[NukeNet] India Could Dump U.S. Nuclear Deal: Envoy

[Bill Smirnow]

  Mothersalert: http://www.mothersalert.org
http://www.mothersalert.org/moreinfo.html

 1. India Could Dump U.S. Nuclear Deal: Envoy
 2. Engineer Says Bomb Test Plan Incomplete
 3.  EU Seeks to Lower Energy Consumption
 4. Japan Nuclear Reactor Resumes Operation


>....Like Bonhoeffer, Haushofer was arrested for
speaking out. The SS prison guards were required
to extract a >confession from prisoners before
they were hanged or shot, but Haushofer refused.
When they removed his body, >though, a paper fell
out of his pocket. It was his admission of guilt
written in the form of a sonnet:
  >Schuld
  >...schuldig bin ich Anders als Ihr denkt.
  >Ich musste früher meine Pflicht erkennen;
  >Ich musste schärfer Unheil Unheil nennen;
  >Mein Urteil habe ich zu lang gelenkt...
  >Ich habe gewarnt,
  >Aber nicht genug, und klar;
  >Und heute weiß ich, was ich schuldig war.
  >Guilt
  >I am guilty,
  >But not in the way you think.
  >I should have earlier recognized my duty;
  >I should have more sharply called evil evil;
  >I reined in my judgment too long.
  >I did warn,
  >But not enough, and clear;
  >And today I know what I was guilty of.

    >At Riverside Church 22 years later, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. began by quoting a
statement by Clergy and >Laymen Concerned About
Vietnam: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."
Dr. King added, "That time has come >for us in
relation to Vietnam."

   > And that time has come for us in relation to
Iraq. But where are the Clergy and Laymen
Concerned About Iraq? >Where are the successors to
Dr. King, to Bonhoeffer, to Professor Haushofer?
"There is only us," says Annie >Dillard, and she
is right of course. We are the ones we've been
waiting for. ..........



http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-india-usa-nuclear.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
  India Could Dump U.S. Nuclear Deal: Envoy
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By REUTERS
Published: January 10, 2007
Filed at 11:57 a.m. ET

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India will walk away from a
civilian nuclear deal with the United States if
New Delhi's concerns are not allayed, its envoy
said on Wednesday.

It was critical the deal allowed India to
reprocess spent U.S. nuclear fuel and did not stop
it conducting nuclear tests, Shyam Saran, India's
special envoy to the negotiations, said.

``This process will have to continue and there are
certain very important issues which would have to
be addressed and these are difficult issues,''
Saran said in a speech to diplomats and strategic
affairs experts.

``Can we walk away from this deal if it does not
correspond to our national interest? Obviously we
have to walk away from this and we will walk away
from it.''

President George W. Bush last month signed into
law a bill approved by Congress allowing the deal
to go through, a major step toward letting India
buy U.S. nuclear reactors and fuel for the first
time in 30 years.

But Congress attached several conditions to the
law which have not gone down well with New Delhi,
and the two countries have returned to
negotiations.

Under the bill, the U.S. president would be
required to end the export of nuclear materials if
India tests another nuclear device. It tested one
in 1998.

It also does not guarantee uninterrupted fuel
supplies for reactors and prevents India from
reprocessing spent fuel.

OPTIMISTIC MINDSET

Saran said these conditions were not acceptable to
India and this had been conveyed to the U.S..

``Reprocessing of spent fuel will be very
important, very critical. Without that it may be
very difficult for us to take this forward,'' he
said.

``While we are prepared to maintain a unilateral
moratorium on fresh testing, we are not prepared
to convert a policy commitment into a legal
commitment,'' he said, referring to India's
voluntary decision not to conduct nuclear tests.

Indian communists, who sho by the 45-nation
Nuclear Suppliers Group, the International Atomic
Energy Agency and again by the U.S. Congress
before nuclear trade can start.

The deal is regarded as the most important symbol
of a new friendship between India and the United
States. It was agreed in principle in 2005 and
went through 18 months of tough negotiations
before it was approved by Congress.



  2.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Mushroom-Cloud.html

    Engineer Says Bomb Test Plan Incomplete

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 10, 2007
Filed at 4:17 p.m. ET

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- An air-quality engineer says
government plans for a huge non-nuclear blast at
the Nevada Test Site failed to consider the
possibility that the explosion will kick up fine
radioactive dust and carry it hundreds of miles.

A federal official agreed and said the engineer's
objections will be included in a final
environmental assessment.

The proposed test would detonate 700 tons of a
mixture of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate
fertilizer, the same materials in the bomb that
destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City in
1995 and killed 168 people.

It would generate the first mushroom cloud in
decades at the Nevada Test Site.

Critics said it would kick up radioactive dust
left from Cold-War-era nuclear tests and allow it
to drift downwind toward Las Vegas and Utah.

Algirdas Leskys, a data analyst with the Clark
County Department of Air Quality and Environmental
Management, said Tuesday at a public forum on the
proposed test that the draft environmental
assessment didn't consider the likelihood that
extremely small bits of dust -- measuring 2.5
microns -- would become airborne. A micron is one
one-millionth of a meter.

Leskys, who stressed that he was not acting in his
official capacity, said dust that fine could
settle as far away as Las Vegas or Utah. ''They
could stay in the atmosphere for weeks, and settle
hundreds of miles from here,'' he said.

Michael Skougard, an official of the National
Nuclear Security Administration, acknowledged that
analysts looked at larger, 10-micron particles
when they determined that a 10,000-foot cloud
would dissipate within 13 miles.

Skougard said Leskys' concerns will be included in
a final report before officials decide whether to
authorize the test.

Officials say the blast would provide crucial data
on the kind of shock needed to destroy deeply
buried or hardened targets.

However, the test has been postponed indefinitely
by a lawsuit filed by Western Shoshone tribe
members and by people living downwind in Utah and
Nevada.

 3.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-EU-Energy.html

   EU Seeks to Lower Energy Consumption

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 10, 2007
Filed at 12:10 p.m. ET

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The European Union on
Wednesday announced plans to lower energy
consumption, develop renewable sources such as
wind power and biofuels and increase research into
cutting carbon emissions from fuels already in
use, particularly coal. The ambitious proposals
seek to deter growing dependence on oil and gas
imports and curb the emissions blamed for climate
change.

But the EU left the contentious issue of nuclear
power up to each state to decide.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said
Europe must embrace a low-carbon economy and lead
the world into a ''post-industrial revolution.''

Those proposals have taken on new urgency as
Europe has seen its oil and gas supplies disrupted
by disputes between Russia -- which provides one
quarter of its natural gas -- and the nations the
supplies pass through on their way to Germany,
Poland and other countries.

''Europe must lead the world into a new ...
post-industrial revolution, the development of a
low-carbon economy,'' Barroso said. ''We need new
policies to face a new reality,'' he said.

The package reflects a renewed sense of purpose
evident in the EU during the past year, after a
period of disarray caused by the rejection of the
bloc's proposed constitution by French and Dutch
voters in 2005.

Climate change is at the center of the new policy,
stressing the need to slash carbon emissions
blamed for global warming -- a matter of dispute
between Europe and the U.S. Barroso said he had
talked to President Bush and congressional leaders
about the issue.

''We are not speaking about European warming, we
are speaking about global warming,'' he said. ''We
need the United States with us, they are after all
the biggest polluter in the world.''

The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto
Protocol, which requires industrial nations to cut
their global-warming gases by an average 5 percent
below 1990 levels by 2012. The Bush administration
contends that would slow its economy, and the
accord should have required cuts by poorer but
fast-growing nations, such as China and India.

Environment ministers of the EU's 27 nations will
debate the new strategy on Feb. 20, with EU
leaders set to vote on the plan at a March summit.
''As soon as we have the endorsement, we will act
swiftly,'' Barroso said.

The EU is currently the world's largest importer
of oil and gas. It buys 82 percent of its oil and
57 percent of its gas from third-party states.
This is projected to rise to 93 percent of its oil
and 84 percent of its gas over the next
quarter-century.

Russia is a large supplier, but concerns about the
reliability of those supplies were underscored
this week when shipments of Russian oil via a
pipeline running through Belarus were disrupted by
a trade dispute between the two former Soviet
republics.

''We consider it unacceptable, this kind of
event,'' Barroso said. ''We will make this very
clear to our Russian and other partners.''

He would not comment on reports that Russia and
Belarus had resolved their dispute.

Surging world demand for limited stocks of oil and
gas is likely to send prices -- and the EU's
energy import costs -- spiraling in future
decades.

The EU is proposing that 20 percent of all its
energy should come from renewable power by 2020,
and a tenth of vehicle fuel from biofuels. It
calls for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by at
least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to
limit global warming and prevent serious damage
caused by climate change.

EU Energy chief Andris Piebalgs said the EU wants
to set binding targets for the first time,
suggesting a massive boost in low-carbon,
homegrown power such as wind and solar energy to
cut reliance of imported fossil fuels.

The European Commission will invest 1 billion
euros ($1.3 billion) over the next six years for
research into renewable energies. It will increase
research into cleaning up coal-burning power
plants and developing technologies prevent carbon
dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere.

Priority will be given to improving energy
efficiency so that vehicles, appliances, homes,
and factories burn less fuel -- using methods
ranging from improved insulation to cleaner
engines. The EU hopes that plan alone can ensure
it burns 13 percent less energy by 2020, with
annual savings of 100 billion euros ($130 billion)
and around 860 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Barroso said the EU's executive arm would respect
the right of each nation to determine its own
course.

''It's not up to us to tell the member states
whether in their energy mix they should have more
or less nuclear or none at all,'' he said. ''What
is important is to make progress toward an economy
that is less dependent on carbon.''

 4.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html

    Japan Nuclear Reactor Resumes Operation

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 10, 2007
Filed at 12:54 a.m. ET

TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese utility company said it
restarted a nuclear reactor Wednesday for the
first time since it was shut down after a fatal
August 2004 accident, the nation's worst at a
nuclear facility.

The No. 3 reactor at its Mihama Nuclear Power
Plant was restarted and no trouble has been
reported so far, said Ryuichi Suehiro, spokesman
for Kansai Electric Power Co. which operates the
plant.

The reactor had been shut down since August 2004,
when a corroded pipe ruptured and sprayed plant
workers with boiling water and steam. Five workers
were killed and six others were injured, although
no radiation was released.

The reactor is expected to start generating power
on Thursday and reach full-scale commercial
operation in early February after a final
government inspection, the company has said in a
statement.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear power
plants for a third of its energy needs and aims to
raise that to nearly 40 percent by 2010.

But the Japanese public has grown increasingly
wary of the nuclear power industry following a
spate of safety problems, shutdowns and cover-ups,
and utility companies face difficulty obtaining
local support for new plant sites.

Mihama is about 200 miles west of Tokyo.