NucNews April 16, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Chernobyl, 20 years after By JUDITH MOHLING Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center Sunday, April 16, 2006 http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2006/04/16/opinion/your_take/yourtake1.txt On the night of April 26, 20 years ago, in a Ukrainian town one mile from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, a young, single mother went onto her balcony for a breath of air. As she stood there, Lybov Sirota witnessed the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. The reactor turned into a massive cauldron of fire, radiation and poisonous gases that burned for ten days. Like a gigantic man-made volcanic eruption, clouds of toxins spewed over Europe and the rest of the world. Lybov and her little son both became very ill in the following weeks. Today Lybov is dying and her town is a radioactive ghost town. In September 2005, two UN organizations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), released a report, seen by many around the world as a definitive statement on the consequences of the disaster. The report created a perspective that the incident was serious, but not nearly a disaster of the scope many radiation scientists, many Europeans, people around the world and anti-nuclear activists had feared. * The report suggested that the accident ultimately would kill a total of 4,000 people. That figure is being seriously challenged as way off the mark. The report is especially significant at this time when the U.S. administration is pushing for a Global Nuclear Energy Policy with nuclear power reactors across the U. S. and the world - as if reactors could be safe and without radioactive contamination that lasts essentially forever. The Green group in the European Parliament issued a report last week by two leading independent radiation scientists from the United Kingdom that has key findings in grave dispute with the IAEA/WHO report. Their report was commissioned by German Green Member of Parliament, Rebecca Harms. It sets out the continuing and predicted future noxious effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the immediate area and worldwide. Some of the key findings include: Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were heavily contaminated; however, more than half of Chernobyl's fallout was deposited outside these countries; Fallout from Chernobyl contaminated about 40 percent of Europe's surface area; About 30,000 to 60,000 excess cancer deaths are predicted, [as a result of the disaster] 7 to 15 times greater than IAEA/WHO's published estimate of 4,000. According to the April 6 edition of the “New Scientist,” magazine, in an article by Rob Edwards, the IAEA/WHO report neglected to mention 5,000 known deaths in parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and of failing to take account of many thousands more deaths in other countries, where more than half of Chernobyl's fallout ended up. Radiation scientist Ian Fairlie is quoted in the article as saying, “it is poor scientific practice to issue figures which only reflect part of the real situation.” Another scientist, Zhanat Carr, a radiation scientist with the WHO in Geneva says the 5,000 deaths were omitted because the report was a “political communication tool.” According to Xavier Dias, social activist co-founder of the Jharkhandis' Organisation for Human Rights in India, in a speech given at a conference on health and environment in 1998, radioactivity is especially insidious because it can be created but not eliminated. It attacks living cells - the building blocks of all forms of life. He said, “Today a growing number of scientists believe that there are no such things as ‘safe radiation levels'. They stress that all radiation is harmful, there is no threshold for health effects of low levels of radiation and that only the degree of damage is variable.” The IAEA and Director General Mohamed ElBaradei were awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, “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.” But IAEA is caught in a fundamental conflict of interest between its promotion of nuclear energy and its publication of a report on health effects at Chernobyl that claims that the world's worst nuclear accident wasn't as deadly as previously thought. Perhaps in the face of the need for a source of energy that doesn't create greenhouse gases, IAEA officials are sincerely self-deceived enough to believe that nuclear energy is the answer. “One of the basic contradictions of the capitalist economy,” according to radical philosopher Istavan Meszaros, “is that it cannot separate advance from destruction, nor progress from waste - however catastrophic the results.” We must transcend that contradiction. No more Chernobyls. No more nuclear reactors. No more nuclear waste. -------- australia The nuclear debate continued Sunday 16 April 2006 Ockhams Razor (Australia) Presented by Robyn Williams http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1613742.htm Summary Medical scientist and former senator Dr John Coulter, now Vice President of Sustainable Population Australia, looks at the dangers and downfalls of nuclear power. Program Transcript Robyn Williams: Well, ‘nuclear’ is the word of the moment. Sales of our uranium to China, prospects of an energy source in the face of climate change; new technology to make the process safer, waste disposal; for Australia to bury the world’s radioactive leftovers. We’ve had all that and more in our programs and newspapers. And there’s more to come. This week a medical scientist who became a Senator and is now back in Adelaide; Dr John Coulter is Vice President of Sustainable Population Australia. John Coulter: An Ockham’s Razor late last year urged Australia to embrace nuclear energy and suggested that we could make a large amount of money by becoming the repository for the world’s nuclear waste. The dangers of nuclear power were gravely misrepresented. For example, it was asserted that: ‘The Chernobyl disaster killed only 31 people and less than 100 deaths have been clearly linked to the explosion in 1986.’ But John Gofman, Professor of Medical Physics at Berkeley, a well recognised world expert in both the physics and biology of radiation, has calculated that 950,000 people will have got, or will get, cancer as a result of the Chernobyl fallout, and roughly half will die of their cancers. The claim that only 31 deaths occurred deliberately hides behind the impossibility of identifying the exact cause of particular cancers and the statistical impossibility of identifying a proportionately small change in a large background of spontaneous cancers. Let me explain. In most populations, about 25% to 30% will get a spontaneous cancer at some time in their lives. Radiation increases the amount of genetic damage in an exposed population and some of this damage leads on to cancer. The amount of cancer being proportional to the dose of radiation. Small exposures will cause only a low incidence of cancer in the exposed population. And no cancer caused by radiation exposure is distinguishable from a cancer that may have arisen spontaneously. Therefore we can never say that a particular cancer was caused by radiation. Only when enough people are exposed to large enough doses can we say that the increased number of cancers in the exposed population is more than we would expect from chance variation alone. We may then say that the exposure has increased the cancer rate by a certain percentage. The maths is the work of epidemiologists and statisticians. Let me illustrate this point. If we toss a coin 100 times, we don’t expect it will come down exactly 50 heads and 50 tails. Suppose we get 45 heads and 55 tails. Is the coin dodgy? Well it might be, but a statistician couldn’t say. We expect this amount of variation too frequently to be sure. To be reasonably sure that the variation from the expected value is not due to chance, statisticians and medical epidemiologists ask that there be less than a 5% probability that the outcome could be due to chance alone. Similarly, we don’t expect the cancer rate across northern Europe to be the same every year. Natural fluctuations occur. The Chernobyl explosion sent a radioactive plume across northern Europe as far as the Atlantic coast of Ireland. The exposed population numbered in the hundreds of millions. It’s easy to show that quite large numbers of additional cancers could occur without these cancers teaching a statistical significance, just as the 45 heads and 55 tails may be due to a dodgy coin but the maths can’t prove it. How then might we calculate the cancers caused by the Chernobyl fallout? We do it by knowing the amount of radiation to which individuals or groups were exposed, the number of people so exposed and by extrapolation from known dose response relationships. The additional risk for a given individual may be extremely small, but when large numbers are exposed, the absolute number of additional cancers can be quite large. And that number may be quite undetectable by any epidemiological examination of the exposed population. Suppose in round figures the population of Northern Europe at the time of Chernobyl was 300 million. We would expect about 75 million of these people to get cancer spontaneously at some stage in their lives. Suppose an additional one million got cancer as a result of Chernobyl fallout. This is the variation that one would expect almost 20% of the time by chance alone, so this number would remain undetected as a consequence of exposure. It is on the basis of this more careful and informed analysis that Professor Gofman, of Berkeley, has calculated that 950,000 people will have got or will get cancer as a result of the Chernobyl fallout and that roughly half will die of their cancers. Only a short time before Chernobyl blew its top, the Deputy Director General of Nuclear Safety with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr BA Semenov, described the Chernobyl-type reactor in the Bulletin of the IAEA. And he said: ‘The design feature of having more than a thousand individual primary circuits increases the safety of the reactor system, a serious loss of coolant accident is practically impossible.’ This is the body we rely on to guarantee nuclear safety. Last year’s Ockham’s Razor also claimed that Australia possesses three characteristics which make it ideal as a site for the world’s nuclear waste: geological stability, extensive areas of dry climate, and political stability. This, it was said, placed a responsibility upon us to take the waste and, by the way, we could make a lot of money out of it. Australia is geologically stable. But claims in regard to the other two factors take little account of the time scale through which this material must be safely stored. The world is entering a period of rapid climate change as a consequence of greenhouse warming. We may speculate on rainfall distribution 100 or 500 years from now but is it brave, or foolish, to store the world’s nuclear waste based on our speculations? Political stability? We’re looking to the care of this material for at least a thousand years. Who, looking back over the turbulent ups and downs of nations and regions over the last thousand years, would confidently predict a politically stable Australia for the next millennium? Who in Russia only twenty years ago would have predicted the economic collapse of that nation to the point that it’s now incapable of caring for a number of rusting nuclear facilities scattered widely across its vast expanse? The inherent dangers associated with nuclear power demand an extremely high level of security and vigilance that may prove impossible to maintain. There is compelling evidence that the peaking of oil presages a near future of considerable international unrest, conflict and economic decline; a future in which it is most unwise to mix an expansion of things nuclear with the associated risks of nuclear weapons and terrorism. And, by the way, do we get paid up front for the cost of a thousand years of safe storage, or are we prepared to take a deposit and a yearly instalment? And what do we do if a nation defaults on its payments? Do we send the waste back? Where does Australia invest a thousand-year deposit so that the cost of looking after the waste can still be met 900 years from now? Those who assert that civil nuclear power can be totally divorced from the military and criminal use of nuclear material are asking us to forget history. The first reactors were built specifically to produce the materials for the first atomic bombs and only later became suppliers of electricity. The bombs exploded at Maralinga were fashioned from material made in a reactor that went on to become a power reactor on the UK electricity grid. Much of nuclear knowledge and technology is common to both power generation and the making of weapons. The Non Proliferation Treaty has proved quite incapable of ensuring that nuclear fuels and facilities are not misused. The Iraq war was started over a claim that that nation possessed nuclear weapons. The IAEA and the NPT could not provide an assurance that was not the case. The suggestion that nuclear power can be a solution to our energy needs arises in a ‘business as usual’ view of the world in which all problems have technical solutions. Experience has shown that each round of technical solutions brings more intractable problems in its wake. Such an approach to problems is also predicated on confidence that even if we don’t find solutions in our lifetime, problems can be left and solution will be found by our descendants. But this technical problem-technical solution view of the world ignores some fundamental realities. It’s piecemeal. Seeking solutions within this paradigm requires that we simplify the nature of the problem and deliberately ignore many contextual factors. Problem: using coal, gas and oil to produce electricity leads to greenhouse induced climate change. Solution: build nuclear power stations or here, I might equally insert, photovoltaic or wind generators. But the wider context reveals that greenhouse induced climate change is only one among a large number of indicators that humans are living unsustainably. Excessive energy use, including electricity, is one of the important drivers of this unsustainability. More energy for human abuse can only accelerate the descent into an even less sustainable future for our children. The more comprehensive context of unsustainability is this. Over the last 180 years humans have exponentially exploited cheap, non-renewable fossil fuels. We have used that temporary energy bounty to build a global human population from about one billion to over 6 billion. We now face a time when that cheap energy is not going to be available and none of the vaunted alternative sources can fill the gap. A very basic example: it has been said that modern industrial agriculture is the process of using soil to turn oil into food. Global food supply is less than one per cent as energy efficient as our gatherer/hunter forebears. The 99% energy subsidy comes overwhelmingly from oil and we are now passing through the peak of oil production. In only a few years oil production will fall ever more steeply, while demand will remain high. The cost of petroleum and all the products we now derive from it will rise more and more steeply, very large numbers will starve, economies will collapse. There will be greatly increased intra and international tension and strife, of which the present Iraq war is but a gentle prelude. Not only can nuclear energy not replace oil and its many vital services – such as fertilisers to grow crops in Australia’s poor soils – it adds an additional danger into this increasingly turbulent mix. Too many people are each demanding, on average, too much from the natural environment. Our primary efforts should not be directed toward technical fixes for a fundamentally unsustainable way of life. Our work must be directed toward stopping population growth as rapidly as possible and doing all in our power to reorganise our lives, our social, institutional and economic arrangements so that our demand for energy from all sources is drastically curtailed. We have only a few short years of relatively cheap energy left. We should use this small window of opportunity to make this transition. If we fail we will have lost the opportunity. Then Nature will do the job for us. Robyn Williams: And do the job in ways we might not relish, is the implication. Dr John Coulter spent 21 years in medical research, then became a Democratic Senator in Canberra. Now he’s Vice President of Sustainable Population Australia. Next week, Ockham’s Razor goes to the countryside. Guests on this program: Dr John Coulter Vice President of Sustainable Population Australia Adelaide South Australia Presenter: Robyn Williams Producer: Brigitte Seega -------- britain Nuclear ‘won’t plug power gap’ Environmental Audit Committee roasts reactors idea By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor Sunday Herald - 16 April 2006 http://www.sundayherald.com/55224 Tony Blair’s ambitions for nuclear power have been given another roasting, this time by MPs from his own party. A programme to build new reactors would be fraught with risks and could not plug the electricity gap, concludes a report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. The report savages the UK government for not doing enough to boost energy efficiency, renewables and clean coal. And it is scathing about the Prime Minister’s energy review, suggesting that it is unnecessary and doomed to failure. In Scotland, the report’s findings are reinforced by a new expert study for local authorities which says that the nation could meet its future energy needs by replacing nuclear power with wind and other renewables. The Environmental Audit Committee consists of 16 MPs, nine of whom are Labour, including the environment minister Elliot Morley. It was set up by Blair in 1997 to demonstrate Labour’s green credentials. Its new report, out today, warns that the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear plants and the spread of nuclear weapons are “serious”. It echoes the position adopted by the Scottish Executive by suggesting that the problem of nuclear waste needs to be “resolved” before a decision is taken on a new nuclear programme. The report argues that nuclear power is incapable of filling the 20 gigawatt power gap forecast for the UK in 2016. It is simply not possible to build new reactors fast enough to replace the stations that are scheduled to close, it says. If we want to keep the lights on, the gap will have to be filled instead by a major investment in gas-fired power stations, wind farms and increasing energy efficiency. The Blair government is now certain to miss its target of generating 10% of electricity from renewables by 2010, it claims. Westminster departments, particularly the Treasury, have failed to take decisive action to improve energy efficiency, the report says. The lack of progress in developing clean coal technologies to capture and store climate-wrecking carbon emissions is condemned as “scandalous”. “The nature of the energy review itself is unclear and the case for a wider ranging review of energy policy has not been made,” the report states. As a result it could fail to command the support of the public and politicians. “We are concerned with the government’s focus on nuclear power,” said the committee’s chairman, Tory MP Tim Yeo. “We do not think that is necessarily the answer.” Progress on carbon capture and offshore wind had been “non-existent or faltering”, he added. And the three years since energy policy was last reviewed had been a “wasted opportunity”. Environmentalists welcome the report, describing it as a “body blow” to Blair. “Nuclear power is simply an expensive and polluting distraction to the sensible alternatives,” said Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland. Blair’s review is “an exercise designed to try to find a way to justify new nuclear power stations”, according to Mark Ruskell MSP, the Green Party’s speaker on the environment. The Greens are demanding a Scottish parliamentary review of how the country’s energy needs can be met. The answer, according to a new study, is without using nuclear power. Glasgow consultants Garrad Hassan say that a combination of gas, coal and renewables will be able to supply all the nation’s electricity in 2023. “Scotland doesn’t need any more nuclear power stations and this report shows that we can cope quite easily without them,” said Pete Roche, a consultant to the Scottish group of nuclear-free local authorities. “Blair should get the message that Scotland doesn’t want any.” ---- Blair dealt nuclear power blow by parliament body Sun Apr 16, 2006 (Reuters) By Jeremy Lovell http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-15T230422Z_01_L15727525_RTRUKOC_0_UK-NUCLEAR-BRITAIN.xml LONDON - A parliamentary committee on Sunday rejected any government dash for nuclear power to meet looming energy needs, delivering an apparent blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair is widely believed to favour replacing the country's ageing nuclear plants with new ones, but the all-party environment audit committee's report was the second time a leading body has opposed a new generation of nuclear stations. The report, entitled "Keeping the lights on", said the answer lay in building many more gas-powered electricity plants and boosting production from sources of renewable energy like wind and waves. "Over the next 10 years, nuclear power cannot contribute either to the need for more generating capacity or to carbon reductions as it simply could not be built in time," the report said. "Nuclear power raises a variety of issues which would need to be satisfactorily resolved before any decision to go ahead is taken." Published only 10 days before the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the report raised issues such as safety, terrorism, nuclear proliferation risks, long-term waste disposal, public acceptability and the availability of uranium. GOVERNMENT ENERGY REVIEW The government, which has acknowledged it is likely to miss its own goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2010, is half way through a six-month review of the country's future energy needs and how to meet them. Bound by pledges to slash emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, it must decide the shape of the country's electricity supply network for coming decades as demand grows and North Sea oil and gas run out. Nuclear and coal power plants supply about 60 percent of Britain's electricity. Public opinion has swung gradually back in favour of nuclear power, but only when taken as an option against global warming. The Group of Eight leading industrialised nations -- Britain, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- are widely expected to endorse nuclear power at a Moscow summit in July. "If we are going to have a sustainable, low-carbon society then we have to have low-carbon (supporting) citizens," said Philip Sellwood, head of the Energy Saving Trust, a body funded by both government and industry that promotes energy efficiency. "Now there is a real chance to give power to the people," Sellwood told Reuters in an interview. A new Energy Saving Trust survey shows Britons worry more about energy bills than personal health or debts. -------- india Cyprus supports India's desire for civil nuclear energy Apr. 16, 2006 India Daily http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/67375.asp Cyprus, a member of the 45-country Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), today supported India's desire for civil nuclear energy as the two countries explored the possibility of cooperation in the field. In a joint statement issued at the end of five-day visit of Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos here, the two countries agreed to consider establishing direct air links as part of effort to promote two-way tourism. Cyprus welcomed the India-US agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation and both sides agreed that such cooperation would help in addressing concerns relating to global energy security and environmental protection, the statement said. -------- iran Iranian: U.S. Waging 'Psychological War' By SAMAR KASSABLI, Associated Press Writer Sun Apr 16, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060416/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_us Iran's former president accused the United States Sunday of waging "a psychological war" against Tehran and said an American strike against the Islamic republic would not be in Washington's interests. Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads the Expediency Council, a powerful body that mediates between Iran's parliament and clerical hierarchy, said Western nations' attempts to block Iran's nuclear program were "unjust." "Iran's success in uranium enrichment is for the interest of the region's countries and all Islamic countries," Rafsanjani said. He reiterated the government position that Iran's nuclear program was not intended to harm any country in the region. "If the United States launched a military strike against Iran, that would be neither in its interests nor in the interests of the entire region," Rafsanjani told a joint news conference in Damascus with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa. He said he believed that the United States was "incapable of taking a risk or engaging in a new war in the region without discussing the subject seriously." U.S. media reports have said the Bush administration was considering a military attack on Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington claims is designed to produce nuclear weapons. Iran says it is purely for generating energy. President Bush has dismissed reports on attack plans as "wild speculation." On Tuesday, Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear reactors or build atomic bombs. Iran has rejected a U.N. Security Council demand for it to stop enriching uranium by April 28. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants a negotiated solution to the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions, he said in an interview published Sunday in the ABC newspaper. Annan told the conservative Madrid daily during a visit last week to Spain that any military operation against Iran would worsen a tense international situation. "I think the issue is being handled properly by the International Atomic Energy Agency. I still believe that the best solution is a negotiated one, and I don't see what a military operation would resolve," ABC quoted Annan as saying. ---- War With Iran Will Do US More Damage Ex-Officials Warn The action in the Persian Gulf continues to simmer at an alarming level by Staff Writers Washington (AFP) Apr 16, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/War_With_Iran_Will_Do_US_More_Damage_Ex_Officials_Warn.html Two former US National Security Coucil experts warned Sunday that military action against Iran could be more damaging to US interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been. Richard Clarke and Steven Simon, who coordinated counterterrorism policy in the Clinton and Bush administrations, wrote in The New York Times that "any United States bombing campaign would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process." They warned that Iran would first attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers, which could cause oil prices to spike above 80 dollars a barrel. However more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States, Clarke and Simon said. "Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field," the experts wrote. "The Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past as an instrument of Iran." The experts argued that Iran was in a position to make the situation in Iraq far more difficult for the United States than it already is. "The Badr Brigade and other Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British and American troops," the two wrote. "There is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready." ---- Iran was not ordered to Stop Enrichment By Mike Whitney 04/16/06 "ICH" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12757.htm It’s easy to get confused about developments in Iran because the media does everything in its power to obfuscate the facts and then spin the details in way that advances American policy objectives. But, let’s be clear; the Security Council did NOT order Iran to stop enriching uranium. It may not even be in their power to do so since enrichment is guaranteed under the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty). For the Security Council to forbid Iran to continue with enrichment activities would be tantamount to repealing the treaty itself. They didn’t do that. What they did was “request” that Iran suspend enrichment activities so that the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) could further prove that Iran’s nuclear programs were entirely for peaceful purposes. Iran, of course, did the only thing they could do; they graciously declined. After all, Iran followed every minute step that the Bush administration took in the long march to war with Iraq, so it is only natural that they would choose to take a different path. Why would they invite more intrusive inspections allowing the UN to ferret through every inch of Iranian territory in an attempt to uncover every armory, radar station, and missile site before the inevitable US bombing? Why would they endure the humiliation of being singled out and scorned for complying with the NPT when nuclear cheaters like India are rewarded with praise and offered banned nuclear technology by Washington? No thanks. The Security Council is looking for a peaceful way out of the standoff, so they are bending as much as possible, but, make no mistake, there will be no sanctions, no Chapter 7 resolutions, and no outright ban on Iran enriching uranium. It won’t happen. In fact, as nuclear scientist Gordon Prather reports, the Security Council actually confirmed Iran’s right to enrich uranium in a terse Presidential Statement which they issued after two weeks of deliberation: "The Security Council reaffirms its commitment to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and recalls the right of States Party, in conformity with articles I and II of that Treaty, to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination”. Should we be surprised that not one newspaper in the western press printed this astonishing vindication of Iran’s conduct under the terms of the NPT? The media routinely characterizes Iran’s behavior as “defiance”, as if anyone who stands in the way of American foreign policy is inherently evil. In fact, there is an important principle involved in Iran’s response that is never adequately explored. The right to enrich uranium is the central tenet of the NPT. That is why in the language of the treaty, it is referred to as an “inalienable right”. This point is oftentimes overlooked but it is crucial to understanding the true spirit of the treaty. Every nation is entitled to the full benefits of nuclear technology as long as they comply with inspections that ensure their programs are strictly being used for peaceful purposes. There’s no way to strip “enrichment” out of the NPT and still have a treaty that means anything. . Without the prospect of enrichment, there is no incentive for countries to join the NPT. The signatory would simply be accepting an apartheid system which rewards nuclear states without any practical benefits for the non-nuclear members. It is the right to utilize nuclear technology without developing nuclear weapons that makes the treaty attractive. For the United States to say that they want Iran to forgo enrichment is the same as saying they want to unilaterally repeal the treaty. For Iran, this is totally unacceptable. It is the equivalent of buying a car from a dealership only to discover that the steering wheel, engine, and transmission have been removed. Iran has fully complied with the most rigorously monitored inspections in the history of the IAEA. They have willingly submitted to “additional protocols” negotiated with the EU-3 (Germany, France and England) as a way of allaying concerns about noncompliance and to build confidence among the members of the international community. Their eagerness to negotiate in good faith was intentionally subverted by the Bush administration which has stubbornly refused to provide any of the security guarantees that Iran sought in exchange for sacrificing its rights. Iran wants a non-aggression pact from the Bush administration, something that Washington is unprepared to offer. At no point, have the inspections produced “any evidence” that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons or diverting nuclear material from its use in peaceful technology. This hasn’t stopped the administration from pursuing an aggressive media strategy to feed public hysteria. Will it work? Iran’s struggle represents a fundamental clash between the rights of individual sovereign states and an increasingly mettlesome superpower. No one disputes that the NPT allows its members to enrich uranium. The dispute is whether or not the United States can arbitrarily overturn international law and rescind a treaty for a nation it simply dislikes. Treaties are the foundation blocks upon which the international order rests; without them we are doomed to an endless cycle of bloody conflicts. Iran’s demand that its rights be respected is in fact a defense of the basic principle which underscores civilization itself; that even the weakest among us can take refuge in the law. The Mullahs are right to think that that is a principle worth fighting for. -------- mideast Iran's Rafsanjani in Kuwait to reassure on nuclear crisis Sun Apr 16, 2006 (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060416/ts_afp/irannuclearpoliticskuwait KUWAIT CITY - Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was in Kuwait on a visit aimed at easing fears of Iran's Gulf neighbours about its nuclear programme. Rafsanjani, also the head of Iran's powerful Expediency Council, is due to hold talks with officials, including Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah and Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, during the two-day visit. The talks will focus on the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear programme amid reports of possible US military action against the Shiite-ruled Islamic republic, officials and diplomats said Sunday. "We want to assure you (the Gulf region) that we are at the service of the whole region," Rafsanjani told an accompanying Iranian television crew at Kuwait airport. Rafsanjani's visit follows Iran's announcement last week that it had successfully enriched uranium to the level needed to make reactor fuel, triggering global concern about its nuclear ambitions. Uranium enrichment can be extended to make weapons, and the UN Security Council has given Iran's hardline leadership until April 28 to freeze the sensitive fuel cycle work. Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah said last week that Iran's nuclear activities must remain under the close watch of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "The countries in the region should be assured that Iranian nuclear activities were under the close watch of international monitoring, and that its safety precautions comply with international standards," he said. US-ally Kuwait and other Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states are concerned about the possibility that the current standoff may develop into a full-scale military confrontation and fear an environmental catastrophe from the Iranian nuclear plant being constructed in Bushehr on Gulf waters. Kuwait's leading liberal newspaper Al-Qabas warned in an editorial Sunday entitled "Welcome Rafsanjani... But," that Gulf states may be the main victims of a possible US-Iranian military confrontation. "We say but because our Iranian brothers have placed us -- the people on the other bank of the Gulf -- right in the middle of the confrontation... against our will, and we may become its main victim," the daily said. The region has witnessed three major conflicts in the last quarter century -- the 1980-1988 Iran- Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf war to end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. -------- u.s. nuc weapons U.S. aims to up nuclear warhead production capability to 250 a year The Japan Times: Sunday, April 16, 2006 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060416a4.html WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The United States envisions a plan to establish an annual production capability of 250 nuclear warheads in a bid to be prepared for possible contingencies in the future, a senior U.S. administration official said. The plan also calls for promoting development of new types of warheads in a five-year cycle to continuously replace existing ones, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) official said on condition of anonymity. The official also said the new type, called the reliable replacement warhead, or RRW, which is now being studied for submarine-launched ballistic missiles in place of the current W-76 warhead, could also be used for intercontinental ballistic missiles. The move shows that the NNSA is contemplating twice the contingency production capability more than what it has publicly stated. In a congressional hearing early this month, NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Thomas D'Agostino said the agency plans a "baseline production capacity of 125 (plutonium) pits per year to the stockpile by 2022." The five-year development cycle means the administration will continue to develop new types of RRW after it successfully produces the one for replacing the W-76 warhead. The NNSA official said, "Every five years we would go through a cycle . . . research, development, production, retirement, dismantlement." The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are expected to "establish technical feasibility" of developing the RRW without the resumption of nuclear tests, he said. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- new jersey Cracks in Oyster Creek wall questioned Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/16/06 BY NICHOLAS CLUNN STAFF WRITER http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006604160391 Regulators concerned about aging parts at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant say they want to know more about hairline cracks in a wall meant to contain radiation. But three independent experts who reviewed a public document about the damage said the flaws are normal and not much to fuss over — at least not yet. The cracks, which appear in a reinforced concrete shield around the Lacey reactor, are similar to those in weather-worn sidewalks: Small stress marks don't necessarily foreshadow a collapse. To make sure changes in cracks don't go unnoticed at the Lacey plant, federal regulators are reviewing the operator's inspection plans before deciding whether to allow Oyster Creek to run for an additional 20 years under a renewed license. Some trust the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and plant operator AmerGen Energy Co. to make sure Oyster Creek grows old gracefully. Others do not. "If they get their license for another 20 years, it's going to be a very harrowing time, knowing what we know," said Brick Mayor Joseph Scarpelli, who wants Oyster Creek closed when its initial 40-year license expires less than three years from now. Close calls at other plants and AmerGen's reluctance to inspect a metal vessel that surrounds the reactor are some reasons renewal opponents are skeptical. Those who back the renewal say Oyster Creek has operated without a major accident since it started up in 1969. Lacey Mayor Mark Dykoff said he has never heard from a disgruntled plant employee. Workers he has met say the plant is safe, he said. "Where there is smoke, there is fire, and I don't see no smoke," Dykoff said. The public will have an opportunity to decide whether to trust AmerGen and the commission by attending a meeting between the two sides Thursday afternoon. At issue will be AmerGen's plans for monitoring the aging of certain safety components, including radiation barriers, during an extended operating period. The discussion is expected to be technical, but it could provide insight into what regulators are thinking part way through their review. A decision on the license isn't expected until May 2007. Since AmerGen applied for a renewal in July, regulators have been reviewing the company's 2,400-page renewal application, asking AmerGen for additional information and touring the plant to verify aspects of the application. In one document pertaining to the commission's review, regulators say they have "a concern that several potential aging issues may not have been adequately addressed." Regulators then go on to ask questions about cracks in the concrete wall, which is meant to stop some of the radiation and heat generated by the reactor from entering parts of the containment building on the other side. Also mentioned in the document, dated March 9, were questions about cracks around a water-filled pool that holds highly radioactive spent fuel. In both areas, the cracks appeared normal to three independent experts. "I don't see anything unusual about this one," said Ted Quinn, past president of the American Nuclear Society, an educational organization for professionals. Samin Anghaie, a professor in the nuclear engineering department at the University of Florida, also reviewed the document and reached the same conclusion. In the document, a representative for AmerGen went over the company's plans for monitoring the cracks. Cracks in concrete structures at nuclear power plants are just as common as cracks found in buildings, bridges and roads. They sometimes form when concrete settles, said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit alliance of citizens and scientists. It might not even make sense for a plant operator to fix a crack unless it's getting worse, even in vital structures, Lochbaum said. Spending money to fix harmless cracks would mean less funding for needed repairs, he said. But cracks can become a big deal when large, unexpected, ones are spotted for the first time. That could mean a plant operator is not conducting inspections often enough or in the right places, he said. Using the wrong criteria to measure a crack's significance — its width, for instance — could lead to catastrophe, Lochbaum said. "If you're inspecting cracks and then all of the sudden your structure collapses, then the criteria you're using isn't doing what it is supposed to do," he said. Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com -------- MILITARY -------- latin america 'Dirty war' babies learn painful truth During Argentina's military regime, officers took the children from kidnapped women who, eventually, were executed. As adults, some are learning the painful truth. BY JACK CHANG Knight Ridder News Service Sun, Apr. 16, 2006 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/14353054.htm BUENOS AIRES - For most of her life, Claudia Victoria Poblete lived a lie that began when she was 8 months old, during the darkest years of Argentina's brutal military dictatorship. Poblete, now 28, was Mercedes Beatriz Landa then and was raised as an only child in a military family. It wasn't until 2000 that she learned the truth: Her father and mother, José Liborio Poblete and Marta Gertrudis Hlaczik, had been kidnapped by soldiers on Nov. 28, 1978, tortured and killed. The man she had known as her father, Army Lt. Col. Ceferino Landa, had been a colleague of her parents' killers. ''When I first learned this, I couldn't believe it was true,'' said Poblete, who is now married and works as a computer systems analyst in Buenos Aires. ``But when I saw the pictures of my parents and my relatives, it was like a shock of truth. And it brought me tranquillity.'' The man who raised Poblete was charged with the ''retention, concealment and suppression'' of her identity and sentenced to nine years of house arrest. After years of court battles, Argentina's Supreme Court used the case last year to declare unconstitutional two amnesty laws passed in the 1980s that had set a 60-day deadline for bringing human rights charges against military and police officials and had protected lower-ranking members of the military from prosecution. That opened the floodgates. Since then, 1,400 people -- civilians and military personnel -- have been charged with a range of offenses related to the kidnapping and murder of dissidents. VANISHED PARENTS Poblete is one of an estimated 500 children whose parents vanished during Argentina's so-called dirty war, which began with the overthrow of President María Estela Martínez de Perón, popularly known as Isabelita, on March 24, 1976, and ended with the replacement of the military government in a 1983 election after the country's defeat in the Falklands War the year before. During its rule, the military government had as many as 30,000 dissidents, intellectuals and innocent bystanders kidnapped and killed while it battled armed guerrillas in what it called the Process of National Reorganization. The terror campaign included abducting hundreds of babies along with their mothers or kidnapping babies born to female prisoners in concentration camps that dotted the country. Witnesses said many of the mothers gave birth gagged, blindfolded and bound. Doctors often induced labor and performed unnecessary Caesarean surgeries. Almost all of the women were later killed, their bodies never found. At a camp in the notorious Naval Mechanical School in Buenos Aires, officials kept a list of pregnant prisoners to help military officers and others select babies for adoption. So far, activists have found 82 missing children, and they are investigating the cases of hundreds of others. The latest discovery came in February when genetic tests confirmed the identity of Sebastián José Casado Tasca, 27, who was born to law student Adriana Tasca while she was jailed. Witnesses saw Casado Tasca's mother in a secret maternity ward for jailed political prisoners. The child was raised by a businessman who had friends in the military. The mother is missing and presumed dead. ''I'm not looking for vengeance,'' said Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit, the vice president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which is leading the campaign to find the missing children. ``We just want justice and truth.'' SYMBOLIC ATTACKS Alicia Lo Giudice, a psychoanalyst who has worked with 15 recovered children, said the illegal adoptions were symbolic attacks against the military's perceived enemies. ''Identity is the most special thing a person can have, and to appropriate it like the military did was a kind of maniacal triumph,'' she said. ``I mean, these children had the same faces as their enemies. These kids were raised in a perverse system.'' Most of the cases are unsolved, but the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo has stepped up its campaign, with growing success. It has located at least one child every year, reaching a peak of seven children in 2000. Their stories have captured the nation's imagination and inspired films and plays. The grandmothers hope the publicity will reach the ears of other missing children, now in their 20s, who may have doubts about their families. ''We're reaching out to kids who have long noticed something strange about the environment they grew up in,'' said Nélida Navajas, 78, who is looking for her own grandchild. 'These are kids who ask, `Why do my parents have red hair, while I have black hair? How come we have such different faces?' '' For nearly three decades, Navajas has been searching for the baby she believes her daughter, Cristina Navajas de Santucho, gave birth to while in captivity, before she was killed. The elderly woman learned of her daughter's pregnancy only after she was abducted, from a letter in her daughter's purse. She also heard testimony from a former prisoner who confirmed the presence of a pregnant woman named Santucho in a concentration camp. Navajas has built her life around her search for her grandchild. ''Children are appearing through genetic analysis, so why not my grandchild?'' Navajas said. ``Hope is the last thing you lose.'' The issue of kidnapped children has played a key role in the legal pursuit of the country's former military rulers, many of whom were never charged with crimes because of amnesties issued after democracy returned. By chance, those amnesties didn't mention the crime of kidnapping children, allowing prosecutors to bring charges against top officials such as a former strongman, army Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, who is now under house arrest for allegedly permitting and concealing the kidnapping of five babies. ''The legal changes are following a public mood,'' said Julio Burdman, an international relations professor at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires. ``The Argentine public wants to see these prosecutions happen, and the issue of these kids is at the center of it.'' HEALING PROCESS For recovered children, the legal victories are only one part of a long healing process that starts the day DNA tests confirm their identities. Ahead lie years of sifting through emotions. Many at first react badly to the news, refusing to believe what they are hearing, said Lo Giudice, the psychoanalyst. Some resist meeting those who have spent years looking for them. Most fear what will happen to the people who appropriated them. But the truth sinks in sooner or later, she said, as does the realization that they will never know their murdered parents. ''They can't ignore the marks they live with, but there is something else,'' Lo Giudice said. ``There is also the possibility of recovering their identity and rebuilding it in another way with their new families.'' After reclaiming her identity, Poblete gradually let go of her old life. She lost touch with many of her friends, some of whom had joined the country's military, and distanced herself from her appropriating parents. Poblete met her new family, including a half-sister in Chile, where her father was born, and aunts, uncles and grandparents in Argentina and Chile. She also gained a cause and is one of a handful of recovered sons and daughters who speak to reporters. ''In my case, this was a victory for my family, who had fought for 30 years to learn what happened to me and my mother,'' she said. ``It was also a victory that could help other families.'' Still, she won't completely let go of her appropriating parents, especially the woman she called her mother for more than two decades. Poblete thinks the woman didn't know her true origin. ''All the memories of my childhood, all the good and bad, all the colors, they are these people, and I can't ignore that,'' Poblete said. ``It's a horrible story, but it's our story.'' -------- ENERGY Going Nuclear A Green Makes the Case By Patrick Moore Sunday, April 16, 2006 Washington Post; B01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209_pf.html In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change. Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely. I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons. And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country. What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then. Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp. And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter. There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored. Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple. That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration: · Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future. · Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.) · Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind. · Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets. · Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use. Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire. The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons. The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination. Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction. pmoore@greenspirit.com Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.