FYI
To: 60 Minutes CBS TV
Regarding "DIRTY BOMBS WAITING TO HAPPEN".
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/14/60II/printable660982.shtml
Here is a method to denature dirty bomb elements
and eliminate them for good.
-----------------------------------
"I am become Death,
the shatterer of worlds."
The line of Hindu scripture that flashed through Oppenheimer's mind at the moment "gadget," the first test bomb exploded above the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.
Bhagavad-Gita Chapter 11
The Vision of the Universal Form
Lord Krishna is beseeched by Arjuna to reveal His universal form showing all of existence.
Lord Krishna said: I am terrible time the destroyer of al beings in all worlds, engaged to destroy all beings in this world; of those heroic soldiers presently situated in the opposing army, even without you none will be spared. Bhagavad-Gita 11:32
Nuclear waste, including plutonium 239 can be denatured
into non-radioactive elements using existing infrastructure.
TRANSMUTING HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE
Transmuting nuclear waste eliminates the disposal problem
and prevents atom or dirty bomb fabrication.
The high heat produced during this unique photon transmutation
method can be used to make steam and power the existing
electric generators at each nuclear power plant where
spent fuel (nuclear waste) is stored in cooling ponds. You could
shut down the dangerously aging, embrittled reactors and use
the transmutation of nuclear waste as a heat source. This is not
recycling plutonium and nuclear waste as in the MOX scheme
which perpetuates the problem. Dr. Roy's photon method
transmutes 100% of each isotope into a non-radioactive element.
Solving the nuclear waste disposal problem DOES NOT make
nuclear power a safe or clean power source. The next Chernobyl
magnitude catastrophe could cause a cascading world wide
depression as well as multi-generation genetic damage.
The Roy Process Brief Description
from the web site: http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess
Is there a safe process to get rid of nuclear waste? One possible solution is a process invented by Dr. Radha R. Roy, former professor of Physics at Arizona State University, and designer and former director of the nuclear physics research facilities at the University of Brussels in Belgium and at Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Roy is an internationally known nuclear physicist, consultant, and the author of over 60 articles and several books. He is also a contributing author of many invited articles in a prestigious encyclopedia. He is cited in American Men and Women of Science, Who`s Who in America, Who`s Who in the World and the International Biographical Centre, England. He has spent 52 years in European and American universities researching and writing recognized books on nuclear physics. He has supervised many doctoral students.
Roy invented a process for transmuting radioactive nuclear isotopes to harmless, stable isotopes. This process is viable not only for nuclear waste from reactors but also for low-level radioactive waste products.
In 1979, Roy announced his transmutation process and received international attention. The Roy process does not require storage of radioactive materials. No new equipment is required. In fact, all of the equipment and the chemical separation processes needed are well known.
What`s the basis for the Roy Process? If you examine radioactive elements such as strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium 239, you will see that they all have too many neutrons. To put it very simply, the Roy process transmutes these unstable isotopes to stable ones by knocking out the extra neutrons. When a neutron is removed, the resulting isotope has a considerably shorter half-life which then decays to a stable form in a reasonable amount of time.
How do we knock out neutrons? By bombarding them with photons (produced as x-rays) in a high- powered electron linear accelerator. Before this process, the isotopes must be separated by a well-known chemical process.
It is feasible that portable units could be built and transported to hazardous sites for on-site transmutation of nuclear wastes and radioactive wastes.
To give an example, cesium 137 with a half-life of 30.17 years is transformed into cesium 136 with a half-life of 13 days. Plutonium 239 with a half-life of 24,300 years is transformed into plutonium 237 with a half-life of 45.6 days. Subsequent radioactive elements which will be produced from the decay of plutonium 237 can be treated in the same way as above until the stable element is formed.
From the Patent application claim: http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess/additional-uses-royprocess.html
Patent Examiner Comments on the Roy Process Invention
As a patent examiner, the explanation as to why the Roy process was not patented makes perfect sense and is not paranoid at all. There is no reason to get a patent unless you have the money to defend it in court. Large corporations are notorious for stealing them. Also, patent applications in 1979 were held confidential until they were issued as patents. The inventor requiring a non-disclosure agreement of a corporation to view the application is also perfectly reasonable. It is niave to believe that Reagan was not encouraged by large corporations to change the law regarding acceptable nuclear waste disposal methods to benefit them in order to squash any new method like the Roy process. These kinds of things happen all the time.
As to the merits of the Roy process, it seems to me on it's face to have potential to change nuclear waste into something less dangerous. I don't know enough about nuclear physics to really give an detailed response, but I do know that nuclear accelerators do change atomic structure and that bombarding nuclear waste would certainly change it into something else.
Atomic Age Timeline Animation:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf
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theroyprocess
Jan9-05, 12:52 PM
List: Leuren Moret sends this communication to the entire list.
This contains startling revelations made public for the first time
in as much as 61 years. The world famous former Lawrence
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab scientist sets the record straight
on the use of "DU" in the 1943 era. Moret talked to scientists who
were present at the time working on the Manhattan Project. Moret
also sets the record straight on a loathsome little man, "a DOE
sycophant" Robert Holloway, too.
-----------------
I have confirmed with three Manhattan Project scientists
that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo
recommending developing radioactive materials as
POISON GAS MILITARY WEAPONS in 1943.
Dr. James Conant, was President of Harvard when John
Kerry's father (a high level CIA agent) brought him
into the Manhattan Project to develop poison gas
warfare weapons. Conant had developed poison gas
warfare weapons in WW I so he was already an expert on
them.
The three Manhattan Project scientists who confirmed
to me that DU was intended to be used in the Groves
memo are:
Marion Fulk, a retired nuclear physical
chemist who worked on the research of rainout of
nuclear materials for the nuclear weapons program at
Livermore (where I also formerly worked),
Dr. Fred Wood, and a third one I met in Willits, Calif. while
giving a talk a few months ago with Dennis Kyne on DU.
In addition to those three, Dr. Ernest Sternglass -
who is a world expert on ionizing radiation and
convinced the Senate to sign the partial test ban
treaty in 1963 at the request of Pres. Kennedy - also
confirmed that DU was intended to be used in the
Groves memo.
The first testing of DU munitions as a terrain
contaminant were crude tests done in the late 1940s on
the Badlands Bombing Range in South (or North) Dakota.
These were bags and barrels of uranium poked through
with holes which were exposed to the wind and the
downwind effects tested on unsuspecting Native
Americans and other poor white folks who happened to
live there too.
The pernicious effects of DU are now global with
reported increases in infant mortality in 20 regions
of Europe reported in the January 2004 Lancet medical
journal in the UK, in the US for the first time in 41
years which was reported in Feb. 2004 in the NYT, and
in the UK Guardian last spring throughout Europe.
No one can escape this horrendous amount of radiation now
globally contaminating the entire atmosphere at levels
that are 5 times higher than the legal allowable
exposure limit under US law. Major Doug Rokke was
ordered by General Paul Greenberg in 1992, as head of
the DU cleanup team for the US Army in Gulf War I, to
write a DU report to Brown and Root (a Halliburton
subsidiary) which was passed to them through the
Secretary of State from the Army.
Today, the UK govt. air monitoring station in Aldermaston,
England, which measures uranium in the air and must report those
levels each year has failed to provide any reports for
the past three years because they claim they are not
measuring it now.
It is no coincidence but certainly curious that Brown and Root
(a Halliburton subsidiary) has now taken over Aldermaston in
England, a British govt. facility....
This terrible truth and global tragedy is what
Holloway and the other prostitutes for the nuclear
establishment are hiding by lying about the intended
purpose of the Groves memo.
Holloway himself worked for the EPA in Nevada. The
EPA had a secret dairy on the Nevada test site during
atmospheric testing and underground testing until 1982.
Horrible experiments were done on animals at this dairy,
and tissue and bone samples were sent to the Livermore
Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the Hunters Point Naval
Shipyard secret radiation lab in San Francisco.
I have just obtained declassified reports on animal studies, the
EPA dairy and other beef herds exposed to atmospheric
testing fallout and rainout in Nevada. All of this
was hidden even from the Livermore lab where Marion
Fulk tried to get the information and never could.
Now 50 years later I have given it to him, to
Sternglass and to Dr. Janette Sherman who did bone
marrow studies at Hunters Point in the 50s on those
very same animals.
What was Holloway doing at the EPA in Nevada? And
what does he know about the secret EPA dairy?
Plenty is my guess. The milk, manure and the
carcasses from the EPA dairy were so radioactive they
had to be packed into discarded munitions boxes and
thrown in bomb test craters at the test site.
It doesnt really matter what they were thinking in
1943 because now Halliburton, three Presidential
administrations, and the Carlyle Group/munitions
manufacturers have poisoned the entire world and slow
deaths and long lingering illnesses will increase.
It is part of the eugenics plan developed under Jimmy
Carter by Kissinger, Brzezinski, Haig and Ed Muskie to
depopulate the world by 2-3 billion in 1979. It is
the "Global 2000" plan which you can easily read on
the internet.
DU is also being used since 1991 to study the
radiobiological effects of 4th generation nuclear
weapons. Read about the nuclear weapons program here:
UC Regents Lose Management Contract of Nuclear Weapons
Program
Part 1
http://www.sfbayview.com/091504/ucregents091504.shtml
Part 2
http://www.sfbayview.com/092204/nuclearweapons092204.shtml
Part 3
http://www.sfbayview.com/092904/nuclearweapons2092904.shtml
Part 4
http://www.sfbayview.com/100604/nuclearweapons100604.shtml
Part 5
http://www.sfbayview.com/101304/nuclearweapons101304.shtml
Part 6
http://www.sfbayview.com/110304/ucregents110304.shtml
Part 7
http://www.sfbayview.com/112404/ucregents112404.shtml
Part 8
http://www.sfbayview.com/120104/nuclearcorridor120104.shtml
And the last comment I have is that while Doug Rokke
was fighting in Vietnam and cleaning up Iraq at the
expense of his health and the life of his team members
- Holloway was pulling tits at the EPA dairy on the
Nevada test site and knowingly poisoning a nation of
men, women, children and babies.
Now he is a DOE sycophant well rewarded by pigging
out at the public trough and feeding on public money...
well rewarded for happily poisoning all of us.
Even his children and grandchildren will not escape this
global tragedy which he continues to deny.
Atomic Age Timeline Animation:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Jan9-05, 12:57 PM
Radioactive Contamination in America
Mina Hamolton
Iraq's alleged nuclear threat sinks into the dustbin of history. Americans can stop worrying about atomic perils? Wrong.
Americans are at risk from American-as-apple-pie, Stars-and-Stripes, and made-in-USA, WMDs.
A just-released study, Danger Lurks Beneath: The Threat to Major Water Supplies from US Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants, details the danger. Written by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a high energy, nuclear physicist, who has been studying nuclear hazards for 28 years and published by the public interest group, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, this book will curl your hair.
Danger Lurks Beneath shows EVEN IF THE US NUCLEAR ARSENAL IS NEVER USED a deadly plague has been released upon the land and water. Though most of the 13 nuclear weapons factories are currently shutdown (a situation President Bush would love to change), the contamination is spreading.
The process of manufacturing nuclear bombs is not dramatic. Unlike an actual nuclear exchange no humans are burned to a crisp, no cities are pulverized. But the ingredients for a nuclear bomb must be mined, sheared, heated, melted, liquefied, transformed into gas, spun, fashioned into metal, nuked, chopped up, put through chemical baths, extracted - all the while unleashing a host of poisons.
The hazard isn't just to the citizens living nearby to the factories. The poisons threaten us all.
Imagine the distance between Boston and New York. It's a five-hour, pedal-to-the-metal highway jaunt. It's also the alarming distance toxins have migrated away from the Hanford nuclear weapons factory in Washington.
Mussels and oysters found on the Washington coast are contaminated with radioactive poisons that flowed down to the coast from Hanford, 200 miles upstream. This is one of many devastating findings in Danger Lurks Beneath.
How can we take in the enormity of what's happened and is still happening?
We learn that four major rivers and many minor rivers are already contaminated or at risk. The Columbia River in Washington, the Snake River in Idaho, the Tuscaloosa River in Georgia, the Rio Grande in New Mexico, the Great Miami River and Ohio Rivers in Ohio.
How do we wrap our minds around four major rivers at risk? What does it mean for people who swim, fish or drink from those rivers? What about people picnicking alongside those rivers? Are the grasses along the banks safe? Is the sediment toxic?
The risk is not a hypothetical, let's-worry-in-ten-years matter. At the Fernald nuclear weapons factory in Ohio the plant managers deliberately poured - via a buried pipeline -tons of uranium into the Great Miami River. Yes, TONS. And this is a river that flows into the Ohio River from which many municipalities draw drinking water.
Ohio communities are not the only ones whose water supplies are threatened. One water reservoir has already had to be shutdown, the Great Western reservoir in the suburbs of Denver. It's contaminated by runoff from the Rocky Flats factory. Now a second nearby water reservoir, Standley Lake, is also polluted by radioactivity.
The information in Danger Lurks Beneath is so shocking we want to comfort ourselves, assure ourselves, Hey we don't live there or near there. Problem: The toxins are seeping into the food chain in sinister ways. For example, ever eat farm-fed trout? That delicious, fresh trout staring up from your plate was probably grown in water drawn from the Snake River aquifer in Idaho. The nearby Idaho nuclear weapons factory is polluting the aquifer.
For the first time in 2000, plutonium was detected in two locations in this aquifer. A host of other nasty chemicals and radionuclides had already been found in this vital water source.
Not that the trout are contaminated, at least, as far as we know. But here's an indicator of how real the threat is: several years ago a trout farmer tried to sell his Idaho hatchery business to the company, W.R. Grace. He was turned down. What were W.R. Grace's reasons? They didn't want a fish farm that gets its water from a source above which nuclear waste is buried. (1)
W.R. Grace was not whistling in the dark. It's a company that knows about nuclear hazards. Back in the 1960's, Grace ran a now-defunct nuclear reprocessing factory in West Valley, NY.
Danger Lurks Beneath shows that the contamination from nuke weapons factories is widespread and it's traveling along unknown and unmapped pathways. We're fooling ourselves if we think we're safe -- anywhere.
The information is this book would be easier to swallow if there were a villain, an archenemy like Saddam to blame. But these villains are US government employees making extraordinarily dumb decisions, decisions driven by a blind dedication to so-called national security.
During four decades worth of bomb making the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor the Department of Energy adopted an out-of-sight, out-of-mind policy. Dump the waste where nobody can see it. Pump poison into aquifers, pipe it to rivers, dump it into streams, ponds and trenches, site burial grounds in swamps. And, all the while, lie about what you're doing.
This WMD threat makes Saddam's "nuclear" menace look like a cupcake. Ditto North Korea's or Iran's.
Don't expect President Bush to make jokes about this threat. No way is he going to engage in a comic routine looking under the desk in the Oval Office for by-products of the US's bomb building spree.
Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, John Kerry, the US Congress, the media and any sane member of the human species should be trumpeting the findings of this report across the land. Will they? Are they?
Are we?
(1) Perspectives of a Former Idaho Trout Farmer, www.ieer.org/sdafiles.
To obtain a copy of Danger Lurks Beneath go to www.ananuclear.org. If you don't feel up to the 270-page study, an Executive Summary is available. Also you can download individual chapters on nuclear factories nearest you or your family and friends.
Mina Hamilton is a writer based in New York City. She is a Contributing Editor to Danger Lurks Beneath: The Threat to Major Water Supplies from US Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants. She can be reached at minaham@aol.com.
-----------------------------------------
Atomic Age Timeline Animation:
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* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Jan9-05, 01:07 PM
Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
Here is an excerpt from the September 30 Presidential debate, in John Kerry's response to the question: What is the most serious threat to U.S.?:
Kerry: Right now, the President is spending hundreds of million of dollars to research bunker buster nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense. You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people "You can't have nuclear weapons", but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using. Not this President! I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation.....
----------------------------------------------------
Cheney to Promote Nuke Reactors to China
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - On a trip to China next week to talk about high-stakes issues like terrorism and North Korea, Vice President Dick Cheney will have another task - making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology.
At stake could be billions of dollars in business in coming years and thousands of American jobs. The initial installment of four reactors, costing $1.5 billion apiece, would also help narrow the huge U.S. trade deficit with China.
China's latest economic plan anticipates more than doubling its electricity output by 2020 and the Chinese government, facing enormous air pollution problems, is looking to shift some of that away from coal-burning plants. Its plan calls for building as many as 32 large 1,000-megawatt reactors over the next 16 years.
No one has ordered a new nuclear power reactor in the United States in three decades and the next one, if it comes, is still years away. So, China is being viewed by the U.S. industry as a potential bonanza.
Cheney's three-day visit to Beijing and Shanghai next week is part of a weeklong trip to Asia that will also include a stop in Tokyo. He departed Washington on Friday.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters about the trip, said Cheney will not ``pitch individual commercial transactions.'' But he intends to make clear ``we support the efforts of our American companies'' and general access to China's markets, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some critics are concerned about such technology transfers.
``This pitch could not be more poorly timed,'' Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, told a hearing of the House International Relations Committee recently.
Citing recent Chinese plans to help Pakistan build two large reactors that are capable of producing plutonium, he said it is not the time for China to be rewarded with new reactor technology. U.S. officials said the Chinese have given adequate assurances that such sales will not pose a proliferation risk.
Bid solicitations for four new reactors are expected to be issued by the Chinese within months.
The leading competitors are U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Co. and a French rival, Areva, which is peddling its next-generation reactor built by its Framatome subsidiary.
Westinghouse is putting its hopes on its 1,100 megawatt AP1000 reactor, an advanced design that is still waiting approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it can be built in the United States. Westinghouse, owned by the British nuclear firm BNFL, is the only U.S.-based manufacturer of a pressurized water reactor, the type of design China has said it wants to pursue.
``Clearly the China market is very important to the industry and a supplier like Westinghouse,'' said Vaughn Gilbert, a spokesman for the Pittsburgh-based reactor vendor. ``The Chinese market is one that we're pursuing.''
Each of the AP1000 reactors are expected to cost about $1.5 billion. ``We would assume there would be more than one order,'' Gilbert said, since China has indicated it wants a standardized design across its reactor program. A successful bid could mean 5,000 American jobs, Gilbert said in an interview.
For the nuclear industry, the potential windfall goes beyond building the power plants.
``The opportunity is not just in selling the Chinese a number of reactors, but engaging them for a longer term in a strategic partnership,'' says Ron Simard, who deals with future plant development at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. That could mean future construction contracts as well as plant service business.
The reactor business has been nonexistent in the United States since the 1970s. No American utility has ordered a new reactor since the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
So, vendors like Westinghouse are relying on business elsewhere, especially Asia.
China currently has nine operating reactors, including French, Canadian, Russian, and Japanese designs as well as their own model, producing 6,450 megawatts of power, or about 1.4 percent total capacity. Chinese officials have estimated that by 2020 the country will need an additional 32,000 megawatts from its nuclear industry, or about 32 additional reactors.
Even with the surge in reactor construction, nuclear power will only account for 8 percent of China's future electricity needs. Chinese officials said at an energy conference in Washington last year their country must more than double its coal-fired generation and build more dams, erect windmills and tap natural gas to meet future electricity demands.
Genesis of Nuclear Proliferation
The entire gamut of how nuclear proliferation started
An open season has been declared on Pakistan in the wake of Doctor A Q Khan's bold confessions. It seems that Pakistan and its scientists are the first and only proliferators in the history of nuclear weaponry.
Nuclear proliferation was born with the first set of nuclear weapons. Its a half century long saga of strategic maneuvering, clashes of ideologies, espionage, love, hate, deceit, back stabbing and personal greed.
History bears witness to the fact that there is nothing extraordinary, new or unique about Pakistan proliferating nuclear know-how, if at all. The United States started the tradition by gifting it to the UK and France. The rogue (socialist) elements in the UK and US exported the same technology to the Soviet Union, who in turn gave it away to countries like China and India. China in kind, passed it to Pakistan who is said to have kept the tradition alive by trying to pass it on to the Iran, Libya and N. Korea. India and Israel did their part by bringing South Africa and Brazil onboard.
For their share of proliferation the French passed the nuclear technology to Israel. Despite De Gaulle's opposition and direct orders to shut the technology pipeline built by Shimon Peres, his atomic energy minister Jacques Soustelle kept the transfer going on. Was Soustelle punished for going rogue and breaking the laws against the proliferation? Not that the world knows of.
If anything, it is the United States, which unintentionally, or otherwise, initiated the nuclear proliferation. The US was the first to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, the rest merely followed in its footprints.
----------------------------------------
Atomic Age Timeline Animation:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf
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~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~
theroyprocess
Jan9-05, 05:47 PM
Rocky Flatts Government Cover-up
An ex-FBI agent, the head of the Rocky Flats grand jury and
others said the Justice Department:
• Restricted the FBI investigation at Rocky Flats and did
not file charges for the most serious crimes found.
• Denied the public was harmed, even though radioactive and
hazardous waste contaminated ground- and drinking water.
• Ignored evidence and did not file charges that Rocky Flats
illegally stored radioactive incinerator ash.
• Obstructed a special grand jury, Congress and an FBI
agent, and lied to the court and the public about the extent
of the contamination and government crimes at Rocky Flats.
Source: www.ambushedgrandjury.com
imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438
----
Flats whistleblowers to speak
By RICHARD VALENTY, Colorado Daily Staff Writer, January 6, 2005
The book "The Ambushed Grand Jury" paints a tale of alleged
environmental crimes and high-level government cover-up of
said crimes at Rocky Flats in the late 1980s.
Two of the main characters from in the book will hold a
press conference Wednesday at the state capitol to begin to
tell the rest of the story.
Wes McKinley, a rancher from southeastern Colorado and
"Ambushed" co-author, served as foreman of a special grand
jury formed to complete a report about federal
investigations into alleged Flats violations. The grand jury
finished the report in 1992, but large portions of the
report were not made public. McKinley could not release the
details himself due to grand jury secrecy laws.
McKinley was elected to the Colorado House of
Representatives in District 64, a multi-county district in
the southeastern corner of the state, in 2004. According to
a Monday press release, McKinley plans to introduce
unspecified new state legislation about Rocky Flats during
the 2005 legislative session.
Jon Lipsky, a former FBI Special Agent, participated in a
1989 FBI raid of the Flats facility. Lipsky said he has been
"muzzled for over a decade" by the federal government to
keep him from speaking about Rocky Flats, and Wednesday's
event will be his first public discussion of the Flats
investigation.
Caron Balkany, the other "Ambushed" co-author, said
Wednesday's press conference will introduce new information
not found in the book, but said the speakers will probably
not focus on alleged federal obstruction of justice.
"We're focusing on a very specific thing right now, which is
what might have happened or what information there is that
would impact the ongoing plans to open Rocky Flats up to
recreation," said Balkany.
Parts of the Flats site could be open to hikers or bikers
after a multi-billion dollar cleanup conducted by
Kaiser-Hill Company and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
is complete.
According to the press release, Lipsky has offered to meet
with Flats cleanup regulators, including the DOE and the
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
(CDPHE), to volunteer additional Flats-related information.
Karen Lutz, DOE spokesperson, said she could not confirm if
a meeting has been arranged between Flats regulators and Lipsky.
"DOE has a process in place to meet with any citizen who has
information that could enhance the cleanup," said Lutz. "If
Mr. Lipsky can avail himself to that process and if he has
information, we would like to obtain the information, meet
with him, and find out if it's pertinent information that we
haven't already addressed."
Balkany said "Ambushed," released in March 2004, is already
in its second printing and has been sold nationally outside
of the Denver area and internationally. Still, she said the
average everyday local citizen needs to learn more about the
history and present status of the former plutonium trigger
plant.
"It's one of the reasons Wes and I wrote the book, because
we respect the average citizen," said Balkany. "We think
it's everybody's obligation to participate, and it's our
obligation to get the information out. The message we're
supposed to use under our system of government to inform the
people has been co-opted."
McKinley could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but one
simple sentence illustrates his feelings about future
recreation on the Flats site.
"I don't want my children playing in plutonium-laden dust,"
said McKinley in the press release.
Lutz along with other DOE and CDPHE officials insist the
site will be safe for casual visitors and full-time
employees when the cleanup is complete.
"The community is going to get a very safe, protective and
conservative cleanup that far exceeds what the law requires
us to do," said Lutz. "We have multiple layers of
conservatism built into this cleanup, and there are a lot of
people who have worked over the last 15 years to get to
where we are today."
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theroyprocess
Jan10-05, 07:51 AM
ARCHIVE THIS DOCUMENT IMMEDIATELY... BEFORE IT
DISAPPEARS
DO NOT RELEASE UNTIL MONDAY JANUARY 10
SECRET BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL AND RADIATION EXPERIMENTS
IN ALASKA 1952-1970+
CANADIAN GOVT IN AN UPROAR,
BUSH CLASSIFIES SECRET DOCS LAST WEEK
CONTACT GULF WAR VETERANS ASSOCIATION FOR INTERVIEWS
OR MORE INFORMATION -
JOYCE RILEY RN BSN (573) 378-6049
www.gulfwarvets.com
www.thepowerhour.com
PLEASE ARCHIVE THESE DOCS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THIS
REPORT (ABOUT 40 PAGES) DISAPPEARS. PRES. BUSH HAS
JUST CLASSIFIED THE FORT GREELEY REPORT BY EXECUTIVE
ORDER BUT IT WAS ALREADY IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. PLEASE
PRINT OUT AND BURN A CD IF YOU CAN. POST ON YOUR
WEBSITE AND DISTRIBUTE AFTER MONDAY.
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Feds Whitewash US
Bio-Chemical Tests in Alaska
By Greg Szymanski
American Free Press.com
1-2-5
President Bush extended holiday greetings to military troops this Christmas, but one gift he'll never open is the executive order he signed, which keeps sensitive documents secret about biological and chemical testing at Fort Greely near Fairbanks, Alaska.
The president, by sealing important documents, obviously feels military health concerns were of secondary importance to protecting the Department of Defense (DOD) against potential exposure for injuries resulting from chemical testing and dumping.
What little is known about chemical and biological testing at Fort Greely has surfaced from leaked documents, eyewitness accounts and other general information provided reluctantly by the DOD after health problems began to surface by those living near the base.
Other information, scratching the surface of what really happened, has also appeared in Seymour Hersh's book Chemical and Biological Testing: America's Hidden Arsenal, a historical account of the base by Norman Chase and a March 2003 article entitled "Northern Exposure" in The Nation magazine by Korey Capozza.
"The real story of what went on is in the classified documents kept secret by the DOD and President Bush," said Capozza, a critic of the recent executive order signed by Bush. "They have yet to give veterans a clear definition of possible causes of their health problems. The DOD also refuses to grant any of the veterans health care based on exposure to agents used in the secret site's experiments."
Records show that Fort Greely, as far back as 1952 and continuing to at least 1970, was used for the explicit purpose of testing chemical and biological weapons. The base, located 100 miles southwest of Fairbanks on 640,000 acres, originally began operating in 1942 as a staging area for planes ferried to the Soviet Union during World War II.
However, seven years later a nuclear reactor was built to serve as the military's power plant. Then in 1966, the Army began testing biological, chemical and various other weapons. The reactor was dismantled in 1973, and in 1995 the base was scheduled for closure.
But recently, under the Bush administration, the DOD proposed Fort Greely be used as a storage site for interceptor missiles in support of the space-based missile defense program.
However, what transpired on the base during the 1960s and 1970s is still heavily debated as veterans are now surfacing with what amounts to "chemical horror" stories.
According to several veterans who spoke to VA officials, between 1962 and 1967, the Army blasted hundreds of rockets and bombs containing sarin and VX nerve gas into the region which is densely populated by forests and wildlife.
Veterans recall canisters of VX nerve agents being indiscriminately buried approximately a mile from the Alaskan highway or tossed in a nearby frozen lake in the winter of 1966, where the canisters later sank to the bottom when the ice melted in the spring. Regular dumping expeditions were reportedly carried out until 1970, when the testing discontinued.
Now, 30 years later, veterans and civilians are coming forward with serious health concerns, but since no records are available due to Fort Greely's top-secret status, VA officials at first had a hard time believing the veterans' credibility.
After heavy pressure was applied by watchdog groups, the DOD has released some documents revealing the test site may have been operated with blatant disregard for human and environmental safety.
The documents also suggest that some of the deadly materials used may still be unaccounted for and buried somewhere beneath the pristine Alaskan wilderness.
Critics suggest the executive order signed by Bush was designed to protect the DOD against conclusive evidence, hiding a massive cover-up of illegal chemical and biological testing.
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
Chernobyl -- Outside, a hard winter's afternoon settles on the village, but inside their cottage Nikolai and Nastia lay out a spread: apples from their orchard, pickles from their garden, mushrooms from the woods around and full glasses of samogon, otherwise known as Ukrainian moonshine. Samogon, the locals say, offers protection from radioactivity, a consideration since we are in a "black village" written off for human occupation in 1986 after the explosion of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station a mere dozen miles away.
"You grow your own food?" a guest asks.
"All of it," Nastia says.
The guest takes a discreet glance at his dosimeter.
The village is called "black," as in abandoned. But as if to make the name literally true, the neighboring houses have turned black and tilted into a slow slide into the earth. Trees reach in and out the windows. The yards are littered with bureaus, picture frames, chairs.
At the beginning of the cleanup, the authorities buried the most radioactive houses, until it dawned on them that they were doing an excellent job of poisoning the groundwater. So the contaminated houses stand. For how long? According to an ecologist at the power station: "In 250 years everything is back to normal. Except for plutonium -- that will take 25,000 years."
Nikolai and Nastia's cottage is basically one room around an oven with a built-in shelf to sleep on during the coldest nights.
"It's home," Nastia says. She wears a sweater and shawl permanently. Her smile is bright steel, and her blue eyes shine with delight and a certain sense of collusion. Visitors are rare in the 19-mile-radius Zone of Exclusion around the reactors and, of course, she is not supposed to be there at all. Nastia and Nikolai were evacuated like everyone else, but sneaked like partisans back to their cottage in the woods. So much for zone security.
Since then, the authorities have largely let Nastia and Nikolai alone among the zone's phantom population of returnees, scavengers and poachers. Almost perversely, the wildlife there is flourishing; poachers hunt wild boar, served later in the finest restaurants of Kiev and Moscow. Scavengers cut up abandoned radioactive cars and trucks to sell as parts in the chop shops of Russia.
Nikolai and Nastia aren't on the run, they've just become invisible. They didn't vote in the recent presidential runoff election; there were no polling booths in the black villages. (To vote, they would have had to be bused out of the zone to cast a ballot bearing the address they had been assigned to and escaped from.) Doctors warned Nastia that if she remains in her village, radioactivity will give her cancer in 25 years. Nastia is 75 now. She says she'll take her chances.
Nastia sings a traditional harvest song in a young, birdlike voice. The samogon has brought out a fine sweat on every brow.
What amazes me is not that two elderly peasants have become invisible, but that Chernobyl itself has, as if it were a subject too awful to contemplate. In the rain, the sarcophagus, the 10-story steel-and-concrete box heroically constructed over Reactor 4, leaks like a radioactive sieve into groundwater that drains in the Pripyat River, which feeds the Dnepr, which is the drinking water for Kiev.
Ninety percent of the core is still in the reactor, breaking down and heating up, and the station's managers say that the sarcophagus itself could collapse at any time.
How dangerous would that be? Estimates of deaths from the explosion range from 41 to more than 300,000. The Zone of Exclusion is not an area of containment, no more than a circle drawn on the dirt would stop an airborne stream of plutonium, strontium, cesium-137. Seven million people live on contaminated land in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. People around the world carry in their chromosomes the mark of Chernobyl.
We search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, while a more likely danger is another explosion at Chernobyl. It may not be a meltdown, but it will be the mother of all dirty bombs. (A better sarcophagus is promised in five years, but at the site there is little sign of activity, let alone urgency.)
And in all the drama of the recent election, the inspiring rallies in Independence Square, the spirited presidential debate on Monday and the apparent triumph of good over evil, the subject of another nuclear disaster rarely came up, and then mostly in nationalist rhetoric: It is an article of faith that the West forced Ukraine in 2000 to close the perfectly good reactors that remained at Chernobyl. The truth is that you have to sympathize with Viktor Yushchenko, the likely winner in the rerun of the presidential runoff on Sunday, because he will have to deal with Chernobyl. Or not.
So, no wonder we're drinking samogon. The air is yeasty with it.
Nastia sings, and I picture her and Nikolai plucking apples off their poisoned tree, digging potatoes from their poisoned earth, fishing in their poisoned stream. (RedF.)
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Jan11-05, 03:56 PM
Chernobyl and the Collapse of Soviet Society
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/ChernobylCoSS.html
http://www.mothersalert.org/chernobyl.html
COMMENTARY ON
CHERNOBYL VICTIMS
Russell Hoffman and Pamela O'Brien
The theory that the Ukrainian Ministry of Heath inflates the number of dead from Chernobyl in order to increase funding to them is false. First, we now have plenty of data to show that there are significantly increased rates of radiation-induced diabetes, thyroid cancer (especially in children), leukemia, chromosome aberrations and a long list of other illnesses (thyroid cancer in children has increased ten-fold around Chernobyl, for example).
Second, the idea that the Ukrainian Ministry of Health was exaggerating the deaths is an idea being pushed within the official halls of the nuclear mafia because the truth was and is so devastating to their industry. Indeed, Alla Yaroshinskaya in her book "Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth" (Jon Carpenter Publishing Co., PO Box 129, Oxford, OX1 4PH England, distributed in the U.S.A. by InBook, PO Box 120261, 140 Commerce St., East Haven, CT 06512) provides what I think is ample documentation to indicate that deaths and other health effects have been purposefully and seriously UNDERestimated around Chernobyl (the book has a forward by eminent physician Dr. John W. Gofman).
Epidemiological data is available from the Belarus Institute for Hereditary Diseases in Minsk (zip code 220053), and published in the Japanese publication Gijutsu-To-Ningn #283, January - February 1998. (Hiroshima Bunker Woman's Junior College helped with the document, at Asaminami - Ku in Hiroshima.)
It is entirely possible that the true number of dead far exceeds the numbers estimated by even the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, who after all are only counting the deaths within a very localized area. They are not counting the random cancers, leukemias and birth defects that occur an extremely difficult-to-measure (low) rates around the world, but among billions and billions of people.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Health estimates are stunning: From Page 8, Permanent Peoples' Tribunal Session on Chernobyl: Environmental, Health and Human Rights Implications, Vienna, Austria, 12-15 April, 1996:
"The minister of health for the Ukraine has estimate that about 125,000 deaths attributable to the disaster have occurred over the last 10 years".
The panel was full of distinguished persons and the testimony was likewise from highly qualified individuals -- the list goes on for pages and pages. The Tribunal also explored in detail the worldwide cover-up about the effects of all forms of radiation. And the deaths go on and on too --150,000 by now? Probably that many, if not more.
WHO alone is insufficient to produce yet another report. We need outside experts in the medical, biological, environmental and financial consequences of radiological dispersals. WHO are part of the global structure that, as Pamela put it, "hasn't exactly come out condemning the entire global nuclear situation in a loud voice".
ALARA stands for "As Low As Reasonably Achievable". It's definition is in part 20 of the U.S. code of Federal Regulation of the U. S. NRC for exposure to radiation. All ALARA means is that, depending on the amount of money that any nuclear industry wishes to spend on protection of the environment and people, and depending on available technology, that is what they can use! So if you say, as a nuclear producer, "I only intend to spend $10 on keeping emissions as low as reasonably achievable, and that's all the technology that is available" its OKAY!
Dr. John W. Gofman has stated in front of federal judges in U.S. Federal courts that this constitutes "planned deaths":
Question by the court:
"What does ALARA..."
Answer:
"It permits deaths."
Question:
"Permits human deaths?"
Answer:
"Yes, because ALARA does not say -- see, the only way you could avoid deaths from the nuclear fuel cycle is to have zero releases. ALARA says keep the releases as low as you can reasonably achieve with the economics that you want to spend on it, and the equipment that you have available and so forth. So it is a planned emission of radioactivity, and that in effect means planned deaths." -- Dr. John Gofman, in conversation with the court, October 2nd, 1978, Jeannine Honicker versus the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Federal Court, Nashville, Tennessee, seeking an injunction to shut down the nuclear fuel cycle.
The judge found out that he had no jurisdiction and that it had to go instead in front of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission/NRC judges. The petition was denied. (It can be found in "Shut Down: Nuclear Power on Trial: Experts Testify in Federal Court" ISBN 0-913990-21-3, published in 1979 in the U. S. by The Book Publishing Company, 156 Drakes Lane, Summertown, Tennessee, 38483.)
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Jan12-05, 07:53 PM
Be the first kid on your block to get one of these!
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two private U.S. companies have designs on building the first luxury recreational vehicle that could withstand nuclear radiation.
Parliament Coach Corp., a privately held company in Clearwater, Florida, which converts Prevost buses into high-end RVs, has partnered with Homeland Defense Vehicles to offer consumers a luxury motor coach that can protect occupants against nuclear radiation from dirty bombs as well as biological and chemical attacks.
The idea is to offer the option on the pricey vehicles to consumers worried about terror attacks, officials for both companies said Tuesday.
"Many people enjoy the RV lifestyle, but we also live in an era when people have some level of fear about terrorism," Parliament Chief Executive Harvey Mitchell said in a statement. "These concerns about terrorism are linked to states where people with RVs like to travel."
The vehicles, costing from $1.2 million to $2 million, will be introduced Wednesday at the Tampa Super RV Show in Florida.
Parliament takes the Prevost buses, which are like transit buses without seats, and adds a luxury interior that sleeps from two to four people, while also providing such amenities as a satellite navigation system and plasma televisions.
The RVs run from $1.1 million to $1.9 million, including a trailer, Parliament said. The filtration system, which uses positive air pressure, will be an option costing about $100,000, added Parliament, which builds 12 high-end RVs a year.
Occupants could live for several days in the custom-built motor coach, said Daniel Ayres, president and CEO of Homeland Defense, a privately held company based in Newton, Texas, which makes mobile medical and command center vehicles for universities, county and state governments, and the U.S. Department of Defense (news - web sites).
Last week, Homeland Defense introduced a similar filtration system for the luxury version of the Medium Tactical Vehicle used by the U.S. Army and built by Stewart & Stevenson Services Inc.
The vehicle, dubbed "Bad Boy Heavy Muscle Truck," weighs more than 13,000 pounds, is 10 feet high and 21 feet long, and has a ground clearance of almost 2 feet. Homeland Defense hopes to sell 50 of the Bad Boy HMTs this year at prices as high as $750,000.
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Jan13-05, 03:32 PM
January 13th, 2005
A BAD DAY AT SAN ONOFRE
Earth News Hour IV
Thursday, January 13, 2005 @ Noon est
12:00pm
"A Bad Day" is about a sequence of to-and-fro newspaper articles,
viewpoints, forums and letters-to-the-editor from the past few months, PLUS
it presents a letter sent to all 1500 employees at San Onofre about this
writer, with my responses.
For those who just want to enjoy a "fun" animation and skip the details,
mouse over the "A BAD DAY" button on the left when the animation comes up.
Here's the URL where you can view it:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2005/sce_memo/sce_memo_2004.swf
or try:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2005/sce_memo/sce_memo_2004.html
A high-speed connection is suggested since the file is about 1.4
megabytes. A reasonably fast PC is also recommended (at least until I go
back and try to optimize a few routines).
I hope you enjoy it and will want to tell your friends and fellow activists!
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
Shut San Onofre:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm
theroyprocess
Jan24-05, 11:03 AM
Jan. 24 9-10:30 p.m., HBO, Dirty War, a hypothetical story of how a terrorist "dirty bomb" attack might be planned and executed in London
DIRTY WAR
Rated TVMA:
Running Time: 90 minutes
Genre: Drama, Suspense
In a post-9/11 world, how do you prepare for the unthinkable? This alarming HBO Films thriller chronicles the hypothetical story of how a terrorist "dirty bomb" attack might be planned and executed in London despite the best efforts of law enforcement--as well as how devastating such a strike would be. Warned of the possibility of a radioactive-weapons attack, members of Scotland Yard--including an Islamic undercover detective and several high-ranking terrorism experts--desperately try to find the perpetrators before they can construct and detonate their dirty work. But when the worst happens in the financial heart of London, the city's inadequate emergency-services are put to an immediate test...with disturbing results. Louise Delamere, William El-Gardi, Alastair Galbrait
Actors: KOEL PURI, MARTIN SARGE
Director(s): DANIEL PERCIVAL
theroyprocess
Jan31-05, 03:11 PM
LETTER TO THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL:
EXCLUDE THE PROMOTION OF NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY
FROM THE MANDATE OF IAEA!
PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD LETTER TO YOUR MAILINGLISTS!
DEADLINE is 23th of February 2005
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
We proudly announce that by now already 95
organisations worldwide have signed the letter to
UN Secretary General on the role of IAEA that was
draftet during the symposium "The Lie of the
peaceful use of atomic energy - nuclear weapons
and nuclear power plants - two sides of the same
coin" held in Linz (Austria) on 1st/2nd October
2004.
All organisations that signed the letter so
far are listed at the end of this email.
There is - and this was agreed by the
international participants of the symposium - an
inevitable connection between nuclear power
and nuclear weapons. There are deficiencies of
international non-proliferation regimes connected
with the promotion of nuclear energy.
The following letter was elaborated within a
workshop group lead by Prof. Alexey Yablokov
(Russia) and Dr. Kumar Udayakumar (India).
If you agree with the letter and have not
signed it already, we ask you to confirm this by
sending an email to elvira.poeschko@aon.at
mailto: elvira.poeschko@aon.at until 23th of
February 2005 at latest and please state your
name, organisation and country.
We will sent the letter with all signatures
before March 1st 2005 - the commemoration day of
H-bomb test at the Bikini atoll - to UN Secretary
General, with copies to IAEA, and the NGO
community, but also to national representatives to
UN.
Thanks to all organisations who already
confirmed their participation within this letter
to UN-Secretary General!
Please spread this email in order to get as
much attention as possible.
Thanks in advance for your support!
ATOMSTOPP INTERNATIONAL
To: UN Secretary General
With copies to: IAEA, national representatives to UN,
media, NGO community
EXCLUDE THE PROMOTION OF NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY FROM THE
MANDATE OF IAEA!
We, the undersigned organisations, would like
to bring your attention to the urgent
deficiencies of international non-proliferation
regimes connected with the promotion of nuclear
energy.
Today, many countries can obtain nuclear
weapons because of the undeniable and inevitable
connection between nuclear power and nuclear
weapons. The existing system of non-proliferation
treaties and IAEA safeguard systems have failed
to put a halt to proliferation since their
conception.
The fact that the concepts of "atoms for
peace" and "atoms for war" are indistinguishable
from one
another has led to the current crisis
situation where the nuclear programs of countries
such as Iran and North Korea are causing such
concern amongst the international community.
The IAEA has identified the prevention of
nuclear weapons proliferation as a major
challenge but it acknowledges the "failed
operation of the export control regime, as
evidenced by the recently discovered black market
of nuclear material and equipment" and " the
perilous spread of fuel cycle technology." As the
IAEA states, under the current non-proliferation
regime, there is nothing illicit in a
non-nuclear-weapons state having enrichment or
reprocessing technology, or possessing
weapon-grade nuclear material; and if a State with
a fully developed fuel-cycle capability and highly
industrialised infrastructure were to decide to
reject its non-proliferation commitments, it could
produce a nuclear weapon within a matter of
months.
The IAEA has recently acknowledged that in
order to address these vulnerabilities, it needs
to bring theproduction of new fuel, the processing
of weapon-usable material, and the disposal of
spent fuel and radioactive waste under
multi-national control and claims that advantages
in terms of cost, safety, security and
non-proliferation could accrue from such a
multi-national approach. It is not clear how the
same multi-national approach that has failed to
accomplish non-proliferation of nuclear weapons or
addressed many other crucial issues
could accomplish this.
This public admission of failure by IAEA
amounts to an appeal for the overhaul of
international non-proliferation regimes and we the
undersigned would like to add our support to this
call.
At present, the nuclear establishment operates
as a state within a state without any
accountability, transparency or public debate,
especially where budgetary considerations are
involved. It is not in the public interest to
allow such practices to continue. Civil society
has experienced the erosion of democratic and
human rights and we would request that you
initiate a discussion on these matters
within the UN structure and would, as
principal stakeholders, be willing to participate
in such a discussion.
Our aim is a world free of nuclear technology
and to achieve this we suggest that the existing
IAEA be substituted with an agency for the
efficient control of all nuclear facilities
(military and civilian) and
materials, and that excludes the promotion of
nuclear technology from its mandate. We would also
advocate the installation of a new International
Renewables Energy Agency (IREA) for the promotion
of renewable energy, which is today already
capable of completely substituting the dangerous
and environmentally destructive nuclear and fossil
fuel energy sources, and supports the efficient
use
of energy. The sun sends 7000 times the amount
of energy as the sum consumed by the entire world
at present to the surface of the earth. It is a
question of political will, and not of technology,
to enable the provision of the global supply of
electrical energy with clean renewable
energy sources within a decade or two.
Yours faithfully
Signatures for the letter to UN-Secretary General
Signatures for the letter to UN-Secretary General
If you agree with the letter and have not
signed it already, we ask you to confirm this by
sending an email to elvira.poeschko@aon.at
mailto: elvira.poeschko@aon.at until 23th of
February 2005 at latest and please state your
name, organisation and country.
theroyprocess
Feb4-05, 11:15 PM
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
1424 16th Street NW, #404, Washington, DC 20036
202.328.0002, f: 202.462.2183; nirsnet@nirs.org, http://www.nirs.org/
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MARIOTTE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE
FEBRUARY 3, 2005
ON STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH BY
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH
In his State of the Union Speech, President George Bush called on Congress to enact legislation to support his energy program, including "safe, clean nuclear power."
*Where Bush sees "safe, clean nuclear power," we see construction of new pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction to be used against us.
Every community near a reactor would be at risk.
*Where Bush sees "safe, clean nuclear power," we see an unsolved legacy of lethal radioactive waste.
This waste will continue to pile up at reactor sites, even if the proposed Yucca Mountain waste site-which does not and cannot meet federal regulations-were to open. Building new reactors would exacerbate the problem, and force the U.S. to find yet another national dumpsite, probably in the Eastern U.S.
*Where Bush sees "safe, clean nuclear power," we see the proliferation of nuclear weapons-usable technology across the globe.
Bush should have taken the courageous lead of International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei, who has called for a five-year moratorium on construction of new uranium enrichment facilities to help prevent nuclear proliferation. Instead, the administration supports construction of such plants in New Mexico and Ohio.
*Where Bush sees "safe, clean nuclear power," we see the diversion of scarce resources from sustainable technologies that should be used to combat the global climate crisis to the most expensive, least effective technology available to address the overriding environmental issue of our times.
*Where Bush sees "safe, clean nuclear power," we see an industry that spews radiation into the air and water on a daily basis from all of its reactors, mines, processing plants, and other facilities, and poses the constant threat of atomic meltdown.
There is nothing "safe" or "clean" about nuclear power. The first generation of atomic reactors brought us bankrupted utilities, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the threat of a nuclear waste transport accident-a "Mobile Chernobyl," and the existing 103 reactors scattered across our nation that can provide nuclear dirty bombs for the enemy.
The Bush Administration's energy bill has failed for the past four years for good reason. Its support for the polluting nuclear, coal and oil industries offers mid-20th century solutions to 21st century problems. Rather than rewarding the Bush Administration's energy industry friends with taxpayer dollars, the Congress can, and should develop an energy policy that will lead the world in efficiency and sustainability, provide millions of new jobs in progressive new energy industries, and take effective steps toward ending the global climate crisis.
The Bush Administration's energy policy can, should and will be rejected by the American people and their elected officials.
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Feb22-05, 07:45 AM
Tide may wash away advocates of Yucca
WEEKEND EDITION
February 19 - 20, 2005
Columnist Jeff German: Las Vegas SUN
There is no doubt in my mind now that the forces pushing the stalled Yucca Mountain project are in a panic mode.
"They're desperate to hold back the tide of public opinion that this thing is dead on arrival," says one Nevada congressional source fighting to keep the nation's high-level nuclear waste out of the state.
How desperate?
Well consider that, for the first time in the history of this 22-year battle, the pro-Yucca Mountain forces felt the need last week to travel into the heart of enemy territory in Carson City to spread their disinformation.
In the face of Yucca Mountain's growing troubles, there was former Gov. Bob List, the nuclear industry's well-paid mouthpiece in Nevada, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee, "the likelihood of this project is greater than it has ever been."
Are you kidding me?
Only two days earlier the Los Angeles Times had published an in-depth story on how Nevada's tenacity in the fight is paying dividends and raising questions about whether the multibillion-dollar project will ever go forward.
List's incredulous words once again reminded me of that Iraqi information minister, known as "Baghdad Bob," who boasted that his country was winning the war with the United States as American troops surrounded Baghdad.
I'll bet List even drew chuckles from his nuclear industry bosses, who are starting to consider alternatives to burying waste at Yucca Mountain, as the project heads toward a meltdown.
"It was like, holy cow, Bob. Give it up," says Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, an anti-Yucca Mountain group. "Even people in the industry are saying it's in big trouble."
Just in case lawmakers had trouble believing him last week, List introduced them to Michael Bauser, a top lawyer with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's influential Washington lobby, which has been working for 22 years to stick us with nuclear waste.
Bauser reminded the senators that Nevada has lost most of its legal battles to fend off the dump, and he suggested this was as good a time as any to give up the fight.
But Bauser didn't talk much about the legal battle Nevada won that has turned out to be the Achilles heel of the project -- its inability to meet a scientific standard for storing the waste safely.
Ever since a federal appeals court last July tossed out the government's inadequate standard, the project has taken a nose dive.
"It's sort of in a death spiral," says Bob Loux, Nevada's top Yucca Mountain watchdog. "And I don't think there's anything that anyone can do to stop it."
Loux and others in the Nevada camp say there's a growing lack of confidence in Washington in the project's ability to move ahead.
Look at the mounting evidence:
# The Bush administration recommended a mere $651 million for Yucca Mountain's budget this year, about half of what had been projected.
# The Energy Department missed a December deadline to file its complicated license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It still has to pore over a mass of scientific papers about the size of Yucca Mountain.
# Margaret Chu, the assistant energy secretary overseeing the project, decided to seek a less stressful job and announced her resignation.
# The Energy Department acknowledged that Yucca Mountain is now at least two years behind its scheduled opening in 2010.
# Pro-nuclear members of Congress began voicing frustration with the way Nevada has put up roadblocks to the project.
# Utilities put the word out that burying the waste in Nevada no longer is crucial to building more long-awaited nuclear power plants.
So here's a thought.
Maybe it's time for Bob List and his fellow Yucca Mountain mouthpieces to start waving the white flag.
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
selfAdjoint
Feb22-05, 10:02 AM
Hey Roy, what does this Yucca mountain post have to do with Nuclear Proliferation?
theroyprocess
Feb26-05, 12:21 PM
Nuclear Weapons: Who has What? (BBC)
Pakistan, like India and Israel, is not party to the NPT
Five nations are officially recognised as possessing nuclear
weapons by the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
These are the US, the first to acquire nuclear capability in
1945, Russia (1949), the UK (1952), France (1960) and China
(1964).
As information about nuclear arsenals is secret, there are
only estimates about their nuclear weapons.
The Arms Control Association (ACA), a US weapons research
organisation, estimates the number of strategic warheads
held by these states to be about 6,000 for the US, 5,000 for
Russia, 300 for China, 350 for France and under 200 for the UK.
The NPT, which has 187 signatories, was created to prevent
other countries from acquiring nuclear capability, to
promote cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy
and to work towards nuclear disarmament.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was set up to
verify compliance to the treaty through inspections, making
sure that nuclear material or activities were not being used
for military purposes.
Three states - India, Israel and Pakistan - never joined the
treaty and are known to possess nuclear weapons.
Claiming its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes,
India first tested a nuclear explosive device in 1974.
India and Pakistan both demonstrated their nuclear weapons
muscle with a round of tit-for-tat tests in May 1998.
While Israel has not publicly conducted a nuclear test and
does not admit or deny having nuclear weapons, it is widely
believed to possess nuclear arms.
The ACA estimates India to have between 45 and 95 nuclear
warheads, Pakistan, 30 and 50, and Israel, 75 and 200.
Iran is generally perceived to be secretly pursuing a
nuclear arms program although it maintains its nuclear
program is for peaceful purposes.
Nuclear muscle
The EU is engaged in negotiations with Tehran to urge it to
suspend its nuclear activities while the US has stated that
it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
North Korea, which this week announced it was pulling out of
multi-lateral talks on its nuclear activities, is believed
by the CIA to have one or two nuclear weapons.
The ACA says Pyongyang also has sufficient spent nuclear
fuel that could be reprocessed into fissile material for as
many as six nuclear bombs.
With the availability of foreign expertise, the CIA has
raised concerns that Syria, which is an NPT member, could be
trying to covertly acquire nuclear bombs.
One of the most recent successes in non-proliferation was in
2003 when Libya renounced its secret efforts to acquire
nuclear capability.
ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL
*The US is also said to have some 3,000 warheads in reserve,
while Russia has about 11,000 in non-operational stockpiles.
Israel declines to confirm it has nuclear weapons.
North Korea claims it has nuclear arms but no details are
available.
Iran is accused by the US of ambitions to build nuclear arms.
Click here for estimates on global arsenals
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4256599.stm#map
Nuclear reactors work on the principle that nuclear fission
releases heat, which can be harnessed and used to heat water
into steam to drive turbines.
A typical nuclear reactor uses enriched uranium in the form
of fuel 'pellets', each roughly the size of a coin and about
an inch long. The pellets are formed into long rods known as
bundles, and housed inside a heavily insulated, pressurised
chamber.
In many power stations, the bundles are submerged in water
to keep them cool. Other types use carbon dioxide or liquid
metal to cool the reactor core.
To function in a reactor - ie produce heat through a fissile
reaction - the uranium core must be supercritical. This
means that the uranium must be in sufficiently enriched form
to allow a self-sustaining chain reaction to occur.
To regulate this process, and allow the nuclear plant to
function, control rods are inserted into the reactor
chamber. The rods are made of a substance, typically
cadmium, which absorbs neutrons inside the reactor.
Fewer neutrons means fewer chain reactions are started,
slowing down the fission process.
There are more than 400 nuclear power stations across the
globe, producing about 17% of the world's electricity.
Nuclear reactors are also used to power submarines and naval
vessels.
--
Posted for educational and research purposes only,
~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~
NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net
===========================
theroyprocess
Feb26-05, 06:50 PM
SelfAdjoint,
Atom and dirty bombs are fabricated from nuclear waste (spent fuel)
which is slated for burial under Yucca Mountain. Secure and safe burial of
high level nuclear waste is a scientific impossibility. In the first 60 years
of the atomic age, nuclear waste has already leaked out of it's containment
and contaminated our precious groundwater. A Russian nuclear waste dump
exploded. From beginning to end the nuclear fuel cycle is a toxic time bomb
and threatens the gene pool of thousands of future generations.
The late Dr. Roy, professor of physics emeritus invented a unique method to
transmute and eliminate high level nuclear waste cost effectively using
existing infrastructure. And generate electric power as a by-product. But
the Roy Process was politically put in limbo when Ronald Reagan signed
the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act which limited science to geologic
isolation.
Now 40 countries have nuclear power plants and can make nuclear weapons.
There is no such thing as (atoms for peace).If Yucca Mountain proceeds
as planned, it will explode in time. No need to worry about nuclear weapons
proliferation or terrorism.
Explain it to your children!
hitssquad
Feb27-05, 03:45 AM
If Yucca Mountain proceeds as planned, it will explode in time.By what mechanism might the Yucca Mountain repository explode?
theroyprocess
Feb28-05, 10:19 AM
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2003/nov/26/515926524.html
November 26, 2003
DOE predicts nuke reactions in casks
Nevadans worry about danger at Yucca
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department predicts up to 60 uncontrolled nuclear reactions would take place inside nuclear waste casks stored at power plant sites should the casks corrode, according to a department study obtained by Nevada officials.
After a review of the documents, state officials say they believe the same thing would happen at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The state wants the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent board set up by Congress to review the potential dump, to look into the matter.
"We were amazed to learn, after finally obtaining some of the pertinent documents from the Department of Energy through the Freedom of Information Act, that DOE's own studies anticipate that, if the repository operates as is now planned, up to 60 nuclear criticalities may plausibly occur inside the mountain, and that (the) conditional probability of occurrence may be greater than one in 1,000 per year," Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects wrote to board Chairman Michael Corradini.
Criticalities are uncontrolled nuclear reactions that could occur if water -- or other liquids -- got inside the casks. It could start a mininuclear reaction inside the casks and cause a steam explosion, said Washington attorney Joe Egan, who represents the state on Yucca matters.
The issue of water seepage at Yucca Mountain has been a critical point of debate over the planned nuclear waste repository. Scientists are still studying how water moves through the mountain. With or without water, the casks are eventually expected to corrode over a period of thousands of years.
State officials expressed surprise that the report wasn't disclosed as part of the Yucca Mountain debate.
They say Energy officials have said that the issue won't affect Yucca Mountain and state officials say this study shows that it does.
But Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain project spokesman in Nevada, said the documents the state received do not relate to Yucca Mountain but are from a 4-year-old report looking at on-site waste storage facilities at nuclear power plants.
Benson said the department was glad Loux sent the letter to the board since it can now choose to review the matter, but that on-site storage and storage inside Yucca "are two different things."
Benson said that since the report shows that criticalities can take place inside above-ground storage containers at the 103 nuclear power plants throughout the country, especially if water gets in them, it makes even more sense to store the waste in Yucca, which is in the desert.
But state officials say the fact that the Energy Department acknowledges in this report that criticality is an issue is a huge threat.
Egan and Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval filed petitions with the U.S. Court Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asking the court to include the FOIA documents in the court record. The state's major court arguments on the site will take place there on Jan. 14.
Loux said the department only predicated an "extremely low probability of occurrence" of such reactions in the Final Environmental Impact Statement issued last year. He quotes the document's specific text to that effect in his letter to Corradini.
State officials had Michael Thorne, a criticality expert, review the report and found that an expected 60 chain reaction events would occur throughout the lifetime of the repository since the department anticipates the waste packages will degrade over time.
"A criticality occurring in the repository could severely compromise the entire facility, vastly increasing radionuclide releases and making waste packages irretrievable," Loux wrote.
The department documents do not have a timeline for the events to occur, according to the letter.
"These are not nuclear explosions," Egan said. "We are not trying to scare anyone ... we are not saying this is going to happen, but DOE's own analysis notes it was a nonspeculative scenario."
But if the casks were to burst, the radioactive material would go with it. "It's literally a dirty bomb, a conventional explosion with radioactive materials," Egan said.
"Their maximum accident scenario in transport is $18 billion in clean-up (costs) and 44 early fatalities, and that's with a small puff of radiation not an explosion -- they call it a 'violent event' which is a euphemism for explosion," Egan said.
===============
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Feb28-05, 03:44 PM
February 28, 2005
Dear Friends of NPRI,
We are excited to announce that Dr. Helen Caldicott will be featured on C-SPAN2's Book TV on Sunday, March 6. She will be the featured guest on In Depth at 12:00 noon EST and again at 9:00 pm PST.
In Depth is a three-hour program that features a single author reflecting on their books, their life, and their work in an interactive television forum. During the program the host of In Depth will discuss with Dr. Caldicott her most recent book, The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military Industrial Complex, as well as her earlier books, which include Missile Envy, If You Love This Planet, Nuclear Madness, and A Desperate Passion. Dr. Caldicott will talk about the current nuclear dangers and discuss her work over the last thirty years in the international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age.
Date: Sunday, March 6, 2005
Time: 12:00 noon EST and 9:00 pm PST
Listeners can write or call in to BookTV to talk with Dr. Caldicott during the show by calling in or emailing questions in advance to booktv@c-span.org.
The segment will also air on Monday, March 7 at 12:00 am EST.
For more information about the show, visit http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segID=5478&schedID=335.
Don't miss this exciting opportunity to see Dr. Caldicott on national television!
-Your NPRI team
(Helen, Julie, Regina, Rupali, and Jessica)
Our postal address is
1925 K Street NW
Suite 210
Washington, District of Columbia 20006
United States
russ_watters
Feb28-05, 04:29 PM
The ignorance of the media and manipulation of wording by politicians continually astounds me, but you either take it further or just misrepresent it (as usual), theroyprocess.
-You use words like "will" - the report uses words like "if." IF water gets into the casks they could burst.
-Your wording says the mountain "will explode" - the report says quite explicitly that these would not be nuclear explosions, but pressure-bursting of the casks, and would be individual casks, not the Yucca Mountain itself. Ie, such events would not compromise the overall integrity of the site.
-You say that there is no such thing as "atoms for peace," ignoring the fact that none of the US's power reactors produces or uses weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
-You continually equate "nuclear bombs" and "dirty bombs" - they are not the same thing. A nuclear bomb is a bomb who'se energy comes from the nuclear reaction.
-You imply dirty bombs are a nuclear proliferation issue. Since they are not nuclear bombs, they are not a proliferation issue.
-You continually overstate the risk involved in a dirty-bomb (to have an impact other than scaring people literally requires tons of waste dispersed in a heavily populated area).
-You say nuclear bombs are fabricated from waste. That is quite simply not true. Nuclear bombs are made from specially produced plutonium in specialized reactors or highly enriched uranium.
-The article says up to 60 burst casks ("if....") over the lifetime of the site. but neglects to mention what that lifetime is. IIRC, its ten thousand years.
-You continue to (knowingly - we had a thorough conversation on this) overstate the magnitude of Chernobyl and overstate the probability of it happening again or in the US.
Oh, and the opening line of the first article you posted is classic.One of the dirty little secrets about international terrorism is that it doesn't take much radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. Sure. You could call it a dirty bomb if its a firecracker and a thimble-full of waste. But so what? It wouldn't do anything unless it fired that thimble-full of waste directly down someone's throat! It's like calling snow-flurries a blizzard. Its utterly meaningless and useless (and laughably silly to anyone who knows just a little bit about the subject): except, of course, for the purpose of yellow journalism, and that makes it intellectually dishonest. But hey, we've come to expect that from CBS and Dan Rather, right?
Your spam, theroyprocess gets its point across to its intended target, I'm sure: but is scaring the ignorant really a worthy goal?
russ_watters
Feb28-05, 04:52 PM
This one deserves a separate post: DU... Manhattan Project.... POISON GAS MILITARY WEAPONS ....No one can escape this horrendous amount of radiation now globally contaminating the entire atmosphere at levels that are 5 times higher than the legal allowable exposure limit under US law.... Halliburton.......the Carlyle Group... have poisoned the entire world ..... the eugenics plan developed under Jimmy Carter by Kissinger, Brzezinski, Haig and Ed Muskie to depopulate the world by 2-3 billion in 1979..... That has got to be the most absurd, highly concentrated, paranoid conspiracy B.S. I have ever seen on the internet. It would be funny if I didn't think the author actually believes it.
theroyprocess
Mar1-05, 08:52 AM
Bush's "freedom and democracy" what a joke! You need to file under
the (freedom and information act) to see Yucca Mt. study data! And now
the government is holding restricted, behind closed door meetings!
Russ....you can't just make up and change the laws of physics to fit
corporate agendas threatening the public health of thousands of future
generations.
Lawyer: Nevada kept out of Yucca meetings
Government agencies discuss court ruling
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
February 23, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has been
quietly meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and
the Energy Department to discuss the EPA's effort to comply
with a court ruling that stalled a nuclear waste repository
at Yucca Mountain, a lawyer for Nevada said today.
The state should be a part of the discussions, Martin Malsch
told the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, a panel that
advises the commission on waste issues. Ultimately, the
commission would license and regulate Yucca, the proposed
repository for high-level nuclear waste. The Energy
Department is planning to submit a license application to
the commission by year's end to construct Yucca.
"Nevada's requests to EPA to establish a public docket and
to meet in public with interested stakeholders have gone
unanswered," Malsch said.
The state has filed Freedom of Information requests to
obtain documents from the meetings, which took place in
recent months, but many of the documents delivered to the
state have been redacted, he said.
The agencies have "drawn an iron curtain of secrecy around
their deliberations," he said.
The state has asked for the EPA to be more open in general
about its rule-making.
At issue is a 10,000-year radiation standard the EPA set for
Yucca Mountain. A federal court last year said the EPA did
not follow the law because it failed to set a standard that
was consistent with a much stricter standard reccommended by
the National Academies of Science.
The academies recommended that the repository radiation
standard should cover the period in which the "peak dose" of
radiation is emitted from waste stored at the mountain. That
could be far longer than 10,000 years, Nevada officials have
said.
The court ruling effectively directed the EPA to draft a new
standard or better explain how its 10,000-year standard
complies with the findings of the academies. The EPA is
expected to release a draft of its new rule-making decision
in late spring or early summer, but has not indicated to
Nevada what the rule will look like, Malsch said.
"Let me express the hope on behalf of the state of Nevada
that logic and sound science will prevail here," he said.
The waste panel today discussed its options for advising the
five-member commission on the EPA rule when it is released.
It will be important, panel member William Hinze noted, to
build public confidence in the new standard.
"If we start changing these things, it's very important to
bring the community, the world, the country into an
understanding that we are still protecting the safety of the
public and the environment," Hinze said.
nevada.gov Yucca Mountain web site
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/index.htm
theroyprocess
Mar1-05, 09:20 AM
The Silent Genocide From America
Here is a very powerful article which connects all the dots from the DU Bomb patents to the Uranium Bombs to Readings at the Bomb craters to the people injured by the uranium gas and dust in Iraq and Afghanistan. I recommend it highly. This is War Crime time. Please send it to your lists. If anybody has influence with your government, you should be aware of this article.
"The perpetuation of the perpetual death in Afghanistan continues with the passage of each day. Every day, people see the silent death striking their families and friends, hopeless and terrified at the sight of the next funeral in their minds' eyes. This indiscriminate murder of the Afghan people continues while those, whose tax money paid for the monstrous weapons and brought about this genocide pretend as though all is well. The horrific pictures of those dying--whose bodies do not correlate to their age since they have internalized so much uranium dust that it impacted the morphology of their bodies--remain in the memories of those still living who are fearfully waiting for their turn of disaster. The pregnant women are afraid from giving birth to babies--horrified to see a deformity instead of a healthy child. This is the legacy of the US "liberation", an indiscriminate murder of the weak and the unarmed that do not have any means of self-defense. In fact, there is no defensive measure against such Weapons of Mass Destruction because these deadly particles of uranium oxide--the dust formed after uranium pulverizes upon impacting a target--remain in soil, water and cover the surface of vegetation for generations to come." ...
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050227104549992
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
Yahoo! Groups Links
russ_watters
Mar1-05, 11:51 AM
Russ....you can't just make up and change the laws of physics to fit
corporate agendas threatening the public health of thousands of future
generations. Frankly, theroyprocess, you need to learn the laws of physics before you criticize anyone about how they use the laws of physics.
Do you have any actual response to the "errors" I pointed out, or are you just here to spam and fling rhetoric? Have you considered what the tactics you need to use to support your position say about your position's validity?The Silent Genocide From America That article (I skimmed it) scores pretty high on the baloney-o-meter. Among other things, it attempts to prove that essentially every munition used in Afghanistan contained DU - an utterly preposterous claim. Ie, why would the military be using "bunker-buster" penetrator bombs to bomb things that aren't hardened? (answer: they don't) It also makes several of the usual mischaracterizations, ie calling DU a WMD.
theroyprocess
Mar1-05, 08:08 PM
Russ,
Your confabulated nay saying does not mean a thing! The articles I post
state the experience and work of serious people. Take your bilge some
where else! I'm not wasting my energy on shills like you!
theroyprocess
Mar8-05, 08:50 AM
Dimona, potential eco-catastrophe
Tehran Times Opinion Column, Feb. 28, By Hassan Hanizadeh
TEHRAN, Feb. 27 (MNA) -- Experts have warned that dangerous
radioactive substances are leaking from the reactors of
Israel’s Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert and
that the Middle East could be on the verge of a humanitarian
and ecological catastrophe equal to or greater than the one
caused by the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine
in 1986.
According to Jane’s Intelligence Review, Dimona has exceeded
its 30-year lifespan by 12 years and the nuclear power
plant’s concrete walls have deep cracks due to earthquakes
in the Negev Desert and the Dead Sea region.
The plant’s radioactive material is toxic for all living
creatures and the radioactive particles will be suspended in
the air for 30 years.
Construction operations at Dimona started in 1953, when
David Ben-Gurion was the Israeli prime minister, with the
help of France and the United States. The power plant came
on stream in December 1963.
Israel built the nuclear power plant to produce nuclear
weapons. Dimona and five other Israel plants have produced
over 250 nuclear warheads so far.
Despite its insufficient safety procedures and the dangers
of leaking plutonium and uranium, Dimona has produced over
1,400 tons of highly-enriched uranium over the past 40 years.
This is enough to produce over 400 nuclear bombs, which, if
detonated, could set off a nuclear winter incident that
would cause widespread death and destruction all over the world.
The Middle East in particular is seriously threatened by
Israeli power plants’ nuclear waste.
Israel produces 32 tons of atomic waste per year, most of
which is buried in the Negev Desert in the vicinity of the
Egyptian border. This has caused a rise in cancer among the
inhabitants of the Negev Desert and the nomadic Bedouins of
Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
In addition, Israel’s Channel 2 television has reported that
dozens of Dimona staff members have died of cancer. Their
families have filed a complaint with the Israeli Supreme
Court, but the Zionist regime has declared their complaints
illegal in order to avoid paying financial compensation.
Arab states presented a plan to the United Nations in 2003,
calling for the International Atomic Energy Agency to
supervise Dimona, but the United States has strongly opposed
the plan.
Now something must be done since Dimona’s nuclear reactor is
vulnerable to meltdown.
Experts have predicted that if there were a meltdown or
explosion at Dimona at least three million people would be
killed in occupied Palestine and other neighboring states
such as Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon and about 17
million would be affected by the radioactive fallout.
Middle Eastern countries should establish a joint
organization with specialized committees to inform regional
nations about the dangers of a nuclear accident at Dimona
and to formulate strategies to prevent such a catastrophe.
Otherwise, the world could experience another Chernobyl
event in the near future, which would affect the next
several generations in regional countries.
--
Posted for educational and research purposes only,
~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~
NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net
selfAdjoint
Mar8-05, 11:21 AM
Can't help but notice the source on this screed:
Tehran Times Opinion Column, Feb. 28, By Hassan Hanizadeh
theroyprocess
Mar9-05, 01:02 PM
35th Anniversary of he NPT Treaty. The World Still Faces Annihilation
This past Saturday, March 5, 2005 marked the
35th anniversary of the NPT Treaty going into
effect, including, of course, it's Article VI
calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. 35
years is a very, very long period of time. Many
reading this weren't even born then or were small
children. Lastly, Russia's inability to monitor
incoming "stuff" renders the possibility of an
accidental nuclear war MUCH more likely as we
drift towards unparalled catastrophes:
Article VI
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to
pursue negotiations in good faith on effective
measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms
race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.
and on a treaty on general and complete
disarmament under strict and effective
international control.
"I have no hope of clearing my conscience.
The things we are working on are so terrible
that no amount of protesting or fiddling
with politics will save our souls."
Edward Teller
July 1945
===============
I am become Death, the shatterer of world's."
The line of Hindu scripture that flashed through Oppenheimer's mind
at the moment "gadget", the first test bomb exploded above the
New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.
Bhagavad-Gita 11:32. Lord Krishna said: I am terrible time the destroyer
of all beings in all worlds, engaged to destroy all beings in this world, of these
heroic soldiers presently situated in the opposing army, even without you none will be spared.
===============
A large part of History is replete with the struggle for human rights.
An eternal struggle in which a final victory can never be won.
But to tire in that struggle would mean the ruin of society.
-- Albert Einstein
(About one year before his death)
==============
Big Anti-Nuke Rally in New York Central Park
02 Dec 2004 21:46:46 GMT
U.S. National - Reuters
By Nicole Maestri
NEW YORK (Reuters) - With tensions rising over nuclear
programs in Iran and North Korea, peace activists on
Thursday said they are planning a rally of 60,000
people next year to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Organizers from United for Peace and Justice and Abolition
Now said they want to stage the demonstration in New York's
Central Park on May 1, before a United Nations
meeting to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The rally also comes ahead of the 60th anniversary of the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by the
United States, which ended World War 2 in Asia.
The anti-nuclear weapons groups are working with the Mayors
for Peace to get representatives from around the world,
including the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to come to
the rally and the treaty review conference.
"Survivors (of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) are growing
increasingly concerned, watching developments around the
world, that nuclear weapons will again be used and that
nobody who will actually remember hell on earth will be
alive," said Jackie Cabasso, U.S. coordinator for Abolition Now.
United for Peace and Justice is applying with New York
City's parks department to hold the rally at Central Park's
Great Lawn -- the same location the coalition was denied
access to this summer ahead of the Republican National
Convention.
Instead, it held a rally in the streets that it estimated
drew a crowd of 400,000. The police declined to estimate the
size of the crowd, but it stretched out more than a mile
along two main avenues in central Manhattan.
Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and
Justice, said at a news conference she was "optimistic" they
would get permission to use the park this time.
"People's voices will be heard on May 1," Cagan said. "That
is a critical moment for people in this city and this
country to speak out for complete and total nuclear
disarmament."
The non-proliferation treaty's objective is to prevent the
spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. The
treaty, which went into force in 1970, is reviewed every
five years.
Carah Ong
Communications Director
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1
Santa Barbara, California 93108-2794
Tel: (805) 965-3443 Fax: (805) 568-0466
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Mar9-05, 05:05 PM
Marshall Islands Atomic Victims
"The only thing I could think of was Nazi
Germany," said then U. S. Energy Secretary Hazel
O'Leary upon first learning about these
experiments when some documents were declassified.
abolition-caucus@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 5:47 PM
Subject: [abolition-caucus] Powerful article by
national leader of the UCC and one of the
vice-presidents of the World Council of Churches
Bernice Powell Jackson is Executive Minister of
the Justice and Witness Ministry of the United
Church of Christ on the national level and also
one of the vice-presidents of the World Council of
Churches.
WITNESS FOR JUSTICE # 0206
March 7, 2005
TURNING OUR BACKS ON THE MARSHALL ISLANDS AGAIN
By Bernice Powell Jackson
Last March 1, I was in the Marshall Islands, tiny
atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where
we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Bravo
test. On March 1, 1954, the United States dropped
a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more
powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It
was one of 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted in
the Marshall Islands by the U.S. between 1946 and
1958. But while many of the islanders had been
evacuated in previous tests, on March 1 the people
of four tiny atolls were not. In fact, they were
not evacuated until for four days after the
massive explosion whose radioactive cloud spread
over an area about the size of New Jersey.
While this story is horrible in and of itself,
documents declassified during the Clinton
administration appear to point to the decision by
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to make the
Marshall Islanders into human guinea pigs. It
appears that there was an AEC project, named
Project 4.1, whose purpose was to study the
effects of radioactive fallout on human beings.
Despite its public statements otherwise, it seems
that the AEC decided three days after the Bravo
test to make the Marshall Islanders into research
subjects. It is unclear whether the Marshallese
actually received medical treatments for the
exposure to high levels of radiation or whether
they just received tracers which helped
researchers know how human beings were responding,
but we do know that they have suffered
extraordinarily high levels of cancer,
particularly of the thyroid. Moreover, the second
and third generations also have high levels of
cancer and immune system diseases. Women and girls
who were originally exposed during the Bravo tests
also experienced high levels of stillbirths,
miscarriages and deformities in their babies. "The
only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany,"
said then U. S. Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary
upon first learning about these experiments when
some documents were declassified.
With the release of these documents in 1993, the
survivors from the Bravo test petitioned the U.S.
government for additional compensation to help pay
for the health care and clean-up needs. Under a
compact signed by the governments of the U.S. and
the Marshall Islands in 1983, the U.S. agreed to
pay $150 million into a trust fund. Some
additional funds were awarded to specific groups
of survivors. But while the commission managing
the trust fund has awarded over $1 billion in
damage claims, less than one percent of that money
could be paid and there are thousands of claims
still pending.
Shortly after the beginning of this year, however,
the Bush administration rejected the petition for
changed circumstances, telling the U.S. Congress
that it should not award further compensation to
the Marshall Islands. The irony, of course, is
that the U.S. is telling other governments that
they must take full responsibility for their
actions, when
we refuse to take responsibility for ours. To make
whole the people of the Marshall Islands to treat
their illnesses and clean up their islands would
take only a few days of the funds we are spending
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This year the survivors of Enewetak, Rongelap,
Utrik and Bikini islands sponsored their own
commemoration of the Bravo test by inviting
survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor
meltdown to share their experiences. They found
that government cover-ups and misinformation were
common to both experiences.
More than half a century after one of our nation's
most shameful actions, we must tell the truth,
admit our guilt and pay fully for our actions.
Only if we make amends to the people of the
Marshall Islands can we move forward into the
future with integrity and truth.
The Effects of Nuclear War:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm
(Note: You can contact your Senators concerning
the petition for changed circumstances of the
Marshall Islands at 202-225-3121. Or contact your
congressperson at 202-224-3121).
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
theroyprocess
Mar9-05, 09:36 PM
European Radiation Research 2004, August 25-28,
Budapest, Hungary
http://www.osski.hu/err2004
MUTATION PROCESS IN CHRONICALLY IRRADIATED BANK
VOLE POPULATIONS INDICATES
THE TRANSGENERATIONAL GENOMIC INSTABILITY INDUCED
BY CHERNOBYL FALLOUT
R. I. Goncharova, N. I. Ryabokon
Institute of Genetics and Cytology, National
Academy of Sciences of Belarus
Akademichnaya st, 27. Minsk 220072, Republic of
Belarus;
e-mail: R.Goncharova@igc.bas-net.by
The objective of this investigation is analysis of mutagenesis dynamics in
bank vole populations chronically exposed to low doses of ionizing
radiation in connection with the absorbed dose dynamics and the number of
affected generations over 1986п1996.
Frequencies of different end-points (chromosome aberrations in bone marrow
cells and embryonic mortality) as well as the doserate and absorbed doses
of external and internal irradiation from caesium isotopes were determined
for four populations inhabiting the sites with different ground deposition
of 137Cs (8п═1526 kBq/m2).
It has been first revealed that the main feature of mutagenesis dynamics in
populations of mammals chronically exposed to very low doses of ionizing
radiation is a gradual increase in the rate of somatic mutagenesis and
embryonic lethality over 1п22 generations. At the same time, the dose rate
and whole body absorbed dose decreased in every consecutive generation after
the primary radiation insult in 1986.
The data on chromosome aberrations and embryonic lethality were fitted by
the exponential and linear functions respectively. It means that genomes
of animals from distant generations are more sensitive to the impact of
very low radiation doses in comparison with those of
animals of prior generations.
The fact that dynamics of somatic mutagenesis (by the chromosome
aberration frequency in bone marrow) and embryonic lethality during the
period of the study closely resemble each other is an additional proof for
the persistence of the delayed response.
Thus, enhanced response of distant generations of mammals to low doses of
ionizing radiation is likely to be due to transgenerational genomic
instability.
Abstract 66
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* (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *
russ_watters
Mar10-05, 07:50 AM
Apparently, you don't have to be an engineer or physical scientist to understand the fear of nuclear power. Perhaps its time to actually name it and treat it, as we do with other phobias?:
A psychiatrist and expert on fears and phobias who has studied and analyzed social perceptions of nuclear energy.
A: Well, a journalist called me up and said he had a question; that he'd noticed that I was an expert in anxiety and phobias. And he had a question he'd like me into look into. And it had to do with nuclear power. I said, "Well, I don't understand any connection." I was not interested and was not sympathetic. And so he came out and we had a meeting, and he said, " Here's the deal. I've got all the network television news coverage that went on about nuclear power for the last 11 years. I'd like you to look at that and just tell me what you think about what has been on the network television about nuclear power." Well, I was fascinated by that. I mean, I'd never thought about it. And so I went down to George Washington University, and they set up a place for me to watch 13 hours of videotape. That was before everybody had a VCR in their home. And so I watched it. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist. You don't have to be an expert in phobias and fears to see what was going on. It was basically a "what if" story. It was something that was going to happen, almost happened. It was a fear story.
Q: What do you mean, a "what if" story?
A: Well, the news about nuclear power was not that something had happened, but that it almost happened, or that it could happen. And I thought, that's a pretty unusual news story. Usually, news stories are about something that does happen. You know, you count the bodies. A vast area that has been destroyed. Something has gone on. But this was a story about some day, just around the corner, there's going to be--fill in the blank. Something terrible is going to happen. And it struck me a very interesting.
Q: So why was this interesting to you as a psychiatrist?
A: ... My special area of interest is anxiety, the reactions that people have to things that produce fear. And they're not necessarily particularly dangerous. An elevator would be an example, or a fear of flying would be common, or problems with agoraphobia, people afraid to go to malls or supermarkets. All kinds of places where fear is keeping people from doing things that they would otherwise do.
Q: Normally, you see people for whom this has become an abnormal type of thing in their lives.