Man Pleads Not Guilty to Ricin Charges

A 58-year-old Arizona man pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges of trying to produce ricin, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 9).

Authorities last year found castor beans plants that could be used to make the agent in the apartment of Denys Ray Hughes. He was indicted in February on federal charges of attempting to produce a biological weapon.

Hughes has also been charged with possession of illegal weapons and explosives.

“It was clear that we interrupted an individual that was infatuated and experimented with dangerous toxins and explosive weapons,” said Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

Law enforcement officials said they believe Hughes was working alone and was not part of a terrorist organization. 

He faces life in prison for the ricin charge. The four silencers and two pipe bombs found in Hughes’ home could each earn him another 20 years in prison, AP reported.

Court documents indicate that Hughes possessed a “to-do” list that included purchasing cannon fuse, building a reinforced bunker and finding safe storage. In a search of his Wisconsin cabin, authorities found ricin formulas, six bottles of castor beans and dimethyl sulfide, which can break through the skin and has been combined with ricin before, Mangan said.

Authorities also found 42 chemical and biological samples and a variety of weapons behind the walls of the cabin (Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press/Mohave Daily News, March 2).

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U.S.-Mexico Border Tunnels Seen as Terrorism Risk

New federal legislation would send people to prison for up to 20 years for constructing or funding secret tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border, USA Today reported today (see GSN, March 31, 2005).

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she pushed the idea after touring one tunnel beneath California’s border with Mexico.

Federal agents have found at least 35 such passageways since Sept. 11, 2001, according to USA Today.

“It’s a transnational threat,” said Lt. Col. Steve Baker, an Army engineer involved in the tunnel search. “You don’t know that they’re just bringing drugs through there.”

One large tunnel below the Otay Mesa section of San Diego is believed to have taken more than a year to build and probably required sophisticated engineering and substantial funding, USA Today reported. That suggests that drug smugglers financed the passageway, said Special Agent Frank Marwood of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Agents tested the tunnel for radiation and biohazards but found no evidence that weapons of mass destruction had been brought through the passage, USA Today reported (William Welch, USA Today, March 2).

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U.S., India Finalize Nuclear Technology Sharing Deal

U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today in New Delhi announced the completion of a nuclear technology sharing agreement between their two countries, Reuters reported (see GSN, March 1).

The deal, which still needs to be approved by the U.S. Congress, allows India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and technology to meet its growing power demands. 

It would also allow India to trade nuclear technology with other countries if the Nuclear Suppliers Group alters its rules to allow trade with New Delhi.

“We have concluded an historic agreement today on nuclear power,” Bush said at a joint news conference with Singh. “I am looking forward to working with our United States Congress to change decades of law that will enable us to move forward in this important initiative.”

“What this agreement says is things change, times change. ... This agreement is in our interest and therefore I am confident we can sell this to our Congress,” he added (Reuters/Yahoo!News, March 2).

A senior U.S. official told the Associated Press that India had to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors as civilian, opening them to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, in order for the deal to be finalized (Deb Riechmann, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 2).

India, however, will be allowed to classify its prototype fast-breeder reactor as military and is permitted to develop fast-breeder reactors for the military in the future. It also is guaranteed a permanent nuclear fuel supply, the New York Times reported.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers who oppose the deal said inspections at civilian sites are pointless as long access to military reactors is forbidden. Other critics said allowing India to keep secret its fast-breeder reactors — which can efficiently produce plutonium — gives New Delhi the potential to quickly develop more nuclear weapons (Bumiller/Sengupta, New York Times, March 2).

The Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation said the deal undermines worldwide efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

In a press statement issued before the finalized agreement was announced, the center points out that India remains outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, along with other known or suspected nuclear-weapon states Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.

Pakistan and China are in talks over an agreement akin to the U.S.-India deal, the center said.

“This one-country exemption from the established nuclear nonproliferation U.S. and international laws could open the door for further exceptions. Such a policy would unravel years of successful U.S. diplomatic efforts to persuade Russia and China to abide by international rules to prevent the spread of nuclear technology to Pakistan and Iran.  There is really not sufficient positive outcome in the deal for the United States at this point to justify weakening long-term U.S. security in terms of nuclear non-proliferation,” John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, said in the release (Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation release, March 1).

Meanwhile, Pakistan has asked the United States for an agreement similar to the one Washington made with India, Agence France-Presse reported.

“We hope that we will also get the same kind of cooperation,” said Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.

Aslam said that Pakistan needs 8,800 megawatts of electricity generated by nuclear power to sustain its growing economy over the next 15 to 20 years (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, March 2).

China said the U.S.-Indian deal must meet global nonproliferation regulations, AFP reported.

“Cooperation must conform with the requirements and provisions of the international nonproliferation regime and the obligations undertaken by all countries,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (Agence France-Presse II/Khaleej Times, March 2).

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Research Suggests Warhead Plutonium Pits Last Longer

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Recent research by a U.S. laboratory suggests that plutonium contained in U.S. nuclear warheads may be reliable significantly longer than previously expected, which some experts say reduces the urgency for developing new warheads (see GSN, Feb. 8).

A senior Energy Department official said yesterday, though, that there is not yet government consensus on the finding, and that the Bush administration’s emerging Reliable Replacement Warhead effort still would be useful for hedging against unexpected problems with aging warheads in future decades, as well as for other reasons.

Confidence is high in the reliability of the current U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks told the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. He said that ongoing research has convinced him that U.S. scientists are keeping up with the effects of aging warheads.

“Right now, our best estimates [of the lifespan of warhead plutonium] are somewhere between 45 and 60 years, and that sounds like a long time, but remember, the last pit we made was made in the 1980s,” Brooks said. After that, “The properties have changed to the point where you lack confidence that what you saw when you were testing is what you’d see now.”

He then alluded to recent but yet unreleased department-funded research that suggests the plutonium in warheads may age even better than previously expected.

“It may turn out to be that it’s 60-plus. We’re doing accelerated aging tests to find that out,” he said.

The oldest warhead in the arsenal is said to be in the 40s.

An initial assessment by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the minimum age at which pits need to be replaced, published in 2003 in JOM, formerly the Journal of Metals, was 45 to 60 years.

The additional research by the laboratory finds longevity for the warheads’ plutonium cores could extend well past 60 years, according to Raymond Jeanloz, a professor earth and planetary science and of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The remarkable finding is that key materials making up the nuclear explosive package are far more stable and predictable than anyone would have anticipated. Recent developments reinforce the conclusion that plutonium pits and the U.S. stockpile are stable over periods of at least 50 to 60 years and probably much, much longer,” he said at an Arms Control Association panel discussion last month.

Jeanloz, who chairs the National Academy of Science’s International Security and Arms Control Committee, argued the finding suggests there should be no great urgency to proceed with the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. The initiative was first funded last fiscal year, as an effort to develop new warheads with greater reliability over the long-term, among other attributes.

Having more reliable and more-easily manufactured and serviced warheads in the arsenal should allow the United States to keep fewer in reserve, administration officials have said.

“The key motivation for RRW would … be to support the decision to significantly reduce the arsenal,” Jeanloz said. “Without that reduction, however, there is no widely accepted motivation as of yet for an RRW program. … Plutonium aging does not force us to a decision point at present.”

Following the hearing yesterday, Brooks told Global Security Newswire that there is not government consensus yet on the new finding.

“Our official position is 45 to 60 years. I think that many believe that Raymond is right, that it’s going to be on the high end of that. But I don’t think we know yet.  There’s supposed to be a statement later this year,” he said.

The administration has requested $27.7 million for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program to continue early research work in fiscal 2007, and additional millions to fund other programs such as an increased pit production capability that would enable new warheads to be produced as soon as 2012.

The department is requesting $6.41 billion for all nuclear stockpile activities for fiscal 2007.

The United States is estimated by nongovernmental analysts to have approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons deployed and in reserve, and the Bush administration in May 2004, without confirming that number, said that it would reduce the total “by nearly half” by 2012, with no more than 2,200 deployed at any given time.

The Reliable Replacement Warhead program could enable further stockpile reductions, Brooks has said, by developing a capacity for developing and building warheads with new capabilities more rapidly. 

“The reduced stockpile the president approved in 2004 still retains a significant non-deployed nuclear stockpile as a hedge against technical problems or geopolitical changes. Once we demonstrate [through the Reliable Replacement Warhead program] that we can produce warheads on a timescale in which geopolitical threats could emerge, we would no longer need to retain extra warheads to hedge against unexpected geopolitical changes,” Brooks said in a written statement to the committee yesterday.

Goals of the program set by a joint committee made up of Defense and Energy representatives in 2004, Brooks said yesterday in his printed statement to the committee, include “revitaliz[ing] our weapons design community to meet the challenge of being able to adapt an existing weapon within 18 months and design, develop, and begin production of a new design within three to four years of a decision to enter engineering development.”

The program could bring other benefits to the U.S. arsenal, he said, such as improved warhead safety and security, reduced danger to the environment, and a reduced need to resume live weapons testing to address a stockpile problem.

Jeanloz last month argued that of all the suggested benefits of the program, the only credible rationale for investing in it is to shrink the arsenal, and that the recent research on plutonium longevity undermined that rationale. 

“To be sure, new phenomena may appear in the future, but these will be uncovered through ongoing work such as accelerated aging experiments. Meanwhile, the technical conclusion is that we do have time for a thorough and well-informed discussion of U.S. nuclear weapons policy,” he said.

Brooks told the committee yesterday the Reliable Replacement Warhead program could further reduce uncertainties about aging nuclear weapons that might emerge in 20 years.

“Why should we take that risk? Because, if there were a problem, then we’re faced with either an unreliable stockpile or what would be a hugely traumatic event of after 20 years resuming nuclear testing,” he said.

“The Reliable Replacement Warhead idea is to drive us farther away from those [risk] margins so that we have less concern,” Brooks said.

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EU Powers to Talk With Iran Before IAEA Meeting

Iranian and European Union officials plan to meet ahead of Monday’s International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governor’s meeting on Iran’s controversial nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 1).

Tehran requested talks between top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and British, French and German foreign ministers, said a European diplomat. He added that European Union leaders remain firm that Iran must end all uranium enrichment activities.

“We are in a listening mode — nothing more,” said another European official (Judith Ingram, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, March 2).

The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow in Vienna, Reuters reported (Reuters/Yahoo!News, March 2).

Meanwhile, Larijani warned that U.N. Security Council action against his country would kill negotiations on Russia’s proposal to enrich uranium on behalf of Iran, AP reported.

“America is lying, trying to destroy the Russian proposal,” he said today. “The Americans’ insistence on handing over the Iranian nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council means the destruction of the Russian proposal.”

Larijani said the Iranian side put forward a “package proposal” to Russia yesterday and that negotiations would resume at an unspecified date. He said the two sides had “achieved mutual understanding” on some issues (Ingram, Associated Press I).

Russia, however, acknowledged that the talks were deadlocked, AP reported.

“There was a constructive and serious discussion, but many questions remain unresolved,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency (Henry Meyer, Associated Press II/Yahoo!News, March 2).

Additional details of the Russian proposal emerged yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported.

A facility in Russia would enrich uranium for nuclear fuel and ship the material to Iran on the condition that Iran reinstate a moratorium on enrichment and that it not acquire new enrichment technology. Russia is prepared to place a time limit on the duration of the joint venture, according to AFP.

Russia is also offering to sell Iran the S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile defense system, conditional on reinstatement of an enrichment moratorium. The two sides are in advanced talks on the sale, AFP reported.

Russia has offered to build more nuclear power plants and expand cooperation on Iran’s nuclear power program, on condition of an enrichment moratorium and ratification of the additional protocol to Iran’s IAEA safeguards agreement.

It has also offered to help develop Iran’s vast natural gas reserves, to construct a new “north-south transport corridor” to enhance trade, and to discuss enhanced security guarantees for Iran. Tehran has already been granted observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security group led by Russia and China, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, March 1).

Elsewhere, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that “after trying to resolve this issue through negotiations and through a good and reasonable proposal from Russia, we’re having to go to the (U.N.) Security Council,” AP reported today (Meyer, Associated Press II).

British Ambassador to the United Nations Emyr Jones Parry said he expects Iran’s activities to be reported to the Security Council at next week’s IAEA meeting.

“My expectation is that the board will reaffirm its view that Iran ought to comply with the wishes of the board,” Jones Parry said. “It would surprise me if as a result of that meeting the issue was not reported to the Security Council” (Ingram, Associated Press I).

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U.N. Security Council Should Address NPT Withdrawal, Lawrence Livermore Expert Says

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.N. Security Council should address the danger posed by nations possibly withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and other pacts, a global-security expert from the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told senators today (see GSN, March 1).

Should the matter of Iran’s controversial nuclear programs come before the New York body, Livermore Center for Global Security Research Director Ronald Lehman said, the council should affirm that withdrawing from international treaties is a right of pact parties but also a legitimate source of concern to other countries.

The United Nations, Lehman told the Foreign Relations Committee, should not allow North Korea’s NPT withdrawal to become a precedent to be followed by Iran or other suspected nuclear proliferators. Countries that withdraw from nonproliferation treaties must still be held to their initial commitments against developing banned weapons, he said.

“International law cannot survive if withdrawal becomes the get-out-of-jail-free card for violations,” Lehman said. “We should understand that we don’t care if they withdraw — they’ve [still] got to live up to their obligations.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors meets next week once again to discuss Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. The United States and like-minded countries are insisting that this board meeting must be the one that at last sends Iran’s case to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions or other measures on Tehran.

Lehman said the Security Council, if it receives the matter, should make clear that any new nuclear-weapon countries constitute a threat to international security, should endorse the IAEA board’s call for steps including an Iranian suspension of uranium enrichment activity and should express concern about the prospect of treaty withdrawal.

Washington Institute for Near East Policy Deputy Research Director Patrick Clawson told the committee that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel’s destruction, should be seen as a threat not only to Israel but also to the United States. Ahmadinejad’s views make Iranian nuclear programs especially troubling, Clawson said.

“He really, sincerely believes that his co-thinkers were able to bring down one superpower — namely, the U.S.S.R. — and that they will be able to do that again, to America,” Clawson said.

Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said the United States must seek to stop Iran’s nuclear progress but should be “realistic” about the options for doing so. Although there is no apparent “short-term” internal threat to the Iranian government, Lugar said, Washington should “seek opportunities to speak directly to the Iranian people,” whose fear of potential aggressors he said Tehran exploits to justify nuclear weapon work.

The U.S. message to Iranians, Lugar said, should be that “we do not want war.”

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Russia Opens Chemical Weapons Disposal Facility

Russia yesterday opened a chemical weapons destruction facility in Kambarka, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 1).

The facility — the second of its kind in Russia — is expected to eliminate 16 percent of the country’s 40,000-ton weapons stockpile. Treaty obligations mandate that the entire stockpile be destroyed by 2012.

“We built it fast but we built it well,” said Alexander Burutin, a Kremlin adviser.

“We can say now with certainty that we will have destroyed all 40,000 tons of chemical weapons by 2012,” he said.

Russia paid 63 percent of the $31 million price tag for the facility, while Germany paid 34 percent and the European Union paid 3 percent, said Gen. Valery Kapashin, head of a Defense Ministry department for the destruction of chemical weapons (Agence France-Presse/Gulf Times, March 1).

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Defense Attorney for Tokyo Subway Sarin Mastermind Seeks Open Psychiatric Hearing

Defense attorneys for the cult leader found guilty of organizing the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system yesterday requested an open hearing with the psychiatrist who determined their client was fit to stand trial, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, March 1).

Lawyers for Shoko Asahara, founder of the cult formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo, also recommended two psychiatrists to re-examine their client. The defense provided a written opinion by an expert who met Asahara last month and who questioned the report by a court psychiatrist judging Asahara competent to stand trial on appeal. The lawyers have asked a total of six outside psychiatrists to examine Asahara and said they would submit similar documents from the other five.

Asahara’s death sentence is unlikely to be overturned unless the court concludes he is mentally incompetent, according to Kyodo (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, March 1).

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U.S. Army Asks to Heat Mustard Agent at Umatilla

The U.S. Army has asked the Oregon Environmental Quality Department for a permit modification that would allow heating units at the Umatilla Chemical Depot to keep mustard agent in a liquid state, the East Oregonian reported Tuesday (see GSN, Feb. 24).

The agent becomes a solid at around 58 degrees Fahrenheit. In that state, the agent is difficult to sample or drain from storage containers.

The heating systems warm the air in storage igloos, eventually raising the temperature of the agent within the containers.

The heating systems have been successfully tested at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah, said Dennis Murphey, chief of the department’s chemical demilitarization program (East Oregonian, Feb. 28).

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Airborne Laser Test Planned for 2008

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency plans to go forward with an Airborne Laser missile intercept test in 2008 despite concerns about the project’s operational feasibility, Inside Missile Defense reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 10).

The system has been “the most visible and most technologically challenging” of the directed energy programs being prepared by the Air Force Research Laboratory, said William Baker, chief scientist at the facility.

“We have tended to invest in directed energy on those [programs] which are most challenging, those that are not doable by any other way. As a result, they have been very expensive and they have had their challenges,” Baker said last month during a Heritage Foundation forum.

Top project contractor Boeing announced in a statement released Monday that the laser — designed to be placed in airplanes to shoot down missiles — “remains on track to conduct its first missile intercept test in late 2008.”

The test will determine the prototype YAL-1A aircraft’s ability to detect, track and destroy a missile during boost phase, according to Inside Missile Defense. 

However, the Missile Defense Agency recently demoted the project to “technology demonstrator” status and delayed development of a secondary aircraft prototype pending results of the test, according to the Defense Department’s fiscal 2007 budget proposal.

The program’s cost estimate is currently more than three times the $2.5 billion Air Force estimate from 1996, Inside Missile Defense reported (Carlo Munoz, Inside Missile Defense, March 1).

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U.S. to Propose New Yucca Mountain Radiation Rule

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials said yesterday that they plan this year to complete a proposal for new radiation standards at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in Nevada (see GSN, Feb. 21).

Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency officials defended their proposed standards for acceptable radiation levels put out by the controversial waste dump. The most recent proposal by the environmental agency, issued in August 2005, called for limiting radiation from the site to 15 millirems a year for 10,000 years and to 350 millirems a year thereafter.

The officials expressed hope that the project could soon move forward after years of controversy and delay. 

“We could spend another 20 years and several more billions of dollars and arrive at the conclusion that we need to study Yucca Mountain more before we can proceed, [but] the waste is here today,” said Energy’s acting head for the project, Paul Golan of the department’s Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Office.

Yucca Mountain was designed to hold 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, a figure that lawmakers have considered increasing, since the site would reach that capacity soon after opening. Congress in 1992 first directed the Environmental Protection Agency to set radiation standards for a waste dump at the site, and the agency now says the earliest the facility could open would be 2012.

Golan said a new “clean canister” approach at Yucca Mountain is in the works that would sharply limit human exposure to spent fuel and would eliminate the need for dry-cask facilities to contain the material. He said the department hoped by “later this spring” to complete new designs for the facility based on the approach.

Environmental Protection Agency acting assistant administrator William Wehrum told senators the 10,000-year limit of 15 millirems is as stringent as any now in force in the country. He said the agency hoped to complete a new regulation incorporating the standards by year’s end.

Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) expressed support for at last moving forward at the site, calling Yucca “certainly the most well-studied mountain in the world.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), though, was less sanguine about the project, which he opposed.

“The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump I don't believe ... will ever be built,” Reid said.

He said Energy “has simply not addressed at all” the security and environmental risks of shipping spent fuel to the dump and called it “obvious that unsound science is prevailing at Yucca Mountain.”

Reid advocated striving for better waste-storage technology and, in the meantime, leaving spent fuel at the sites where it is now housed and storing it in dry casks.

“It’ll be safe there for at least 50 years, and thereafter, we’ll have some idea of what to do with it,” he said.

“It will never open,” he said of Yucca Mountain, “yet we must safely store spent nuclear fuel, so it’s time to look at other alternatives.”

Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.), with whom Reid is sponsoring a bill to mandate the on-site, dry-cask approach, added, “the Department of Energy no longer even pretends to know when Yucca might open or how much it will cost.”

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