NucNews September 12, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR Lining up to enrich uranium Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter International Herald Tribune September 12, 2006 International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/12/opinion/edferguson.php# Never underestimate the potential for erratic policy when economic and political interests collide, even when the policy involves preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. This happened last month when, in rapid succession, Argentina, Australia and South Africa joined a growing list of countries interested in enriching uranium for commercial purposes. That is the same activity that Iran claims as its inalienable right, and that the United States, the European Union, Russia and China insist must be halted in the interest of nonproliferation. Is it fair or feasible to allow some countries to enrich uranium while attempting to prevent others from doing it? The answer is not simple. It turns on a number of technical, economic and political considerations. The technical dimension is most straightforward. It pertains to the dual purpose of uranium enrichment: to produce fuel for civilian reactors and explosive material for nuclear weapons. It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the countries that have an active or latent uranium-enrichment industry also possess, once made, or tried to acquire nuclear weapons. Today, most of the arguments in support of new enrichment capacity are couched in economic terms, generally linked to the buzz about major global expansion in nuclear energy. Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, for example, portray their renewed interest in terms of projected domestic consumption and new export opportunities. In fact, current global enrichment capacity exceeds demand. The projected boom in nuclear-energy development in most countries has yet to be matched by major new orders, and the ability of newcomers to supplant the entrenched suppliers is problematic. Moreover, the financial costs of reviving antiquated and previously uneconomical enrichment facilities in Argentina and South Africa are likely to be enormous. So other factors are at play. Almost all the new and prospective entrants in the enrichment business appear anxious to establish their credentials as having existing technology in place. Driving this process, in part, is the perception that all countries will soon be divided into uranium enrichment "haves" (suppliers) and "have-nots" (customers) under various proposals to establish multinational nuclear fuel centers and fuel-supply arrangements. These proposals include President George W. Bush's call two years ago for the Nuclear Suppliers Group to refuse to sell enrichment technology to any state that did not already possess a full-scale, functioning enrichment plant, and the idea promoted about the same time by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, for a five-year moratorium on new enrichment plants in order to buy time for developing more equitable means to ensure fuel supplies while stemming proliferation. More recently, the United States and Russia have proposed that a small set of countries would serve as enrichment providers while all others would forego such technology. But the basis for becoming an approved enricher remains unclear. While the United States opposes allowing Iran to enrich uranium, Dennis Spurgeon, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, recently said that "special rules" apply to Australia and Canada because they "have the majority of economically recoverable uranium resources." These rules appears founded more on political grounds that distinguish between allies and adversaries. Such a policy of exceptionalism is at odds with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It is also a recipe for failure, as the history of U.S.-Iranian nuclear cooperation in the 1970s should make clear, since today's friend could become tomorrow's foe. There is no foolproof means of promoting peaceful nuclear energy while preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Perhaps the best way of resolving the conundrum is to provide inducements to all states that voluntarily forsake uranium enrichment. These inducements should include guaranteed access to nuclear fuel for all states in good standing with the nonproliferation treaty - an approach that will be explored this month at a special IAEA conference in Vienna on "Assurances of Fuel Supply and Nonproliferation." To be effective, these assurances will have to be nondiscriminatory and consistent with the nonproliferation treaty. Such an approach will not guarantee an end to abuse of sensitive nuclear technology, but it should reduce the number of states joining the uranium enrichment queue. Charles D. Ferguson is a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. William C. Potter is director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. They are the principal authors of "The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism." Never underestimate the potential for erratic policy when economic and political interests collide, even when the policy involves preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. This happened last month when, in rapid succession, Argentina, Australia and South Africa joined a growing list of countries interested in enriching uranium for commercial purposes. That is the same activity that Iran claims as its inalienable right, and that the United States, the European Union, Russia and China insist must be halted in the interest of nonproliferation. Is it fair or feasible to allow some countries to enrich uranium while attempting to prevent others from doing it? The answer is not simple. It turns on a number of technical, economic and political considerations. The technical dimension is most straightforward. It pertains to the dual purpose of uranium enrichment: to produce fuel for civilian reactors and explosive material for nuclear weapons. It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the countries that have an active or latent uranium-enrichment industry also possess, once made, or tried to acquire nuclear weapons. Today, most of the arguments in support of new enrichment capacity are couched in economic terms, generally linked to the buzz about major global expansion in nuclear energy. Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, for example, portray their renewed interest in terms of projected domestic consumption and new export opportunities. In fact, current global enrichment capacity exceeds demand. The projected boom in nuclear-energy development in most countries has yet to be matched by major new orders, and the ability of newcomers to supplant the entrenched suppliers is problematic. Moreover, the financial costs of reviving antiquated and previously uneconomical enrichment facilities in Argentina and South Africa are likely to be enormous. So other factors are at play. Almost all the new and prospective entrants in the enrichment business appear anxious to establish their credentials as having existing technology in place. Driving this process, in part, is the perception that all countries will soon be divided into uranium enrichment "haves" (suppliers) and "have-nots" (customers) under various proposals to establish multinational nuclear fuel centers and fuel-supply arrangements. These proposals include President George W. Bush's call two years ago for the Nuclear Suppliers Group to refuse to sell enrichment technology to any state that did not already possess a full-scale, functioning enrichment plant, and the idea promoted about the same time by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, for a five-year moratorium on new enrichment plants in order to buy time for developing more equitable means to ensure fuel supplies while stemming proliferation. More recently, the United States and Russia have proposed that a small set of countries would serve as enrichment providers while all others would forego such technology. But the basis for becoming an approved enricher remains unclear. While the United States opposes allowing Iran to enrich uranium, Dennis Spurgeon, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, recently said that "special rules" apply to Australia and Canada because they "have the majority of economically recoverable uranium resources." These rules appears founded more on political grounds that distinguish between allies and adversaries. Such a policy of exceptionalism is at odds with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It is also a recipe for failure, as the history of U.S.-Iranian nuclear cooperation in the 1970s should make clear, since today's friend could become tomorrow's foe. There is no foolproof means of promoting peaceful nuclear energy while preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Perhaps the best way of resolving the conundrum is to provide inducements to all states that voluntarily forsake uranium enrichment. These inducements should include guaranteed access to nuclear fuel for all states in good standing with the nonproliferation treaty - an approach that will be explored this month at a special IAEA conference in Vienna on "Assurances of Fuel Supply and Nonproliferation." To be effective, these assurances will have to be nondiscriminatory and consistent with the nonproliferation treaty. Such an approach will not guarantee an end to abuse of sensitive nuclear technology, but it should reduce the number of states joining the uranium enrichment queue. Charles D. Ferguson is a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. William C. Potter is director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. They are the principal authors of "The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism." -------- accidents and safety Ionic liquids studied in nuclear power Newscom September 12, 2006 http://www.topix.net/content/newscom/0778551400038382695607029111930359104608 U.S. scientists say they expect the rising cost and dwindling supply of fossil fuels will soon again make nuclear power a plausible energy option. To that end, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory are addressing one important safety aspect of that issue -- the use of materials called ionic liquids. The scientists say if such liquid salts are used in nuclear fuel reprocessing -- the chemical removal of reusable nuclear material from spent nuclear reactor fuel -- the risk of unintended nuclear chain reactions may be substantially reduced. Ionic liquids, which contain only electrically charged molecules known as ions, have several properties that make them attractive as an alternative medium for nuclear fuel reprocessing, researchers said. Those include low volatility, low combustibility, and resistance to being electrochemically oxidized or reduced. Brookhaven Lab chemist James Wishart presented his research Monday on how ionic liquids containing the element boron react with radiation. His presentation took place in San Francisco, during the American Chemical Society's annual national meeting. -------- africa Nuclear power risk pales against benefits September 12, 2006 Star & Independent Online http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3433991 The September 4 article on Earthlife Africa's response to the energy minister's speech on uranium enrichment refers. Firstly, it is imperative that due processes are allowed to unfold. Then, as a country, we will be able to make informed decisions. Secondly, despite the commercial nuclear power industry's impressive safety record and the thorough engineering of reactor structures and systems, which make a catastrophic radioactive release from any reactor extremely unlikely, there are those who simply don't want to run any risk of this. This fear must then be weighed against the benefits of nuclear power, in the same way that some people's fear of plane crashes must be balanced against the utility of air transport for the rest of the population. Ultimately, balancing risks and benefits is not simply a scientific exercise. Many countries with huge natural wealth lose much of the full value to outsiders. The best way to capture the most value from a resource is to pursue activities as far along the value chain towards the final product. This also creates jobs. When the apartheid government was involved in uranium enrichment, it was not for peaceful purposes and they carried out their programme irrespective of the cost. That era is gone. We are now part of the international community and will not have to re-invent the wheel, as it were. Furthermore, there has been considerable advancement in nuclear technologies, which makes the argument that uranium enrichment is very costly unfounded. Much has been written about the environmental implications of the nuclear industry. But the fact remains that the only realistic and economical way to reduce global warming and reduce fossil fuel dependence without curtailing electricity supply is to build nuclear power stations. Many governments are beginning to reluctantly accept this, which is reflected in the number of nuclear power stations being built or planned. Since 88% of this country's electricity is generated by coal-fired power stations, it would be ecologically responsible for South Africa to take advantage of its uranium resources rather than adding to global warming. International good practice should be followed to avoid incidents such as Chernobyl. The minister said: "The expansion of peaceful uses of nuclear energy worldwide is looking more and more irreversible." There are 440 reactors currently operating around the world; 24 reactors are under construction; 41 reactors are planned; and 113 reactors have been proposed. This translates to about 65 000 tons of uranium currently required. The additional reactors under construction, planned or proposed will require about 25 000 tons of uranium. A cost-benefit analysis will help us in telling whether this is our best option. Renewable energy sources for electricity are diverse, from solar, tidal and wave energy to hydro, geothermal and biomass-based power generation. Apart from hydro power in the few places where it is very plentiful, none of these is suitable, intrinsically or economically, for large-scale base-load power generation. Because of their diffuse nature (making them difficult to harness efficiently) and their intermittent availability (giving rise to the need for storage or back-up from other sources), their role in meeting electricity demand on any significant scale will always be limited. All the various means of generating electricity have a role to play in meeting the country's rapidly increasing demand. Fossil fuels, particularly coal and gas, will remain important. Nuclear electricity is one part of the solution for the future, particularly in the light of concerns about carbon dioxide emissions. Without nuclear power the world would have to rely almost entirely on fossil fuels, especially coal, to meet demand for base-load electricity production. This has significant environmental, and particularly greenhouse gas, implications. Shane Motlhaloga Arcadia, Pretoria -------- business Nuclear's new look - Leaner designs fuel race to build next generation of reactors By WILLIAM McCALL - AP Business Writer - 09/12/2006 http://www.helenair.com/articles/2006/09/12/health/c01091206_01.txt CORVALLIS, Ore. - Jose Reyes' research lab looks like a three-story tangle of pipes and instruments. But to nuclear engineers like him, it's evidence that generating electricity by splitting atoms can cost less and be done more safely than in the past. Reyes heads an Oregon State University team that's built a quarter-scale model of the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear plant - which the company hopes will lead an atomic-energy renaissance in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Even though the lab looks complicated, the model is far simpler than the plants built in the 20th century. Without using radioactive material, it tests the AP1000's ''passive-safety'' system, which relies on gravity rather than a battery of mechanical pumps to carry water to a reactor in an emergency. ''I think Oregon State was working much like the consumer products testing lab for nuclear power plants,'' Reyes said. The tests, conducted under contract with Westinghouse and the U.S. Department of Energy, were critical in the reactor receiving Nuclear Regulatory Commission certification last December. The lab can test other reactor models as well. The safety system, Reyes said, would make nuclear leaks far less likely, and virtually eliminate the threat of a meltdown of the nuclear core. The simpler, modular design will help bring down the cost of construction and make overruns less likely. The 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania contributed to a virtual halt in new plant construction - along with high costs and energy-demand forecasts that turned out to be wrong. There are currently 103 U.S nuclear plants, producing about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. But fears of global warming and the rising cost of natural gas and coal may finally change the image of nuclear power as the industry markets a new generation of reactors, such as the AP1000 and General Electric Co.'s ESBWR, or Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor. Interest in new plants has increased sharply since August 2005, when President Bush signed an energy bill that streamlines applications and offers loan incentives, tax credits and federal insurance for new plants. Licensing could be approved within a few years, depending on when applications are filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But there are plenty of skeptics. They point out that, because the AP1000 and ESBRW have not yet been built, it's still uncertain how much they will cost or how safe they will actually be. ''It's been tested in scale models,'' David Lochbaum, director of a nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said of the passive-safety system. But if there's a gap between tests and actual operation, ''it could be a nasty surprise,'' said Lochbaum. The model at OSU was built to test how the passive-safety design would hold up during all sorts of emergencies that would require a quick shutdown of the reactor - even without human intervention. The model uses no fissionable material. Instead, electricity heats water to temperatures reached in a nuclear plant, and the water is moved through the model, testing each of the safety features. The cooling system in the previous generation of reactors operated much like a car radiator, requiring constant pumping of cool water to prevent overheating. In the passive-safety designs, the cooling system is more like the tank of a toilet. Flip a single handle and cool water rushes down to the reactor if it overheats. Designers say that if the operator needs to leave the plant during an accident, that handle will be tripped automatically, and the reactor will cool itself. The passive-safety system also contributes to making this generation of power plant less expensive to build because there are far fewer parts, nuclear advocates say. The system eliminates the need for huge cooling towers, redundant pumps and backup diesel generators. The AP1000, according to Westinghouse, has 87 percent less cable, 83 percent less piping, 50 percent fewer valves and 36 percent fewer pumps than the previous generation of reactors. Estimates on the cost of new reactors vary widely, and it is difficult to compare current costs with past projects that required years to build and many design modifications, analysts say. ''We say broadly the passive plants are simple and have fewer active components, and should cost less to build,'' said Ed Cummins, nuclear engineering manager for Westinghouse. ''Utilities are not risk takers. Investors want steady earnings and low risk.'' GE has been racing with Westinghouse - a wholly owned unit of the United Kingdom's BNFL PLC - and other manufacturers, such as Areva NP in France, to build the next generation of nuclear reactors. So far, Westinghouse has the U.S. lead because it has a design already certified by the NRC. A dozen new plants are under consideration. Nuclear opponents say that even if the new safety features work under all conditions, there's yet another problem to be resolved: As of yet, the United States has no permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. Potential delays in site approval for new nuclear plants and licensing are also a concern. Reyes said the NRC needs to ''expedite its new and untested process for a combined construction and operating license.'' On the construction side, Reyes said, ''the U.S. has lost significant capability in fabricating key components for nuclear plants.'' Right now, Reyes said, ''there's a single U.S. manufacturer of large nuclear components, and we're buying most large replacement components from France. We must also rebuild the skilled work force needed to construct nuclear plants.'' Reyes concedes these are ''significant challenges,'' but says they are ''being faced by an industry that is highly energized, disciplined with regards to safety and profit, and driven by goals of energy independence and environmental quality.'' But nuclear opponents are telling people not to get their hopes up. Among them is Portland attorney Greg Kafoury, a veteran of battles against atomic power in the Pacific Northwest. ''We were promised that the plants could not explode and we got Chernobyl,'' Kafoury said. ''We were told they could not melt down and we got Three Mile Island. Now the industry says they can get it right. Why on Earth should anybody believe them?'' On the Net: Energy Department: http://www.ne.doe.gov/ Westinghouse: http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/ General Electric: http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge-nuclear/en/index.htm -------- depleted uranium New study scrutinizes various symptoms of `Gulf War Syndrome' By Todd J. Gillman The Dallas Morning News September 12, 2006 http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15503224.htm WASHINGTON - Scientists looking at ailments among 100,000 Gulf War veterans released a study Tuesday that found the range of symptoms too varied to suggest a single "syndrome." But they validated claims of elevated rates of certain rare conditions, such as Lou Gehrig's disease. Initial reports on the study - backed by the Veterans Administration and conducted by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences - angered veterans' advocates, with the suggestion there was no such thing as "Gulf War syndrome." Dallas businessman Ross Perot, an early advocate of research, treatment and benefits for veterans who returned sick from the first Iraq war, called it "propaganda" akin to the resistance faced a dozen years ago, when doubters blamed stress for soldiers' complaints. "There are multiple symptoms. Well, big deal. That doesn't prove it's not caused by chemical and biological weapons," he said. "These men were wounded." Thousands of Gulf War veterans have reported chronic fatigue, migraines, memory and stomach problems, rashes, joint pain and dizziness. Causes have never been proven, but researchers and veterans groups point to exposure to pesticides, oil fires, depleted uranium, nerve gas and other potential triggers. Tuesday's report, a review of 850 health studies over the past decade, found that nearly 30 percent of Gulf War veterans experienced a multi-symptom illness. That's almost double the rate seen in personnel who weren't deployed. The report found elevated risks of Lou Gehrig's disease, a rare nerve disorder, and of anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse, and potential links to brain cancer. Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and a top researcher on Gulf War ailments, shrugged off the report, saying it did not help doctors come closer to finding explanations. "It's another piece of paper from Washington," Haley said. "It's not going to hurt or help. . . The consensus is that we don't need more epidemiological studies. We need more medical science, and good clinical studies." Last year, Congress set aside $75 million for UT-Southwestern to spend on such research over the next five years. Haley said the conclusion there is no single "Gulf War syndrome" is a decade old. "There's three to five to seven, depending on how you dice it," he said. The report called for better tracking of troops during and after battle, and especially of any exposure to contaminants - to make it easier to find causes of ailments that emerge later. "The report in no way is saying that veterans are not suffering from some sort of illness," said Christine Stencel, a spokeswoman for the National Academy of Sciences. "Gulf War veterans consistently report more symptoms than non-deployed veterans. And that's true not only for U.S. veterans but also for those from Australia, Canada and other countries." But she said, "The variety in the symptoms does not comprise a unique cluster of symptoms that you can say, aha, there's a syndrome." A spokesman for Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who led the push for the $75 million UT-Southwestern grant, said the new study "justified that we need to have additional resources devoted to studying what is causing Gulf War veterans to suffer from these confusing illnesses at a higher rate." -------- europe Austrian activists criticise Temelin for a long time, saying it is not safe because it combines Soviet design and western fuel and safety technology. These doubts were repeatedly dismissed by the Czech Republic. US Announces Successful Removal of Nuclear Material from Poland US State Department September 12th, 2006, 12:33 http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/US_Announces_Successful_Removal_of_Nuclear_Material_from_Poland_20060912.php WASHINGTON: About 40 kilograms of highly enriched uranium has been transferred from Poland to Russia, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The transfer was done in secret, and was a combined effort of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Russian Federation, Poland and the NNSA, which provided all funding for the project, according to an NNSA statement August 10. "This is another example of the international community working collectively to reduce the threat of terrorism," said U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. Highly enriched uranium, or HEU, is a proliferation concern, since it is one of only two substances that can be used to make a nuclear weapon (the other is plutonium). For more than two years, NNSA has undertaken numerous transfers of nuclear materials as part of its Global Threat Reduction Initiative. The program's aim is to "secure, recover and/or facilitate the disposal of high-risk, vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials around the world as quickly as possible." To date, about 230 kilograms of highly enriched uranium has been returned to Russia from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Libya, Poland, Serbia and Uzbekistan, according to the NNSA. "Every time we are successful in securing weapon-grade nuclear material and vulnerable stockpiles of high-risk, radiological materials, we increase our security at home and around the world," Bodman said. In this instance, the highly enriched uranium was located at a research reactor at the Institute of Atomic Energy in Otwock-Swierk, Poland. While NNSA technical experts and IAEA safeguards inspectors observed, the uranium was placed into specialized transportation containers. These canisters were then airlifted under guard to a secure facility in Dimitrovgrad, Russia. The material now will be mixed with other materials to make low-enriched uranium, which is less attractive for proliferation purposes. The two-day operation, the NNSA said, was the largest removal of Soviet-origin HEU so far occurring under the threat reduction initiative. The shipment took place under a prioritized, accelerated schedule as a result of the Bush-Putin Bratislava Joint Statement on Nuclear Security Cooperation, the NNSA added. -------- iran Nuclear watchdog debate to urge Iran atom talks By Mark Heinrich Tue Sep 12, 2006 (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060912/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc_212 VIENNA - Most members of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's governing board, a barometer of world sentiment on Iran, were likely on Tuesday to champion last-ditch talks to defuse a stand-off over Iran's atomic program, diplomats say. Weekend talks in which diplomats said Tehran offered to consider temporarily halting uranium enrichment, and U.S. hints of openness to such a compromise, have revived hopes of averting sanctions with the risk of economic and security repercussions. Most members of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board were expected to tread cautiously when they debate the Iran nuclear issue now poised on a knife's edge between diplomatic progress and volatile confrontation. The West believes Iran's fledgling nuclear program, which Tehran says is just to generate electricity, is a veiled attempt to produce atom bombs and has condemned its disregard of an August 31 U.N. Security Council deadline to stop enriching uranium. Washington said last week it and five other world powers expected to start considering steps toward sanctions against Iran in the Council this week. Iran remained defiant, suggesting it could bar all IAEA inspectors if hit with sanctions. But the upbeat results of weekend talks in Vienna between Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana appeared to have taken the steam out of the U.S. push for swift punitive action. Diplomats at the IAEA board said most statements planned for the pending debate on Iran would probably stress the value of a diplomatic solution given widespread reluctance to isolate the world's No. 4 oil exporter and Middle East strategic giant. "Nobody wants to provoke anybody. Low-key statements are expected, calling on Iran to seize this negotiating opportunity, not much more," said a diplomat from one of the "EU3" powers -- Germany, France, Britain -- at the forefront of Iran diplomacy. He said the EU3 statement would be "very, very balanced" and that "some attempts to sharpen the language failed in the end." DIVISIONS AMONG 6 POWERS It was unclear whether the six powers would speak as one at the IAEA as Russia and China, while also saying Iran must not be allowed to acquire atom bombs and must prove to the world it is not trying to do so, have opposed U.S. pressure for sanctions. "We may still get strong statements from the United States and Iran. But the dialogue of real consequence is going on elsewhere -- and given the stakes, none of the players here are going to make any friends in their respective capitals by saying anything rash," a senior IAEA diplomat told Reuters. Board members from the Non-Aligned Movement that groups developing nations including Iran, were likely to stress its right to a domestic nuclear fuel industry but also encourage Iran more than before to cooperate to find a peaceful solution. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held out the possibility on Monday that Washington might join talks with Iran if it temporarily suspends its nuclear program. She chose not to flatly reject talk of a two-month enrichment freeze by Tehran, suggesting Washington is looking for a way to begin negotiations as long as Iran meets its bedrock condition by suspending uranium enrichment first. "If there is a suspension, we can have discussions but there has to be a suspension," Rice told reporters. Previously, the United States has said Iran must suspend nuclear enrichment-related work throughout any negotiations. The text of Iran's August 22 reply to the incentives offer from the five permanent Council members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China -- and Germany, made public on Monday, hinted at Iranian flexibility but was not conclusive. The document raised the possibility of discussing enrichment suspension during talks. But it set terms that are likely non-starters for the West, such a final halt to IAEA probes if no proof of an arms program has been found. None has so far. -------- korea U.S. proposes nuclear talks without N. Korea By Jae-Soon Chang Associated Press Tue, Sep. 12, 2006 http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/15498930.htm?source=rss&channel=journalgazette_nation U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the U.S. is prepared to talk with North Korea if it comes back to the negotiating table. SEOUL, South Korea – The United States has proposed a meeting of North Korea’s neighbors and other regional powers on the sidelines of the upcoming meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, South Korea’s top nuclear envoy said Monday. Such a meeting could put more pressure on North Korea as the Communist state refuses to rejoin the six-party talks aimed at ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The move also comes amid concerns North Korea may be preparing to test a nuclear bomb to further heighten tensions created by its test-firing of a series of missiles in July. Chun Yung-woo, the chief South Korea nuclear negotiator, said the U.S.-proposed session would be like one that 10 countries held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the sidelines of an annual security forum in July to discuss North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. The 10 countries consisted of all parties to the six-nation nuclear talks except North Korea – China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the U.S. – plus Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Canada and New Zealand. “For now, the U.S. is thinking of holding a meeting similar to the one held in Kuala Lumpur,” Chun said after talks with his U.S. counterpart, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. “But not all of the related countries have responded.” Hill said his discussion with Chun included “the possibilities of having various talks” now that the six-party talks have been deadlocked for almost a year. “We don’t want a situation where the North Koreans, who are boycotting the talks, can also veto anyone else from talking,” he said. “So we had some discussion about that.” But the U.S. diplomat stressed that such a session wouldn’t weaken the six-party talks and said Washington is committed to the dialogue process. North Korea has refused to attend the six-party talks since last year in anger at U.S. efforts to choke off North Korea’s access to international banking over its alleged currency counterfeiting and other wrongdoing. “Sometimes, small countries can make terrible mistakes. That’s really what they are doing,” Hill said upon arrival in South Korea. “They are causing a lot of difficulties and really disturbing harmony in the whole region.” Pyongyang has demanded direct talks with the United States, but Washington has said it would only meet North Korea along with other countries. Hill repeated the U.S. would talk to North Korean officials on the sidelines of the six-party talks “as many times as they would like.” Hill also said the United States is prepared to discuss the financial issue with North Korea if it comes back to the negotiating table and moves toward implementing a September 2005 agreement where Pyongyang promised to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees. “If (North Korea) wants to come forward and implement the September agreement, I have no doubt we can work out some of these financial issues,” Hill said. “The problem is they don’t seem to want to implement the agreement. That’s the basic problem.” Hill arrived in Seoul earlier in the day on the final leg of an Asian tour that also took him to Japan and China. He also met with South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok and discussed the possibility of a nuclear weapons test by North Korea. -------- russia Report: Russia to Boost Uranium Spending Reports: Nuclear Chief Says Russia Plans Major Boost of Spending on Uranium Extraction Tuesday September 12, 2006 http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060912/russia_nuclear.html?.v=2 MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia will increase spending on uranium extraction tenfold over the next two years, Russian news agencies quoted the nation's top nuclear official as saying Tuesday, the latest evidence of a major effort to expand the nation's nuclear energy sector. Annual investment in finding and extracting uranium will be raised from its current level of 100 million rubles (US$3.7 million; euro2.9 million) to 1 billion rubles (US$37 million; euro29 million) by 2008, RIA-Novosti and ITAR-Tass quoted Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko as saying. He said spending would rise fivefold in 2007 and then be doubled in 2008, according to the reports. "There is no alternative to the development of atomic energy in the Russian Federation. It should replace gas (power) generation in Russia," RIA-Novosti quoted Kiriyenko as saying. He said electricity use has been growing faster than planned. With the public backlash against nuclear power fading as the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster recedes into the past, Russian officials have made ambition plans to develop the nuclear power industry. Kiriyenko said earlier this year that Russia would commission at least two nuclear reactors a year beginning in 2010. "Russia has uranium reserves, but we haven't been involved with them in many years," ITAR-Tass quoted Kiriyenko as saying at a party celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of Russian nuclear fuel producer OAO TVEL, suggesting little mining has been done. According to RIA-Novosti, Kiriyenko said it would be profitable for Russia to mine new uranium deposits, which he said currently costs about US$60 (euro47) to US$85 (euro67) per kilogram extracted. He also said, "We are ready to participate in the extraction of uranium with any partners in the world, where it is profitable," ITAR-Tass reported. Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin is chairman of TVEL, a main springboard for the prospective renaissance of Russia's nuclear industry. Kiriyenko said TVEL and state-owned nuclear materials and services exporter OAO Tekhsnabexport, or Tenex, would be subsumed into a single, new company that soon would be registered, RIA-Novosti reported. The agency quoted Tekhsnabexport's director, Vladimir Smirov, as saying that creating the new company would show that "Russia is moving toward the restoration of uranium prospecting and mining on its territory and elsewhere in the world." ---- Russia nuclear chief cautious over IAEA uranium reserve proposal Source: RIAN. Russia Journal September 12, 2006 http://www.russiajournal.com/?p=10161 Posted By Newsroom On 12th September 2006 @ 11:06 In Home, International | Comments Disabled MOSCOW - Russia’s civilian nuclear chief said Tuesday a proposal made by the International Atomic Energy Agency to create guaranteed reserves of low-enriched uranium was interesting, but dangerous. The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, recently proposed a voluntary mechanism based on the Concept for a Multilateral Mechanism for Reliable Access to Nuclear Fuel submitted to it on June 12 by the six nations that now provide the bulk of enriched uranium: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. But Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Power, gave the initiative a cautious welcome. “This mechanism is interesting, but dangerous, because it could destroy the economic functioning of the global market,” he said. Under the proposal, reserves of enriched uranium, held nationally or by the IAEA, will serve as a “last resort” fuel reserve. The agency would determine eligibility based on a country’s compliance with IAEA safeguards, and acceptance of nuclear safety standards, as well as its renunciation of uranium enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing. Kiriyenko, whose country produces around 6% of the world’s uranium but plans a dramatic increase in spending on surveying and production in the next two years, said it was unclear what rules would be applied to allow the use of this reserve and for what price it could be sold. “It is important to maintain stability on the global uranium market,” he said. The agency head said a Russian proposal to create a joint uranium enrichment venture under the aegis of the IAEA was a suitable alternative to the reserve proposal. President Vladimir Putin put forward the initiative for an international center on Russian soil at the height of the Iranian nuclear crisis at the start of the year. Delegations from 140 countries will meet at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna on September 19-20 in an attempt to encourage countries to forgo uranium-enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, two critical technologies that could lead to the production nuclear weapons, while ensuring that they receive civilian nuclear fuel. ---- Nuclear power must displace natural gas share - nuclear official 12/ 09/ 2006 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060912/53788772.html http://www.russiajournal.com/?p=10162&print=1 MOSCOW, September 12 - Nuclear energy must replace the share of natural gas in Russia's energy balance, the country's civilian nuclear chief said Tuesday. Russia's reserves of coal and natural gas could be depleted in fifty years. But with around 8% of the world's uranium output, Russia is planning to mine 60-70% of its uranium needs by 2015, with the remainder coming from joint ventures in former Soviet republics, particularly Kazakhstan, which holds 25-30% of the world's uranium reserves. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power, told a nuclear power seminar Russia has no other option than to focus on atomic energy. "There is no alternative to the development of nuclear power in Russia, which must replace power generated using natural gas." Russia has the world's largest reserves of natural gas and has become a crucial exporter, particularly for Europe. But the nuclear agency head lauded his sector, saying it was growing regardless of military projects, as market-economy mechanisms were playing an increasingly important role. Some European governments, in particular the United Kingdom, have decided to look toward atomic energy to provide for their future needs despite environmental activists' protests. And Kiriyenko said the revival of the nuclear sector in his country had been caused by growing energy consumption, a lack of new energy sources in the foreseeable future and unjustified hopes that energy-saving mechanisms could solve an energy deficit. Electricity consumption increased 5.5% against the planned 2% in the past eight months owing to the country's economic and industrial growth and a rise in retail power consumption. Kiriyenko, who had a brief stint as prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin in 1998, told RIA Novosti Thursday that Russia was planning to build 42-58 nuclear power units for its own needs by 2030 and 40-50 units abroad in the next 30 years. Russia currently has 10 operational nuclear power plants with 31 reactors, but Kiriyenko said Russia would need another 300 gigawatts from new plants to cover a projected energy deficit in the next 30 years. And he reiterated the point at today's seminar. "We will have to commission new energy-generating facilities capable of producing 300 GW by 2030," he said, adding that from 2015 the industry would commission at least two power-generating units a year without governmental subsidies. Kiriyenko highlighted several key areas in the nuclear industry's development: the division of the industry into the military and civilian branches, budget spending on the construction of nuclear power plants to ensure a 2 GW annual increase, the adoption of a nuclear and radiation security program, the establishment of a single mining company, international centers for nuclear cycle services, the development of fast-neutron reactors and a serial construction of new power units. ---- Russia set to dismantle 5 nuclear submarines by 2010 12/ 09/ 2006 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060912/53760822.html http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/09/12/dismantlesubs.shtml VLADIVOSTOK, September 12 - Russia will scrap five nuclear submarines decommissioned from the Pacific Fleet by 2010 under a joint project with Japan, a Japanese deputy foreign minister said Tuesday. The Victor class vessels will be dismantled under the Star of Hope program for the dismantlement of decommissioned nuclear submarines in Russia's Far East, which was adopted in 2003 during a visit of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Russia. Deputy Foreign Minister Shintaro Ito told a news conference in Vladivostok, where the headquarters of the Russian Pacific Fleet are located, that Japan had allocated 20 billion yen (about $171 mln) for the project. The diplomat, who will be in Russia until Friday, said the dismantling of the first decommissioned Victor I nuclear submarine under the project would start in the near future at the Zvezda Shipyard, in a suburb of Vladivostok, and would take about 10 months. During the dismantlement process spent nuclear fuel is removed from the submarine's reactors and sent to storage, the hull is cut into three sections, and the bow and stern sections are removed and destroyed. The reactor section is sealed and transferred to storage. There are about 30 decommissioned nuclear submarines moored at various ports in the Russian Far East. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- arizona 12 disciplined at Palo Verde Move is to reassure NRC about oversight Mark Shaffer The Arizona Republic Sept. 12, 2006 08:40 PM http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0912biz-paloverde-ON.html A dozen Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station supervisors and line workers either have been fired or transferred since February as the plant tries to ease federal regulators' concerns about oversight at the nation's largest nuclear plant. Cliff Eubanks, vice president of nuclear operations for Palo Verde, told Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in a meeting last week that the changes were made because "we're very serious about improving performance." Jim McDonald, an APS spokesman, said, "We've made certain changes regarding leadership with people not meeting the challenges." Eubanks also indicated that more changes could be made as an outside consulting group continues an assessment of plant leadership through Oct. 1. An NRC spokesman said he was pleased with the personnel changes, which Palo Verde officials said they could not discuss in more detail because of privacy considerations. "It's a definite step in the right direction, but it's too early to tell what the cumulative effect of the changes will be," said Ken Clark of the NRC's office in Atlanta. "Overall, their operation continues to be considered safe, but that's not to say they don't have problems that need to be addressed." Only three of the nation's 103 nuclear reactors have poorer ratings from the NRC than Palo Verde. In 2004, a so-called dry pipe that could have disrupted the flow of water to the emergency core-cooling system was found. Arizona Public Service Co. repaired that problem, but federal regulators discovered other issues during investigations afterward, most of them non-safety problems. Federal inspectors found 24 minor violations over a six-month period earlier this year, according to a letter sent to Palo Verde management Aug. 31. Among the problems: issues with decision-making systems, not always following technical requirements during nuclear reactor restarts, ineffective communication and poor interaction between engineering and operations workers. During the meeting between APS and the NRC last week, NRC regulators repeatedly mentioned their concern that communications problems remained between supervisors and front-line workers. "Because of a lack of sufficient progress . . . we plan to conduct an additional problem-identification and resolution inspection in early 2007 to further evaluate the effectiveness of your correction actions," Bruce Mallett, regional administrator of the NRC, wrote in a letter to Jim Levine, APS executive vice president of generation, who oversees Palo Verde's operations. Palo Verde, located 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, is a vital source of electricity for the Southwest. The plant had an exemplary operating record for a decade before being plagued by outages and equipment problems the past two years. -------- louisiana Louisiana approves proposal seeking to ease construction of new nuclear plant September 12, 2006 SNL Financial LC By Andrew Engblom http://www.snl.com/interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-4665359-10592 The Louisiana Public Service Commission on Sept. 13 approved a proposal to examine how it can encourage the development of a new nuclear plant in the state. The proposal by Commissioner Jay Blossman opened a rulemaking investigation to define the rules under which a new nuclear power plant could be built and, in particular, how it would be financed. At the meeting, the full commission voted to hire an outside consultant to help it develop the new rules. Blossman said after the vote that he believes the proposed rule would be ready within 30 days of an order and that he hopes to have a final rule by December, but that it may take until January. "I believe nuclear is the future power in this country — especially in Louisiana," Blossman said. "I want our commission to be progressive and to show [potential nuclear developers] how they are going to collect their money before the plant is proposed. We want it to be as easy as it can be." Blossman said any range of mechanisms could end up in the proposed rule, but when asked about the recovery of construction and preconstruction costs before the plant comes online, he said it was "absolutely" under consideration. "We're not giving them a blank check, but if there are prudently incurred costs, we don't want to have a big fight over it," he said, continuing that he hopes a new rule could ease a developer's path to find financing. "Financing seems to be the hardest part of building a new nuclear plant," Blossman said. "I think this will put us in front of other states in developing a plant. Maybe Louisiana can be first at something instead of last at something." He said at least this initial stage of opening a rulemaking docket should result in a 5-0 vote. "We have an obligation to the ratepayers to try and lower rates," he said. Entergy Corp. is perhaps the most natural developer of a new nuclear plant, considering that it already owns and operates two nuclear plants in Louisiana, River Bend and Waterford. Blossman said the commission will be seeking input and offers from Duke Energy Corp., Southern Co. and FPL Group Inc., "[n]ot just Entergy Corp." Entergy said it was encouraged by the PSC's actions but called any further discussions preliminary at such an early stage of the rulemaking process. "We are pleased to see some movement on the Louisiana Public Service Commission's part," Entergy Nuclear spokeswoman Dianne Park said. "Without anything definitive yet, it's too early to comment." Meanwhile, Entergy is already pursuing a new nuclear plant in Louisiana, at the River Bend facility, and is planning to file with the NRC for a combined construction and operating license. This article was revised on Sept. 18, 2006, at 11:30 a.m. EDT to update the status of the proposal. -------- utah Tribe Considers Storing Nuclear Waste; Might Mean $10 Million in Fees Associated Press September 12, 2006 http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=5105389&nav=menu484_5_4 SKULL VALLEY, Utah - Leon Bear, a stocky man in T-shirt and jeans, peers across the sagebrush-pocked valley where his ancestors once chased Pony Express riders and sees the future for his dwindling tribe: Nuclear waste. Just west of the gun-barrel straight, two-lane road that darts through the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, Bear wants to store 4,000 steel and concrete canisters of highly radioactive used fuel from nuclear power plants. The tribe would reap tens of millions of dollars in rent over the next 40 years. "I've been shown there's no problem. The way they plan to handle it, it's safe," the 46-year-old tribal leader insists, escorting a visitor around the reservation in a glistening new pickup truck. The truck is an example of the largess the tribe already has received from a consortium of eight electric utilities that nine years ago signed a lease with the tribe to put 40,000 tons of reactor waste on the reservation. It's the kind of deal other tribes have rejected, that most communities would oppose, one that spells "not in my back yard" in the brightest of colors. Utah's establishment in Salt Lake City, the capital 45 miles away, is enraged. Critics, including some within the tribe, call it environmental racism at its rawest. But Bear says it's the way to riches that will mean new homes, new jobs and better health care for the 118 members of his tribe. Only about two dozen - including children - still live on the 18,000-acre reservation, but this will bring many of the others back, he predicts. The Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the lease in 1997. The deal is yet to be consummated amid a mountain of lawsuits, regulatory hurdles and bitter opposition. It's close, though. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license for the dump in February. It rejected arguments that its location is unsafe because hundreds of F-16 jet fighters fly over the reservation on the way to bombing runs over nearby government land. The chance of a crash that could result in the release of radiation is one in a million, an adequate risk, the NRC said. Private Fuel Storage LLC of Wisconsin, the consortium that would build and run the dump, has begun looking for nuclear power plant owners to sign up for waste shipments. "We have to store this stuff somewhere," says PFS Chairman John Parkyn. The utilities "were promised this material would be collected and removed to a central location, and now we have one." ---- US tribe chief angered at nuke waste plan rejection Tue Sep 12, 2006 (Reuters) By Adam Tanner http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?storyID=2006-09-12T234051Z_01_N12341316_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENERGY-NUCLEAR-TRIBE.xml&rpc=81 SAN FRANCISCO - The chairman of a Native American tribe said on Tuesday a federal rejection of a plan to store nuclear waste on his tribe's sovereign land recalls 19th century U.S. violations of Indian treaties. Earlier this year, the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in a remote area of Utah won U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing approval to temporarily store highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste. Last week, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which holds Indian land in trust for the tribes, rejected the $3.1 billion project that could have earned the Goshutes tens of millions of dollars. "This land is held in trust for the Indian people, not for them," Leon Bear, chief of the 123-member tribe, said of the U.S. government. "The Department of Interior took it upon themselves to make this decision for us. We made a decision already, we signed the business lease, we had the resolutions where a majority of our people wanted this facility out here. "They are really on thin ice at this point making this decision," Bear told Reuters in an interview. Native American tribes have special rights on sovereign land, and in recent years many Indians have opened casinos in an effort to overcome a historical legacy of poverty. As the conservative state of Utah bars casinos, the Goshutes, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, started developing the nuclear waste plan a decade ago -- garnering strong opposition from many citizens and officials. A BUNCH OF LIES? In its September 7 decision, the Bureau of Indian Affairs cited environmental concerns and uncertainty about long-term U.S. plans for spent nuclear fuel, or SNF. "As trustee-delegate, the secretary has the complex task of weighing the long-term viability of the Skull Valley Goshute reservation as a homeland for the Band (and the implications for preservation of tribal culture and life) against the benefits and risks from economic development activities proposed for the property held in trust," the bureau wrote. "We conclude that it is not consistent with the conduct expected of a prudent trustee to approve a proposed lease that promotes storing SNF on the reservation." Chief Bear compared the rejection of the plan to past instances in which the U.S. government did not honor its treaty obligations to native tribes. "They promoted in the past this government-to-government relationship, you know. They promoted all of these things in the past and what were they, a bunch of lies?" he said. "Are we back in the 1800s when they were breaking all the treaties? Is this the same thing? Bear said he would confer with his tribe and with Private Fuel Storage, or PFS, a consortium of eight electric utilities including Xcel Energy, American Electric Power Co., Edison International and Entergy Corp., before deciding his next moves. In a separate interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said the nuclear plan was dead. "It was probably the best news our state has received in recent years, and that was essentially putting a period at the end of the sentence on Skull Valley," he said. "We're at the end. There is no way this will be revived. "Obviously PFS can take this to court but I think that they are at the end of their options. ... It would be an exercise in futility from what legal experts tell me," Hunstman said. (Additional reporting by Jim Christie) -------- vermont NRC to hear questions about Vermont Yankee September 12, 2006 Associated Press http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=5389844&nav=4QcS NEWFANE, Vt. -- More than six months after Vermont Yankee nuclear plant won permission to boost its power output by 20 percent, regulators are set to hear questions about how the change will affect its ability to shut down suddenly. A hearing set for Sept. 20 before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will offer a group critical of Vermont Yankee a last chance to argue against the license amendment that allowed the power boost. The watchdog group, New England Coalition, will offer sworn testimony, as will Vermont Yankee representatives and NRC staff, on how well Vermont Yankee would perform in a sudden shutdown, or "transient." "If you think you can run this plant safely, prove it by stepping on the brakes from full power," said the coalition's technical adviser, Raymond Shadis. Vermont Yankee spokesman Robert Williams said the plant, which was allowed to increase its rated capacity from 540 to 650 megawatts, had already demonstrated its ability to shut down suddenly under the new conditions. "We'll present to the ASLB our view that the New England Coalition is wrong in their interpretation of NRC regulations regarding transient tests," Williams said. The hearing, to be held in the Windham County Courthouse, will be held Wednesday and continue Thursday and Friday, if necessary. The sudden-shutdown issue is the last of several raised by the coalition and the state Department of Public Service during a three-year review of Vermont Yankee's request to increase power. The plant, which is located in Vernon, won approval for the power increase last winter, and slowly ascended to the new power level in March and April. The state had questioned Vermont Yankee's ability to cool the reactor core in an emergency under the new power level, but dropped two challenges related to that issue in May. The coalition dropped another issue it had raised concerning the likely performance of a plant cooling tower, leaving just the sudden-shutdown question standing. Vermont Yankee's power boost, or "uprate," comes after four Midwestern plants of similar design developed cracking in a key plant component after increasing power levels. The state Public Service Board asked for an extra level of NRC review as it considered whether the power boost would hurt Vermont Yankee's reliability. The result has been extra scrutiny applied to Vermont Yankee's request to increase power, said Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the NRC's Northeast regional office. "This is the most extensive uprate review conducted by the NRC," Screnci said. Information from: Brattleboro Reformer -------- MILITARY -------- africa Kofi Annan Accuses Sudan of Violating Darfur Peace Deal Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/12/139200 In news from Africa -- United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has accused Sudan of violating the Darfur peace agreement by waging a series of recent military attacks. * Kofi Annan: “Thousands of Sudan armed forces troops have been deployed to the area in clear violation of the Darfur Peace agreement. Even worse, the area has been subjected to renewed aerial bombing. I strongly condemn the escalation.” Kofi Annan called on the international community to take a greater role in securing peace in Sudan. * Kofi Annan: "Can we in conscience leave the people of Darfur to such a fate. Can the international community, having not done enough for the people of Rwanda in their time of need, just watch as this tragedy deepens. Having finally agreed, just one year ago that there is a responsibility to protect, can we contemplate failing yet another test?" -------- arms Official Touts Nonlethal Weapons for Use By Lolita C. Baldor The Associated Press Tuesday 12 September 2006 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-air-force-weapons,1,4148740.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines Air Force official says nonlethal weapons should be used on people in crowd-control situations. Washington - Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press." The Air Force has funded research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service isn't likely to spend more money on development until injury issues are reviewed by medical experts and resolved. Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices. On another subject, Wynne said he expects to pick a new contractor for the next generation aerial refueling tanking by next summer. He said a draft request for bids will be put out next month, and there are two qualified bidders: The Boeing Co. and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the majority owner of European jet maker Airbus SAS. The contract is expected to be worth at least $20 billion. Chicago-based Boeing lost the tanker deal in 2004 amid revelations that it had hired a top Air Force acquisitions official who had given the company preferential treatment. Wynne also said the Air Force, which is already chopping 40,000 active duty, civilian and reserves jobs, is now struggling to find new ways to slash about $1.8 billion from its budget to cover costs from the latest round of base closings. He said he can't cut more people, and it would not be wise to take funding from military programs that are needed to protect the country. But, he said he also encounters resistance when he tries to save money on operations and maintenance by retiring aging aircraft. "We're finding out that those are, unfortunately, prized possessions of some congressional districts," said Wynne, adding that the Air Force will have to "take some appetite suppressant pills," he said. He said he has asked employees to look for efficiencies in their offices. The base closings initially were expected to create savings by reducing Air Force infrastructure by 24 percent. -------- israel / palestine IDF Commander: “What We Did Was Insane and Monstrous” Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/12/139200 The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has published an interview with an IDF commander who has confirmed the Israeli military used phosphorous shells during the war even though they are widely forbidden by international law. The commander also estimated that the IDF fired about 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. The Israeli commander said "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.” ---- IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon By Meron Rappaport 12/09/2006 Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=761781 "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war. The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate. MLRS is a track or tire carried mobile rocket launching platform, capable of firing a very high volume of mostly unguided munitions. The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds. The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit. The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended. Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war. According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would "flood" the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon. When his reserve duty came to a close, the commander in question sent a letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz outlining the use of cluster munitions, a letter which has remained unanswered. 'Excessive injury and unnecessary suffering' It has come to light that IDF soldiers fired phosphorous rounds in order to cause fires in Lebanon. An artillery commander has admitted to seeing trucks loaded with phosphorous rounds on their way to artillery crews in the north of Israel. A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death. International law forbids the use of weapons that cause "excessive injury and unnecessary suffering", and many experts are of the opinion that phosphorous rounds fall directly in that category. The International Red Cross has determined that international law forbids the use of phosphorous and other types of flammable rounds against personnel, both civilian and military. IDF: No violation of international law In response, the IDF Spokesman's Office stated that "International law does not include a sweeping prohibition of the use of cluster bombs. The convention on conventional weaponry does not declare a prohibition on [phosphorous weapons], rather, on principles regulating the use of such weapons. "For understandable operational reasons, the IDF does not respond to [accounts of] details of weaponry in its possession. "The IDF makes use only of methods and weaponry which are permissible under international law. Artillery fire in general, including MLRS fire, were used in response solely to firing on the state of Israel." The Defense Minister's office said it had not received messages regarding cluster bomb fire. -------- us Retired General: Rumsfeld Refused to Plan For Post-War Iraq Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/12/139200 A retired Army general has revealed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to consider planning for a postwar Iraq. In the lead-up to the war Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid served as the commander of the Army Transportation Corps. Scheid said "The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave.” Scheid said Rumsfeld threatened to fire anyone who talked about the need for post-invasion plans. Rumsfeld reportedly feared the American public would not back the invasion of Iraq if they thought it was going to be a long war. ---- Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs September 12, 2006 (AP) http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/12/usaf.weapons.ap/index.html WASHINGTON -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday. The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press." The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved. Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices. On another subject, Wynne said he expects to choose a new contractor for the next generation aerial refueling tankers by next summer. He said a draft request for bids will be put out next month, and there are two qualified bidders: the Boeing Co. and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the majority owner of European jet maker Airbus SAS. The contract is expected to be worth at least $20 billion (€15.75 billion). Chicago, Illinois-based Boeing lost the tanker deal in 2004 amid revelations that it had hired a top Air Force acquisitions official who had given the company preferential treatment. Wynne also said the Air Force, which is already chopping 40,000 active duty, civilian and reserves jobs, is now struggling to find new ways to slash about $1.8 billion (€1.4 billion) from its budget to cover costs from the latest round of base closings. He said he can't cut more people, and it would not be wise to take funding from military programs that are needed to protect the country. But he said he also incurs resistance when he tries to save money on operations and maintenance by retiring aging aircraft. "We're finding out that those are, unfortunately, prized possessions of some congressional districts," said Wynne, adding that the Air Force will have to "take some appetite suppressant pills." He said he has asked employees to look for efficiencies in their offices. The base closings initially were expected to create savings by reducing Air Force infrastructure by 24 percent. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/12/139208 The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War On the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, President Bush took the occasion to claim success in the "war on terror" and defend his decision to invade Iraq. Now a new book has been released with new details of what was happening inside the White House in the run-up to the invasion. It's called "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War." The book has already made headlines for exposing former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the White House source who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. We spend the hour with the co-authors of the book, journalists Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and David Corn of The Nation. [includes rush transcript] Memorials across the country marked the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. On Monday morning, New Yorkers held a moment of silence at 8:46 and again at 9:03 - when the north and south towers were hit. At Ground Zero, police and firefighters held a ceremony honoring their fallen colleagues. Family members and partners read out the names of the 2,749 known victims who died in the attack on the World Trade Center. President Bush began the day in New York where he attended a ceremony at Fort Pitt firehouse. He went on to Pennsylvania, where he placed a wreath near the crash site of United Flight 93. The President's day ended here in Washington, DC with a visit to the Pentagon. Later in the evening, he addressed the country in a nationally-televised prime time speech. President Bush took the occasion to claim success in the "war on terror" and defend his decision to invade Iraq. * President Bush: "I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My Administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat - and after 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power." The President's comments come just days after a major Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded Saddam Hussein had no relationship with Al Qaeda despite the Bush administration's claims. The report also disclosed for the first time the CIA had concluded Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In fact Hussein tried to have Zarqawi captured once he moved to Northern Iraq. The report's findings on Iraq's pre-war weapons capability is expected to be released after November's mid-term elections. Amid this latest evidence the Bush administration ignored its own intelligence to lead the country into war, a new book has been released with new details of what was happening inside the White House. It's called "HUBRIS: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War." It's already made headlines for revealing former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the White House source who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. We speak with book's authors -- Michael Isikoff and David Corn. * Michael Isikoff, investigative correspondent for Newsweek. Co-Author of the new book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. * David Corn, Washington Editor of The Nation magazine. He is the Co-Author of "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War" He is also author of "The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception." More information at Davidcorn.com. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We're joined right now in Washington, D.C. by the book's authors, Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Michael Isikoff is an investigative correspondent for Newsweek magazine. His co-author, David Corn, is the Washington editor of The Nation magazine. He’s also the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! DAVID CORN: Good morning. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Good morning. AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you both with us. Let's start with Michael Isikoff. Richard Armitage, how do you know he is the source? Tell us the story. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, when we started work on this book late last year, the Valerie Plame leak case was clearly going to be a part of it, because I think our view is that the whole controversy over the Joe Wilson, Valerie Wilson affair grew out of the administration's faulty selling of the war on Iraq and its need to defend its pre-war sales pitch, so that when Joe Wilson came forward in the summer of 2003, they had to fight back very hard, because they realized at that moment that the faulty intelligence that was used to sell the war in Iraq was becoming a front-and-center major political issue. We had been in there a few months. No WMD, weapons of mass destruction, had been found. AMY GOODMAN: And Joe Wilson, an ambassador -- Joe Wilson went to Niger, just to remind people. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Right. And had been the first sort of insider to come forward and say, I told them that what they were saying -- or told them that this wasn't true, and yet they used it anyway. Since then, there have been a parade of people who have said similar things and many of them come forward for the first time in Hubris, and we talk about the many, many dissents that were going on within the U.S. intelligence community. Anyway, back to Armitage. Clearly the big mystery in Washington was who was Robert Novak's initial source that got the whole controversy started, that erupted it. And in the course of reporting on the book, we were able to nail down that it was unquestionably Richard Armitage, a surprising figure to a lot of people. He had not who many people had expected initially. He was a member of the small moderate cell within the administration that had misgivings about the march to war in Iraq. And in the course of reporting it, we had on-the-record sources, Carl Ford, the State Department intelligence chief, who told us that Richard Armitage had confessed, “I may be the guy who caused this whole thing. I was the one who spoke to Novak and told him there are other people,” and we described in great detail Armitage's confession to Secretary of State Powell on the morning of October 1st, when Robert Novak wrote a second column saying that his source was a senior administration official who was not a partisan gunslinger. AMY GOODMAN: Tell us that scene, that setting. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Yes. That Novak column runs just a few days after it has been disclosed that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson. A lot of people suspect that the leak had come out of the White House, and in fact, as we amply document, the White House on its own, White House officials were pointing reporters towards Valerie Wilson's role. But it is one of the ironies of this case that the initial leaker was, in fact, Armitage. He had met with Robert Novak on July 8th, 2003, in his office, a meeting that was recommended to him by another surprising figure, Ken Duberstein, former Ronald Reagan chief of staff, very close to Colin Powell. Duberstein was urging Armitage to meet with Novak, who he didn’t have a close relationship with. And they met, and Armitage provided this information to Novak. When the criminal investigation gets launched, Novak writes the second column. Armitage is at home reading the paper early in the morning and essentially freaks out and calls Colin Powell and says, “I think I’m the guy he's talking about. What are we going to do?” There’s a frantic series of meetings at the State Department that morning. AMY GOODMAN: Explain Armitage's relationship with Powell. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Deputy Secretary of State number two. They were very close, old friends. And they realized they had an enormous problem. What they had to -- they did contact the Justice Department. Will Taft, the State Department legal counsel, gets called in. He says, “We've got to let the Justice Department know.” Armitage -- they arrange a meeting for Armitage to meet with the FBI the next day. But what they’re really worried about is the White House. If the White House finds out, they are going to leak that it's Armitage publicly to deflect attention from themselves, and that would then point the finger at Powell and Armitage. They were sort of known as thick of sleeves, anyway. And Taft, there is this extraordinary scene where we describe Taft calling Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, saying, “Look, we have some information relevant to this information.” Taft is worried that Gonzales is going to say, “Tell me what it is. And then we'll let the President know or Karl Rove know,” and instantly the word would get out. Gonzales never asks any questions. Perhaps it's emblematic. Perhaps he’s playing it by the book, just doing the right thing, doesn’t want to step on a Justice Department investigation. Or perhaps it’s emblematic of, you know, larger incuriosity at the White House about matters. But for whatever reason, Taft, Powell and Armitage breathe a huge sigh of relief. The information doesn't get to the White House, and it stays secret for three years, until we revealed it in Hubris. AMY GOODMAN: And you, David Corn, on the issue of what Valerie Plame was doing at the time that she was outed. DAVID CORN: I think there were two big mysteries in the Plame case. One was, who was the first leaker to Bob Novak? And the other was, what did Valerie Plame, Valerie Wilson do at the CIA? After the leak came out and people raised criticisms and were outraged about it and expressed disagreement with the White House and pointed to it as a, perhaps, example of White House thuggery or hardball politics, a lot of people on the conservative side, a lot of Bush defenders, said, well, she was just an analyst. In fact, Robert Novak reported in that second column that Michael just described that he had been told that she was just an analyst. In other words, she was a paper-pusher, a desk jockey, and her outing had been basically insignificant, nothing to get all hot and bothered about, certainly nothing that you would need to bring a special counsel in to investigate. Well, for years -- and I’m kind of surprised by this -- what she actually did at the CIA had remained a secret, until our book came out and we revealed that she was no analyst. She was an undercover operations officer. She was chief of operations in a unit called the Joint Task Force on Iraq. That was part of a greater unit called the Counter-Proliferation Division, which is part of the super-secret Operations Directorate, which is the part of the CIA, not the analytical side, it’s the part of the CIA that mounts espionage operations and covert actions around the world. And what the Joint Task Force on Iraq was doing, what she had been doing for two years prior to being outed, was seeking intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. So it had been her job, literally her job, to find the evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq and the argument the White House had been making for two years. She worked with a staff of ten to twelve officers. She traveled overseas to oversee these operations, and they had gotten some operations going. Their basic target was Iraqi scientists, scientists who could tell them about any sort of WMD program Iraq might have. They tried to find them out out of Iraq. They tried to find them inside Iraq. And it was very hard work. They built up a stable of a couple of sources, not too many. But every Iraqi scientist they got to, either directly or indirectly -- sometimes they sent relatives to Iraq and said put these questions to your cousin, your brother, whoever -- all the answers they got back were, “We don't know anything about any WMD programs.” They couldn't find any evidence. And they were quite frustrated, the people on her unit, because they could not tell if they were getting the right answer, which is there are no WMDs, or that they just were not finding the right sources. But they dutifully wrote up their reports that this scientist or that scientist denies there are any WMD activities going on in Iraq and sent them into the CIA bureaucracy, where they disappeared. But at the end of the day here, you have the situation where, as Mike said, it wasn't just Armitage. Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, others at the White House, set on undermining and discrediting Joe Wilson, were leaking information about her to reporters. This was classified information. And they, you know, purposefully or not, certainly recklessly, they undermined and destroyed her career and outed the CIA officer who had been tasked with perhaps the administration's top priority. AMY GOODMAN: When we come back from break, I want to ask about why Karl Rove was not indicted, but Scooter Libby was. We're talking to two investigative reporters, Michael Isikoff for Newsweek and David Corn for The Nation. They have just published a book. It’s called Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Back in a minute. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We are talking with two investigative reporters who have just come out with a book called Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War: Michael Isikoff, investigative correspondent for Newsweek, as well as David Corn, who is the Washington editor of The Nation magazine. They have broken a number of stories within this book: one, Richard Armitage, the source of the leak, the outing of Valerie Plame, and what Valerie Plame was doing at the time of her outing, that she was looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. David, you said that this, of course, derailed the whole thing. It's always been talked about as going after her husband for revealing in the New York Times that he had gone to Niger and, in fact, that Saddam Hussein was not getting weapons of mass destruction. But it could have been just an outright attack on her. She's the chief of a division that says no WMD. DAVID CORN: Well, she was operations chief. I don't think it was. I don't think they actually knew what she was doing. Armitage and others were reading off a State Department memo, which we describe in the book had been written in sort of an inaccurate fashion, that described her as working in WMDs, not WMDs in Iraq. And she was one of thousands of mid-level CIA officers. It just so happened that Iraq was her beat. I think this was more an example of the White House acting as if they were in a political campaign, when you just throw anything you can at the other side, you know: “What's up with this trip with Joe Wilson? It must have been a boondoggle. It was a junket. Let's try that as a talking point. Throw it out his wife sent him,” which meant that he wasn't sent on the basis of merit. So that's my -- I don't think they investigated fully. I don't think they were targeting her, per se. But I think it was just, you know, politics overall. I mean, we have one scene in the book where Karl Rove calls a reporter and explains the White House attitude here. And it was, the Wilsons are screwing us, we're going to screw the Wilsons. But I don't think it's conscious that we we’re going to get the one person who worked on Iraq weapons. AMY GOODMAN: Michael Isikoff. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: First of all, the junket line comes from Vice President Cheney directly. He was the one who threw that out there, when he scribbles on the Joe Wilson op-ed that he then hands to Scooter Libby, “Did his wife send him on a junket?” question mark. He was the first one to put the junket idea into play, at least as far as the record shows. But you asked about Karl Rove and Karl Rove's role. And we actually have some new details on the Karl Rove case in the book, as well, and as has been known since last July when I first reported it in Newsweek, that Karl Rove had been the source for Matt Cooper just a few days after -- AMY GOODMAN: The Time magazine reporter. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: The Time magazine reporter. So you have -- DAVID CORN: But it's important to note, he leaked the same information that Armitage did before the Novak column came out, too, so he was trying as hard as he could to get this information out. It’s just that Armitage beat him by a day or two. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Right. And, of course, Rove was the sort of secondary source, confirming source, for Novak. When the investigation begins, Rove acknowledges that he spoke to Novak and said, “I heard that, too.” That was his loose confirmation of what Armitage had told Novak. But he doesn't -- he, Rove, doesn't tell the FBI nor the Grand Jury about his conversation with Matt Cooper. He says he forgot. He forgot that he had blurted out the same information without prompting to Matt Cooper just a few days later. Well, it turns out, as we report in the book, that at some point after the investigation begins, Rove's lawyer asks Rove's staff to print out all his emails, just to see if there's some reference to the Valerie Plame Wilson matter in Rove’s emails. And it turns out there was. Rove, after talking to Cooper, had actually sent an email to Steve Hadley, then the Deputy National Security Advisor, telling him, “I got a phone call from Matt Cooper. He asked about Wilson, Niger. Isn’t it damaging? I told him to hold back.” Now, it turns out he actually told a lot more, as we know from Matt Cooper’s contemporaneous email. But this was hard confirmation that Rove had spoken to Cooper, who, of course, later wrote about Valerie Plame Wilson's role, as well. AMY GOODMAN: In Time magazine. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: In Time. Here is the interesting wrinkle, as we report in the book for the first time. That email was printed out by Rove's office on November 25th, 2003. Rove goes before the Grand Jury in February 2004 and does not mention the Matt Cooper conversation. His lawyer already has the hard evidence that he did speak to Matt Cooper. Rove tells the Grand Jury he did not speak to Matt Cooper some months later, after his lawyer had the hard evidence. AMY GOODMAN: He said he did not speak to Matt Cooper? Or he just didn't mention it? MICHAEL ISIKOFF: In his initial Grand Jury appearance, he’s asked and says he did not speak to Matt Cooper. This is why Karl Rove was under investigation for so long. DAVID CORN: And the other point is -- MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Now, just to finish the story, though. At some point, Rove does disclose the email and that he spoke to Steve Hadley, and he turns it over in his third Grand Jury appearance. But what's interesting about that third Grand Jury appearance is the timing. It's October, mid-October of 2004, right in the tail end of the election campaign. Why does he just turn it over on October 15th, 2004? Well, the day before, there's a headline in the newspaper, in the New York Times and the Washington Post: “Matt Cooper held in contempt for not talking about who his source was.” It was at that point that Rove and his lawyer had good reason to know that Matt Cooper may be going to jail and may be forced to testify to keep out of jail about who his source was. And his source, of course, was Karl Rove. So it was at the point that Cooper was threatened with jail and there was real concern he might be forced to talk, that Rove finally comes forward and turns over the email and acknowledges he spoke to Matt Cooper. This is why Karl Rove had five Grand Jury appearances. This is why he remained under investigation until just June of this year. AMY GOODMAN: David Corn. DAVID CORN: For nearly a year, a critical email that had been printed out in November 2003 was not turned over, even though there was a subpoena that had been presented to Rove and everybody else. And so, what we've seen in the last week or two after our story broke, that defenders of the White House have slammed Patrick Fitzgerald: if you knew from the beginning that it was Richard Armitage, why did you investigate, you know, Libby and Rove? Why did this go on for so long? The reason really is based on what Rove and Libby told the FBI and the Grand Jury. As Mike just detailed, Fitzgerald had reason to believe that Rove hadn't played straight up with him. This email had sat in somebody's office for a year. He had not initially acknowledged this conversation with Matt Cooper, while Armitage had very quickly acknowledged what he did. And with Scooter Libby, when the FBI came knocking, he didn't say -- unlike Rove, he didn’t say, “I don't remember anything.” He said, “Well, I had learned this from other reporters and then told other reporters about Valerie Wilson, and I did nothing proactive myself.” AMY GOODMAN: Not responding to the original subpoena, not telling the truth in the Grand Jury investigation, isn't that a crime? DAVID CORN: Well, it is if you can show that it's intentional. You know, if you come before a Grand Jury and say, I don't remember something, which is what Karl Rove did, as opposed to Scooter Libby, who said, “I had a certain conversation, and I was told specifically a, b, c,” it's much easier for a prosecutor to prove the latter might be wrong or false, because you have other pieces of evidence you can compare against it. To prove someone had a false memory or is not telling the truth about that is very difficult. And so I think Fitzgerald spent, though, a good year and a half trying to sort this out with Rove and seeing if indeed he had a strong enough case that could survive the reasonable doubt standard before a jury. And he obviously looked long and hard at it. But it was that that prolonged the investigation. It wasn't that Fitzgerald was on a witch-hunt or anything. If everybody had told him the truth and had good recollections early on, this thing might have been over within a few months. AMY GOODMAN: Michael Isikoff. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Yeah, well, look, at the end of the day, just in the interest of fairness, he could not prove that Karl Rove was intentionally deceiving the Grand Jury. And in fact, one spin on this from Rove's lawyer is that it may have been Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer, who screwed up here, who had the email. And in fact, Luskin has admitted that and admitted that to another lawyer, or at least used that line to another lawyer in the case. We cite that in the book. Whether Luskin was covering for his client or was just acknowledging his own screw-up, we'll probably never know. AMY GOODMAN: What about the marathon session between Luskin and Fitzgerald at the very end, when the decisions were being made? MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, this was one of the issues, that they were unquestionably talking about: Why wasn't Rove forthcoming in that initial Grand Jury appearance? AMY GOODMAN: Not just not forthcoming, he lied. He said, “I did not speak to” -- MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Yeah, he denied doing what, in fact, he had done. And that's central to why this investigation took so long. But, remember, at the end of the day, in the case of Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's staff, Fitzgerald had a parade of witnesses who contradicted Libby's story. DAVID CORN: And documents, too. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: And documents that undermined Libby’s story. Libby, too, claimed not to have been at all involved, says he only learned about Valerie Plame Wilson from Tim Russert. And, of course, when Tim Russert testified, he said, “My conversation with Scooter Libby had nothing to do with Valerie Plame Wilson.” In fact, we disclose for the first time what that conversation was really all about. And it's actually quite interesting. AMY GOODMAN: What was it about? MICHAEL ISIKOFF: It was about Chris Matthews, the host of Hardball, and Scooter Libby's firm belief that Chris Matthews was blurting out anti-Semitic comments by attacking neocons for applauding the war on Iraq. In fact, Russert is quoted as saying, “Why is it he only always says Pearle and Wolfowitz and Libby? Why is he always using those names?” Russert instantly interpreted that as Scooter Libby trying to suggest that Chris Matthews was trying to blame Jewish neoconservatives for launching the war in Iraq. Now, you know, that was, I think, the furthest thing from Chris Matthews's mind, and there really isn't anybody who believes that, but that was what Scooter Libby was trying to suggest to Tim Russert. And that's what their conversation was all about. DAVID CORN: It goes to the mindset at the time of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, that it’s not just about the Wilson op-ed piece. The book is far from just about the leak case. I mean, what they were most concerned with was that the argument for war that they had sold, that we document how they had mis-sold, before the invasion was in some ways falling apart. And it wasn't just Joe Wilson attacking it. There were people within the CIA and State Department who were leaking information about the pre-war sales campaign that was making the administration look really bad. And I think maybe in the back of their minds, some of them had to realize that they had engaged in cherry picking, that they had tried to rig the deck to some degree. Scooter Libby knew that he had put together a 24-page memo on the supposed connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime that Colin Powell refused to use at the UN speech. So they realized they had really gone overboard on a lot of these matters, which we detail, you know, quite specifically in the book. And that's sort of the narrative inside story of the book. And yet, so when things -- when WMDs wound up falling apart and other parts of the government were trying to explain why they weren't there, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove and others felt under siege, and they, as one White House aide told us, they went crazy. AMY GOODMAN: You write about President Bush's first WMD briefing. DAVID CORN: Yes. That was the end of July. David Kay had been selected by the CIA to head up the Iraq Survey Group, which was to look for the -- AMY GOODMAN: 2003. DAVID CORN: In 2003, which was to look for the WMDs. They didn't start really until a few months after the invasion. And David Kay, before the war, firmly believed that there were WMDs. He was an NBC News consultant, had testified before Congress and had said so many a time. So he took the job, saying, “Now I’m going to get to find everything.” And he went there. After six, seven weeks, he started coming to the conclusion that there were no WMDs to be found. He thought, perhaps optimistically, that there would be what he called a production surge capability, meaning that at the snap of a finger, Saddam Hussein could order up his scientists to cook up some chemical and biological weapons very quickly, and that would be, you know, not -- that would be close to what the administration had said, maybe enough of a threat to have been worried about. So that’s what he was aiming to find evidence of six weeks into the job. At that point, he comes back to Washington, briefs members of the Congress, and he's brought to the Oval Office. In the office is the President, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, Condi Rice. Paul Wolfowitz is there. Scooter Libby’s there. And I think Rumsfeld might have been there, as well. And Kay says --you know, he's not a guy who sugarcoats things -- he said, “I’ve got to tell you this. We're not going to find stockpiles of WMDs, maybe a production surge capability, but nothing like you said would be there.” And he kind of waits for the President to respond. And he's flabbergasted, because the President poses no questions to him, not “Are you sure? Have you looked here? Have you done this?” You know, “What might happen there? Where were they? What happened?” Nothing. And then he looks around the rest of the room, and everybody, perhaps being deferential to the President -- you know, Cheney and Rumsfeld, who are known to be quite harsh when it comes to interrogation skills, you know -- don't say anything, as well. So David Kay walks out of the office. And as he tells us -- it’s quoted in the book -- he says he had never met a more un-inquisitive fellow at such a senior level of government. And he is shocked by this. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to David Corn and Michael Isikoff. They’ve written the book, Hubris. It has just come out, has broken a number of stories. When we come back from break, I want to ask you about Ahmed Chalabi, right. He is the source for so much information that appears in the front page of the New York Times under Judith Miller's byline, which she sometimes shares with others. But the White House begins to think that he's channeling Iranian intelligence, too, but he is being paid by the Bush administration. I want to talk about all of that. [break] AMY GOODMAN: Our guests today are Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and David Corn of The Nation. They’ve worked together on a book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War, broke the Valerie Plame story about what she was doing when she was outed and who outed her, Richard Armitage. But the book is about a lot more. Let's talk about Ahmed Chalabi. Tell us about who he is, whose payroll he was on and whose information he was channeling, Michael Isikoff. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Right, there was probably no more contentious issue within the Bush administration than the role of Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress. And he was sort of the favored Iraqi exile of a lot of senior figures in the administration, particularly at the Pentagon and in the White House and in the Vice President’s office. Chalabi was their guy. He was the guy who was going to take over Iraq and would lead the new democratic government that we were going to install. But Chalabi was deeply distrusted by the CIA and the State Department and, in fact, in the book, we interview -- one of our key figures in the book is a man by the name of John Maguire, who was the CIA liaison with Iraq. He was in charge of Iraq and with Chalabi. And he distrusted Chalabi for years. He had actually looked into Chalabi in the mid-1990s, when Chalabi was first getting U.S. government money supposedly to propagandize within Iraq. Maguire goes to Iraq. He’s supposed to –--Chalabi’s been getting money from the CIA to fund a TV station, to fund a newspaper, to propagandize against Saddam. And Maguire concludes that Chalabi is scamming the CIA, that he’s not using the money for what he's supposed to be using it at all. And it leads to this -- it’s one of many factors that leads to this rift between Chalabi and the CIA. The CIA thinks he’s a scam artist. They don’t trust him. They don't believe the information that he's bringing forward either. And that's when we get to the run-up to the war, when Chalabi's bringing these defectors out of Iraq, providing them to the news media and to the U.S. intelligence community. And the CIA, one by one, is shooting them down. These guys are fabricators. They don't know what they are talking about. They are telling us a bunch of cock and bull stories that we, the CIA, don't believe, don't trust. Doesn’t matter. Chalabi has his friends in the Pentagon, he’s got his friends in the White House, and he has his friends in the news media. And we go into great detail how these defectors were fed to the New York Times. Judy Miller and other reporters put them on the front page in prominent stories: “Defector Tells Stories of Underground WMD Facilities in Iraq.” The -- number of people say, Republican defenders of the administration have said, well, they never actually made it into intelligence community products, this defector information. That's a bit deceptive, because, as we document, what happened is, those front-page stories in the New York Times and other publications were then used by the White House as fodder for its own white paper on Iraq that was released by the White House in conjunction with the President's UN speech, prominently citing the New York Times stories based on these false fabricating defectors determined by the CIA. So the information was being used. It was being used by the administration and, of course, you know, one by one, piece by piece, as has been once again documented in last week's Senate Intelligence Committee, this information was false. DAVID CORN: There's another element to this story, too -- AMY GOODMAN: David Corn. DAVID CORN: -- that we get into the book. Ahmed Chalabi, in his Iraqi National Congress, was for years close to officials in Iran. That made sense to a certain degree. Iran wanted Saddam gone. INC and Chalabi wanted Saddam gone. Chalabi had a home in Iran. The INC had an office in Tehran. But the CIA, starting in the mid-’90s, had a concern. It’s not just that they were close and shared a strategic interest. They worried that Iranian intelligence was working through the INC, and there was one INC official in particular, a man named Aras Habib, who they intercepted communications about and came to believe that he was working quite actively with Iranian intelligence. And they were very suspicious about this. It turns out, a few years later, in late ’90s, early 2000s, as we're getting closer to the war, one of the primary projects of the INC was what was called the Information Collection Program, the ICP. They took money from the State Department first, and then from the Pentagon, tens of millions of dollars, to get the defectors that Mike talked about and bring them to governments around the world, but to media, as well, and to pass these stories on that really would raise the drumbeat and give people a reason to believe that we should go to war in Iraq. Well, the person in charge of that probe and the person in charge was the same Aras Habib. So someone who some CIA officials suspected of being perhaps an Iranian asset was involved with giving information to the New York Times and Washington Post and NewsHour and other organizations that would make the case for war. And when John Maguire and others told us about their suspicions, I mean, I was just kind of stunned. How could this be? So here is the CIA suspecting the guy running this program of being an Iranian agent. And I said, “Well, what did you do about this? You know, certainly this must have been a big deal.” And they kind of shrugged their shoulders, and they said, “Well, we couldn't do anything about this. And I said, “Well, why not?” And we quote one in the book saying, “You can't fight City Hall,” meaning that because the White House and the office of the Vice President and the Pentagon were so invested in the INC and Ahmed Chalabi that these concerns or fears of the CIA, they felt they couldn't even express within the administration. So this raises, I think, the scary possibility -- and it’s something that was not looked into in the Senate Intelligence report that came out few days ago, that it's very good in parts on blowing apart the credibility of the INC, but they didn’t look into this one. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Although they do mention the concerns about Iranian intelligence. DAVID CORN: Yes, there was a -- MICHAEL ISIKOFF: The INC was infected by -- was infiltrated by Iranian intelligence and that this was a longstanding CIA concern about the INC. That's not something that ever got raised before the war. DAVID CORN: Right. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask something about -- you have written about recently, Michael Isikoff, in Newsweek, and that is, how many CIA agents are now buying insurance, afraid that they could be sued? MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Yes. And that relates to the aggressive interrogation practices that the CIA was using against al-Qaeda suspects, and, in fact, in one of those cases, it ties directly into the selling of the war in Iraq. And we talk about that in great detail in this book. In fact, we have a load of new details about the case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who was the first major al-Qaeda commander who was captured in Afghanistan, was originally interrogated by the FBI. The FBI thought they were making progress with him. They were viewing him as a potential witness in a court case. They were affording him his -- they were treating him as somebody who might someday come in a courtroom. So they were treating him with a measure of respect and not stepping over the line. The CIA gets control of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, takes him away from the FBI, and then sends him to Egypt, where he is rather brutally interrogated. In fact, new details about the brutal interrogation of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi have come out just in recent days. We talk about it in the book, as well. And then, after being interrogated by the Egyptians, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi tells the story that he hadn't told the FBI before, but now tells Egyptian interrogators, that al-Qaeda had sent operatives to Iraq for training in chemical and biological warfare training. This report from Ibn Sheikh al-Libi is doubted within the U.S. intelligence community. In fact, there’s a memo in which the DIA says it's likely he’s just telling interrogators what he thinks they want to hear. Yet, it is used by the administration in a crucial way. In fact, it becomes the prime evidence for what Secretary Powell later calls at the UN the “sinister nexus” between Iraq, al-Qaeda and WMD, and Powell refers to the Ibn Sheikh al-Libi allegations in his speech to the UN. After the war, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi is transferred back from Egypt into CIA custody, and he acknowledges, he recants the entire story, acknowledges he made up the whole thing because of the brutal interrogation practices that were being used against him. “I told them what they wanted to hear. I had to say that if I wanted to live.” That's what Ibn Sheikh al-Libi says. And the CIA withdraws all the reporting that it got from Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, says “Never mind, not true. This whole story about Osama sending operatives to Saddam for training in chemical/biological warfare was false, and it was extracted under torture.” This is probably the single most dramatic example of how these sorts of interrogation techniques don't work. They don't get you reliable information. AMY GOODMAN: The parade of generals and military officials we saw in the newsrooms leading up to the invasion, who were beating the drums for war, there was another parade of military officials and generals who, unfortunately, their parade route didn't take them to the front pages of the newspapers or into the TV networks. They were the ones who were raising questions. Can you give us a list of names? Early on, as the President, as the White House, as the entire corporate media keeps repeating, “No one was saying before that there weren't weapons of mass destruction.” They all believed it. DAVID CORN: Well, there were several key components of the WMD case. There was the “sinister nexus.” There was the biological weapons labs and mobile labs that Colin Powell talked about. There were the whole Niger documents that were phonied up. And there were chemical weapon stockpiles. The DIA had put out a report in October 2002 saying that we have no evidence that there are chemical weapons stockpiles. One good case study, I think, is the aluminum tubes, because of all the WMD arguments, the fact that Saddam Hussein might be close to nuclear weapons is perhaps the most compelling. A lot of countries have chemical and biological weapons. Often they can only be used in a theater of war and are not a direct threat to a country far away. Nuclear weapons is really of a different category. And you might remember that when the administration in September 2002 unveiled the new product, as White House Chief of Staff Andy Card called it, it was with Dick Cheney going on Meet the Press and pointing to a New York Times story that said that Iraq had obtained tens of thousands of aluminum tubes that could only be used for a nuclear centrifuge, which would enrich uranium, which would be used to make nuclear weapons. And the White House came up -- a speech writer came up with this metaphor, “We don't want the smoking gun to appear in the form of a mushroom cloud.” That was the ultimate WMD argument. Well, at the time, a year prior to that, the aluminum tubes case had been hotly contested within the intelligence community. In fact, there really was only one analyst, a fellow at the CIA who we named for the first time in the book. We name him, because he's not undercover. The CIA didn't want us to name him, but we went ahead and did so. This one analyst -- AMY GOODMAN: His name? DAVID CORN: Joe Turner. And he was pushing the case that these tubes could only be used for nuclear centrifuges. Now, the federal government, as you might suspect, has many experts when it comes to centrifuge. Most of them work for nuclear labs based at the Department of Energy. They all looked at the same evidence and said, “No way, can’t fit in the centrifuge.” And they came up with a whole different use for them: these are for rocket launchers. AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute. Some more names. Names of people, every aspect. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: One of the figures who we interview for the book is Admiral Thomas Wilson, who is the former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency up until May 2002. A couple of months earlier in 2002, he testifies before the Senate. We found this testimony got no coverage at the time, in which he's asked to identify the five most pressing threats to the United States, security threats to the United States. Iraq isn't even on the list. In his testimony about Iraq, Wilson said that he didn’t believe -- in fact, in the book, he’s quoted for the first time, saying “I never believed they had a nuclear program. I never believed they were an immediate WMD threat.” What he thought, what he testified at the time was that Saddam’s military was degrading. It was weak. It was morale. It was not a regional threat. And that was the chief intelligence officer of the Department of Defense in the spring of 2002. This testimony got no coverage. He was replaced, and very shortly thereafter, the rhetoric from the Pentagon changed dramatically. AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you very much for being with us. The book is called Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War, the authors Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff and The Nation magazine's David Corn. Thanks so much for joining us. DAVID CORN: Thank you. MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Thank you. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Wind Vs Nuclear Tue, Sep 12, 2006 Iran Daily http://www.iran-daily.com/1385/2658/html/energy.htm#s172653 Wind power is the fastest-growing energy generation industry in the world. (AFP Photo) Despite Australian PM John Howard’s call for a “full-blooded debate“ about energy, greenhouse and uranium mining, there has been little discussion about renewable energy sources such as wind power. Wind power is the fastest-growing energy generation industry in the world. Notwithstanding a lack of government support, across the world the industry has grown at an average rate of 29% over the past 10 years, concentrated in California in the US, Spain, Germany, Denmark and several other European countries. During that time, the amount of wind energy production has risen from 5000 megawatts (MW) to more than 60,000 MW. By 2010, the amount is expected to double to 120,000 MW, Greenleft.org reported. Wind power has become more technologically advanced and reliable since it emerged commercially around 25 years ago. One of the most important advancements has been the evolution of larger turbines, which has had a couple of advantages. First, the most consistent and strongest airflow is found higher above the ground; lower-altitude breezes are generally weaker and more erratic. Whereas wind farms used to be viable only in special areas with excellent year-round breezes, newer large turbines are suited to a far wider range of locations. The second advantage of large turbines is that they generate more electricity. The latest generation of mass produced wind turbines has a blade diameter of 90 meters, with the generator, a nacelle, sitting on top of an 80 or 105 meter-high tower. Such turbines consistently produce about 3 million MW of electricity per unit, and cost about $3.6 million each (or about $1200 per kilowatt). A South Australian wind farm recently placed an order for 53 V90 3 MW turbines. Vestas, of Denmark, now has a factory in Tasmania that is equipped to produce several types of large turbines. Next generation turbines are larger again, with 5 MW turbines with a 126-metre blade diameter. While the reliability of wind power has improved, problems remain with consistent supply. One of these is overloading the grid with electricity in times of high wind and, to a lesser extent, under-powering the grid in low wind. A South Australian consortium is investigating using “burst power“ by running electricity-hungry seawater desalination plants during peak wind power periods as a way of “soaking up“ excess power. The concern that wind power inadvertently kills birds can be minimized by ensuring that the turbines are not built in known flight paths, or near nesting areas and waterholes. Wildlife groups are generally well aware of the benefits of wind power, and are happy to let authorities know about these critical locations. Some birds and bats will still be killed, but only a tiny fraction compared to those killed each year by vehicles. Solutions to community concerns might include building wind farms on private land, where farmers can still graze livestock and grow crops beneath the turbines while earning lease payments for hosting the turbines, and by placing the turbines along roadways and the edges of large public reserves. Turbines do emit some blade noise, but modern models are much quieter due to improved blade aerodynamics. Some argue that turbines are “unsightly“, but these anti-wind groups, often supported by the nuclear industry, should consider how aesthetically pleasing deformed babies and cancer victims are. The electricity grid in Australia, like most around the world, is based around a few centralized power plants that feed high voltages out to a progressively lighter network of transmission lines. Wind farms built around the perimeter of existing power networks would need to be properly linked back into the grid, requiring the construction of new cable infrastructure. Any nuclear power plant would require a similar investment in transmission lines to link them back into the grid. For wind power to be the dominant source of power, it would require a substantial restructure of the grid, and technological advances to further refine the reliability of wind power. However Ben Carmichael of Vestas Australia told Green Left Weekly that, in the immediate future, Australia could derive up to 20% of its national electricity needs from wind without a massive overhaul of the transmission network and without compromising the reliability of supply. According to Carmichael, 20% wind power nationally would require the construction of about 2500 V90 turbines, or equivalent, at a cost of around $9 billion. Compare this to the financial costs of nuclear energy. To achieve a situation where 20% of current national electricity production was nuclear power would require the construction of at least five typical nuclear power plants, each with a capacity of around 1000-1500 MW (a typical reactor size). Based on several recently commissioned third-generation reactors in Japan and South Korea, these reactors would cost between $1500 and $2000 per kilowatt to commission, and therefore between $11.25-$15 billion in total. Clearly, nuclear power is more expensive. Once built, the plants require fuel rods, an additional cost, and these must be enriched at a separate facility, which would cost upwards of $500 million. Nuclear power has higher operational and maintenance costs compared to wind power, and nuclear power stations take longer to commission (seven to 10 years) than wind turbines (three to six months once delivered). More carbon dioxide is emitted in the construction of a nuclear power plant, and in the enrichment of fuel rods, than in the construction of wind towers. Once a wind turbine is up and running it will have generated as much clean energy after six months as “dirty“ energy used in its manufacture. It takes about seven years for a nuclear power station to generate more carbon dioxide-free electricity than was spent building the plant and getting it operational. Over the lifetime of a wind turbine, it will generate 17-39 times the amount of energy as was used to build it. Nuclear power plants produce only about 16 times the energy used to build them. Each 1000 MW nuclear power generator would produce about 33 tonnes of highly radioactive waste per year, which would then need to be stored at additional cost, reprocessed at an even greater cost, or dumped--the cheapest and most likely option for dollar-saving corporations. If Australia has its own nuclear power plants, nuclear waste dumps and enrichment facilities, it will be easier to argue for it to become a world dumping ground for nuclear waste. If Australia leases enriched fuel rods to other nations and takes the waste back, a stockpile of dangerous nuclear waste will accrue. ---- FREE ENERGY FROM MAGNETS? Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=20804 Is there a way out of the present energy crisis that can break our dependence on so-called "fossil fuels"? Whitley Strieber thinks so. At his Unknown Country website, he cites a Dublin, Ireland-based company called Steorn, where a new invention is being unveiled, using the power of magnets to as he puts it, "defy the standard laws of physics and create free energy." He notes that the concept has "long been thought to be an impossibility," but points to developments in the erstwhile-impossible realm of nuclear fusion to challenge that contention. Meanwhile, over at the company's own site, at http://www.steorn.net, they've issued a challenge to reputable scientists to come and test their new discovery, promising that "We are currently preparing for Phase 1. We will soon finalise [sic] arrangements with the registered scientists and engineers and announce our timeline for implementation of Phase 1."- ST Staff Reports - Free-Market News Network -------- ACTIVISTS CALL Congressman Markey and Thank him!! September 12th, 2006 Progressive Democrats of America http://blog.pdamerica.org/?p=836 Please call Congressman Markey and thank him for his strong support to protect nuclear reactor sites by hardening the waste on site. The congressman joined by other House representatives called for Hardened On Site Storage (HOSS) with the Nuclear Security Coalition. U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) http://markey.house.gov/ israel.klein@mail.house.gov office: (202) 225-2836 fax: (202) 226-0092 ---- Solange Fernex has died, but remains with us Tuesday 12 September 2006 ACDN http://acdn.france.free.fr/spip/breve.php3?id_breve=186&lang=en Solange Fernex, a French pacifist and politician born in 1934 and resident in Biederthal (Alsace), died of cancer on 11 September at around 3pm. After living through some difficult stages and a recent short remission, she slipped away gently. She was the understudy for the first Frenchmen to stand as a ecologist candidate in the legislative elections, Henri JENN (then aged 32), in a Mulhouse electorate in 1973. She headed the list of Europe-Ecologie in the first European elections (1979) gaining nearly 900 000 votes. In 1983, she participated in the Fast for Life, fasting for 40 days in Paris for nuclear disarmament. In 1984 she participated in the foundation of Les Verts (the Green Party). In 2001 she was awarded a prize for her involvement in the struggle against nuclear weapons, the Nuclear-Free Future Award (for Lifetime Achievement). She was President of the French section of WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) until her illness, and a member of the patrons’ committee of the French coordinating group for the Decade of Peace and Nonviolence. With her husband Michel Fernex, a physician, she took assistance to the children of Chernobyl. For many years they denounced the effects of the radioactivity spread by that nuclear catastrophe of April 1986. Five days before her death, she said on the phone to a friend involved in the same struggle that "she was going to watch over our work from her new location."