NucNews October 17, 2006



-------- NUCLEAR 

Supercomputers can't mimic nuke blast

ANGELA CHARLTON
Associated Press
Tue, Oct. 17, 2006

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/15782810.htm

BRUYERES-LE-CHATEL, France - While North Korea was testing a nuclear bomb, France was verifying its nuclear arms, too - with a battalion of soundless, black, cabinet-sized calculators buried beneath a meadow.

The world's established nuclear powers have for the past decade foregone real test blasts for the onscreen kind, harnessing the world's most powerful computers to simulate as best as possible what happens when a nuclear bomb explodes.

So why should any nation test-blast weapons anymore if supersimulators can do the job? Because, nuclear experts say, it has turned out to be tougher than most people thought to mimic the "real thing."

Scientists working in this secretive compound at Bruyeres-le-Chatel, south of Paris, are still several years away from being able to replicate nuclear fusion, or trying out a new bomb design without detonating it. Their American counterparts are only slightly closer, despite billions of dollars spent on supercalculators and superlasers.

"We're not really there yet," said Don Johnston, spokesman for supercomputing programs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a U.S. government nuclear research facility in California. "The more you find out, the more you realize you don't know."

North Korea's test deep inside a mountain last week sent shivers across the globe, revived fears of a nuclear apocalypse and talk of test bans, and drew new attention to these simulation efforts.

In the most basic nuclear weapon, like that dropped on Hiroshima, two loads of highly enriched uranium are slammed together to create a critical mass, a fission chain reaction, and a blast.

Most modern weapons are implosion devices, in which conventional explosives surround a radioactive core and rapidly compress it into a supercritical state.

While computers can't imitate the heat and pressures of these processes, they can perform trillions of calculations per second to predict how existing weapons will deform with age. And scientists can use conventional explosives to simulate implosion, and snap superfast photos of the process with complex X-ray machines.

This is valuable to any army holding a stockpile of aging nuclear arms - especially those who have pledged to abandon the big radioactive bangs in the desert and oceans of decades past.

Didier Besnard describes the simulation program he runs for France's Atomic Energy Commission as the "responsible option."

Anti-nuclear activists concede that simulators are safer than plutonium clouds, but oppose them in principle: They want disarmament, not costly projects that keep nuclear weapons alive.

Mike Townsley of Greenpeace expressed concern that countries could return to testing if computers can't keep up with the weaponry.

He also warned that simulation technology could pose a proliferation risk. "Will we see a black market in nuclear bits and bytes?" he asked.

Nuclear scientists defend supercomputers, saying that they can also be used for medical and environmental research, too. Supercomputers were used to help map the human genome.

France conducted its last nuclear tests in 1995-96 to glean a last round of data before giving up test blasts in favor of full-time simulations.

Today, computer scientists, physicists and other experts at the Bruyeres-le-Chatel use that data as a baseline when they analyze colorful computer graphs that bulge out like warped balloons or plunge into deep canyons.

During the Cold War, nuclear test blasts were at the core of the defense strategy of the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and China. Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons but has not announced tests. India and Pakistan formally joined the nuclear club in the late 1990s with tests of their own.

None has blown up a bomb since. Dozens of countries joined the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, but it cannot come into force until others sign on. Notable holdouts include the United States, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Meanwhile, simulation efforts continue. The strongest players are the United States and France, according to Philip Coyle, senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

At the heart of France's program to test its 300 or so warheads is the Tera-10 supercomputer, capable of 50 teraflops, or 50 trillion calculations, per second.

Little green lights flicker from the scores of black cabinets that line the underground chamber that houses it, the only sign of activity in the silent, football field-sized hall. No humans enter the chamber, except the occasional maintenance worker. Only carefully authorized humans enter the surrounding territory at all.

The people involved in this project are found in nondescript offices scattered nearby and at other sites in France. In one office, post-it notes tile the desk beneath an average-looking computer - but its classified contents mean it must be switched off and locked before outsiders can enter the room.

These supercomputers can predict parts of a nuclear blast. To complete the picture, France and the United States are looking to superlasers to create fusion ignition - which is what happens when a hydrogen bomb explodes.

The U.S. government has put 15 years and $3 billion into its National Ignition Facility, but is now saying it has no guarantees that it will be able to produce fusion after all.

Both the NIF and the French Laser Megajoule project are estimated to go on line in 2009, though the dates have been repeatedly pushed back.

The pressure is on to get the simulation technology up to speed in time to test the first new American nuclear weapon since 1991. The United States has one of the biggest stockpiles but it's getting old, and the government is planning a fresher weapon, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, that could be developed without underground blast tests. The U.S. government is expected to choose an RRW design next month.

Western governments were pressured into halting tests when the end of the Cold War called nuclear arsenals into question. But Coyle, a former nuclear scientist, worries that information gleaned over 50 years of testing could be lost.

"In all the years I was involved in underground testing, time and again we were surprised. Something would happen that we wouldn't expect," he said. "We would realize that we didn't understand everything about the weapon."

"There's no simulation like the real thing."



-------- australia

Nuke power option 'probably not viable'

October 17, 2006 Sydney Morning Herald 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Nuke-power-option-probably-not-viable/2006/10/17/1160850925409.html

A senior government minister says nuclear power is probably not viable in Australia, but it is sensible to consider whether it may have a future role in meeting energy needs.

Finance Minister Nick Minchin said Australia's abundance of cheap coal and gas meant it was difficult to assert the economic viability of establishing a home-grown nuclear industry.

Prime Minister John Howard on Monday continued to back the benefits of nuclear power.

As he announced $350 million in drought aid, Mr Howard talked up the role nuclear power could play in easing the problem of global warming and climate change.

The government has commissioned former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski to head a taskforce examining the pros and cons of nuclear power in Australia.

Senator Minchin insisted the government had not made a decision to go down the nuclear path.

"The government does not have a policy to have nuclear power," he told question time.

"The government has a policy, clearly enunciated, to properly investigate that question under the expertise of Ziggy Switkowski and to report back to the government on the feasibility or otherwise of nuclear power.

"At this stage the economic case would have difficulty being made, because this country has a significant advantage in low-cost coal and gas which supply the mainstay of our base-load power.

"Nuclear power would have to become significantly, relatively cheaper than it is at the moment for it to be able to compete in this country with either coal or gas."

Nuclear energy could be a key part of efforts to tackle global warming by reducing the build-up of greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels, Senator Minchin said.

"If you are worried about human-induced greenhouse gas emissions causing the globe to warm then you must ... contemplate the possibility that nuclear power has a part to play in Australia's future," he said.

He criticised Labor for ruling out nuclear energy in Australia.

"Typical of the Labor Party - stick your head in the sand, ignore the issue, rabbit on about climate change ... but oh, let's not talk about nuclear power," he said.

----

MPs concerned over planned nuclear plant

The World Today - Tuesday, 17 October, 2006  
Reporter: Gillian Bradford

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1767161.htm

ELEANOR HALL: But now to Canberra and the Federal Government has put nuclear power firmly on the national agenda with Industry Minster Ian Macfarlane predicting that construction of a power plant could begin within a decade.

So Labor is asking the inevitable question, just where should this plant be built? And several MP's have today asked the Prime Minister to rule out putting a nuclear plant in their backyard.

In Canberra, Gillian Bradford reports.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: Even a year ago nuclear power was barely on the political radar. But now both the Prime Minister and his Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane are both converts, talking it up as part of the answer to global warming.

Queensland Liberal MP Warren Entsch says he senses there's also been a shift in the public mood.

WARREN ENTSCH: You're always going to get a group that'll say no. But I think that there's a growing awareness of value of nuclear power, particularly in relation to alternatives.

And I think that there is certainly a very, very strong support. Let's have a look at what it's going to cost us to do it, and let's see what the benefits are.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: The obvious question though is where would a power plant be built. Mr Entsch, possibly with the knowledge his own far north Queensland electorate is not a likely site, says he'd welcome such a project

WARREN ENTSCH: I don't have an issue with it.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: Labor MPs though are not so welcoming. Just yesterday the President of the Pacific Nuclear Council suggested a few sites including north of Newcastle in New South Wales and the coast south of the La Trobe valley in Victoria.

So this morning at Parliament, out came the local Labor members to say their piece. First Jill Hall.

JILL HALL: Well I'd like to call on John Howard to assure the people of Newcastle, Hunter, Central Coast, that there won't be a nuclear power station in that area.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: Then Sharon Bird.

SHARON BIRD: Now the question for the Prime Minister, and you can't avoid this, is where will these power stations be? And today, I'm calling on him to rule out the Illawarra region for one of these power stations, thanks.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: The Opposition's problems with the Government's nuclear zeal are much deeper than the "not in my backyard" syndrome.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: Labor's leader Kim Beazley.

KIM BEAZLEY: Well it's not the solution to global warming, that's a nonsense. It's an obsession with an old technology when what we've got to be about is new renewable technologies. That's what we've got to concentrate on.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: Labor's resources spokesman Martin Ferguson says Australia has urgent decisions to make about its energy requirements. And nuclear power need not be part of the mix.

MARTIN FERGUSON: Beyond Australia, nuclear power is a fact of life for a range of countries. For those countries, do not have the energy richness that Australia has.

We actually have a capacity to guarantee our future by making the right decisions with the respect to our future energy sources, but also engaging in new debates such as where we go on transport fuels, the issue of energy security, whether investing gas to liquids and coal to liquids, synthetic diesel, which takes our reliance off oil.

These are the debates that Australia has to have now. These are the debates that the Prime Minister has been running away from for the last couple of years.

Every other nation in the world at the moment is consumed at the moment with the energy security debate. Nuclear power doesn't stack up in Australia economically.

Australia will make energy decisions based on the economics of what is right for Australia.

ELEANOR HALL: And that's Labor's Martin Ferguson ending that report by Gillian Bradford.

----

State rules out nuclear reactor

October 17, 2006 Australia Sunday Mail

http://www.news.com.au/sundaymail/story/0,,20597221-1245,00.html?from=rss

A NUCLEAR reactor will not be built in Western Australia while the current state Government is in power, WA's energy minister says.

Frances Logan said today the Federal Government's push to develop nuclear power was gathering momentum and it was clear WA was seen as the perfect site for a nuclear reactor or dump.

"We do not allow uranium to be mined in WA and will not allow a nuclear reactor to be built in this state," Mr Logan said.

"We will also oppose any move to make WA the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste."

Australian Nuclear Association head Clarence Hardy had identified the coast south and north of Perth as a potential site, he said.

Earlier today, WA Premier Alan Carpenter said the Federal Government would do better to support WA in its bid to secure 15 per cent of gas reserves for domestic use instead of going down the nuclear power path.

Mr Carpenter said he was trying to secure sufficient quantities of domestic gas to fuel the economy for a long time in the future.

"And the federal government should be supporting us in that policy direction," Mr Carpenter said on ABC Radio.

"Not trying to impose upon us by stealth conditions which will lead to uranium fired nuclear power plants in (Perth) or in the south-west of Western Australia.

"We don't need to go down that path and we shouldn't."

----

Nuclear energy has record of safety and security

By Michael Angwin
October 17, 2006 THE AGE

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/nuclear-energys-record-of-safety-and-security/2006/10/16/1160850866632.html

In contrast to Jeremy Rifkin's assertion (Opinion, 4/10), nuclear power is not being "resurrected" or "re-introduced" into the world. Nuclear power has never been away. The world has been living safely with nuclear power for 50 years.

Today, 442 nuclear power plants produce 16 per cent of the world's electricity, cleanly and virtually without carbon dioxide emissions. Australia exports uranium to many of the 31 countries using nuclear power under 19 safeguards treaties negotiated since 1979.

As the cost of energy rises throughout the world and global warming becomes a more pressing issue, the world's demand for nuclear energy is also rising. From Australia's point of view, with one third of the world's known low-cost uranium resources and only 20 per cent of the world's production, this represents a major opportunity with a potential pay-off in jobs and export dollars.

Rifkin questions the economics of nuclear power. The capital cost of nuclear power plants is greater than the alternatives. Yet, around the world, 28 plants supplying more than 22,000 megawatts are under construction by either governments or private corporations. That they are being built despite a substantial capital cost component is strong evidence they are economic. The low fuel cost is the key to the economics of nuclear power plants.

Where nuclear power is not affordable or economic, a different fuel mix will emerge. Australia is a case in point. Because of the low cost of alternative fuels, it is one of the few countries in which nuclear power is not competitive at present. Its future viability is being debated today and will continue to be.

Rifkin's second contention is that "scientists still don't know how to safely transport, dispose of or store nuclear waste". Yet the record shows that there have not been significant problems or incidents in transport, disposal or storage of nuclear wastes in the half century of nuclear power.

The management of used nuclear fuel involves storage as the level of radioactivity diminishes. After 40 years, the level of radioactivity is reduced to about one thousandth of the original level. The used fuel can then be disposed of in deep geological repositories.

Safety is a strong point for reactor operation too. The Chernobyl disaster tragically underlined the reason plants of that type could never be built outside the Soviet Union. The incident at Three Mile Island in America in 1979 resulted in injury to no one or any greater dose of radiation than one would get in an hour's flight.

Third, Rifkin's belief that known supplies of uranium are so limited that they may "fail to meet demand, possibly as early as 2026" is misleading. The known resources of any mineral, including uranium, bear little relationship to what is in the Earth's crust. There is a strong and proportional relationship between known resources and the money and effort spent looking for and defining them. Little exploration effort has been expended on uranium since the mid-1980s. That is now changing, as demand for uranium grows.

Even if Rifkin were right, so what? In that circumstance, other fuels would be relatively more economic and the mix of fuels used in the world would change.

Fourth, he argues that the growth of the nuclear industry increases the hazards of terrorism. The point is a contentious one, especially as there has not been a nuclear-related terrorist attack of the kind Rifkin refers to. What can be said is that research shows that US nuclear reactor structures can protect the fuel from the impact of commercial aircraft; and that such an attack would not result in significant radioactive contamination nearby.

Finally, Rifkin seems to complain that nuclear power represents the centralised technology of a bygone era. The fact is that most demand for power is still demand for continuous, reliable supply on a large scale, which nuclear power is well suited to supply. There is nothing "bygone" about that. At the same time, there is no reason why distributed technologies - small-scale power generation close to the point of use - should not co-exist with large-scale technologies such as nuclear energy and coal.

Michael Angwin is executive director of the Australian Uranium Association.

----

Ministers push case for nuclear solution

Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent
October 17, 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ministers-push-case-for-nuclear-solution/2006/10/16/1160850872643.html

THE Federal Government has ramped up its push for nuclear energy with one minister suggesting work on the first power station could begin within 10 years.

With crippling drought placing the focus on climate change, the Prime Minister, John Howard, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, and the Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane, all spruiked nuclear energy yesterday as part of the solution.

A Government-appointed taskforce inquiring into the nuclear industry is due to report by the end of this year, but it was clear yesterday the Government had embraced the concept of nuclear power in the context of climate change and would be pushing it in the lead-up to next year's federal election.

"If we're serious about having a debate about global warming, particularly as the holder of some of the largest uranium reserves in the world, we have got to be willing to consider the nuclear option," Mr Howard said.

"It is part of the solution, I'm not saying it's the only solution."

Mr Macfarlane told the Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference in Sydney that while other forms of renewable energy needed to be explored, nuclear power was the only source of non-fossil fuel-energy which could provide significant levels of power.

"Only nuclear power offers Australia a base-load energy option with the potential to dramatically slash the country's greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "Nuclear power has the potential to bridge that emerging gap between this country's economic development and the impact it has on our environment."

Mr Macfarlane acknowledged there were risks but a "factual, non-hysterical debate" was needed. He forecast that planning for a nuclear power station could begin within 10 years.

The Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, warned recently the only way to make nuclear energy financially competitive would be to tax the rival coal and gas industries so heavily as to make them non-viable.

The Labor leader, Kim Beazley, restated his party's opposition to nuclear energy yesterday because it was old and dirty technology that created problems with waste. He has been using the drought to promote his climate change policies which focus on clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

"Our future is about renewables, not reactors," he said during a visit to a wind- and solar-powered school in Canberra.

Mr Downer said he was "enormously impressed" by two nuclear power stations he visited on a recent trip to Finland. "Nuclear power is a very real option. It works well in a lot of parts of the world and it's entirely clean."

Pacific Nuclear Council vice-president Clarence Hardy said nuclear power stations would have to be built on the coast and he nominated the Hunter Valley, Queensland and Western Australia as potential sites.




-------- britain

Sellafield decision offers 'little comfort'

Tuesday, 17th October, 2006 EIRCOM
	 
http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/9110803?view=Eircomnet

The decision of a British court to levy an €850,000 fine on the Sellafield nuclear plant offers "little comfort" that the British authorities will tackle its "poor safety culture", the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, has said.

British Nuclear Group was fined £500,000 (€743,000), plus £68,000 in costs at Carlisle Crown Court yesterday for failing to spot and stop an eight-month long leak of 83,400 litres of radioactive liquid within the plant's grounds.

The liquid contained 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium escaped from a broken pipe into a sealed concrete holding site. No-one was injured and no radiation escaped from the plant.

The decision of the UK Health and Safety Executive to take a prosecution was welcome, and the fine "goes some way towards reflecting the serious issues" caused by the leak, he said.

"However, it gives little comfort that the poor ongoing safety culture identified can, or will, be tackled by the United Kingdom authorities," the Minister said.

The company's own internal report found that staff believed the new Thorp reprocessing plant would not leak and that "nothing could go wrong since the plant was relatively new".

It also showed that staff had failed to carry out safety tests that would have revealed the 2005 leak earlier and a camera examination because it would have curbed production, he said.

"We have been here before. The new safety dawn promised, and ultimately signed off on, by the UK regulatory authorities has proved to be false. The Irish Government's concerns are in no way diminished by this episode.

"This leak provides further evidence, if such were needed, that the UK authorities should make the current shutdown of the Thorp plant a permanent feature," said the Minister.

The Government will continue to hold the British government "accountable and responsible" for Sellafield's operations in the UK and to the European Commission, he said.

Demanding Sellafield's closure, Fine Gael TD Fergus O'Dowd said the fine is "an absolute pittance", particularly since the Crown Court judge reduced it from £750,000.

"I have absolutely no confidence in Sellafield's management and its ability to run the plant safely. The management concerned must be held personally accountable and fired without delay," said the Louth TD.

"The fact that enough nuclear waste to fill a 25 metre pool leaked undetected for months highlights the lax attitude to safety at the plant and the real danger it poses to Ireland.

"Time and time again, the Government and the Irish people have been told lies about Sellafield with leaks covered up and safety records falsified. And [ it] still represents a prime terrorist target," he said.

Labour spokesman on nuclear safety, Emmet Stagg, said the fine was "a significant decision", but it was, nevertheless, "insufficient" given the potential threat that Sellafield posed for Ireland.

"For years Ireland has had to put up with ongoing discharge of harmful waste into the Irish Sea and the risk of a nuclear explosion or a major terrorist attack on one of the British plants.

"The British government, however, seem totally oblivious to the serious safety implications any major accident would pose," said Mr Stagg.

Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe said British prime minister Tony Blair should note the remarks of the presiding judge, that Sellafield "did not have a good safety record".

"This should be a stark reminder to the UK of the danger of proceeding with a new programme of nuclear power stations," he said.

----

Parties focus on nuclear problems
Politicians opposed to nuclear have focused on the problems

Tuesday, 17 October 2006 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6059692.stm

Anti-nuclear politicians have seized on problems at Hunterston B nuclear power station to underline their arguments against building any new ones.

British Energy found cracks in one of the two reactors at the Ayrshire plant, with 92 out of 500 boiler tubes experiencing defects.

Scottish Green and SNP MSPs said it was dangerous to rely on nuclear power.

The Scottish Executive said it would only consider building a new plant if the waste issue was resolved.

Scottish Greens said the problems emphasised an over-reliance on nuclear power while the SNP said First Minister Jack McConnell's energy policy was cracking along with the pipes at Hunterston.

Waste management

The first minister has been accused of being evasive on the issue of new nuclear plants.

Mr McConnell, who is in the US and unavailable for comment, recently said he suspects Scotland has the capacity to meet its energy needs through a massive increase in the use of renewable sources.

An executive spokesman said: "We will not support the further development of new nuclear power stations in Scotland while waste management issues remain unresolved."

There have also been problems at Hinkley Point, another nuclear plant run by British Energy in Somerset, with ongoing inspections of three reactors at the site. 



-------- china 

Vice premier stresses nuclear fusion development

2006-10-17 (Xinhua)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/17/content_5215898.htm?rss=1

   CHENGDU, Oct. 17 -- Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan has called for expanded international cooperation in controlled nuclear fusion development.

    Controlled nuclear fusion could be a viable solution for the world's energy supply, said Zeng in a letter to the ongoing 21st International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Fusion Energy Conference.

    It is seen as an efficient way for people to generate infinite and clean energy, said Zeng, and China has been actively promoting nuclear fusion development.

    Zeng said China expects to join the international community in conducting research in this field and pushing for the sustainable development of the world.

    More than 800 scientists from around the world are attending the six-day conference that kicked off on Monday.

----

21st IAEA Fusion Energy Conference opens in Chengdu

October 17, 2006 Xinhua

 http://english.people.com.cn/200610/17/eng20061017_312403.html

The 21st International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Fusion Energy Conference kicked off in Chengdu, capital of China's Sichuan Province on Monday.

Over 800 scientists from around the world are attending the six-day event, which is being hosted by a developing country for the first time.

"China was selected to host the conference because its nuclear research institutes have achieved some outstanding experimental results in the field of controlled nuclear fusion," said Pan Chuanhong, director of the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP).

Controlled nuclear fusion replicates the energy generation process of the sun and is nicknamed 'artificial sun'.

China started research into 'artificial sun' in 1965 and the Chengdu-based SWIP, the country's largest institute specializing in controlled nuclear fusion and plasma physics studies, has since built three nuclear fusion research devices.

"Deuterium and tritium extracted from one liter of sea water would produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline after nuclear fusion," Zhou Caipin, deputy director of Center for Fusion Science of Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP), said. "It's unlimited energy will solve the dearth of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and it is much cleaner than fission."



<a name="du"></a>

-------- depleted uranium

The Pentagon’s manna from heaven

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

http://theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/2006/10/pentagons-manna-from-heaven.html

On 7 February 2000, Nato’s then Secretary General, Lord Robertson, wrote to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan: I can confirm that DU (Depleted Uranium) was used during the Kosovo conflict … during approximately 100 missions. The GAU-8/A API round (left) is designated PGU-13/6 and uses a streamlined projectile housing a sub-calibre kinetic energy perpetrator machined from DU, a non-critical by-product of the uranium refining process … A total of approximately 31,000 rounds of DU ammunition was used in Operation Allied Force. The major focus of these operations was in an area west of the Péc-Djakovica-Pritzen highway … However, many missions using DU also took place outside of these areas. At this moment it is impossible to state accurately every location where DU was used.

Before that admission, Finland’s Minister of the Environment, Satu Hassi, issued a statement: I think the EU should make an initiative: military use of DU should be forbidden. Depleted Uranium is a waste from the nuclear industry. In the industry itself, the handling of DU is strictly regulated and controlled, and waste is kept in guarded areas. But in military use, in combat situations and test shooting, the very same waste is dispersed into the environment, where the spread follows a haphazard pattern. Munitions containing DU are now part of the armament of many countries. I am of the opinion that the use of DU should be banned … It will permanently contaminate the areas where it is used with toxic heavy metal.

DU is seen by the Pentagon as manna from heaven. Nuclear waste costs next to nothing, the supply is unlimited and uranium-tipped ‘tank-busters’ have extra ‘penetrative power’. Therefore when the DU controversy arose after the Gulf war, and refused to go away, the Pentagon became even more secretive than normal. Like all debates which leave the public dependent on the competence and integrity of scientists, this one often generated more heat than light. The topic’s vulnerability to journalistic oversimplification assisted the Pentagon and arms industry, which share a determination to obstruct or subvert DU research. When the US government commissioned a Rand report, in response to growing public disquiet, its authors omitted to mention DU’s most dangerous feature, its transmutations into ceramic aerosols. (Pliable - the senior staff at Rand have included James Schlesinger, former CIA director and pro-nuclear Secretary of Defense, and Henry Rowen, former head of the CIA's National Intelligence Command).

In August 1999 the ceramic aerosol phenomenon was explained by Dr Rosalie Bertell, an epidemiologist with thirty years’ experience of studying the health effect of exposure to ionizing radiation: DU is radioactive waste, and it attains special deadly properties when it is fired in battle. Because of its density and the speed of the missile or bullet containing it, DU bursts into flame on impact. It reaches very high temperatures, and becomes a ceramic aerosol which can be dispersed 100km from the point of impact. Because the radiation dose to te person depends on the strength of the source of the radiation, and the time duration of the exposure, this ceramic aerosol formation is important. Ceramic (glass) is highly insoluble in the normal lung fluid, and when inhaled, this ceramic particulate will remain in the lungs and body tissue before being excreted in urine … Much of the ceramic DU aerosol is in respirable size particles and it stays in the lungs for upwards of two years … Ingested uranium is excreted in faeces, basically never entering into the human blood and lymph system. In contrast, the DU ceramic aerosol released in war enters directly into lymph and blood through the lung-blood barrier and circulates throughout the whole body …Women (because of their radiation sensitive breast and uterine tissue) and children (because their bones are growing, thus able to pick up more DU than adults) wil be more at risk from delayed DU weapon action … DU is also a heavy metal and is chemically toxic to humans … The aerosol can be resuspended in wind or when disturbed by traffic and this inhaled DU represents a seriously enhanced risk of damage immune systems and fatal cancers.

The chilling account above is from Dervla Murphy's 2002 book Through the Embers of Chaos, Balkan Journeys (John Murray ISBN 0719565103). Not happy reading, but essential reading nevertheless.

The 26 member countries of Nato are – Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States – but not Finland, home of Satu Hassi, or Ireland, home of author Dervla Murphy.

* Dr Rosalie Bertell is is an internationally recognized expert in the field of radiation and has been a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart for more than fifty years. After the Bhopal disaster in 1984, she directed the International Medical Commission investigating the effects of the Union Carbide chemical spill that contributed to some 15,000 deaths, and after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 resulted in 31 dead and forced the evacuation of 135,000, she helped convene a tribunal to fight for the rights of those victims.
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/RBanNun.html

* For more on Depleted Uranium follow this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

For more on the terrible aftermath of Operation Allied Force take An Overgrown Path to The Beautiful Blue Danube - Pancevo, and take this Path to find out about Musicians against nuclear weapons



-------- korea

North Korean Fuel Identified as Plutonium

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: October 17, 2006 NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/world/asia/17diplo.html?_r=1&oref=login

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — American intelligence agencies have concluded that North Korea’s test explosion last week was powered by plutonium that North Korea harvested from its small nuclear reactor, according to officials who have reviewed the results of atmospheric sampling since the blast.

U.N. Press Release and Text of Resolution (un.org)

The officials, who would not speak for attribution because it was an intelligence matter, were responding to specific questions about what had been learned about the nature of the weapon.

As administration and intelligence officials watched for indications that the North might be preparing a second test, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned North Korea on Monday that it risked even further isolation if it took such a provocative action.

American officials have reported recent activity at the test site, leading some to believe that another test might be carried out soon.

The intelligence agencies’ finding that the weapon was based on plutonium strongly suggested that the country’s second path to a nuclear bomb — one using uranium — was not yet ready. The uranium program is based on enrichment equipment and know-how purchased from Pakistan’s former nuclear chief.

Nuclear experts said that the use of plutonium to make the bomb was important because it suggested that North Korea probably had only one nuclear program mature enough to produce weapons.

“This is good news because we have a reasonably good idea of how much plutonium they have made,” said Siegfried S. Hecker, the former chief of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a visiting professor at Stanford University. Mr. Hecker, who has visited North Korea and is one of the few foreigners to have seen parts of its nuclear infrastructure, said that it was his guess that “they tried to test a reasonably sophisticated device, and they had trouble imploding it properly.”

The supply of plutonium materials is known from the days when international inspectors kept tabs on the fuel rods in the North’s reactor, and intelligence analysts estimate that North Korea has enough material to make 6 to 10 plutonium bombs.

Politically, the results of the test may revive last week’s finger-pointing about who is more responsible for the Korean test: Bill Clinton or President Bush.

As president, Mr. Clinton negotiated a deal that froze the production and weaponization of North Korea’s plutonium, but intelligence agencies later determined that North Korea began its secret uranium program under his watch. The plutonium that North Korea exploded was produced, according to intelligence estimates, either during the administration of the first President Bush or after 2003, when the North Koreans threw out international inspectors and began reprocessing spent nuclear fuel the inspectors had kept under seal.

Unlike the Clinton administration in 1994, the current Bush administration chose not to threaten to destroy North Korea’s fuel and nuclear reprocessing facilities if they tried to make weapons.

That threat in 1994 — which was ultimately resolved with an agreement to freeze the weapons program — was made by William J. Perry, who was the defense secretary then. In an interview on Monday, Mr. Perry said: “There was a brief window to catch this plutonium before it was made into bomb fuel. It’s gone. It’s out of the barn now.”

After a week of some lingering doubt about whether the test had indeed been a nuclear detonation, the office of John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, confirmed that much in a statement issued Monday.

“Analysis of air samples collected on Oct. 11, 2006, detected radioactive debris which confirms that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of Punggye on Oct. 9, 2006,” said the statement, putting on the record a conclusion that officials first disclosed Friday, the night before the United Nations Security Council voted on sanctions. “The explosion yield was less than a kiloton,” the statement added.

It gave no further details, and the officials who described the early findings did not disclose more beyond the conclusion that plutonium, not uranium, was the device’s core.

The determination that the blast was nuclear was announced a day before Secretary Rice was to depart for a trip to Japan, South Korea, China and Russia. She will go to the capitals of the nations that have been engaged in the six-party talks over North Korea’s nuclear program except, of course, North Korea.

The unanimous resolution adopted by the Security Council last week imposing sanctions on military material and luxury goods was proof of “a strong and firm hand and strong and firm response,” Ms. Rice said Monday during a State Department news conference. She said the international community wanted “to leave open a door for North Korea to take a different course if it wishes to do so.”

Pressed to respond to analysts’ assessment that desires by China and South Korea for continued economic and business exchanges with North Korea might trump demands for a stiff sanctions and inspections regime, Ms. Rice said her goal was to work out the details of putting the Council resolution into effect.

The Associated Press reported Monday from Dandong, China, that customs officials were examining trucks at the North Korean border as China complied with the United Nations sanctions.

However, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, indicated that his nation would not conduct similar searches at sea.

Mr. Wang made clear that China would not halt ships and board them to search for ballistic missiles or for bomb-making equipment or material that can be used to manufacture nuclear, chemical and biological arms.

“This is a resolution we have to implement,” he told reporters at the United Nations. “The question was raised whether China will do inspections. Inspections yes, but inspection is different than interdiction and interception. I think different countries will do it different ways.”

During the news conference on Monday, Ms. Rice said she was “not concerned that the Chinese are going to turn their backs on their obligations. I don’t think they would have voted for a resolution if they did not intend to carry through on it.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

----

N.Korea Plans Series of Nuclear Tests: Report

By REUTERS
October 17, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-test.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials say North Korea's military has informed China it intends to carry out a series of underground nuclear tests, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

No further details were provided in the report.

The United States said North Korea had moved equipment into place that may indicate it plans a second nuclear test, despite international condemnation of its first underground nuclear explosion on October 9.

North Korea has denounced U.N. sanctions over its nuclear test as a declaration of war.

----

US Warns North Korea Against Second Nuclear Test

by Olivier Knox
Washington (AFP) Oct 17, 2006

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Warns_North_Korea_Against_Second_Nuclear_Test_999.html

The United States on Tuesday warned North Korea not to conduct a second nuclear weapons test and dismissed its claim that UN sanctions imposed after a first test amounted to a declaration of war. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, bound for Asia and Russia to firm up support for enforcing those punitive measures, said a second test would "only deepen their isolation, which is pretty deep right now."

"There are a number of states that are telling the North Koreans that further escalation would not be in their interests or in the interests of peace and security," she told reporters aboard her official airplane.

Earlier, White House spokesman Tony Snow indicated that Washington fully expected Pyongyang to carry out another nuclear test, saying: "The North Koreans have made no secret of their desire to be provocative."

"It would not be a good thing for them, but it certainly would not be out of character," said Snow.

Asked to elaborate, he noted that the UN Security Council had unanimously adopted sanctions on North Korea after a first test on October 9 and added that if North Korean leaders "believe that somehow people are going to give them a pass on this, they're going to find out that they're wrong."

Snow also shrugged off Pyongyang's announcement, in one of its harshest statements in years, that it viewed UN sanctions imposed after the first test as "a declaration of war" and that it was ready for battle.

"I don't think North Korea has declared war. I think what it did is it tried to characterize the UN resolution as an act of war, which it is not," said the spokesman.

Separately, a US intelligence official said that activity detected at potential North Korean test sites could be consistent with preparations for a second nuclear test but not necessarily evidence a test is imminent.

"How close they may be to pulling the chain or pressing a button is what's not clear," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It is reasonable to expect the government of North Korea will do what it can to test the will, the determination and the unity of the United Nations, the United Nations Security Council, and the other members of the six-party talks," said Snow.

Those negotiations, stalled since November 2005, group China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States in an effort to convince North Korea to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for economic aid and an end to its international isolation.

Rice, seeking to prepare an even tougher response to any second nuclear test, left Washington Tuesday and was scheduled to hold talks with Japanese leaders in Tokyo on Wednesday and then meet together with her Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Seoul on Thursday.

The top US diplomat will then meet Chinese leaders in Beijing before heading to Moscow.

US officials said she was bearing an ambitious plan for inspections of North Korean sea, land and air shipments to ensure the erratic regime does not sell its newly proven nuclear arsenal to terrorists or rogue states.

North Korea walked away from the six-party talks a year ago, after the United States imposed sanctions on an Asian bank alleged to be acting as a clearinghouse for illicit North Korean trade and finance activities.

Rice's top envoy on the Korean issue, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, warned in Seoul that Washington would regard a second nuclear test as "a very belligerent answer" from North Korea and said the international community would respond "very clearly" to such an action.

Meanwhile, China and Russia, long-time allies of North Korea and the most reluctant of the major powers to impose sanctions on the reclusive state, vowed Tuesday to enforce the UN resolution.

----

North Korea Tells World Not To Follow US, Labels Sanctions "Declaration Of War"

by Jun Kwanwoo
Seoul (AFP) Oct 17, 2006

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/North_Korea_Tells_World_Not_To_Follow_US_Labels_Sanctions_Declaration_Of_War_999.html

North Korea warned the world Tuesday against following the United States in trying to enforce new UN sanctions, calling the measures a "declaration of war" and stressing it was ready for battle. In one of the North's harshest statements in years, Pyongyang rejected the sanctions imposed after it tested a nuclear bomb last week and lashed out at both the United States and the UN Security Council.

The announcement, dismissed by South Korean and US officials in Seoul as nothing new, came on the same day as Japanese and US media reports that the reclusive communist state may be planning a second test.

It underlined North Korea's unwillingness to bow to international pressure, which had been mounting for months before the Council's vote Saturday to punish it for testing a nuclear weapon.

"The DPRK (North Korea) wants peace but is not afraid of war," a foreign ministry spokesman said in the statement.

"We will deliver merciless blows without hesitation to whoever tries to breach our sovereignty and right to survive under the excuse of carrying out the UN Security Council resolution."

North Korea has repeatedly said the threat of attack from the United States is the reason for its nuclear arsenal.

Tuesday's statement said Washington had "instigated" the resolution, which was approved and co-sponsored by all 15 Council countries, and that the Council had overlooked US "hostility" to the North.

"This is an immoral behaviour utterly devoid of impartiality," said the unnamed spokesman, quoted by the North's official KCNA news agency.

"The UNSC 'resolution', needless to say, cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of a war against the DPRK because it was based on the scenario of the US, keen to destroy the socialist system."

The statement warned the US it "would be well advised not to miscalculate."

"If the Bush group ... calculates that it can bring the DPRK to its knees through sanctions and pressure, pursuant to the already bankrupt hostile policy toward it, there would be nothing more ridiculous and foolish."

The statement came as Christopher Hill, the lead US negotiator on North Korea's nuclear programmes, arrived in South Korea for talks on firming up commitments to enforce the sanctions.

"I don't think it really contained anything new," Hill said, when asked his reaction. "Frankly I don't think it is particularly helpful to anybody, especially not helpful to North Korea."

"There are no surprises," said Chun Yung-Woo, Seoul's lead negotiator, before the talks with Hill and Russian negotiator Alexander Alexevev. He called it "the usual rhetoric that they have been using."

Hill also commented on reports of possible preparations for a second test.

"I think we would all regard a second test as a very belligerent answer on North Korea's part to the international community," he said. "I think the international community will respond very clearly to the DPRK on this."

The UN resolution calls on the North to give up all weapons of mass destruction, bans nations from sending heavy weapons or luxury goods to the North, and calls for a freeze on any of the North's weapons-related funds.

More controversially, it also allows for the inspection of cargo going in and out of North Korea.

Both China and South Korea, while insisting they back the sanctions, have indicated they do not want to be involved in intercepting North Korean ships -- a move they fear could make an already tense situation even worse.

Seoul reiterated Tuesday that sanctions should seek to pressure the North to resume negotiations and must not spark an armed clash.

Hill said the Proliferation Security Initiative, which was set up by the United States to intercept ships in a bid to stop the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, and would be expanded under the sanctions, was voluntary.

He is laying the groundwork for Thursday's visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will meet in Seoul with the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan.

----

North Korean Fuel Identified as Plutonium

October 17, 2006, New York Times 

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30711F835540C748DDDA90994DE404482

By THOM SHANKER AND DAVID E. SANGER; MARK MAZZETTI CONTRIBUTED REPORTING. (NYT); Foreign Desk

American intelligence agencies have concluded that North Korea's test explosion last week was powered by plutonium that North Korea harvested from its small nuclear reactor, according to officials who have reviewed the results of atmospheric sampling since the blast. 



-------- missile defense

Russian general: U.S. missile defense in Europe threatens Russia

Posted 10/17/2006 (AP) 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-10-17-russia-missiledefense_x.htm

MOSCOW — A top Russian general said his country would view the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense components in eastern and central Europe as a security threat and take retaliatory measures, according to an article published Tuesday.

Yevgeny Buzhinsky, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry's international military cooperation department, urged the United States and its allies to refrain from unilateral action and negotiate with Moscow.

"The deployment of missile defense near the Russian borders could pose a real threat to our deterrent forces," Buzhinsky said in an article published in the daily Izvestia. "We would view that as an unfriendly gesture on behalf of the United States, some eastern European nations and NATO as a whole. Such actions would require taking adequate retaliatory measures of military and political character."

Buzhinsky wouldn't elaborate how exactly Russia could respond to the possible deployment of U.S. missile defense components in such nations as Poland and Czech Republic, but he warned that "a buildup of military potential near the Russian borders wouldn't strengthen the European security."

"It's still not too late to analyze possible negative consequences of unilateral actions in security sphere and try to avert them," Buzhinsky wrote in the article.

Buzhinsky warned that the deployment of U.S. missile defense components could also make them a desirable target for terrorists. "Advertising missile defense capabilities, the importance of these facilities for the United States and a strong public reaction that can be caused by their destruction would make these sites an attractive target for terror attacks," he said.

Moscow has opposed U.S. plans to deploy a national missile defense system, dismissing Washington's assertions that it would be directed against missile threats from rogue states, not Russia. Moscow, however, has said it is eager to cooperate with NATO partners in developing defenses against short-range missiles.



-------- pacific




-------- pakistan




-------- russia



-------- security

GAO questions $1.2B nuke test contracts

Associated Press/WASHINGTON
By DAN CATERINICCHIA
AP Business Writer, OCT. 17, 2006

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8KQLSQG0.htm

6:51 P.M. ET A government watchdog agency said Tuesday the Department of Homeland Security used "incomplete and unreliable data" to justify nearly $1.2 billion in contracts for radioactive and nuclear material testing monitors at the nation's borders.

The finding by the Government Accountability Office could mean a delay in full-scale production funding for contractors Thermo Electron Corp., Raytheon Co.'s Integrated Defense Systems unit and Canberra Industries Inc.

The companies received the contracts in July to develop and test radiation screening equipment for trucks and cargo containers. The report concluded that DHS "relied on potential future performance to justify the purchase" of the machines.

Congressional budget staffers said Tuesday that because they were given a "heads-up" on the GAO findings, a provision was added to the $35 billion Homeland Security spending bill President Bush signed into law this month that prohibits full-scale production until DHS certifies "a significant increase in operational effectiveness."

A cost-benefit analysis had called for the monitors to identify hidden highly enriched and depleted uranium 95 percent of the time. But DHS test results showed the ID rates were never higher than 53 percent and were as low as 17 percent. The cost-benefit analysis also underestimated by about $181 million the life-cycle costs of the monitors, according to the GAO.

In an Oct. 11 letter to the GAO, Vayl S. Oxford, director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, defended the initial detection rates, saying they "were not intended to determine the absolute capabilities of deployed systems," but instead were used to support initial contract awards. He added that the monitors will undergo additional testing before full-scale production "including the requirement for 95 percent probability of detection."

The GAO also faulted Oxford's office for failing to consider the machines' ability to detect nuclear and radioactive materials other than highly enriched uranium. Oxford's letter said because the uranium "poses the greatest challenge from a detection standpoint," it served as a "reasonable threat baseline."

Oxford e-mailed a statement late Tuesday that said DHS plans to comply with certification requests so that production can go forward.

The GAO report did not mention a related DHS program, under which $1.35 billion in contracts were awarded last month to three companies to develop nuclear-detecting scanners for containers at U.S. ports.

Shares of Thermo Electron rose 65 cents to $41.67 and Raytheon's fell 49 cents to $50.31 in trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.



-------- u.n.

A 'race' to head off nuclear disaster

By William J. Broad and David E. Sanger The New York Times
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2006

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/10/15/news/arms.php

The declaration by North Korea that it has conducted a successful atomic test brought to nine the number of nations believed to have nuclear arms. But atomic officials estimate that as many as 40 more countries have the technical skill, and in some cases the required material, to build a bomb.

That ability, coupled with new nuclear threats in Asia and the Middle East, risks a second nuclear age, officials and arms control specialists say, in which nations are more likely to abandon the old restraints against atomic weapons.

The spread of nuclear technology is expected to accelerate as nations redouble their reliance on atomic power. That will give more countries the ability to make reactor fuel, or, with the same equipment and a little more effort, bomb fuel - the hardest part of the arms equation.

Signs of activity abound. Hundreds of companies are prospecting for uranium where dozens did a few years ago. Argentina, Australia and South Africa are drawing up plans to begin enriching uranium, and other countries are considering doing the same. Egypt is reviving its program to develop nuclear power.

Concern led the International Atomic Energy Agency to summon government officials and experts from around the world to Vienna in September to discuss tightening curbs on who can produce nuclear fuel. "These dangers are urgent," Sam Nunn, a U.S. expert on the politics of nuclear proliferation, told the group. "We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe and, at this moment, the outcome is unclear."

The International Atomic Energy Agency itself exemplifies some of the underlying tensions inherent in the development of nuclear energy. It is the primary United Nations agency charged with detecting proliferation, but it has another mandate as well: to promote safe nuclear power.

For decades, it has done so by running technical aid programs with roughly a hundred states. Some of that knowledge could be useful in a weapons program, though the aid is meant exclusively for civilian use.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, has estimated that as many as 49 nations now know how to make nuclear arms, and he has warned that global tensions could push some over the line. "We are relying," he said, "primarily on the continued good intentions of these countries - intentions which are in turn based on their sense of security or insecurity, and could therefore be subject to rapid change."

In the United States, Democrats and Republicans spent the past week arguing over who lost control of North Korea: Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. But seeds of the problem were planted by President Dwight Eisenhower, just months after the armistice ended the fighting on the Korean Peninsula in 1953.

His program was called Atoms for Peace, and it soon involved dozens of nations, all seeking to unlock the magic of nuclear power.

Almost from the start, evidence accumulated that countries were using civil alliances and reactor technologies to make bombs. By 1960, France had joined the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union as a nuclear weapons state. China held its first test in 1964. Israel had the bomb by 1967 (though it still does not admit to it), India by 1974, South Africa by 1982 (it has since given up its weapons) and Pakistan by 1998.

Six of those countries built their weapons by exploiting at least some technologies that were ostensibly civilian, nuclear analysts say. They enriched uranium beyond the low level needed for power reactors. Or they mined the spent fuel of civil reactors for plutonium - the path that North Korea started taking in the late 1980s or early 1990s, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has worked hard to fight this kind of cheating while also helping with the basic technology. In the 1980s, it aided Iran's hunt for uranium. Even now, Iranian technicians fly to Vienna and agency experts go to Iran to lend a hand.

The hardest part, experts agree, is not acquiring the weapons blueprints but obtaining the fuel.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arms program, who went on to establish the world's largest atomic black market, sold the secrets of how to make centrifuges for enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

Investigators are still trying to learn where else Khan may have planted his nuclear seeds. They discovered outposts of his network in Dubai, Malaysia and South Africa and found that before his fall in 2004 he had visited at least 18 countries, including Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Syria and Saudi Arabia.



-------- u.s. nuc weapons

What Kind of Little Nuke Are You?

by James Gordon Prather
October 17, 2006

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=12542

Editor's note: The New York Times reported today that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that, according to atmospheric sampling, North Korea's test explosion was in fact powered by plutonium. That NYT article fails to explain the overriding significance of the plutonium finding. The piece below (published the same day as the NYT article) clearly describes what the implications of such a finding are for the foreign policy record of the current president and his predecessor.

A critical question, easily answered by President Bush, is this: was the nuke that North Korea just tested a Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 device? That difference, though seemingly technical, is of considerable geopolitical (and just plain political) significance. The answer would indicate whether Bush’s decision to pull out of the Clinton-era Agreed Framework directly resulted in North Korea producing nukes from its plutonium assets “frozen” under that framework or if North Korea indeed did have the uranium-enrichment, bomb-making capabilities that Bush has been claiming—a less likely scenario for all such a program would entail.

As of this writing, we don’t know what kind of bomb was tested, but Bush does because the at-least partially successful nuke blast was not completely contained. The office of the National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said yesterday that analysis of air samples gathered last week detected radioactive debris that confirms North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion. A radiochemical analysis of that debris can quickly and accurately determine the type of nuke and its fission yield.

In the past few months there has been both good news and bad news for Bush. North Korea conducted a test of not only a nuclear weapon, but also ballistic missiles that could reach our West Coast. The good news for Bush is that the tests will help him justify the zillion-dollar ballistic-missile defense boondoggle being constructed in Alaska. The bad news depends on whether North Korea tested a uranium nuke or a plutonium nuke; and whether the media elite chooses to explain the implications of the difference to the voters.

Flashback to 1994

First, let’s briefly look at some recent history.

In 1992, because of a dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency over the analysis of certain materials and activities they were subject to under an IAEA Safeguards Agreement—as required by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—the North Koreans threatened to withdraw from the NPT.

In 1994 President Clinton had persuaded North Korea to sign the Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed not only to remain a signatory to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons but also to shut down its 5-MW, Plutonium-239-producing reactor; close its spent-fuel reprocessing facilities; and place all its existing nuclear materials—including (you guessed it) the Plutonium-239 contained in spent fuel elements—under lock and seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency; and to abandon construction of its 50-MW and 200-MW, Plutonium-239-producing reactors.

At the time, the NPT had to be extended every 5 years, and Clinton was hell-bent on getting the NPT extended indefinitely and to get all countries—especially Israel, India and Pakistan—to become NPT signatories, and to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. For Clinton, the Agreed Framework’s principal benefit was North Korea’s promise to remain a NPT signatory.

What did the Koreans get in return? Well, Clinton promised to facilitate the replacement of their graphite-moderated Plutonium-239 producing reactors with conventional nuclear power plants and promised to provide millions of tons of fuel oil to tide them over until the plants came on line.

But the principal benefit the Koreans got under the Agreed Framework was a promise by the president of the United States to never use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against them. And as denizens of the Hermit Kingdom well know, over the years several American presidents had threatened them with nukes.

Bush Was Aggrieved by the Agreement

Well, you can imagine how constraining Bush the Younger considered the Agreed Framework to be. He couldn’t even threaten to nuke Kim Jong-il. Worse, President Clinton promised when getting the NPT extended indefinitely—and again at the 2000 NPT Review Conference—to never use or threaten to use nukes against any NPT signatory—including Iran.

North Korea was on Bush’s Axis of Evil because it had already supplied Iran ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and was developing ballistic missiles that might one day be capable of reaching our West Coast and carry warheads weighing perhaps several hundred pounds.

So, Bush apparently saw the Agreed Framework as constricting and welcomed a North Korean (and Iraqi and Iranian) withdrawal from the NPT. Although it has not been discussed much, Bush requested a National Intelligence Estimate in 2002 not just for Iraq but also for North Korea—and it was also highly controversial in the intelligence community. That document alleged that Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan had provided North Korea (circa 1997) a dozen or so gas-centrifuges similar to those someone (A.Q. Khan, perhaps?) provided Iran at about the same time. The document also alleged that the Pakistanis trained North Korean engineers on how to operate them. The North Koreans were “assessed” to have produced a substantial amount of weapons-grade uranium. 

In September 2002 U.S. officials privately confronted the North Koreas of having a secret Uranium-235 nuke program, which the North Koreans then vehemently denied publicly, and have continued to deny to this day.

The president—citing the Uranium-235 nuke “intelligence”—stopped the fuel oil shipments to North Korea in November 2002, thereby abrogating the Agreed Framework. As Bush may have intended, the North Koreans almost immediately announced they were withdrawing from the NPT. 

Hence, in January 2003, on the eve of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, North Korea ejected the IAEA inspectors, restarted their Plutonium-239 producing reactor, and began recovering Plutonium-239 from their spent fuel, which had been under IAEA lock and seal since the Agreed Framework was established in 1994.  By most estimates they now have enough Plutonium-239 to make 6-10 nukes and are busy producing more.

So What Was It?

So the question remains: Was that tested nuke Plutonium-239 or Uranium-235? If the nuke was a plutonium bomb, then Bush can put a nuke-armed North Korea on his list of foreign-policy achievements. If it was a uranium bomb, then the 2002 NIE on North Korea was correct.

Uranium or plutonium? America needs to know.

James Gordon Prather's long association with U.S. nuclear weapons programs includes active duty with the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, participation in nuclear weapons tests as a diagnostic physicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and as a technical director at Sandia National Laboratory. He was chief scientist for the Army under the Reagan Administration. Dr. Prather has been actively involved since 1991 in the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Nuclear Threat Reduction programs.



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


-------- new jersey

Oyster Creek shuts down for maintenance work

Posted by the Ocean County Observer on 10/17/06
BY BOB VOSSELLER
STAFF WRITER

http://www.ocobserver.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061017/NEWS/610170308

LACEY — The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station shut down yesterday for scheduled refueling and maintenance.

During the shutdown, workers will perform about 9,000 activities on a variety of plant components and systems, according to spokeswoman Rachelle Benson of AmerGen, owner of Oyster Creek.

Benson said that nearly a third of the reactor's fuel was replaced and that a series of license-renewal inspections are being conducted during the outage. Many of the activities performed during the shutdown cannot be performed while the plant is operating and all are designed to ensure the safe and reliable production of electricity through the 24-hour operating cycle, she said.

Benson said that to support the effort the station is utilizing the talents of more than 1,200 additional workers.

Workers from AmerGen's parent company, Exelon, along with skilled workers from local union halls, travelers from outside the county area and specialized vendors are part of the effort and provide a temporary benefit for the local economy.

"The Oyster Creek team has been preparing for this outage for more than a year," Oyster Creek Vice President Tim Rausch said. "It is now time to put our plan into action and safely perform the work necessary to ensure that the unit will run safely and reliably during its next operating cycle."

Township Committeeman Dave Most, an instrument technician at Oyster Creek, said during Thursday's Township Committee meeting that the two-week outage is part of a regular maintenance program held each year.

AmerGen announced during the spring that it would perform multiple inspections on the drywell shell during the plant's scheduled refueling outage. These additional inspections were agreed upon by the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April and were based on discussions with NRC staff performed as part of the plant's ongoing license renewal process.

The inspections are designed to test the safety function of the drywell shell. The tests will be used by AmerGen to show the NRC that its systems are safe and will meet the criteria for the plant's license renewal through 2029.

The 100-foot drywell shell provides containment in the event of an accident. The lower portion of the shell is spherical with an inside diameter of 70 feet. The exterior portion of the drywell shell is termed the sand bed region. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board granted a federal hearing to a coalition of environmental groups who are opposing the license renewal of Oyster Creek at an Oct. 10 meeting.

The contentions raised by six environmental groups involve safety concerns about the drywell shell. The environmental groups would like to see the Oyster Creek outage last until all safety issues are resolved.



-------- tennessee

Nuclear plant defends security compliance

By Duncan Mansfield
The Associated Press
Tue, Oct. 17, 2006

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/15777356.htm

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A watchdog group Monday questioned whether the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge has met the Department of Energy's own standards for security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Rather than requiring Y-12 to meet these requirements, the DOE's approach can only be compared to lowering a hurdle to allow a sprinter to easily jump over it," the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight said in its report.

A spokesman for Y-12, a high-security complex 20 miles west of Knoxville that makes parts for every nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal and hosts the country's principal storehouse for bomb-grade uranium, objected to the report's conclusions.

"We are in full compliance" with the 2003 security requirements, spokesman Steve Wyatt said.

Y-12 has received "an extension" from Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on further upgrades for such things as extra guards and new storage facilities, contending they would be unnecessary when a modern, $500 million, uranium storehouse opens in 2009 or 2010.

Peter Stockton, a former DOE official who is now the Project on Government Oversight's senior investigator contends five years is too long to wait for Y-12 to secure its bomb-grade uranium stockpile.

The Project on Government Oversight report said Y-12 houses 400 to 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium - enough for about 14,000 nuclear warheads - in five buildings. If terrorists were able to get inside Y-12, they potentially could set off a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device that could cause 60,000 casualties, including 18,000 fatalities, and harmful radiation sickness for over 40 miles, the report said.



-------- MILITARY 


-------- africa

Eritrea incursion 'to pick crops'
The UN said Eritrea's move breached the 2000 peace deal

Tuesday, 17 October 2006 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6057352.stm

Eritrean troops are in a prohibited buffer zone on the border with Ethiopia to harvest crops, says Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu.

UN officials said 1,500 troops and 14 tanks entered the zone on Monday.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the incursion constituted "a major breach of the ceasefire" and could jeopardise the peace process.

The temporary buffer zone is part of a peace deal signed by the two countries in 2000 to end a two-year border war.

Mr Abdu said the soldiers went to the region every year at harvest time.

"If the harvest is not taken, it will be lost with severe consequences for our food security programme," he said.

When asked by AFP news agency why they had tanks, he said that if soldiers move they "have to take their equipment".

The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee), which has more than 2,000 troops in the zone, reported the move.

It said Eritrean forces also took over one of its checkpoints in the buffer zone.

Mr Dujarric said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was concerned.

"This is a very troubling development, and he calls clearly on the government of Eritrea to withdraw its troops from that zone immediately," Mr Dujarric told the BBC.

Eritrea has placed restrictions on the UN operation since last year in response to Ethiopia's failure to withdraw from the disputed town of Badme.

An international arbitration commission awarded Badme to Eritrea in 2002.

But Eritrea has become increasingly frustrated with the failure of Ethiopia to accept the decision. It banned western UN staff from Eritrea last year.

Mr Abdu said that if Ethiopia had accepted the decision, civilian farmers and not soldiers would be harvesting the crops.

A spokesman for Ethiopia says they are monitoring the situation in the demilitarised zone very closely. 
	
TENSE BORDER
Dec 2000: Peace agreement
Apr 2002: Border ruling
Mar 2003: Ethiopian complaint over Badme rejected
Sep 2003: Ethiopia asks for new ruling
Feb 2005: UN concern at military build-up
Oct 2005: Eritrea restricts peacekeepers' activities
Nov 2005: UN sanctions threat if no compliance with 2000 deal



-------- iraq

Report From Iraq: Civil War Intensifies From Baghdad to Balad

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/17/1439233

Los Angeles Times Baghdad Bureau Chief Borzou Daragahi joins us from Baghdad: “The level of bloodshed between Sunni and Shiites as well as the number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces… is as bad as I have seen it.” [includes rush transcript] Four days of slaughter in the town of Balad killed at least 91 people by Monday. The bloodshed began with the beheadings of 17 Shia workers on Friday. In response Shiite militias poured into the area and went on a killing spree. Fifty Iraqis were killed in other attacks across the country, including up to 30 dead from two major bombings in Baghdad. Iraqi police also reported finding 67 corpses scattered throughout the capital on Monday.

Meanwhile, President Bush telephoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to reaffirm his full support for the Iraqi government. White House spokesman Tony Snow said that Bush urged Maliki to ignore rumors that Washington has set a deadline for the Iraqi government to control the activities of insurgents.

This comes as a White House panel of advisers is said to be ready to call for a major shift in Washington’s policy on Iraq. Members of the panel, which is led by former US Secretary of State James Baker, told the Los Angeles Times that this could include large troop withdrawals. The U.S. death toll in Iraq has been soaring this month. Fifty nine U.S. soldiers have died so far in October, putting it on pace to be one of the deadliest months of the war for US forces.

- Borzou Daragahi, Baghdad bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. He joins us on the line from the Iraqi capital.

AMY GOODMAN: Borzou Daragahi is the Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. He joins us on the phone from Baghdad. Welcome to Democracy Now! Borzou, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Thanks a lot.

AMY GOODMAN: First, can you talk about this conversation that President Bush had with al-Maliki about the issue of there is no timeline?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, I’m not sure what happened in the conversation. I saw Tony Snow's remarks on the transcript. But I can tell you that from this end, Maliki, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is looking increasingly weak and ineffective. People have major doubts about him. Now, that’s not all his fault. It’s not just the driver, it’s the car. It’s flawed. The government is structurally weak. The constitution makes for a weak prime minister who is hemmed in by all of these checks and balances. So to some extent, even if he wanted to do something to rein in militias or restore services, he’s not really able to.

AMY GOODMAN: And the level of violence right now?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: It’s very, very high, as bad as I’ve ever seen it, the level of bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites, as well as really the number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces. It’s not just a civil sectarian war that’s going on. There’s also the insurgency is raging strong as ever. So it’s really -- feels like it’s getting out of control.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Borzou Daragahi. He is in Baghdad right now. We have reports from a London paper, The Times of London, reporting calls are increasing to oust al-Maliki and replace the current government with a group of five strongmen who would impose martial law. According to the paper, the proposal to suspend the democratic process in Iraq is being widely discussed in political and intelligence circles.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: I mean, I think that’s a really, you know, interesting theory, but the reality on the ground is that the government’s just weak. It’s not just the person at the helm. What are they going to do? Order a crackdown on the militias? The militias are probably as strong, if not stronger, than the government. There would be a massive uprising in the south. There would be an increasing move in the Kurdish north towards autonomy. They just don't have a lot of really good options. And that coup option, while it might sound good on a PowerPoint presentation, on the ground here in Iraq it’s not really seeming like it would work.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Borzou Daragahi, how about how you operate, the level of attacks on journalists? On Saturday, an Iraqi reporter working for the government-run Al Iraqiya TV channel was killed in a drive-by shooting in southern Baghdad. Another journalist with the TV channel Nahrain was kidnapped. On Friday, a radio announcer with Voice of Iraq was shot while driving to work. On Thursday, eleven people assassinated at a TV station in Baghdad in the deadliest attack on journalists so far.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Yeah, journalists are being attacked at an unprecedented rate, as well. We try to be careful. We try to go under the radar. We do get out there, but we’re hemmed in, especially by these surprise rolling checkpoints, where they ask for your ID. Presumably, they're looking for Sunnis or Shiites to target in sectarian reprisals, but who knows what they would do if they found a foreign journalist.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about what is happening now in Balad, the level of violence there?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Yeah, I mean, that’s the kind of thing that everyone is really afraid of, this kind of open civil warfare, this open daylight killing of people. There’s been similar incidents. There was an incident like this in the neighborhood of Jihad in Baghdad. And this is just the latest outbreak of this kind of warfare, where people are just randomly killing each other and not even trying to hide it anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: The UN refugee agency is estimating 1.5 million people are now displaced in Iraq. How do you see that around you?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: It’s so evident. You know, I mean, every single Iraqi person that I come in contact with, it seems, is himself displaced in some way or another. You know, they’re staying at a relative’s, or they’re making plans to leave the country, or they’re making plans to move. So this is definitely affecting a lot of people. It’s disrupting a lot of lives. This level of violence is not something that you can't shield yourself from.

AMY GOODMAN: Borzou, one of the recommendations that’s being reported, though the report hasn’t been released yet, from James Baker, the Secretary of State, is the possibility of dividing the country in three parts. You also have Sunni groups, a network of militant Sunni groups declaring a separate Islamic republic inside Iraq, stretching from Anbar province in the west to Baghdad to as far as Kirkuk. The Sunni group said the move was needed, as Kurdish and Shia groups move to set up their own republics. Can you comment on this?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Yeah, I mean, it just shows the -- I mean, that statement, as crazy and out of whack as it was, from a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which is linked to al-Qaeda. They issued a videotape. They had a guy that they designated as their minister of information, and he was basically declaring a new state. It just shows how much the security situation has devolved. It just shows how much the authority of the Maliki government is being questioned.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Iraqi government postponing the national reconciliation conference that had been much heralded and highly publicized, officials saying the conference was put off for unspecified emergency reasons.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Yes, officials say that it was put off because of technicalities, but if you talk to the people in the agency that’s running that conference, they also acknowledge that indeed Iraq is not moving towards the direction of reconciliation. It’s moving away from that direction, so it’s the opposite of reconciliation and compromise.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Borzou Daragahi, your reaction just overall, do you see things just descending now?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, I mean, it seems like the trend lines are very bad, you know. In terms of the violence, it’s up. In terms of the attacks, they’re up. In terms of services, electricity, water, basic services, healthcare, they’re all down. In terms of the number of people displaced, they’re all up. So it doesn’t seem like there’s much good happening. There is some hope in that the Iraqi army -- not the police, the Iraqi army -- does seem to be increasingly competent and has been doing some good things. They seem to be more professional than the Iraqi police, but that remains to be seen whether they can have an effect on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the Iraqi government has announced that Saddam Hussein verdict will be delivered November 5th, just days before the U.S. elections.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, I’ll let analysts in the U.S. comment on what they think of that. Yeah, I mean, it did happen that way. The U.S. officials here insist that indeed the trial is an Iraqi process and all those kinds of decisions are made by Iraqis.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Borzou, thank you for being with us. How do you protect yourself as you report in Baghdad?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: We just -- we travel very discreetly, and we don’t really -- we try not to talk about or let anyone know how we’re reporting in Baghdad. That’s one of the things that keeps us maybe a little bit safer than some of the Iraqis, who don’t have that luxury. They have to tell family and friends what they’re doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, be safe, Borzou. Borzou Daragahi is the Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. Thank you for joining us. 



-------- latin america

In Colombia, a Dubious Disarmament
Demobilized Paramilitaries Are Sidestepping Justice, Critics and Victims Say

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 17, 2006; A14

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/16/AR2006101600971_pf.html

BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia -- In the midst of a relentless conflict, Colombia's government and its ally, the Bush administration, are hailing the demobilization of 32,000 fighters from right-wing paramilitary groups -- a disarmament that authorities here say is larger than any of those that closed out Central America's civil wars in the 1990s.

But another, far more critical picture of the disarmament has emerged in recent months, drawn from the accounts of rights groups, victims of Colombia's murky, drug-fueled conflict, and even a report from the Attorney General's Office. Paramilitary commanders, according to these accounts, have killed hundreds of people in violation of a cease-fire, trafficked cocaine and stolen millions of dollars from state institutions they had infiltrated.

A handful of lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also voiced concerns about the disarmament, which is partly funded by the United States.

"The demobilization process has been as much about avoiding justice and consolidating ill-gotten gains as it has been about disarming the paramilitaries," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member of the subcommittee on foreign operations. "The government needs to stop appeasing the leaders of these outlaw militias and listen more to their victims."

Critics acknowledge that the disarmament has yielded benefits. It has removed a loose confederation of paramilitary militias from a 42-year-old war, leaving the state facing one powerful Marxist rebel organization and a second, much weaker guerrilla group. It has also lowered Colombia's homicide rate, officials here say, and given President Alvaro Uribe's government leverage in its efforts to prod the guerrillas to the negotiating table.

Now, two months after the last paramilitary fighter laid down his weapon in a carefully choreographed ceremony, Colombian officials are pledging to conduct exhaustive investigations of paramilitary atrocities and launch trials of the militias' most bloodthirsty commanders. They say the proceedings will bring justice and recompense for thousands of families who lost relatives or land to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials, AUC.

But in communities hit hard by paramilitary violence, including this grimy, oil-refining city in northern Colombia, victims are incredulous about the government's lofty claims. Once fearful that speaking out could get them killed, they are increasingly organized and assertive. And they are sharply criticizing a process that they say is tilted more toward whitewashing crimes than punishing perpetrators.

"The victims haven't had a voice," said Jaime Peña, whose son, Jaime Yesid, 16, was killed by paramilitaries during a 1998 massacre here. "How can there be reparations and reconciliation if we don't know the truth and if there isn't any justice?"

Across Colombia, victims and rights groups have been shaken by revelations in the press about paramilitary-related outrages, from wealthy commanders patronizing elegant stores in shopping malls to disclosures of paramilitary ties to Colombia's Congress.

In the latest scandal, one of the more powerful paramilitary commanders, Rodrigo Tovar, recruited peasants to play the part of paramilitary fighters in demobilization ceremonies, according to a 29-page internal investigative report by the Attorney General's Office. The report, based on records that were kept in Tovar's computer and that detailed crimes committed by his paramilitary unit, was first disclosed in El Tiempo, the country's leading newspaper.

According to its findings, a special bank account was set up to disburse money to unemployed peasants so they could "pass themselves off as militiamen, the more the better."

Tovar, the report continues, "gives instructions so that they are ready for demobilization day, that they know how to march, sing the hymn [of the AUC] and respond to prosecutors' questions." At the same time, Tovar ordered underlings to make sure some bands of fighters remain armed to guard "vulnerable zones."

Tovar's hit men killed 558 people in one coastal province, Atlantico, at the same time he was participating in disarmament negotiations, according to the report. The victims included shopkeepers who failed to deliver extortion payments, leftist activists, common criminals and even a university professor. The report says that "men, women, children and passersby from all social and professional levels have become victimized."

Tovar kept detailed records of cocaine shipments to the United States and Europe, the Attorney General's Office said. The office's report also recounted how rogue police units took payoffs to permit cocaine deliveries and how Tovar helped senators and congressmen close to him win reelection.

In this city in a key region of the mighty Magdalena River, paramilitary fighters entered with fury in 2000, rooting out guerrillas and killing their supporters. Caught in the crossfire were villagers and the residents of Barrancabermeja, where lush neighborhoods filled with fruit trees and tropical birds sprawl over the hillsides.

In a massacre here in 1998, paramilitaries kidnapped 32 people at gunpoint. Twenty-five disappeared, and seven were later found dead. Peña still chokes up as he recalls how he looked out his window to see two gunmen abducting his son.

A neighbor, Luz Almanza, tears up as she recounts how her husband, Ricky Nelson García, was also led away for good that night. Luz Marina López, a shop owner, can barely keep her composure when she tells how her 20-year-old twins, a son and a daughter, were killed in the same incident.

All that the victims' relatives ever learned was that the paramilitaries suspected the neighborhood of close ties to the guerrillas.

"What I want from the state is to know what happened to these people," Almanza said. "What we want is for them to tell us the truth."

Under the government's Justice and Peace Law, approved by Congress last year, generous benefits were granted to commanders accused of atrocities in exchange for disarming units of fighters. The government also announced that those who participated in the process would not be extradited to the United States on drug-trafficking charges -- the paramilitary commanders' greatest fear.

In the face of international outrage, Colombia's highest court struck down some provisions in May and made the terms more stringent. Most of the commanders, including Tovar, also turned themselves in and are now housed in a spacious facility in Antioquia province.

Under the revised law, commanders must pay reparations to victims out of both their legal and ill-gotten gains. And they must confess to their crimes -- losing benefits if prosecutors later determine that they lied or omitted information.

"What we want is that there be a recognition of the victims' right to truth, to justice and reparation," said Eduardo Pizarro, who heads the government's reparations commission. "And to guarantee that it won't happen again."

Still, the law shields the commanders from serving time in prison, and they remain protected from extradition.

Though officials in Uribe's government pledge to come down hard on commanders, the state appears ill-prepared to follow through, said Sergio Jaramillo, director of the Ideas for Peace analysis group in Bogota. There are only 20 prosecutors to investigate 2,695 paramilitary commanders who are believed to have committed atrocities.

Asked about the capacity of his office to investigate, Mario Iguarán, the attorney general, said in an interview: "You'd have to say it's not sufficient. The Justice and Peace Law did not create positions for prosecutors."

The sheer complexity of the cases helps paramilitary commanders not only to sidestep criminal investigators but to shield their properties. The commanders have already claimed that they own far less than authorities believe they do. Determining the truth is a formidable task, since the properties they own are registered under third parties' names.

Though there are no exact figures, government officials have calculated that Colombian paramilitaries and drug traffickers control a swath of territory three times the size of New Jersey.

"The government has no clue about what these guys own, how they've operated for all these years, who's supported them, where their assets are, and it hasn't really set up an effective system to figure that out," said Maria McFarland, who tracks Colombia for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

In Barrancabermeja, groups such as the Popular Women's Organization, which runs soup kitchens and works on human rights issues, have no illusions about what the process with the paramilitaries will deliver.

Paramilitaries have slain three members of the group, including one this year, and its president, Yolanda Becerra, said that threats continue. Becerra, a slight woman who races around town meeting with members, said her group is still poised to lead protests and lobby for a tough approach to the paramilitaries.

"We're doing what we've always done -- maintain a hope for a new country," she said. "A people can save themselves when they're united."




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


-------- homeland security / national intelligence

Bush signs bill to interrogate and prosecute suspected terrorists

10/17/2006
By David Jackson and Kathy Kiely, 
USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-17-detaineebill-signed_x.htm

WASHINGTON — President Bush signed a sweeping terror interrogation and trial law this morning, creating a legal process for trying terrorism suspects and giving the president the power to determine whether interrogation methods violate international treaties.

"We will meet our obligation to protect our people. And no matter how long it takes, justice will be done," Bush said at a White House bill-signing ceremony. "With the bill I'm about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice."

The legislation applies to those selected by the military for prosecution and leaves mostly unaffected the majority of the 14,000 prisoners in U.S. custody, most of whom are in Iraq. Bush needed the legislation because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.

ON DEADLINE: Read the new law

The measure became law just six weeks after Bush acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.

Among those the United States hopes to try are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaeda cells.

The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. Bush said the process is "fair, lawful and necessary."

The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts.

The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize aggressive interrogation methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts. White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush would probably eventually issue an executive order that would describe his interpretation, but those documents are not usually made public and Snow did not reveal when it might be issued.

The measure faced a sometimes-difficult path through Congress. Bush reached a deal last month with recalcitrant Senate Republicans, who said that compromise language in the measure preserved U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment for prisoners of war, and defines for the CIA what is not acceptable.

"We're going to do it in a way that won't come back to haunt us if our troops fall into enemy hands in the next war," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said when the compromise was reached.

The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts.

"This bill complies with both the spirit and the letter of our international obligations," the president said today. "By allowing the CIA program to go forward, this bill is preserving a tool that has saved American lives."

Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence. Bush acknowledged that the law came amid dispute.

"Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated and the questions raised can seem complex," he said. "Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

As Bush signed the bill, about 20 protesters refused to leave the northwest gate of the White House. "I am not a terrorist! You are a terrorist!" yelled one man who kneeled at the gate, clad in an orange jumpsuit with a black hood on his head.

After repeated warnings to disperse, police officers began arresting protesters. Police cordoned off the protest area with yellow tape. Just outside of the area, other critics of the bill chanted "torture is a crime," and "Bush is a criminal."

Bush signed the bill in the White House East Room, at a table with a sign positioned on the front that said "Protecting America." He said he signed it in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"This nation will call evil by its name. We will answer brutal murder with patient justice. Those who kill the innocent will be held to account," the president said.

One key architect of the bill was absent. Former prisoner of war John McCain, who was among the Republicans who held up the measure in the Senate, did not attend the signing ceremony.

McCain's press secretary, Eileen McMenamin, said he had previous commitments to campaign for GOP candidates. In Wisconsin, McCain was to appear with congressional hopeful John Gard; in South Dakota, he is to travel with Sen. John Thune, who is not up for re-election until 2010.

Contributing: Randy Lilleston; Associated Press.

----

Bush signs bill to interrogate and prosecute suspected terrorists

10/17/2006
By David Jackson and Kathy Kiely, 
USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-17-detaineebill-signed_x.htm

WASHINGTON — President Bush signed a sweeping terror interrogation and trial law this morning, creating a legal process for trying terrorism suspects and giving the president the power to determine whether interrogation methods violate international treaties.

"We will meet our obligation to protect our people. And no matter how long it takes, justice will be done," Bush said at a White House bill-signing ceremony. "With the bill I'm about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice."

The legislation applies to those selected by the military for prosecution and leaves mostly unaffected the majority of the 14,000 prisoners in U.S. custody, most of whom are in Iraq. Bush needed the legislation because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.

ON DEADLINE: Read the new law

The measure became law just six weeks after Bush acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.

Among those the United States hopes to try are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaeda cells.

The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. Bush said the process is "fair, lawful and necessary."

The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts.

The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize aggressive interrogation methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts. White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush would probably eventually issue an executive order that would describe his interpretation, but those documents are not usually made public and Snow did not reveal when it might be issued.

The measure faced a sometimes-difficult path through Congress. Bush reached a deal last month with recalcitrant Senate Republicans, who said that compromise language in the measure preserved U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment for prisoners of war, and defines for the CIA what is not acceptable.

"We're going to do it in a way that won't come back to haunt us if our troops fall into enemy hands in the next war," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said when the compromise was reached.

The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts.

"This bill complies with both the spirit and the letter of our international obligations," the president said today. "By allowing the CIA program to go forward, this bill is preserving a tool that has saved American lives."

Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence. Bush acknowledged that the law came amid dispute.

"Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated and the questions raised can seem complex," he said. "Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

As Bush signed the bill, about 20 protesters refused to leave the northwest gate of the White House. "I am not a terrorist! You are a terrorist!" yelled one man who kneeled at the gate, clad in an orange jumpsuit with a black hood on his head.

After repeated warnings to disperse, police officers began arresting protesters. Police cordoned off the protest area with yellow tape. Just outside of the area, other critics of the bill chanted "torture is a crime," and "Bush is a criminal."

Bush signed the bill in the White House East Room, at a table with a sign positioned on the front that said "Protecting America." He said he signed it in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"This nation will call evil by its name. We will answer brutal murder with patient justice. Those who kill the innocent will be held to account," the president said.

One key architect of the bill was absent. Former prisoner of war John McCain, who was among the Republicans who held up the measure in the Senate, did not attend the signing ceremony.

McCain's press secretary, Eileen McMenamin, said he had previous commitments to campaign for GOP candidates. In Wisconsin, McCain was to appear with congressional hopeful John Gard; in South Dakota, he is to travel with Sen. John Thune, who is not up for re-election until 2010.

Contributing: Randy Lilleston; Associated Press.



-------- ACTIVISTS

Refusnik left in underwear, only

Omri Evron won't wear IDF uniform, so was jailed in his underwear. Wardens refuse to let him wear civilian pants arguing he may use zipper to commit suicide

Dorit Siton
10.17.06 YNet News

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3316237,00.html

When army refusnik Omri Evron protested wearing an IDF uniform, he probably did not guess that his ideological refusal would soon become a naked truth. For three days now Evron has been held in isolation in Tzrifin prison, wearing only his underwear.

Evron, 19, from Tel Aviv, was supposed to start his army service on Sunday. Members of the “New Profile” movement, which supports IDF refusniks, protested outside of the recruitment office in a show of solidarity. The night before, Evron himself was demonstrating with dozens of his friends opposite the home of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert under the slogan “We refuse to serve the occupation.”

Protesting on eve of induction (Photo: Activestills)

As soon as he was inducted, Evron was sentenced to 14 days detention for his refusal to serve in the army. In a letter of refusal he sent on the eve of his recruitment, Evron wrote: “I, Omri Evron, refuse to join the army out of loyalty to the moral principles I believe in. My refusal is a protest of the continued military occupation of the Palestinian people, an occupation which fans the hatred and terror between our two peoples. I refuse to join the cruel war over control of the occupied territories to guard settlements and the 'Whole land of Israel' ideology.

His friends and family knew about his sentence but had no idea in which conditions he was being held. New Profile said: "As part of his refusal to serve in the army, he refuses to wear a uniform and obey orders. He was therefore placed in solitary confinement in an attempt to break him and threaten him. The army forbade him to continue wearing his pants under the pretext that they pose a threat and Omri was left in his underwear."

'Pants with zipper not allowed'

Having unsuccessfully tried to call his lawyer, Omri called his mother Nurit. "Omri is a very stubborn man who stands by his words. He said he refused to wear a uniform in jail and asked wardens to be allowed to wear the pants he brought from home.

He was put in solitary confinement as a result. His pants had a zipper and they told him he couldn't wear them. That's abuse. They left him in his underwear for three days. They allowed him to leave his cell to a patio only in his underwear," she said.

His mother rejected the army's claims that he wasn't allowed to wear his pants for fear that he might use the zipper to commit suicide, charging that the move was meant to apply psychological pressure on her son, whom she claimed was threatened with a prolonged sentence.

Evron was not allowed access to books, his mother said, with wardens insisting that he may only have a copy of the Torah.

Refusnik Lior Vilnich will be joining Evron on Wednesday, the day of his recruitment.