------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
U.S. Nurtures Growing Defense Bond With India
N.Korea Warns U.S. on Missile Plan
Russia Slow to Destroy Weapons
An Early Test of Nuclear Plant's New Private Ownership
Fortunes rise for state's only nuclear plant
Economic View: A Debate Is Renewed Over Nuclear Power
Let's Look Harder Before We Leap
Outdated Thinking Is Holding Us Back
MILITARY
Australia considers women in combat
The Risks of a New Space Race
Getting the Boot at The United Nations
OTHER
Peace Corps security in question
Energy Interests' Policy Priorities
White House Seeks Input on Energy
Energy Conservation Will Be a Priority, Bush Says
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
U.S. Nurtures Growing Defense Bond With India
New York Times
May 13, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/world/13INDI.html?searchpv=site01
NEW DELHI, May 12 - Unlike most of the world, India has reacted positively, if somewhat ambiguously, to President Bush's proposal for a missile defense, and in response the Bush administration is continuing the warming trend in American-Indian relations that began under Bill Clinton.
On the third anniversary of India's nuclear tests, which led the United States to impose sanctions on India, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said here on Friday that the United States was worried about Pakistan's development of a nuclear arsenal, but he did not mention a paired worry about India's own nuclear capacity.
India, the world's largest democracy and the dominant power in South Asia, has long sought to be treated distinctly from its subcontinental rival, Pakistan, ruled by the military since late 1999, and to win legitimacy for its decision to develop what it calls "a minimum nuclear deterrent."
Pakistan has been troubled by the friendliness developing between the United States and India, and today Gen. Pervez Musharraf - perhaps stung by Mr. Armitage's remarks - reacted coolly to Mr. Bush's proposed defense plan.
Asked about Mr. Bush's proposal, the general was quoted by Pakistan's official news agency as saying that the government opposed "any action that re-initiates a nuclear and missile race." His remarks came in the midst of Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji's visit to Pakistan. Military experts say China has provided Pakistan with nuclear technology in the past, and China sees Mr. Bush's missile defense proposal as a challenge to the effectiveness of its nuclear force.
After India conducted nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan responded with its own tests. Both were roundly condemned at the time.
So Mr. Armitage's comments in New Delhi were music to the Indian government. It was also pleasing to India that the United States was consulting Indian leaders about America's nuclear policies - given the United States' vehement criticism of India's nuclear tests.
At a news conference after meeting with Indian officials, Mr. Armitage said Mr. Bush's missile defense program was aimed at offering protection from states like Libya, Iraq and North Korea. While he did not explicitly include Pakistan, he did say that American concerns about Pakistan were well known.
American officials have long fretted about Pakistan's political instability and deep economic problems, as well as the growing assertiveness of Islamic fundamentalists there.
On Mr. Bush's proposed nuclear policies, India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, said he welcomed Mr. Bush's decision to step away from the development of offensive nuclear weapons - and pointedly reiterated India's need for its own nuclear deterrent.
India has been lavish in its praise for Mr. Bush's plan to make deep cuts in America's nuclear arsenal, but it has been less explicit about its position on the missile defense itself, which other countries worry would encourage a new arms race and destabilize the global strategic balance.
According to Indian officials, President Bush has accepted an invitation to visit India, though no date has been set.
-------- korea
N.Korea Warns U.S. on Missile Plan
The Associated Press
Sunday, May 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010513/aponline224341_000.htm
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea warned Sunday that it would take a "strong" countermeasure if the United States tries to build an anti-missile shield.
Citing new threats from "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iraq, President Bush earlier this month announced plans to build a missile defense program.
"We will take a strong countermeasure if the U.S. deploys missile defense under the pretext of a 'threat' from (North Korea)," said a commentary in the North's official communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. "Our countermeasure will not be bound to anything and we will not care about an arms race."
The commentary, carried by the North's foreign news outlet, KCNA, did not specify what the countermeasure would be.
It also denounced the U.S. missile defense as aimed at "militarily containing independent countries, big powers in particular and holding world supremacy."
Russia and China oppose the U.S. missile plan.
North Korea also expressed anger at being called a rogue state.
"In fact, the most dangerous and biggest rogue state is the U.S. seeking to stifle legitimate, sovereign states by force," the said.
On Saturday, the same North Korean newspaper warned that South Korea will be doomed to "ruin and death" if it participates in the U.S. program.
Last week, Seoul officials thanked visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for explaining Washington's plans for the missile defense system. But they were careful not to take a stand on the issue.
The purpose of a missile shield is to protect the United States and, possibly, its allies if some erratic regime fires off long-range ballistic missiles.
-------- russia
Russia Slow to Destroy Weapons
By Judith Ingram
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, May 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010513/aponline130516_000.htm
MOSCOW -- More than a year after American and Russian officials festively opened a laboratory to fine-tune techniques for destroying Russian chemical weapons, the building stands empty of all but its sophisticated scientific equipment and a security guard who warily monitors the rare visitor.
The inauguration of the lab 13 months ago at a scientific institute in southern Moscow was supposed to mean progress in Russia's efforts to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, the world's largest, in line with the Chemical Weapons Convention. The international treaty, which Russia ratified in 1997, requires the elimination by 2012 of all stockpiles of nerve gases and compounds used in weapons of mass destruction.
But Moscow is nowhere near meeting the deadline. It has yet to start destroying the 44,000 tons of nerve and blister agents piled up in storage depots at the seven plants where they were produced. The depots are poorly protected, and the chemicals, some from World War II, are deteriorating and putting the surrounding regions at risk of severe toxic accidents.
The $21 million lab, jointly U.S.- and Russian-funded, had to close its doors soon after the opening because construction problems cropped up, Russian auditors had to inventory the building's contents and the Russian side ran short of funds. As to why it opened in the first place, officials insisting on anonymity indicated that it was necessary to demonstrate to the U.S. funders that Russia was making progress.
The lab's deputy director, Vladimir Sitnikov, now says it is set to reopen this month, which may augur a revival of efforts to destroy chemical weapons after a prolonged standstill.
The delays, caused by Russia's money problems and conflicts with international funders over the technologies to be used, have frustrated and alarmed arms control experts.
"Sooner or later there could be an accident, and with time the probability of that happening will grow geometrically," said Gennady Khromov, a veteran arms control negotiator.
In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin approved a plan to destroy the weapons, but fierce public opposition and bureaucratic wrangling thwarted it. Russian legislation banning transport of the deadly substances further complicated the project, because destruction facilities would have had to be built near each of the seven storage sites - at a cost of roughly $1 billion each.
That cost included developing complex technologies, creating multilayered security systems and building roads, hospitals and other infrastructure to compensate local populations for accepting the destruction plants.
Most local people have gradually accepted that leaving the stores in place is riskier than removing them.
"Now public opinion is turning toward accepting the principle of disarmament," said Vladimir Leonov of the Russian Green Cross, an environmental advocacy organization.
Last year, responsibility for the program switched from the Defense Ministry to the newly formed Munitions Agency whose chief, Zinovy Pak, is thought to have wide authority to cut bureaucratic squabbles.
But cost remains an obstacle. Russia has appealed repeatedly for foreign aid to supplement its meager budget for the plan, and it has won some pledges and grants from the U.S. and European governments to build two destruction facilities. The United States has released funds slowly, attempting to ensure that the destruction will be carried out in the safest way possible.
The European-funded site, in Gorny, in the Volga River region of central Russia, would be a pilot plant for destroying blister agents, Russia's oldest chemical weapons. Moscow has given them priority, since they are believed to pose the most urgent ecological threat. But the United States has urged Russia to direct its funding to a plant under construction at Shchuchiye, in the heavy industrial belt of the Ural Mountains, for handling more sophisticated nerve agents.
The United States considers these a greater threat to its own security, with experts pointing out that just a knapsack full of nerve gas could wreak havoc. Washington has concentrated its funding on that plant, tentatively scheduled to be built by 2006.
Now the Munitions Agency has proposed scaling back the goal of building destruction facilities at all seven plants. Officials are reluctant to discuss details before the new plan gets Kremlin approval, but Pak outlined the main ideas in an interview in the current issue of Russia's Nuclear Control journal.
Just three of the planned facilities would be completed and used for the entire cycle of chemical weapons destruction. At the other four sites, weapons would only be neutralized for transportation elsewhere for destruction. Munitions Agency expert Alexander Sidyakov also raised the possibility that some of the weapons would be neutralized and reprocessed, easing the pressure to completely destroy the arsenal by the 2012 deadline.
"We understand that we won't get seven facilities built," Pak was quoted as saying. "Such funds can't be found."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
An Early Test of Nuclear Plant's New Private Ownership
New York Times
May 13, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/nyregion/13NUKE.html?searchpv=site01
BUCHANAN, N.Y., May 11 - It was Day 13 of the race to refuel the Indian Point 3 nuclear reactor, about 8 in the evening, and workers had succeeded in gently but swiftly removing all 193 uranium fuel rods, getting them to the spent fuel pool, performing maintenance on key parts, and then starting to move the assemblies back. They had done 20 when the towing cable came loose from the cart that carries the fuel.
Now it was Day 14, and Rod Cavalieri, the outage manager, was watching a diver, dressed in deep- sea-style diving suit and covered in radiation monitors, work 23 feet under radioactive water to re-attach the cable. "We were about 6 hours ahead, and we lost 16 hours, so now we're down about 10 hours," Mr. Cavalieri said. "We'll make it up."
At $850,000 for a day's worth of electricity - $9.83 a second - the calculation was of more than academic interest to him and to a crowd of other workers whose duties were interrupted by the cable failure. All stood inside the muggy containment dome, sweating slightly in two layers of gloves, coveralls, booties, helmet liners, hard-hats and safety glasses, the coveralls sealed with duct tape at the wrists and ankles, and radiation measurement devices hanging on plastic chains from their necks.
When the Entergy Nuclear Corporation, of Jackson, Miss., agreed to buy Indian Point 3 fourteen months ago, it counted on being able to run the plant better than the New York Power Authority did. Now, management is getting its first test. The Power Authority's best-ever performance was in 1999, when it did the refueling job in 40 days, 19 hours. In 1997 it took 121 days. Entergy wants to do the job in 25 days this time, and in 20 the next.
"We're like a pit crew in a Nascar race," said L.J. Olivier, Entergy's senior vice president for Indian Point. The change, part of a much- heralded revival in nuclear power, is part of Entergy's plan to keep the plant running more than 90 percent of the time; the Power Authority managed only 46 percent between the plant's first commercial electricity production, in 1976, and 1995, and about 85 percent since then.
Outwardly, the plant is still in transition. The patches on the guards' shirts still say "New York Power Authority," although the coffee mugs say "I'm Entergized." But long-time employees (nearly all of whom remain because Entergy made few personnel changes) say that they are in a new era, in which they must work faster and smarter.
The changes are focused on more than just speed; in an increasingly safety-conscious American culture, managers here agree that the nuclear industry is probably only one major accident away from extinction. And any plant could be doomed by frequent small incidents that caused shutdowns. So a major consideration in any work here is doing it well enough to let the reactor run uninterrupted until its next scheduled shutdown, set for spring 2003.
Indian Point 3 (and Indian Point 2, which Entergy is supposed to buy from Consolidated Edison in July) are exemplars of the new hope for nuclear power: Old plants that never ran very well but are in areas of strong electricity demand and were bought by experienced operators who will try to turn them around and make them profitable, so that they will live out their 40-year licenses and then some.
If all goes well enough, the operating experience of places like Indian Point could help lay the foundation for new nuclear plants; for now, though, Entergy would simply like to lay the foundation for two years of quiet, profitable operation.
This has meant many changes. The control room, for example, once ran on a skeleton crew during outages; now it is overstaffed, so that no task is ever delayed for want of an operator's attention.
Another change is in how operators plan to re-fill the reactor and nearby parts with water. They used to fill the fill the system, then jog the giant pumps, starting and stopping them, to force air bubbles to collect at the high points, so air could be bled off. This was vital because when the system is pressurized, any missed bubbles become dissolved oxygen when the system is pressurized, and oxygen causes rust. The old solution was to dump chemicals into the system to bind with the oxygen.
This time, they plan to suck water back into the piping, so that there are no bubbles. They hope this will save wear and tear on the pumps, and shave about a day off the time needed to get running again.
There have been setbacks, though. Early Tuesday morning, while all the fuel was in the spent fuel pool, the cooling system failed because of an electrical fault, and the temperature rose from about 150 degrees to about 155 before cooling was fully re-established within 40 minutes. At that rate, the pool was about 10 hours from the boiling point. Had it boiled, the fuel could have eventually melted down, and since it was outside the reactor vessel, it would have been a step closer to releasing its radioactivity to the environment.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called 10 hours a "rather short recovery time." The Indian Point units, he said, are less capable than most other reactors to remove heat from the spent fuel pool, which contains all the fuel the plant has ever used, and more radioactive material than the reactor.
Mr. Lochbaum is not convinced that the nation's 103 nuclear power plants, all ordered between 1974 and again, will run reliably in years to come. Since the beginning of 2000, eight plants have shut down unexpectedly because of problems with aging components, according to his review of Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents. One of those was Indian Point 2, where an aged steam generator tube sprung a leak in February 2000.
At Indian Point 3, plant officials said that there were many ways to re-establish cooling in the spent fuel pool, including, as a last resort, simply turning on a fire hose and dumping more water in to make up for evaporation. But Robert J. Barrett, the vice president for operations, said the failure, while not a safety problem itself, demonstrated "a deficiency" to be addressed. The cooling system that failed was a backup system added by the Power Authority, he said, to allow shutting the main system for maintenance. But the add-on system's design was too prone to electrical failures, he said.
The analysis of that failure was under way this afternoon, in a conference room with a handwritten "do not disturb" sign taped to the door. Elsewhere in the plant, technicians performed extensive maintenance, more thorough, managers said, than in the old days, because of a greater emphasis on running "breaker to breaker," from the time the electrical switch is thrown to connect the plant to the grid again to the time the plant is disconnected, in 24 months.
"The old days are the old days," said Larry Moskowitz, a design engineer who has been at Indian Point for several years and was doing temporary duty at a fence surrounding the electrical generator. He and two other engineers, clipboards in hand, were checking off each object brought into and out of the area, to make sure that no one left so much as a washer or a pencil behind where it could cause damage. Next time, he said, he would use universal product code stickers and scanners instead.
"We're a lot more aware of generating electricity now, and running well, breaker to breaker," he said.
-------- washington
Fortunes rise for state's only nuclear plant as nuclear power gets a second look
Sunday, May 13, 2001
By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=nukepower13m0&date=20010513
RICHLAND -- Chuffing away at a steady 1,200 megawatts, the Columbia Generating Station near the Hanford nuclear reservation produces enough power to light Seattle. Without air pollution and without killing salmon.
It is the nuke in Seattle's back yard, the only one of five nuclear plants planned for the region that is in operation. The other concrete hulks dotting Washington from Satsop to Hanford were never finished.
But Columbia, completed in 1984 at a cost of $3 billion, has become a reliable producer. It is a metaphor of the nuclear turnaround story. Both a nightmare and a laugh line of the '80s and '90s, nuclear power is serious business again.
Costs of nuclear power are now competitive with coal and gas, once the power plants are built, and cleaner in terms of air emissions than both. Nuclear energy also is getting the first political boost since President Nixon from the Bush administration.
And the nuclear-power debate has returned to the Northwest, a place that thought the issue was dead along with its bungled nuclear plants. As the region scrounges for kilowatts, the once unthinkable is under review: expanding the region's nuclear capacity.
Energy planners are studying the viability of finishing construction of the dead plant next door to Columbia Generating Station, WNP-1, and firing it up. The debate will kick off in earnest this summer when the study is completed and open to public consideration.
Back in 1992, the Columbia plant was a dog of the industry, down more often than it was up because of malfunctions and accidents. It was hastily built and sloppily run, and the cost to generate power at the plant was so high that regional power planners were ready to pull the plug.
But after a change in management and a major repair campaign, the plant has turned the corner.
Shut down for malfunctions five times in five days in times past, the plant now runs years without problems. While it used to work only 40 percent of the time, it now runs 80 percent of the time and is down only for planned outages, including one for refueling beginning next Friday.
Thanks to better management and repairs, the cost of generation at Columbia has dropped from 5.8 cents a kilowatt hour in 1994 to about 2.5 cents today. That's competitive with the cost of coal generation (between 1.5 to 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour) and power from natural-gas plants (4 cents per kilowatt hour). Electricity on the spot market costs from 25 to 57 cents per kilowatt hour.
Folks who work at Columbia have a new spring in their step; for the first time in years, they are proud to tell people where they work.
Pillboxes and Glock 9s
Cut over the Cascades, the Columbia River and then miles of open country in the state's sagebrush steppe, and the hulking concrete block that is the Columbia Generating Station appears. Amid the concrete cubes, domes and towers, it is heaped like a child's building blocks near the Hanford nuclear reservation.
Pass the sign reading "Should you hear a steady three-minute siren you must evacuate immediately."
Go past the triple row of razor wire; the bomb sniffer; the X-ray scanner; the radiation detectors; the concrete pillboxes for taking cover in enemy fire; the anti-terrorism nets; the steel riot shields on wheels in strategic hallway corners; through the steel doors with the sign: "Warning: Grave Danger"; past a 3-foot-thick concrete wall; a steel casing; and finally inside a 9-inch-thick steel-reactor vessel.
There, packed in 12-1/2-foot-long zirconium fuel rods, are ceramic pellets the size of pinky digits, pregnant with the most powerful and poisonous fuel known to humans - uranium. Each pellet contains as much energy as a ton of coal, 149 gallons of oil, or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.
The radioactive material is so lethal anyone running toward a hunk of it in the middle of a football field would die before he or she reached it.
Fuel rods are stored in a shimmering pool of water 50 feet deep, along with every spent rod of fuel ever burned in the reactor. The water shields the surrounding environment from the fuel's neutron and gamma radiation.
When the pool fills, more spent fuel will be stored in steel casks parked on concrete pads outdoors.
A generator harnesses the enormous energy produced as atoms are split by subatomic particles in a continuous, controlled reaction deep within the reactor's core. The heat from the reaction boils water, which produces steam. The steam turns turbines that spin a generator the size of a locomotive.
Its pulsing energy vibrates every surface in the control room of the reactor, with its backup tanks of oxygen hung on a rack by the door in case the air is rendered unbreathable.
A half-dozen workers monitor the reactor's vital signs. A hexagon glows red on the control panel, showing the reactor is running pedal to the metal.
The control room is part Oz and part insurance office, with guys in Dockers toiling under fluorescent lights.
The security guard hidden in the back with a Glock 9 mm side arm, automatic rifle, gas mask and bank of surveillance monitors is a clue to the sensitive nature of their work.
Today the staff is so zipped up a visitor putting on lip balm is met with a stern, "Sorry, I'll have to take that." A worker is concerned about even the remote possibility the salve could transport radiation beyond the reactor's walls.
Electricity sizzles over high-voltage wires from the plant to the power grid, where it is purchased at cost by the Bonneville Power Administration for wholesale to utilities around the region.
BPA carefully planned for the plant's upcoming monthlong refueling by purchasing replacement power, a sign of the plant's importance. Every kilowatt is needed.
That's big news for a plant that during the 1990s was routinely fined for faulty operations by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which criticized the plant as one of the "worst under-performers" in the country.
Remembering WPPSS
Columbia Generating Station used to be known as WNP-2. It was just one more dark chapter in the region's gothic tale of nuclear woe, courtesy of the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS), a regional consortium of public utilities nicknamed "Whoops."
Formed by the Legislature in 1957, the consortium is funded by power revenues.
WPPSS, now known as Energy Northwest, backed a series of five nuclear plants in the 1970s that foundered in a sea of construction mismanagement; falling demand for electricity spawned by recession; and skyrocketing debt.
Two of the failed plants resulted in the largest municial-bond default in history when WPPSS could not repay the $2.2 billion debt owed investors who gobbled up WPPSS' tax-free municipal bonds.
BPA is still on the hook for the $6.4 billion in debt for the other three plants, including Columbia Generating Station.
BPA guaranteed the bonds floated by WPPSS to build three of the nuclear plants, promising to repay investors whether the plants ever produced a kilowatt of electricity. In return, BPA was to receive all of the power from the plants at cost for wholesale to its customers.
Added to that financial disaster is the concern nuclear power causes anywhere: fear of radiation release, such as in the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island at Harrisburg, Pa.
The country also has no permanent safe place for its nuclear waste. Even low-level radioactive waste is usually dangerous for up to 500 years. High-level waste remains lethal for millenniums.
But the volume of waste produced is small. According to Energy Northwest, the amount of spent fuel produced to power Seattle for 60 years would fit in a 7-Eleven.
And nearly all sources of energy have some environmental price: coal stokes global warming; natural gas heats the planet; hydropower has helped put the region's once legendary salmon runs on the endangered species list.
The plant near Hanford has enabled the region to avoid an estimated $1.5 billion in expensive power purchases so far this year.
An approximately $1 million study is under way by a consultant hired by Energy Northwest to scope the cost of completing WNP-1, the dead nuclear plant next door to Columbia Generating Station.
Nationwide, 103 nuclear plants crank out about 20 percent of the nation's power. Plants across the country are applying to extend their federal licenses for another 20 years.
The proposal in Washington is different: Energy Northwest is taking a look at reviving a plant - with a vintage 1960s design - that was never completed, let alone licensed for operation.
The age of the design is not unusual; no new plant has been ordered in the U.S. since 1973. Energy Northwest engineers say completing WNP-1 and making it run is technically a "no-brainer."
The plant was maintained in its mothballed state for 12 years, at a cost of about $5 million a year, until the Supply System decided to terminate it in 1994. It was to be cut up for scrap this year.
The big question isn't technical feasibility, according to managers at Energy Northwest, but whether the economics make sense and if the region has the political stomach for a nuclear expansion.
After so many years as the region's whipping boy, Energy Northwest officials show the relief of the pardoned convict to anyone open to nuclear power.
"A lot of people don't even know there's a nuke plant in Washington," said Vic Parrish, CEO of Energy Northwest since 1996. "And they thought these nuclear plants were pretty much gone."
"The faults of the past and the mistakes of the past are to be learned from. We are doing everything in our power to show we are different. It's `You are a convicted sinner.' Well, it's time to move on."
Lynda Mapes can be reached at 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.
-------- us nuc politics
Economic View: A Debate Is Renewed Over Nuclear Power
New York Times
May 13, 2001
By TOM REDBURN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/business/13VIEW.html?searchpv=site01
With the threat of electricity shortages looming in many parts of the country, is it time to reconsider nuclear power?
Vice President Dick Cheney certainly thinks so. "We can safeguard the environment by making greater use of the cleanest method of power generation we know," he said in a speech last month outlining the Bush administration's coming energy policy proposals. "If we are serious about environmental protection, then we must seriously question the wisdom of backing away from what is, as a matter of record, a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source."
And longstanding advocates for atomic energy like Mr. Cheney are not the only ones who now argue that more nuclear plants may be needed to temper the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil and even natural gas - that contribute to air pollution and global warming. Consider the views of William Nordhaus, a Yale economics professor who has studied the Swedish nuclear industry for Resources for the Future, a middle-of-the- road environmental research group.
"Nuclear power is a long way from coming back," he said. "But if you are really serious about coming to grips with global warming, nuclear or some other yet-to-be- proven technology needs to play a role."
But for nuclear power to have even a modest revival, it must do more than overcome public fears about safety - both in operations and disposal of radioactive waste. Far more important, new nuclear plants must compete economically against other power sources. And that won't be easy.
Despite the electricity deregulation fiasco in California, the power industry has largely abandoned its traditional approach - in which utility monopolies, after approval by state regulators, built their own power plants under a guarantee that users would cover the full costs. Now, most new electricity sources - from midsize gas- fired generators to clusters of windmills - are built by outside producers, essentially on spec.
Under these conditions, no one is prepared to take the risk of sinking billions of dollars into the kind of huge reactors, capable of powering a million homes or so, that were built in the 1960's and 70's. And rightly so. "To order a new nuclear plant today," said Robert D. Glynn Jr., the chairman of Pacific Gas & Electric in San Francisco, "you'd have to be crazy."
Around the world, construction of nuclear plants has practically ground to a halt. No utility in the United States has ordered a nuclear plant in a quarter-century; dozens that were on the drawing boards have been canceled. Even in France, where nuclear power has long been favored by the government, no new reactors are on order.
"I almost have to laugh when Cheney says environmentalists are out of touch with reality," said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental advocacy group in Washington. "He's the one basically trying to reverse history. Yet in the meantime, the power industry has moved from a centralized to a decentralized model. Those who think nuclear power can make a comeback are the ones who are being naïve and unrealistic."
Supporters of nuclear energy pin their hopes on a new approach, known as the pebble-bed modular reactor, that is supposed to be safer, cheaper and faster to build and roughly one-tenth the size of the current generation of light water nuclear plants.
"We recognize that these new generation plants, if they are to succeed, will have to compete on the basis of cost - without subsidies," said Elizabeth A. Moler, a top Energy Department official in the Clinton administration and now a senior vice president at the Exelon Corporation, a large energy company that operates 17 nuclear power plants.
While it will take years for changes in nuclear technology to get off the ground, perhaps it is time to start putting that thinking to the test. Environmentalists like Mr. Flavin say nuclear power will fail in a truly open market. It will have to compete, he said, not only with the many new midsize power plants that will run on natural gas but also with the proliferation of "micropower" devices - solar cells, wind turbines, fuel cells and the like - that can rely on renewable energy sources.
The environmentalists may be right. But either way, some counterweights to the nation's - and the world's - excessive dependence on fossil fuels are clearly needed. Such balances would not only lessen risks from global warming, but would also limit the economic damage at the times when oil and gas become more expensive.
"There's too much inflexibility in the whole energy system," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "As it stands now, we're making a big bet on natural gas. It's a good bet, but we need some other bets, too."
--------
Let's Look Harder Before We Leap
By Jennifer Weeks
Sunday, May 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18318-2001May12?language=printer
Though no one has ordered a new nuclear power plant in the United States in more than 20 years, there is talk of a nuclear renaissance. With rolling blackouts in California, natural gas prices spiking, and debate over how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, advocates say the time has come to begin building new reactors. More support for nuclear power is almost certain to be one controversial element of the Bush administration's forthcoming energy plan.
But the question of whether to rely more heavily on nuclear energy really has two parts. First, should we extend the operating lives of existing plants? Second, should we build new ones?
The answer to the first question is a qualified "yes." The 103 reactors that provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity are performing better than ever, and many reactors' construction costs are paid off, making the power they produce comparatively cheap. Last winter, production costs of electricity (meaning fuel plus operation and maintenance, but not amortization of the initial investment in the power plant) averaged 1.83 cents per kilowatt-hour for nuclear energy, compared with 2.07 cents for coal and 3.52 cents for natural gas.
Given those numbers -- plus the current sellers' market for electricity -- reactors considered virtually worthless a few years ago are now generating billion-dollar bidding wars. And given their improved safety records, most surrounding communities have accepted the reactors' continued operation.
But the 40-year operating terms of America's nuclear plants will start expiring in 2006, and all but two will do so by 2030. (Some plants ordered in the 1970s didn't go into service until the 1990s.) If reviews by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) confirm that the plants can operate without reduction in safety for 20 more years, it would make sense to extend their licenses for that period -- as has already been done for the Calvert Cliffs power station in Maryland and another plant in South Carolina.
But what about building new reactors? That is a more difficult case to make. New reactors will not make sense without improvements in cost, safety, radioactive waste management and safeguards against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Getting all of this right is a tall order. Success is not guaranteed.
Let's start with cost. For new reactors to be economically attractive, their total generation costs -- including amortization of construction -- must be competitive with the total generation costs of other energy sources. This will not happen unless construction and licensing times for nuclear plants are shortened considerably. (Delays run up big interest charges.) Moving faster will require better management by the nuclear industry and regulators alike, plus a degree of public trust that will only come from the conviction that the most worrisome issues are under control.
The public is rightly concerned about safety. True, nuclear plants have far fewer unplanned shutdowns and other "safety events" today than 20 years ago. And new reactor designs are likely to improve the record because they have passive safety systems that do not depend on failure-prone sensors, valves or human operators.
But the potential for deadly accidents remains throughout the nuclear industry. When workers at a Japanese nuclear fuel processing plant mistakenly added too much uranium to a vat in September 1999, the resulting uncontrolled fission killed two workers and exposed hundreds more to radiation. Regulations can reduce but not eliminate such human error -- and American watchdog groups charge that the NRC often does not enforce its own regulations. To support new plants, the public will have to be convinced that their safety systems are virtually foolproof.
Progress is also needed on the disposal of radio- active waste -- the "spent" fuel rods discharged from reactors after they can no longer sustain a chain reaction. A typical large power reactor discharges 20 to 25 tons of spent fuel rods per year, in bundles 14 feet long and weighing about 1,400 pounds. Still highly radioactive, these are stored temporarily in tanks resembling swimming pools, whose water provides both cooling and shielding. After some years, when their radioactivity has diminished, they can be removed and transferred to longer-term dry storage.
Currently nearly all spent fuel is held at the reactors where it was generated, but some plants are running out of storage space. The Department of Energy missed a 1998 deadline to begin taking spent fuel off of utilities' hands because DOE had no place to put it.
DOE has been investigating an underground site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., as a potential permanent repository, but this process has taken much longer than expected. Geologically, the site's complexity has surprised scientists more than once; politically, Nevadans hotly resent being singled out as hosts for all the high-level radioactive waste from U.S. reactors (none of which are in Nevada). Whether and when Yucca Mountain will open for business is therefore unknown -- in the best case, it would be no sooner than 2010.
This continuing uncertainty undercuts support for nuclear power. In reality it is safe to store spent fuel at reactors for several decades -- and more capacity could be built at reactors now lacking it -- but without clear progress toward a longer-term option, neither the public nor investors are likely to support building new reactors.
Nuclear energy's links to nuclear weaponry may prove even harder to manage. Civilian nuclear programs have provided cover, technology and trained personnel for weapons programs incountries including France, India and Pakistan. And such operations could become sources of nuclear-explosive materials for countries that don't yet have nuclear weapons, or for criminal groups.
The principal materials of concern are plutonium and highly enriched uranium. All U.S. power reactors and nearly all foreign ones use uranium fuel that is enriched to a level still too low to make a nuclear weapon.
Bomb-usable plutonium, however -- formed in uranium-based reactor fuels as an unavoidable side effect of the chain reaction -- is another matter. Fortunately, it is quite inaccessible in spent fuel: The rods are too massive to steal easily, too radioactive to handle safely, and very difficult to process to extract plutonium in a pure form.
On the other hand, if spent fuel is reprocessed -- as it is in some other countries -- plutonium is separated out and becomes a major proliferation danger. Flows of separated plutonium can be difficult to measure and monitor, and one year's spent fuel from a large power reactor contains enough plutonium to make some 50 nuclear bombs. Therefore, the United States should continue to reject reprocessing of nuclear fuel. And if nuclear energy is to spread worldwide without undue danger, greater effort will be needed to persuade other countries that they should reject it as well.
It is not clear whether all of these obstacles can be surmounted, but the potential benefits make it worth trying. Strangely, although Vice President Cheney has called nuclear "a safe, clean, and very plentiful" energy source, the Bush administration's fiscal 2002 budget proposal offers little help with these challenges.
For the past few years, DOE has been carrying out a Nuclear Energy Research Initiative focused on improving nuclear energy's cost, safety, waste management and resistance to proliferation. The program was funded at about $35 million in the budget for fiscal year 2001. The 2002 Bush budget proposal cuts that by 48 percent, and cuts funding for radioactive waste management by nearly 30 percent.
A sensible national energy strategy would look to expanding the use of nuclear energy -- but it must also have other ingredients. Its cornerstone ought to be increased efficiency in energy use, which cuts pollution, reduces dependence on foreign oil and saves money. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power also offer much promise, as do advanced fossil-fuel technologies. But Bush's 2002 budget proposal cuts R&D for all of these energy-supply possibilities by at least 25 percent.
Not just for nuclear energy, then, but for the whole array of ingredients in a sensible energy mix, the country awaits a strategy -- and a budget -- commensurate with the administration's rhetoric.
Jennifer Weeks directs the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
----
Outdated Thinking Is Holding Us Back
By James A. Lake
Sunday, May 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18315-2001May12?language=printer
The question I'm most often asked about nuclear energy is how we plan to deal with the wastes. The answer I give is this: The spent fuel from nuclear reactors may just be the best managed waste in the world. Unlike other energy technologies that can dump some of their wastes on the ground or in the air, nuclear plants manage every bit of theirs, and include an explicit charge for its safe, long-termdisposal in their power prices.
The volume of high-level nuclear waste is not all that large: The total generated byAmerica's 103 nuclear plants during their lifetimes could be stacked less than 15 feet high in a space the size of a football field. Equivalent coal plants, by comparison, produce thousands of times more waste volume (albeit nuclear wastes are very hazardous and far more concentrated).
Commercial high-level nuclear wastes are currently safely stored in spent-fuel pools and dry-storage casks at the plants where they were generated. The long-term U.S. government plan is to find and license a national underground repository. The Department of Energy has spent nearly $6 billion to research and test a deep geological site in the remote desert at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The nuclear industry has alreadycontributed $16 billion intothe nuclear waste fund that will pay for developing and operating the repository.
The United States may be able to learn something, however, from France, Britain and Japan, where nuclear energy is a major component of electricity generation. These countries have the technology and political will to recycle spent fuel rather than throwing it away after a single use. This strategy extracts more energy from the fuel, while at the same time reducing the volume and radioactive lifetime of the wastes that have to be stored in the repository.
Recycling, or reprocessing, essentially involves dissolving spent nuclear fuel and separating out the uranium, plutonium and certain other materials for re-use in the reactor. The remaining fission product wastes -- which remain radioactive fordecades or at worst centuries, as opposed to thousands of years for uranium and plutonium -- are then dissolved in melted glass for disposal and long-term storage in stainless steel canisters.
In the late 1970s, the United States instituted a policy prohibiting the recycling of commercial nuclear fuel. President Jimmy Carter signed theoriginal directive in response to concerns that recycling was not economical and fears of the possible proliferation of nuclear materials and technology for non-peaceful purposes. That policy deserves to be revisited in light of today's technical and political realities.
Three issues should be considered in choosing the "best" nuclear fuel cycle for the United States in the 21st century.
• Economics: How does the cost of recycling spent nuclear fuel compare with the cost of ausing it only once before disposal? That is hard to know, in part because it is impossible tocalculate the ultimate cost of a geologic repository that might have to last thousands of years, and in part because we have little experience in commercial reprocessing. In the United States, the comparison is further distorted by the presence of large amounts of government-subsidized high-enriched uranium from former Soviet weapons programs, and because the U.S. policy places zero economic value on recycled plutonium.
The French experience with reprocessing, though, may offer some answers. According to the French data, considering all factors from mining to disposal, the cost of recycling spent fuel is roughly the same as for using it once and then storing it permanently. So the economic tradeoff is approximately equal.
But reprocessing has a potential bonus: There is up to 100 times more energy potential in nuclear fuel than is extracted in one cycle. Multiple recycling in future advanced reactors could thus offer significant advantages in sustaining low-cost nuclear fuel supplies for manygenerations -- particularly if the use of nuclear power expands substantially.
• Environmental impact: Is it better to directly dispose of all our spent nuclear fuel in a geological repository that has to be designed and managed to provide barriers to the release of hazardous materials for thousands of years, or to reprocess it, recycling the plutonium and other fuel materials in the reactor and only disposing of the shorter-lived fission products? Certainly recycling can simplify waste disposal -- relatively speaking, it's a cinch to designstorage that can last for a few hundred years. In the recycle scenario, there would be far less plutonium and other long-lived materials to store in the repository. Multiple recycling, to extract the largest amount of energy from the fuel and minimize the net waste volume, would require development and deployment of a new class of fast burner reactors. This development work was also stopped in the United States in the late 1970s with the cancellation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project. Reactor and fuel cycle research and development needs to be reinstated to form a solid technical basis for future policy decisions.
• Social responsibility: An often-raised concern about reprocessing is that the separated plutonium could be vulnerable to theft or diversion for nuclear weapons. It is worthwhile to note that no nuclear materials have ever been proliferated from commercial spent fuel, both because of the substantial cost and technical difficulty and because of strict oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
New technology may eliminate the proliferation concern entirely. An electrometallurgical process developed by Argonne National Laboratory separates uranium, plutonium and other fuel materials from the fission product wastes, but not from each other. Therefore, no weapons-grade material emerges from the process.
Nuclear power, in one or more advanced states, holds great promise for the generation of abundant, clean and affordable electricity for the United States and the world. If spent fuel recycling can be made economical in the United States, and if advanced technology can respond effectively to the proliferation concern, then America may have an attractive new option for dealing with the growing need for clean energy, while at the same time improving the social acceptability and cost of our waste disposal strategy.
James Lake, a nuclear engineer specializing in reactor design and safety, is president of the American Nuclear Society, a not-for-profit scientific and professional organization.
-------- MILITARY
-------- australia
Australia considers women in combat
05/13/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-13-women.htm
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Australia's prime minister will consider a Defense Department report that recommended allowing women in combat if they meet the physical standards applied to male soldiers, a newspaper said Sunday.
"The report says there is no medical reason for women to be excluded from combat roles as long as they are of the same height, weight and fitness levels as the men," the Sunday Telegraph quoted a department official as saying. "Women can do anything men do."
Prime Minister John Howard said his government would consider the proposal, the newspaper reported. He said 95% of defense force positions are already open to women.
"I'm regularly flown by very talented female pilots in the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force). I think they're terrific," Howard said.
Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Scott said the government would have to consider the physical and practical aspects of the issue, as well as public opinion.
Currently, women in the Australian armed forces can carry weapons only for self-defense. Those rules were challenged by a three-year study carried out by the army's directorate of career management.
-------- space
The Risks of a New Space Race
New York Times
May 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/opinion/13SUN2.html?searchpv=site01
Watching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set a new agenda for the Pentagon is like viewing an accomplished chess player at work - his opening moves only hint at complex and audacious strategies to come. That seemed especially so last week as Mr. Rumsfeld ordered a reorganization of the Pentagon's numerous and entangled space operations. The bureaucratic reforms are sensible and long overdue. But they also lay the groundwork for possible new American military initiatives in space that could invite a celestial arms race and transform the heavens into a future battlefield.
Mr. Rumsfeld insisted that his effort to streamline the management of Pentagon space programs has nothing to do with deliberations about the development of space-based weapons. The introduction of such systems would substantially alter the way space has been used since the first unmanned Soviet satellite went into orbit in 1957. For the most part, the United States and other nations have used space primarily for peaceful purposes or for passive national security activities like spying, communications and missile guidance. So far, there is no sign that the Bush administration has decided to put offensive weapons in space.
But the idea is in the air. Mr. Rumsfeld himself served as the chairman of a national commission on space issues, which earlier this year recommended that Washington develop "weapons systems that operate in space and that can defend assets in orbit and augment air, land and sea forces." Mr. Rumsfeld left the commission shortly before it completed its work, when he was nominated to be secretary of defense, but the panel's report reflects his views.
America's military and spy satellites are critical to military communications, the collection of intelligence, the accurate guidance of missiles and other weapons, and the management of American forces in combat. Civilian communications and commerce also rely extensively on satellites, most privately operated. Because of this dependence, the Rumsfeld commission warned that the United States is an attractive target for a "Space Pearl Harbor." To some extent, the means already exist to disrupt America's space systems by jamming or blinding satellites, disabling ground stations and detonating nuclear weapons in space.
But the Bush administration should proceed with caution as it considers how to protect its space operations. Just as a rush to build an ambitious missile shield could provoke a renewed arms race with Russia, a decision to place weapons in space could increase rather than diminish the threat to American security. It is decidedly not in America's interest to open a new phase in the militarization of space. It is only because space has been largely reserved for nonviolent uses that the United States has enjoyed the freedom to develop and operate the world's most advanced array of satellites.
If Washington opens the way to making space just another potential battlefield, other nations will surely follow and American satellites will become more likely targets for attack. That will certainly be the case if the United States places the satellites of other nations at risk by building anti-satellite space weapons. Russia, China and other countries would inevitably respond in kind. The United States, of course, would have no choice but to produce its own space weapons if other nations began to do so.
For now, there are reasonable, mostly earthbound defensive measures the Bush administration can take to protect its space activities. Realistically, American satellites are not in great physical danger today. Russia is the only nation that currently possesses the technology to effectively attack American satellites in orbit, but Moscow lacks the money and motivation to do so.
The larger danger comes from the disruption of the data stream from satellites to ground stations, either through the electronic jamming of satellites themselves or interference with the ground installations. Every effort should be made to improve the security of ground stations and to make the signals more difficult to interrupt.
The United States must be acutely sensitive to the vulnerability of its space systems. But it must also be wise in the way it protects them. As the Rumsfeld commission itself noted, the United States has an urgent interest in promoting and protecting the peaceful use of space.
-------- u.n.
Getting the Boot at The United Nations
By David Ignatius
Sunday, May 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18322-2001May12?language=printer
It's bad enough that the United States got kicked off the United Nations Human Rights Commission this month. What's worse is that America's place has been taken by Austria -- a country that was sanctioned by the rest of Europe last year for its own human-rights problems.
Austria's stealth campaign is the least noticed and most peculiar aspect of this whole saga. The Austrians, to some observers, ran as victims of human-rights activism -- a little country that had been unfairly attacked because its government briefly included a far-right party whose leader, Joerg Haider, had made pro-Nazi statements.
"Austria played the underdog," said one European U.N. ambassador who closely followed the campaign. "Their message was: 'We've been unfairly criticized by our fellow Europeans.' "
Needless to say, that line played well with such professional victims as Cuba, Syria, Sudan and China -- which were among the 53 paragons of virtue that elected the Human Rights panel.
One factor in the U.S. defeat, inescapably, was the global backlash against America, which under the Bush administration has taken unilateral stands on such issues as missile defense and the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Indeed, the lackadaisical U.S. non-campaign for the human-rights job was itself a kind of arrogance -- and in that sense, the Bush administration got what it deserved.
Predictably, some members of Congress now want to punish the United Nations by cutting American financial support. It's hard to imagine a more foolish response. That would further isolate the United States and compound the impression that we're just a spoiled rich kid.
It's important to understand precisely what happened in the May 3 vote in New York, because it's a classic example of the log-rolling politics of the United Nations. If the United States is going to continue to play in this international arena, then it should learn the rules and play to win.
The Human Rights Commission is elected through the kind of regional power-sharing (and mutual back-scratching) that's typical of the United Nations. Membership is allocated by blocs: 15 African countries; 12 Asian, 11 Latin American, 5 Eastern European and 10 from what's known in U.N.-speak as "WEOG" (for the Western Europe and Others Group, which includes the United States).
Many members of the commission were elected without any vote at all. The Africans, for example, agreed on four countries -- Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda and Sudan -- and, presto! They were installed.
The real contest was in WEOG, which had to choose three countries from among four candidates. The two favorites were France and the United States, both permanent members of the Security Council. But there were two other pesky candidates, Sweden and Austria, each running partly for reasons of national vindication. Sweden was still peeved that it had been displaced from the commission by Belgium last year, and Austria was still peeved about sanctions imposed by the European Union in February 2000 after Haider's party joined the government.
So the politicking began, U.N.-style. French President Jacques Chirac personally visited the headquarters of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva on March 30 and made an ingratiating speech about French policy.
Then there were the vote-swapping deals. The French agreed to support Sweden if the Swedes would agree to deliver the votes of their Nordic neighbors, Norway and Denmark. And France and the United States agreed to vote for each other under the unwritten rule that permanent members of the security council (known as the P5) always vote for each other.
With the Bush administration's U.N. ambassador, John Negroponte, still unconfirmed, the American campaign was haphazard. When U.S. officials realized late in the game that they might lose, they went informally to Austria and Sweden and suggested that one of them withdraw. That didn't work. Since the U.S. lobbying campaign was so disorganized, many of the 53 voting countries assumed the Americans didn't really care.
When the votes were counted, France had all but one (the French and the Austrians voted against each other). Coming in second was Austria, with 41 votes; Sweden was third with 32, and Uncle Sam won the booby prize with just 29 votes. U.S. diplomats say they had been promised 43 votes; obviously, somebody lied.
Though France was widely suspected of conniving in the American defeat, French diplomats seem genuinely perturbed by it. That's partly because with the Americans gone from the commission, the French will now have to be the point men -- taking the lead in criticizing countries such as China. The French also worry about the U.S. congressional backlash.
What should the United States do about its embarrassing defeat? Rather than walking away from the United Nations in a huff, the Bush administration should start campaigning now to win back that seat next year. The U.N.'s political games may be silly, but it is the right place for the United States to fight for its beliefs.
-------- OTHER
Peace Corps security in question
05/13/2001
By Elliot Blair Smith,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-14-corps-usat.htm
MEXICO CITY - After meeting with his Peace Corps supervisor, Walter J. Poirier walked out of La Paz's ramshackle City Hall on the afternoon of Feb. 22 onto the Bolivian capital's colonial plaza. He hasn't been seen since.
The disappearance of the 23-year-old Notre Dame graduate brings into focus the dangers the USA's 7,300 Peace Corps volunteers sometimes face as they engage in development work in 77 countries around the world.
In the agency's 40-year history, 20 volunteers have been murdered. But over the past six years, six Peace Corps volunteers have been murdered in places such as Africa and the Philippines. Now, Poirier is missing and feared dead. Some Peace Corps volunteers and their families also complain of a high rate of unpublicized criminal assaults, particularly sexual assaults. The families of some victims, and some former volunteers who were the victims' friends, say Peace Corps security and supervision measures are inadequate.
Since it was formed in 1961 by President Kennedy to relieve poverty in the Third World, the Peace Corps has posted 169,000 volunteers abroad.
They are sent to developing areas to teach English, build schools and infrastructure and improve health and nutrition. Too often, critics say, this enthusiastic corps of recent college graduates and retirees is exposed to conflict, natural disaster and crime.
Peace Corps spokeswoman Ellen Field says, "There is no correlation between any of the crimes nor is there an explanation for the increases" in violence in recent years.
Field notes that Congress allocated $8.3 million to the 1999 budget to improve safety and security at the developmental agency's posts.
But in testimony to Congress on March 15, Peace Corps Inspector General Charles Smith identified continuing flaws in the security efforts, including housing in dangerous areas and cases of inadequate supervision. Smith said the agency failed even to distinguish between medical and security concerns until 1998, when the corps created the Office for Volunteer Safety and Overseas Security.
Volunteers and their families wonder whether better security measures might have averted several tragedies in the field. They offer these examples:
Nancy Coutu, 29, of Nashua, N.H., was raped and murdered before dawn on April 9, 1996, while bicycling to a Peace Corps meeting on a rural road in Madagascar.
Coutu's mother, Constance Coutu of Kissimmee, Fla., says her daughter should not have been stationed alone in the remote Madagascar countryside and should not have been required to commute in pre-dawn hours to attend Peace Corps functions. "If there had been two (volunteers living together), there would be two of them going to the meeting," the mother says.
Kevin Leveille, 26, of Ventura, Calif., was beaten to death at his home in Tanda, Ivory Coast, in February 1998, allegedly after having reported house robberies on three occasions to local police and to his Peace Corps supervisor. Karen Phillips, 37, of Philadelphia was raped and stabbed to death while walking to her home in Oyem, Gabon, late one night in December 1998, after attending a Peace Corps mixer for new volunteers and then stopping at a bar with friends. Brian Krow, 27, of Fremont, Calif., died after falling from a bridge in Cherkasy, Ukraine, in July 1999. Krow's death was reported as a suicide and later was ruled an accident by police. Family members suspect foul play.
Peace Corps spokeswoman Field says volunteers have three months of intensive training in the country of service that focuses on cultural issues and exercising judgment.
Field notes that female volunteers are counseled to travel in pairs. She says Krow's death was ruled an accident.
Brant Silvers, a former Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Africa, says, however, that the Corps is not as forthcoming as it should be about security matters. Silvers says an "outrageous" number of sexual assaults were reported by about 100 Peace Corps volunteers stationed in the Ivory Coast during his two-year tenure.
The Peace Corps confirms volunteers reported seven sexual assaults, including at least two rapes, in the Ivory Coast from 1997 to 1999, and says four rapes were reported there from 1993 to 1999.
"I think security matters could have been dealt with in a more open way," Silvers says. "There was an informal grapevine of volunteer information. We found out a lot of things that were happening in the country that weren't told to us by the administration and felt a responsibility to tell each other from a safety aspect."
In the case of Poirier's disappearance, his mother, Sheila Poirier, of Lowell, Mass., says Peace Corps officials failed to report her son was missing for two weeks.
Poirier adds: "When we put out the alarm, the Peace Corps didn't even know where he was living. Their protocols and policies are totally lacking."
The Peace Corps is offering a $10,000 reward for information on the missing volunteer, who was stationed in the rugged Zongo Valley near La Paz. The FBI recently sent six agents to Bolivia to search for him. They returned with no information about his whereabouts.
-------- energy
Energy Interests' Policy Priorities
New York Times
May 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Wish-Lists.html?searchpv=aponline
Initiatives that energy interests hope are included -- or left out -- of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy plan this week, based on interviews with industry groups that met with the administration's energy task force:
COAL:
--Create incentives for utilities to use ``clean coal'' technology that turns coal into a clean-burning gas for use by power plants.
--Change Environmental Protection Agency interpretation of Clean Air Act to let coal-burning power plants conduct routine maintenance, including anti-pollution upgrades, without facing environmental reviews.
--Give states greater flexibility in meeting Clean Air Act requirements.
--Give coal-burning utilities flexibility in meeting the new mercury emission standard the EPA is to develop in 2003.
ELECTRIC:
--Improve transmission.
--Proceed with proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site in Nevada.
--Relicense hydroelectric facilities.
--Ease transmission bottlenecks.
--Open power grid, now largely owned by utilities, to all participants. Make wholesale power market open and competitive.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS:
--Recognize energy efficiency as best resource.
--Do not ease environmental standards.
LABOR:
--Preserve and create union jobs.
NATURAL GAS:
--Increase the nation's natural gas supply and pipeline capacity. Speed approval of pipeline construction.
NUCLEAR ENERGY:
--Extend law setting minimum liability coverage nuclear power plants must carry.
--Make sure decommissioning funds -- money nuclear plant owners must set aside to handle any contamination if their plants eventually close -- are not taxed when plants change hands.
--Establish federal nuclear waste site.
--Give Congress rather than EPA authority over groundwater standards for a federal nuclear waste site and plant decommissioning.
OIL:
--Speed permitting, including providing access to nonpark federal land, for oil exploration and production.
--Increase crude oil supply from abroad, in part by re-examining countries under U.S. economic sanctions.
--Expand refining/pipeline/distribution infrastructure to meet demand, in part by making environmental permitting more flexible.
--Lift requirements for use of oxygenated fuel. Let industry sell different types of pollution-cutting gasoline.
--Back development of Arctic natural gas pipeline.
--Ease Western-land use restrictions.
--Provide tax credits to advance environmental technology, including development of fuel-cell vehicles.
WIND POWER:
--Extend tax credit for wind energy production for five years.
--Require utilities and federal government to obtain certain percentage of power from renewable energy sources.
-------
White House Seeks Input on Energy
By Sharon Theimer
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, May 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010513/aponline123502_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- The White House team developing a national energy plan has met with more than 130 interest groups, from environmentalists and unions often at odds with Republicans to major Bush supporters given private sessions with Vice President Dick Cheney.
The vice president, Cabinet secretaries and others on a special task force have solicited ideas behind closed doors, hoping the privacy would encourage a free exchange of ideas.
The White House has declined to provide names of participants - even to Congress.
But interviews with participants detail a massive outreach where diverse interests have met with task force executive director Andrew Lundquist. Cheney's time has been reserved for meetings with more select participants such as power wholesaler Enron Corp. and the Edison Electric Institute, both GOP donors.
"The way the task force is set up, they don't have the staff or time to have a huge host of companies come through the door. They have told us to work through our associations to the extent we can," said Don Duncan, vice president of government relations for Phillips Petroleum Co.
Participants said the meetings, typically 20 minutes to 45 minutes, included about a dozen to 100 interest group members and a few task force members and staff.
No details were disclosed. Instead, administration representatives summarized the nation's energy problems or listened as groups briefly offered background and proposals. Many sent detailed materials to the task force outlining their priorities.
At a half-hour meeting in late March with White House strategist Karl Rove and Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey, nuclear energy executives tried to make sure the two knew about the production records the industry has set over the past few years. At one point, Rove asked if anyone was looking to build a nuclear power plant. An executive with Exelon replied that his company was thinking about it, meeting participants said.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has attended several meetings, including one with Teamsters President James Hoffa and an hourlong session in California with Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who contends the administration has done little to help the power-strapped state.
Like other governors, Davis was asked to provide one page on the state's power crisis, including a description of the problem, an anecdote about it and possible solutions.
"They're asking for a one-page memo on possibly the biggest crisis ever affecting the state, with a massive ripple effect for the nation," Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio said. "I think it demands more attention than a one-page memo."
Cheney spokeswoman Juleanna Glover Weiss said the task force has been studying the California problem almost daily.
At a meeting between Abraham and about 100 coal industry representatives in late April, task force staffers handed out a briefing packet that outlined national energy needs, and then they listened to industry proposals.
"I thought the purpose was one, to reassure people in the coal industry that coal was going to play a large role in the energy mix, and essentially when the plan is unveiled that they're going to be looking to people to help martial this through Congress," said Bill Banig, a lobbyist for the United Mineworkers Union.
White House officials said the meetings are not designed to encourage lobbying and that task force members were carefully instructed on what was permissible under federal law.
Cheney's meetings included Enron, Edison Electric Institute, California Republicans, and the senators from Nevada, home to the proposed Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste site. The vice president plans to meet with the renewable-energy industry this week.
Enron ranked among Bush's top 10 presidential campaign contributors, giving more than $110,000, and helped sponsor a $7 million party fund-raiser last month.
The Edison Electric Institute gave Republican candidates more than two-thirds of its $193,000 in contributions last year. Edison International, whose holdings include the Southern California Edison electric utility, is also a major donor, giving $535,000 to Republicans last year and $330,000 to Democrats.
Enron spokesman Mark Palmer said Cheney met with Enron executives because the power wholesaler is a respected member of the industry, not because it was a contributor. Enron wants the administration's energy plan to ease electricity transmission bottlenecks, give companies incentives to invest in new transmission and make the wholesale power market as open as possible, he said.
Tom Kuhn, the institute's president, said it is "totally ludicrous" to think political donations played a role.
Cheney's meeting with Edison board members, held at the institute's invitation, lasted 15 minutes to 20 minutes. Cheney spoke about the task force process, Kuhn said. He said Cheney's remarks were consistent with the vice president's public statements.
Edison wants to see new generation and transmission systems built, including coal, natural gas and nuclear and hydroelectric power, Kuhn said.
Democrats in Congress sought a list of participants in the meetings, but Cheney's office responded by only listing broad categories and no names. That has left fodder for political attack.
"You can't just take advice from one interest group or set of interest groups when you do these things," said Dave Albersworth of the Wilderness Society, whose group has met with Lundquist but was denied its request to talk with Cheney.
Weiss countered that the energy task force has collected information from more than 130 groups since January in an "almost Herculean effort" to draw input from all sides.
"People deserve the right to petition their government and not expect a full laundry list of who's called to be announced," she said.
Enron spokesman Palmer said he is not seeking such privacy. "I'm happy to tell people what we're advocating for. I'd rather be talking about policy than about politics," he said.
---
Energy Conservation Will Be a Priority, Bush Says
New York Times
May 13, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/national/13RADI.html?searchpv=site01
WASHINGTON, May 12 - The Bush administration proposed new tax incentives today to encourage energy conservation, including assistance for people who buy fuel- efficient cars and for companies that install more efficient power generating systems.
President Bush, in his weekly radio address, said the proposals would be part of a broad review of energy policy that the administration is about to unveil.
"Pushing conservation forward will require investment in new energy technology, and that will be part of my administration's energy plan," he added.
Mr. Bush's remarks provided the latest example of his growing willingness to incorporate at least modest conservation measures into his energy planning. In recent weeks, the administration has been sharply criticized for focusing on fossil fuel exploration and power plant construction, more than conservation, as the solutions to energy shortages.
This month, the president ordered all federal facilities in California to keep thermostats at 78 degrees and shut down escalators during electricity shortages this summer. He also told managers of the government's 500,000 buildings nationwide to devise plans to reduce their energy use as much as possible.
Mr. Bush has in the past warned that the nation "can't conserve our way to energy independence." But today, he sought to distinguish between traditional conservation policies and "a 21st-century conservation" that uses new technology to make efficiency less painful.
"Some think that conservation means doing without," Mr. Bush said in his address. "That does not have to be the case."
"It can mean building sensors into new buildings to shut the lights off as soon as people leave a room," he continued. "It can mean upgrading the transmission lines that deliver electricity to your home so less is wasted on the way."
The new proposals outlined by the White House today would allow companies to write off the costs of new, more efficient generators at a faster rate. The proposal is intended to encourage businesses to replace inefficient boilers with systems that make use of both the heat and the electrical power that they produce.
The plan would also give tax credits to people who buy electric or gas- electric hybrid cars between 2002 and 2007. The White House did not specify the value of those credits.
Hybrid cars, which are currently being sold in the United States only by Honda and Toyota, can typically travel 50 miles or more on a gallon of gasoline.
Mr. Bush also proposed expanding a variety of federal energy awareness programs, including the voluntary Energy Star program that is intended to help consumers pick out more energy efficient appliances.
Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program, described Mr. Bush's initiatives as extremely modest and said he expects the final plan to focus on drilling for oil and gas or building nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
"They seem to be constructing a Potemkin village of energy efficiency," he said.
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