Palin shows her animosity towards Mother Earth

NFIC Columnists – Doug George Kanentiio By Doug George-Kanentiio© News From Indian Country 9-08 When Skennenrahowi walked among the Iroquois 850 years ago he sought not only to bring an end to war through the creation of the Great Law of Peace but also created a society in which women were assured of their natural [...]

New Friends of the Earth Ad Ties Nuclear Loan Guarantees to Bush Bailout

September 29 – A new ad from Friends of the Earth accuses nuclear industry lobbyists of seeking a “preemptive bailout” from Congress in the form of risky, taxpayer-backed loan guarantees from Congress.

“First the government bails out the banks, now all of Wall Street, at a cost of over 1 trillion dollars. So why would taxpayers ever risk billions to build nuclear power plants?” the ad asks. “With cheaper, safer alternatives, why is Congress even considering a preemptive bailout for nuclear power?”

Nuclear industry executives admit that nuclear power is so financially risky that federal loan guarantees are the only way new plants will get built. For example, Michael J. Wallace, the co-chief executive of UniStar Nuclear, told the New York Times last year that “without loan guarantees we will not build nuclear power plants.” Unfortunately, the Congressional Research Service says such guarantees could leave taxpayers with “potentially large losses.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the risk of default on a nuclear loan guarantee is “very high-well above 50 percent.”

Native Cigarettes

New York City is suing eight smoke shops that have been selling tax-free cigarettes on an Indian reservation.

The lawsuit accuses the small cluster of shops on the Poospatuck (POOS’-puh-tuhk) Indian Reservation of breaking state and federal law by selling massive quantities of cigarettes to bootleggers, who then smuggle the cartons off the Long Island reservation and resell them throughout the metropolitan area.

The practice has existed for years, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration says it costs the city and state hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost tax revenue.

TransCanada must prove it respects Lubicon rights

Chief Bernard Ominayak of the Lubicon Cree Nation has (once again) informed TransCanada that the Lubicon are “prepared to consider talking with TransCanada about [their] proposal to build a major new gas pipeline across unceded Lubicon Territory,” in a letter dated September 9, 2008.

However, Chief Ominayak states that such a meeting depends on the Crown corporation respecting Lubicon rights, something that must begin with the “suspension of TransCanada’s application [...] to build that pipeline without first obtaining Lubicon agreement.”

US envoy heads to NKorea in bid to save nuclear deal

US negotiator Christopher Hill headed Tuesday for Seoul and will travel on to Pyongyang in an attempt to save a North Korean nuclear disarmament deal that appears close to collapse.

Hill will visit the North Korean capital at the invitation of its leaders, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters.

It was unclear who Hill would meet in Pyongyang or how long he would stay there.

The United States and its partners are alarmed that a hard-won, six-nation disarmament agreement reached with the hardline communist regime in February 2007 is crumbling away.

The aid-for-disarmament deal has hit several roadblocks before — but this latest dispute, over US-led demands for strict procedures to verify the North’s nuclear disclosures, is seen as the most serious.

Rice’s deputy spokesman Robert Wood said Monday that Washington is “very concerned about some of the reversal of disablement activities that the North has been engaged in.”

North Korea, accusing Washington of breaking the pact, announced last week it would begin restarting its plutonium reprocessing plant within a week and ordered UN atomic inspectors to quit the building at Yongbyon.

The North, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, is estimated to have produced enough plutonium for around six bombs before Yongbyon was shut down last year.

Better Radiation Protection for Patients

Patients in many countries need better protection from unwanted exposure to radiation during medical exams and treatment, nuclear regulators and health practitioners are warning. In some countries, doses are not well controlled, while in others problems are linked to weak regulatory oversight or medical workers who lack training.

The topic was featured at the IAEA General Conference 29 September at a briefing organized by the French Presidency of the European Union.

Medical care is the largest source of human exposure to ionizing radiation outside of nature. Exposures are increasing through advances in X-ray technologies and medical imaging systems – such as computerized tomography (CT) scans – and the growing complexity of procedures. Each year, for example, ionizing radiation is used worldwide in 4000 million diagnostic procedures, and up to 8 million radiotherapy treatments, notes Ms. Renate Czarwinski, an IAEA expert heading the section on Radiation Safety and Monitoring.

Adding to the picture are reports of accidental, unintended, or unnecessary exposures. In France, for example, health officials found that more than 100 patients were overexposed earlier this year. Elsewhere, oversight is often missing, or medical personnel are not properly trained.

Ms. Beatrice Mwape, a medical imaging specialist at Zambia´s Ministry of Health, told the briefing that the country is not equipped to manage or control radiation exposures because of poor equipment and inadequate dosimetry and radiation protection guidelines and training.

Controversy over unauthorized raises leads to downfall

Nuclear Projects Commission Chairman Richard Bryan makes a point during Monday’s meeting at Las Vegas City Hall on accepting Bob Loux’s resignation as chief of the State Nuclear Projects Agency.
Photo by Craig L. Moran.

Nevada’s Nuclear Projects Commission accepted the resignation Monday of Bob Loux, the man who for 23 years led the state’s charge against federal plans to bury nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain and whose career now ends marred by controversy over unauthorized pay raises.

The seven-member commission, led by former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, decided unanimously to accept Loux’s resignation and allowed him to continue to serve as executive director of the State Nuclear Projects Agency until his replacement is chosen by Gov. Jim Gibbons

Millstone makes deal with environmental groups

Two environmental groups say they have reached an agreement with the state and the Millstone nuclear power complex in Waterford to speed up plans to reduce the plant’s effect on Long Island Sound.

At issue is whether Millstone will install a water recycling system that would reduce the amount of water the plant pulls out of Long Island Sound to cool its reactors.

The Connecticut Fund for the Environment says Millstone now pumps more than 2 billion gallons out of the sound every day in a process that kills billions of fish and other sea creatures. The group says a recycling system would reduce the fish kill by up to 98 percent.

Uranium fortress dedicated

Several congressional representatives were stuck in Washington to work on the Wall Street bailout dilemma and had to be scrapped from Monday’s program at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.

But there was still a powerful turnout — nearly 1,000 people total, including many business and community leaders — to celebrate the government’s new fortress for weapons-grade uranium.

Ron Wantland, an engineer who heads Y-12’s operational security group, said he believes the storage site is impenetrable. “It’s one of the most secure places on the face of the Earth as far as … trying to enter,” he said.

Wantland said it’s also hardened enough to withstand an airplane crash.

“A general aviation crash for sure,” he said. How about the type of airline crash seen on 9/11? “It’s very possible, yes,” he said.

Construction of the $549 million Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility was completed recently, and attention now turns to installing and testing systems at the high-security site. Loading of the uranium stocks will begin around 2010, if the necessary approvals come as anticipated. The massive storehouse required 91,000 cubic yards of concrete and more than 5,800 tons of rebar to construct. It is designed to protect the large cache of U-235 against any type of terrorist assault, according to federal and contractor officials.

Y-12 historically has been called the Fort Knox of Uranium, but Ted Sherry, the federal manager at Y-12, said Monday it’s time to rethink that nickname. “I don’t think Fort Knox has anything that looks like this,” Sherry said.

Butch Clements, vice president for safeguards, security an

Now We Need Leadership

Now that the first vote on the Paulson plan has failed, and barring alien invasion or other game-changer of planetary scope, it seems one of the following things will happen. We’ll assume from the outset that neither Bush nor the Republican leadership has control of their own caucus, and it seems a demonstrable fact that McCain does not. That leaves:

1. A Paulson Plan, But Miniaturized. It may be that a lot more people will sign off on a $200 billion dollar bailout than would sign onto a $700 billion dollar one. I’m not convinced that would actually work, however, and I’m presuming Paulson has been saying that too. The whole premise of the Paulson Plan is to ride in with so much freakin’ money that you can stabilize the entire mortgage-related marketplace: shock and awe for the financial sector. If you have much less money, it doesn’t follow that you’d stabilize squat. It might just create an initial rush, benefiting few, followed by the same systemic collapse when the initial money ran out.

I’m not one who’s been fond of the Paulson plan, and it’s not because I don’t understand or respect the (rather audacious) logic behind it: I just suspect it to be so obviously prone to corruption and corporate abuse as to be unworkable. There are some fixes that could be made, but likely the “easiest” shift would be for the House to simply cut the plan by two-thirds and declare their task done, saying they’re revisit it later. It’d be dumb and insincere and quite possibly futile or even harmful in practice, and absolutely none of those things would stop it from being considered.