NucNews August 7, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR Nuclear weapons offer no security Gulf News 8/07/2006 http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/editorial_opinion/world/10058127.html The residents of Hiroshima yesterday marked the 61st anniversary of the atomic bombing of their city. Nagasaki suffered the same fate three days later. The world cannot plead ignorance to the destructive force of such weapons. Modern nuclear warheads carry in their payload a destructive power many times greater than those used on the Japanese cities. Yet mankind is still haunted by the threat of weapons of mass destruction, weapons that could terminate life, as we know it on the planet. There is no security in nuclear weaponry. He did not know what weapons would be used, former US president Lyndon Baines Johnson once said, to fight the third world war but he knew what weapons would be used after it; stones. Mutually assured destruction was a mindset of Cold War nuclear poker whereby one superpower would not attack another for fear of the reprisal. But in recent years, nuclear weaponry and its possible use have become almost respectable. So-called limited impact scenarios, where a device would be used to destroy a bunker or wipe out an army in the field, have entered the language of military planners. Surgical use of nuclear weapons is a contradiction. If there is one message from Hiroshima and Nagasaki it is that nuclear weapons provide security for none and imperil us all. ---- ‘No danger from uranium cloud’ By Jean Christou August 7, 2006 (Cyprus Mail) Tehran Times http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=8/7/2006&Cat=2&Num=002 NICOSIA -- Cyprus is not in danger from a cloud of toxic depleted uranium from weapons allegedly being used by Israel against Lebanon, Health Minister Charis Charalambous said on August 2. Charalambous, responding to reports, and to a warning from the Green Party of the danger to Cyprus, said the threat was hypothetical. He said however that his Ministry was well prepared to face up to such a situation in case the theoretical threat turned into a potential threat to Cyprus. Depleted uranium is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal used particularly in armor-piercing ammunition. They burn up on impact, creating a radioactive dust, the effect of which remains the subject of safety debates. Like other heavy metals, DU is toxic and constitutes a health risk independent of any residual radioactivity. Amnesty International (AI) has called on all governments to consider refraining from the transfer and use of DU weapons. “There is much controversy over their long-term effects. Some studies suggest that DU dust, which remains in the vicinity of targets struck by DU weapons, poses a significant health risk if inhaled or ingested. AI calls for a moratorium on their use pending authoritative conclusions on their long-term effects on human health and the environment,” a recent statement said. “According to media reports, the U.S. is transferring GBU 28 bunker-buster bombs containing depleted-uranium warheads to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon,” Amnesty added. The Green party on August 2 warned of the danger of DU but on Tuesday the Labour Ministry, which monitors air quality daily, said there was no reason for concern or panic. It said no notice had been received by international centers, which Cyprus is cooperating with and which monitor similar situation. The centers inform their members as soon as such a threat appears, the Ministry said. ”The levels of radiation and concentration of dust in the atmosphere are being monitored by the Department of Labour Inspection and, according to data taken on a 24-hour basis, no increase of these numbers has been ascertained,” said a statement. Former state pathologist and military man, MEP Marios Matsakis told the Cyprus Mail on August 2 that when radiation from DU weapons is released into the atmosphere it can be carried long distances and then it can settle down on everything and contaminates whatever it lands on and it remains radioactive for many years. “The Americans would say there is no danger but of course many eminent scientists say there is serious a health risk,” he said. “How much radiation travels is related to the prevailing conditions at the time. There are so many factors involved,” he added. But he also warned that there was not anything that could be done about it if it did happen. In 2001, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said that NATO's use of depleted uranium in former Yugoslavia could be investigated as a possible war crime. In 2003, the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) tested the urine of civilians in six different areas of Afghanistan four months after the American attacks and found that the urine had non-depleted uranium levels 400 to 2000 percent higher than normal. Several hundred Afghan civilians were found to have symptoms of radiation poisoning, such as joint pain, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems, and disorientation. The effects on soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have also been documented. Four soldiers from New York's 442nd Guard Unit were confirmed to have inhaled uranium oxide, exposure revealed through tests conducted by the Uranium Medical Research Centre. Life Magazine reported a study conducted by the Department of Veteran Affairs which found that 67 per cent of post-Gulf War babies have serious birth defects or serious illnesses, such as missing eyes, limbs, and organs; fused digits; or organ malfunctions. The U.S. Army confirmed they had used over 500 tons of uranium munitions just in the first two months in Iraq using GBU 28, a precision guided bomb. Israel has not admitted to using DU weapons in Lebanon but last week Washington sent a shipment of “bunker busters” to Israel through the Scotland that contained over 100 GBU 28's to use against targets in Lebanon. -------- accidents and safety Fact Sheet on Tritium, Radiation Protection Limits, and Drinking Water Standards Monday, August 07, 2006 Nuclear Regulatory Commission http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html Background The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has recently evaluated several instances of abnormal releases of liquid tritium from several nuclear power plants, which resulted in groundwater contamination. The NRC determined that although the releases were unplanned, the levels of tritium were within radiation protection limits and did not pose a threat to public health and safety. Nonetheless, the NRC takes these unanticipated and unmonitored releases very seriously, and is currently reviewing these incidents to ensure that nuclear power plant operators have taken appropriate action. What is the NRC doing about the tritium leaks and spills at nuclear power plants? The NRC has revised its inspection procedures for nuclear power plants to evaluate licensees' programs to inspect and assess the equipment and structures that have the potential to leak. The NRC has also placed additional emphasis on evaluating the licensees' abilities to analyze for additional discharge pathways, such as groundwater, as a result of a spill or leak. The NRC has established a "lessons learned" task force to address inadvertent, unmonitored liquid releases of radioactivity from U.S. commercial nuclear power plants. This task force will review previous incidents, identify lessons learned from these events, and determine what, if any, changes are needed in the agency's regulatory program. The task force's findings are expected in the near future. As with any industrial facility, a nuclear power plant may deviate from normal operation with a spill or leak of liquid material. However, the plant design and the NRC's inspection program both provide reasonable assurance that safety limits will be met — even in abnormal situations. This fact sheet provides a general overview of the health effects of tritium and the technical bases for the regulatory standards that the NRC uses to protect public health and safety, as well as the drinking water standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Additional resources and references related to tritium are listed at the end of this fact sheet. Tritium * Tritium is a naturally occurring radioactive form of hydrogen that is produced in the atmosphere when cosmic rays collide with air molecules. As a result, tritium is found in very small or trace amounts in groundwater throughout the world. It is also a byproduct of the production of electricity by nuclear power plants. * Tritium emits a weak form of radiation. The radiation emitted from tritium is a low-energy beta particle that is similar to an electron. Moreover, the tritium beta particle does not travel very far in air and cannot penetrate the skin. Tritium from Nuclear Power Plants * Several nuclear power plants have recently reported abnormal releases of liquid tritium, which resulted in groundwater contamination (see http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ ops-experience/grndwtr-contam-tritium.html). * Many power plants (nuclear and otherwise) convert heat into electricity using steam. Non-nuclear power plants burn coal or oil to generate the heat to make steam. By contrast, nuclear power plants generate the heat to make steam through the process of atomic fission (atom splitting). Fission occurs when the nucleus of a heavy atom, such as uranium or plutonium, splits in two when struck by a neutron. This "fissioning" of the nucleus produces energy in the form of heat, and releases two or three new neutrons, which can then repeat the process to release even more neutrons — and more nuclear energy. The repetitive cycling of this process is called a "chain reaction." * Most of the tritium produced in a reactor is as a byproduct of the absorption of neutrons by a chemical known as boron. Boron is a good absorber of neutrons, which nuclear reactors use to help control the fission chain reaction. Toward that end, boron either is added directly to the coolant water or is used in the control rods to control the chain reaction. Tritium can also be produced (to a lesser extent) from the fission process itself, or when neutrons are absorbed by other chemicals (e.g., lithium or heavy water) in the coolant water (NAS, 1996; UNSCEAR 1988). * Like normal hydrogen, tritium can bond with oxygen to form water. When this happens, the resulting water (called "tritiated water") is radioactive. Tritiated water (not to be confused with heavy water) is chemically identical to normal water and the tritium cannot be filtered out of the water. * Nuclear power plants routinely and safely release dilute concentrations of tritiated water. These authorized releases are closely monitored by the utility, reported to the NRC, and made available to the public on the NRC's Web site at http://www.reirs.com/effluent/. How do people become exposed to tritium? * Tritium is almost always found as a liquid and primarily enters the body when people eat or drink food or water containing tritium or absorb it through their skin. People can also inhale tritium as a gas in the air. * Once tritium enters the body, it disperses quickly and is uniformly distributed throughout the soft tissues. Half of the tritium is excreted within approximately 10 days after exposure. * Everyone is exposed to small amounts of tritium every day, because it occurs naturally in the environment and the foods we eat. Workers in Federal weapons facilities; medical, biomedical, or university research facilities; or nuclear fuel cycle facilities may receive increased exposures to tritium. Is the radiation dose from tritium any different than the dose from natural background radioactivity or medical administrations? * The type of radiation dose from tritium is the same as from any other type of radiation, including natural background radiation and medical administrations. * The tritium dose from nuclear power plants is much lower than the exposures attributable to natural background radiation and medical administrations. * Humans receive approximately 82% of their annual radiation dose from natural background radiation, 15% from medical procedures (e.g., x-rays), and 3% from consumer products. Doses from tritium and nuclear power plant effluents are a negligible contribution to the background radiation to which people are normally exposed, and they account for less than 0.1% of the total background dose (NCRP, 1987). As an example, assume that a residential drinking water well sample contains tritium at the level of 1,600 picocuries per liter (a comparable tritium level was identified in a drinking water well near the Braidwood Station nuclear facility). The radiation dose from drinking water at this level for a full year is characterized as follows (using EPA assumptions): o at least ten thousand times lower than the dose from a medical procedure involving a full-body computed tomography (CT) scan (e.g., 3,000 to 10,000 mrem from a CT scan vs. 0.3 mrem from tritiated drinking water) o one thousand times lower than the dose from natural background radiation (e.g., 300 mrem from natural background radiation vs. 0.3 mrem from tritiated water) o one hundred times lower than the dose from either dental x-rays or natural radioactivity (potassium) in your body (e.g., 30 mrem from potassium vs. 0.3 mrem from tritiated water) o ten times lower than a round-trip cross-country airplane flight (e.g., 3 mrem from New York to Los Angeles and back vs. 0.3 mrem from tritiated water) ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) is a radiation safety principle for minimizing doses and releases of radioactive material by using all reasonable methods. In principle, no dose should be acceptable if it can be avoided or is without benefit. [See Title 10, Section 20.1003, of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 20.1003).] What are the possible health risks from tritium radiation exposure? Along with other national and international regulatory agencies responsible for radiation protection, the NRC assumes that any exposure to radiation poses some health risk, and that risk increases as exposure increases in a linear, no-threshold (LNT) manner. The LNT assumption suggests that any increase in dose, no matter how small, incrementally increases risk. Conversely, lower levels of radiation proportionately decrease the risk, such that very small radiation doses have very little risk. The health risks include increased occurrence of cancer and genetic abnormalities in future generations. Since it is assumed that any exposure to radiation poses some health risk, it makes sense to keep radiation doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). The NRC's radiation dose limits and ALARA requirements minimize the health risk and ensure that no individual is disproportionately exposed as a result of NRC-licensed activities. A millirem (mrem) is a term that scientists use to describe how much radiation the body absorbs. For example, scientists estimate that we receive a dose of 360 mrem every year from natural (e.g., radon) and human-made (e.g., medical) radiation sources. The NRC's dose limits for radiation workers and the general public are significantly lower than the levels of radiation exposure that cause health effects in humans — including a developing embryo or fetus. Although high doses and high dose rates may cause cancer in humans and genetic abnormalities in an embryo or fetus, public health data have not established the occurrence of these health risks following exposure to low doses and low-dose rates — below about 10,000 millirem (mrem). For comparison, the NRC calculated a maximum annual dose of less than 0.1 mrem to a member of the public from the recent unintended tritium releases at the Braidwood Station. This is a very low dose, which is not considered a risk to public health and safety because it is well below the NRC's 500 mrem dose limit for declared pregnant workers at nuclear facilities and the 100 mrem annual dose limit for members of the general public. For additional comparison, a typical individual in the United States receives an average annual radiation exposure of about 300 millirem from natural sources (NCRP, 1987). Radon gas accounts for two-thirds of this exposure, while cosmic, terrestrial, and internal radiation account for the remainder. No adverse health effects have been discerned from doses arising from these levels of natural radiation exposure. In addition, human-made sources of radiation from medical, commercial, and industrial activities contribute another 60 mrem to our annual radiation exposure. Of these sources of exposure, medical x-rays are among the greatest contribution, and diagnostic medical procedures account for about 40 mrem each year. In addition, consumer products (such as tobacco, fertilizer, welding rods, gas mantles, luminous watch dials, and smoke detectors) contribute another 10 mrem to our annual radiation exposure. For more information on the health effects of radiation, visit http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/ doc-collections/fact-sheets/bio-effects-radiation.html (NRC, 2004). Radiation Protection Limits The NRC is continuously evaluating the latest radiation protection recommendations from international and national scientific bodies to ensure the adequacy of the standards the agency uses. Among those standards, the NRC and EPA have established three layers of radiation protection limits to protect the public against potential health risks from exposure to radioactive liquid discharges (effluents) from nuclear power plant operations. The NRC has determined that doses to the general public from the unintended release of tritium at nuclear power plants are significantly below even the most stringent layer of these protective limits and, therefore, does not pose a risk to public health and safety. Layer 1: 3 mrem per year ALARA objective — Appendix I to 10 CFR Part 50 The NRC requires that nuclear plant operators must keep radiation doses from gas and liquid effluents as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) to people offsite. For liquid effluent releases, such as diluted tritium, the ALARA annual offsite dose objective is 3mrem to the whole body and 10 mrem to any organ of a maximally exposed individual who lives in close proximity to the plant boundary. This ALARA objective is 3% of the annual public radiation dose limit of 100 mrem. The NRC selected the 3 mrem and 10 mrem per year values because they are a fraction of the natural background radiation dose, a fraction of the annual public dose limit, and an attainable objective that nuclear power plants could meet. Power plants that meet these objectives are considered to be ALARA in reducing exposures to the general public from nuclear power plant effluents (AEC 1971, NRC 1975). Nuclear power plant operators must monitor the authorized releases (effluents) from their plants. If a given nuclear power plant exceeds half of these radiation dose levels in a calendar quarter, the plant operator is required to investigate the cause(s), initiate appropriate corrective action(s), and report the action(s) to the NRC within 30 days from the end of the quarter. Layer 2: 25 mrem per year standard — 10 CFR 20.1301(e) In 1979, EPA developed a radiation dose standard of 25 mrem to the whole body, 75 mrem to the thyroid, and 25 mrem to any other organ of an individual member of the public. The NRC incorporated these EPA standards into its regulations in 1981, and all nuclear power plants must now meet these requirements. These standards are specific to facilities that are involved in generating nuclear power (commonly called the "uranium fuel cycle"), including where nuclear fuel is milled, manufactured, and used in nuclear power reactors. EPA determined the basis of the standards by comparing the cost-effectiveness of various dose limits in reducing potential health risks from operation of these types of facilities. EPA assumed the standards would be able to be met for up to four fuel cycle facilities (e.g., four reactors) at one location (EPA, 1976a). Notably, the NRC's ALARA objectives are lower than these EPA standards (NRC, 1980). Layer 3: 100 mrem per year limit — 10 CFR 20.1301(a)(1) The NRC's final layer of protection of public health and safety is a dose limit of 100 mrem per year to individual members of the public. This limit applies to everyone, including academic, university, industrial, and medical facilities that use radioactive material. The NRC adopted the 100 mrem per year dose limit from the 1990 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). The ICRP is an organization of international radiation scientists who provide recommendations regarding radiation protection-related activities, including dose limits. These dose limits are often implemented by governments worldwide as legally enforceable regulations. The basis of the ICRP recommendation of 100 mrem per year is that a lifetime of exposure at this limit would result in a very small health risk and is roughly equivalent to background radiation from natural sources (excluding radon) (ICRP, 1991). Thus, the ICRP equated 100 mrem per year to the risk of riding public transportation — a risk the public generally accepts (ICRP, 1977). The U.S. National Commission on Radiological Protection and Measurements (NCRP) also recommends the dose limit of 100 mrem per year (NCRP, 1993). For liquid effluents, including tritiated water, any licensee can demonstrate compliance with the 100 mrem per year dose standard by not exceeding the concentration values specified in Table 2 of Appendix B to 10 CFR Part 20. These concentration values, if inhaled or ingested over the course of a year, would produce a total effective dose of 50 mrem. Drinking Water Standards Under the authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA sets the Federal legal limits for contaminants in drinking water. These limits are called maximum contaminant levels, and water suppliers must provide water that meets these standards. EPA's drinking water standards do not apply to private drinking water wells, such as those that may be impacted by tritium that is inadvertently released from nuclear power plants. However, many State authorities have adopted the EPA's drinking water standards as legally enforceable groundwater protection standards, and those standards are often used in assessing laboratory test results of water from private wells. For more information on drinking water and health, visit http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwh/index.html (EPA, 2006a). Picocurie (pCi) is a term that scientists use to describe how much radiation and, therefore, how much tritium, is in the water. A pCi is a unit that can be directly measured by laboratory tests. In 1976, EPA established a dose-based drinking water standard of 4 mrem per year to avoid the undesirable future contamination of public water supplies as a result of controllable human activities. In so doing, EPA set a maximum contaminant level of 20,000 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) for tritium. This level is assumed to yield a dose of 4 mrem per year. If other similar radioactive materials are present in the drinking water, in addition to tritium, the sum of the annual dose from all radionuclides shall not exceed 4 mrem per year. Water treatment plant operators use this drinking water standard, along with monitoring requirements, to remain vigilant regarding the amount of radioactivity in drinking water and provide a means to gauge if the concentration of contaminants in finished drinking water is increasing or decreasing over time. This standard was expected to be exceeded only in extraordinary circumstances (EPA, 1975; EPA, 1976b). Since EPA developed the 1976 drinking water standard, scientists have improved the calculation methods to equate concentrations of tritium in drinking water (pCi/L) to radiation doses in people (mrem). In 1991, EPA calculated a tritium concentration to yield a 4 mrem per year dose as 60,900 pCi/L — a threefold increase from the maximum contaminant level of 20,000 pCi/L established in 1976. However, EPA kept the 1976 value of 20,000 pCi/L for tritium in its latest regulations. For more information on the basis and history of the Radionuclide Rule, visit http://www.epa.gov/safewater/radionuc.html (EPA, 2006b). Additional Tritium Resources * U.S. NRC: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/grndwtr-contam-tritium.html * U.S. EPA: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/tritium.htm * U.S. DOE (Argonne National Lab): http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/tritium.pdf PDF Icon * California EPA: http://www.oehha.ca.gov/water/phg/allphgs.html (Scroll down and click on Tritium.) * University of Idaho: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm References Atomic Energy Commission (U.S.) (AEC), "Licensing of Production and Utilization Facilities," Federal Register, Vol. 36, No. 111, pp. 11113–11117, Washington, DC, June 9, 1971. California Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (CAL-EPA), "Public Health Goal for Tritium in Drinking Water," available at http://www.oehha.ca.gov/water/phg/pdf/PHGtritium030306.pdf PDF Icon, April 27, 2006. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 40, "Protection of Environment," Section 141.16, "Maximum Contaminant Levels for Beta Particle and Photon Radioactivity from Man-Made Sources." Environmental Protection Agency (U.S.), "Drinking Water and Health: What you need to know," available at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwh/index.html, June 23, 2006 (2006a). EPA, "Radionuclides in Drinking Water," available at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/standard/pp/radnucpp.html, June 23, 2006 (2006b). EPA, "40 CFR 190 Environmental Radiation Protection Requirements for Normal Operations of Activities in the Uranium Fuel Cycle: Final Environmental Statement, Volumes 1&2." November 1, 1976 (1976a). EPA, "Drinking Water Regulations: Radionuclides." Federal Register, Vol. 41, No. 133, pp. 28402–28409, July 9, 1976 (1976b). EPA, "Interim Primary Drinking Water Regulations: Proposed Maximum Contaminant Levels for Radioactivity." Federal Register, Vol. 40, No. 158, pp. 34324–34328, August 14, 1975. International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). ICRP Publication 26, "Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection," 1977. ICRP Publication 60, "Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection," Ann. ICRP 21(1–3), 1991. National Commission on Radiation Protection and Measurement (NCRP). Report No. 116, "Limitation of Exposure to Ionizing Radiation," March 31, 1993. NCRP, Report No. 93, "Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population of the United States," September 1987. National Research Council, "Radiochemistry in Nuclear Power Reactors," National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 1996. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S.), "Fact Sheet on Biological Effects of Radiation" (2004, available at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/bio-effects-radiation.html, June 23, 2006. NRC, NUREG-0543, "Methods for Demonstrating LWR Compliance with the EPA Uranium Fuel Cycle Standard (40 CFR Part 190)," January 1980. NRC Issuances: Opinions and Decisions of the NRC with Selected Orders, "Docket No. RM-50-2: Numerical Guides for Design Objectives and Limiting Conditions for Operation to Meet the Criterion ‘As Low As Practicable' for Radioactive Material In Light-Water-Cooled Nuclear Power Reactor Effluents," April 30, 1975. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), "Sources, Effects, and Risks of Ionizing Radiation, Annex B: Exposures from Nuclear Power Plant Production," 1988. July 2006 -------- africa Congo Denies Alleged Uranium Shipment To Iran From 2005 Dow Jones Newswires 08-07-06 http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20060807%5CACQDJON200608071242DOWJONESDJONLINE000433.htm&selected=9999&selecteddisplaysymbol=9999&StoryTargetFrame=_top&mkt=WORLD&chk=unchecked&lang=&link=&headlinereturnpage=http://www.international.na KINSHASA, Congo (AP)--The Congolese government Monday denied that a uranium shipment left its territory last year bound for Iran. "It's a great big lie," government spokesman Henri Mova Sakanyi said. "All our nuclear activities are under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency." The U.K. Sunday Times newspaper reported Saturday that a smuggled shipment of uranium 238 was intercepted in Tanzania last October. The report cited a "senior Tanzanian customs official" and an unpublished report by the U.N. from July 18. The article said the shipment came from a closed mine in Lubumbashi, Congo, then was driven via Zambia into Tanzania, and uncovered during a scan at the port of Dar es Salaam while awaiting shipment by boat to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. "Anyone who knows about uranium knows that it is not exported in raw form in trucks. It must be treated and purified, and we don't enrich uranium in Congo," Sakanyi said. The paper cited a Tanzanian customs official, who it did not identify by name, as saying that the uranium was hidden inside a cargo of 50-kilogram drums of coltan, a mineral used to make computer chips. The Sunday Times said the uranium was suspected of being extracted illegally from the Shinkolobwe mine, which was closed in 1961. U.N. spokesman Jean-Tobias Okala in Kinshasa said Monday he couldn't confirm the uranium shipment. The large U.N. peacekeeping force is overseeing elections in Congo and Okala said tracking of any such shipments would be outside of his jurisdiction. Uranium 238 can be used to breed plutonium, which is used both in nuclear warheads and as fuel for nuclear reactors. -------- business GE and STP Nuclear Operating Company Sign ABWR Project Development Agreement 07.08.2006 FinanzNachrichten.de http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2006-08/artikel-6815750.asp GE Energy's nuclear business and the STP Nuclear Operating Company (STPNOC), acting as agent for NRG South Texas LP, have signed a project development agreement to study the deployment and begin licensing activities for two GE (Nachrichten/Aktienkurs) Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) that would be located at the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station (STP). The proposed project would be built adjacent to the existing STP nuclear plant, located near Bay City and about 90 miles southwest of Houston. The existing plant utilizes two 1,312 MW pressurized water reactors (PWRs) to supply power to customers in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Corpus Christi and surrounding areas. The agreement comes just weeks after STP's 44 percent owner, NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG), announced its intention to pursue the two-unit ABWR project. The projects are part of a larger initiative to expand and repower NRG's generation portfolio in Texas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana and New York. On July 27, STPNOC, NRG and GE representatives met with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to discuss their intention to prepare a combined license (COL) application for the two-unit project. With the recent ABWR announcement, NRG joins a growing number of generation companies that have notified the NRC of their potential interest in building new, advanced reactors. The NRC issued final design certification for the GE ABWR in 1997, allowing it to be used in U.S. projects. The ABWR is a "Generation III" reactor design that is more advanced than existing reactors in operation. For example, the ABWR design incorporates digital controls and has relocated recirculation pumps inside the reactor containment vessel for enhanced safety. "We are very excited to be working with STPNOC and NRG to build the first ABWRs in the United States," said Andy White, president and CEO of GE Energy's nuclear business. "By selecting GE's NRC-certified ABWR technology, NRG will be able to quickly offer its customers even a greater baseload supply security as the public's demand for energy continues to rise." GE's ABWR technology is the only proven Generation III reactor operating in the world today with four operating units in Japan, with the first starting up in 1996. Two more ABWRs are nearing completion in Taiwan and construction has begun on a seventh unit in Japan. Additional ABWRs are in the planning stages. As a result, utilities have access to important "baseline" construction and operational data, offering them a greater degree of certainty about ABWR project costs. Additionally, GE has an established global supply chain to meet any utility's construction schedule and cost requirements. "Our advanced engineering, design and production capabilities are among the best in the industry, which we look forward to demonstrating on this project," White said. "We are ready to build new ABWRs." The STP plant is operated by STPNOC and owned by Austin Energy, CPS Energy and NRG Texas. STP's current twin reactors produce about 2,600 megawatts of electricity, enough for approximately two million homes. GE Energy's nuclear business develops advanced light water reactors and provides a wide array of technology-based products and services to help owners of both boiling and pressurized water reactors safely operate their facilities with greater efficiency and output. About GE Energy GE Energy (www.ge.com/energy) is one of the world's leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies, with 2005 revenue of $16.5 billion. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, GE Energy works in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels. Numerous GE Energy products are certified under ecomagination, GE's corporate-wide initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet pressing environmental challenges. -------- canada Saskatchewan warming to nuclear energy: chamber Mon Aug 7, 2006 (CBC) http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/07082006/3/canada-saskatchewan-warming-nuclear-energy-chamber.html The Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce says there's a renewed interest in the use of nuclear energy in the province. The chamber sent out a survey asking communities and First Nations if they were receptive to a uranium processing or refining plant being built in the area. It found overwhelming support for the idea. "Ninety-five per cent of the respondents said 'yes,'" said Chamber president Ralph Boychuk. "The only five per cent that were negative about it were resort villages, which really have no ability to have that in their jurisdiction. "So quite convincingly there was a strong appetite for a plant in whatever municipalities responded." Saskatchewan is a world leader when it comes to uranium production, but residents have opposed any large-scale processing plants or power production facilities in the province. In the early 1990s the province's NDP government had a policy to phase out uranium mining. Later governments have reversed that policy and encouraged uranium mine development. Last month, Premier Lorne Calvert went to France, touring nuclear plants and talking with investors while he was there. Boychuk says nuclear processing plants have a lot of potential. He touted the economic and enviromental benefits that are available by using the uranium, adding "obviously it boosts opportunities for employment in the province." Boychuk says there's also an environmental benefit, as using nuclear energy cuts down on greenhouse gases. However, environmental groups still say nuclear plants could have a negative impact. They say waste material will need to be contained and stored properly. -------- depleted uranium New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces 'direct energy' weapons, chemical and/or biological agents, in a macabre experiment of future warfare by Professor Paola Manduca August 7, 2006 GlobalResearch.ca http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAN20060807&articleId=2918 By now there are countless reports, from hospitals, witnesses, armament experts and journalists that strongly suggest that in the present offensive of Israeli forces against Lebanon and Gaza 'new weapons' are being used. New and strange symptoms are reported amongst the wounded and the dead. Bodies with dead tissues and no apparent wounds; 'shrunken' corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounds with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed. Many of these descriptions suggest the possibility that the new weapons used include 'direct energy' weapons, and chemical and/or biological agents, in a sort of macabre experiment of future warfare, where there is no respect for anything: International rules (from the Geneva Convention to the treaties on biological and chemical weapons), refugees, hospitals and the Red Cross, not to mention the people, their future, their children, the environment, which is poisoned through dissemination of Depleted Uranium and toxic substances released after oil and chemical depots are bombed. Right now, the Lebanese and Palestinian people have many urgent and impellent problems, yet many people believe that these episodes cannot and must not pass ignored. In fact several appeals have been launched to scientists and experts with a view to investigating the issue. With the intent of responding to such appeals, we have set up a team to investigate the testimonies, the images, and possibly the material evidence that delegations and NGOs will be able to bring from the affected areas. We want to offer support to the health institutions of Lebanon and Palestine, which ask constantly for help and external verification and monitoring, and we are examining all available materials in order to formulate hypotheses which can be verified or disproved. We ask for the active participation of our (Italian) scientific institutions, and, following the request from medical personnel in the conflict area, we are requesting that the UN set up an international independent verification and investigation committee, with a view to facilitating entry into the conflict zone, as well as collecting material and testimonies directly in the field, and undertaking inquries and verifications concerning the various claims regarding these new kinds of weapons of mass destruction being used by Israeli forces in Lebanon. We request that such investigating teams be set up immediately, and that procedures be defined and implemented with a view to supporting future investigations. Of particular concern is the issue of how to collect and store samples from the different theatres, with a view to preserving important information regarding the various impacts of these weapons. We ask that the international committee have access to all sources of information, that it be fully operational, while abiding by relevant investigative procedures, including cross-checking of information between different laboratories. The international committee is to report to the competent authorities, including the Human Rights tribunals and international courts, if appropriate.. As people and as scientists, we are offering our time and expertise in order to reach an understanding of the underlying facts, in the belief that a perspective of justice, equity and peace among people can be reached only with the respect of the rules defined up to now within the international community of nations. The issue pertains to the behavior of the parties in an armed conflict. We ask that the respect of these rules be verified in the context of the present conflict. We invite scientists to contribute to this effort by offering their specific competences. In particular we seek collaboration of toxicology experts, pharmacologists, anatomy pathologists, doctors with an expertise in trauma and burns, chemists. They can reach the working group at the E-mail address: nuovearmi@gmail.com Paola Manduca, Professor of.Genetics, University of Genova, Italy -------- europe Bulgaria Denies Support for Iran Nuclear Program 7 August 2006 Sofia News Agency http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=67689 Bulgaria shares the international community view on Iran's nuclear program, the foreign ministry said. Its spokesman denied a report to the contrary of Iranian Fars News Agency. Fars News Agency has misquoted the statement of our envoy, Dimitar Tsanchev stated, adding the ministry will make clear that any misquote of Bulgaria's official position is not acceptable. The Iranian media had previously announced that Bulgarian ambassador to Tehran Plamen Shukurliev had declared support for Iran's nuclear program. The ambassador has already submitted his written answers to the questions posed by Fars News Agency to Darik News. Bulgaria sticks to the official position of the international community, which envisages that Iran should stop its uranium enrichment activity and renew the negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the spokesman also said. ---- Portugal's Azores islands to have nuclear monitoring station LISBON (AFP) Aug 07, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060807163232.0mximmgp.html A nuclear monitoring station will be built next year on Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores archipelago as part of a global network to detect nuclear explosions, an official said Monday. The station on Flores island, one of the group's nine volcanic islands, will help enforce the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosions, the head of the island's science foundation, Joao Gaspar, told the Lusa news agency. It will also be used to monitor seismic activity in the archipelago, he said. Flores was chosen because it has plains and dense vegetation which can protect the station's equipment, he addded. The monitoring station will be one of more than 300 already in place in over 80 countries which use a variety of technological means, including infrasound, seismology and hydroacoustics, to track potential violations of the treaty. The stations collect data for a Vienna-based organization that monitors adherence to the treaty. More than 100 countries have endorsed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but to take effect it must be signed and ratified by 44 states that participated in a 1996 disarmament conference and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time. Only 34 have done so. Holdouts include China, Israel and North Korea. -------- india US official says Indian nuclear deal 'on track' Mon Aug 7, 2006 (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060807/wl_sthasia_afp/indiausnuclearpoliticsboucher_060807165617 NEW DELHI - A senior US official said a controversial US-India civilian nuclear energy deal was "on track," a report said. "The agreement is on track (and) is moving swiftly forward," US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard A. Boucher told a business gathering in New Delhi, the Press Trust of India news agency said on Monday. "The US Senate will examine the contents of the agreement in September and I am sure that it will be cleared in just the way it was entered into by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi." Last Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted 359-68 in favor of the legislation, a first step for the US and India towards clinching the deal which detractors in Washington say will start a nuclear arms race in South Asia. Under the deal, India will open a series of its civilian reactors to international inspection but keep pre-selected military nuclear facilities out of public scrutiny. India, which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests in 1998 and then imposed an unilateral moratorium on further testing. Boucher, who arrived in India last week, also called Monday for joint action against terrorism, including against groups based in Pakistan. He made the comments after meetings with business leaders and government officials. "The two sides discussed joint efforts to fight terrorism and felt that terrorism should be fought in all places and all its forms," Boucher said after a three-hour meeting with government officials. "We all know there is terrorism in the (South Asia) region. Some of the terrorism is in Pakistan. Some of the groups that have designs against India still have pieces in Pakistan," he told reporters. Indian police investigating deadly bombings on crowded commuter trains in Mumbai on July 11 have said radical Islamic outfits with links to Pakistan may have been responsible. Police say the Students' Islamic Movement of India is suspected along with militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Mumbai bombings that killed at least 183 people and wounded nearly 900. Lashkar, which is fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, has denied involvement in the blasts. Prime Minister Singh said "elements" across the border had a role in the attacks, in a reference to Pakistan. Islamabad angrily denied the claims and offered to help in the investigations. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two over the disputed region of Kashmir. -------- iran Iran Says It Will Ignore U.N. Deadline on Uranium Program By MICHAEL SLACKMAN August 7, 2006 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07iran.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print CAIRO, Aug. 6 — Iran’s chief national security official said Sunday that Iran would defy the United Nations Security Council by refusing to halt enrichment of uranium by the end of the month. During a news conference in Iran, Ali Larijani, the country’s security chief and top nuclear negotiator, condemned the West. He said it had engaged in double-dealing, by first offering a package of incentives in exchange for suspension of its nuclear-enrichment program, and then by issuing a threat. In remarks reported by the official Iranian News Agency, Mr. Larijani did not appear to chart new ground, sticking with Iran’s position that it would not halt enrichment as a precondition of negotiations. Western diplomats in Iran said in recent interviews that it appeared that Iran’s leadership had bet on the notion that it was more likely to get what it wanted if it refused to budge from its position, believing that the Security Council, and the West in particular, would do anything to avoid another ugly confrontation in the Middle East. The remarks appeared to be consistent with the government’s initial reaction at the end of July, when the Security Council passed a resolution demanding that Iran halt its enrichment work or face the possibility of economic and political sanctions. “The resolution is illegal,” said Mr. Larijani, echoing comments made in July by Javad Zarif, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations. The two have said that since Iran has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and since it has not violated that treaty, it cannot be forced to suspend enrichment. Under the treaty, members are entitled access to peaceful nuclear energy. Iran hid its nuclear program for more than a dozen years from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear monitoring arm of the United Nations, and now the United States and Europe contend that Iran is pursuing an arms program. Iran insists it is pursuing peaceful nuclear energy. The United States and Europe offered the incentives in June. Iran had said it would look favorably on the package and give a reply by Aug. 22. The West, along with Russia and China, pushed Iran to reply sooner. When it did not, the Security Council adopted the resolution with the Aug. 31 deadline. “If they are to solve the problem, they should find a solution in fair negotiations,” the news agency quoted Mr. Larijani as saying. “They should not harm the course of the negotiation.” Mr. Larijani did not say what Iran’s response would be to the incentive package, only that it was being viewed less favorably after the Security Council resolution. Christina Gallach, spokeswoman for Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, called on Iran to carry out the Security Council resolution. “We encourage Larijani and Iran to comply with the resolution,” she said, adding that Iran had ample time to make its case before the resolution was passed. In Iran, the issue of its nuclear program has become intertwined with the rest of the turmoil in the Middle East. Western diplomats in Iran said it appeared that the chaos had given an upper hand to the more hard-line members of Iran’s leadership. Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Brussels for this article. -------- japan Medical records detail A-bomb girl's last months The Yomiuri Shimbun (Aug. 7, 2006) http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20060807TDY02001.htm The medical records of Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia at the age of 12 in 1955 due to radiation exposure from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, reveal details of her unsuccessful fight against the disease. Her older brother, Masahiro, 65, obtained copies of her medical records from the hospital, which donated the originals to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum five years ago. Since then, he has examined the records, which are in German and English. The 2-year-old Sasaki was at her home in Hiroshima about 1.7 kilometers from ground zero when the bomb was dropped on Aug. 6, 1945. In February 1955, she fell ill and was taken to a hospital in the city. On her sickbed, she vowed to fold 1,000 paper cranes, believing she could eventually overcome her illness if she successfully completed her goal. But she died in October after folding only 644 cranes. The story of her fight against the disease has become symbolic to the peace and anti nuclear movements for peace. After Sasaki's death, her own notes, containing 26 test results listing her white blood cell count and other data, were found near her sickbed. According to Masahiro, the data recorded in the memos and those in the medical records are identical, which means she was probably aware she had leukemia and had seen her medical records, even though her doctors had not told her she had the disease. According to the medical records, on Feb. 21, 1955, while Sasaki was in the hospital, her white blood cell count was 37,400 per cubic millimeter, which is about four times the maximum normal level. In July, her condition began to deteriorate. On July 6, the medical records show she had nausea and 10 instances of diarrhea. It was during this time, while watching the Milky Way from the rooftop of the hospital, that she asked her brother if people become stars in the sky after they die. On July 18, her white blood cell count reached 108,400. She appears to have been aware she had leukemia as she told her father that people usually die if their white blood cell count exceeds 100,000. Around mid-July, she began to fold paper cranes. On Oct. 25, the hospital director wrote in the records that she died that day at 9:57 a.m. Masahiro said: "No one told her about what leukemia was like and that she suffered from the illness, but I believe she was aware of everything. She began to fold paper cranes while dealing with the fear of death." ---- Thousands remember Hiroshima 07 August 2006 NZ Stuff http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3757215a10,00.html HIROSHIMA: Tens of thousands of people from around the world gathered in Hiroshima on Sunday to pray for peace and urge the world to abandon nuclear weapons on the 61st anniversary of the first atomic bombing. In an annual ritual to mourn the more than 220,000 people who ultimately died from the blast, a crowd including survivors, children and dignitaries gathered at the Peace Memorial Park, near ground zero where the bomb was dropped. "Radiation, heat, blast and their synergetic effects created a hell on Earth," said Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba. Lamenting a global trend towards nuclear proliferation, Akiba called for a campaign to free the world of atomic weapons. "Sixty-one years later, the number of nations enamoured of evil and enslaved by nuclear weapons is increasing," Akiba told the crowd gathered under a blazing summer sun. "The human family stands at a crossroads. Will all nations be enslaved? Or will all nations be liberated?" The Peace Bell tolled at 8:15am - the moment the Enola Gay B-29 warplane dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945 - as the crowd stood and bowed their heads for a moment of silence. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki on August 9. Six days later, Japan surrendered. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed to abide by Japan's pacifist constitution and non-nuclear policy. "Japan, the only country that has suffered atomic bombings in the human history, has the responsibility to keep telling the international community about its experience," Koizumi said. "With the resolve not to let the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki repeat itself anywhere, Japan has delivered on its pledge not to wage war in the past 61 years." Under Koizumi, Japan has enacted legislation allowing its troops to play a greater security role abroad and sent soldiers to Iraq on a reconstruction and humanitarian mission, the military's largest and riskiest operation since 1945. DISTANT DREAM Koizumi's ruling party and the main opposition party are also seeking to revise the pacifist constitution, whose Article Nine prohibits maintaining a military but which has been interpreted as allowing armed forces solely for self-defence. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed fear that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of "non-state actors". "More than six decades after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the unspeakable horror of nuclear weapons remain etched in our collective consciousness," Annan said in a message read on his behalf during the 45-minute ceremony. "The worrying possibility of dangerous nuclear material falling into the hands of non-state actors should energise efforts to strengthen the non-proliferation regime." This year's anniversary coincides with renewed concerns about nuclear programmes by Iran and North Korea, which last month jolted the region by firing a salvo of missiles. It also comes amid debate, intensified by Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine for war dead, over how Japan should view its responsibility for the war and the suffering it caused in Asia. Koizumi defended his visits to the controversial Shinto shrine in central Tokyo. "I do not think it is wrong for a Japanese prime minister to visit Japan's facility and express condolences on the war dead," he told reporters in Hiroshima. The atomic bomb had killed some 140,000 people by the end of 1945, out of Hiroshima's estimated population of 350,000. Thousands more succumbed to illness and injuries later. The names of 5,350 people who died recently were added to the list of victims, bringing the total number recognised by the city to 247,787. A few thousand names are added each year. "Cities and citizens of the world have a duty to release the lost sheep from the spell and liberate the world from nuclear weapons," Akiba said as the cries of cicadas filled the air. -------- pacific Pakistan nuclear report disputed By Shahzeb Jillani BBC News, Washington Monday, 7 August 2006 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5251936.stm The United States and Pakistan have disputed a recent report by a nuclear monitoring institute which says that Pakistan is building a new reactor. Last month, the US-based Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) published satellite images of the Khushab nuclear site. The report said that it could produce enough plutonium to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The report sparked worldwide concerns, but both US and Pakistan downplayed it. The US said the administration was aware of the developments at the nuclear complex. And Pakistan's foreign ministry refused to comment on the charges, saying the Khushab nuclear site was well known. Wrong analysis But now for the first time the two governments have spoken out against the report. Last week, The New York Times quoted the US National Security Council spokesman, Frederick Jones, as saying that Isis analysis was wrong. "After assessing the Isis findings, the US government experts believe that the reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported," he said. A day later, the US State Department spokesman, Edgar Matthews, said "the reactor will be over ten times less capable" than estimated. Not true Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Mahmud Ali Durrani, also dismissed the report saying the Isis analysis was "grossly exaggerated". In an interview to The Washington Times, he acknowledged for the first time that the plutonium from the reactor could be used for civilian or military purposes. But, "it's simply not true that it will increase our capability X-fold", the newspaper quoted him as saying. Khushab map The institute says it stands by its findings. In a fresh statement released on the Isis website the authors of the report, David Albright and Paul Brannan, said they remain convinced that the new reactor is capable of providing Pakistan plutonium "many times greater than its current annual output". Experts differ The expert opinion on the accuracy of the report and Pakistan's nuclear capability is divided. Michael Krepon, South Asia security analyst and President Emeritus of the Henry L Stimson Center, says he finds the Isis claim "surprisingly high". He is sceptical that anybody on the outside could claim to know more about a country's alleged nuclear activity than the many experts with direct access to sensitive classified information working for the government. But Leonard Weiss, a prominent non-proliferation expert and former US senate staff member who helped author many US non-proliferation laws, told the BBC he is not surprised "that Pakistan may be picking up the pace on increasing its nuclear arsenal". Isis is a well-known and highly regarded organisation within academic circles, specialising in nuclear proliferation. The organisation - and the authors of the report - tend to be inclined against any form of proliferation around the world. Under construction The Isis report said that the construction of the reactor at Khushab could bring about a dramatic increase in the size of the Pakistani and Indian nuclear arsenals. "The reactor under construction... could produce over 200kg of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power for a modest 220 days per year. "At four to five kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of 40-50 weapons a year," the report said. Isis published commercially available satellite photos which its analysts said appeared to show the plant under construction. The Washington-based organisation said that work apparently began some time after March 2000, but "work does not appear to be moving quickly". The report's authors said this could be because Islamabad is facing a shortage of reactor components or does not have the necessary weapons production infrastructure. Experts believe that the timing of the release of the report is significant, because it raises fresh concerns about an arms race in South Asia at a time when the US is on the verge of ratifying a deal which would give India greater access to American civilian nuclear technology. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- tennessee Uranium removal is expected to end soon $27.7 million project finishing by end of year; cylinders shipped to Ohio By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com August 7, 2006 Knoxville News Sentinel http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_4898883,00.html OAK RIDGE - The uranium road show is coming to a close. For the past couple of years, government contractors have transported thousands of uranium-loaded cylinders, one by one, from Oak Ridge to Piketon, Ohio. The U.S. Department of Energy is legally obligated to the state of Tennessee to remove all of the Oak Ridge cylinders by 2009. Although there have been some delays and complicating issues, it appears that deadline won't pose a difficulty. "About 650 remain, and they are expected to be shipped by the end of this calendar year," Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., said last week. The total cost of the project is estimated at $27.7 million. The cylinders contain depleted uranium hexafluoride, a legacy of uranium-enrichment operations that took place in Oak Ridge, beginning during the World War II Manhattan Project. They weigh 10-14 tons each. Ultimately, the toxic uranium compounds will be processed into a more stable form at an Ohio plant being constructed for that purpose. The first shipment was made on March 17, 2004. Since then more than 5,300 cylinders have been shipped to the Piketon facility. Visionary Solutions has a subcontract with Bechtel Jacobs to arrange and coordinate the transportation. For decades, the cylinders were stored in outdoor yards at the K-25 uranium-enrichment plant, which is now called the East Tennessee Technology Park. Many of the steel cylinders rusted or showed wear from the elements. Some of them required specially designed overpacks for added protection during the shipment on flatbed trucks. Also, some of the containers did not meet size or weight standards and needed an exemption from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Hill said DOE had granted all the special permits needed to complete the project. "There have been minor issues to work through on some of the overpacks and in coordinating with the receiver site, but generally all operations have proceeded as expected," Hill said. Shipments were delayed for months in late 2005 and early this year because of concerns that some of the older cylinders might contain traces of phosgene, a chemical warfare agent once stockpiled in the United States. Those concerns, however, were dismissed after records of the cylinders' previous usage were studied and additional inspections were conducted. The depleted uranium was the residual product left after processing at the old K-25 Site to concentrate and extract the fissile U-235 isotopes for use in weapons and nuclear reactors. The Oak Ridge plant produced almost all of the enriched uranium that was used in the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. -------- texas South Texas Project chooses GE Energy to furnish nuclear reactors San Antonio Business Journal - August 7, 2006 http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2006/08/07/daily7.html?from_rss=1 STP Nuclear Operating Co. selected GE Energy to supply two new nuclear power-generating units at the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station in Bay City, Texas. STP Nuclear Operating Co. manages the nuclear power plant. It is 44-percent owned by Princeton, N.J.-based NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG), 40-percent owned by CPS Energy in San Antonio and 16-percent owned by Austin Energy. NRG Energy announced plans in June to build two new generating units at the power plant for a total cost of $5.2 billion. STP signed a project development agreement with Atlanta-based GE Energy to begin work on installing two GE Advanced Boiling Water Reactors at the plant. Representatives from the nuclear plant's operating company, NRG, and from GE Energy met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on July 27 to discuss plans to file a combined license application for the expansion project. The nuclear power plant, when operating a full capacity, currently is capable of producing a maximum of 2,600 megawatts of electricity. This is enough electricity to power two million homes across Texas. Last year, the nuclear power facility supplied one-third of San Antonio's electric consumption. The addition of the two new units would allow the facility to double its electric-generating capacity. These units would come on-line in 2014 and 2015, respectively. GE Energy is a unit of Fairfield, Conn.-based General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). The company supplies power generation equipment and energy-delivery technologies for fossil fuel, nuclear and renewable resources. -------- MILITARY -------- africa “The War The World Ignores”: A Look at War-Devastated Congo & The Country’s First Multi-Party Elections in 45 Years Monday, August 7th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/1436229 The conflict in Congo has been called the world's largest forgotten war. Yet while millions have died since the start of the most recent violence in 1998, the country has been torn apart by resource exploitation and government repression for decades. On July 30, Congo's voters went to the polls for the first time in over 45 years, however allegations have surfaced that the elections were marred by fraud and international meddling. We speak to Alexis Motunda, national secretary for Congo's main opposition party, as well as to journalist Johann Hari of the UK Independent, and the Congo Education Council's Tshimanga John Metzel. [includes rush transcript] The Democratic Republic of Congo is awaiting the results of the country's first multi-party elections in over 45 years. Last month month thirty- two candidates -including incumbent Joseph Kabila -ran for the presidency and more than 9,000 candidates ran for the Parliament. Official results are not expected for weeks. If no single candidate gets fifty percent of the vote, citizens will choose between the two top contenders in October. Most media have been reporting that Joseph Kabila and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba are the top candidates but several other presidential candidates and some human rights groups allege that there has been widespread fraud. Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch said that she had personally witnessed the dumping of ballots outside of counting offices. And the main opposition party, led by Etienne Tshisekedi, boycotted the elections altogether. Tshimanga John Metzel joins us from the studio in Washington, D.C. -- He works with the Congo Educational Council. And on the phone from the Congo we are joined by Alexis Mutanda. He is the National Secretary for the Union for Democracy and Social Progress which is the main oppoistion party in the country. He is also editor of the La Tempete des Tropiques, a newspaper in Kinshasa. Johann Hari joins us on the line from Scotland -- He is a Journalist for the Independent of London, and his article “The War The World Ignores” was published in the Independent earlier this summer. * Alexis Motunda. National Secretary for the Union for Democracy and Social Progress which is the main oppoistion party in Congo. * Johann Hari. Journalist, UK Independent * Tshimanga John Metzel. Congo Educational Council. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Tshimanga John Metzel joins us in the studio in Washington, D.C., works with the Congo Educational Council. On the phone from the Congo, we’re joined by Alexis Motunda. He is the National Secretary for the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, which is the main opposition party in the Congo. He's also editor of La Tempete des Tropiques, a newspaper in Kinshasa. And Johann Hari joins us on the line from Scotland, a journalist for the Independent of London. His article, "The War the World Ignores," was published in the Independent earlier this summer. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! I wanted to begin with Johann Hari. We’re talking about the elections today, but we put this in the context of a war in the Congo that's taken the lives not of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but millions of people. Can you talk about the situation in the Congo today? JOHANN HARI: This is the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler's armies marched across Europe. And it's a war that has still not ended. But what I think is really important for people to understand is, this is not a distant tribal war that has nothing do with you. It's a war whose trail of blood leads absolutely directly to London, to New York, to Paris, to the laptop people will be listening to this on, to their remote controls, the mobile phone, and indeed to the diamond necklace, if they're fortunate enough to spend their money on one. I always think going to Congo is a bit like, you know the TV series Lost, where that group of plane crash survivors think that they’re stranded alone on a desert island, until one day they're going through the jungle and they discover this metal cable that leads out into the ocean, and they realize they're in fact connected to the world beyond very closely. The Democratic Republic of Congo is full of cables like that, connections from seemingly isolated and incomprehensible acts of violence to our world and indeed to your own apartment. Just to give people a sense of the scale of the suffering there, I’ve covered -- I’ve been to Iraq, Palestine, some of the poorest parts of South America -- the sheer quantity and quality of suffering in Congo is markedly worse than anything I had seen in those countries. Going to hospitals full of women who had been gang-raped and then shot in the vagina, a common practice; going to villages where child soldiers had been made to kill their own father so they couldn't run away back to their family -- unimaginably extreme violence is happening there. And I think it’s important for you to understand, there's a complicated kind of official story about what happened in the war in Congo and how it began, and then there's the real story. The official story is that after the end of the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu Power genocidaires, the psychopaths who murdered 800,000 people in just a hundred days, fled across the border into Congo. And the official story of how the war began is the Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered the Rwandan troops across the border to hunt down these genocidaires. And then, the Uganda, neighboring country, also invaded to get some of its criminals, and then Kagame appealed to some of the surrounding countries like -- sorry, not Kagame, the President of Congo appealed to some of the surrounding countries to support him -- AMY GOODMAN: And I just wanted to clarify, when you say “genocidaires,” for people in the United States, you mean the killers in Rwanda? JOHANN HARI: Sorry, the people who committed the genocide, exactly. And the Congolese president appealed to some of the surrounding countries to come and help him against this invasion. So, in a sense, in that story, the war in Congo is like a kind of the First World War, just a gigantic cock-up, you know. Someone acts out of a good motive, and then it all spirals and goes wrong. It’s a nice story. It’s a reassuring story. It’s also completely untrue. The United Nations established a panel of experts, once the war had completely spiraled, to find out what really happened. And what they said, what the panel of experts found, is that in fact these countries all acted as, in their words, armies of business. They went into Congo not to track down killers, but to seize the country's unbelievably immense mineral wealth, to grab it and to sell it out to New York, to London, to Paris, to the developing world. So they seized, for example, coltan, which at that time had a huge market spike. Coltan is a metal that's extremely good at conducting heat. You have it in your cell phone, in your remote control, and so on, and your laptop. And Congo has one of the largest stocks of it anywhere in the world. And there was at that point a big spike in the global price, partly because of Sony Playstations, which contain coltan, so as one human rights campaign in Congo put it: so kids in New York and London could play imaginary war games, kids in Congo were enslaved and sent down coltan mines. So, we know that this story is the real story, partly because the Rwandan army, when it went into Congo, didn't go to where the Hutu Power people who committed the genocide were. They went to where the mines were. And, indeed, we have memos that were unearthed by Human Rights Watch that show that the Rwandan army actually gave orders to collaborate and cooperate with the Hutu Power people in the rape of Congo. This continues right to the present day. You still have -- I went to mines that were controlled effectively by slave labor, where they were owned by the militias. So you can't ever have a unified state in Congo, while you have this situation. The government doesn't control the resources. You’ve got a situation where the government is trying to get the country to be united by bribing, paying soldiers to join the national army. The problem is, you go to the camps, the Congolese National Army camps, as I did, people are paid $5 a month, if they're lucky. There were people dying of AIDS just in the barracks. There were people are starving, people with their children there starving. And they were saying, “Well, look. If we join the national army, we get $5. If I go out and join one of the militia groups that control a gold mine or a diamond mine or cassiterite mine or a coltan mine, I can get $60 a month. What should I do?” So, it guarantees that Congo -- the fact that we in the outside world are still buying these blood-soaked minerals guarantees that Congo can't be unified. And the United Nations identified some of the most core multinationals as responsible for this: Anglo American, De Beers, Barclays Bank. And what's really shameful is this a war fought for us, so that we can have these resources. But when our governments were informed by the United Nations that they were cooperating with some of their -- that their corporations were collaborating and indeed causing some of the worst human rights abuses anywhere in the world, our governments didn't react by holding these corporations to account. They reacted by saying to the UN, “Why has our company been put on this list?” The companies lobbied very hard, not just in the Bush administration, but in Britain, in Germany, all over the developed world, to say, “Get us off the list.” And lots of them were taken off the list. It's a disgrace. And it's a real disgrace to us, because last time there was this scale of mass slaughter in the Congo, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Belgians colonized it and killed ten million people, basically turned the country into a giant rubber plantation, there were mass campaigns across the developed world, led by people like Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle. There were questions asked in the Senate. There were huge mass meetings in London. The same thing has happened in our lifetimes, and we've done virtually nothing. It's very easy to lose hope, but I always think of the -- whenever I do feel despair about the situation in Congo, there are scenes that come back to you. I saw a guy being beaten to death. I went to a Pygmy village where a guy had been beheaded the day before. It’s awful. I think about the incredibly brave people in Congo I met, who were fighting. I met an extraordinary man, who was a kind of Oscar Schindler of the Congolese mass rapes, who had been treating women who had been horrifically subject to sexual violence by the different armies of business, who treated these women in secret, because he would have been killed if he hadn’t. I think about -- there was a guy called Bertrand Bisimwa, a fantastic Congolese human rights activist. He said to me -- I thought he summarized the situation brilliantly -- he said, “You know, people have looked to Congo for over a hundred years, and they've seen a great big pile of riches with some black people inconveniently sitting on top of them.” And he said to me just before I left, you know, “It's your country and the developed world that has been doing this to Congo. So, tell me, who are the savages, you or us?” AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Johann Hari. He’s a journalist with the Independent in London. The piece that he did is called “A Journey into the Most Savage War in the World : My Travels in the Democratic Vacuum of Congo.” You know, this period now, August 6th through 9th, is the anniversary of the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Wikipedia, the uranium mine for those bombs came from the Congo. Is that true? JOHANN HARI: That is true, and unfortunately I couldn't get to the uranium mines. It's one of the very few parts of Congo that is actually quite well guarded, but it’s interesting, because the -- so many of the terrible problems that confronted the world actually, you find, cables back to Congo, whether it's the fact that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made with material stolen from the Congolese people, the fact that the earliest known cases of AIDS that we have were reported in Congo. I mean, the situation, to give you a sense of how far Congo is regressing, when I spoke to someone in the health ministry, they said, "You know, we've got a note from the UN today saying we've got to prepare a plan for avian flu. Well, don’t get me wrong, avian flu is a really big danger, but I had to write back and say, ‘In our rural areas, bubonic plague has come back. We can't do anything to deal with bubonic plague. What are you expecting us to do about avian flu?’” Just to give some sense of how awful things have become there. And the extraordinary courage of ordinary Congolese people, just raising their kids in these situations -- by every roadside, you would just meet -- I was particularly impressed by Congolese women, who have been subject to most incredible violence. Even in South Kivu, which is a very small province within Congo, the UN estimates 45,000 women were raped last year. One of the ways the war has shifted is that the various militia groups, usually proxies for these foreign armies, are no longer fighting each other so much, but instead targeting the other side's women, trying to break their will. The women are used in Congo, basically, as pack horses, as well. There are no roads. So you would see by the side of the road, everywhere you went, women carrying these unimaginably huge heavy loads, on their backs, of wood or whatever had to be transported for, you know, a few pence a day, and you would -- I thought, when I stopped and spoke to these women -- often, you see them just by the side of the road. Sometimes they miscarry -- they very often miscarry, you see them just bleeding by the side of the road. It's awful, and I thought these women were kind of understandably exaggerating -- they said to me these loads were 200 pounds or more -- until I got them to load it onto my back, and I literally couldn't -- you know, these women were walking miles and miles every day with this on their back, and I could barely do ten paces without falling down. So, yeah, as I say, the scale of human suffering, it makes Iraq under Saddam look, you know, almost bearable. It's so horrendous. AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined on the phone, in addition to Johann Hari, the journalist for the Independent, by Alexis Motunda in Kinshasa, National Secretary for the Union for Democracy and Social Progress. Your party did not participate in the elections, boycotted the elections. Why? Alexis Motunda, welcome to Democracy Now! ALEXIS MOTUNDA: Yeah. Okay, I'm here. AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I was asking why the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, why your party did not participate in the elections. ALEXIS MOTUNDA: My political party did not participate in these elections, because, you know, first of all, we found out from the very, very beginning that the commission, the commission which is in charge of organizing these elections, from the beginning, we found out that this commission is not independent. It's not independent because, you know, the choice of the people in this commission was very, very doubtful, in the sense that the [inaudible] of the commission was very tied to the president, and so, he is, even today, receiving his orders from the government and is not really independent. And the second reason is that, as you know, the elective processes from the very beginning was not -- you know, we have the perception that, you know, the processes from the very beginning was very, very bad, and from the very beginning, we complained to the United Nations, the representative of the United Nations in this country, and then to the council of the United States, the representative of this organization, and the [inaudible] General Secretary himself, when he came to Congo just a few months ago, and we did not receive any improvement in the processes, which could, you know -- people concluded and our [inaudible] of the party concluded that, you know, this whole thing was completely, you know -- they are mounting fraud in the election. And since that we did not get any satisfaction from the organizer of the election, we just thought that, you know, this is going to be, you know, a very doubtful election, and we could not reach the conclusion of a good election. And as you know, we found out, and the people found out that, you know, in the processes they found that after that, the independent commission input extra ballots in the processes. And we could not understand where the ten million extra ballots were coming from. And that has been discovered, and the questions had been asked, and we could not receive any reliable, you know, reply from all these things. And as far as the security was concerned, all over the country, we just found out that, you know, private military people were spread out all over the country, and we could not conclude to the security of the candidates or the security of the people who were going to vote. And there were so many elements and so many things that, you know, just convinced most of the people that these elections were not made for peace, that they could just go to the conclusion of unrest in this country. That's why we told the Secretary General of the United Nations, the security council of the United States, and all of the people in the European Community, we told them that these elections, the processes were not good from the very beginning, and it was necessary, you know, to correct things and to -- but they did not listen, you know. Everybody just pushed, you know, to go to the elections. We said, “Okay, since things are that way, the best thing is just to be out of the processes.” AMY GOODMAN: Alexis Motunda in Kinshasa. Tshimanga John Metzel also joins us in Washington D.C., who grew up in the Congo. Can you talk about the role of the international community in these elections? By the way, the largest U.N. force is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. TSHIMANGA JOHN METZEL: Yes, I thought it was interesting that Johan referred to the struggle of the people in the mining areas. The UDPS Party, which Alexis represents, which is led by Etienne Tshisekedi, had its origins also in the plight of the people in the mining areas, where more than 40 miners, artisanal miners, were shot down in Katekelayi, in Luamuela in 1979. This was the impetus which led Etienne Tshisekedi and 13 members of Parliament, at that stage, to form a second political party, which was against the law under Mobutu. But they succeeded after many years of struggle. Etienne Tshisekedi was imprisoned more than ten times by Mobutu, and this is the first trained lawyer in Congo. He succeeds in 1990 in getting the UDPS recognized as a second political party, so this is the basis for his popularity. But the international community and the U.S., in particular, has played a role in stifling this people's movement dedicated to nonviolence from even participating here in this election, but also in earlier attempts to bring about democracy. Tshisekedi was elected by over 70% of the Sovereign National Conference on August 15, 1992, but was only allowed to serve as prime minister for several months before Mobutu threw him out of office using force, when he tried to move to control the central bank at that point, which was essentially Mobutu's piggy bank. At that stage, rather than backing the elected prime minister, the U.S. chose to back a "third voice," it was called, and through our diplomats, Herman Cohen, in particular, moved into place Kengo Wa Dondo and essentially ignored the democratic movement in favor of someone closer to Mobutu's liking. AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute to go, Tshimanga John Metzel, and I wanted to ask, you wrote a letter to Condoleezza Rice. What did you say in it? TSHIMANGA JOHN METZEL: There, we laid out the way in which this large party has been sidelined in the current run-up to elections. Essentially, Dr. Tshisekedi was promised one of the vice presidencies. There are four under the transition government. But when everyone got back to Kinshasa, the assassins of Lumumba -- Justin Bomboko and Jonas Mukamba -- convened a meeting, which they called representative of the opposition, with many fake parties and voted for someone other than Tshisekedi to take that vice presidency. In fact, one of the warlords assumed that position, Z’ahidi Ngoma, one of the founders of the AFDL movement. Then, as we move toward the election, they formed not one, but four, fake UDPS parties to contest the election, to divide the UDPS vote, and that's one of the reasons, that Alexis was mentioning, that the UDPS decided to abstain from the referendum. After the referendum, Tshisekedi asked to be readmitted to allow his people to register to vote. That was refused by the chairman of the Electoral Commission. And the U.S. ambassador immediately chimed in in support of that position. So what you have an election manipulated long before the actual day of election, the ANC of Congo, the Mandela of Congo, excluded from even running for office. So the issue of legitimacy of power and the rule of law that could come from that has been once again denied to the Congolese people, and yet you'll hear the Carter Center and many other groups declaring that this election was essentially free and fair. Well, on the day of the election, there weren't a lot of incidents, but the manipulation took place long before, in the exclusion of this major party. AMY GOODMAN: Tshimanga John Metzel, we have to leave it there, but we will certainly continue to cover what is developing here in the Democratic Republic of Congo in these elections, a winner yet to be announced. Tshimanga John Metzel ; Alexis Motunda, we spoke to in Kinshasa, with the Union for Democracy and Social Progress; as well as Johann Hari, journalist for the Independent of London. We thank you all for being with us. We talked to him in Scotland. -------- israel / palestine Death Toll in Lebanon Tops 1,000; 90% Civilians Monday, August 7th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/1436212 The death toll in Lebanon from Israel's attacks has now topped one thousand. According to the Lebanese government more than 90 percent of the dead have been civilians. Lebanon's High Relief Committee estimates another thirty-four hundred people have been injured and one quarter of the country has been displaced from their homes. Meanwhile about 75 Israelis have been killed since the conflict began 27 days ago. On Sunday, Israel suffered its single deadliest blow yet when a rocket fired by Hezbollah killed 12 soldiers near the Lebanon border. Another three Israelis died in rocket attacks on the city of Haifa. Israeli Military Official: "Lebanon Will Be Dark For a Few Years" The Israeli military is reportedly planning to ramp up its attacks on Lebanon by targeting more of the civilian infrastructure as well as symbols of the Lebanese government. One military official told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years." Dozens Feared Buried Alive in Southern Lebanon Earlier today Israeli air strikes destroyed several houses in the south Lebanon border village of Houla. Dozens of civilians are feared buried under the rubble. Israeli Strike Kills 33 Farm Workers Near Syrian Border On Saturday, Israeli war planes bombed a farm on Lebanon's border with Syria. The attack killed at least 33 farm workers. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Lebanon so far. Israel Warns All Residents of Lebanon's Third Largest City to Leave Israel has also begun dropping leaflets on the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon urging all residents to leave. Sidon is Lebanon's third largest city with a population of over 200,000. U.S. Resolution Would Allow Israel to Stay in Lebanon On the diplomatic front, efforts by the United Nations Security Council to secure a ceasefire appear to be faltering. On Saturday the United States and France announced they had agreed on a draft resolution. But Lebanon and other Arab states rejected the proposal. This is Lebanon's special envoy to the United Nations Nouhad Mahmoud. * Nouhad Mahmoud: "We appreciate all the efforts made to come up with this draft but unfortunately it lacked for instance a call for withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon, and that's recipe for more confrontation." Lebanon's envoy Nouhad Mahmoud also said the resolution must order the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Shebaa Farms. Lebanon accused the U.S. of drafting a resolution slanted toward Israel. Meanwhile Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice urged the Security Council to quickly approve the resolution. She said its passage will determine "who's for peace and who isn't." Report: Israel Allowing Rocket Attacks to Give It "A Sort of Moral Equivalency" On the military front, Thomas Ricks, a top reporter for the Washington Post, has said that Israel is purposely not bombing all of Hezbollah's rocket launchers. Sources have told him that the Israeli military feels that if Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at Israel it gives Israel a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. Up to 100,000 Protest in London Against Israeli Attacks Protests against Israel's attack on Lebanon occurred around the world this weekend. In London, the Stop the War Coalition said as many as 100,000 demonstrators marched to call on Tony Blair to back an immediate ceasefire. Demonstrators were urged to pile children's shoes near Blair's residence to protest the large number of children killed so far. Protests were also held in Capetown, Cairo, Indonesia and Morocco. 5,000 Israelis Protest in Tel Aviv Against Attacks In Israel, over 5,000 protesters marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday to condemn the attack on Lebanon. The protest was one of the largest in Israel since the attacks on Lebanon began. Demonstrators called on Israel to negotiate with Hizbollah. * Israeli Protester: "Hizbollah kidnapped two soldiers and Israel started a stupid war instead of talking to Hizbollah like it demanded. And we are protesting against those stupid acts. Israel is murdering people every day and we disagree." The protesters also encouraged Israeli soldiers to disobey orders in Lebanon. Reporter: Israeli Fighter Pilots Deliberately Missing Targets The Observer newspaper reports that at least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed bombing targets in Lebanon because they were concerned they were being ordered to bomb civilians. Israeli Military Abducts Speaker of Palestinian Parliament In the Occupied Territories, the Israeli military has abducted the speaker of the Palestinian parliament. Aziz Dweik was seized on Saturday after Israeli soldiers surrounded his home in the West Bank. Israel defended the arrest of the high-ranking official because Dweik is a member of Hamas. In June, Israel seized eight Palestinian government ministers and 26 legislators. Most of them remain in jail. UNICEF Warns of Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza In Gaza, the aid organization UNICEF is warning the region is facing a humanitarian crisis. This is UNICEF Special Representative Dan Rohrmann. * Dan Rohrmann: "I just returned from Gaza and the situation there is quite dramatic for the children. And It is understandable that the international media is paying attention to what goes on in Lebanon right now, because there you have a humanitarian disaster. But I can tell you that for the children in Gaza the eight hundred and forty thousand, the humanitarian crisis there is very real to them." Palestinian Government spokesperson Ghazi Hamad accused Israel of waging a war against the people of Gaza. * Ghazi Hamad: "What happening in Rafah is something that is critical, because we feel that there is a comprehensive war against the people, against civilians and against their buildings so we think that in the last two days we lost about 15 people in the last aggression attack" Palestinian Cultural Activists Call for Israeli Boycott Meanwhile over 100 Palestinian cultural activists have begun distributing a letter urging artists and filmmakers to participate in an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The letter reads in part "Like the boycott of South African art institutions during apartheid, cultural workers must speak out against the current Israeli war crimes and atrocities." -------- mideast Death Toll in Lebanon Reaches 1000; Humanitarian Crisis Mounts As 1/4th of Lebanese Residents Are Displaced Monday, August 7th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/1436223 The Israeli military is reportedly planning to ramp up its attacks on Lebanon by targetting more of the civilian infrastructure as well as symbols of the Lebanese government. One military official told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz "It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years.” We speak to Catholic Relief Services representative Mark Shnellbaecher, who suggests that Lebanon could run out of fuel within the week, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe that will not be easily solved by ceasefire alone. [includes rush transcript] Overall, the Israeli death toll has risen to about 75 people. The number of Lebanese deaths has reached 1,000 -- more than 90 percent of them have been civilians. Over the weekend Israeli airstrikes continued to pelt Beirut's southern suburbs, as well as Southern Lebanon. Airstrikes also destroyed at least four major bridges on aid routes leading north from Beirut. Dozens of Lebanese civilians were killed in the weekend's attacks. A bomb Friday killed at least 33 Kurdish farm workers. We discuss the humanitarian situation on the ground and the long term effects of war with Mark Shnellbaecher, regional director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut. * Mark Shnellbaecher. Regional director of Catholic Relief Services for the Middle East. He is based in Beirut. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Overall, the Israeli death toll has risen to 75 people. The number of Lebanese deaths has reached 1,000, more than 90% of them have been civilian. Over the weekend, Israeli air strikes continue to pelt Beirut’s southern suburbs, as well as Southern Lebanon. Air strikes also destroyed at least four major bridges on aid routes leading north from Beirut. Dozens of Lebanese civilians were killed in the weekend's attacks. A bomb Friday killed at least 33 Kurdish farm workers. Last night, we spoke to Mark Shnellbaecher. He’s the regional director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut. MARK SHNELLBAECHER: It’s a compound of problems we’re facing because of the continuing bombing of the road and bridge infrastructure. Our latest problem is that fuel is running short throughout the country for both the power plants and the generators, particularly in hospitals and also at fuel stations, at the gas stations. So, we're now facing a situation that even those roads that we still can travel, both to bring stuff in, mainly from Syria, and then to get it out of warehouses in Beirut into towns and villages that they're hosting displaced people, we now face the problem of in probably, I don't know, I would guess four, five, six days, there’s not going to be any fuel left to run this stuff around. AMY GOODMAN: What bridges have been bombed? What kind of impact does that have -- the Israeli government saying they're bombing it so that Hezbollah can’t get weapons from Syria? MARK SHNELLBAECHER: I don't have any doubt about that claim, that the purpose of bombing these bridges by the IDF is to hinder Hezbollah's ability to transport weaponry closer to the Israeli border so that they can fire on Israel. However, it's not only the only things going down those roads -- what's going down those roads is not only Hezbollah material. It's also people. It's also Lebanese trying to get out of harm's way. It's also aid workers trying to get into the country. It's also food coming into the commercial supply line into the supermarkets. And it's also aid -- aid supplies that are coming in from Syria. And they’ve systematically been taking out bridges and roads throughout the country and are effectively strangling the country. I can't tell you how many bridges have been taken out. I don’t know. I know that two were taken out two days ago on the northern coastal highway between Tripoli and Beirut, which was until that point the major highway that was bringing aid into the country from Syria. Most of our program right now, simply because of access issues, is assisting displaced families who are living either with host families or in schools or mosques and churches and convents and other sorts of public buildings. We are every day attempting to get convoys into the south, as are the UN and the Red Cross, and whatnot. But this is an extremely risky and tenuous operation due to the continuing military activity down there. You send stuff down, you never know whether it’s going to get to the destination you're hoping to send it to, and just because of the inability or the unwillingness of Israelis to guarantee safe passage. I was at a meeting this evening with UN officials, and they estimate that there's only 20,000 to 30,000 people left in the south. And so, this is probably out of a population or more than three-quarters of a million people. 20,000-30,000 people left, completely besieged, unable to be reached. First they moved to Tyre, and Tyre continues to be bombed, so they moved to Saida. Yesterday Saida was threatened to be -- was leafleted by the IDF, warning that that city was going to be bombed, so now people are on the move up to Beirut. Some of them are too poor to leave. There’s no question about that. I suppose some of them just refuse to leave their land. I suppose some, it's just out of plain old stubbornness. It's a devil's choice, staying your ground when Israel has told you to leave or get on the road and -- you're going to be bombed in your town or risk being bombed on the road as you’re fleeing north. And this happens in a number of times. So what's happening here is, in addition to all the death and injuries that this conflict is causing, as well as the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, systematic destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, what the Israelis are doing by forcing people from their homes, they're stirring the pot of the very delicate balance of the sectarian demographics in the country. It's essentially, people who are being driven by their homes are for the most part Shiites. And they are now going -- when they go to places like Saida, for example, they're going into a predominately Sunni city. And then when they move north into Mount Lebanon or Zahleh, they’re moving -- and even further up the coast, they're moving into areas that are predominantly inhabited by Christians. Or when they go to places like Aleh, they’re going into Druze areas. And so, thus far, there has been remarkably little inter-communal conflict and indeed a heck of a lot of inter-communal solidarity by people opening their homes to people they don't even know from the south. Who knows how long is this going to last? Of the about 700,000 - 750,000 Lebanese displaced who are still inside the country, more than 500,000 of those people are with host families. Now, in some cases, of course, that's their relatives or friends. But in many cases, it's people they don't know, who have opened their homes to them. That's been the case for three weeks. And I suppose most families can sustain house guests for three weeks. And how long can that continue? Can it continue for two months? Not that I think the conflict is going to -- the act of conflict is going to continue for two months, but it's not as if people are going to be able to go home the day a ceasefire is declared. Go home to what? Rubble? No schools? No civil infrastructure? No electricity, no water, no sewage? No jobs? They’re going to stay with whom -- they're going to hope to stay with whom they're currently living. And, as I said, in many cases, these are -- the numbers of people that have moved are significantly increasing the populations of these other areas, and in many cases they're altering the demographics that carry balance. In addition to all of the damage and death that the IDF attacks on Lebanon are causing, it's stirring the pot of the very fragile demographic balance inside the country, with what I fear to be will be potentially very dangerous effects once a ceasefire takes hold. AMY GOODMAN: What is your estimate of the number of Lebanese casualties? MARK SHNELLBAECHER: It’s a hard number. I mean, the numbers that we're seeing is approaching 1,000 dead, approaching more than 3,500 injured. However, there’s still a lot of buildings that are rubble. I mean, today, I was at my office, which is in Christian East Beirut, maybe two kilometers from the southern suburbs. And, you know, we were watching the bombings late this afternoon. So more buildings are coming down. These are densely, densely populated areas. Everybody lives in an apartment building. And so, it's really anybody's guess as to how many bodies are still left in the rubble. AMY GOODMAN: Mark Shnellbaecher, regional director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut. ---- Russia Denies Supplying Hezbollah with Anti-Tank Armaments 07.08.2006, MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/07/nohezb.shtml Russia has not supplied modern anti-tank armaments to the Middle East, so Hezbollah militants cannot possibly be in possession of them, Deputy President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov told Interfax-AVN. “Had Hezbollah obtained modern close-combat weaponry, including grenade launchers, I think that Israeli army casualties would be incomparable to the current figures,” he said. Ivashov previously headed the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Department of International Military Cooperation. Ivashov’s statement came as a response to a Monday article in the Israeli Haaretz daily claiming Hezbollah had obtained Russian RPG-29s from Syria. Hezbollah has rather primitive missile launchers for use in guerrilla warfare, items which Russia has never produced. Such weapons may be manufactured in the Middle East, Ivashov said. Meanwhile, head of the Military Forecasting Center Anatoly Tsyganok ruled out the possibility of deliveries of modern anti-tank weapons to Hezbollah from Russia or Syria. “Any accusations alleging Russian or Syrian deliveries of anti-tank weapons to any forces in Lebanon are unfounded. The Israeli side has not presented any evidence of this, and it is unlikely that it will,” he told Interfax-AVN on Monday. RPG-29 weapons have been supplied to India, China and some other countries. “Most probably, such weapons, should Hezbollah militants really have any, might have been brought to Lebanon through third countries,” Tsyganok said. ---- Arab Anger at Their Governments Grow By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD, Associated Press Writer Monday, August 7, 2006 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/08/07/international/i004836D12.DTL (08-07) 00:48 PDT CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- As their anger against Israel and America swells, protesters across the Middle East are also increasingly venting their frustration at their Arab rulers, especially in moderate countries whose governments have been reliable U.S. allies. Nearly four weeks of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel have aggravated a summer of discontent over the bloodshed in Iraq, stalled democratic reforms and price increases. Angry at their governments, demonstrators are praising a new hero: Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. "The whole region has been engulfed in anger since the war on Iraq more than three years ago," said Diaa Rashwan, an Egyptian analyst with the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "The frustration is just huge." The rising resentment is weighing heavily on Arab leaders as their foreign ministers gather in Beirut on Monday for an emergency meeting. Moderates like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia may want a halt to the fighting, but they can't be seen as backing a U.S.-promoted cease-fire plan that Hezbollah has depicted as a surrender. Even more worrisome for Arab leaders is the possibility violence may turn on them. On Saturday, al-Qaida announced that an Egyptian militant group had joined the terror network. While the group denied it, many fear that public anger could nonetheless boost militants around the region. Demonstrators have denounced leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for blaming Hezbollah — sometimes implicitly, sometimes overtly — for starting the fighting by snatching two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid. Three straight days of protests broke out last week among the normally quiet Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia, where demonstrations are rare, though protesters were cautious not to criticize the ruling family. Hundreds of Shiites waved posters of Nasrallah, chanting "Oh Nasrallah; oh beloved one; destroy, destroy Tel Aviv." Cairo has seen nearly daily demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for what protesters see as his failure to support Hezbollah. On Sunday, demonstrators held up a poster of Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead, labeling him "the enemy of the Egyptian people." Last week, more than 1,000 protesters rallied in downtown Cairo, burning Israeli and American flags. "Arab majesties, excellencies and highnesses, we spit on you," one banner read. Similar protests have erupted in Jordan and Kuwait, where anti-U.S. demonstrations are rare. Lebanon may be the spark, but there's plenty of tinder for the discontent, particularly the situation in Iraq and domestic economic strains. Iraq's unity government has been unable to curb mounting sectarian violence since it took power in May. A U.N. report said that nearly 6,000 civilians were killed across Iraq in May and June. Late last month, the Egyptian government reduced subsidies on gas, and the price at the pump jumped 30 percent from 65 to 84 cents a gallon. Subway fares went up from 13 cents to 17. The hikes angered many in a country where the average income is less than $1,400 a year. Egypt's "regime stabbed the Lebanese and burned the Egyptians by raising prices of gasoline," read a headline of the opposition weekly Sawt El-Umma. Egyptian officials say the country's economy is growing at a rate of 5 percent, but they acknowledge the benefits haven't reached most of the population. The subsidy cuts were part of budget tightening the government says focuses subsidies on the most needy. Cash-strapped Jordan is wrestling with rising commodity prices after three consecutive fuel price hikes in the past year. "Who cares about democracy while struggling for food and butter for their children?" said Mustafa Qabbani, a 35-year-old Jordanian hotel receptionist and father of three. "We live in a state of nonstop worry about our future in a war zone," said construction engineer Bassam Awad, 39. The Shiite cleric Nasrallah has emerged as a hero, even among some secular Sunnis in Egypt and Jordan. In Egypt, protesters and opposition newspapers compare him with the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Arab nationalist champion against Israel. "Nasser 1956, Nasrallah 2006: We will fight and never surrender," read one headline in a weekly newspaper run by the Nasserist party in Egypt — referring to Nasser's 1956 war with Israel, France and Britain. Nasrallah means "victory from God" and Nasser is "the victorious." Some find the lionizing of the guerrillas alarming. "Hezbollah took Lebanon hostage, and then came the tragedy we all know," wrote Lebanese columnist Dalal al-Bizri in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat on Sunday. "Ironically, as the number of victims increases, the party becomes more popular." Associated Press writers Jamal Halaby in Amman and Diana Elias in Kuwait contributed to this report. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars News Media's Love-Hate for Nuclear Weapons by Norman Solomon Antiwar.com August 7, 2006 http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=9487 Since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago, nuclear weaponry has been mostly relegated to back pages and mental back burners in the United States. A big media uproar about nuclear weapons is apt to happen only when the man in the Oval Office has chosen to make an issue of them. Sometimes a "nuclear threat" has been imaginary. During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration went into rhetorical overdrive – fabricating evidence and warning that an ostensible smoking gun could turn into a mushroom cloud. The White House publicly obsessed about an Iraqi nuclear-weapons program that didn't exist. In sharp contrast, North Korea really seems to have a nuclear warhead or two. And because the Pyongyang regime is apparently nuclear-armed, Bush isn't likely to order an attack on that country, as he did against Iraq and as he has been not-too-subtly threatening to do against Iran. By all credible accounts, Tehran is at least several years – and probably more like a full decade – away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. But America's top officials and leading pundits have been sounding urgent alarms. Judging from the frequent denunciations of some countries for alleged plans to build a nuclear arsenal, you might think that the U.S. media are down on nuclear weapons. Not so. Red-white-and-blue nuclear weaponry has been depicted by U.S. news media as a reassuring guarantor of national security – or at worst an unfortunate necessity – since the nuclear age went public 61 years ago with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. That first atomic bombing of Japan came three days before an initial presidential lie about U.S. nuclear weapons policies. The lie was huge, but very few journalists in the United States have ever done so much as murmur a complaint about it. On Aug. 9, 1945, President Harry Truman told the public this whopper: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." Actually, the U.S. government went out of its way to select Japanese cities of sufficient size to showcase the extent of the A-bomb's deadly power – in Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and in Nagasaki on Aug. 9. As a result of those two bombings, hundreds of thousands of civilians died, immediately or eventually. If Truman's conscience had been clear, it's doubtful he would have felt compelled to engage in such a basic distortion at the dawn of the nuclear era. The scientific know-how of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb was headquartered at the secret Los Alamos laboratory in northern New Mexico beginning in the spring of 1943. Today, that one laboratory has a $2 billion annual budget, with most of the money devoted to the lab's key role in helping to maintain the "reliability and safety" of the U.S. government's nuclear arsenal – which currently includes about 10,000 thermonuclear weapons. But you'd have to search far and wide to find mainstream American news coverage that raises fundamental questions about that arsenal as any kind of "nuclear threat." Meanwhile, experts say that the Israeli government now has about 200 nuclear weapons. Israel's military actions in recent weeks underscore its willingness to use high-tech weaponry for reckless offensives that kill many civilians. But in U.S. news media, the implicit message is that American nuclear bombs are A-OK, and the fact that Washington's ally Israel maintains a large nuclear arsenal is supposed to be no cause for major concern. Until the moment when events prove otherwise, the policy of deploying an array of nuclear weapons with the rationale of "deterrence" can convince the faithful that the nuclear priesthood in Washington is worthy of our trust. But, going deeper than nationalistic blind faith, some important questions should be considered. Last week, the Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano asked two of them: "Who calibrates the universal dangerometer? Was Iran the country that dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?" -------- OTHER -------- environment Heated debate over the warming of the planet Jarrod Watt ABC Aug 07, 2006 http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/index.cfm/Page/Article/ID/2672 Australia's internationally known veteran of the anti-nuclear movement, Helen Caldicott, takes the stage with Australian Conservation Foundation head, Ian Lowe, and urban policy academic, Brendan Gleeson, to discuss the battle of ideas in the climate change debate. The title of this mornings session is "The environment: climate change and other hot issues", but what's getting Helen Caldicott hot under the collar is the fact that biologist Tim Flannery has landed on the front page of a daily news magazine with his qualified support for the nuclear industry. Caldicott spares no time in coming out swinging against the author of the acclaimed ecological bookThe Future Eaters. "It's a propitious day to have this panel, because on the front of the Good Weekend magazine today there's an article with Tim Flannery talking about nuclear power could possibly be the answer to global warming. So that goes really well with my book, which is Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming," she chuckles. "The first chapter deals with the fact that nuclear power produces large quantities of carbon dioxide in its own right. There's a study by Storm Van Leeuwen and Phillip Smith from Holland, estimating the amount of fossil fuel which is needed to mine the uranium, to mill it and crush it, to enrich it, build a massive reactor, to then decommission it after 30 or 40 years - which requires more energy input than building the reactor - and then storing and transporting the radioactive waste for half a million years. "At the moment, a nuclear power plant produces 30 per cent of the amount of CO2 [carbon dioxide] as a fossil fuel plant, or gas fired plant. But shortly, as the uranium concentration declines, the amount of CO2 produced by a nuclear reactor will equal the amount of CO2 produced by a gas-fired plant - number one. "Number two; uranium is very finite. If all electricity today was generated by nuclear power, there's only nine years' supply of uranium. Number three; we're at peak oil, and peak gas. How will we keep the radioactive waste cool for thousands of years without any oil or natural gas? That argument has not yet entered the lexicon of the discussion, and that's an extremely important discussion. "The next issue is, is it economically viable? The nuclear industry is a socialised industry; it's an offshoot of the weapons industry; the American Senate just allocated 13 billion dollars to nuclear power last year, which would build five nuclear power plants. A power plant takes 5 to 10 to 15 years to construct, with licenses and the like... and it would make no difference to global warming at all. I would love... Flannery to be on this panel, so we could debate and discuss, and maybe he could learn a few things. I think he's good on climate change, like Lovelock, but he doesn't understand, apparently, the biological implications of radiation. Caldicott's next point is that of the waste generated by the nuclear power industry - she discusses the US plan to store its nuclear waste in a facility under Yucca Mountain, a place of geologically porous rock, intersected by over 30 seismic faults. "They don't know what to do with their waste, and I suspect when our notorious Prime Minister met with the notorious President of the United States recently, that the deal was struck - 'hey listen John, you've got a big desert out there, why don't you take our radioactive waste?' - and I think the notion of having nuclear power plants on the east coast of Australia is a Trojan horse, so we'll all have an anaphylactic reaction to that notion, but then underneath the radar he'll say 'By the way we'll just bring some radioactive waste back from America', which Flannery is actually postulating - bringing our waste back from our uranium, burying it in our desert," she says. She is followed by Brendan Gleeson, Professor of Policy at Griffith University, an experienced advocate of sustainability within the decision-making circles of government, who has just won the John Ironmonger Award for Public Writing for his latest book, Australian Heartlands: Making Space for Hope in the Suburbs. "My point of departure, though not my only interest, is cities... although I thought this morning I should extend that out to human settlements in general; I don't want to let Byron Bay off the hook when we talk about sustainability, although coming from Brisbane, a big dustbowl, it's lovely to have all this rain. I think you should advertise it as a sort of feature in your tourism... I think [cities] are absolutely essential to the sustainability issue, the sustainability imperative for three reasons: firstly, because they're the principal, although not exclusive, sources of environmental stress, including greenhouse emissions. They're also now the principal home of the real authors of the problem, our species, humanity," he says. "The UN estimates we're becoming an urban species - most human beings live in human settlements", though if you look beneath the bright rhetoric of globalisation, if you've looked at the works, of example, of Mike Davis, a U.S scholar, he writes about a planet of slums. Much of the species is now living in miserable urban conditions, and there is no ready evidence that globalisation is simply going to lift them out of those miserable urban conditions, although that's alleged. "In Australia, we live overwhelmingly in cities and large settlements, andmostly in suburbs. We are a suburban people; we have long been - it's an extended love affair we've had with suburbs that's manifest through our history, which has survived all sorts of shifts, including sea change, which is often, not always, simply about the relocation of suburban preferences to where it's more amenable or more affordably applied. "Coming out of my work is raising the importance of suburbia in public discussion; it has been a long love affair in Australia, but it's the love that dare not speak its name; we don't like to talk about the idea that most of us have lived in suburbs, continue to do so and continue to want to do so. If we don't talk about it we can't address the problems of suburbia... sustainability or un-sustainability is central to that discussion. "The third reason why I think human settlements are cental to the question of sustainability is that, for the two reasons I've just given you, they have to be key to the solution of the sustainability crisis. What Phil McManus in a recent book calls the 'vortex city' model - a sort of entropic city, the vast importers of energy and exporters of waste, which is the urban model which we adhere to now has to give way to a more ecologically sustaining model, one that is practically generating its own energy from renewable sources, including food energy, and we're a long way from that ideal right now - a long, long way." Gleeson discusses the 'hellfire cities' such as London in the mid 19th century, and how a crisis in pollution and human disease brought a realisation amongst the middle classes and the growth of a long period of reform which sought to redress living and working conditions as well as the ways cities operated. He claims we are again facing the prospect of 'hellfire cities', but despite all governments and councils mouthing the right words there is still a substantial gap between the rhetoric of sustainability and the reality of what is happening. "My colleague at the University of South Australia, Clive Forster, a geographer, talks of the gulf now between the sort of institutionalised rhetoric of urban sustainability and the reality of ouir vortex cities - he calls it a 'parallel universe problem'... The other dimension of the disconnection is the extent that... we do have urban institutions and regulations that focus on the sustainability of our human settlements, but they're marginalised within our governments and our corporate sector, and I think they're marginalised by what I'd call - it sounds a bit dramatic, but I think it's true - an eco-cidal logic that remains deeply ensconced in politics and institutions." Global genetic mutation as a result of nuclear waste, followed by a call to motivate the suburbs to engender a sustainable future - the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation as well as author of 14 books, Ian Lowe, sees a constant thread amongst all three speakers. "What links what Helen has said with what Brendan has said with what I'm going to say is energy. Energy is the key to a comfortable lifestyle. The reason why we live at a standard of material comfort that our grandparents could only have dreamed of is the huge amounts of fuel energy we use to sustain that lifestyle. The energy that allows us to move around, as someone said to cook our clothes and wash our food, to see in the dark, to do a whole range of things that required human muscle power a hundred years ago. And the sort of cities we live in are only viable because of the import of huge quantities of fuel energy. "There are now two serious threats on the horizon: well, they're not on the horizon, they're high in the sky, but our politicians are behaving as if they're on or below the horizon. We've know since the 1950s about the problem of peak oil, and the fact world oil production would peak some time about now, after which it's downhill all the way, and those of us who can remember the 1970s saw the out of town try-out for the real show that's coming soon to a planet near you - make sure you're sitting comfortably, because a long run is assured - a world where oil gets steadily scarcer and steadily more expensive," he says. "The second problem is climate change, and again we've known for at least 20 years it was a serious problem, although some of our decision makers are still in denial about it; the Murdoch press, remarkably, seems to still have the view at the editorial level that climate change is not yet proven as a serious problem, but is so scary we should be considering nuclear power as an alternative. "Climate change clearly, already, is a serious issue. The world already is three quarters of a degree warmer than it was a hundred years ago, rainfall patterns have changed, we are seeing more frequent extreme weather events, and interestingly the insurance industry was saying 20 years ago that climate change was a serious problem, because we can see it in the red ink on our balance sheets for property damage. "It's already having significant economic effect, whether it's seen in reduced agricultural productivity, as our farmers and graziers battle with a hot and drier climate, whether it's the increased cost of supplying water, as we have water restrictions and desalination plants seriously being considered for commission, and loopy ideas for pipelines thousands of kilometres long shifting water from where it is to where we would like it to be... we're seeing it in health impacts in the human population; the recent heatwave in Europe killed about 25,000 people, and a study commissioned jointly by the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Conservation Foundation found that the annual number of heat-related deaths in Australia - now about 1,100 - will increase to between 5-15,000 this century depending on where we are on the spectrum of possible rates of increase in climate change." The questions posed by both the session's moderator and the crowd come from a range of angles; how does fear become a tool to inspire action, rather than of hopelessness? Is there data on the cancer rates for France, given their massive reliance on nuclear power? What of Cuba - who restructured their economy during the first oil shock and the prevailing economic sanctions from the USA? Are cremations really an environmental and potential radiation hazard? It is, however, Professor Ian Lowe who leaves the crowd with a poignant thought. "It's clear the trajectory we're on is not sustainable, but I believe it's possible to turn the ship around. Pete Seeger, the folk singer, once in the middle of a folk concert, sang the hymn Amazing Grace, and he explained the reason he was singing it was the hymn was written by the captain of a slave-trading ship, who, becalmed in the middle of the Atlantic, had time to think and ponder the morality of what he was doing. He decided it was morally untenable, wrote the hymn, literally turned the ship around, sailed back to Africa and returned the slaves to where they came from. He said that he hoped that we would reflect that what we were doing was morally untenable and would turn the ship around... "I think that in ecological terms we are booked on the Titanic and are sailing towards the iceberg. I don't think there's any doubt those on the bridge are either too stupid or too shortsighted or too greedy to care. Some of them are still urging us to throw more coal in the boilers and speed us on our way there with markets guiding us in an economically optimal fashion. In that sense, in talking about an ecologically sustainable society, we're really organising a mutiny." http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/ArticleID/2672 *Helen Caldicott is the author of a recently published book 'Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer'. [The following is the Introduction to Dr. Helen Caldicott's new book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer.] “[Nuclear power] is a very important part of our energy policy today in the U.S. . . . America’s electricity is already being provided through the nuclear industry efficiently, safely, and with no discharge of greenhouse gases or emissions.” —Vice President Cheney in a speech to the Nuclear Energy Institute, May 22, 2001 “The 103 nuclear power plants in America produce 20% of the nation’s electricity without producing a single pound of air pollution or greenhouse gases.” —President Bush in a speech to a group of nuclear power plant workers at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear reactor, June 22, 2005 The current administration clearly believes that if it lies frequently and with conviction, the general public will be lulled into believing their oft-repeated dictums. As this book will show, no part of “efficiently, safely, and with no discharge of greenhouse gases or emissions” is true. Nuclear energy creates significant greenhouse gases and pollution today, and is on a trajectory to produce as much as conventional sources of energy within the next one or two decades. It requires massive infusions of government (read taxpayer) subsidies, relying on universities and the weapons industry for its research and development, and being considered far too risky for private investors. It is also doubtful that the 8,358 individuals diagnosed between 1986 and 2001 with thyroid cancer in Belarus, downwind of Chernobyl, would choose the adjective “safe” to describe nuclear power. Nuclear power is not “clean and green,” as the industry claims, because large amounts of traditional fossil fuels are required to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors, to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process. Burning of this fossil fuel emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2)—the primary “greenhouse gas”—into the atmosphere. In addition, large amounts of the now-banned chlorofluorocarbon gas (CFC) are emitted during the enrichment of uranium. CFC gas is not only 10,000 to 20,000 times more efficient as an atmospheric heat trapper (“greenhouse gas”) than CO2, but it is a classic “pollutant” and a potent destroyer of the ozone layer. While currently the creation of nuclear electricity produces only one-third the amount of CO2 emitted from a similar-sized, conventional gas generator, this is a transitory statistic. Over several decades, as the concentration of available uranium ore declines, more fossil fuels will be required to extract the ore from less concentrated ore veins. Within ten to twenty years, nuclear reactors will produce no net energy because of the massive amounts of fossil fuel that will be necessary to mine and to enrich the remaining poor grades of uranium. (The nuclear p