A cargo vessel docks at the Belgian port of Antwerp. Port officials said they plan to deploy a new generation of radiation detectors even as U.S. officials slow plans for similar systems at U.S. ports (Dirk Waem/Getty Images). European Ports Install Radiation Detectors as U.S. Delays By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire EDINBURGH — European officials are forging ahead with plans to deploy more-expensive, next-generation radiation detectors at ports in Belgium and the Netherlands even as the United States is delaying plans to deploy the new equipment due to questions about technical efficacy (see GSN, Nov. 20)...Full Story

Nuclear Fuel Produced for Arak Reactor, Iran Says Iran’s atomic energy chief said Saturday that Iran has produced nuclear fuel pellets to power its heavy-water reactor at Arak next year, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 26)...Full Story

EU “Closely Watching” Indian Safeguards Talks European Union officials said yesterday they were “closely watching” discussions between India and the U.N. nuclear watchdog over a safeguards agreement required to implement a civilian nuclear trade deal with the United States, the Press Trust of India reported (see GSN, Nov. 26)...Full Story

	Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Taiwan Accuses Firm of WMD Exports to North Korea Taiwan’s Bureau of Investigation said today that charges will be filed against a Taipei company for allegedly selling North Korea equipment to enrich uranium and other technology for producing nuclear and biological weapons, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Aug. 14, 2006). Investigators have provided prosecutors with evidence implicating Yi-cheng Co. in the illegal export of filters for preparing uranium and biological agents for use in weapons as well as other equipment over the last year, according to a Taiwanese Justice Ministry official with knowledge of the case. “This is a first in Taiwan in terms of the (discovered) export of technology geared toward producing nuclear weapons,” said the official.  “The case is now a matter with … prosecutors — the chances are great that Yi-cheng officials will be indicted soon.” The source said Yi-cheng caught the attention of investigators when they learned that the firm had delivered “spare parts that the average person wouldn’t possibly have any use for” to a Chinese company known to be a North Korean front. “Our judgment, of course was that these parts were to be used for military purposes,” he said. The Dalian, China-based front company transferred the equipment to North Korea after it receiving it from Taipei, Taiwanese media reported. “Breaking this case will have a positive impact on Taiwan, which has been cooperating with the United States and the international community on export control for many years,” he said.  “Taiwan wouldn’t seek to cover this up” (Kyodo News, Nov. 27). Back to top

European Ports Install Radiation Detectors as U.S. Delays By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire EDINBURGH — European officials are forging ahead with plans to deploy more-expensive, next-generation radiation detectors at ports in Belgium and the Netherlands even as the United States is delaying plans to deploy the new equipment due to questions about technical efficacy (see GSN, Nov. 20). Just last week, U.S. officials announced that the Homeland Security Department is slowing plans to roll out 1,400 monitors, each costing nearly $400,000, as part of a $1.2 billion multiyear project.  In field tests, the new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors, or ASPs, “led to the determination that additional functional capacity is needed to meet the operational standards,” a department spokeswoman announced. The announcement, which means the machines could take another year to reach U.S. ports, comes after more than a year of sparring between DHS officials and the Government Accountability Office over how effective the technology is as well as testing methods used to evaluate it (see GSN, Oct. 3, 2006). The debate over the new equipment has largely played out in congressional hearings. In September, GAO officials argued that DHS testing was based on a “biased” methodology that allowed vendors an artificial edge during the evaluation of their radiation detectors, an allegation Homeland Security officials said was off base (see GSN, Sept. 19) Officials at the Belgian port of Antwerp, however, are moving ahead with deployment of the ASPs for use in secondary screening. “We’re in the process of finalizing it now,” Pascal Fias, a scientist working at the Antwerp port, said last week during an International Atomic Energy Agency-sponsored conference on nuclear trafficking here. In the Netherlands, Dutch customs officials are already using the ASP detectors in secondary deployments and expect to eventually use them as primary scanners, Fias said. Containers at ports are typically put through a two-phase scanning process.  During the first phase, the shipping containers are sent through very sensitive detectors called plastic scintillators.  Plastic scintillators can detect very low-level radiation emissions but are incapable of identifying the isotope emitting the energy. Due to their sensitivity, they can be triggered by innocuous cargo with trace levels of natural radiation like granite, kitty litter or bananas.  In one instance a load of blueberries set off Belgian alarms.  The fruit exhibited trace levels of cesium contamination, a legacy from Chernobyl, Fias said. If the primary detectors discover the presence of radiation, the shipping container is then sent through a secondary screening where customs officials use hand-held devices to determine the nature of the source. After the latest round of GAO criticism of the DHS technology vetting process, Homeland Security officials suggested the ASP detectors would first be deployed in secondary locations and testing would continue before replacing the plastic scintillators. While Belgian port officials have no plans to shift the ASP to a primary detection deployment — they say they have the plastic scintillators and might as well use them — the new technology is perfect for secondary screening, they say. “For the second phase, it makes a lot of sense to use the ASP,” Fias told Global Security Newswire, calling the technology currently “the best on the market.” Without the ASP detectors, custom officials must use a small, hand-held scanner to assess the entire shipping container.  That is a small scanner and a large box, a combination that has led to complaints from customs officials at the port, Fias said. By contrast, the ASP scanners are “basically a very, very big detector that can scan the whole of the container,” he said.  Replacing primary scanners with the new technology requires any new device to be at least a sensitive as the plastic scintillators, Fias notes, a more challenging bar to meet. The goal with these detector upgrades, both domestically and abroad, is not necessarily increasing the level or radiation detection at ports, but rather smoothing the flow of commerce and making sure current detection regime is not disruptive.  U.S. officials have repeatedly said the goal is to lower the number of false alarms at large ports such as Los Angeles/Long Beach.  That port, the nation’s busiest, has about 500 radiation alerts a day, and DHS officials suggest the new technology could plunge that number to less than 30. “We want to have a low economic impact.  Time is money, certainly in a port,” Fias said of Antwerp.  “Only 1 in 10,000 containers are delayed for more than a few hours or days” He expects the ASPs, to be used in conjunction with x-ray scanning, to be rolled out in Antwerp by the end of next year. Back to top       Nuclear Fuel Produced for Arak Reactor, Iran Says Iran’s atomic energy chief said Saturday that Iran has produced nuclear fuel pellets to power its heavy-water reactor at Arak next year, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 26). “Based on the existing standards, the pellets useable in the 40-megawatt Arak research reactor have been produced,” Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said. “By the first half of the next Iranian year (September 2008), the fuel manufacturing plant will be able to provide fuel for the 40-megawatt Arak research reactor,” he said. The Arak reactor currently under construction would replace a research reactor the United States provided to Iran before its 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran has been attempting to build up an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle by supplying fuel for its reactors from its own uranium mines.  Western powers have suspected that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons using enriched uranium, but Tehran has insisted its nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Nov. 24). The International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday addressed neither Iran’s nuclear fuel manufacturing claim nor its assertion that investigations into two aspects of its nuclear program’s history have been concluded, AFP reported. An IAEA spokesman said the U.N. nuclear watchdog did not wish to comment on Aghazadeh’s statement (Agence France-Presse II/Space War, Nov. 26). In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday urged Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to support a new U.N. Security Council resolution against Iran for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program, AFP reported. “The secretary underlined she thought it was important and the United States government feels as though it is important to move forward with a new Security Council resolution,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a news conference. McCormack said that Rice sought to “encourage China to play an effective role as they have done in the past year and half in formulating and passing a new Security Council resolution.” “Over the past several weeks we have been encouraging them to be more constructive both in scheduling a political directors meeting as well as really agreeing to the elements of a resolution,” he said, noting that the political directors from Germany and the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations planned to meet “in a week or so” to discuss the proposed sanctions resolution further. “I think we will be able to come to some agreement.  We will see if we can get that accomplished in the coming weeks,” he said (Agence France-Presse III/Google News, Nov. 26). Mousavian Partially Cleared Meanwhile, former top Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian was cleared of espionage charges by an Iranian court today, Associated Press reported. Iran accused Mousavian this month of passing classified information to the British Embassy and other foreign entities. “There were three charges raised against Mousavian:  Spying, keeping confidential documents and propagating against the ruling system.  He was found not guilty of the first two but found guilty of propagating against the system,” judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said Tuesday. Jamshidi said the court has suspended Mousavian’s sentence but will have to consider a punishment if the prosecutor contests the decision (Associated Press/USA Today, Nov. 27). Back to top       EU “Closely Watching” Indian Safeguards Talks European Union officials said yesterday they were “closely watching” discussions between India and the U.N. nuclear watchdog over a safeguards agreement required to implement a civilian nuclear trade deal with the United States, the Press Trust of India reported (see GSN, Nov. 26). EU nations that are part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 45-nation organization of nuclear exporters, will individually decide whether to support an exemption permitting nuclear sales to India, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “The European Union is committed to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and it is in this context we are following with great interest the discussion India is having with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” said Daneile Smadja, ambassador and head of the Delegation of the European Commission to India. Smadja acknowledged India’s interest in civilian nuclear trade to help meet its increasing energy demands. “We have to wait for negotiations with the IAEA.  We will work on a common position.  We are trying to reach the maximum consensus and arrive at a common European position on this issue,” said Luis Mendes, the IAEA envoy for Portugal, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency. Smadja and Mendes spoke to reporters in the lead-up to the India-EU summit scheduled to take place Friday in New Delhi (Press Trust of India/BBC Monitoring, Nov. 27). Back to top       IAEA Checks Russian Fuel for Iran’s Bushehr Reactor International Atomic Energy Agency officials traveled to a Russian facility yesterday to certify nuclear fuel bound for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Oct. 15). The U.N. nuclear watchdog inspectors will examine the fuel and seal its containers for future delivery to the power plant, according to Sergei Guryanov, a spokesman for the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Plant in Siberia.  The firm is the primary producer of nuclear power plant fuel in Russia. No date has been set for transporting the fuel to the Bushehr site, Guyanov said.  A Russian contractor has continued building the plant following several delays in its completion (Associated Press/PR-inside, Nov. 26). Back to top       Bahamas Ratifies Test Ban Treaty The Bahamas yesterday ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, making it the 141st nation to fully join the pact, the treaty’s implementing organization announced today (see GSN, Sept. 5). Five other Caribbean nations have not signed the treaty, including Barados, Cuba, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as Trinidad and Tobago. So far 177 countries have signed on to end all nuclear testing, but just 34 have ratified the pact of the 44 needed to bring the treaty into force. The outstanding 10 nations include China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States (CTBTO release, Nov. 27). Back to top       U.S. Official to Discuss North Korea in Talks U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill is expected to begin a trip to China, Japan and South Korea today to take part in discussions related to a six-party North Korean nuclear disablement deal, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 26). Hill is “going to visit South Korea, Japan and China, and all of these meetings are in connection with the six-party talks,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.  McCormack did not specify the dates when Hill would visit each country. Hill attended a discussion yesterday between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the denuclearization agreement and “how the process is going to evolve and move forward.” When asked whether U.S. technical experts currently in North Korea expected to receive a declaration of Pyongyang’s nuclear assets, McCormack said “the deadline for it is the end of the year, and I would expect that we have something final from the North Koreans closer to the end of the year.” “It wouldn't surprise me if, along the way, they briefed up members of the six-party — the other five members of the six parties on where they are in their declaration process,” he said. “It's important that this declaration be full, that it be complete and that it reassure all of the other five parties that North Korea is being completing forthcoming with the declaration,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Nov. 26). Back to top       ICBM Monitors Continue Cold War-Era Work U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at nuclear ICBM launch sites have continued to live much as they had during the Cold War, spending long working days in isolated facilities as federal efforts to remove weapons from high-alert status have faltered, the Washington Post reported Friday (see GSN, Nov. 2). “The natural state of an ICBM is on alert, with its nuclear warhead on and solid-fuel engines powered up. … The crews are needed to monitor the systems,” said Retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, a former head of U.S. Strategic Command. More missiles have been taken off of high-alert status since the end of the Cold War, however, and rather than targeting Russian cities and military bases they engage in what Maj. Gen. Roger Burg called “broad ocean area targeting.” “There are a lot of mission requirements we do down there,” said Air Force Capt. Elizabeth Buss, who spent a total of 72 hours last week leading a three-officer team in monitoring 10 nuclear-tipped Minuteman III ICBMs at a launch facility near Malmstrom Air Force Base. Buss referred to the importance of routine actions such as checking the status of missiles, testing secure communication links, looking for security vulnerabilities and dealing with safety inspections.  The officers have taken part in launch drills at Malmstrom, but an actual launch would require an order from U.S. President George W. Bush. National Security Agency officials battled attempts to wire missile-launch facilities with Internet connections for years out of fear that hackers could interfere with launch systems, but the ban was lifted in August. Former Senator Sam Nunn, who for years chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, has campaigned to extend warning times and reduce the number of nuclear weapons on high-alert status. “Perhaps we're foolproof,” Nunn said recently, but he referred to the accidental transport of nuclear warheads across in the United States in August as proof that “human error can happen, and it can happen in communications or digital intervention.”  Nunn said the high-alert status of nuclear ICBMs in Russia and the United States is part of a “posture more dangerous to us than any threat justifies” (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Nov. 23). Back to top

Iran Builds New Medium-Range Missile, Official Says Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said today that Iran has created a new missile capable of reaching Israeli targets and U.S. bases in the Middle East, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 24). Iranian state media reported that the new “Ashura” missile has a range of 1,240 miles, making it Iran’s longest-range missile. “The construction of the Ashura missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers is one of the accomplishments of the Ministry of Defense,” state media quoted Najjar as saying. Iran provided conflicting reports on its other longer-range missile, the Shahab 3, in the past.  Military officials first said the missile had a 1,100-mile range, but it was said to have only an 800-miles when it shown off at a military parade in September (Stuart Williams, Agence France-Presse/Google News, Nov. 27). Back to top

U.S., Russia Discuss Missile Defense U.S. and Russian officials met yesterday in Washington to discuss Bush administration plans to deploy missile defenses in Eastern Europe, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 26). U.S. officials were hoping to learn Russia’s reaction to a U.S. proposal delivered last week that sought ways for the two nations to cooperate and to reduce Russian opposition to the U.S. deployment plans, according to AFP. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, in Washington primarily for this week’s Middle East peace talks in Annapolis, Md., met with acting Undersecretary of State John Rood and Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, said Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Karen Finn. Russia has so far expressed displeasure at the recent U.S. proposal. “There is no more talk of joint assessment of threats, of Russian experts’ presence at missile shields’ sites, no readiness to keep the system nonoperational if there is no actual missile threat — everything is so washed out that it is hard to recognize the earlier proposals,” one foreign ministry official said last week (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 26). Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov backed that assessment yesterday. “If by joint work they mean pursuing unilateral plans to install missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe, and inviting us only to help them and provide information we have, that’s not what we have in mind when we propose … together conducting analyses to determine threats and together discussing measures to neutralize them,” he said from Washington (Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Nov. 27). Lavrov also questioned the maturity of Iran’s missile program, the threat U.S. officials have said they are seeking to mitigate by deploying missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic (see related GSN story, today). “The experts are perfectly aware that creation of such (long-range) missiles is a long, costly process for any nation,” he said.  “Iran does not possess the needed industrial potential for this end.  It is not obvious that an adequate political decision has been taken by the Iranian leadership” (Russia & CIS Military Newswire, Nov. 26). Meanwhile, former Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman yesterday expressed doubt about the U.S. intentions. “The true objective of this radar base is to aim at Russia,” he said.  Any other explanation was “idiotic,” he added (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Nov. 26). Back to top       India Plans Interceptor Missile Test India has planned to target and destroy a mock enemy missile inside the earth’s atmosphere in a test interceptor launch scheduled for the first week of December, the Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 21). Indian military officials will attempt to destroy the target missile between nine and 13 miles above the Bay of Bengal in a demonstration of the second component of the New Delhi’s dual-layered ballistic missile defense system. India successfully tested a hypersonic interceptor missile one year ago today, destroying a Privthi missile outside the earth’s atmosphere at about a 50-mile altitude (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2006; Xinhua News Agency/China View, Nov. 26). Back to top

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