NucNews January 30, 2007 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Safety system problem prompts emergency shutdown at Russian nuclear plant Tuesday, January 30, 2007 (AP) http://www1.wsvn.com/news/articles/world/MI38598/ MOSCOW -- An unspecified safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at a Russian nuclear power plant, but no increase in radiation levels were reported, federal officials said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the first unit of the Balakovo plant around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plant, located near the Volga River city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, has four 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactors. Nuclear regulators said the problem was located and corrected Tuesday morning and could be restarted later in the day. "Initial reports indicate the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. The reactor has been taken off-line," the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. The Balakovo plant was the site of a false alarm in late 2004, when a turbine malfunction prompted a shutdown and rumors of a major accident sparked panic among nearby residents. Russian lawmakers recently passed legislation to restructure the country's nuclear power sector, which includes 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for about 17 percent of electricity generation. President Vladimir Putin has pledged to build another 42 atomic reactors by 2030 and increase the proportion of electricity generation produced by nuclear plants to about 25 percent. Environmental groups have criticized government plans to keep older model nuclear plants operational, saying that graphite reactors like the one that exploded in Chernobyl and other types have serious safety flaws. About half of Russia's nuclear reactors are of the graphite and older models. -------- australia Lucas Heights nuclear reactor shuts down 30th January 2007 http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=28&ContentID=20062 Australia's oldest nuclear reactor has shut down after nearly 50 years of splitting atoms. But the NSW Greens questioned whether the site of the old reactor at Lucas Heights, south of Sydney, could ever be made safe. Conservation groups also called on the government to explain what it planned to do with the site's radioactive waste. The $50 million decommissioning process started with the official shutdown of the facility. Fuel will be removed next and fluids drained from the facility, before short-lived radioactive materials within the reactor are left to decay. The ten-year process will be complete once the reactor itself is dismantled, radioactive waste removed and the site redeveloped. A new $350 million reactor replaces the old facility, which opened in 1958 as Australia's first nuclear reactor. The updated reactor is loaded with uranium and set to produce 20 megawatts of power - enough for a small town - when it's fully operational. Like the original reactor, the new facility will produce neutrons for scientific, medical and industrial purposes rather than generate power. NSW Greens senator Kerry Nettle said she feared the decommissioning process of the old facility would not be as successful as hoped. Science was not far enough advanced to safely dispose of nuclear waste, she said. " ... not one single commercial nuclear power reactor around the world has been successfully decommissioned," Ms Nettle said. "We know from the evidence this nuclear site may never become safe, regardless of any new reactor. "We don't have the technological and scientific answers of how to dispose of this waste." The Wilderness Society called on the federal government to fully outline its plans for the disposal of radioactive waste from the reactor. "The federal government must make clear to local communities where they plan on storing this nuclear waste that remains toxic for millions of years," said society spokeswoman Imogen Zethoven. "Local communities along transport routes will also be concerned about the tonnes of dangerous nuclear waste that will be trucked past their homes." The radioactive waste would be stored in the commonwealth's national storage facility, which was "currently being commissioned", the government said. ---- Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors January 30, 2007 Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Coastal-sites-flagged-for-nuke-reactors/2007/01/30/1169919339949.html Nuclear reactors are likely to be spaced out along the Australian coast from Townsville in Queensland to Port Augusta in South Australia under a nuclear-powered future, a new study says. Queensland would have six reactors and the coast around Sydney from Port Stephens to Jervis Bay would have four power plants, left-wing think-tank the Australia Institute says. Victoria would have four more and South Australia three, including one at Port Adelaide, it suggests. In all, the study names 17 likely sites for reactors, based on criteria such as proximity to seawater for cooling and access to the national electricity grid. The institute also surveyed 1,200 Australians on their attitude towards having a reactor in their local area and found that 66 per cent were opposed. A quarter of those surveyed, 25 per cent, were supportive and nine per cent undecided. Fifty-five per cent were strongly opposed and just 10 per cent strongly in favour. The study follows a determined push by the federal government towards the nuclear generation of electricity. A government commissioned inquiry headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski last year reported reactors would have to be positioned within tens of kilometres of the east coast national power grid. It found that nuclear generation was attractive in the battle against greenhouse gas emissions and could be viable if there were to be a price on carbon. That inquiry posed the scenario of 25 reactors producing a third of Australia's electricity needs by the year 2050. The institute's director Dr Clive Hamilton said overseas experience showed that the siting of power plants is one of the most politically contentious aspects of the nuclear debate. "The prime minister has called for a thorough and full-blooded debate about nuclear energy," Dr Hamilton said. "We cannot have this debate without considering siting issues." Report author Andrew Macintosh said the fact that nuclear energy attracted moderate levels of support at a general level but fierce opposition from local communities when concrete proposals were put forward suggested the presence of the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon. "That is, even if people do not oppose nuclear power plants at a general level, they often object to proposals to construct them in their local areas," he said. The report raised the possibility that governments might compensate communities in a bid to placate local opposition to nuclear facilities. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane declined to comment on the report, saying the nuclear debate was too young to be talking about placement of reactors. "It's too early to start speculating," a spokeswoman for Mr Macfarlane told AAP. "He just wants to talk about it and start investigating it. Deciding on sites is something that's going to happen way down the track." Labor's resources and energy spokesman Chris Evans said people in the communities identified by the report should expect a nuclear power plant in their area if Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear plans are successful. Labor is opposed to a nuclear industry in Australia. "Instead of talking up nuclear power John Howard should be encouraging an immediate increase in the use of renewable energy and the introduction of clean coal technologies," Senator Evans said. "With Australia's existing energy resources, there is no reason for us to go down the nuclear path." Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett said the report was further evidence Australia should not go nuclear. "Australia needs to go on a low carbon diet, not a nuclear binge, and these figures show John Howard is increasingly out of step with Australians who are desperate for real action on climate change," he said. Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the report unsurprisingly showed that populations close to the suggested sites did not want nuclear power plants. "Instead of talking about 25 possible nuclear power plants, the prime minister should be looking for another 25 sites for major wind power stations and another 25 solar power stations," she said. ---- Nuclear group dismisses concerns over dumping waste Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Australia Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200701/s1836594.htm The organisation operating Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear facility has dismissed concerns over shipping the old reactor to a future radioactive waste dump proposed for the Northern Territory. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) officially closed the reactor today. The Federal Government wants to build a nuclear waste dump in the NT and is assessing three possible sites. ANSTO chief of operations Ron Cameron says it is expected the Lucas Heights HIFAR reactor will be dismantled after a decade and disposed of in an NT-based nuclear waste dump. Environmental groups have cautioned against such a move, but Dr Cameron says radioactive levels in the reactor will have declined to a low level in 10 years. "I think the risk is extraordinarily low - there's tens of millions of such transports that take place every year, and there's never been an instance which has had any impact on the health of people," he said. "That is a superb record compared to the transport of petrol and LPG and explosives, and various hazardous goods that go on our roads every day." Dr Cameron says the radioactivity is currently at an intermediate level and will be low level waste in 10 years, when it can be discarded in a Federal Government waste disposal facility. "We have been storing waste safely here for over 40 years," he said. "But what the Government has decided is rather than having radioactive waste stored in various places around the country, we would follow international practice and establish a purpose-built facility, which was designed to store this waste if it's intermediate or to dispose of this waste in a repository if it's low-level waste." ---- Howard's disingenuous Nuclear Power debate January 30, 2007 Perth Indymedia http://perth.indymedia.org/index.php?action=default&featureview=465 The Australia Institute has identified at least 19 potential locations for John Howard's nuclear power plant sites, yet two thirds of Australians oppose nuclear power plants in their local area according to new research. They discovered that 50 per cent of people are against having nuclear power plants in Australia, but opposition increases when people consider the prospect of a plant built in their neighbourhood. Mr McIntosh says "we need to solve climate change rapidly and with this amount of opposition you're just not going to get there. It's going to take you two decades to get anywhere near the position where you're going to be ready to establish a large scale nuclear power industry." "73 per cent of middle income households are opposed to living near a nuclear plant..." -------- depleted uranium China concerned over U.S. export controls January 30, 2007 (Reuters) http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/01/30/china_concerned_over_us_export_controls/ BEIJING - Planned U.S. export controls that seek to protect sensitive technologies could damage high-tech trade ties between the two countries, a senior Chinese trade official was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Wang Qinhua, in charge of China's electronics and high-tech trade at the Ministry of Commerce, said he hoped Washington would consider seriously Beijing's deep concerns about the rules, which he said hindered healthy trade development, the official Xinhua news agency reported. They would leave Chinese companies with no choice but to look for business and research opportunities in other countries and would deprive U.S. companies of business, Wang added. The U.S. Commerce Department introduced the draft rules in July to tighten export controls to China, which is engaged in an expensive but opaque overhaul of its massive military. They include items such as depleted uranium and some telecoms equipment, but many of the 47 items on the list are already sold to companies in China for civilian use. Chinese officials have argued that lifting the controls will significantly narrow a growing trade gap, although Chris Padilla, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for export administration, told Reuters earlier this week that the effect would be minimal. Padilla said the updated rules, which are under review after a period of public consultation, should be finalized this spring. U.S. national security is a major consideration in the review. ---- Fulk’s depleted uranium ‘facts’ are sound Russell “Ace” Hoffman /For the (CA) Tracy Press Tuesday, 30 January 2007 http://tracypress.com/content/view/7479/2/ Given that there are no letters to the editor column large enough, no public hearing long enough, no newspaper article or television documentary in-depth enough to cover every fact in the debate about radiation, there will always be room for someone like letter-writer Steve Hall to claim that someone like scientist Marion Fulk did not provide all the facts. No matter how much or how little Fulk says, Hall will always respond, “But you didn’t give all the facts!” But it’s a charade. In reality, Fulk warns and Hall obfuscates. Hall claims that Tracy residents shouldn’t be concerned about possible upcoming depleted uranium testing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300 because alpha particles emitted by the radioactive material cannot penetrate the skin, and he implies that debris from the testing will not leave the test site in significant quantities. Depleted uranium weapons aerosolize upon use. Their gaseous, radioactive effluent will leave the test site. And what doesn’t aerosolize and drift away immediately will drift around the world over time. Wind, rain, birds, insects, lost lab records, combined with future construction projects and a million other things will eventually move the particles around. With a half-life of 4.5 billion years, it’s just a question of when. It may not poison Tracy residents immediately, but it will surely poison somebody, someday — just as depleted uranium munitions are poisoning people wherever they are being used. Once depleted uranium gets in the body (and it does and will) Hall’s statement that alpha particles cannot penetrate the skin is irrelevant. In addition, this “fact” ignores the sensitive parts of the outer body that can be harmed by alpha radiation, including mucous membranes, pores, ducts and parts of the eye. Hall further misrepresents the facts by citing a number he claims is “natural background” radiation, which actually comes from many different sources and comprises several different types of rays and particles, some easily avoided and some not. Hall combines everything that’s not specifically depleted uranium released from Site 300 weapons testing and pretends that all the other radiation poisoning does not cause cancer to millions worldwide. It does. Any additional radiation only adds to the misery. And official government guidelines for permissible doses of low-level radiation exposure are probably several orders of magnitude too lax, even when they are followed. As usual, it is the pro-nuker presenting half-truths to the public. -------- europe Brussels rules out reopening Bulgarian nuclear reactors BRUSSELS (AFP) Jan 30, 2007 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/070130181052.qrwvwce6.html EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs on Tuesday ruled out reopening two Bulgarian nuclear reactors, while stressing his readiness to discuss energy problems facing Sofia and its neighbours. "There was a legal obligation to close down the reactors for safety reasons," Piebalgs told a press conference in Brussels. "To come back to the issue now is like driving down a one-way street in the opposite direction. The (European) Commission is willing to reopen the issue but not in the sense of reopening a closed reactor." Bulgaria closed down the two nuclear reactors at its only plant at Kozloduy, in the northwest, on December 31 as part of the requirements to join the EU -- which it duly did the following day -- and received 570 million euros in compensation. But Bulgarian Energy Minister Rumen Ovcharov said on Friday that Sofia would ask the European Union for permission to restart the nuclear reactors to ease energy demands in the region. Bulgaria has been one of the Balkans' main exporters of energy, exporting some 7.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2006. It mothballed its two oldest 440-megawatt reactors, 1 and 2, in 2002 but these have yet to be dismantled. Sofia then shut down two other old but revamped 440-megawatt blocs, 3 and 4, in order to secure EU accession in 2007. Only the two most modern 1,000-megawatt reactors remain in operation at Kozloduy and there are no plans to close them down. Bulgaria plans to build a second nuclear plant in Belene in the north of the country in 2013. The EU has cited studies conducted in 1992 by the G7 group of industrialised nations stating that reactors of the Kozloduy type cannot be modernised at a reasonable price and should be shut down due to security concerns. The problems caused by the reactor shut-downs is expected to be on the agenda at a meeting of EU energy ministers in Brussels on February 15-16. ---- Sweden files nuclear plant complaint 30th January 2007 AFP http://www.thelocal.se/6246/20070130/ Sweden's nuclear authority on Monday asked prosecutors to investigate whether the operator of a nuclear power plant broke the law in its response to a malfunction last year. Two reactors at the Forsmark plant, 60 miles north of Stockholm, were shut down in July after two backup generators malfunctioned during a power failure. They went back on the grid two months later after security upgrades. In its complaint to prosecutors, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate said plant managers acted too slowly in cooling down one of the reactors after the incident. Such a decision was not made until one day after the July 25 incident, the inspectorate said. Prosecutors will now review the complaint and decide whether to press charges against the operator, Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB, for nuclear safety violations. The company is controlled by state-owned energy group Vattenfall AB. -------- india Energy tops Indo-Russian priority list Asia Times Tuesday, January 30, 2007 http://peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22865 The array of agreements signed last week during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to India indicates that while India might have warmed significantly to the United States over the past decade and dramatically since his last visit to the subcontinent, the India-Russia relationship hasn't cooled either. Nine agreements in areas ranging from energy and space to business and culture were signed during Putin's fourth visit since he became president in 2000. Defense was at the core of the India-Russia strategic relationship for decades. Energy security appears to have become a top priority. India and Russia have signed a "memorandum of intent" on cooperation over civilian nuclear energy under which Moscow has promised to build four more reactors in Kudankulam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and additional reactors at other sites in India. Russia is currently helping to build two units at Kudankulam. This Russian commitment has come even as India and the US are negotiating the details of a bilateral agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation and changes to the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to enable the export of nuclear technology and systems to India. -------- security The Cold War's Deadly Legacy: How the U.S.'s Atom for Peace Program Helped Spread Nuke Technology to Iran and Beyond Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/30/1515256 "The specter of nuclear warfare waged by North Korea or Iran has hung over the world in recent months. But beyond that fear and foreboding looms a more far-reaching threat: the vast amount of nuclear bomb-grade material scattered across the globe. And it wasn't Kim Jong Il or the ayatollahs of Iran who put it there. America did." Those are the opening lines of a new expose by the Chicago Tribune reporter Sam Roe. [includes rush transcript] Roe's investigation has found several tons of US nuclear bomb-grade material distributed under the Cold War Atoms for Peace program remains scattered across the planet. The US government has failed to retrieve forty tons of highly enriched uranium -- enough to make over 1,400 nuclear weapons. While the Bush administration says its trying to remove weapons-grade fuel from several research reactors around the world, many nuclear experts believe the US does not know how much enriched uranium exists abroad -- or even where it exists. * Sam Roe, staff reporter at the Chicago Tribune. His series on the U.S. Cold War program "Atoms for Peace" is featured this week. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Sam Roe is a staff reporter at the Chicago Tribune, author of this investigative series, joining us from Chicago. Welcome to Democracy Now! SAM ROE: Thanks for having me. AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t you start off with this latest story that we've been getting in the news about the possibility that someone in the old Soviet Union now had weapons-grade nuclear material? SAM ROE: Yeah. That was a case that just came out last week, where someone was caught having a small amount of highly enriched uranium in plastic bags in his coat pocket. And what's significant about that is that highly enriched uranium is the holy grail of nuclear materials. It's the one thing that you can easily make a bomb with. It doesn't take much technical expertise if you have enough to create nuclear fission, so that’s why there’s so much worry about highly enriched uranium. Secondly, it's easy to transport. So if someone can just put it in their pocket and walk across the border, that's of great concern. That case was really interesting, because for the last few years there really hasn't been a lot of nuclear-smuggling cases, but that was one of the most recent one and most disturbing one. AMY GOODMAN: Describe, Sam Roe, that Atoms for Peace program. SAM ROE: The Atoms for Peace program really was this bold experiment by President Eisenhower, unveiled in 1953, and the concept was that the United States would distribute nuclear technology around the world to other nations if they promised not to build nuclear weapons. So it was this grand bargain. At the time, you know, we had nuclear weapons, and we thought, and rightly so, that other nations would eventually build weapons on their own, so why not cut a deal now, why not get some kind of control over this? And the Soviet Union saw what we were doing, and so they decided to follow suit, and you had this really interesting sort of Cold War chess match going around, where the United States and the Soviet Union, they were both supplying research reactors, nuclear technology, and highly enriched uranium all throughout the world, and that's the material that’s out there today. That's the material that we're so concerned about. AMY GOODMAN: What role does the IAEA play, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in monitoring this? SAM ROE: Well, they can monitor some countries, and they do go out to some sites, and they do check on quantities of material and make sure there's not certain infractions, but -- and this isn’t discussed much -- but they’re really underfunded and they only have so many staff members to go out to some of these places. And as we've seen in Iran and other places, sometimes they’re just told, you know, go away, or come back another time. And so, when you look at the big picture, there's not a whole lot of monitoring of this material around the world, not as much as there should be. AMY GOODMAN: Sam Roe, can you tell us the story of Armando Travelli? SAM ROE: Armando Travelli is an interesting character, because, remarkably, he, and he alone, sort of led this effort over the last quarter century to go out and try to get this highly enriched uranium back in US hands, and he himself is an interesting story. He grew up in sort of the war-torn rubble of World War II in Italy, and as a child he was part of that new atomic age, where he thought that someday everything would be run by nuclear energy -- cars, boats, planes, everything -- and he came to the United States because he wanted to be part of this new nuclear generation and quickly rose to become a star in the nuclear engineering field out here outside of Chicago at Argonne National Labs, designing some of the largest research reactors ever conceived of. And then, once India detonated its bomb in 1974, using some of this Atoms for Peace material that was distributed by Canada and the US, suddenly the United States wanted to get this material back, and they couldn’t just go into all these countries and, with guns ablazing, demand it back or take it back by force, because we had sold it or leased it or given it away. It wasn't ours anymore. And so, we had to find some way to sort of swap it out. We had to find some way to convince these countries to give the material back. And so, they came to Armando Travelli, and they said, “Can you, as a scientist, help us with this problem? Can you take this diplomatic quandary that we're in and invent new fuels? Can you invent something that all these other countries can use in these reactors around the world instead of highly enriched uranium?” And he said, “Yeah, that can be done.” And they said, “Will you lead this charge? Will you invent these fuels and then go to these countries and sort of play diplomat and persuade them to use this new material?” And he was somewhat taken aback, because his life's work was to, you know, spread nuclear technology, not to rein it in. He really believed in nuclear technology, but he was convinced that it was silly to have this bomb-grade material spread around the world. So he decided to do it. He decided to make the rest of his life this quest to get all of this material back. AMY GOODMAN: And explain his relationship with Romania. SAM ROE: Romania is a really interesting case, because it was one of the first assignments that he was given by the State Department. This was back in the early 1980s, when the dictator Ceausescu was still involved in Romania, still running the country. But the dictator offered, “Yeah, we’ll give you back your highly enriched uranium, America. Come on down, and let’s talk about it.” So Armando went to Romania and looked at the reactor to see if maybe they could swap out some material in that reactor for the highly enriched uranium. But the United States, remarkably enough, the whole mission sort of bogged down over money. The Romanians wanted the US to pony up some money to pay for it, and the United States wasn't willing to do that, and it bogged down for a number of years. And while that was going on, the reactor and the people in the reactor in the Romanian government used that reactor that the US supplied and the highly enriched uranium to separate plutonium, which is the first step to make an atomic bomb. There's no other reason to separate plutonium than to start a nuclear weapons program. So that just shows you, there’s really a lesson of the Atoms for Peace legacy: if you let this stuff sit out there too long, you know, those kinds of things might happen. Eventually the Romanian government, once Ceausescu was executed in ’89, they acknowledged what had happened and there were some additional safeguards put in place, but some of that uranium still actually remains in Romania. AMY GOODMAN: And other countries that he is associated with -- for example, Taiwan. SAM ROE: In Taiwan, that was an interesting case, too. Canada had supplied India with the reactor that India used to build its first atomic weapon. And an identical nuclear facility was given to Taiwan from Canada. And so, the Americans were suspicious that Taiwan was also building nuclear weapons. In Canada, they were embarrassed by what just happened in India. They didn't want to have this come out that, you know, now another Canadian reactor might be sparking a nuclear weapons program, so the United States offered to intervene and went there to take a look at this reactor, and Armando Travelli was in charge. He went there and was just shocked at what he saw. From the outside, this reactor in Taiwan looked like your typical reactor. It had a domed roof, and it was windowless and made out of cement. But when he stepped inside, it was very eerie. It was dark, and it had this green tint to it, and it had this Chinese music piped in, not the typical thing you’d see in a reactor. And rising out of the middle of the reactor was this 30-foot tomblike structure, just this huge concrete block, almost like a Chinese temple. And he and his team just slowly walked toward it with their hosts, and they checked everything out. There’s no research going on. There’s no scientists around or any kind of experiments that they could see of, and when he walked outside, he said to his colleagues -- Armando said to his colleagues, “That’s a machine for making plutonium. There’s no other reason for that.” So over the next few years, they went back and forth to Taiwan, and the Taiwanese eventually got tired of the scrutiny and shut the place down. AMY GOODMAN: Sam Roe, how easy is it to transport nuclear material. SAM ROE: Well, with highly enriched uranium, it’s quite easy, because it's not highly radioactive, so if you had this holy grail of bomb material, you could put it in your pocket and you could carry it around with you and it’s not going to harm you. And you could cross borders with relative ease. Once it's been burned in a reactor, then it’s highly radioactive, and it would take some technical skill to steal it and get away with it, but one of the issues is that some of the fuel that has been burned in these reactors overseas has sat there for so long, it's not highly radioactive anymore. If something sits around for 30 years, if highly enriched uranium is burned in a reactor and it sits there for 30 years, it can be stolen and spirited away quite easily. So there needs to be more attention paid to that material, too. AMY GOODMAN: The Russian man that allegedly was trying to sell uranium had hidden it in two plastic bags in his pocket, that the Georgian authorities found? SAM ROE: Yeah, that just shows you how easily you can spirit this stuff away. And that's why highly enriched uranium is something we should all pay attention to. One, it's the one thing you can use to easily make a bomb and, two, you can hide it and transport it easily. If terrorists could get their hands on it, it would be hard to detect, and so that's why there's a push in this country and some other places to do an inventory, do a global inventory, of where is highly enriched uranium. You know, it’s the one thing that could blow up the world. Why not get a better handle on every place it is in the world and not just secure it, not just put up locks and fences, because ultimately that may not prevent an inside job -- because it’s so valuable, somebody even guarding it may just decide to steal it and sell it -- why not destroy it all? Why not take it and dilute it down, blend it down into something that can't be made a bomb? That's what a lot of folks are calling for now. AMY GOODMAN: You begin your article with that very provocative paragraph about the specter of nuclear warfare being waged by North Korea or Iran hanging over the world in recent months, but it's not Kim Jong-il or the ayatollahs of Iran who put it there; America did. Go more into that, the US and Iran and nuclear weapons. SAM ROE: Well, I think most people, when they talk about loose nukes or they think about the issue, they think in terms of this is a problem that is overseas or this is something that the Soviets created or something like that. But we have to remember this is sort of a problem that we created in the first place. This was a problem of our own making, and over the last 30 years America hasn't done a good job of getting this material under control. And one story that really went under the radar screen is, one of the reactors in Iran that's come under scrutiny was actually provided to Iran in the first place by the United States, under the Shah. I wrote about this last year, that back in the ’70s, the United States gave Iran a research reactor and highly enriched uranium, and that reactor in recent years has been one of the places where the Iranians have done some things where the IAEA says were infractions, so the United States complains about how Iran is violating international rules and creating a nuclear weapons program, and such and such. You know, some of these infractions have taken place in a reactor that we provided them in the first place. AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for joining us, Sam Roe, staff reporter. His series on the US Cold War program Atoms for Peace is featured this week in the Chicago Tribune, and we will link to it. Thanks for joining us from Chicago. SAM ROE: Thanks for having me. ----- U.S. nuclear regulator nixes air defenses Tue, 30 Jan 2007 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/25468.html WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 5-0 that nuclear power plants do not require additional protection from commandeered passenger planes. The vote was in response to a 2004 petition from a Los Angeles non-profit group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The committee's president, Daniel Hirsch, argued the country's 103 nuclear facilities were the most likely target for terrorists. Nuclear power plants are pre-emplaced nuclear weapons near major cities, Hirsch said. They can't blow up like a nuclear bomb, but they can release a thousand times the radiation of the Hiroshima bomb.The NRC said that guarding against airborne attacks was the job of the military and other agencies, and said plant operators were already required to be prepared for fires or explosions, whatever the cause. Chairman Dale Klein also said he was satisfied with research on plant safety. Nuclear power plants are inherently robust structures that our studies show provide adequate protection in a hypothetical attack by an airplane, Klein said. ---- Feds: Nuke Plant Air Defense Plans Impractical By H. Josef Hebert AP 01/30/07 http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/55457.html The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 5-0 that nuclear power plants do not require additional protection from terrorist-commandeered passenger airplanes, and recommended that the U.S. military should take care of it. Some members of Congress and nuclear watchdog groups have argued that the requirements fall short of what is needed. Whether it is stopping the Storm virus within minutes or successfully blocking image-based spam, MX Logic has consistently provided superior protection for its customers. Click here to find out why thousands of customers turn to the MX Logic Email Defense Service - the best email defense on the planet! Making nuclear power plants crash-proof to an airliner attack by terrorists is impracticable and it's up to the military to avert such an assault, the government said Monday. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in a revised security Barracuda Spam Filter – Free Evaluation Unit policy, directed nuclear plant operators to focus on preventing radiation from escaping in case of such an attack and to improve evacuation plans to protect public health and safety. "The active protection against airborne threats is addressed by other federal organizations, including the military," the NRC said in a statement. No-Fly Zones Shot Down The agency rejected calls by some nuclear watchdog groups that the government establish firm no-fly zones near reactors or that plant operators build "lattice-like" barriers to protect reactors, or be required to have anti-aircraft weapons on site to shoot down an incoming plane. The NRC, in a summary of the mostly secret security plan, said such proposals were examined, but that it was concluded the "active protection" against an airborne threat rests with organizations such as the military or the Federal Aviation Administration Latest News about Federal Aviation Administration. It said that various mitigation strategies required of plant operators -- such as radiation protection measures and evacuation plans -- "are sufficient to ensure adequate protection of the public health and safety" in case of an airborne attack. The commission unanimously approved the plan, which has been the subject of internal discussions for 15 months, in a 5-0 vote at a brief meeting without discussion. "Nuclear power plants are inherently robust structures that our studies show provide adequate protection in a hypothetical attack by an airplane," NRC Chairman Dale Klein said in a statement, adding that plant operators already must be able to manage large fires or explosions, no matter the cause. Klein called the new rule "only one piece" of an effort to enhance reactor security and said the NRC will continue to examine and discuss the issue of airborne threats and take additional actions if found to be necessary. Design Basis Threat The defense plan, formally known as the "Design Basis Threat," spells out what type of attack force the government believes might target a commercial power reactor and what its operator must be capable of defending against. While details are sketchy because of security concerns, the plan requires defense against a relatively small force, perhaps no more than a half-dozen attackers, but that they could come from multiple directions including by water and could include suicide teams. The plan, which formally approves many of the procedures that have long been in place, reflects the increased concerns raised by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also includes measures to address cyber attacks, according to the NRC. Some members of Congress and nuclear watchdog groups have argued that the requirements fall short of what is needed, given what was learned by the Sept. 11 attacks on the twin towers in New York and at the Pentagon. These critics have argued that defenders of a reactor should be ready to face up to 19 attackers -- as was the case on Sept. 11 -- and expect them to have rocket-propelled grenades, so-called "platter" explosive charges and .50-caliber armor-piercing ammunition. The NRC does not assume such weapons being used and rejected the idea of a 19-member attack force, maintaining that the Sept. 11 attacks actually were four separate attacks, each by four or five terrorists. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that NRC appears not to have followed the direction of Congress "to ensure that our nuclear power plants are protected from air- or land-based terrorist threats" of the magnitude demonstrated on Sept. 11. The NRC "has missed an opportunity to provide the public with a real solution to the nuclear reactor security problem," said Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a frequent critic of the nuclear industry and the NRC. Maintaining the Status Quo Daniel Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a California-based nuclear watchdog group that had urged the NRC to require physical barriers to keep planes from hitting reactors, called the security measures "irresponsible to the extreme." "Rather than upgrading protections, (the NRC plan) merely codifies the status quo, reaffirming the existing, woefully inadequate security measures already in place at the nation's reactors," said Hirsch. NRC officials have emphasized that the defense plan should require what is "reasonable" to be expected of a civilian security force at the 103 commercial nuclear power reactors. In an unclassified summary of the Design Basis Threat, the NRC maintains that studies "confirm the low likelihood" that an aircraft crashing into a reactor will damage the reactor core and release radioactivity, affecting public health and safety. "Even in the unlikely event of a radiological release due to a terrorist use of a large aircraft against a nuclear power plant, the studies indicate that there would be time to implement the required onsite mitigating actions," says the summary. ---- Nuclear Agency: Air Defenses Impractical By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS January 30, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Reactor-Security.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin WASHINGTON (AP) -- Making nuclear power plants crash-proof to an airliner attack by terrorists is impracticable and it's up to the military to avert such an assault, the government said Monday. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in a revised security policy, directed nuclear plant operators to focus on preventing radiation from escaping in case of such an attack and to improve evacuation plans to protect public health and safety. ''The active protection against airborne threats is addressed by other federal organizations, including the military,'' the NRC said in a statement. The agency rejected calls by some nuclear watchdog groups that the government establish firm no-fly zones near reactors or that plant operators build ''lattice-like'' barriers to protect reactors, or be required to have anti-aircraft weapons on site to shoot down an incoming plane. The NRC, in a summary of the mostly secret security plan, said such proposals were examined, but that it was concluded the ''active protection'' against an airborne threat rests with organizations such as the military or the Federal Aviation Administration. It said that various mitigation strategies required of plant operators -- such as radiation protection measures and evacuation plans -- ''are sufficient to ensure adequate protection of the public health and safety'' in case of an airborne attack. The commission unanimously approved the plan, which has been the subject of internal discussions for 15 months, in a 5-0 vote at a brief meeting without discussion. ''Nuclear power plants are inherently robust structures that our studies show provide adequate protection in a hypothetical attack by an airplane,'' NRC Chairman Dale Klein said in a statement, adding that plant operators already must be able to manage large fires or explosions, no matter the cause. Klein called the new rule ''only one piece'' of an effort to enhance reactor security and said the NRC will continue to examine and discuss the issue of airborne threats and take additional actions if found to be necessary. The defense plan, formally known as the Design Basis Threat, spells out what type of attack force the government believes might target a commercial power reactor and what its operator must be capable of defending against. While details are sketchy because of security concerns, the plan requires defense against a relatively small force, perhaps no more than a half-dozen attackers, but that they could come from multiple directions including by water and could include suicide teams. The plan, which formally approves many of the procedures that have long been in place, reflects the increased concerns raised by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also includes measures to address cyber attacks, according to the NRC. Some members of Congress and nuclear watchdog groups have argued that the requirements fall short of what is needed, given what was learned by the Sept. 11 attacks on the twin towers in New York and at the Pentagon. These critics have argued that defenders of a reactor should be ready to face up to 19 attackers -- as was the case on Sept. 11 -- and expect them to have rocket-propelled grenades, so-called ''platter'' explosive charges and .50-caliber armor-piercing ammunition. The NRC does not assume such weapons being used and rejected the idea of a 19-member attack force, maintaining that the Sept. 11 attacks actually were four separate attacks, each by four or five terrorists. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said that NRC appears not to have followed the direction of Congress ''to ensure that our nuclear power plants are protected from air- or land-based terrorist threats'' of the magnitude demonstrated on Sept. 11. The NRC ''has missed an opportunity to provide the public with a real solution to the nuclear reactor security problem,'' said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a frequent critic of the nuclear industry and the NRC. Daniel Hirsch, president of the Community to Bridge the Gap, a California-based nuclear watchdog group that had urged the NRC to require physical barriers to keep planes from hitting reactors, called the security measures ''irresponsible to the extreme.'' ''Rather than upgrading protections, (the NRC plan) merely codifies the status quo, reaffirming the existing, woefully inadequate security measures already in place at the nation's reactors,'' said Hirsch. NRC officials have emphasized that the defense plan should require what is ''reasonable'' to be expected of a civilian security force at the 103 commercial nuclear power reactors. In an unclassified summary of the DBT, the NRC maintains that studies ''confirm the low likelihood'' that an aircraft crashing into a reactor will damage the reactor core and release radioactivity, affecting public health and safety. ''Even in the unlikely event of a radiological release due to a terrorist use of a large aircraft against a nuclear power plant, the studies indicate that there would be time to implement the required onsite mitigating actions,'' says the summary. On the Net: Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov Nuclear Energy Institute: www.nei.org ---- Lawmakers threaten to close nuke lab over security lapses (AP) 1/30/2007 http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-30-congress-nuclear-security_x.htm WASHINGTON — Fed-up lawmakers on a House oversight committee said Tuesday they want to strip a federal nuclear agency of its security responsibilities and threatened to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory to correct a decade of security lapses there. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said he has sat through nearly a decade of hearings in which the Energy Department and the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab have promised to fix security problems. "I've been hearing these promises for a long time, and they've become somewhat tedious," he said. The lawmakers blistered the lab for its most recent security breach in which a contract worker walked out with hundreds of pages of classified documents. The documents turned up during a drug raid last October involving a man who rented a room at the worker's home. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said that if problems cannot be solved this time, he will ask that Los Alamos lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, be shut down. "There is an absolute inability and unwillingness to address the most routine security issues at this laboratory," Barton said. Barton, Dingell and others on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a measure Tuesday to strip the National Nuclear Security Administration of its primary security responsibilities and turn them back to the Energy Department because of concerns that NNSA has not fixed security problems at Los Alamos despite tens of millions of dollars spent on improvements. "NNSA was a management experiment gone wrong," Barton said. A new management team was installed at Los Alamos less than a year ago, in part to reverse years of security and safety problems. The embarrassing October incident involving the classified documents resulted in a shake-up in the agency that oversees the lab. Linton Brooks, already reprimanded for an earlier incident, resigned earlier this month as head of the NNSA. Lab officials have said that none of the material found during the drug raid was top secret. A lawyer for the employee, a 22-year-old archivist, has said she had taken it home to catch up on work. But lawmakers and watchdog groups have raised numerous questions — including why the employee was able to take classified documents home when her security clearance required that she be supervised at all times. Lawmakers also want to know what has happened to repeated efforts to make the lab disk-less so that classified material could no longer be lost or stolen. Security problems at the lab date back to the late 1990s. The problems include the disappearance of two hard drives containing classified material that later were found behind a copying machine and the disappearance of two computer disks that forced a virtual shutdown of Los Alamos. It later was learned those two disks never existed. "A substantial amount of money was being spent on preventing the lab employees from being able to take information away," said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., whose district includes Los Alamos. "How much of that has been spent? Why wasn't this expenditure of money able to prevent this from happening if they have this new system in place?" Udall is not on the subcommittee holding the hearing, but wanted to attend to make sure key questions are asked and answered. Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said Los Alamos officials are "eager to explain all the lab has done in response to this latest incident and to outline for the panel his plan for the future." "We realize that the questions are serious and that the solutions are difficult," Roark said. Officials at the Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group, predict that problems will continue unless the government puts more emphasis on safety and security in the lab's management contract and financially penalizes the lab for failing to improve security. The group also encouraged lawmakers to audit the lab's work to see whether it reflects Congress' priorities. "For decades, Los Alamos has operated as a sacred cow with no serious oversight," POGO's executive director, Danielle Brian, said in testimony prepared for the hearing. "I hope this is the beginning of a new era." -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- florida Other choices besides nuclear energy By ELAINE NICHOLS Published January 30, 2007 St. Petersburg Times http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/30/Citrus/Other_choices_besides.shtml We have the capability now to generate electricity by wind, sunlight and hydrogen at a much lower price than nuclear power. By price I mean money, environment, resources, future, our health and trust. A few facts that you may not know are documented at www.nonuke.org. 1. The net electrical consumption used to mine uranium from the ground exceeds the annual output of several 1,000-megawatt nuclear generating stations operating at 100 percent capacity, not to mention the workers exposed to the uranium dust as it is being mined. 2. Billions of gallons of water daily are used to cool the generators. This water comes back out at a much warmer temperature, killing marine life and their habitat, creating dead zones in the water. Many times, towns, cities, areas are all under a drought watch or warning while these utilities are given carte blanche water extraction. 3. Humans need water to live before they need electricity. Think about this. We have lived through the days of candles, but we wouldn't be here if we didn't have water to drink. 4. No nuclear plant has yet lived out its expected and promised life. 5. When nuclear plants "die" early, counties do not collect taxes on them. Don't count on the tax money from any private utility. Many have bailed on what they owe. 6. Many debate global warming is occurring, yet the glaciers are melting and inhabited islands are being consumed by the sea. Hurricane seasons have been predicted to become more intense. Imagine a Katrina striking not just one, but two nuclear plants in northern Citrus and southern Levy counties. 7. Solar, wind and hydrogen electricity generation do not cause cancer and annihilate the environment for millions of years if they have a "meltdown." If they are hit with a storm, they can still produce electricity. Measures can be made to "retract" these power producers so their wind effect is greatly reduced. 8. Instead of increasing power, how about conservation of power? I don't know about you, but I don't see a booming economy on the rise. The more electricity we use the more money we pay to a privatized utility. We've shipped most of our manufacturing jobs across oceans. What we basically have left is services (retail, food, law, medical, insurance, finance, banking, construction, etc.), and the military/weapons/defense industry. 9. Depleted uranium (radioactive weaponry) is used in tanks, and in armor-piercing and bunker-busting weapons by U.S. troops and sold to other countries. The half-life of DU is 4.5-billion years longer than recorded history. Our soldiers are exposed to this material every day, and no tests for strontium are performed on veterans. Birth defects are reported from military families and countries with whom we have been at war. 10. Nuclear power plants are still dependent on oil. They must run oil-driven generators once a month for four hours and once a year for 24 hours. They must stock enough fuel on site for seven days of continual power generation. This is the equivalent of almost 83,000 gallons of fuel. 11. Solar, wind, hydrogen (www.windhunter.org) are all promising for power needs. Why monopolistic companies aren't considering these alternatives is because it doesn't generate the control over the power that they want. If you control the utilities, you control the people. The federal government is giving out billions of dollars in incentives and other benefits to build new nuclear reactors, which Progress Energy has already collected. The incentives for solar and wind arrays are not to be found. Please call Progress Energy and Levy and Citrus counties and tell them you don't want nuclear power. There are better ways to generate electricity that supports life, not cancer and death for thousands of years. Please call Gov. Charlie Crist and ask him to support green, renewable power - solar, wind, hydrogen. This is your world; how do you want to live in it? Elaine Nichols of Oldsmar is active in the anti-nuclear energy movement. Guest columnists write their views on subjects that they choose, which do not necessarily reflect those of this newspaper. -------- us nuc waste Colorado Company Licensed to Strip Uranium from Water WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2007 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2007/2007-01-30-09.asp#anchor2 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC, has issued a license to RMD Operations, LLC, of Wheat Ridge, Colorado, for its system of removing uranium from municipal water supplies to help communities comply with new federal safe drinking water standards. Water treatment facilities must comply this year with new standards published in 2000 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limiting the amounts of various contaminants in drinking water. The EPA’s limit for uranium, which occurs naturally in groundwater, is 30 micrograms per liter, or 30 parts per billion. Up to 2,000 treatment facilities nationwide must meet this standard. But extracting uranium from drinking water could result in these facilities accumulating enough concentrated uranium to require licensing as source material by the NRC or an Agreement State - 34 states thatregulate radioactive materials in their jurisdictions under agreements with the NRC. Any material consisting of more than 0.05 percent uranium is considered source material, and any entity possessing more than 15 pounds at a time, or 150 pounds over the course of a year, must be licensed. The license granted to RMD allows the company to contract with water treatment facilities in NRC states to remove uranium from their community water supplies and to take possession of the uranium once extracted. The program involves storing the collected uranium in RMD’s self-contained uranium removal system for disposal in properly permitted or licensed facilities, either as waste or for use in a uranium mill. The RMD uranium water treatment program may enable community water systems to remove uranium from drinking water sources to comply with the EPA requirements without the need to develop expertise in handling radioactive materials. The program may also allow municipal water authorities to remove the uranium permanently from their environments. The NRC license applies to the 16 states under NRC jurisdiction. At RMD’s request, the agency sent its environmental assessment to Agreement and non-Agreement States for their review before the license was issued. RMD has applied for similar licenses in some Agreement States. -------- MILITARY -------- arms U.S. Urged to Stop Selling Cluster Bombs to Israel Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/30/1515235 Human Rights Watch is urging the United States to stop selling cluster bombs to Israel following the widespread use of U.S-made cluster munitions during the war in Lebanon last year. On Monday State Department spokesperson Sean McCormick acknowledged that Israel likely violated US arms export agreements when it dropped cluster bombs among villages in Lebanon. * Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch: "As a comparison in the war in Iraq in 2003, the United States over three weeks dropped 2 million cluster sub-munitions. Israel in the war in Lebanon dropped 4 million in three days. It dwarfs any use of cluster bombs prior. You can take Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo and put them together and you’re not going to come close to what happened in southern Lebanon." Israel & Boeing Sign $100M Weapons Deal Meanwhile the Israeli military has announced it has signed a major new contract with the US military contractor Boeing. Israel plans to spend one hundred million dollars to buy a new weapons system that converts conventional bombs into satellite-guided, precision weapons. ---- Report: Russia negotiating sale of air defense missiles to Venezuela 1/30/2007 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-30-russia-venezuela_x.htm MOSCOW — Russia is holding talks with Venezuela to supply it with mobile air defense missile systems, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday, citing a defense sector source. Between 10 and 12 Tor-M1 missile systems could be supplied to Venezuela at the initial stage, the Interfax-Military News Agency said, citing a source it did not name. A spokesman for Russia's state-controlled arms trading monopoly, Rosoboronexport, refused to comment on the report. The ITAR-Tass news agency said the report was denied by Venezuela's Defense Ministry. The Tor-M1 system consists of eight missiles mounted on a launch vehicle. The system can identify up to 48 targets and fire at two targets simultaneously at a height of up to 20,000 feet. Despite U.S. efforts to block other countries from selling arms to Venezuela, Russia recently has signed about $3 billion in military deals with President Hugo Chavez's government, making it the largest weapons supplier to Venezuela. Contracts include 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 Su-30 fighter jets and 53 Russian helicopters. Russia has also just delivered 29 Tor-M1 systems to Iran, over Washington's complaints. -------- iraq LA Times Baghdad Bureau Chief Borzou Daragahi: The Intensity of the Bloodbath Is Increasing Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/30/1516203 In Iraq, at least 36 Shiite pilgrims have died today in a series of bombings and ambushes aimed to disrupt Ashura, the holiest period of the year for Shiite. Another five Shiite worshippers were killed on Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade hit a mosque south of Kirkuk. [includes rush transcript] * Borzou Daragahi, Baghdad bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We end today with one of our top stories in Iraq. At least 36 Shia pilgrims have died in a series of bombings and ambushes aimed to disrupt Ashura, the holiest period of the year for Shia. Another five Shiite worshipers were killed Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade hit a mosque south of Kirkuk. We’re joined right now in Baghdad by Borzou Daragahi. He is the Baghdad bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Borzou, can you give us the latest news right now in the Iraqi capital? BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, as you mentioned, it's been a series of mortar attacks and bombings, mostly targeting Shiite civilians, many of them pilgrims celebrating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the Ashura festival, which wraps up today. There are also reports of mortar attacks on Sunni neighborhoods and a Sunni shrine, the Imam Adham temple in northern Baghdad, so it's just ongoing sectarian warfare. The streets are relatively empty because of the holiday. Kind of spooky out there. AMY GOODMAN: Borzou, you most recently wrote about the Iraqi and US forces killing several hundred fighters apparently planning an attack on the Shia Muslim shrine in the holy city of Najaf. Describe what you know. BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, there’s a lot we don’t know. We don't have a lot of ground truth on what's happening here. We have a lot of official comments from officials down there, in a neighboring province, and also from the capital, essentially saying that there was this Shiite messianic cult. They were recruiting from Sunnis and foreigners, as well. They were holed up in this village. They had suspicions about this village. They went over there. Something happened; there was an altercation. Fighting broke out. They started routing the Iraqi troops. Iraqi troops called for US backup. Eventually, air strikes came in and killed a whole bunch of people. AMY GOODMAN: And do you know who those people are? BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, according to Iraqi officials, according to some of the other people that we talked to who are corroborating that information, they are members of a group called Heaven's Army or the Soldiers of Heaven, a cult led by a charismatic young guy who claimed that he was the second coming of a Shiite saint. AMY GOODMAN: Borzou, you've been in Iraq for a long time now. What effect, what has been the reaction to, and what evidence is there right now of the escalation of war, of the increased troops, soldiers already coming in from the US? BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, I think that there's been no evidence of US forces increasing their activities at this point. As a matter of fact, I tend to know that during these religious holidays, the US forces try to keep a lower profile, because they know that their presence is offensive to certain pious people. But what we have seen is an apparent escalation in the types of attacks that the insurgents are carrying out. It seems like there's more and more attacks on Shiite civilians over the past couple weeks. There was a little lull in the number of dead bodies that were, you know, we believe, generally caused by Shiite death squads. Those numbers have gone up, as well. So just overall an increase in the intensity of the bloodbath. AMY GOODMAN: There were major protests in the United States, particularly in Washington D.C., estimates of tens of thousands to half a million protesting the escalation of war in Iraq, calling for the troops to come home. Did it get any coverage? Was there any reaction from Iraqis in Baghdad? BORZOU DARAGAHI: I mean, the Iraqi people, in general, they’re under so much pressure and they’re suffering so much. You know, there was a little bit of TV coverage on the international Arabic satellite channels. Most people are just basically trying to get past the next checkpoint. AMY GOODMAN: Borzou Daragahi, I want to thank you very much for being with us in Baghdad. He's the bureau chief there for the Los Angeles Times. -------- ACTIVISTS Jury: Seattle violated constitutional rights of 1999 WTO protesters 1/30/2007 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-30-wto-protesters_x.htm SEATTLE — A federal jury found Tuesday that the city of Seattle violated the constitutional rights of 200 protesters who were arrested during a demonstration during the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999. The jury found the city liable for violating the protesters' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure, but did not find a violation against their free speech rights under the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman had already ruled that police had made the arrests without probable cause. Attorneys for the city said they plan to appeal the decision. The city has already paid more than $800,000 in WTO lawsuits and settlements. Any damages from the latest decision will be set in the next phase of the trial. The week of the arrests, about 50,000 protesters swarmed Seattle, overwhelming police and closing down the meeting. The mayor imposed a curfew and limited the downtown core to WTO delegates, police and emergency workers, store employees, residents and shoppers. The area became known as the "no-protest zone," even though shoppers, residents and others allowed in the zone were not exempted from protesting. The group of demonstrators were arrested when they marched within the zone, where they sat down, chanted and sang.