Who Will Take the Radioactive Rods from Fukushima?

By Yoichi Shimatsu

The inability of Tepco or the government to pay for nuclear waste disposal puts the financial liability squarely on its partner companies and suppliers, including GE, Toshiba, Hitachi, Kajima Construction and especially the sources of the uranium, CAMECO and Rio Tinto and the governments of Canada and Australia. A fundamental rule of both capitalism and civil law is that somebody has to pay.

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25064

The decommissioning of the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant is delayed by a single problem: Where to dispose of the uranium fuel rods? Many of those rods are extremely radioactive and partially melted, and some contain highly lethal plutonium.

Besides the fissile fuel inside the plant's six reactors, more than 7 tons of spent rods have to be removed to a permanent storage site before workers can bury the  Fukushima facility under concrete. The rods cannot be permanently stored in Japan because the country's new waste  storage centers on the northeast tip of Honshu are built on unsuitable land. The floors of the Rokkasho reprocessing facility and Mutsu storage unit are cracked from uneven sinking into the boggy soil.

Entombment of the rods inside the Fukushima 1 reactors carries enormous risks because the footing of landfill  cannot support the weight of the fuel rods in addition to the reactors and cooling water inside the planned concrete containment walls. The less reactive spent fuel would have to be kept inside air-cooled dry casks. The powerful earthquakes that frequently strike the Tohoku region will eventually undermine the foundations, causing radioactive wastewater to pour unstoppably into the Pacific Ocean. The rods must therefore go to another country.

American Bad Faith

Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed by Japan in 1970, Washington's negotiators stipulated that used nuclear fuel from Japanese reactors must by law be shipped to the United States for storage or reprocessing to prevent the development of an atomic bomb. Washington has been unable to fulfill its treaty obligations to Tokyo due to the public outcry against the proposed Yucca Mountain storage facility near Las Vegas.

A panel convened by the Obama administration has just recommended the set up of a network of storage sites across the United States, a controversy certain to revive the anti-nuclear sentiments during the upcoming election campaign. The American nuclear industry has its own stockpile of more than 60,000 tons of spent fuel - not counting waste from reactors used for military and research purposes - leaving no space for Fukushima's rods inside the Nevada disposal site, if indeed it is ever opened.

To Continental Asia

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has allocated 1 trillion yen ($12 billion) in funds for nuclear waste disposal. Areva, the French nuclear monopoly, has teamed up with Tepco to find an overseas storage site. So far, the Tepco-Areva team have quietly contacted three Asian countries - Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia -- to set up a center for "reprocessing", a euphemism for nuclear dump site.

Among the threesome, China was the top choice for the Japanese nuclear establishment, which has confidence in Beijing's ability to safeguard nuclear secrets from its citizenry and even from the top leaders. Japan's space agency, which keeps 24-hour satellite observation over every nuclear-related facility in China, possesses the entire record of radiation leaks there. Since Beijing withholds this sort of data from the public, the Japanese side felt it had the necessary leverage in talks with Chinese nuclear officials.

Though the nuclear-sector bureaucrats were initially eager to receive bundles of yen, the proposal was blown away by the salt craze that swept over China. Within a couple of weeks of the Fukushima meltdowns, millions of shoppers emptied supermarket shelves on rumors that iodized salt could prevent radiation-caused thyroid cancer. The Chinese public is rightfully fearful of health-related scandals after discoveries of melamine in milk, growth hormones in pork, pesticides in vegetables, antibiotics in fish and now radioactive fallout over farmland.

A nuclear disposal deal would require trucks loaded with radioactive cargo to roll through a densely populated port, perhaps Tianjin or Ningbo, in the dead of night. There is no way that secret shipments wouldn't be spotted by locals with smart phones, triggering a mass exodus from every city, town and village along the route to the dumping grounds in China's far west. Thus, the skittishness of the ordinary Chinese citizen knocked out the easiest of nefarious plans.

Principle of Industrial Recovery

A more logical choice for overseas storage is in the sparsely populated countries that supply uranium ore to Japan, particularly Australia and Canada. As exporters of uranium, Canberra and Ottawa are ultimately responsible for storage of the nuclear waste  under the legal principle of industrial recovery.

The practice of industrial recovery is already well-established in the consumer electronics and household appliances sectors where manufacturers are required by an increasing number of countries to take back and recycle used television sets, computers and refrigerators.

Under the principle, uranium mining giants like Rio Tinto and CAMECO would be required to take back depleted uranium. The cost of waste storage would then be factored into the export price for uranium ore. The added cost is passed along to utility companies and ultimately the consumer through a higher electricity rate. If the market refuses to bear the higher price for uranium as compared with other fuels, then nuclear power will go the way of the steam engine.

Australian and Canadian politicians are bound to opportunistically oppose the return of depleted uranium since any shipments from Fukushima would be met by a massive turnout of "not-in-my-backyard" protesters. The only way for Tokyo to convince  the local politicos to go along quietly is by threatening to publish an online list of the bribe-takers in parliament who had earlier backed uranium mining on behalf of the Japanese interests.

Nuclear's Cost-Efficiency

The question then arise whether nuclear power, when long-term storage fees are included, is competitive with investment in renewable energy such as wind, solar, hydro and tidal resources. Renewable energy probably has the edge since they don't create waste. Natural gas remains the undisputed price beater wherever it is available in abundance. In a free market without hidden subsidies, nuclear is probably doomed.

In a lapse of professionalism, the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) has never seriously addressed nuclear-waste disposal as an industrywide issue. Based on the ration of spent rods to reactor fuel inside U.S. nuclear facilities, there are close to 200,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste at the 453 civilian nuclear-energy plants worldwide. Yet not a single permanent storage site has ever been opened anywhere.

The Fukushima 1 dilemma shows that the issues of cost-efficiency and technological viability can no longer be deferred or ignored. Ratings agencies report that Tepco's outstanding debt has soared beyond $90 billion, meaning that it cannot cover future costs of storing spent rods from its Kashiwazaki and Fukushima 2 nuclear plants. The Japanese government's debt has soared to 200 percent of GDP. Neither entity can afford the rising cost of nuclear power.

The inability of Tepco or the government to pay for nuclear waste disposal puts the financial liability squarely on its partner companies and suppliers, including GE, Toshiba, Hitachi, Kajima Construction and especially the sources of the uranium, CAMECO and Rio Tinto and the governments of Canada and Australia. A fundamental rule of both capitalism and civil law is that somebody has to pay.

Last Stop

Since Australia and Canada aren't in any hurry to take back the radioactive leftovers, that leaves Japan and treaty-partner United States with only one option for quick disposal- Mongolia.

Ulan Bator accepts open-pit mining for coal and copper, which are nothing but gigantic toxic sites, so why not take the melted-down nuclear rods? Its GDP, ranked 136 among the world's economies, is estimated to be $5.8 billion in 2010. Thus, $12 billion is an unimaginable sum for one more hole in the ground.

Not that Mongolia would get the entirety of the budget, since the nuclear cargo would have to transit through the Russian Far East. Unlike the health-conscious Chinese, the population of Nakhodka or Vladivostok are used to playing fast-and-loose with radioactive materials and vodka.

Even if the mafia that runs the Russian transport industry were to demand a disproportionate cut, Mongolia's 3 million inhabitants would be overjoyed at gaining about $2,000 each, more than the average annual income, that is if the money is divided evenly after the costs of building the dump.

Realistically, the Mongolian people are unlikely to receive a penny, since the money will go into a trust fund for maintenance costs. That's because $12 billion spread over the half-life of uranium - 700 million years - is equivalent to $17 in annual rent. That doesn't even cover kibble bits for the watchdog on duty, much less the cooling system. Not that anyone will be counting since by the time uranium decays to a safe level, fossils will be the sole remnant of human life on Earth.

Illusory, shortsighted greed will surely triumph in Mongolia, and that leaves a question of moral accountability for the rest of us. Will the world community feel remorse for dumping its nuclear mess onto an ancient culture that invented boiled mutton, fermented mare's milk and Genghis Khan? For guilt-ridden diplomats from Tokyo and Washington wheedling the dirty deal in Ulan Bator, here's the rebuttal: Did the national hero, the Great Khan, ever shed any tears or feel pangs of guilt? There's no need for soul-searching. A solution is at hand.

Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, is a Hong Kong-based environmental writer and also Editor-at-large at the 4^th Media, China.

China detects more low level radiation from Japan

BEIJING - 29th March 2011

By AFP

Authorities in large swathes of southeastern China have detected “extremely low levels” of radioactive material from Japan’s stricken nuclear plant in the air, the government said. The nation’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement that monitoring stations in coastal areas from Shanghai in the east to the southern region of Guangxi had detected very small doses of iodine-131 on Monday. The same radioactive material was found in the air above the northeastern province of Heilongjiang over the weekend in tiny amounts. The ministry said that in both cases the radioactive iodine came from the Fukushima nuclear plant on Japan’s eastern coast, damaged by the March 11 quake and ensuing tsunami that left more than 28,000 people dead or missing. But it added that no preventative measures were necessary as the radiation dose was too weak to pose a danger, in the statement released late Monday. The atomic crisis in Japan has caused concern in neighbouring China, and even sparked panic-buying of salt nationwide as consumers mistakenly believed that the iodine it contained could protect against radiation poisoning. News of the discovery comes as South Korean authorities announced that they too had detected traces of iodine-131 in Seoul and seven other places across South Korea. The institute said in a statement the amount was so small that there was no immediate risk to public health or the environment.

Second half of 2011 – Get ready for the meltdown of the US Treasury Bond market

Beyond its tragic human consequences (1), the terrible disaster that has just hit Japan weakens the shaky US Treasury Bond market a little more. In the GEAB No. 52, our team had already explained how the sequence of Arab revolutions, this fall of the “petro-dollar” wall (2), would translate during 2011 into the cessation of the massive purchases of US Treasury Bonds by the Gulf States. In this issue, we anticipate that the sudden shock experienced by the Japanese economy will lead not only to the halt in US T-Bond purchases by Japan, but it will force the authorities in Tokyo to make substantial sales of a significant portion of their US Treasury Bond reserves to finance the enormous cost of stabilization, reconstruction and revival of the Japanese economy (3). 

With Japan and the Gulf States alone accounting for 25% of the total 4.4 trillion USD of US federal debt (December 2010), LEAP/E2020 believes that this new situation which is asserting itself during the first quarter of 2011, against a background of China’s increasing reluctance (holding 20% of US Treasury Bonds) to continue to invest in US government debt (4), carries the seeds for the collapse of the US Treasury Bond market in the second half of 2011, a market that now has only a single buyer: the US Federal Reserve (5). 

It is certain that the context of the crisis of US local authority securities (Munis) and European government debt (the entire periphery of the EU, including the United Kingdom) that our team anticipated for this timeframe (see GEAB N°50 ), will only exacerbate the event. Moreover, it is highly significant that PIMCO the world’s largest bond fund manager decided, at the end of February 2011, to liquidate its US Treasury Bond holdings. And that was before the disaster in Japan (6)!

Major holders of US Federal Debt (10/2010) - Sources: US Treasury / Dave's Manuel

But beyond the Japanese and Arab shocks (see GEAB N°52 ), the process of US Federal debt market implosion in the second half of 2011 is accelerating under the effect of four other events: 

. the introduction of budget austerity in the US (as anticipated in GEAB No. 47) which condemns US local authorities to a major crisis in the market for their debt ("Munis") 
. impossible for the Fed to introduce QE3 
. the inevitable rise in interest rates against a backdrop of global inflation 
. the end of safe-haven status for the US currency. 

Of course, these events are related and, characteristic of a major crisis, we are entering a period that will see a mutual strengthening of their effects, leading to this sudden shock in the second quarter of 2011. Incidentally, we could add a fifth event: the complete decisional paralysis of the US powers. The daily confrontation on virtually all subjects, between Republicans (hardened by the "Tea Parties") and Democrats (demoralized by an Obama administration that has betrayed the substance of its campaign promises (7)), tends to show, a little more each day, that Washington has become a sort of "Ship of Fools ", tossed about by events, without any strategy, without willpower, incapable of action(8); in other words, according to LEAP/E2020, when the US Treasury Bond collapse begins, one cannot expect anything from Washington other than a colossal squawking that will only worsen the crisis. 

In this issue’s public announcement, we have chosen to present our anticipation of the Japanese shock on a global scale, in particular in terms of inflation and geopolitics, in more detail. The other events that lead to the collapse of the US Treasury Bond market in the second half of 2011 are analyzed in this issue, where we also set out our recommendations to address the clear worsening of the global geopolitical dislocation process. 

The triple disaster that has just hit Japan (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident) is a crucial event that will accelerate and intensify the global systemic crisis, and in particular the process of global geopolitical dislocation. 

The scale of destruction, the direct impact on the energy infrastructure of the third (or fourth) largest economy in the world (9), the severity of the accidents at the nuclear power plants (10), ... is one of the major shocks which the current international system is no longer able to withstand as we anticipated in the GEAB N° 51 ("2011: The Ruthless Year "). Japan, already seriously weakened by a chronic economic crisis that has lasted for twenty years and whose government debt is one of the largest in the world, now finds itself faced with the need to both finance a large-scale reconstruction and secure major change over an indefinite period characterized by a limitation of available energy and the disruption of commercial and industrial supply chains. Yet Japan is a fundamental part of the system of global governance of recent decades. Tokyo is one of the world’s major financial centers, one of the three management hubs of the foreign exchange markets (along with London and New York) and the Japanese economy supplies a quantity of electronic components vital to the global economy. Finally, as we have analyzed in past issues, it is, with the United Kingdom, one of the two "floats" (11) that has allowed the US to manage global economic, monetary and financial affairs for over fifty years. 

For several years now this "float" has been increasingly attracted to the Chinese sphere of influence, keeping pace with China’s increasing strength and the weakening of the United States. The crisis triggered by the earthquake will, according to LEAP/E2020, greatly accelerate this trend particularly because today, only China has the capacity to provide massive financial aid to Japan (12), while directly helping its economy by opening the huge Chinese market to Japanese business even more (13).

The falling share of the US Dollar in global foreign exchange transactions (first section) and global foreign exchange reserves (second section) Sources: BRI / FMI / Wall Street Journal, 03/2011

As regards global inflation, we can already identity five channels by which the Japanese crisis will reinforce current inflationary pressures: 

• the abrupt end to the policy of the expansion of the civil nuclear industry worldwide (14) will rapidly increase pressure on the price of oil (15), gas and coal 
• the shortage of many vital electronic parts which will mean higher prices for electronic equipment (from computers to flat screen TVs (16)) because of power cuts that affect plants and transport disruption (17) 
• increased pressure on world food and energy prices (18) due to a significant increase in Japanese food imports (especially rice) since the area affected is one of the country’s major agricultural regions (see map below) 
• a further decline in the world economy following the global consequences of the near-halt of the Japanese economy, champion of both exports and "just-in-time" delivery (19), which will limit as much the "deflation" effect of globalized trade (20) 
• and finally, a double phenomenon of a falling yen due to massive injections of liquidity by the Bank of Japan and the immediate increase in the worldwide "borrowing cost" of money (higher interest rates) because of Japan’s huge needs to carry out its reconstruction.

Japanese land utilization (red: double cropping-mainly paddy rice, with wheat and barley / pink: single crop rice/brown: single crop –mainly wheat, barley and oats/ green-mainly forest with some pasture and wasteland) - Source: Columbia University, 2009

These anticipations obviously don’t incorporate the ultimate disaster scenario that would see the Tokyo region heavily contaminated by radioactivity following an explosion and radioactive fallout at the Fukushima plant (21). Such a situation would, just like Chernobyl, lead to the creation of an exclusion zone affecting this region of more than thirty million inhabitants and which is at the heart of the flow of global basic necessities, and would lead to an historically unprecedented humanitarian disaster and an immediate disruption of economic, global, financial and monetary markets. Quite simply, there is no "plan B" for a "sudden shutdown" of the global intersection that Tokyo and the surrounding region constitutes. 

Whist hoping that this extreme situation doesn’t materialize, our team believes that the shock that has taken place will, therefore, result in a sudden worsening of the global systemic crisis and that the US Treasury Bond market will be the first major collateral casualty from the second half of 2011, as we analyze in detail in this issue. Thankfully the worst situation may not happen but, on the other hand, there’s no doubt that it’s very serious.

-------- 
Notes: 

(1) In these tragic circumstances, the LEAP/E2020 team would like to express its solidarity with the people of Japan and in particular with our numerous Japanese subscribers and visitors to our website. We would also like to emphasize that our very “clinical” analysis of the consequences of the catastrophe that Japan has just suffered is not a mark of indifference but simply the respect of our methodology which aims to limit the subjective elements at the heart of our anticipations to the strict minimum likely. 

(2) Even the Telegraph of 02/24/2011 now interprets the grassroots Arab revolution as the fall of the Middle Eastern US empire. 

(3) Source: JapanToday, 03/14/2011 

(4) According to the German edition of the FT, the Chinese central bank has even been given instructions to not buy any at all anymore. Source : FT Deutschland, 10/03/2011 

(5) Before the Japanese disaster, it was estimated that the Fed had become the primary holder of US Treasury Bonds, having already purchased more than 70% of new issue. In the coming weeks this proportion will, step-by-step, approach 90% to 95%. Because, even despite its docility vis-à-vis US pressure, the United Kingdom which each day sinks a little further into the new phase of the crisis, the "double-dip-flation" as our team calls it, can no longer afford to buy US Treasury Bonds: it is too busy repurchasing its own government debt. Moreover, according to Karen Ward, one of HSBC's main economists, the British government could face hunger riots if food price continue to soar the way they have been doing in the past few weeks. Source: SkyNews, 03/09/2011 

(6) In the short term, the flight from stocks (Japanese and others) will benefit US Treasury Bonds, but it’s a temporary event. Source : CNBC, 03/09/2011 

(7) The latest is the reopening of the Guantanamo trials whilst he had promised the closure of the prison within a year after his election at the latest, thus drawing millions of voters from the left of the Democratic Party. 

(8) France is the other major western country whose leadership finds itself in the same situation. 

(9) Depending on whether one considers Euroland as an economy on its own. Yet the March 11 summit that continued to tighten the budgetary and financial integration of Eurozone countries makes the position of wanting to continue to separately count the Eurozone countries’ combined major economic numbers more and more absurd. Thus, with a GDP of €8.4 trillion, Euroland is in second place behind the US (€10.428 trillion) at a current exchange rate of 1 €/$ 1.4, and way ahead of China (€4.1 trillion) and Japan (€3.85 trillion). Sources: Wikipedia,Eurozone, Countries listed by GDP. 

(10) Without even mentioning at this stage the risk of partial or complete neutralization of the Tokyo region, one of the key cities of the world in recent decades, due to nuclear contamination. 

(11) Like a trimaran. 

(12) Keep in mind that Beijing seeks by all means to quickly, but profitably, get rid of its mountain of Treasury Bonds and US Dollars. The cataclysm that Japan is currently suffering will thus offer Chinese leaders a unique opportunity to strategically align Tokyo with Beijing. 

(13) Conversely, the highly controversial US troop presence in Japan will materialize in Japanese public opinion, as all the more anachronistic and useless in the face of the current disaster. This is another example, as we have already seen in the case of the Arab revolution, of the growing uselessness of the huge US military machine: in crisis after crisis, it is becoming obvious that it is of virtually no use in enabling the US government to influence events. 

(14) It is in fact certain that civil nuclear power has just come to a sudden halt from which it will be very hard to recover, especially because this disaster now joined in the conflict between the elite and public opinion that the global systemic crisis exacerbates a little more on a daily basis. We can already include France amongst the countries that will suffer the full brunt of this "revolution" vis-à-vis nuclear energy which has, for nearly fifty years of civil nuclear energy, made it one of the jewels of its technology and exports. Source: Spiegel, 03/14/2011 

(15) One factor that will strengthen the inexorable progression in the Gulf region towards a situation of chaos, even direct conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, between the people of the region and their leaders, between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Sending Saudi troops to Bahrain is an indication of the escalating risks in the region just as the financial implications for the UAE who are trying to urgently alleviate forty years of neglect of entire segments of their population. Sources:AlJazeera, 03/15/2011; New York Times, 03/10/2011; AlJazeera, 03/10/2011 

(16) One of the few "bearish" sectors which allowed the soaring price of food and energy at the core of many price indices to be hidden. So even in China and throughout Southeast Asia, the impact of Japanese spare-part shortages is already being felt with immediate price rises as the Japanese electronics industry has massively relocated entire parts of its production throughout Asia while keeping strategic manufacturing in Japan. Source: China Daily, 03/15/2011 

(17) Around the world we will experience shortages of Japanese cars and spare parts for them. Given the global importance of the Japanese automobile industry, there will be no solution of an easy alternative which can be implemented. Thus, even in India, yet little dependent on Japanese brands, the impact is already being directly felt with the cancellation of sales and promotion of new models by the major Japanese manufacturers. Source: Times of India, 03/15/2011 

(18) Several Japanese refineries have been destroyed. That implies increased Japanese imports of refined products which are already causing petrol price rises in the US. Source: USAToday, 03/14/2011 

(19) The Chinese and German export economies (as well as those of South Korea, Taiwan…) will also suffer the negative consequences of this development.

(20) It is important to keep in mind that the decline in the globalization of trade in favor of a focus on regional economic zones endowed with a single or dominant currency (EU, Asia, Latin America ...) involves a simultaneous decrease in the need for US Dollars to finance international trade. See previous GEAB issues. 

(21) This would also lead to international consequences in terms of radioactive fallout.

Jeudi 17 Mars 2011

In the same category:

 November 15, 2010: LEAP considers the victory of the Green Party in Baden-Württemberg an indicator of the double shock of the 2012 German and French elections - 29/03/2011

 LEAP launches MAP "to renew our stock of potential futures" - 24/03/2011

 MAP2-Winter 2011 - Content - 23/03/2011

 France 2012: the National Front overtakes the UMP - 07/03/2011

 The first half of the decade marked primarily by world geopolitical dislocation - 05/02/2011

 GEAB wrote it in June 2008: "Arab world: Pro-Western regimes go adrift / 60 percent risk of socio-political explosion on Egypt-Morocco axis" - 31/01/2011

 Book - 'World crisis: The Path to the World Afterwards Europe and the World in the decade from 2010 to 2020', by Franck Biancheri - 27/12/2010

 Do GEAB yourself with the ‘Manual of political anticipation’! - 12/11/2010

 For 100 euros, have access to 4 years of GEAB archives! - 26/03/2010

 Traffic-Info LEAP/E2020 - Over two million single visitors from 150 different countries in 2009 - 14/01/2010

1 2

Boeing engineer "passed shuttle secrets to China"

I can smell the spies on here two ways . by the google searches they use which tells me which languages they use - and I can also go back and do searches and find out who comes here from the military etc that is being hacked by mostly the Chinese and Koreans.

This story does not suprise me in the least .... alot more is going on than we are told.

Now if Boeing employees would just pass on information about RENDITION, pass it right on to the ICC, that would be very cool.

If the US government were better at pursuing the real traitors instead of using agents to spy on its citizens, must danger could be averted. In the world of alphabet soupers and outsourced intel, getting oversight of what gets investigated is bent. Boeing has some obligations no matter what it says and SHOULD be the target of investigations. Any contractor with top secret clearances must be constantly monitored. As we say in Canada, "what? Are you new??"

Veeger

Boeing engineer 'passed shuttle secrets to China'

February 12, 2008 - 10:04AM
Source: ABC = Australia

Four people have been arrested in the United States overnight on charges of spying for China in two separate cases including one involving the space shuttle, the Justice Department said.

New Orleans residents Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, and Gregg William Bergersen of Alexandria, Virginia, were arrested for passing US defence documents to China in one case, according to a Justice Department statement.

In a second case, former Boeing engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung was arrested on charges involving stealing and turning over to China Boeing trade secrets, including information involving the space shuttle.

US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein says the incident is proof of an aggressive effort by China to obtain American secrets.

"The threat is very simple," he said.

"It's a threat to our national security and to our economic position in the world.

A threat that is posed by the relentless efforts of foreign intelligence services to penetrate our security systems and steal our most sensitive military technology and information."

Department officials say Chung, 72, of Orange, California, who was employed by Rockwell International from 1973 until its defence and space unit was acquired by Boeing in 1996, was arrested without incident at his residence.

He is accused of espionage involving economic secrets, conspiracy and other charges.

Chung, a China native who is a naturalised US citizen, held a secret security clearance when he worked at Rockwell and Boeing on the Space Shuttle program, officials said.

He retired from the company in 2002, but the next year he returned to Boeing as a contractor, a position he held until September 2006.

According to the charges against him, Chung took and concealed Boeing trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket.

Boeing spokesman Dan Beck says his company has been working with investigators.

"We do not comment on ongoing Government criminal investigations and will not comment on the subject matter of the case,"

he said.

"Boeing is not a target of the investigation and has been cooperating with the Government."

The other case involved Bergersen, who was a Defence Department official, and Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, both of New Orleans.

Working under the direction of an individual identified in court documents only as "PRC Official A," Kuo cultivated friendships with Bergersen and others in the US Government and obtained from them sensitive classified information for China.

The criminal conduct spanned a two-year period from January 2006 to February 2008, the documents said.

Kuo, a naturalised US citizen and New Orleans businessman, gathered the information on behalf of China.

- AFP

What is going on in the nuclear arms race??

By PYOTR GONCHAROV
UPI Outside View Commentator

MOSCOW, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- The national ABM has crossed the boundaries of Russian-U.S. relations and, to all appearances, will soon acquire larger global significance now that Japan is following the American footsteps to establish its own sea- and land-based ABM system.

The plan was already announced and is rapidly being built up.

Only one Japanese destroyer will be on combat duty in the Sea of Japan for now. It carries U.S.-made SM-3 missiles, which successfully completed recent tests. Japan intends to have four similar ships with anti-missiles and Aegis systems designed to detect a big number of flying targets by the spring of 2011.

They will comprise a national sea-based ABM. The second, land-based echelon will be armed with the latest Patriot air-defense systems. Two air-defense batteries have already been deployed near Tokyo. The Japanese ABM will spread much wider by 2010, with approximately 30 such batteries in 11 bases in every part of the country.

The Japanese plan alarm Russia and China, who say it will inevitably trigger an arms race in the region. Tokyo is turning a deaf ear to the warnings. It has something worse to think of -- North Korea with its 200 ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets in the whole of Japan. But then Russia and China are larger and stronger than North Korea and have formidable missile arsenals of their own, so it is unwise to ignore them.

Moscow and Beijing have no legal grounds to protest such plans, Japanese or any other country's, with the United States being the only exception, to a certain extent. The Moscow-Washington controversy over U.S. intentions to deploy its missile defense elements in Europe is widely known, as well as both parties' arguments for and against it. In particular, Russia points to the ABM Treaty, which is no longer in effect because of U.S. actions. A similar treaty would provide a sound alternative to missile defense shields, Moscow insists.

The Soviet Union and the United States signed the ABM Treaty in 1972. It bound the signatories, each with a huge offensive nuclear potential, to limit the use of ABM systems. As they saw it, mutual rejection of missile defense systems was the best barrier to the strategic offensive arms race. ABM limitations reduced the motivation for SNF buildup. That was the idea. Thus, the treaty was a practical reflection of the concept of nuclear deterrence.

Japan was not part of the treaty, but then it has no means of nuclear deterrence, though it certainly needs protection against tentative missile attacks. Its emergent ABM system is strictly within the realm of self-defense.

This situation can be repeated elsewhere. Israel intends to establish its own ABM system, the Iron Dome, to intercept short-range missiles from the Gaza Strip and longer-range missiles from Iran or Syria. In doing this, Tel Aviv proceeds from national, not Russian or American, interests.

European NATO countries may also follow suit. The European ABM idea comes from them. Whether Moscow likes it or not, a continental ABM system can appear tomorrow, if not today.

Now, the Luxembourg Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe, recently drafted by a team of international disarmament experts, Russians among them, recommends urgent measures to ward off a nuclear crisis -- in particular, to place smaller emphasis on nuclear deterrence and step up international cooperation for ABM development.

The Russian-U.S. Joint Declaration on a New Relationship, signed in 2002, bound the signatories to take stock of the opportunities for practical ABM partnership in Europe. They also announced their intentions to reduce their strategic offensive forces to a minimum.

In other words, Moscow and Washington concluded in the declaration that the nuclear deterrence principle -- the basis of the ABM Treaty -- was outdated. The world situation instead demanded new instruments to provide national security and reflect the new Russian-U.S. strategic relations.

see also,

The Pacific Arms Race

by Robert Maginnis

Posted: 01/04/2008

and


Russia to set up missile shield for Iran Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: Russia will set up a massive anti-missile shield in Iran that will virtually guarantee the country against military attacks.

China's nuclear subs, ratching up on the WEAPONS.

China lowers secret curtains - the Shang nuke peeks out

Posted by zerosix under China, International submarines, military technology, submarine | Tags: China, international submarine, nuclear sub, nuclear weapon, Shang |

A picture of China’s second-generation nuclear-powered attack submarine was published online Sept. 18. Though the strategic publication in state-run media did not offer the first glimpse of the sub, the incident does offer insight into how Beijing hopes to mold perceptions of its naval power.

A picture of China’s Shang-class (Type 093) second-generation nuclear-powered attack submarine of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) appeared in the state-run People’s Daily Online Sept. 18. Beijing is attempting to carefully manage perceptions of China’s armed forces to convey the appearance of both a nonthreatening posture and a technically capable and operationally proficient military.

One aspect of this dynamic is the slew of recent joint Chinese naval exercises internationally — with everyone from the United States and the United Kingdom to Pakistan and India. Much like China’s increasing emphasis on humanitarian and peacekeeping operations abroad, these exercises are intended to appear nonthreatening and to expand Beijing’s influence around the world.

Models and some hazy photographs of the Shang-class (Type 093) nuclear submarine were on display in an exhibition at the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution during the 80th anniversary of the founding of the PLA in late July.

Later, Modern Ships Magazine published the first clear photo of one of the submarines in August. The Type 093 nuclear submarine is China’s second generation nuclear-powered attack submarine. It will replace five first generation Han-class attack submarines (Type 091) - obsolete and tremendously noisy - that first launched between 1970 and 1990. The Type 093 submarine began construction in the mid-1990s. Two were launched in 2002 and 2003 respectively. China’s Type 093 nuclear submarine is known as the Shang-class nuclear submarine in Western countries.

{editor} Further coverage of this story comes from the Indian press where they seem to be paying a little more attention than in the US press and more than a little willing to talk up their own plans for an advanced sub fleet.

Faster, stealthier and exponentially lethal, the Shang (Type 093) class attack submarines are replacements for the first generation Han class boats that were famous for being the most noisy nuclear submarines in the world.

While China-watchers in the Indian Navy have known about the new class of submarines for the past few years - construction of the submarines began in the mid-1990s but officials say that they became fully operational only last year - these are the first set of visuals on the latest killer submarine in China’s inventory.

“As far as the navy and armed forces are concerned, we have known about them for a long time. It is no secret,” former Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash told The Indian Express.

Indian Navy officers say that till now, Chinese nuclear submarines have never been detected in the Indian Ocean region but the long-range Shang class will give People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) the capability and reach to project its presence in the area.

“Nuclear submarines are noisier than diesel submarines but trade off the handicap by having a longer range and being faster. However, the first generation of Chinese submarines were slow and noisy. It remains to be seen how they have tackled the problems,” said a senior Navy officer. China will gradually be replacing all five of its first generation Hans class nuclear submarines with the new machines.

Incidentally, the Indian Navy is also looking at inducting five indigenous ATV nuclear submarines. The first one, currently under production at Vizag, is likely to undergo sea trials by next year. Little is known about the new Shang Class but the over 6,000 tonne submarine is bigger than India’s indigenous ATV nuclear submarine that is projected to be in the 5,000 tonne category. Analysts say that outwardly, the Chinese design seems to be a cross between the Russian Victor III design and the American Los Angeles class submarines.

In contrast, the Akula II submarine being leased by India from Russia next year is in the 12,000-tonne category and a generation ahead of both the ATV and the Shang class submarines. However, the real threat will come from the Jin class of submarines being built by China. It will be capable of launching nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. The ATV, to be equipped by indigenous Sagarika submarine-launched missiles currently undergoing tests in the Bay of Bengal, will be India’s match to the Jin class, officials say.

While India is still ahead in the maritime game with greater presence and reach, analysts say that with the nuclear submarines and a new aircraft carrier currently under development, China is fast narrowing the gap and moving towards world class capabilities.