* U. S. Policy allows nuclear attack on
Iraq.
* Nuclear waste rail safety study request
denied by U. S. Dept. of Transportation.
* Plutonium waste passes through Panama
Canal with protesters aboard.
* India will go nuclear, if Hindu Nationalists
win election.
* A top-secret directive, signed by President
Clinton last November, has quietly changed U.S. Nuclear policy to
permit the U. S. to attack Iraq with tactical atomic warheads,
said a recent article in the Irish Times. The directive is part
of a U. S. contingency plan to consider using atomic bombs on
Iraqui weapon sites if President Saddam Hussein initiates a major
biological attack. Administration officials said the policy
shift was made as part of the most extensive update of U. S.
nuclear weapons policy since the Reagan administration. Clinton
approved the new policy, a part of Presidential Policy Directive
60, after consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Until November, first use
of nuclear weapons on Iraq would have violated U. S. pledges
never to make such an attack on a signer of the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, which includes Iraq. U.S. officials now
maintain that Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons would
forfeit treaty protection.
Administration officials fear Saddam Hussein might use Scud
rockets to spread powdered anthrax spores over Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and Israel, killing thousands and making parts of Riyadh,
Kuwait City and Tel Aviv uninhabitable for decades. Intelligence
officials fear these biological weapons may be buried in 11-foot
cement bunkers, which, during the Persian Gulf war, were attacked
using 2,000 lb. Bombs, with only limited success. Since then,
the U.S. has developed a 5,000 lb. bomb with a conventional
warhead, the GBU28, which can be dropped by FISE Fighter-bombers,
or the B-1 subsonic strategic bomber now poised in Bahrain.
If the U.S. does choose to employ nuclear weapons against
the bunkers, the most likely choice is the B61-7 series of
tactical warheads. These so-called "mini-nukes" are 300-500
times more powerful than the largest non-nuclear weapon. They
have an explosive force of less than 1 kiloton; the bomb dropped
on Hiroshima had an estimated 13 kilotons of explosive power. So
far, the U.S. is the only nation to have used atomic weapons in
war.
* The Department of Transportation has
denied a request from Bay Area Reps. George Miller and Ellen
Tauscher for a safety study of the rail routes proposed for
shipment of nuclear fuel rods from Concord Naval Weapons Station
in California to Idaho. Some safety measures for the shipments
were offered by officials, however, including priority status,
railroad inspectors and armed guards for the dangerous loads.
The Department of Energy (DOE) plans 5 separate shipments of 38
casks of hig-level nuclear waste over the next 13 years. Each
cask contains as much radioactivity as 200 Hiroshima bombs, and
unshielded, will kill a man standing three feet away. The casks
will arrive by ship from nuclear reactor facitlities in Asia,
passing under the Golden Gate and five other bridges, through a
narrow channel surrounded by petrochemical refineries, to arrive
at Concord, which is situated near a major earthquake fault.
From there, rail shipments will cross above California's Feather
River Canyon, where 28 trains have derailed in 16 years. The
DOE's plan has met wide-spread opposition in California, and
arguments will begin March 6 in the lawsuit that Contra Costa
County and the city of Concord have filed against the DOE to
prevent these shipments.
* And in Central America, the British ship
Pacific Swan entered the Panama Canal on February 6 flying a
Greenpeace banner reading "STOP PLUTONIUM,"with three Greenpeace
activists clinging to the mast. The activists had crept on board
as the ship slowed to enter the canal. The ship is carrying
thirty million curies of radioactivity from France to Japan, in
what Greenpeace claims is a complete absence of any environmental
impact information from either the French, British and Japanese
shippers, or the Panama Canal Commission. Security forces
removed the activists and banner after the plutonium-bearing ship
entered the first lock. On its way to the Pacific, the ship
passed through Gatun lake, which provides the drinking water for
over 1 million people.
* In India, the manifesto of the Hindu
Nationalist party, which is expected to win
in the upcoming elections, announced that India would "exercise
the option to induct nuclear weapons" into the armed forces, if
it comes to power. Lal Krishna Advani, leader of the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), told a news conference that India's security
was "a matter of prime importance," and a nuclear-free world was
"a distant dream."
Elections in India will be held between February 16 and
March 7.
* Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) will hold an
Environmental Safety and Health meeting at Sweeney Center, on
Marcy St. in Santa Fe, on Tuesday evening, February 24.
* A meeting of the Santa Fe City Council regarding the
WIPP bypass will be held on Wednesday evening, February 25.
For more information about these meetings, and their exact
times, please contact CCNS at 986-1973.
