Hiroshima commemorating 56th anniversary of A-bombing

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Index:



Hiroshima commemorating 56th anniversary of A-bombing

Maralinga veteran claims parties ignoring compensation issue

Australia's brush with nuclear power 'ground zero'

British Energy eyes BNFL unit - paper

Solar Power Gets Its Day in Sun

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Hiroshima commemorating 56th anniversary of A-bombing



HIROSHIMA, Aug. 6 (Kyodo) - By: Ko Hirano Hiroshima on 

Monday commemorates the 56th anniversary of its atomic bombing 

in 1945, with the western Japan city vowing to make the new 

century one of peace and humanity and free of nuclear weapons. 



On the first Aug. 6 of the 21st century, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi 

Akiba will deliver a peace declaration at the city's annual 

ceremony, calling for the establishment of nuclear-free zones in 

Asia and the conclusion of a global treaty prohibiting nuclear 

weapons forever. 



Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Health, Labor and Welfare 

Minister Chikara Sakaguchi -- whose ministry deals with policies 

for rehabilitation of atomic-bomb survivors -- are to attend the 

ceremony at the city's Peace Memorial Park. 



House of Councillors President Yutaka Inoue and Itcho Ito, mayor 

of Nagasaki, which was also A-bombed Aug. 9 1945, will also take 

part in the 45-minute ceremony. 



The ceremony will begin at 8 a.m. with Akiba and two citizens 

placing two books under the park's arch-shaped cenotaph in which 

the names of 4,757 people, recognized by the Hiroshima city 

government since Aug. 6 last year as bomb victims, are listed. 



Participants will also offer flowers to the souls of the bomb victims 

in front of the cenotaph. The number of victims in the city totaled 

221,893 as of Monday, including an estimated 140,000 who had 

died by the end of 1945 as a direct result of the bomb, the 

Hiroshima city government said. 



At 8:15 a.m., the time when the United States dropped the bomb 

on the western Japan city 56 years ago, there will be a moment of 

silence observed in the memory of the victims. 



Koizumi, Hiroshima Gov. Yuzan Fujita and U.N. Undersecretary 

General Kenzo Oshima will also speak, after two Hiroshima 

elementary school children express their determination to help 

establish world peace in the 21st century. 



Other ceremony participants include representatives of a group of 

leaders of about 100 cities from around the world currently visiting 

Hiroshima to explore ways to achieve global peace. 



Representatives of the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan 

(Mindan) and the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean 

Residents in Japan (Chongryon) will jointly lay flowers at the 

cenotaph, the first such move in the ceremony's history. 



The number of A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima totaled 88,592 as of 

late March, the Hiroshima government said, adding the average age 

of the survivors came to 70.1, topping the 70-year-old level for the 

first time. 



An estimated 5,000 A-bomb survivors live in South Korea, North 

Korea, China, Brazil and the United States. Of these, about 2,300 

live in South Korea. Many Korean survivors, or hibakusha, were 

brought over to Japan as forced laborers during World War II. 

------------------



Maralinga veteran claims parties ignoring compensation issue



5 August - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - A prominent 

veteran of last century's atomic testing at Maralinga says  both 

Labor and Liberal parties continue to ignore the need for veterans  

to receive compensation. 



Around 100 people have attended a forum at Adelaide's Trades Hall 

to  mark tomorrow's 56th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of 

Hiroshima and  to remember those involved in nuclear testing in 

Australia. 



The forum called for an apology and compensation from the Federal 

 Government for workers, indigenous people and others effected by 

testing  at Maralinga, Emu, Monte Bello Islands and Christmas 

Island. 



Former Maralinga Serviceman Avon Hudson says both sides of 

politics have  historically ignored the plight of people like himself, 

and he does not  believe that will change in the future. 



"It's been one of the most bitter disappointments, millions of dollars 

 wasted on the commission," he said. 



"They could have just given it to the veterans, it would have done 

more  good. 



"But we weren't to know that and worse than that, I've even been 

accused  of wasting taxpayers' money, so, I mean, we've had a 

double-barrelled  insult."

--------------



Australia's brush with nuclear power 'ground zero'



JERVIS BAY, Australia, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Deep within Booderee 

National Park, almost jutting into the blue waters of Jervis Bay, a 

quiet asphalt road weaves to a halt beside a stretch of sand. 



Half of the clearing has been claimed as a parking lot for tourists 

who come to swim and snorkle in the pristine bay, while weeds 

have spent 30 years creeping across the remainder of the clearing 

where the nation's first reactor was to have stood. 



The abandoned plans for that stretch of sand are as close as 

Australia came to generating nuclear power. 



"That is exactly how close we came, the road was there, the 

excavation had occurred, the footings were just about to be poured. 

And then...the decision was made, no, we're not going to go 

nuclear," said park manager Martin Fortescue. 



The reactor, approved in 1969, was killed two years later when pro-

nuclear Prime Minister John Gorton was ousted by his own 

government in favour of long-time political foe, ex-treasurer and 

foreign minister William McMahon. 



Instead, the site, about 200 km (120 miles) south of Sydney on 

Australia's east coast, was declared a nature reserve and park 

rangers moved into the handful of homes built to house the 

scientists who would have ushered Australia into the atomic age. 



Thirty years later, the Australian government remains officially 

opposed to nuclear power, although the country exports uranium to 

fuel overseas reactors. 



The decision has left Australia as the second biggest per capita air 

polluter in the world, reliant on coal-fired electricity plants and 

struggling to meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the 

troubled Kyoto climate change protocol. 



START-UP COSTS 



Keith Alder, who eagerly watched the Jervis Bay reactor begin to 

take shape as commissioner of the then Australian Atomic Energy 

Commission, remembers the cancellation bitterly. 



"I and my assistant were called to Canberra for an interview with 

the prime minister to tell us that he was deferring it for a year," 

Alder told Reuters. 



The prime minister said the start-up costs for the steam-generating 

heavy water reactor, to be built by a British conglomerate, were 

simply too great. 



"I said: 'Well of course the tenders will all be invalid in a year 

because they're only valid for three months.' And he said: 'Well, so 

be it.' And that was the end of that," Alder said. 



By the mid-1980s, in the wake of a near meltdown at the U.S. 

Three Mile Island power station in 1979 and the 1986 Chernobyl 

disaster, all talk of nuclear power in Australia was abandoned. 



Environmentalists say Jervis Bay was as close as Australia will 

ever get to nuclear power generation, with anti-nuke activism 

boosted by a raging debate over how -- and where -- to dispose of 

waste from a 43-year-old research reactor in Sydney. 



"Australians are relatively savvy about nuclear waste, we've had 

absolute clamour in South Australia over the proposal to dump 

intermediate level nuclear waste down there (from the Sydney 

reactor)," said Greenpeace Australia campaigner Stephen 

Campbell. 



Loud opposition to the proposed replacement of an aging, purely 

research reactor in Sydney is only a fraction of the outrage that 

would greet proposals for a power plant, he added. 



"There would be vigorous, robust opposition to any proposed plan 

to build a nuclear plant anywhere in Australia." 



Still resentful of British atomic tests and radiation experiments in 

outback Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, Australia has never built 

nuclear weapons and strongly opposes further testing anywhere in 

the world. 



Australia led a worldwide outcry against French nuclear testing in 

the South Pacific in the 1990s, with a nationwide Australian 

consumer boycott of French goods. 



KYOTO FALL-OUT 



But Alder, now 80, remains convinced the decision not to go 

nuclear is to blame for the environmental dilemma played out by 

Australia at the recent Kyoto climate talks in Bonn. 



"I think it was a tragic mistake," Alder said. 



Australia, along with Canada, Russia and Japan, this week pushed 

the Kyoto accord on cutting emissions to the brink of failure before 

agreeing to a last-minute compromise to water down reduction 

targets by offsetting them through carbon-absorbing forests, and 

taking the teeth out of enforcement measures. 



Alder believes Australia will eventually -- in another 20 years or so --

 turn to nuclear power to keep up with the nation's growing 19 

million population and burgeoning appetite for energy. 



"It's inevitable. Down the track, if we don't go nuclear we die in the 

cold and the dark. It is as simple as that -- ask California at the 

moment what they think," he said with a laugh. 



The U.S. state, which gets 18 percent of its energy from two 

nuclear plants but has prohibited further reactors on environmental 

fears, suffered six days of blackouts this year. 



NUKE RUMOURS PERSIST 



But Greenpeace scoffs at suggestions, put forward in the 

occasional editorial, that Australia reconsider nuclear power. 



"Arguing that nuclear is the solution to climate change is like 

arguing that you should take up crack to give up smoking," 

Campbell said. "One 'solution' just transfers the cost to the 

environment from one waste form to another." 



Still, Campbell said he does not doubt that Prime Minister John 

Howard's conservative government, despite its official opposition, 

would like to re-explore the nuclear age -- although the issue has 

barely been mentioned in years. 



"I think the current government has a very pro-nuclear ideology, and 

I don't think that you could rule out members of this government 

pursuing nuclear power at some stage," he said. 



To the horror of green groups, the Australian government has 

allowed uranium destined for overseas reactors to be mined in land 

adjacent to World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park. 



Booderee National Park manager Fortescue admits development 

rumours continue to circulate about the 6,313-hectare (15,600-

acre) Jervis Bay park, but he doesn't believe a nuclear reactor 

would be seriously considered. 



"But then again, there are uranium mines in Kakadu," he said. 

--------------



British Energy eyes BNFL unit - paper

  

LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Mainly nuclear power generator British 

Energy has approached the government about the possibility of 

buying part of state-owned British Nuclear Fuels, a newspaper said 

on Sunday. 



The Observer said British Energy was interested in BNFL's nuclear 

fuel manufacturing and reactor services division, which industry 

experts estimated could be worth some 1.5 billion pounds ($2.14 

billion). 



The paper said British Energy would be interested if the 

government would consider a trade sale of BNFL's fuel-making 

operations. 

-----------------



Solar Power Gets Its Day in Sun



LOS ANGELES (AP) Aug 5 - Buoyed by generous government 

subsidies and plummeting costs, solar power is enjoying a rare 

day in the sun. 



In places like sun-kissed California, the energy source that once 

languished on the economic fringe is now carving out a booming 

niche among consumers hamstrung by high electricity prices and 

the threat of blackouts. 



``As the energy problems in the United States increase, it slides 

more into the mainstream,'' said John Thornton, a principal 

engineer in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, 

Colo. 



The situation has sent a jolt through sales of solar power 

equipment. 



Domestic shipments of photovoltaic cells increased 74 percent 

during the two-year period ending in 2000, according to the federal 

Department of Energy. That's enough equipment to generate at 

least 75 megawatts of power at peak usage times. One megawatt 

can power 750 average homes. 



The DOE projects that total could reach 3,200 megawatts by 2020. 



Meanwhile, the price of those cells continues to fall; they now cost 

just 20 percent of what they did 25 years ago. Rooftop systems 

that can meet half a home's electricity needs for more than 20 

years now cost as little as $10,000 with rebates and tax credits 

available from the federal and state governments. 



``You're talking a five- to six-year payback range in California, 

compared to 20 a few years ago,'' said David R. Lillington, 

president of Sylmar-based solar cell manufacturer Spectrolab Inc. 



Dan Kammen, a professor in the energy and resources group at 

the University of California, Berkeley, said it's the first time that 

solar power systems can be justified economically. ``Before it was 

just a good idea environmentally,'' he said. 



Photovoltaic cells produce electricity when struck by sunlight, and 

a portion of that energy is absorbed by a semiconducting material 

such as silicon. That knocks loose electrons, sending them 

coursing through the material. The current can then be drawn off as 

a source of power. 



Photovoltaic output peaks when demand for electricity and the 

wholesale price of power both spike - typically on hot, sunny days. 



But even today, three decades after those cells were first made 

available on a commercial basis, photovoltaic systems still produce 

less electricity at a greater cost than all other significant means of 

generation. 



Solar power contributes just 0.02 percent of the total amount of 

electricity fed into the nation's grid. And even at its cheapest, it 

costs 20 cents per kilowatt-hour to generate, or roughly four times 

as much as electricity produced from fossil or nuclear fuels on 

average. That makes large-scale plants unfeasible, experts said. 



``From an electric utility standpoint, it's developing, it's being used, 

but the technology costs have to come down more for it to be more 

usable,'' said Jayne Brady, a spokeswoman for the Washington, 

D.C.-based Edison Electric Institute, which represents shareholder-

owned utilities. 



Still, for individual homeowners like Karina Garbesi, an assistant 

professor of geography and environmental studies at California 

State University, Hayward, the rooftop panels can be an attractive 

alternative. The system atop her Bay Area home regularly 

produces excess electricity that she can sell to her utility. 



``My meter runs backward during the day,'' Garbesi said. 



In housing developments being built in places like San Diego and 

Sacramento, solar panels are now standard in some new homes, 

their cost factored into the sale price. 



``We're seeing more use of photovoltaics in new construction,'' said 

Joe Wiehagen, an engineer with the research center of the National 

Association of Home Builders in Maryland. ``It can be a bit less 

expensive in a new home and you don't have to worry about 

working it into your mortgage because it's already there.'' 



Subsidies also make the capital costs of the systems less 

prohibitive. 



At the Los Angeles headquarters of Neutrogena Corp., officials 

recently installed a 200-kilowatt system that should cut the amount 

of power the firm buys by 20 percent, said Senaka Nanayakkara, 

the cosmetics company's director of facilities. 



The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ponied up $1 

million of the system's $1.4 million price tag, as part of its program 

to add the equivalent of 100,000 residential rooftop solar systems 

by 2010. 



Similar subsidy programs should continue to drive down prices and 

prevent the solar power industry from foundering as it did in the 

1980s, when fossil fuel prices fell and interest in emerging 

alternative energy sources waned. 



``We could still screw it up. Yank price supports and you could 

drive industries out,'' Garbesi said. 



On the Net: 



http://www.nrel.gov/ 



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Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	

Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    

ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc.			E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue  		E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com          	          

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/scperle

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com

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