------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
54 Countries to Take Part in Nuclear Emergency Exercise
Nuclear Reactor Shut Down in London
The Man Inside China's Bomb Labs
China Firm On Missile Defense Opposition
China agrees to future missile defense talks
Activists Protesting Russian Waste Imports Disrupt Nuclear Meeting
Protestors briefly block German nuclear waste
Ex-Generals' Trial Begins in Israel
Japanese Approve Nuclear Plant
Japan Panel OKs 1st Nuke Plant Since 1999 Accident
North Korea Might Quit Nuclear Deal
Canada in Dark Over U.S. Missile Defense Plan
U.S. Envoy Stymied at Missile Talks in China
Bush to Meet With Russian President
Bill introduced to increase nuke fallout compensation
Bill Would Aid Radiation Victims
Nuclear Defense
BROOKHAVEN MANAGER TO LEAD REVIEW OF FAST FLUX REACTOR
Cheney says push needed to boost nuclear power

MILITARY
Potential Cyberattacks Worry U.S.
U.S. Proposes Lifting Iraq Sanctions

OTHER
US Energy Sec sees tax breaks for home solar use
US energy firms elated at Republican White House
Group: Power Woes May Hit Northeast
Energy Glance
Bush Aims for More Energy Sources
ANWR drilling, and conservation too
Railroad Worker Jumps Into, Stops Runaway Train
Freeh: FBI Blundered in McVeigh Case
Some Papers on Downed Spy Plane Were Not Destroyed

ACTIVISTS
Hiphop Conference for Peace Draws Rappers to U.N.
Free the 3 activists still in Jail for Mother's Day NTS Actions!


-------- NUCLEAR

54 Countries to Take Part in Nuclear Emergency Exercise

May 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-16-02.html

VIENNA, Austria, As part of ongoing international collaboration to deal with possible nuclear emergencies, on May 22 and 23 an extensive international nuclear emergency exercise will be carried out in France.

The activities will be based on a French national exercise at the Gravelines nuclear power plant located in the north of France, close to the Belgian border near Dunkirk. The Gravelines site has six pressurized water reactors, each providing 910 megawatts of electrical power.

Webcam shot inside one of four reactors at the French Cattenom nuclear power plant. (Photo courtesy Electricite de France)

The exercise will involve a simulated incident at a fictitious unit on this site with the possibility of an environmental impact. Participants may have to decide on measures to protect the public based on actual weather conditions at the time of the exercise.

Third in an ongoing annual series, the Gravelines exercise is jointly sponsored and coordinated by five international organizations, the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, the World Health Organization, and World Meteorological Organization.

The 54 countries participating worldwide will follow their own actual national emergency response plans and procedures, using their own emergency response centres, and will share information and co-ordinate response activities.

The main objectives of the exercise are to test existing national and international procedures and arrangements for responding to a nuclear emergency, co-ordinate the release of information, and assess the effectiveness of advisory and decision making mechanisms.

Following the exercise, each participating organization will undertake an evaluation in order to further improve emergency preparedness.

A total of 438 nuclear power plants were operating around the world at the end of 2000, two more than the previous year. Together they have a total net installed generating capacity of 351 gigawatts of power, according to data just released by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A specialized agency within the United Nations system, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) serves as the world's central intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the nuclear field.

Brazil's newest nuclear power plant, Angra 2, was connected to the grid on July 21, 2000. Angra 3 is scheduled for completion in 2006. (Photo courtesy Electronuclear)

During 2000, six new nuclear power plants representing 3,056 megawatts net electric capacity were connected to the power grids of the world - one in Brazil, one in the Czech Republic, three in India and one in Pakistan.

Construction of three new nuclear reactors started in 2000 - one in China and two in Japan, bringing the total number of nuclear reactors reported as being under construction to 31.

In 2000, Chernobyl 3 in Ukraine was declared permanently shut down. This was a companion reactor to Chernobyl 4 which was responsible for the world's worst nuclear accident when an explosion and fire April 26, 1986 destroyed the facility and spread radioactivity across much of Europe.

Nuclear power provides about 16 percent of global electricity, with about 83 percent of nuclear capacity concentrated in industrialized countries.

The 10 countries with the highest reliance on nuclear power in 2000 were: France, 76.4 percent; Lithuania, 73.7 percent; Belgium, 56.8 percent; Slovak Republic, 53.4 percent; Ukraine, 47.3 percent; Bulgaria, 45 percent; Hungary, 42.2 percent; Republic of Korea, 40.7 percent; Sweden, 39 percent and Switzerland, 38.2 percent.

In total, 17 countries relied upon nuclear power plants to supply at least a quarter of their total electricity needs.

Watts Bar Unit I, the newest nuclear plant in the United States. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

In North America, where 118 reactors supply about 20 percent of electricity in the United States and 12 percent in Canada, the number of operating reactors has declined slightly.

The United States has 103 operating nuclear power reactors at 65 sites. The newest is the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Unit I which began commercial operations in May 1996.

In Western Europe, with 150 reactors, overall capacity is likely to remain at or near existing levels in the coming years, the IAEA predicts.

In Central/Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States, with 68 reactors, a few partially built plants are likely to be completed, while aging units are being shut down.

Only in the Middle East, Far East and South Asia, with a total of 94 reactors at present, are there clear plans for expanding nuclear power, particularly in China, India, the Republic of Korea and Japan.

The International Atomic Energy Agency Power Reactor Information System database of nuclear power plants worldwide is online at: http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/

-------- britain

Nuclear Reactor Shut Down in London

The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline052319_000.htm

LONDON -- One of the reactors at the Sizewell B nuclear power station has been shut down following an acid leak, managers said Wednesday.

The reactor at the plant in Suffolk in eastern England was closed after sensors in the main containment area picked up a leak of boric acid, officials said.

They said the acid is believed to have corroded a number of metal seals, which had been replaced just 18 months ago. Work has begun to repair them.

"There is no cause for alarm," said spokesman John McNamara. "It has all taken place within the containment area and nothing gets out of there.

McNamara said it was unclear when the reactor, which was closed on Friday, will be brought back into operation.

A government safety spokesman said there had been leakage for some time, but there was no danger to anyone working there.

-------- china

The Man Inside China's Bomb Labs
U.S. Blocks Memoir of Scientist Who Gathered Trove of Information

By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29474-2001May15?language=printer

Between the spring of 1990 and the summer of 1999, nuclear weapons scientist and intelligence analyst Danny B. Stillman made nine trips to China. He visited nearly all of its secret nuclear weapons facilities and held extensive, authorized discussions with Chinese scientists and generals.

In all, Stillman said he collected the names of more than 2,000 Chinese scientists working at nuclear weapons facilities, recorded detailed histories of the Chinese program from top scientists, inspected nuclear weapons labs and bomb testing sites, interviewed Chinese weapons designers, photographed nuclear facilities -- and then, each time he returned home, passed the information along to U.S. intelligence debriefers.

Now Stillman, 67, who worked for 28 years at Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory before retiring in late 1993, is locked in a dispute with the U.S. government over whether he can publish a 500-page memoir detailing his and other little-known contacts between U.S. and Chinese nuclear scientists during the 1990s. The case involves complex First Amendment issues and reveals the extent to which both countries have used scientific exchanges to keep tabs on each other's nuclear programs.

Stillman submitted his manuscript, "Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program," to the Defense Department and the Department of Energy 17 months ago for prepublication clearance required by a secrecy agreement he signed at Los Alamos. Both agencies have so far denied Stillman permission to publish, citing a Pentagon memo that says the memoir could "reasonably be expected to damage the security concerns of the United States" and "could also damage American foreign relations with China." Stillman has hired an attorney and intends to file a lawsuit to reverse that finding.

Stillman's disclosures could provide new context for allegations that China used contacts with U.S. scientists during the 1990s to steal U.S. nuclear secrets, showing that China also provided unprecedented access to its own nuclear program to visiting U.S. intelligence officials and scientists.

Stillman said in an interview that he believes the Chinese nuclear program made its important advances without resorting to espionage. While the Chinese looked for ways to steal secrets during their contacts with him and other U.S. scientists, he said, they also were "looking to brag about what they had done" on their own, while "trying to bring their program out into the open."

China invited Stillman to its closed nuclear facilities while seeking to rebuild ties disrupted by American outrage over the massacre of Chinese students around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

At the beginning of the 1980s, China had authorized intelligence-sharing with the United States to help contain the Soviet Union. These programs included smuggling arms to Afghan rebels and operating joint listening posts along the Soviet Union's southern borders.

In the nuclear arena, China had been slower to engage, but as Stillman began his travels, Beijing signaled a desire to enter arms control agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Chinese scientists wanted to exchange information about how to maintain their nuclear stockpile after testing ended. They also repeatedly pressed Stillman to transmit requests to U.S. officials for safety locks that would make it harder for Chinese bombs to be detonated without authorization.

"They wanted me to bring information to the U.S. government," Stillman said. "If you want to weigh what we got versus what we might have said -- well, we got a whole lot."

Colleagues familiar with Stillman's work concur.

"We saw things no outsider had ever seen before," said Robert Daniel, who traveled to China with Stillman in 1991, when Daniel was an assistant energy secretary in charge of intelligence programs. "We went to the test site in the Gobi Desert and saw them getting ready to place a [nuclear explosive] device down a 600-meter hole. . . . I think we learned a lot, and I would emphasize: We didn't give anything away."

"Danny's approach was disarmingly simple: You just go to China, find the guys who designed the bombs and ask them questions," said Robert Vrooman, former director of counterintelligence at Los Alamos. Added Jay Keyworth, a former science adviser to President Ronald Reagan: "I would say the whole activity that he was involved in was extraordinarily successful for the United States."

But skeptics of the scientific exchanges argue that on balance, the United States has given up much more than it received, in part because the U.S. nuclear program is ahead of China's.

"There's just absolutely no way to do these exchanges without showing your hand in a way that there's security problems," said Gary Schmitt, a former White House and Capitol Hill intelligence analyst who is executive director of Project for the New American Century. "You had a cocktail of a large policy goal [to engage China] combined with the natural instincts of scientists to share everything. . . . I think what happens is you just kid yourself about what you're doing."

Stillman and his lawyer argue that the best way to resolve such debates is to allow publication of his memoir. But it isn't clear whether or when the U.S. government will do that.

Last year, after conducting an initial manuscript review, the Department of Energy proposed a few changes to remove what it said was sensitive information about nuclear weapons. Stillman agreed to the changes but soon learned that the Defense Intelligence Agency, backed by the CIA, had decided that none of his manuscript could be released.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that the DIA's recommendations were not final and that a further Defense Department review was underway. A DOE spokesman also said its review "is ongoing."

Mark S. Zaid, Stillman's attorney, said the government's rulings have been overly broad because Stillman merely recorded in the book what he saw and heard during visits made at the invitation of Chinese officials, and in some cases was traveling as a private citizen after his retirement.

"Essentially, what the government has done is classify his postcards home," Zaid said.

There are few clear guidelines for Stillman's case, lawyers specializing in First Amendment issues said. The most relevant precedent, they said, was a 1972 dispute in which courts held that a former CIA agent, Victor Marchetti, had a right to publish unclassified information but that the government also had wide authority to deny clearance for any material that was properly classified.

"There's enormous ground for battle about what is properly classified," said Mark Lynch, a partner at Covington & Burling and former attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Stillman joined Los Alamos in 1965 as a specialist in devices used to simulate and measure nuclear explosions. In 1978, he was promoted to run the lab's Division of International Technology, which contracted with the DIA, CIA and other U.S. agencies to analyze foreign nuclear programs.

As part of this work, Stillman met with visiting Chinese scientists whenever possible. Playing off the intelligence community's fondness for acronyms such as "SIGINT," or signals intelligence, and "HUMINT," or human intelli- gence, Stillman called his method "ASKINT," as in "Just ask them."

When five Chinese scientists visited New Mexico in 1988, Stillman invited them on a picnic. Later he learned they were all from the Chinese nuclear program. Stillman kept in touch and pressed for an invitation to China.

In April 1990 he made his first trip, and with two U.S. colleagues he visited China's equivalent of Los Alamos, the Southwest Institute of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics at Mianyang. On this and subsequent trips, the Chinese talked extensively about their program's history and operations, including how they had developed a neutron bomb.

"I had videos and cameras, and I was always taking notes," Stillman said.

Even after retiring from the lab in October 1993, Stillman continued to travel to Chinese facilities, sometimes escorting senior Los Alamos officials. More recently, he has traveled to China with John Lewis, a Stanford University political scientist who specializes in the history of China's nuclear program.

Before each trip, Stillman obtained permission to travel from the Department of Energy. Each time he returned, a U.S. intelligence debriefer came to his Los Alamos office for an interview, and Stillman said he voluntarily provided detailed diaries about everything he had seen and heard in China.

Stillman said Chinese scientists offered details that seemed to contradict a select congressional committee headed by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.). The committee alleged in 1999 that China had stolen U.S. secrets that helped it to miniaturize nuclear weapons for use on intercontinental missiles.

Stillman said Chinese physicists told him that they had begun research on miniaturization during the 1970s, but could not complete it because they lacked the computing power to carry out massive calculations. When the Chinese physicists got access to supercomputers, they pulled out their old research, ran the numbers and designed the new devices.

On a visit to China in the summer of 1999, Stillman said, Hu Side, one of China's leading weapons physicists, delivered an angry speech over dinner about distortions he ascribed to the Cox committee and the prosecution of Taiwanese American scientist Wen Ho Lee for security violations.

As for miniaturization, "We did not need you," Hu Side said, according to Stillman. "These allegations must have been made for political reasons."

Cox said yesterday that Chinese scientists provided a mixture of accurate insights and disinformation to their U.S. colleagues. "I think we were all in agreement that [the exchanges were] not a black-and-white question."

From his first visit, the Chinese asked Stillman to press U.S. officials for help with nuclear bomb locks known as permissive action links, or PALs. The Chinese said that splits in their military during the Tiananmen crisis brought home the potential danger of unauthorized control of nuclear weapons, and they wanted the United States to provide older PAL technology that would make Chinese bombs safer but not jeopardize U.S. bomb security.

"Every trip, they asked for that," Stillman said. "I always thought the world would be a safer place if they got that."

In Washington, after Stillman transmitted the Chinese request, "There was a big debate in the United States about how far we should go to assist them with that technology," said Kurt Campbell, a former Pentagon official during the Clinton administration, now senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think they [the Chinese] truly were interested in what they called positive control."

Ultimately, however, U.S. authorities declined to help, and by the mid-1990s China had turned to Russia for PAL technology as well as for other nuclear weapons assistance.

Stillman said that after years of maintaining a low profile, he decided to write his memoir because he had a great deal of information to add to the record about how the Chinese built their nuclear program.

"I retired and I couldn't find a job, frankly, and I had all this unique experience," Stillman said. "More Americans have walked on the surface of the moon than have walked on the surface of the Chinese nuclear test site."

----

China Firm On Missile Defense Opposition
U.S. Envoy Pushes Plan in Beijing

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31143-2001May15?language=printer

BEIJING, May 15 -- Rejecting the arguments of a senior U.S. envoy, China stood firm in its opposition to the Bush administration plan for national missile defenses today, bluntly describing it as a threat to Chinese national interests.

"China's constant position is unchanged," said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Sun Yuxi. "We are opposed to the national missile defense system because it destroys the global strategic balance and upsets international stability."

Sun made the remarks even before talks concluded between Chinese officials and the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, James Kelly, who came here as part of a global diplomatic push by the Bush administration to ease fears and win support for its vision of a missile shield that would protect the United States against nuclear attack.

["I stressed that our plans for a missile defense system would not be a threat to China," Kelly said before leaving Beijing on Wednesday. "Although we clearly still have differences of opinion, our consultations on this subject were constructive and constitute a good beginning."]

The official New China News Agency reported that "the two sides held frank consultations on the missile defense issue, and expressed willingness to continue consultations in this regard."

President Bush's plan to build a missile defense system has met with skepticism from many countries, including allies, that worry it could destabilize relations among nuclear powers, result in a new arms race and cause the United States to feel invulnerable and act recklessly. But China has been the most stubborn opponent of the system, largely because the few nuclear weapons it owns -- estimates are that it has about 20 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles -- could be compromised by an effective U.S. system.

The dispute is one of several that have strained relations between the two nations since the collision of a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet off China's southern coast last month. China has also been angered by Bush's decision to sell a major arms package to Taiwan and to allow Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to visit the United States before and after a trip to Latin America.

Kelly, the first senior Bush administration official to visit China, exchanged views on U.S.-China relations with two deputy foreign ministers, Li Zhaoxing and Wang Yi, and both sides pledged to work toward good relations, according to the New China News Agency. Before the talks began, Kelly told reporters that China and the United States share "an interest in promoting peace and stability. Curbing the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is a key element."

U.S. officials insist the proposal for a national missile defense system is aimed at defending the United States against an attack by an unpredictable small nation such as North Korea or Iraq. But many Chinese officials suspect the plan is directed at them and their small arsenal.

China also objects to a U.S. proposal to build a theater missile defense system to protect regional allies such as Japan or U.S. troops in South Korea, in part because such a system could also be used to protect Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island of 23 million that Beijing claims as part of its territory.

Sun declined to say how China would respond if Washington presses ahead with its plans, but warned that "China will not just wait idly and see its national interests being undermined." Chinese officials have said previously that China may respond by expanding its nuclear forces, making its missiles more accurate or finding other ways to overwhelm the proposed U.S. system.

"When you invent a new shield, you will invent new types of spear. It always goes on like that," Sun said. "Therefore all new plans like this will not bring any benefit. It's just like lifting a stone and dropping it on one's own feet."

In an apparent departure from previous Foreign Ministry statements, Sun said China is "more opposed" to theater missile defense because such a system would undermine the balance of power in Asia. China's chief arms negotiator, Sha Zukang, said just the opposite in March, in what was seen then as a softening of China's position.

---

China agrees to future missile defense talks

05/16/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-16-chinatalks.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline034444_000.htm

BEIJING (AP) - China and the United States are at odds over a proposed U.S. missile shield, but initial talks on the issue were constructive, a U.S. envoy said Wednesday.

State Department official James Kelly said Chinese officials agreed to further discussions over the planned missile defense system along with U.S. proposals for curbing weapons proliferation and reducing America's nuclear forces.

"Although we clearly still have differences of opinion, our consultations on this subject were constructive and constitute a good beginning," Kelly said in a departure statement released by the U.S. Embassy.

Earlier, China's Foreign Ministry said talks on Tuesday had not softened Beijing's opposition.

Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi urged Washington to abandon its plan, saying the system would endanger the global strategic balance, spark an arms race and frustrate arms control efforts.

China would not "wait idly and see its national interests being undermined," Sun told reporters Tuesday, without specifically saying how China would respond. China has previously said it could beef up its small nuclear arsenal or improve the technology of its missiles to overcome the U.S. defenses.

Kelly, an assistant secretary for east Asian and Pacific affairs, met with China's chief arms control official, Sha Zukang, and other Foreign Ministry officials. Kelly said he reiterated U.S. arguments that the system wasn't aimed at China, but intended to defend against accidental missile launches or attacks from unpredictable countries such as North Korea.

"I stressed that our plans for a missile defense system would not be a threat to China," Kelly said.

His China visit and earlier stops in Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore were part of a global diplomatic push by the United States to ameliorate concerns over the system. U.S. diplomats have been dispatched to Russia, which has joined with China in opposing the plan, as well as to U.S. allies in Europe who have given the U.S. plans a tepid response.

Kelly said the sides also discussed returning the U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane that made an emergency landing on southern China's Hainan island after an April 1 collision with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea.

The crash, which killed the Chinese pilot, and China's 11-day detention of the U.S. plane's crew, inflamed nationalist passions on both sides. China has refused to allow the United States to fly the plane home after repairs. However, the two sides agreed to use diplomatic channels to secure the plane's quick release, Kelly said.

The two sides also discussed China's human rights records and Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway territory, Kelly said.

-------- germany

Activists Protesting Russian Waste Imports Disrupt Nuclear Meeting

May 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-16-01.html

DRESDEN, Germany, The opening day of the Annual Meeting on Nuclear Technology 2001 at the Kulturpalast in Dresden was disrupted Tuesday by several hundred German and Russian anti-nuclear activists protesting Russian plans to import nuclear waste. The protests of the three day meeting are continuing today.

Nuclear power in Russia tops the list of topics being discussed at the meeting which is organized by the German Atomic Forum in collaboration with the German Nuclear Technology Society. The annual event attract the international nuclear industry including German, Russian, British, French and other companies.

Nuclear Technology 2001 delegates are gathered at Dresden's Kulturpalast. (Photo courtesy Kulturpalast)

Protests, organized by the Russian anti-nuclear organization EcoDefense!, Greenpeace Germany and the German group Anti-Atom Network of Saxony, were targeted at disrupting the opening of the meeting. Activists believe closed door negotiations aimed at the dumping of international nuclear waste in Russia will be taking place here.

Several activists climbed the roof of the Kulturpalast to display banners reading, "No nuclear waste to Russia!" and "Conference of nuclear mafia." Others blocked doors of the Palace making what the activists called "a noisy drums party" to greet arriving nuclear officials.

In the evening, about 50 activists disrupted the cultural tour through Dresden offered to the participants of Nuclear Technology 2001 by organizers. The tour was cancelled shortly after it began, and participants were advised to return to their hotel.

Russia will build six new nuclear power units by 2010, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Yurievich Rumyantsev announced Tuesday at a roundtable debate on energy industry problems in the Russian parliament, known as the State Duma.

A group of officials from the Russian Ministry of Atomic Power (Minatom) attended the Dresden meeting hoping to conclude agreements on the commercial import of nuclear waste to Russia. According to Minatom statements, the agency believes Russia can make up to US$20 billion by importing nuclear waste during next decade.

The Duma has not yet passed the final resolution needed to change Russian law to allow the import of nuclear waste, but two preliminary resolutions have been approved by the deputies.

German protesters gather Tuesday at the rail line on which the Castor casks containing spent nuclear fuel are traveling to France. (Photo courtesy Indymedia Germany)

A parallel demonstration is taking place in Germany against the transport of spent nuclear fuel from German nuclear reactors to Cogema, the French state owned nuclear reprocessing facility at La Hague. The transports started again this year after a three year pause due to safety concerns.

"There will be a strong resistance across the country if German companies want to dump their waste in Russia," said Carsten Enders of EcoDefense! Dresden at a press conference today. "Germany should not solve its waste problems this way, with the help of Russia. Protests will be continued until nuclear officials leave the city."

"Minatom must understand it's better to give up plans to import nuclear waste from Germany or any other country," said Vladimir Slivyak, council member for EcoDefense! in Russia. "Making an international dump site for nuclear waste in Russia is a crime against the nature and next generations of Russians and may result in new accidents larger than Chernobyl," Slivyak warned.

----

Protestors briefly block German nuclear waste

May 16, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10834

BERLIN - Anti-nuclear protestors temporarily blocked the transport of nuclear waste from the north German Stade and Brunsbuettel nuclear power plants to France yesterday morning.

According to a statement by the Federal Border Guards (BGS), a group of around 40 protestors temporarily occupied the railway track near Luenburg and in Suderburg near Uelzen.

But police and the BGS soon freed the rails and the protestors were held for a time in custody, a BGS spokesman said.

At around 8:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) the train was again on the move in Lower Saxony to Goettingen.

Two members of the environmental protection organisation Robin Wood had already stopped the train with a nuclear waste container for a good hour on Monday night immediately at the start of the transport by chaining themselves to the rails.

Police and the BGS freed the track and removed the young men from the ballast. The train with two nuclear waste containers from Brunsbuettel was, however, not disturbed at the marshalling yard in Maschen, south of Hamburg.

Three wagons were coupled there at around 0430.

The transport of the so-called Castor containers with around 54 spent fuel rods should cross the German-French border at Woerth yesterday afternoon and from there travel to the waste processing plant at La Hague.

The four year-long break in nuclear waste shipment to France rolled out again a month ago.

These shipments are again possible after Germany resumed at the end of March its receipt of processed nuclear waste from France and placed it in temporary storage at Gorleben.

-------- israel

Ex-Generals' Trial Begins in Israel

By Jack Katzenell
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline065058_000.htm

JERUSALEM -- A retired Israeli general accused of divulging classified information has gone on trial, though the charges do not include much more serious allegations reported earlier, officials said Wednesday.

At a court session Tuesday in Tel Aviv, Yitzhak Yaakov, 75, was formally charged with passing on secret information to unauthorized persons, with the intention of harming state security.

At an earlier hearing, Judge Uri Goren ruled that the charges against Yaakov did not relate to the transfer of classified material to hostile elements or foreign espionage agencies.

Goren had instructed the prosecution to draw up a new indictment and to remove elements that could compromise state security, so that the indictment could be published in full.

Yaakov, a former military scientist, is believed to have been connected to Israel's nuclear weapons program, according to press reports. However, Israel has never acknowledged having a nuclear weapons program, maintaining a policy of ambiguity for decades.

Yaakov, who retired from the defense establishment in 1973, played an important role in building Israel's military technological capability, his supporters say. He was arrested March 28, but it was not publicly known until London's Sunday Times published a story April 22.

The Israeli media reported that Yaakov, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, was being held on suspicion of espionage.

According to the indictment, Yaakov wrote memoirs in which he divulged secrets from his work in the defense establishment, and sent copies of the book to unauthorized persons.

He also wrote what he described as a work of fiction which he acknowledged was based on his military career, and gave the manuscript to a number of people, the prosecution said.

Yaakov has lived in the United States for most of the last two decades. Until last year he served as chairman of the New York-based high-tech company Constellation 3D Inc., which has branches in Russia and Israel.

-------- japan

Japanese Approve Nuclear Plant

The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline034754_000.htm

TOKYO -- A government panel on Wednesday approved a plan to build a new nuclear power plant in southern Japan, the first since the nation's worst nuclear accident in 1999.

The electric power panel of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry endorsed the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki in Yamaguchi state, about 390 miles southwest of Tokyo, ministry spokesman Koichi Sakamoto said.

The panel's decision is expected to be formally approved by the ministry in June, he added.

The local government and Chugoku Electric Power Co, which will run the plant, have obtained consent from residents, Sakamoto said.

Under Chugoku's proposal, two reactors, each with an output capacity of 1.37 million kilowatt, will be completed in 2012 and 2015 respectively. The company currently owns one nuclear plant, which has three reactors.

The new plant will be the first since Japan's worst nuclear accident in September 1999, when an uncontrolled nuclear reaction at a fuel reprocessing center in Tokaimura killed two workers and exposed hundreds of nearby residents to radiation.

Tokaimura is located 70 miles northeast of Tokyo.

--------

Japan Panel OKs 1st Nuke Plant Since 1999 Accident

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-energy-.html?searchpv=reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese government panel on Wednesday approved the construction of a new nuclear power plant for the first time since the nation's worst nuclear accident in September 1999 that killed two plant workers.

New Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has the final word, is expected to rubber-stamp the plan, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) said.

Pending final approval, Chugoku Electric Power Co Inc will have the green light to build a 2.74-gigawatt plant with two reactors in Kaminoseki, Yamaguchi prefecture, some 375 miles west of Tokyo.

METI's decision is likely to raise a furor among local residents, some of whom are refusing to sell the rest of the land needed to build the facility.

Since the nation's worst accident in Tokaimura two years ago, many nuclear power projects have been forced to delay amid growing public distrust of the industry and residents' fear of living near a nuclear power plant.

The approval of Chugoku Electric's project had been delayed due partly to difficulties for securing land, 20 percent of which has yet to be procured, the METI official said.

The government last year approved the construction of two nuclear reactors to be added to existing plants in Shimane, western Japan and Hokkaido, northern Japan, but this would be the first to be built from scratch since the fatal accident.

Construction of the Kaminoseki plant is due to begin in fiscal 2007, with one reactor scheduled to be completed in fiscal 2012 and the other in fiscal 2015. Each reactor is expected to have the capacity to generate 1.37 gigawatt of power.

Total costs for the project are estimated at $6.49 billion, a spokesman at Chugoku Electric said.

Japan has 51 commercial nuclear reactors, which provide about one-third of the nation's power.

-------- korea

North Korea Might Quit Nuclear Deal

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NKorea-US.html?searchpv=aponline

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Wednesday threatened to pull out of a 1994 nuclear deal with the United States, saying Washington has failed to uphold terms of the agreement.

The warning came less than a week after a top U.S. official said Washington would resume talks soon with North Korea, raising hopes that the stalled reconciliation process between the two Koreas might get back on track.

North Korea agreed in 1994 to freeze its nuclear program -- which U.S. officials suspected was being used to make nuclear weapons -- in exchange for two nuclear reactors to be built by a U.S.-led consortium. But funding and contractual problems, as well as political tensions, have delayed completion of the project by several years.

``The failure by the U.S. to live up to its obligation ... by the year 2003 would possibly drive us to respond to it with abandoning (the) ongoing nuclear freeze,'' the North's foreign media outlet, KCNA, said in a report.

``We cannot sit idle over our loss while maintaining the nuclear freeze,'' the agency said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday that the United States has no intention of abandoning the agreement.

``Our position has always been that we intend to abide by the agreed framework,'' he said. ``And we expect them to abide by the agreed framework.''

North Korea has made similar threats in recent months without acting on them.

It recently said it might scrap a moratorium on missile tests, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a European Union delegation this month that he would extend the moratorium until 2003.

Reflecting the communist North's dependency on the nation it often denounces, the United States said this past weekend that it would donate 100,000 tons of commodities to the U.N. World Food Program for distribution in North Korea.

On a visit to Seoul last week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said the United States was concluding a review of North Korea policy and would resume talks with the North ``in the near future.''

Armitage also said the Bush administration would abide by the 1994 nuclear deal, which has been criticized by some U.S. lawmakers as costly and impractical.

North Korea said it had abided by its requirements ``over 100 percent,'' but the project might be held up until 2010, because ``ground work'' had yet to begin.

On the U.S. side, however verification issues remain unresolved. John E. McLaughlin, deputy director of the CIA, said last month that North Korea ``probably has one or two nuclear bombs.''

-------- missile defense

Canada in Dark Over U.S. Missile Defense Plan

May 16, 2001
By David Ljunggren
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010516/12/politics-arms-canada-usa-dc

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is still largely in the dark about a proposed U.S. missile defense system, despite a visit by a top-level delegation from Washington to discuss the controversial concept.

After three hours of talks on Tuesday in Ottawa with a U.S. delegation headed by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, senior Canadian officials made it clear they had learned relatively little about the proposed national missile defense (NMD) shield, designed to protect against attacks by so-called rogue states such as North Korea.

"It was a good beginning but it's also clear that an awful lot of work that needs to be done...For a lot of questions we asked there were not definitive answers at this stage," one official told reporters.

"That's not a criticism of the U.S. team. That's simply a function of the fact that the planning process is not at a stage yet where the Americans are in a position to give us complete answers."

Grossman's visit was part of a concerted bid by Washington to persuade its allies and partners of the merits of the NMD shield, which critics fear could trigger a new arms race with Russia and China.

The official position in Canada -- where opinions are increasingly divided on NMD -- is that Ottawa does not need to make a decision because it has yet to be asked.

But the country's most influential newspaper, the Globe and Mail, said on Wednesday that the Canadian stance had become an international embarrassment.

"Missile defense is a bad idea -- expensive, unproven, unnecessary, illegal and destabilizing. If Canada really counts itself a friend of the United States, it will stop pulling its punches and say so," the paper said in its lead editorial.

The prospect of being able to put off a decision for many months to come will likely be welcome in Ottawa. On one hand, Ottawa has no desire to irritate its major military and commercial partner, but on the other it does not want to do anything that could destabilize the international arms balance.

Canadian officials said it was clear the United States had little idea of what kind of system it would choose, how it might work, where it would be based, how much it would cost and what effect it might have on global security.

"There was no concrete proposal that was put on the table by the American side and we will not be responding definitively until there is one, and until we've had an opportunity to consider its implications fully," one official said.

If Washington does decide to build NMD it looks set to be run from the immensely powerful joint U.S.-Canadian NORAD air defense command in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Canada's military fears that staying out of the missile defense plan could result in their exclusion from NORAD.

"Our American interlocutors were not in a position to discuss the impact (that NMD) would have on NORAD...it depends on details that were not clear now," said one senior Canadian Defense Department official.

Critics in Canada are particularly worried about the effects NMD might have on the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the cornerstone of international nuclear deterrence for the last 30 years.

"We urged the Americans to take all the time they need to fully explore the implications of a decision on the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system and to find a way forward which increases global strategic stability," said one official.

"Past experience suggests these processes always take longer than people had originally thought. The devil really is in the details."

Canada will now start an active round of consultations with its NATO allies as well as with Russia and China, both of which oppose NMD.

----

U.S. Envoy Stymied at Missile Talks in China

By ERIK ECKHOLM
May 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/world/16CHIN.html

BEIJING, Wednesday, May 16 - Even as President Bush's emissary was here making the case for a missile defense system, the Chinese government publicly condemned the proposal on Tuesday, calling it a fruitless step that would endanger global security.

James Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs, spent Tuesday meeting privately with Chinese arms control and foreign policy officials, presenting Mr. Bush's vision of a "new framework" for security involving missile defenses and a sharp reduction in the American nuclear arsenal. The Bush administration says the planned antimissile project is aimed at stopping attacks from "rogue" nations like North Korea, Iran or Iraq and should not worry China.

But China fears that even a modest American missile defense will neutralize its own small nuclear forces, currently believed to include only about 18 long-range missiles, and will make the United States feel invulnerable and more likely to bully other countries.

Tuesday afternoon, at a regularly scheduled news briefing, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Sun Yuxi, insisted that China's opposition to the program was unwavering and said the proposed defenses would "harm others without benefiting the United States itself."

If the United States pursues the plan, he said, it will "lift a stone only to drop it on its own feet."

As he left Beijing this morning, Mr. Kelly released a statement describing Tuesday's talks as "a good exchange of views."

"Although we clearly still have differences of opinion," he said, "our consultations on this subject constitute a good beginning to what both sides agreed would be a continuing dialogue on these important security issues."

Mr. Sun said China hoped to persuade Washington to abandon the plan by diplomatic means, but he also warned that, "China will not sit idly by and watch its national interests suffer harm."

Officials here have previously said that China could respond by greatly increasing its forces under its already planned deployment of improved missiles, or by developing decoys and other countermeasures. But Chinese officials also say this could set off a costly and dangerous arms race in Asia, where India and Pakistan have recently joined the nuclear club.

Mr. Kelly is one of several Bush administration officials who are trying to reassure allies and other nuclear powers that the missile defense plan is part of a new vision of global stability and should not be feared.

"I stressed that our plans for a missile defense system would not be a threat to China," Mr. Kelly said in this morning's statement.

At the Foreign Ministry news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Sun also attacked Washington for allowing President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to make extended transit stops in New York and Houston as part of a visit to Latin America later this month, and for agreeing to let him to meet with interested members of Congress during the stops.

Under the terms of its recognition of Beijing, rather than Taipei, as the government of China, Washington does not hold public meetings with high-level officials from Taiwan. Beijing considers Taiwan an errant province, separated by civil war, but over the last half century the island has established its own identity and democracy.

-------- russia

Bush to Meet With Russian President

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline022940_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration expects Russian President Vladimir Putin to appeal directly to President Bush next month to reconsider his inclination to scrap a 1972 major arms-control agreement and build a U.S. anti-missile shield.

The two leaders have agreed to meet in Europe, most likely in mid-June at the end of a four-nation trip by Bush, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The trip will be the most ambitious overseas venture by far of Bush's young presidency. Among high points are meetings with NATO allies in Brussels, Belgium, and leaders of the European Union in Goteborg, Sweden.

The session with Putin, to be followed by another in July at an eight-nation economic summit conference in Genoa, Italy, is apt to rival the others in importance.

Until now, Bush has focused on tax reductions and other domestic items while getting his bearings in foreign affairs.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has worked for weeks with Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, on a convenient time and place for a Bush-Putin meeting. Ivanov is to see Bush and Powell on Friday in Washington. The official announcement of the presidential session could come then.

Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the two leaders wanted to meet in Europe in June and that only logistics need to be worked out.

At the top of the agenda would be Bush's intention to build a defense against missile attack and Russia's opposition to the program.

On Monday, the administration again affirmed it would construct a defense against missiles, if one is needed, whatever Russia or other nations may think of the idea.

Bush and Powell are expected to make that point when they talk to Ivanov. They also are likely to tell the Russian foreign minister the administration wants to negotiate reductions in offensive nuclear arsenals, long a Russian goal.

Russia is opposed to a national missile defense system. Such a program is outlawed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Bush has declared an irrelevant relic of the Cold War.

On Tuesday, American envoys ended a two-week mission to Russia and other far-flung points to sound out government officials about a U.S. anti-missile system.

In Ottawa, the final stop as the consultation tour ended, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the delegations found mixed reactions to the idea.

"There was some positive reaction and a sense of, 'Yes, this is doable,'" said Quigley, speaking for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a driving force behind the administration's effort to build a missile defense. He said positive reactions came in Australia and Poland but admitted others were skeptical.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who led the delegation to Germany, told reporters in Berlin the Germans exhibited an "openness and willingness to discuss, but very, very serious questions were asked of us."

French Defense Minister Alain Richard said more details are needed. Sweden's defense minister, Bjorn von Sydow, said whatever kind of missile defense is built should be within the bounds of an international treaty.

Tuesday in Ottawa, Marc Grossman, Canada's undersecretary of state, expressed willingness to listen: "The world in 2001 is not the world of 1972. The Cold War is over and Russia is not our enemy." Prime Minister Jean Chretien made clear, however, that convincing remains to be done. "We are engaged in a dialogue," he said. "I don't know exactly what it's all about. They don't know exactly what it's going to be. I'm not going to take a position on something if I don't know what that means."

Russia's reaction has been cool. On Monday, Igor Sergeyev, an adviser to Putin, said the U.S. delegation headed by Wolfowitz failed to convince Russian officials. "We did not hear coherent arguments in favor of Washington's plan to deploy a national missile defense system," Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Asked Monday if the United States would ignore such views if Bush and his senior advisers were to opt for a missile shield, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "The secretary has made clear, the president has made clear that we intend to proceed with defense, and defense is part of our ... strategic framework."

Russia has threatened to stop reducing its 7,000-warhead arsenal if the United States quits the treaty. China says fielding missile defenses in Asia, which the Bush administration said it would consider, could escalate tensions over Taiwan.

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

Bill introduced to increase nuke fallout compensation

May 16, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archives/2001/may/16/511830218.html?nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR+radioactiv%3F%3F%3F+OR+missile%3F

Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Pete Domenici of New Mexico introduced amendments today to strengthen radiation compensation to residents living downwind of radioactive fallout from the Nevada Test Site.

The amendments would grant downwinders and others exposed to radioactive fallout an extra $50,000 and lifetime medical benefits. The proposal would cost $710 million over the next 10 years.

Between 2,000 and 4,000 claims have been paid since the original compensation bill was passed in 1990 to residents living under radioactive fallout, military personnel exposed to the fallout and uranium miners.

The amendments would also remove compensation funding from annual congressional review by making it a permanent and indefinite appropriation. People had complained that instead of checks, the Department of Justice was sending them IOUs after the annual fund ran dry late last year.

Domenici, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was prepared to ensure the bill received funding, a spokesman said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a major supporter of radiation compensation for Energy Department workers and downwinders, was reviewing the bill, a spokesman said.

Last year Congress had voted to expand compensation to hundreds of nuclear workers who risked their health to build the U.S. weapons arsenal during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. The first checks from the new legislation were expected later this year.

However, an executive of the Downwinders, a 25-year-old organization that represents people affected by nuclear weapons radiation that drifted across the country from the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said the amendments might trigger a fight between worker groups.

The amendments would definitely help downwinders, uranium miners and other groups exposed to the radiation, said Preston Truman, executive director of the Downwinders based in Idaho.

However, by adding an extra $50,000 and permanent medical benefits to people who have already been paid, the amendments could create problems, Truman said.

"The proposal could pit one victim's group against another," he said.

----

Bill Would Aid Radiation Victims

May 16, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/16/051606356.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Victims of Cold War nuclear weapons development programs would be guaranteed $150,000 and medical benefits under legislation introduced Wednesday.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would patch holes in existing laws meant to compensate people exposed to radiation by fallout from nuclear tests, known as downwinders, or through mining uranium.

Lack of money has left dozens of sick and dying uranium miners and downwinders holding IOUs from the government.

Hatch and Domenici are proposing increasing benefits for fallout victims by $100,000 to bring them to the level of miners and other nuclear weapons workers whose compensation was boosted to $150,000 last year.

"It seems blatantly unfair for the federal government to provide a richer level of benefits to its own employees than for innocent civilians who happened to live downwind from a test site," Hatch said in a statement.

The legislation also would cover medical bills for fallout victims, which can dwarf the monetary compensation, said Preston Truman, director of the group Downwinders.

"That medical stuff is a godsend to all of us," Truman said, although he is skeptical about the bill's chances for passage. "I'll have to see it get passed before I believe it."

The bill also protect the compensation from Congress' annual budget battles by declaring it an entitlement.

"Our goal now is to make the program for the miners mandatory," Domenici said. "We're going to get it done. Whether it's this way or another way, we're going to get it done."

It would cost about $71 million to pay anticipated Radiation Exposure Compensation Act claims next year and $650 million over the next decade.

The Bush administration included $97 million in its budget for next year and $710 million over 11 years, and also proposed making the payments an entitlement.

The money would not be available until the next fiscal year begins in October. Several members of Congress are pushing for $84 million in immediate payments.

Many of the uranium mines were in the Four Corners area, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet. Many of the miners were Navajo Indians. The downwinders lived in southern Nevada and Utah and northern Arizona, where fallout from nuclear weapons tests near Las Vegas settled.

-------

Nuclear Defense

Wednesday, May 16, 2001
Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/05162001/public_f/97751.htm

Having read Stanley Holmes' "Star Wars Fraud" (Forum, April 23), I believe the era has arrived that this country needs to be prepared in the event of all-out nuclear attack. It can happen one day, and I would hate to think that this great nation of ours did not prepare itself against such an attack.

Far too many nations now possess a nuclear arsenal. True, there needs to be a reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons around the world, but then again, such weapons of mass destruction will not disappear. It will only take a few intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy a country. Today there exist enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth. Once a warhead has been dismantled, then comes the problem of storing the plutonium 239 for at least 10,000 years. It is not a subject that is pleasant to ponder over these days, but it can become real!

DONALD E. EVETT Bountiful

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

BROOKHAVEN MANAGER TO LEAD REVIEW OF FAST FLUX REACTOR

May 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-16-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The Department of Energy has announced that Michael Holland, manager of its Brookhaven Area Office, will lead the review of the decision to deactivate the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF).

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham decided to suspend for 90 days a previous administration decision to shut the FFTF down in order for qualified personnel led by Holland to review all available information that might have an impact on the future of the FFTF.

The review will encompass the following:

A review of all existing studies, reports, assessments and environmental reviews related to the FFTF's original mission of medical isotope production, Pu-238 production for space missions and nuclear energy study; A forum for the submission of public and private sector interest in the continued operation of the FFTF for original and potential missions; and Additional opportunities for stakeholder input through open public meetings.

The results of the review will be documented in a report and submitted to Secretary Abraham's office.

Holland has 25 years experience in the conduct of operations of nuclear reactors and large facilities. He has been with the Department of Energy for ten years overseeing the operation of research reactors, facility decommissioning, and environmental restoration.

In addition, Holland has led teams in the completion of complex projects such as the shipment of spent nuclear fuel, community outreach programs, and large facility commissioning and decommissioning.

The FFTF is a 400 megawatt sodium cooled nuclear reactor located in Washington state. As part of the Department of Energy's Hanford Site, the reactor operated from 1982 until 1992 to test advanced fuels and materials in support of the national Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Program.

The plant also produced a variety of medical and industrial isotopes, including tritium, and provided research and testing of components and systems for advanced power systems.

-------- us nuc politics

Cheney says push needed to boost nuclear power

May 16, 2001
by Randall Mikkelsen
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10832

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday the White House would try to spur nuclear power production by seeking a renewal of legislation shielding nuclear companies from unlimited liability for accidents.

In his most extensive comments to date on nuclear power, Cheney said in an interview with Reuters that concern over the safety of nuclear energy had abated in the United States since the 1979 Three Mile Island power plant accident.

He said President George W. Bush's energy task force would recommend in a report to be released on Thursday the use of "certain technologies" to deal with the issue of nuclear waste, which he said hindered investment in nuclear power.

"We'd like to see an increase in the percentage of our electricity generated from nuclear power," said Cheney, who is head of the task force.

More than two decades after the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island shook confidence in nuclear power, "I think people are much more rational about it now," Cheney said. "It is safe, the technology gets better all the time and it has the great advantage of not adding any to greenhouse gases."

America's 103 nuclear plants now provide about 20 percent of U.S. electricity.

Cheney said the task force would recommend renewing the Price-Anderson Act on nuclear accident liability, which expires in August 2002. The act spreads liability for catastrophic accidents with damages in excess of $200 million over the entire nuclear industry, and requires Congress to consider covering costs beyond $9.5 billion.

INCREASED PRODUCTION SOUGHT

"It needs to be renewed," Cheney said. If it is not, he said, "Nobody's going to invest in nuclear power plants."

Existing plants are covered beyond the expiration date, but renewal is needed to build new plants, said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute industry group.

But Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense said the program was an unfair government insurance subsidy for private industry that could expose taxpayers to costs of an accident.

Previewing other elements of Bush's energy strategy, which is expected to emphasize increased production of oil, coal, and nuclear energy, Cheney said the task force would not address short-term ways to combat a summer rise in gasoline prices.

These resulted from a lack of foresight under former President Bill Clinton, he said.

He said Bush would ask Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to review the possibility of tightening fuel economy standards for vehicles to enhance conservation, based on a report expected in July from the National Academy of Sciences.

Bush would also ask the Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate within 90 days the "new source review" environmental rules governing improvements on power plants and refineries, to see whether they unduly limit capacity increases.

Reducing federal gas taxes, which Senate Republican leader Trent Lott has said could be considered in conjunction with Bush's energy program, could have adverse long-term consequences and a minimal short-term impact, Cheney said.

A lower federal levy on gasoline sales would reduce federal highway money funded from the levy. Furthermore, there there is no guarantee prices would not rebound higher, he said.

He also said trying to persuade OPEC oil-producing nations to lower their crude prices would have a minimal impact on gasoline prices and discourage investment in energy development in non-OPEC nations where the costs of production are higher.

"The reason we've got (gasoline) price spikes today is obviously tied to supply and inadequate refinery capacity, and to some extent to the requirements we've imposed because we wanted clean air. If somebody had three or four years ago addressed the question of having adequate supplies of gasoline at an affordable price we wouldn't have these problems today."

AID FOR ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Cheney met later with representatives of the alternative energy industry, who said the report would recommend tax incentives for energy sources such as solar and wind power.

Among the recommendations, they said, are a 15 percent tax credit for home solar energy systems, and extending an existing subsidy beyond next year for electricity from wind and "biomass" sources such as crop residue.

With gasoline prices at a record high and California facing even more electricity blackouts, energy issues have become a key political battleground.

House of Representatives Democrats proposed a plan Tuesday emphasizing conservation and efficiency measures and calling for temporary price controls on electricity in the West.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush would work with Democrats on "overlapping" areas of the proposals such as conservation. He repeated Bush's opposition to price controls.

-------- MILITARY

-------- cuba

Potential Cyberattacks Worry U.S.

By George Gedda
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline010240_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ron Wyden didn't think Cuba posed a military threat to the United States and believed that Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson would reinforce that view when he raised the subject with Wilson at a Senate hearing.

Wilson's answer surprised Wyden, D-Ore.

Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Cuba has the potential to use "information warfare or computer network attack," enabling the country "to disrupt our access or flow of forces to the region."

Moments later, the public portion of the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing ended and the participants continued their discussion in secret.

The little-noticed exchange took place in February.

Wyden acknowledged later to a reporter that he had thought Cuba was too weak to be a threat to the United States. After hearing Wilson's testimony, Wyden said he believes the issue "warrants further review."

Capt. Michael Stainbrook, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had nothing to add to Wilson's February comments.

Concern about a possible Cuban attack on U.S. military Web sites is not new. Manuel Cereijo, an engineering professor at Florida International University, said in a 1999 study that telecommunications espionage has been a high priority area for Cuba since 1991.

"Cuba represents a serious threat to the security of the United States in the cyberwarfare phase of terrorism," Cereijo wrote.

But a U.S. official, asking not to be identified, said he believes the worries about Cuba's competence in this area can be overstated. The ability to wage cyberattacks depends on having a state of the art phone system, which Cuba lacks, the official said.

As for the possibility of Cuba planting agents in the United States to disrupt American military communications, the official said that would be a high risk exercise for President Fidel Castro, noting the success the FBI had in penetrating a Cuban spy ring that was broken up in Miami several years ago. Five of the alleged spies are now on trial in Miami.

The official acknowledged the possibility that China may be providing technical assistance to Cuba on ways to target U.S. military communications. Sino-Cuban relations are at a peak following the visit to Havana last month by President Jiang Zemin, but the U.S. official said the administration had no hard information about any collaboration on the issue.

Castro also has been strengthening ties with Iran, which, according to the U.S. officials, is continuing its pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The officials said the possibility of Iran-Cuba military cooperation cannot be ruled out.

Politically, Cuba and the United States appear to be as antagonistic nowadays as at any time in decades. The hostility gives added context to concerns here about Cuba's alleged development of a cyber warfare capability.

Proposals by some U.S. groups for steps to ease tensions have been brushed aside by the Bush administration, which shows no interest in softening the 39-year old embargo against Cuba.

In 1998, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen sent an intelligence assessment on Cuba's military capability to Congress. In a cover letter that went beyond the findings in the assessment, Cohen said he was concerned about Cuba's "potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its biotechnology infrastructure."

The study made no direct reference to cyberwarfare but said without elaboration that Cuba has a "limited capability to engage in some military and intelligence activities which would be detrimental to U.S. interests and which could pose a danger to U.S. citizens under some circumstances."

As for Cuba's conventional military capability, the report was more reassuring. It said that due to a deterioration over the past decade, "Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the United States or to other countries in the region." ---

EDITOR'S NOTE - George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.

-------- iraq

U.S. Proposes Lifting Iraq Sanctions

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States and Britain are proposing that most controls on Iraqi imports be lifted in an effort to alleviate the suffering of ordinary Iraqis and make weapons-related sanctions more effective, diplomats said Wednesday.

Under the proposal, controls on military and weapons-related items would be retained.

``This will mean Iraq will be free to meet all its legitimate civilian needs from food to car parts,'' a British official said, on condition of anonymity.

Under the U.N. oil-for-food program, Iraq is allowed to sell oil provided that the money goes primarily for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies, and equipment to rebuild its frayed oil infrastructure.

The program was launched in 1996 to help Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed to punish Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

As part of the program, virtually all goods going into Iraq go through a U.N. approval process leading to long delays in getting goods to Iraq. Baghdad has criticized the West for the humanitarian suffering of the Iraqi people.

Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington wanted ``to revise the sanctions policy so that it is directed exclusively at preventing Iraq from a military buildup and developing weapons of mass destruction.''

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

US Energy Sec sees tax breaks for home solar use

May 16, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10833

PARIS - The United States is considering tax incentives for the residential use of solar power, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said yesterday.

"We have provided tax incentives for commercial use of solar energy, we really have not extended that to residential use of solar energy...and I think we're going to have to take that decision," he told a news conference in Paris.

He said the Energy Department had spent $6 billion on research into geothermal, solar and wind energy, but they still only provide less than half of one percent of total generation.

The new U.S. energy policy to be unveiled in the coming days is expected to address these issues, possibly on the regulatory front, he said.

"One of the things we'll be doing as an outgrowth of this review is looking at other things that need to be part of the equation with respect to bringing more renewable energies into play," he said.

Abraham also emphasised biomass and hydrogen as two areas of renewable energy that would begin to see greater attention.

"I think you're going to see a growing role in the research and development work in our department on those areas," he said.

-------- energy

US energy firms elated at Republican White House

USA: May 16, 2001
Story by David Howard Sinkman
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10831

NEW YORK - After eight years of frustration under a Democratic president, energy industry executives are all smiles now that two former oilmen are running the country, and they are eagerly awaiting this week's energy proposals.

Since President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney took office in January, the energy industry has not only seen its political support grow. It has also gained more clout with consumers concerned that energy shortages are driving up their energy bills.

Once almost unthinkable, companies are preparing to drill in sensitive areas, stepping up coal production, and are even contemplating building new nuclear plants.

"Finally we have an administration and a public who sees we have a problem," Anadarko Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive Officer Robert Allison told Reuters.

"For the past ten years, no one listened or cared," said Allison, whose company is hoping for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be opened to drilling.

The U.S. public is increasingly concerned about the rising cost of gasoline, electricity and natural gas, especially with a power crisis in California in the headlines, analysts said.

The average U.S. retail gasoline price rose to a record $1.713 per gallon (45 cents per litre), the Energy Information Administration said on Monday in its weekly report.

Bush's energy proposals will emphasize tax incentives and streamlining federal regulations to produce more oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydropower. The recommendations will also include some conservation measures, but the president last week blamed record-high gasoline prices on the lack of new refineries and said conservation would not lower the prices.

In an interview with Reuters yesterday, Cheney again blamed high U.S. gas prices on low supply, saying world oil prices were not to blame. He also said the Price-Anderson Act, which protects nuclear companies from unlimited liability, should be renewed.

More details will become clear on Thursday, when Bush's energy policy task force, headed by Cheney, releases its long-awaited report. The industry likes what it hears so far.

"Cheney and Bush are saying all the right things," said National Mining Association's vice president John Grasser.

GORE, GOING, GONE

Industry analysts said that just the change in rhetoric from the White House has given drillers, refiners, coal miners and nuclear power companies a stronger voice. This is seen as a more important development than some of the recent concerns expressed by major energy companies about the contribution their plants are having on global warming.

"Bush's energy plan will create more opportunities for growth and profit for all energy companies in the U.S.," said Deutsche Banc analyst David Wheeler.

Take for example liquefied natural gas. No new facilities were built in the past 25 years because of environmental restrictions, but that should change, said Wheeler.

Energy companies said they have the public's ear as people realize that energy does not come from a socket in the wall.

Nothing expresses this change better than support for nuclear energy, which analysts said is stronger than it has been in more than two decades.

"This is the brightest prospect for nuclear power since Three Mile Island," said Ken Rose, senior economist at the National Regulatory Research Institute, referring to the accident at a nuclear plant in 1979.

Although no new nuclear plants have been built in over 20 years, the industry is now trying to overcome public opposition and even running newspaper advertisements to improve its image.

But Rose warned new nuclear plants still face local opposition and are at least 10 years from being built.

Environmentalists are on the defensive. "We knew the administration would be run like a business," said Tyson Slocum, spokesman for environmental group Public Citizen. "But who knew it would be run as an energy company."

----

Group: Power Woes May Hit Northeast

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010516/aponline015524_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Power problems could spread into the Northeast this summer, electricity grids in Texas and the Pacific Northwest are being watched closely, and California could average 20 hours of blackouts a week, electricity industry experts say.

The gloomy forecast comes just as President Bush prepares this week to release a sweeping energy policy that is expected to focus heavily on long-term solutions and not this summer's power concerns or high gasoline prices.

Among the recommendations that will be made by the president's energy task force is a call for more transmission lines and power plants to address future electricity needs and changes in air pollution rules to improve the production and distribution of gasoline, according to government sources.

But none of these proposals will help this summer, officials acknowledge.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry-sponsored watchdog organization, said in a report Tuesday that California's power problems this summer are likely to be worse than even state officials have predicted, with 260 hours of rolling blackouts - an average of 20 hours a week - likely because of a power shortfall that could be as much as 5,000 megawatts during peak demand periods.

A megawatt is enough power to serve 1,000 homes.

While most of the country will have enough electricity, the council's report also warned of potential problems in the Northeast, with possible power disruptions if there is a persistent heat wave, and in the Pacific Northwest as well as possibly in Texas. The New York City area could have blackouts if there are transmission problems on lines into the region, the report said.

While Texas has plenty of electricity, it "should be closely watched" because the state is shifting into a retail competitive market in June and consolidating some grid management activities, David Cook, the reliability council's general counsel, said.

"There is no magic bullet, no single thing to be done that will solve the challenges we face" in trying to assure electricity reliability, Cook said in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

In the Pacific Northwest, there is expected to be enough power to meet summer demand despite low hydroelectric generation as a result of a severe drought. But, the report said, if the region's drought continues, there could be rolling blackouts next winter.

In other developments Tuesday:

-The Energy Department said there were some signs that gasoline prices may ease around Memorial Day as refiners have revved up production and inventories were beginning to build.

But John Cook, director of the Energy Information Administration's petroleum division, cautioned any refinery disruption or pipeline problem could cause prices to soar again. "Today, little cushion exists," he said at a House hearing.

-The Senate Finance Committee by an 18-2 vote rejected a proposal by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., for a windfall profits tax on energy company earnings above a 20 percent rate of return. Critics said the proposal would stifle energy investment.

-Vice President Dick Cheney, briefing GOP lawmakers privately, dismissed concern about high oil company profits, declaring the oil business "is a lousy cyclical business," according to several people present. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, reportedly told Cheney that Republicans were ignoring the oil industry profit numbers "at our peril."

The White House, meanwhile, sought to garner political support for its energy package and counter Democratic criticism that it focuses too heavily on production and not enough on getting people to conserve energy.

After courting labor leaders earlier in the week, the White House briefed executives representing renewable energy industries - from solar and wind power to producers of ethanol and organic waste energy plants - on parts of the energy package.

The executives were pleased with some proposals of tax breaks for renewables, but, said Jaime Steve of the American Wind Energy Association, "other items need to be included."

In Congress, Republicans promised to move swiftly on energy legislation once the Bush proposals are announced. Democrats, however, announced their own proposals in the House on Tuesday and promised a fight unless more emphasis is put on energy conservation and protection of the environment.

"We can have adequate supplies of energy and save our environment at the same time," said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., adding that "we don't have to just drill our way out of this problem."

Republicans said they expect the president to propose conservation measures as well as proposals to spur new energy development such as opening additional public lands for oil and gas drilling and easing regulatory barriers to building power plants, electric transmission lines, and promote nuclear power.

--------

Energy Glance

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Glance.html?searchpv=aponline

Some recommendations expected to be in President Bush's energy task force report on Thursday:

Production:

--Ease restrictions on oil and gas development on public lands.

--Open 8 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

--Ease permit process for refinery expansion and construction.

--Speed license procedures for hydroelectric dams and geothermal plants.

Power Plants:

--Streamline approval process for siting power plants.

--Give government authority to take property through eminent domain for power lines.

--Provide tax breaks for developing clean coal technologies.

--Ease regulatory barriers, including clean air rules to make plants more efficient.

Nuclear:

--Adjust regulations to speed relicensing of reactors and licensing of new plants.

--Speed up process to ensure disposal of nuclear waste.

--Urge a national nuclear waste repository.

--Give tax breaks for purchase of nuclear plants.

--Reauthorize law that limits industry liability from a nuclear accident.

Renewable Energy:

--Provide tax credits to encourage development of energy plants that use organic waste, or biomass.

--Continue tax credits for wind energy generation.

--Give tax credit of 15 percent for homeowners who purchase solar panels.

Conservation:

--Give tax credit for purchase of high-mileage, hybrid gas-electric vehicles.

--Provide tax benefits and regulatory relief for co-generation plants that produce both heat and electricity

--Expand federal Energy Star program to include not only businesses but schools, homes and hospitals.

Other:

--Review policy of economic sanctions with Iran to foster energy development.

--Spur U.S. participation in Caspian Sea oil and gas development.

--Step up diplomatic efforts to expand oil production in Latin America, Asia and Caspian Sea nations such as Azerbaijan.

--Urge states to end requirement for ``boutique'' gasoline blends that industry says contributes to supply shortages and price spikes.

--------

Bush Aims for More Energy Sources

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Energy.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush launched his campaign Wednesday for more nuclear reactors, oil refineries, gas pipelines and electrical grids to quench America's energy thirst. Democrats said his plan, due Thursday, would endanger the environment and do nothing to lower prices now.

With even some Republicans demanding quicker fixes, presidential advisers for the first time were speaking of short-term relief from high energy bills.

Bush convened his Cabinet to accept the energy report from a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. On Capitol Hill, the vice president met privately with rank-and-file House Republicans, attempting to ease fears that Americans will punish GOP candidates in 2002 elections.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said he hoped to get the energy package approved and ready for Bush's signature by July 4. He conceded, however, that some recommendations, such as expanded drilling on federal land and taking private land for power lines, ``will be hotly debated'' by Congress.

Republicans in Congress and at the White House are increasingly concerned that voters will blame them for energy shortages and rising prices. Bush and Cheney, the administration's energy pointman, are especially vulnerable to criticism because they made fortunes in the oil business.

``The president has no program for the short term, telling people they are on their own,'' said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. ``At a time when consumers are paying record prices, at a moment when energy companies are making record profits, we have an obligation to the American people to address their concerns.''

The half-inch thick report, complete with glossy pictures and pie charts, contains 105 recommendations -- some of which will go to Congress and others that will be carried out by executive order.

The White House rhetoric is focused on poll-tested conservation initiatives, with aides noting that 42 of the recommendations offer incentives for people and businesses to curb their fuel demands. But the president's focus is on strategies to make the United States less reliant on foreign oil and less susceptible to aging electrical transmission systems.

He wants to ease restrictions on oil and gas development on public lands and open 8 percent of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Regulations covering new electrical power plants would be slashed, and the federal government would be allowed to seize private property for transmission lines. Tax breaks would go to companies running nuclear plants, and those firms would face fewer regulations.

Thirty-five of the recommendations address domestic supply shortages, and 25 seek to increase energy sources abroad.

``It's going to be pretty hard to blame Republicans for a problem that's been evolving for 20 years or more, maybe 30 or 40 years,'' Lott said.

The White House is worried, just the same.

Press secretary Ari Fleischer, who previously had maintained that there are no short-term answers to the nation's energy woes, said the report's promises of future supplies would drive down prices among investors who speculate on short-term oil price trends.

``The president's proposal will help in the short term,'' Fleischer said. ``For the first time in years, focusing on a comprehensive solution, the president is confident that markets will see that more supply is on the way, conservation is starting to be emphasized, and the combination of more conservation and greater supplies has an effect on markets. And as those markets are affected, it has a ripple effect that benefits consumers, benefits the economy and helps to lower prices.''

House Democrats have already released their own energy blueprint that urges the government to hold down price increases for electric power while sparing environmentally sensitive areas from oil and gas exploration. Bush opposes price controls, saying they would exacerbate the problem in the long run.

Some Republican lawmakers are proposing short-term solutions such as reducing the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax and offering more conservation incentives. For a second day, Cheney tried Wednesday to calm GOP lawmakers voicing dissent in private Capitol Hill meetings.

Bush plans to travel to Iowa and Minnesota, two key states during presidential campaigns, to promote his plan Thursday and will discuss hydroelectric power in Pennsylvania on Friday. The White House is releasing a state-by-state analysis of the program's impact.

Environmental groups plan rallies and critical newspaper ads in each of the cities Bush visits.

--------

ANWR drilling, and conservation too
A preview of Bush's energy plan reveals a lot the energy industry will love, and a little for its critics.

Salon
By Jake Tapper
May 16, 2001
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/16/energy_preview/index.html - - -

WASHINGTON -- Scarcely 16 hours before President Bush is scheduled to announce its contents to the world, the White House Wednesday night offered reporters a glimpse of the 163-page report prepared for the president by his internal National Energy Policy Development Group.

In a briefing by an individual I am permitted to identify only as "a senior administration official," or ASAO, the secretive White House task force -- helmed by Vice President Cheney and charged with coming up with solutions for what Bush in March called "an energy crisis" -- finally showed a little leg, detailing general outlines and a few details here and there, though certainly not all 105 recommendations.

Yes, ASAO confirmed, despite what Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was saying a few weeks ago, the Bush administration does intend to seek congressional approval to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Yes, ASAO went on, Bush wants to take a scythe to the dense weeds of federal regulations he thinks are standing between Americans and an answer to their energy needs.

"Outdated regulations have frozen America into an antiquated energy supply network, designed for 1950, not 2050," ASAO said. An example of one of the regs Bush wants to whack can be seen in his desire to weaken a provision of the Clean Air Act so the owners of older power plants can run their plants ASAP without having to invest in cleaning the plants up.

And he wants to go nuclear, ASAO said. Not only does Bush want to build more nuclear power plants and establish a national repository for nuclear waste (I'm guessing that won't be put in Texas), he wants to explore the possibility of once again allowing the use of reprocessed plutonium, which hasn't happened since the late 1970s because of both cost and security concerns.

But, ASAO said, there is a lot in the energy plan that environmentalists can embrace. Like $10 billion in new tax credits for alternative energy sources and to encourage conservation. ASAO said that Bush wants to "establish a temporary efficiency-based income tax credit available between 2002 and 2007 for new, hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles" that run on a combination of gasoline and electric power. Somewhere Al Gore is wincing -- Bush continuously mocked then Veep Gore for supporting tax credits for hybrid vehicles during the presidential campaign.

("How many of you own hybrid electric gasoline engine vehicles?" Bush asked on MSNBC's "Hardball" on Oct. 24, 2000. "If you look [in Gore's plan], you'll see that's one of the criterion necessary to receive tax relief. So when he talks about targeted tax relief, that's pretty darn targeted.")

Bush himself now gets pretty darn targeted, directing $1.2 billion of "bid bonuses" from drilling in ANWR toward the funding of research into alternative and renewable energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal energy. Additionally, Bush wants to direct Whitman to look into what's called "multi-pollutant" legislation to reduce and cap emissions of toxins like sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxides.

Many of the recommendations seem to pass the buck to Whitman, or Energy Secretary Spence Abraham, or others in the Cabinet. One of the diciest energy issues -- improving corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards for cars -- would be passed to Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta for review after the National Academy of Sciences study on the matter is released in July.

Environmentalists, however, look at the proposals -- Bush even wants to reduce truck-idling emissions at truck stops! -- and see a typical corporate America plan with just enough enviro-friendly trimming to fool the gullible.

"In Texas, there's a saying," commented Sierra Club director Carl Pope, reached by phone after the briefing. "If you put boots in the oven that doesn't make them biscuits." Sure, there are parts of the plan Pope approves of -- but on balance he finds it wanting. "They want to commit an America of the 21st century to energy technologies from the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century."

ASAO prefaced the announcement by detailing what Bush has labeled an energy "crisis."

"U.S. energy consumption is projected an increase of 32 percent by 2020," ASAO stated. Where we imported 35 percent of our fuel in 1973, that number is now 55 percent and stands to increase to 67 percent by 2020.

ASAO pointed out that low-income individuals will find more funding for their energy needs, with increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, and the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program.

"There's a mix, obviously," ASAO said of the report.

The plan does not address allegations some have raised about various energy corporations raising and, perhaps in some cases, fixing prices. Spokesman Ari Fleischer pointed out that while the issue was apparently so unimportant it didn't merit inclusion in the 105 recommendations, Bush had made remarks addressing the matter earlier in the day. ("I'm calling on the FTC to make sure that nobody in America gets illegally overcharged," Bush said at a Cabinet meeting. "And we're going to make sure FERC will monitor electricity suppliers to make sure that they charge rates that are fair and reasonable.")

Democrats have been asserting that the report is written as if the energy industry itself sat down, took pen to paper and handed a wish list to Cheney. So I asked ASAO: Was there, indeed, anything in the plan that the oil and gas industries wouldn't like? ASAO said that they probably wouldn't like the fact that they didn't get any tax credits, that "every tax incentive is for conservation and renewables." And also, maybe, that Bush wanted to invest $2 billion in clean coal technology research -- a potential competitor.

Not that "renewables" are a major part of the proposal. "You need a perspective," ASAO instructed us. "We need to push for more renewables and alternative fuels, but currently only 2 percent of our electricity needs come from non-hydro-powered renewables."

ASAO also made it pretty clear that there is little in the plan in short-term relief, other than "the quicker you implement this policy, the quicker we're going to get rid of some of the problems like California." Other than one executive order Bush will issue ASAP -- to expedite the federal permit process on the federal side on all energy-related matters -- ASAO didn't think there was much that could be done right away.

"You know," ASAO said, "the other thing I would suggest is that you've got to look at this from the perspective that it's been neglected for a long time. It's going to take some time. There is only two things that can help California right now -- increasing supply or decreasing demand." The expedited permits will help to increase supply, ASAO said.

Twelve of these recommendations will be enacted by executive order -- two of which will happen this week, one mentioned above and the other one directing "all federal agencies to consider energy when they do major regulatory actions." Seventy-three of the report's official suggestions will be in the form of directives to federal agencies. And 20 of the recs will need congressional approval.

The details, with the predictable devils no doubt lurking within, will be formally unleashed Thursday at 11:45 a.m. EST, as Bush takes Air Force One to St. Paul, Minn.

About the writer Jake Tapper is Salon's Washington correspondent and the author of "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency."

-------- environment

Railroad Worker Jumps Into, Stops Runaway Train
Hazardous Cargo Carried Through Ohio

By William Claiborne and Don Phillips
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29470-2001May15?language=printer

A runaway freight train carrying hazardous liquids rolled for more than 65 miles through Ohio yesterday, defying all attempts to stop it until a daring railroad man grabbed a handrail, swung aboard and made his way to the controls.

Jon Hosfeld, the 31-year railroad veteran who jumped onto the moving train just outside the town of Kenton, discovered that the locomotive cab was empty.

"My adrenaline was pumping," Hosfeld said in a telephone interview last night, but "I didn't lose my focus. . . . I got a wife and daughter, and I don't want to do anything foolish."

For reasons not yet clear, both the engineer and the conductor had climbed off the train at a yard near Toledo, leaving no one aboard. Although the locomotive's brakes were set, the train rolled out of the yard because the throttle apparently was open enough to overcome the brakes and start the train moving, sources close to a federal investigation said.

The circumstances were so bizarre, the sources added, that they have not ruled out anything, from a chain of honest mistakes to sabotage. "We'll have to call this one the Crazy 8," said one official, noting that the locomotive's number was CSX Transportation No. 8888.

Police using hand-held radar guns clocked the runaway train at 46 mph as it passed through Findlay, about 45 miles south of the Toledo area yard where it originated. Shortly afterward, two CSX locomotives chased the 47-car train, hooked onto its last car and applied their brakes, slowing it enough for Hosfeld to grab a ladder.

Exactly how fast the train was moving at that point is unclear, but Hosfeld estimated that it was about 15 mph, which he said was "in my comfort zone."

Footage of the dramatic maneuver, taken from a hovering news helicopter, showed Hosfeld running alongside the locomotive, grabbing a handrail and swinging aboard the engine. He then calmly walked along a catwalk to the cab, opened the door and went inside to shut down the throttle.

Railroaders said the skill with which Hosfeld swung aboard the locomotive immediately showed that he was a longtime railroad man from an era when such boardings were routine, although usually at slower speeds. Today, it is strictly against the rules -- sometimes a firing offense -- to step aboard moving locomotives or cars.

The Federal Railroad Administration launched an investigation of the incident, even though it did not meet the federal definition of an accident, since no one was hurt and there was no property damage.

Sources close to the investigation said the train included two tank cars of concentrated molten phenol, which is used in mouthwash after being diluted. It is not flammable, but in undiluted strength it will burn the skin on contact, the sources said.

Robert Ruse, safety director of the town of Findlay, said CSX officials first tried to derail the train in a sparsely populated area. But the derailing sleeves simply spun off the tracks as the fast-moving locomotive passed.

The two locomotives then chased the train, but their braking power was insufficient to stop it completely, even while it was going uphill. Hosfeld, whose job title is CSX senior trainmaster, said he happened to be in Stanley Yard when the runaway began. He and another railroad official, Mike Smith, immediately hopped into a car.

"We decided we were going to chase it down and catch it," he said.

He said they caught up with train at four locations, but each time it was moving too fast to board. Several other railroaders tried and failed, he said.

If Hosfeld had been unable to swing aboard at Kenton, officials said, the final plan was to take whatever action was necessary to derail the train into a swamp near Marysville.

"It could have been very bad, but we were fortunate," Ruse said.

Investigative sources said numerous questions remain, including why the engineer and the conductor left the locomotive at Stanley Yard near Toledo, and whether they took all the required precautions to prevent the train from moving.

The sources said the locomotive's air brakes were set, which should have kept the train stationary. However, the engine clearly was under enough power to make the train move, and the locomotive's brake shoes were almost burned away by the time the train was stopped.

Sources said investigators will be particularly interested in whether the engine had an alerter, often called a dead man's control, which is designed to bring a train to a stop if there is no one in the locomotive cab periodically handling the controls, such as blowing the horn or manipulating the throttle. Under federal rules, the freight train was not required to have an alerter, but it is a federal crime to disable an alerter if a locomotive is equipped with one.

Dick Kimmins, spokesman for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, said state and local authorities were put on the agency's highest alert as the train rolled through four counties along the CSX Transportation main line from Toledo to Cincinnati.

The runaway train passed through corn fields and by grain elevators as it headed south, at times parallel to Interstate 75. It passed Bowling Green, a city of 29,600; Findlay, whose population is 40,000; and numerous smaller communities. Some of the grade crossings along the route were blocked by emergency vehicles, but others were not.

A special passenger train carrying about 75 state officials, on a tour to raise public awareness of the need for safety at train crossings, was forced to pull off on a siding to avoid being hit by the runaway freight. The "Operation Lifesaver" train, chartered by a railroad safety lobbying group and the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, got off the southbound track at Walbridge, just south of Toledo. "Lifesaver" trains usually carry a camera on the front to record how motorists take chances at grade crossings.

Claiborne reported from Chicago.

-------- police

Freeh: FBI Blundered in McVeigh Case

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-McVeigh-FBI.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- FBI agents this week have found still more Oklahoma City bombing documents that may not have been turned over to Timothy McVeigh's attorneys, FBI Director Louis Freeh said Wednesday.

He told Congress his agency was guilty of ``serious error'' in dealing with documents in the case.

Freeh's comments on Wednesday, the day McVeigh had been scheduled for execution, came less than a week after the revelation that more than 3,000 pages of documents were withheld from McVeigh's lawyers before his trial. That discovery led Attorney General John Ashcroft to postpone McVeigh's execution for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

Freeh said he did not think the documents found this week or last week would change McVeigh's conviction or sentence for the April 1995 federal building bombing that killed 168 people.

``Although I fully support the attorney general's decision to postpone the execution -- fairness and justice, of course, demand that -- I do not believe this belated disclosure of documents will affect the outcome,'' he said.

McVeigh's lawyers met with him at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., and said he was taking an active role in deciding what to do. McVeigh had declined to pursue further appeals, allowing his execution date to be set, but attorney Nathan Chambers said Wednesday that the inmate was ``willing to consider all options that are available to him.''

Freeh, in his first public statements about the FBI mishap, told a House Appropriations subcommittee he would be adding ``a world-class records expert'' and creating a separate office of records management and policy to ensure that documents aren't mishandled in the future.

He said he also will increase records training for agents and order the FBI to take time to review proper procedures for handling important documents.

The McVeigh documents ``should have been located and released during discovery,'' Freeh said in one of his last appearances before Congress. ``As director, I'm accountable and responsible for that failure, and I accept that responsibility.''

Freeh recently announced he was retiring in June, two years before completion of his 10-year term.

Only Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., was openly critical, calling the FBI ``something close to a failed agency'' and saying ``the litany of troubles with the agency are truly astounding and regrettable.''

``I just think this is a pitiful performance, which is feeding the paranoia of large sections of this country, and that's the last thing that we can afford these days,'' Obey said.

Other lawmakers said the situation had been blown out of proportion.

``You had 28,000 interviews, and you had tons of material that were turned over. And what we're talking about here is really insignificant, irrelevant documents that have no bearing on the case,'' said Rep. David Rogers, R-Ky. ``Is that a fair statement?''

``That is my understanding,'' Freeh said.

Freeh said agents were reminded constantly to send their material to the Oklahoma City field office. In 1995 and 1996, he said, field offices were told 11 times to send the documents.

When it appeared that not all materials had been sent, Freeh said he sent a priority teletype to all field offices in November 1996 directing all materials be sent promptly.

``As we now know, there were still many offices that had failed to comply fully or precisely with the instructions given,'' Freeh said.

FBI agents first realized they had documents that might not have been turned over to McVeigh in March when archivists started to store the documents, Freeh said. By the time they were sure that the documents hadn't been shared, it was May, he said. The FBI turned the documents over to the prosecutors on May 8, who gave the documents to McVeigh's lawyers on the same day.

Freeh said he didn't learn about the documents until May 10.

He said more documents showed up this week, and they were discovered only after he ordered all of his deputies worldwide on Friday to do one last ``shakedown'' for any documents and warned them he would hold them personally responsible if all weren't retrieved.

``This latest scrubbing has produced additional documents which are currently being reviewed to determine whether they were covered by the discovery agreement and, if so, whether they have been produced,'' Freeh said.

Freeh said he suspects there won't be one single answer to why all the documents in the case weren't turned over earlier.

``For example, some offices wrongly concluded that the information was so extraneous that it was not covered by the request related to these prosecutions,'' Freeh said. ``Some offices forwarded summary results of investigation but not the underlying documents. Some offices forwarded copies of originals. Some offices turned investigative inserts into 302s and forwarded only the 302s. Some offices overlooked material when culling out responsive documents. Finally, some offices believed they sent the material but, in some cases, not in a form that could be uploaded into our existing system.''

-------- spying

Some Papers on Downed Spy Plane Were Not Destroyed

New York Times
May 16, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/world/16PLAN.html

WASHINGTON, May 15 - The crew of the Navy surveillance plane forced to land in China last month was unable to destroy or dump all of its classified manuals and other documents, and Bush administration officials now assume that the Chinese military gained useful information about the workings of American reconnaissance flights, Pentagon officials said today.

The officials declined to specify what kind of intelligence benefits could be gleaned from the damaged EP-3E surveillance plane that has been in Chinese custody since April 1, except to say that the documents left on board detailed "tactics and operations."

One military officer, assessing the wildly varying reports of damage to American intelligence after the collision with a Chinese fighter brought the Navy plane down on Hainan island, said, "The pendulum is back to the middle."

In the days immediately after the incident, administration officials gave a sanguine report: the 24-member crew successfully carried out a well-rehearsed program of destroying computer hardware and software that enables the plane to intercept and analyze Chinese communications. The crew completed a checklist of items to be smashed by ax or dumped into the sea through a hatch on the fuselage over the right wing, officials said.

But since that early report there has been a steady chorus contradicting those statements, arguing that the surveillance plane provided an intelligence windfall to the Chinese.

"There may be ways to exploit even a smashed hard drive," one Pentagon official said today. But, the official emphasized, it would have been impossible to wholly eliminate the loss of intelligence "short of setting charges to the plane."

The Navy craft was not equipped with a shredder, so the crew would have had to push manuals and documents out of the hatch or, perhaps, use a specially designed acid during the emergency landing.

"But you can't set fire to documents inside an airplane that is falling like a rock," a senior military official said.

Pentagon officials continue to describe the heroic efforts of the pilot to bring the damaged plane to a safe landing, and to compliment the crew for diligently destroying sensitive equipment and software during a harrowing emergency landing after the collision with the Chinese F-8 fighter, which resulted in the death of its pilot.

Those comments came as Pentagon officials said the crew of the Navy surveillance plane was scheduled to travel to suburban Washington for a public reunion on Friday.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is scheduled to honor them that day when he officially opens the Joint Services Open House at Andrews Air Force Base. The annual event features flight demonstrations of high-performance aircraft and displays of military equipment, and the crew is set to greet visitors to an EP-3E that will be parked on the runway, Pentagon officials said.

The United States has flown at least one reconnaissance flight off the coast of China, on May 7, since the crew's release after 11 days on Hainan island. That mission of an Air Force RC-135 was off China's northeastern coast - and not over the South China Sea, where Chinese pilots have been more aggressive in intercepting American flights and where the collision with the Navy plane occurred.

Pentagon officials declined today to discuss whether other reconnaissance missions had been flown near China since then.

The State Department is negotiating with the Chinese Foreign Ministry over the return of the EP-3E, although the government in Beijing has repeatedly said the plane will not be allowed to fly from its territory, meaning it will have to be dismantled and hauled off Hainan.

But the administration position is that plane should be repaired and flown home.

"Our preference remains the simplest, fastest, least expensive way to do that - and that is to get it back in flying condition again," Adm. Craig Quigley, the Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing today.

He said the plane needed repairs to flight-control surfaces - flaps and rudders, for example - as well as to engines, propellers and the fiberglass nose cone.

"It's a fairly detailed list of things that needs to be repaired, but it's still less involved than disassembly, certainly," Admiral Quigley said.

Pentagon officials had previously expressed concerns that the aircraft's left wing had been so badly damaged in the collision that it could not support the load of takeoff, but an American engineering crew that was allowed to examine the plane found the wing to be structurally sound, officials said.

-------- activists

Hiphop Conference for Peace Draws Rappers to U.N.

May 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-music-h.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Hiphop rubbed shoulders with world diplomacy on Wednesday as rap singers, politicians and music industry leaders gathered at U.N. headquarters to dispel the notion that hiphop is all sex, drugs and violence.

``Hiphop can be used as a culture of peace, not what you see on television. Hiphop can be used as an educational tool, not that nonsense you hear on the radio,'' organizer KRS-One, a self-proclaimed hiphop philosopher, told a news conference.

``We have gathered here to announce to the world that hiphop culture is not exclusively criminal,'' he said.

The event he helped organize, the International Hiphop Conference for Peace, drew some 300 music business, media, political and entertainment figures to the posh U.N. Delegates Dining Room, including Wise Intelligent, Chuck D, Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash.

KRS-One, who is one of the founders of the Temple of Hiphop, a hiphop preservation society, blamed the marketing side of the music industry for injecting violence, drugs, sex and anti-female and anti-gay sentiment into hiphop culture, as characterized by rap music, graffiti art, breakdancing, a unique clothing style and a language all its own.

``What is selling in this country, as well as everywhere else in the world, is violence, sex and immorality. We are looking for a more sensitive message for our children. Hiphop is life-affirming,'' he said.

``Our message is that you don't have to sound like Eminem,'' he said, referring to bad boy U.S. rapper Eminem, known for his seemingly homophobic and misogynistic lyrics. ``If we stay silent, the madness only keeps going, going and going.''

Sponsors for the International Hiphop Conference for Peace included UNESCO, the United Nations' educational, scientific and cultural arm, and LUGZ Footwear.

The conference, featuring the signing of a Hiphop Declaration of Peace, was part of this year's celebration of the fourth annual Hiphop Appreciation Week, said Professor Z, another founder of the Temple of Hiphop.

Other events during the week, which began on Monday, included a film festival and a street party in New York City, a book fair in Englewood, New Jersey, and a lecture on drug abuse in Newark, New Jersey, organizers said.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, was among a handful of area politicians issuing proclamations declaring the week to be Hiphop Appreciation Week.

----

Free the 3 activists still in Jail for Mother's Day NTS Actions!

Date: Wed, 16 May 2001
From: Shundahai Network <shundahai@shundahai.org>

Three Western Shoshone supporters who used non-violent direct action to temporarily stop business as usual at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) have been in jail since the morning of Monday May 14th, 2001, and are currently being held in Tonopah, NV.

THEY NEED YOUR HELP!

Greg Geddy was arraigned on the afternoon of May 15th) and pled "not guilty" to the charge of public nuisance. His trial will be on May 29th at 2PM. Greg was arrested for stopping a Department of Energy (DOE) worker bus from entering the NTS. He put his life in jeopardy when he wrapped himself around the axle of the bus. Wackenhut Security and Nye County Sheriffs used pepper spray and physical force to remove him from the bus.

Two women, Katrina Worthing, age 19, and Rosanna Hatch, age 18, were arrested for being a part of a soft blockade. They refused to accept this false arrest and left the holding pen by moving a porta potty next to the fence, climbing up on it, unraveling the barbed wire, and running into the desert. They were chased and captured by NTS security. The two women are being held, pending bail until their arraignment on May 22nd at 2pm.

These three Western Shoshone supporters are trying to raise bail money that would allow for an earlier release. We have already raised some of it, and with $600 more they could be free.

The charges are as follows:

All 3 with Public Nuisance (NRS 202.470) a misdemeanor, $330 bail each The two women with the additional charge of "Escaped Prisoner" (NRS 212.090) a gross misdemeanor, additional $2000 bail each.

The activists along with many others have permission from the Western Shoshone Nation to "Gather, Go and Come" in Western Shoshone territory. Nye County does not have jurisdiction over Western Shoshone land, which according to the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley includes NTS. The Western Shoshone Nation has never ceded their lands to the NTS and the Western Shoshone issued land use permits to the peace activists giving them the ability to move about freely on their land. The courts have not pursued charges in the past on charges of "suspected trespass on federal lands," which the present citations were issued for, possibly to avoid legal conflict with the treaty rights of the sovereign nation of the Shoshone peoples.

The misdemeanor charges carry a maximum penalty of 6 months in jail, and/or $1,000 fine, with the possibility of community service. The women face the additional gross misdemeanor penalty, which could add up to an additional year in jail and $2,000 fine for each. Katrina and Roseanna's arraignment will be on May 22nd at 2pm. Unless bail or bond is posted, the three activists will remain in jail until their upcoming court dates. They are all being held in the Tonopah Jail, and would like to go home as soon as possible. If you can send them a donation of money or provide legal assistance, please contact Shundahai Network.

The Nevada Test Site (NTS) is home to over a thousand nuclear weapons detonations and current "subcritical" nuclear weapons tests. These tests are being used by NTS, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories as a means to develop new and "mini" nuclear weapons. NTS is also the site of two currently operating "low-level" radioactive waste dumps that receive shipments up to fifteen times per week. These activists wanted to prevent another day of destruction and took these nonviolent direct actions to achieve that end.

Please help as soon as possible with any monetary or legal assistance in support of these non-violent peace activists. Contact us at shundahai@shundahai.org or call 775 537 6088. There will also be continual updates posted on our web page at: www.shundahai.org

Shundahai Network is assisting the activists legal support team at this time; we are not responsible for the individual actions taken by those moved to do so at the NTS.

SHUNDAHAI NETWORK
"Peace and Harmony with all Creation"
Po Box 6360, Pahrump, NV 89041
Phone:(775) 537-6088
Email: shundahai@shundahai.org http://www.shundahai.org


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