans, it is not going to give "any accounting of our nuclear facilities". That is, India has only to furnish a list of civilian facilities - and not military ones. The efforts of the Americans would be to satisfy themselves that the equipment and other resources are not diverted to military nuclear programmes.

Talking to The News, Dr. Shireen Mazari, director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, said: "Separation of the civilian and military nuclear facilities means that the US has to accept that even without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India will maintain these military facilities. If India does not open its military facilities to international inspectors, it means the US is accepting India’s right as a nuclear weapon state."

According to government and media sources from New Delhi, the Indian government has still not put its act together and separated its military and civilian facilities. This becomes absolutely necessary now after Washington has agreed to cooperate with New Delhi with its civilian nuclear trade.

These sources maintain that India never anticipated it would get US nuclear assistance without fulfilling all the terms and conditions. Also, so far India has never felt the need for a clear distinction of its military and civilian facilities.

In the past, the US and Europe had cooperated with Indian nuclear facilities, but they never demanded any nuclear safeguards. One of the reasons why many in New Delhi feel there should be a sense of urgency by the government is because, according to one media report from Washington, there are lobbies on the Capitol Hill with eyes on the congressional elections 2007, which could go either way.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election, as also one-third of the Senate. There is the possibility that Republicans, who currently control the Senate, could face a tough time getting elected. These developments could make the Bush administration’s legislative task cumbersome.

"It should come as no great surprise that India has been offered nuclear partnership. US sees India as a strategic ally and has signed a ten-year defence agreement. "But the question that should be asked by responsible states is — does the US want to undermine the NPT regime? You cannot have any nuclear cooperation with any state which has not singed the NPT," concluded Mazari.



-------- iran

Iranian Bushehr Plant: A Nuclear Reactor that Will Never Work

Dec 9, 2005
Bahman Aghai Diba PhD International Law - Persian Journal

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_11399.shtml

It started during the Shah's time. The Iranian experts were trained by the MIT and other places in the United States. The Germans started to establish the first Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr. After the revolution and the start of the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqis destroyed what the Germans had abandoned. Later a Japanese firm took up the case but they paid compensation for violation of the contract and withdrew. Finally the Russians came. It is more than a decade that they are working there to establish a nuclear reactor for the power plant.

Almost three thousand Russians and their facilities live near Bushehr power plant in a city that looks like a part of the Russian Federation. The Russians drink vodka, and drive in the streets that have traffic signs in Russian style and do not observe the Islamic dress code that is compulsory all over Iran for the women.

However, during the last several years, the Russians have kept telling that the Bushehr power plants will start working in a short while. The "short while" has already lasted at least 5 years and the last news was that: "(RIA Novosti) - Russia and Iran have agreed to draw up a final timetable for the launch of the Bushehr nuclear power plant that will be confirmed in February 2006 when the head of the Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency visits Iran. The agency said in a news release that the agreement was reached during a meeting Wednesday between the agency's head, Sergei Kiriyenko, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Gholamreza Ansari and vice presidents of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Asadullah Saburi and Mohammad Saidi..."

It must be noted that even if the Russians deliver the nuclear fuel to the Bushehr power plant right now, it will take at least one year for the plant to become operational.

The reality is that, even if in the February of the 2006 the two sides make an agreement on the operation of the power plant in Bushehr, and sometime in the same year, the nuclear fuel is delivered, the operation will happen sometime in 2007.

However, most probably the delivery will be postponed due to technical reasons. In the last couple of years there was a kind of ridiculous discussion between the two countries about the burnt fuel of the plant. According to the previous agreements the burnt fuel must be retuned to Russia. This burnt fuel is a precious material that can even be used for production of the nuclear bombs. The discussion was that the Russians wanted Iran to pay cash for the transfer of the burnt fuel to Russia and after many discussions Iranians had to accept the imposed Russian formula. Then there was the case of embezzlement in the accounts of the power plant by the Russians. The case is still open. It seems that the Bushehr power plant will never start working.

Perhaps the Russians are killing the time for a purpose. Lets guess:

1- Continuation of lucrative trade with Iran,
2- Taking the market from other countries,
3- Making itself ready to benefit more from the possible sanctions against Iran that will be possibly imposed by the Americans and the EU, after failure to do so in the United Nations Security Council, starting to build other reactors,
4- Iran gives free hand to the Russians in the Caspian Sea to impose their desired formulas for the delimitation and the new legal regime of the Caspian Sea
5- No active response from Iran against the concentration of one of their biggest naval fleets of the Russians in the Caspian Seas,
6- Iranian regime does not consider the Russian Muslims as Muslims (while the Iranian regime is more Catholic than Pope in the case of the Palestinian Muslims),
7- Iranian regime buying all kinds of the low-level Russian goods.
8- Making new reactors in Iran and other countries.
9- Gaining political and economic influence in Iran and the region
10- Taking advantages from the western countries for arrangement of their relations with the regime of Iran

There is another side for the story of these delays in delivering the nuclear fuel to the Bushehr power plant. Although there are several points in Iran that are already known as parts of the Iranian nuclear program and there is speculation that perhaps there are many other unknown points, it is clear that the possible US or Israeli, or their combined attack against the nuclear establishment of Iran will include the Bushehr Power Plant.

The Americans and Israelis will probably make sure to attack this establishment before the nuclear fuel is delivered, because the effects of an attack against an active nuclear reactor will be a disaster for the whole countries of the region. Noting that the effects of the Chernobyl explosions reached as far as the north of Iran, it is imagine how the regional countries think. Noting that the Americans are no more in the other side of the world. They are already in Afghanistan and especially Iraq and they are not far from the disaster area. The Russians are in a clear danger too. In addition to the 3000 Russians living right next to the reactor, the effects of a nuclear disaster will reach its southern sections of the Russian Federation. If the nuclear power plant is attacked after it is active (and it is equipped with the nuclear fuel) this will be the first time in history that such a thing is happening.

According to the Associated Press: "Iran plans to build at least one more nuclear power plant despite international concern over its atomic program, the country's top nuclear negotiator said Monday...We plan to construct two more nuclear power plants," Larijani told reporters, adding that the projects would be open to international bidding. State-run television reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Cabinet ministers had decided Sunday night to build a reactor "based on domestic technology" in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran. Khuzestan is the site of an unfinished French-built power plant where construction was halted after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran's first reactor in the southern town of Bushehr is due to begin generating electricity next year. Iran said last year it would also build a second plant at Bushehr. Parliament has asked Ahmadinejad for the construction of 20 nuclear power plants. Russia, which built the first Bushehr reactor, has offered to continue helping Iran's nuclear program."

The Russians are getting the contracts to build new power plants even before the previous one is completed. The new ones will take many years to reach the present stage of the Bushehr power plant and until then God knows what will happen in the fundamentally unstable regime of Iran, which is hated inside and outside of the country.

A good business for the Russians: making nuclear power plants that never work. May be this good for everybody: the Iranians brag about nuclear power plant without having it, the Russians get the money and do nothing worthy of that, and the Western countries are happy that Iran does not have nuclear reactors. It looks like a win-win-win situation.



-------- israel

Should Israel give up its nukes?

By George Bisharat
Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2005

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bisharat9dec09,0,7466853.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

IN A SUDDEN ATTACK of common sense, a Pentagon-commissioned study released in mid-November suggests an approach to nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East that might actually be accepted by the people of the region. What is this breakthrough idea? That U.S. policies begin not with a country that currently lacks nuclear weapons — Iran — but rather with the one that by virtually all accounts already has them — Israel.

To avert Iran's apparent drive for nuclear weapons, concludes Henry Sokolski, a co-editor of "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran," Israel should freeze and begin to dismantle its nuclear capability.

This and other recommendations emerged from two years of deliberations by experts on the Middle East and nuclear nonproliferation.

Limiting the spread of nuclear weapons is a pivotal U.S. foreign policy objective. As the sole nation ever to have employed them, we bear a special responsibility to prevent their use in the future. With regard to the Middle East, we rightly worry not only about the potential use of the weapons themselves but about the political leverage bestowed on those who would possess them.

However, there is an Achilles heel in our nonproliferation policy: the double standard that U.S. administrations since the 1960s have applied with respect to Israel's weapons of mass destruction. Israel's suspected arsenal includes chemical, biological and about 100 to 200 nuclear warheads, and the capacity to deliver them.

Initially, the United States opposed Israel's nuclear weapons program. President Kennedy dispatched inspectors to the Dimona generating plant in Israel's south, and he cautioned Israel against developing atomic weapons. Anticipating the 1962 visit of American inspectors, Israel reportedly constructed a fake wall at Dimona to conceal its weapons production.

Since then, no U.S. administration has effectively pressured Israel to either halt its program or to submit to inspections under the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nor has Israel been required to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The apparent rationale: Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of an ally are simply not an urgent concern.

Yet this rationale neglects a fundamental law of arms proliferation. Nations seek WMD when their rivals already possess them. Israel's nuclear capability has clearly fueled WMD ambitions within the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, for example, in an April 1990 speech to his military, threatened to retaliate against any Israeli nuclear attack with chemical weapons — the "poor man's atomic bomb."

WASHINGTON'S inconsistency on the nuclear issue in the Middle East has been terribly corrosive of American legitimacy throughout the world, and a reversal of our policy would be widely noted regionally.

Nor is our international legitimacy all that is at stake. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, a panicky Israel, facing early battlefield losses, threatened a nuclear strike. This evoked a massive arms shipment from the United States, eventually permitting Israel to turn the tide of the war — demonstrating the kinds of pressures that nuclear powers can apply, even on allies. Although many view Israel's victory with favor, it surely enabled subsequent decades of Israeli intransigence over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and has contributed to the impasse afflicting the region.

The study's authors include retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom and Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy — in short, no enemies of Israel. Their suggestion is comparatively mild: Israel should take small, reversible steps toward nuclear disarmament to encourage Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Nonetheless, Israeli leaders reportedly have already demurred.

One can anticipate the bipartisan stampede of U.S. lawmakers to denounce the recommendation should it win official U.S. backing. That would be a shame. Sooner or later, common sense must prevail in our Middle East policy. Otherwise, we will continue to run our global stature into the ground.

GEORGE BISHARAT is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.



-------- ukraine

The Greens protest against Ukraine President's statement

Ukraine Forum 9 December 2005

http://eng.for-ua.com/news/2005/12/09/131507.html

Green Party of Ukraine urges President of Ukraine to deny in public any considerations or proposals on nuclear store creation for foreign nuclear waste in the territory of Ukraine, the Party’s statement read.

The Green Party reckons any ideas on spent fuel store in Ukraine are criminal and unacceptable. The Party is revolted with the President’s willingness to accept a political resolution on the store creation for the other countries. “The Head of the State must not promote transformation the country into the scrap-heap,” stressed the statement. 

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Ukraine's Yushchenko Mulls Chernobyl Dump for World's Nuclear Waste

Created: 09.12.2005 MosNews

http://mosnews.com/news/2005/12/09/chernobylwaste.shtml

Photo from www.corium.blogspot.ru
http://mosnews.com/files/12483/cher2.jpg

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is ready to analyze and make a political decision on burying nuclear waste from other countries in the Chernobyl zone after scientific approval and a public discussion of the matter, the RBC news agency reports.

However, he underscored at a press conference in Chernobyl, the issue should first and foremost be approved by the people.

The Ukrainian leader added that the second storage area for the Chernobyl station’s nuclear waste would be put into operation in 2010.

The catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine (then a part of the Soviet Union) on April 26, 1986 is widely regarded as the worst in the history of nuclear power generation. 30 people were killed immediately after the fourth reactor of the plant suffered a catastrophic steam explosion that resulted in a fire, a series of additional explosions, and a nuclear meltdown. Most of the workers who went inside the reactor after the accident had no protective equipment which led to fatal radiation burns.

The explosion produced a plume of radioactive debris that drifted over parts of the western USSR, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. Large areas of the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian republics of the USSR were contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of roughly 200,000 people.

A concrete sarcophagus was later erected over the plant, but the area had already been severely polluted.



-------- u.s. nuc facilities


-------- alabama

N-R-C finds minor safety violations at Browns Ferry

December 9, 2005 Associated Press

http://www.wmcstations.com/Global/story.asp?S=4219765

ATHENS, Ala. As T-V-A continues preparing Unit One at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant for restarting, an inspection has found only minor safety problems.

Those were discussed at the first public meeting between T-V-A and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Unit One Oversight Panel yesterday.

In one case, four cables had been improperly spliced. An another, a work order had been initiated to remove thermal overloads from some electric motors, but the paperwork was misplaced and the work wasn't done.

Plant licensing manager Bill Crouch says the overloads keep motors which constantly open and close valves from overheating. The order was to remove them from motors which didn't get continual use.

As for the splicing, Crouch says engineers were retrained about the installation and the N-R-C will reinspect them.

The federal utility is spending nearly two (b) billion dollars to restart Unit One, which it shut down in 1985 amid safety concerns. The restart process is 73 percent complete and start-up is slated for May 2007.



-------- nevada

The high cost of a bad idea
	
Nevada Appeal editorial board
December 9, 2005

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20051209/OPINION/112090054

The late Everett Dirksen is credited with saying "A billion here and a billion there, and soon you're talking about real money."

Because Dirksen died in 1969, he couldn't have been talking about Yucca Mountain. But the Republican senator from Illinois knew then how large government had become - a behemoth that normal folks could no longer comprehend.

The plan to store radioactive waste inside a mountain in south-central Nevada would be the nation's largest single public-works project at $58 billion, a number we simply can't wrap our minds around.

Perhaps it would help Carson City residents to think of their new hospital and realize that, for the cost of Yucca Mountain, the government could build approximately 439 more hospitals just like it. Every county in Nevada could have 25 new hospitals.

Much of the money that will build Yucca Mountain isn't tax dollars, although taxpayers are funding its research at $460 million a year. Electricity customers served by the nuclear-power industry pay for it every month on their bills. The money collects in a fund to fulfill Congress' promise to solve the problem of where to store the radioactive waste.

A number people can easily comprehend is two - as in double. That's what's happened to the estimate for a railroad across some of Nevada's roughest mountain terrain to carry nuclear waste. It's gone from $1 billion to $2 billion without a shovel of dirt being turned.

It was also Everett Dirksen who said "There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come." To which we would add: There is nothing so wasteful as an idea whose time has passed.



-------- north carolina

Duke’s Cliffside plans proceed

By JERRY STENSLAND Rutherford County, NC Daily Courier Staff Writer
Friday, December 09, 2005

FOREST CITY — Duke Power officials are moving forward with plans for possibly two new coal-fired power plants in Cliffside while a statewide environmental group seeks to stop the expansion.

NC WARN, a Durham-based non-profit, has filed papers to be allowed as a legal intervener with the North Carolina Utilities Commission to formally question Duke’s continued use of coal as a power source and its overall demand forecast.

Duke, meanwhile, has given public notice that it intends to apply for its air quality permit for the new plants, probably by the end of the year.

Duke spokesman Tom Williams confirmed this week that the air quality application will include retirements of the oldest four units at Cliffside. Those units are the least efficient and most polluting said Williams, and would be replaced by much more efficient units if plans move forward.

The four older units would only be retired if a new plant is built at Cliff-side.

NC WARN states that while the new coal-fired plants would be cleaner than the old plants, coal itself is a polluting power source that should be phased out.

"In an era of rapidly advancing climate change, pursuing huge, old fashioned coal-fired power plants is backward thinking," said Pete MacDowell, Program Director for NC WARN contending that 40 percent of the state’s greenhouse gases come from coal-burning power plants. "It's time for modern thinking and state officials who will lead the transition to a job-creating, economical and safe energy future. The utilities' strategy to build new large power plants is like building old Studebakers in an age of hybrid Priuses."

MacDowell and others say North Carolina and the country needs to move away from the large power companies model and decentralize power generation with renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

Duke officials say they actively support and fund alternative power sources, but say the only practical way to meet growing customer demand is through greater coal and nuclear capacity.

“It is impossible to bring on a nuclear plant fast enough to meet demand,” said Williams. “The coal plant is the plant we need to build to meet the baseload needs.”

Both sides agree that coal plant have carbon emissions that cannot be controlled directly.

Williams said the newer plants are more efficient and thus would emit less greenhouse gases than the old plants.

“The carbon emissions on our system are 28 percent below the national average, and that is because of our nuclear fleet,” he said. “A (new) Cliffside (plant) would be at the top of dispatch, would offset not only Cliffside 1 through 4 but other less efficient coal plants. Carbon emissions will be lower on a per-megawatt basis.”

NC WARN says it does not make sense to invest millions dollars of rate-payers money in burning coal at all.

"We want to make sure billions of rate payer dollars aren't committed to building more large coal and nuclear power plants without the Utility Commission and state leaders being fully informed about - and fully considering - alternative paths," said MacDowell.

They recommend an investment is disbursed renewable energy sources that will spread job creation across the state.

Williams said Duke’s carbon record will be better with more efficient coal plants as well as possible new nuclear plants, which do not emit greenhouse gases.

Because of the lengthy permitting process, the earliest a nuclear plant could be brought online is 2016 leaving new coal plants as the means to meet new demand he said.

Duke has not built a new baseload plant since 1986. It estimates adding 46,000 new customers each year.

NC WARN said estimates of demand needs in past years by Duke have proven to be too high.

Williams said estimates are adjusted yearly and if those estimates change, then plans could be scaled back.

Williams said other environmental benefits will come from the cleaner coal plants.

The new plants are capable of removing between 84 and nearly 100 percent of fly ash, sulfur dioxide, sulfate, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions in addition to an 85 percent reduction in water usage from the Broad River.

NC WARN is represented by attorney John Runkle, the same attorney who is helping the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and the Rutherford County Citizens Against Pollution oppose a proposed quarry and asphalt plant.

One of the recommendations those two organizations have is a high impact or polluting industries ordinance in the county.

The model recommended is once adopted recently in Alleghany County, which includes electric generating facilities in its list of polluting industries.

Runkle said last week at a press conference here that it is ultimately a local decision what industries to include and the County Commissioners could exclude power plants.

There does not appear to be opposition to Duke’s expansion plans with either the County Commissioners or the RCCAP group.

As for the air quality permit, Williams said it should be submitted in the next couple of weeks.

“It is not a firm commitment to go forward with the project, but it does represent another step in the process to permit the plant and maintain our option for going forward with one and possibly two units,” he said.

NC WARN, Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, is a grassroots non-profit working in the areas of climate change and environmental impacts of nuclear power and other electricity production.

Duke Power announced plans in May of this year to potentially build two new 800-megawatt power plants at Cliffside with a total investment of $2 billion.

Contact Stensland via e-mail at jstensland@blueridge.net



-------- pennsylvania

TMI security change criticized
Plan would leave bridges unguarded

Friday, December 09, 2005
BY GARRY LENTON
Of The Patriot-News

http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/east/index.ssf?/base/news/113412373138030.xml&coll=1

A familiar presence at the entrance to Three Mile Island -- armed security guards -- will disappear next month.

The guard posted along Route 441 will be moved to a vehicle checkpoint a few hundred yards away.

Plant operator AmerGen said the change will add more protection to a vital area of the plant.

However, the change also will mean no visible guard presence at either entrance to the island, something that has concerned local and state officials.

AmerGen officials said the move will strengthen security by concentrating personnel at a heavily protected vehicle stop about 200 yards from the west end of the bridge onto the island.

"We've become uncomfortable with having an officer out there," said Ralph DeSantis, spokesman for AmerGen. "They are pretty much exposed."

Guards complained to management about that vulnerability, said Derwin Westbrook, manager of nuclear security at TMI. "This is a concern of theirs," he said.

Critics said the change will leave a critical asset of the island unprotected -- the two bridges that connect the station to the mainland.

"In today's post-9/11 age you want to send a clear message that this facility is secured and you don't do that by allowing terrorists onto the bridge ... where they can approach the island easily and in large numbers," said Scott Portzline, a security specialist for Three Mile Island Alert.

TMIA filed a petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission four years ago asking the agency to compel nuclear plant operators to maintain guards at their entrances. The agency has yet to rule on that petition.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the nuclear industry has increased security by adding concrete barriers, high-tech fencing, guard towers and more guards.

Exelon, which owns 10 plants, including TMI, Peach Bottom and Limerick in Pennsylvania, has spent more than $100 million on security improvements, including $12 million at TMI.

GARRY LENTON: 255-8264 or glenton@patriot-news.com 

----

Three Mile Island Guards To Move; Locals Concerned

Dec 9, 2005(AP) 

http://kyw.com/local/local_story_343114725.html

HARRISBURG The operator of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant plans to move armed guards posted at the entrance a few hundred yards back to a vehicle checkpoint, leaving local officials concerned.

AmerGen Energy Co. said the move will consolidate security at a crucial entryway and prevent the guards from being isolated along Route 441, which runs past the plant on the Susquehanna River.

"We've become uncomfortable with having an officer out there," said AmerGen spokesman Ralph DeSantis. "They are pretty much exposed."

The move is scheduled for January.

Critics, however, said two bridges to the island, about 10 miles south of Harrisburg, will be left unprotected at a time when nuclear power plants are considered a prime target of terrorists.

"In today's post-9/11 age you want to send a clear message that this facility is secured and you don't do that by allowing terrorists onto the bridge," said Scott Portzline, a security specialist with a watchdog group, Three Mile Island Alert.

Four years ago, the group asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to require nuclear plants to post guards at their entrances. The agency has not ruled on the petition.

Three Mile Island was the site in 1979 of the nation's worst nuclear accident.



-------- utah

Utahns to Have Another Chance to Comment on Nuke Storage Site

December 9th, 2005 @ 9:29pm (AP)

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=137838

WASHINGTON -- The federal Bureau of Land Management plans to ask Utahns to comment on a proposed temporary nuclear waste dump in the state's Skull Valley, a move that opponents of the project hope could lead the agency to block access to the site.

The BLM must sign off on rights of way needed to access the storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The agency took public comments on the proposal several years ago.

This week, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, argued to the Interior Department that the government should ask for new public input because it had not considered the terrorist target posed by such an aboveground storage facility. He also said new information showed Private Fuel Storage -- the coalition of utilities applying to build it -- was crumbling.

The new round of comments and information about PFS's financial stability could lead the BLM to block the rights of way, according to Hatch's office.

No one from the Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management, was immediately available for comment Friday night.

Hatch declared the BLM decision a victory, and said Friday he would urge Utah residents to write in to oppose the project.

"My intent here is to get rid of the Skull Valley project," he told reporters. "I'm going to do that any way I can."

But the consortium of utilities may not be as close to unraveling as Hatch suggests.

On Thursday, two of the eight utilities that make up PFS -- Southern Nuclear Operating Co. and Xcel Energy -- said they had dropped their support for the Skull Valley project.

Hatch said that six companies, including Southern, had suspended their funding in 2002. With more dropping out, just one active member was left, he said. One company could not hope to finance the project alone, he said.

"The viability of the PFS proposal is now seriously threatened," Hatch wrote to Interior Secretary Gale Norton. He asked her to consider the information when deciding PFS's request for rights of way.

Hatch cited a 2002 letter in which Southern and five other members promised to "commit no funds to construction of the PFS facility past the licensing phase."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September authorized a license for the facility -- which would be used to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel -- but the process is not complete.

In interviews with The Associated Press, two of the six companies said they were still funding PFS and had no plans to drop out. Two others could not be reached Friday.

"All the operators of power plants need a place to store their fuel for the long term, and this facility may be one of the answers," said Todd Schneider, a spokesman for FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., one of the PFS partners.

Diane Park, a spokeswoman for Entergy Nuclear, said that her company is an active PFS partner and has not decided what its future relationship with PFS will be.

Southern California Edison dropped its funding for PFS in 1999 but is still a participant, said spokesman Ray Golden.

Hatch's spokesman Peter Carr said the senator's staff must have misinterpreted the 2002 letter.

"Our interpretation of their letter to us was that they were becoming passive investors in the project," he said. "We have made excellent progress with the few members of PFS we have been focusing on so far, as is evidenced with the recent actions by Southern Company and Xcel Energy." 



-------- MILITARY 


-------- business

US Military to Probe Video of Contractor Shootings

Friday, December 9th, 2005
Headlines Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1443234

Meanwhile, the US military has announced a probe into allegations private contractors with the defense company Aegis have randomly shot at Iraqi cars. A video recently posted on a website maintained by Aegis employees contained footage of an unidentified gunman shooting at cars in Iraq. In one clip, a Mercedes is fired on before it crashes in to a civilian taxi. In another, a white sedan is shot at repeatedly as it drives on an open highway. London-based Aegis is in Iraq under a $290 million dollar contract. In a written instruction posted on the same website, Aegis CEO Tim Spicer wrote employees: "Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody."



-------- nato

NATO To Keep 'Robust' Force in Kosovo during Status Talks
	
2005-12-09 
AP/www.seeurope.net

http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=56843&LangID=1
	
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Thursday it will retain a "robust" force in Kosovo during U.N.-mediated talks on the future status of the Serb province.

After a meeting, NATO foreign ministers issued a statement reiterating support for the Kosovo talks and urging ethnic Albanians and Serbs to complete those talks, due to begin in January, successfully.

To help them, NATO will maintain "a robust military presence in Kosovo and will remain engaged politically" in the search for a negotiated settlement of its future status, it said.

"Any party that might try to use violence to affect the political process will meet a strong response" from the 17,000-strong military force NATO has in Kosovo, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer told a news conference.

Although still technically a province within the loose union of Serbia and Montenegro, Kosovo has been administered by the U.N. for more than six years, since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign ended Belgrade's hold on the region of 2 million people.

Serbian leaders want Kosovo to be split administratively between its majority Albanians and minority Serbs, granting Albanians self-government while keeping the province part of Serbia. Ethnic Albanians are pressing for independence from Belgrade. 



-------- us

Pentagon sticks with 2-war plan

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published December 9, 2005

http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20051208-113131-7167r

The Pentagon, in a major four-year decision, has decided to stick with having the capability of being able to fight two major conflicts at once, The Washington Times has learned.

    Two officials said that when the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is completed next month, it will retain the requirement that the Pentagon maintain active forces and reserves able to repel and occupy an enemy in one war and defeat a second enemy but not necessarily occupy the capital.

    The decision is one of the most important that Pentagon leaders make every four years in the congressionally mandated QDR. From the two-war requirement, other major decisions flow, such as the number of active and reserve troops, fighter air wings and Navy carrier battle groups, and major weapons systems to be procured.

    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is expected to approve the new QDR next month and present it to Congress in February. A Pentagon spokesman said no public comment on the QDR decisions would be issued until then.

    The 2005 QDR, two sources said, generally will endorse the current military strategy known as "1421."

    The first number represents defending the home front. The "four" is the ability to deter hostilities in four global regions. The "two" is the overriding requirement to defeat two enemies nearly simultaneously. The final "one" is having the capability of decisively defeating one of those enemies and occupying the country if necessary.

    Pentagon planning groups have been brainstorming over major QDR decisions for months and at one point considered reducing the military's two-war-plus requirement. But planners, using a tenet that came to be known as "operational availability," decided that a transformed force, even while being used in the global war on terror, still can meet its major war requirements.

    Officials think that transforming the 10-division active Army into 70 mobile brigades allows the service to meet future challenges with fewer soldiers.

    "The new brigades are so much more mobile and lethal than they used to be," said a senior defense official, citing better precision-guided weapons, improved intelligence links and shorter logistics tail. "They are easier to get to the fight. ... A new Army brigade has more firepower than an old Army division."

    Likewise, Navy planners think the fleet today, with 11 carrier battle groups instead of 12, represents more firepower because of better weapons and intelligence links.

    "We're able to be more lethal with lower numbers," said the source, who, like the other official, asked not to be named.

    In a speech Monday, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his thinking as the QDR deadline neared.

    "I think if I had to pull out one lesson that we've learned over the past four or five years, it would be that in the 21st century we're going to have to stop thinking about things, numbers of things, and mass, and think also and maybe even first about speed and agility and precision," he said.

    "The Navy, for the sake of argument, has been able to go from X number of ships down to a much lower number," but each carrier group's firepower is "vastly greater than it was five years ago."

    The Pentagon is not likely to terminate any major weapons systems for the 2005 QDR, after killing the Army's next general scout-attack helicopter and self-propelled howitzer. Defense sources said planners may trim the Air Force's buy of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and order the Army to restructure its Future Combat System, a network of armored vehicles and aircraft.

    Mr. Rumsfeld also shepherded the 2001 QDR, but it was being finalized on September 11, 2001, and planners did not have time to fully incorporate the war on terror into the document.

    Besides the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Pentagon has created Northern Command, with the principal task of defending the United States, and empowered Special Operations Command to head the global war on terror. 



-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE


-------- prisons / prisoners

U.N.: U.S. base in Kosovo secret prison

By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 9, 2005

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20051209-112556-5749r

KOSOVO, Serbia-Montenegro -- A United Nations official has said a U.S. military base in the Kosovo region is the site of a secret prison.
    
    Talking about Camp Bondsteel in eastern Kosovo, U.N. Ombudsman Marek Nowicki told the German daily Berliner Zeitung:
    
    "There can't be any doubt that since several years a secret prison exists inside Camp Bondsteel, a prison that doesn't succumb to any civil or legal control," he said. "We have to ask the question what actually goes on in there."
    
    Nowicki is a seasoned human rights expert -- he heads the U.N.'s ombudsman office in Kosovo, and for years was the president of Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and senior judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
    
    Roughly 6,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed at Bondsteel. Located near the town of Ferizaj, it is the main base of U.S. troops under command of the Kosovo Force, widely known as KFOR, in the U.N. protectorate of Kosovo. KFOR has stated no such secret prison exists there.
    
    Those assurances remain questionable until U.N. officials can finally inspect the base, Nowicki said.
    
    The ombudsman visited Bondsteel in 2000 and 2001, he said. "The prison looked like the pictures we know from Guantanamo Bay."
    
    After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Nowicki was denied access to the camp. Amnesty International also claims that Bondsteel is a site of illegal imprisonments. It has reported that several Arabic individuals have been detained there for months "under the massive violation of international laws."
    
    Amnesty International was never able to investigate, it said.
    
    Nowicki said Bondsteel was "totally out of control," and added: "In truth, we have no idea what goes on in there."

-------- 

Dark Days in Prisons at Home and Abroad
Suspected militant from Caucasus suffered at Guantanamo and now back home, family says.

December 9, 2005

By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes972.html

NALCHIK, Russia — When Fatima Tekayeva heard that her son was about to be returned to Russia from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she felt an aching fear.

Don't do it, she begged anyone who would listen. It's bad there, yes. It's worse here. Please don't send my son home.

All the same, the scenario unfolded like a scripted nightmare. Rasul Kudayev was put on a plane back to Russia. Soon he was released. He came home to the Caucasus region nothing like the broad-shouldered wrestling champion who had gone off to study Islam with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He could barely walk unaided. His eyes were yellow from hepatitis, his heart fluttered, his head throbbed, family members said. Kudayev would sit up in the kitchen all night, telling his brother how guards at Guantanamo forced him to take medicine that made him sick and left him alternately to freeze and suffocate by opening and closing the ventilation system in a cramped isolation cell. By morning, his stories spent, he would fall asleep.

It ended as Tekayeva feared it would.

On Oct. 23, a truckload of soldiers showed up outside the family's small house and seized Kudayev, accusing him of having participated in an attack by Islamic militants on police and government targets in Nalchik 10 days earlier. Tekayeva threw her body in front of her son's thin frame.

"Handcuffs, what handcuffs?" she wailed. "He's already had enough handcuffs for a lifetime!" But he disappeared into the feared Department 6 organized crime unit of the Kabardino-Balkaria police.

Kudayev, 27, is a veteran of an increasingly borderless campaign against terrorism, in which suspects may be ferried among prisons around the globe without facing trial. He survived a hellish uprising at an Afghan prison, followed by two years at Guantanamo, only to find himself in the hands of Russian police.

Several days after local police arrested Kudayev, his lawyer was brought in to witness his confession.

"He looked awful," attorney Irina Komissarova said. "He couldn't sit or stand straight because of the pain he experienced. He dragged one of his feet and couldn't step down on it. His face was covered with cuts and scabs."

Komissarova filed a complaint. Russian authorities responded last month by dismissing her from the case, saying that the complaint made her a witness. But Komissarova has continued to follow developments. Last week, after she alleged that Kudayev had been beaten again, this time so severely that his leg was broken, authorities opened a criminal investigation against her for allegedly revealing investigative secrets.

As a boy, Kudayev was not particularly religious, said his brother, Arsen Mokayev. When he was named wrestling champion of the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in 1996, "my mother would say, 'I wish he were pious. But that's not his way.' "

That changed as the North Caucasus felt the effects of unemployment, ethnic resentment and corruption, as well as Islamic militancy and harsh police tactics spilling over from nearby Chechnya.

Kudayev left to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. From there, he made his way to Afghanistan. How, when and why he went there is unclear. Many young Muslims said later they had idealized the Islamic state established by the Taliban.

Mokayev said his brother was attempting to flee Afghanistan with men from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia when they were captured by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance and imprisoned in the ancient Qala-i-Jangy fortress at Mazar-i-Sharif.

A three-day uprising at the prison in November 2001 was crushed by Northern Alliance fighters and U.S. airstrikes. Only about 60 of the more than 500 prisoners survived.

Kudayev and many other non-Afghans were handed over to U.S. forces for eventual transfer to Guantanamo. Many of his letters from the prison there had large sections blacked out by censors, Mokayev said. But he told Tekayeva that he was being fed well and allowed to perform religious rituals.

When U.S. authorities sent Kudayev and six others from Guantanamo back to Russia in March 2004, they said they still considered the men a threat and that Russia had pledged to detain and investigate them. Russia filed charges but released the men in late June of that year.

Kudayev's mother said she barely recognized him when he arrived at her two-room house outside Nalchik. Several other former prisoners came with him and stayed until their families could pick them up.

"When I saw them at first, they were white, and you could look through them. You could blow on them and they would fall," she said.

Kudayev rarely left the house. He walked with difficulty. A bullet had been lodged in his thigh since Afghanistan that needed to be surgically removed, his family said. For unexplained reasons, the Americans never operated, and Kudayev could not get the surgery in Russia because authorities refused to return his passport, a prerequisite for free access to the healthcare system.

His liver was swollen from the hepatitis he and several other Russian prisoners said they contracted at Guantanamo. Heart and blood-pressure problems sometimes left him unable to rise off the couch. He had frequent headaches. All of it, his family said, dated to Guantanamo, although he had also been beaten by Russian security forces shortly after his return to his homeland.

Family members said Kudayev was haunted by his treatment at the U.S. naval base prison.

"There was constant psychological pressure on him," Mokayev said. "Imagine a man sitting in a cage for days on end, being constantly watched by another person who keeps writing down everything that the caged man does and ignoring him even when he speaks to him. Never turning off the lights. Just imagine that."

Mokayev said his brother told him of being forced to kneel with his hands cuffed to his ankles, being sprayed with a gel that caused a painful rash, then carried out, still shackled, and hosed down with a stream of water. Kudayev and several other prisoners said Guantanamo guards would turn up the air conditioning to the freezing point, then turn it off until breathing became difficult.

He was forced to take unidentified pills that gave him chest pains and made his muscles feel like stone.

"They beat them if they didn't want to take these pills, and they would administer them by force to them," Tekayeva said. "Afterward, he would just hunch into a fetal position."

The U.S. has denied forcing medication or any other abuse at Guantanamo but as a matter of policy does not comment on individual cases.

"All detainees in custody at Guantanamo, without exception, are treated humanely and are provided excellent medical care by dedicated medical professionals," said Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, director of public affairs for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay.

At home, Mokayev would stay with his brother most days while Tekayeva worked at a clinic. At night, they reversed and Mokayev went out to work at odd jobs. They seldom left Kudayev alone. Police had been watching their house constantly since his return, and on several occasions had brought him in for brief questioning.

On Oct. 13, as many as 200 militants attacked police and government targets in Nalchik, and more than 135 militants, police and civilians died in a day of fierce fighting. Family members insist that Kudayev was home. They say they left him alone only for about 15 minutes, when Mokayev took their mother to work.

Prosecutors say Kudayev headed a group of eight people assigned to attack a police rest house and the residence of the president of the republic. The assault was halted in a battle with traffic police on the outskirts of Khasanya, the small suburb where Kudayev lives, in which one officer was killed, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel told the Los Angeles Times in responses to written questions.

"Kudayev admits [in his confession] that he had a semiautomatic rifle and had been assigned to lead a group of armed people," Shepel said. "At the same time, the arrested members of Kudayev's group are giving testimony about his participation in the armed battle with police officials, and about his heading the group."

On Nov. 22, 12 days after his lawyer was dismissed, Kudayev was charged with terrorism, banditry, attempted murder of a police officer, homicide and illegal trade in weapons, ammunition and explosives.

Komissarova, the lawyer, said Kudayev was so weak when she saw him that he had to be dragged into the room by two police officers.

"He told me that since being delivered to this place, he'd constantly been beaten and tortured — that was his word, 'tortured' — and he said electric shock had been used," she said.

Another man arrested at the same time, a member of the town council and the pro-government United Russia party, said he could hear the sound of beatings as he entered the prison area.

"All you could hear around you were thuds of blows, bangs and kicks behind cell walls, and screams and moans of the people who were being beaten up there," Ramazan Tembotov told The Times. "They were howling like injured animals."

One family was told that their son had committed suicide by throwing himself from a second-story window.

"I heard police officials talking about how … they're trying to get information out of people, and how people are thrown out a window, taken back and thrown out again," said Larissa Dorogova, a lawyer for another suspect who also has been removed from her case. "And that way, they're forced to talk."

Russian media reports say 2,000 Nalchik-area residents have been detained for questioning since the Oct. 13 events. Few families acknowledge their sons went to war against the police. Most insist they were somewhere else at the time. Kudayev's family dismisses the idea that he went to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban or be trained as a terrorist.

"If this were the case, do you think the Pentagon would have let him go?" Mokayev asked.

To Komissarova, Kudayev has the right to go to trial unmolested and represented by the lawyer of his choice, regardless of whether he was at home on the couch or in a gunfight.

"Neither I nor a single other lawyer will ever say that these are nice, wonderful guys. The only issue we're drawing attention to is the protection of their rights — as detainees, as suspects, as defendants," she said.

"We hear so many law enforcement officials tell us, 'Oh, there you go, defending them,' " she said. "But the institution of defense has not been annulled in our country, has it?"

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.



-------- torture

Former Senior CIA Officials Back Anti-Torture Amendment

By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Correspondent
December 09, 2005

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200512\NAT20051209d.html

(CNSNews.com) - Thirty-two former CIA officials, including former Director Stansfield Turner and Counterterrorism Center Director Vincent Cannistraro, are backing an anti-torture amendment that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has submitted to the Defense Appropriations Bill.

The group sent a letter to McCain Friday to show support for the legislation, which would "establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees and prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in the detention of the U.S. government."

"I think it is an important voice being added to the mix as the administration is requesting exceptions, especially for the CIA," Avi Cover, senior associate at Human Rights First, told Cybercast News Service. "This is an important group opining that they don't need these sorts of exemptions."

The letter by the 32 officials stated that they were proud to have served their country and they "remain deeply committed to supporting efforts to confront the serious terrorist threats facing the nation."

They also noted that "the use of torture and other cruelty against those in U.S. custody undermines this fight.

"Such tactics fail to produce reliable information, risk corrupting the institutions that employ them, and forfeit the ideals that attract others to our nation's cause," the letter to McCain stated.

The letter also addressed the efforts by Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss to exclude the CIA from the amendment.

"Those who press for more 'flexibility' to abuse prisoners have been willing to forsake both effectiveness and our values as a nation on the misguided belief that abusive treatment will produce vital intelligence," the letter stated.

While the legislation was a response to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, many say it was especially important in light of recent findings of the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

But Mark Ballesteros, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense, told Cybercast News Service that the military is "treating and will continue to treat all detained individuals humanely, and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949."

Ballesteros added, "Abuse of detainees is not tolerated. All credible allegations of detainee abuse are aggressively investigated. Individuals convicted of abuse or involved in abuse are held appropriately accountable."

The letter to McCain followed by a day the decision by Great Britain's highest court to set an international precedent by banning the use of torture. "It's a modern judgment, in December 2005, but it's steeped in the legal and moral history not just of this country, but also of the United States and international treaty obligations. We believe our colleagues in the United States who are fighting for the rule of law will take strength from the judgment," Gareth Peirce, an attorney in the British case, told the New York Times.



-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

U.N. Talks Support Clean Energy in Poor Nations

December 09, 2005 — By Alister Doyle and Mary Milliken, Reuters

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9425

MONTREAL — Negotiators at U.N. talks agreed to speed investments in clean-energy projects in the Third World Thursday but remained deadlocked on ways to enlist the United States in a long-term fight against global warming.

About 160 nations at the U.N. climate talks agreed to streamline a plan meant to encourage projects such as hydroelectric power in Honduras and wind energy in China to help cut use of fossil fuels.

A draft decision to go to ministers at the talks, which are to end Friday, reassured investors and Third-World nations that the so-called "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM) would last beyond 2012, when the first phase of the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol runs out.

Under the CDM program, rich nations can invest in Third World clean energy projects and claim credits back home for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. So far more than 40 such projects have been approved.

The draft urges nations to make "urgent" contributions to finance the CDM at about $18 million for 2006-07, up from $6 million in 2005. It also sets up ways to reform the program's management.

The novel project, part of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for reining in global warming, has been hit by red tape and a lack of staff to evaluate plans such as an Indian plant to generate power from rice husks or a Brazilian project to burn the woody waste from sugar cane.

If successful, some estimates say the plan might funnel $100 billion in investments to the developing world and aid a shift away from fossil fuels in power plants and factories, whose emissions are widely blamed for stoking global warming.

"This puts the CDM process on a much more professional basis," said Andrei Marcu, president of the International Emissions Trading Association. "This represents progress and a basis to work on."

The ministers were also struggling to break deadlock on ways to entice the United States and developing nations into long-term U.N. efforts to fight climate change.

The United States has defended its policy of investing billions of dollars in cleaner technology to reduce emissions, brushing aside calls for it to commit to long-term U.N. discussions on slowing climate change.

"One size does not fit all," Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. under secretary for global affairs, who leads the American delegation, told the talks Wednesday.

Adding a sense of urgency to the talks is extreme weather, including Hurricane Katrina, the world's costliest weather-related disaster, which scientists warn could be a portent of things to come. 


-------- ACTIVISTS

Chinese protesters report a massacre

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2005
By Howard W. French 
The New York Times/International Herald Tribune

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/12/09/news/china.php

SHANGHAI Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by the paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside.
 
Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting that occurred this week as villagers staged a protest over government land appropriations. It is the largest known use of force by security forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That death toll remains unknown, but is estimated to be in the hundreds.
 
The violence began after dark in the town of Dongzhou on Tuesday evening. Terrified residents said their hamlet has remained occupied by thousands of security forces, who have blocked off all access roads and are reportedly arresting residents who attempt to leave the area after the heavily armed assault.
 
"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where a relative of his was killed.
 
"Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared. At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody.
 
"Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people."
 
The use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China, where the authorities have come to rely on rapid deployment of huge numbers of security forces, tear gas, water cannons and other nonlethal measures.
 
But the Chinese authorities have become increasingly nervous in recent months over the proliferation of demonstrations across the countryside, particularly in heavily industrialized eastern provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiansu. By the government's tally there were 74,000 riots or other significant public disturbances in 2004, a big jump from previous years.
 
The villagers in Dongzhou said their dispute with the authorities had begun with a conflict over plans by a power company to build a coal-fired generator in their area, which they feared would cause heavy pollution. Farmers said they had not been compensated for the use of the land for the plant.
 
Others said plans to reclaim land by filling in a local bay as part of the power plant project were unacceptable because people have made their livelihoods there as fishermen for generations. Already, villagers complained, work crews have been blasting a nearby mountainside for rubble for the landfill.
 
A small group of villagers was delegated to complain to the authorities about the plant in July, but they were arrested, infuriating other residents and encouraging others to join the protest movement.
 
On Dec. 6, while villagers were mounting a sit-in demonstration, the police made a number of arrests, bringing people out into the streets, where they managed to detain several officers. In response, hundreds of law enforcement agents were rushed to the scene.
 
Everybody, young and old, "went out to watch," said one man who claimed his cousin had been killed by a police officer's bullet in the forehead. "We didn't expect they were so evil. The farmers had no means to resist them."
 
Early reports from the village said the police opened fire only after villagers began throwing homemade bombs and other missiles, but villagers reached by telephone on Friday denied this, saying that a few farmers had launched ordinary fireworks at the police as part of their protest.
 
"Those were not bombs, they were fireworks, the kind that fly up into the sky," said one witness reached by telephone. "The organizers didn't have any money, so someone bought fireworks and placed them there. At the moment the trouble started many of the demonstrators were holding them, and of those who held fireworks, almost everyone was killed."
 
Other witnesses estimated that 10 people were killed immediately in the first volley of automatic gunfire. "I live not far from the scene, and I was running as fast as I could," said one witness, who declined to give his name.
 
"I dragged one of the people they killed, a man in his 30s who was shot in his chest. Initially I thought he might survive, because he was still breathing, but he was panting heavily, and as soon as I pulled him aside, he died."
 
The witness said that he, too, had come under fire when the police saw him going to the aid of the dying man. The Chinese government has yet to issue a statement about the incident, nor has it been reported in the state media.
 
Reached by telephone, an official in the city of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over the village, said, "Yes, there was an incident, but we don't know the details." The official said an official announcement would be made Saturday.
 
Villagers said that in addition to the regular security forces, the authorities had enlisted thugs from local organized crime groups. "They had knives and sticks in their hands, and they were two or three layers thick, lining the road," one man said.
 
Like the Dongzhou incident itself, most of the thousands of riots and public disturbances recorded in China this year have involved environmental, property rights and land use issues. Among other problems, in trying to come to grips with the growing rural unrest, the Chinese government is wrestling with a yawning gap in incomes between farmers and urban dwellers, and rampant corruption in local government, where unaccountable officials deal away communal property rights, often for their own profit.
 
Finally, mobile telephone technology has made it easier for people in rural China to organize, communicating news to one another by short messages, and increasingly allowing them to stay in touch with members of nongovernmental organizations in big cities.
 
Residents said that after the demonstration was suppressed a senior Communist Party official came to the hamlet from nearby Shanwei and addressed residents with a megaphone.
 
"Shanwei and Dongzhou are still good friends," the official said. "We're not here against you. We are here to make the construction of the Red Sea Bay better.
 
Later, the official reportedly told visitors, "all of the families who have people who died must send a representative to the police for a solution."
 
On Friday, a group of 100 or so bereaved villagers gathered at a bridge leading into the town, briefly blocking access to security forces, hoisting a white banner whose black-ink characters read: "The dead suffered a wrong. Uphold justice."

----

U.S. Activists Trek Toward Guantanamo

Fri Dec 9, 2005
By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051209/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_guantanamo_2

HAVANA - American activists reached the halfway point in a long trek toward the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay to protest treatment of terror suspects, but it appeared unlikely the communist government would let them enter a Cuban military zone to reach the U.S. outpost.

Marchers from the largely Christian group, Witness Against Torture, said by cellular telephone on Thursday that they had completed about half of the 50-mile trek from the eastern city of Santiago.

The 25 marchers, who set out Wednesday, hope to arrive at — or at least near to — the naval base by Saturday, which is International Human Rights Day. The march was organized by the Catholic Worker movement, an anti-war and social justice alliance.

"We don't know how far we can get, so every step forward is an amazing thing," said Shelia Stumph, a 28-year-old marcher from Raleigh, N.C.

If denied entry to the base, they have said they will fast and pray for the abolition of torture by all nations.

The U.S. government says the roughly 500 foreign terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay are enemy combatants, not prisoners of war, and are not entitled to the same rights afforded under the Geneva Convention. Critics say that leaves the door open to the use of torture.

Cuban officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said it was unlikely that the island's Revolutionary Armed Forces would allow marchers to traverse the miles-wide military zone that has surrounded the American base since shortly after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution.

Cuba's elite Frontier Brigade considers its military zone its front line of defense against the United States, which it accuses of trying to undermine its government for more than four decades.

Permission to enter the area is rarely granted to civilians — especially foreigners — and even then only after months of deliberations.

Associated Press Writer Robin Hindery contributed to this report from New York.