Print Edition: Feb. 12, 2014

Iran Official Rules Out Change to Heavy-Water Reactor

Feb. 12, 2014 — By Diane Barnes

An Iranian official on Wednesday set aside the idea of potentially altering a nuclear reactor that other nations fear could produce atomic-bomb fuel.

Iran cannot convert its Arak heavy-water reactor to a light-water facility, Hamid Babaei, a spokesman for Iran's delegation to the United Nations, wrote in a Wednesday commentary published by the London Guardian.

Such a change would reduce the unfinished site's capacity to produce weapon-usable plutonium once activated, addressing a major concern shared by world powers as they seek a deal with Iran aimed at preventing its atomic assets from supporting any nuclear-arms production. But the diplomatic official said this kind of modification would prove infeasible.

"It is now too late to change [the Arak reactor] into a light-water prototype, as some have suggested in the West," Babaei wrote. "This 'generous' offer should have been made much earlier."

His assertion came a week after Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, reportedly expressed openness to modifying the Arak site "to produce less plutonium."

On Tuesday, a former U.S. national security staffer said shutting down or significantly altering the Arak reactor would be one of the Obama administration's "key considerations" in seeking a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. The Persian Gulf power, which insists the site is strictly for medical use, is set on Feb. 18 to begin talks on the potential deal with China, Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"If Iran genuinely intends Arak to be a facility that produces medical isotopes only, it should be able to agree to such modifications without significant fuss," Jofi Joseph, a former White House nonproliferation official, wrote in a Tuesday analysis for Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

In Senate testimony last week, the Obama administration's senior Iran negotiator dismissed Tehran's rationale for building the heavy-water facility.

"We do not believe there is any reason for a heavy-water reactor at all in a civil nuclear program of the type that Iran is interested in," Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. She did not explicitly say in testimony whether the United States would demand the facility's closure or conversion.

Extremists Pose 'Very Real' Risk to Syrian Chemical Arms: U.S. Intel Official

Feb. 12, 2014 — By Rachel Oswald

A senior U.S. intelligence official on Tuesday warned of a "very real" risk of extremist groups gaining control of Syrian chemical or biological weapons.

"The current instability in Syria presents a perfect opportunity for al-Qaida and associated groups to acquire these weapons [of mass destruction] or their components," U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said in Tuesday testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, citing the terrorist organizations' longtime stated interest in acquiring the most dangerous arms.

His remarks stand in contrast to some recent comments by U.S. diplomats who have played down the risk that extremists might seize Syrian chemical arms as they are transported to a coastal city for international removal and destruction.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's government has blamed delays in moving these sensitive warfare materials out of the country on security concerns, amid assertions that the sensitive convoys already have come under rebel attack. Damascus last year agreed to U.S. and Russian demands that it surrender its entire chemical arsenal following a major sarin gas attack that allegedly killed more than 1,400 civilians.

"While Syria's stockpiles are currently under the control of the regime, the movement of these weapons from their current locations for disposal or other reasons drastically increases the risk of these weapons or their components falling into the wrong hands," Flynn said. "There is also the very real possibility that extremists in the Syrian opposition could overrun and exploit chemical and biological weapons storage facilities before all of these materials are removed."

Damascus this week said nearly all of most of its most deadly chemicals would be moved out of Syria by the end of the month -- two months past a deadline set by international authorities.

At the Tuesday hearing, U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the panel it was "hard to discern" whether the Syrian delays were due to legitimate security concerns. Instead, he indicated, the lag times could reflect a scheme by Damascus aimed at lengthening the chemical disarmament process for "as long as possible because it ... serves to implicitly legitimize Assad."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power in comments to reporters last week seemed to minimize Damascus' argument that extremist threats to chemicals under transport justified the delays.

"We know the regime has the ability to move these weapons and materials because they have moved them multiple times over the course of this conflict," Power said. "It is time for the Assad government to stop its foot-dragging."

On Tuesday, Clapper also told the Senate panel there are projected to be in excess of 7,500 foreign fighters hailing from about 50 countries currently in Syria. "Among them are a small group of [Afghanistan-Pakistan] al-Qaida veterans who have aspirations for external attacks in Europe, if not the [U.S.] homeland itself," he said.

French Leader Defends Iran-Trade Stance, Amid U.S. Sanctions Concerns

Feb. 12, 2014

French President Francois Hollande defended his Iran trade policy as President Obama pledged to hammer sanctions violators, the New York Times reports.

The leaders spoke together days after dozens of high-level French entrepreneurs visited Tehran in an effort to capitalize on an interim nuclear accord with Middle Eastern nation. The six-month agreement, which took effect in January, grants limited sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for temporary restrictions on the country's nuclear activities.

"Businesses may be exploring, are there some possibilities to get in sooner rather than later if and when there is an actual agreement to be had," Obama told reporters during a joint appearance with Hollande at the White House. "But I can tell you that they do so at their own peril right now because we will come down on them like a ton of bricks."

The half-year, multilateral agreement is intended to pave the way for a longer-term deal to address fears in Washington, Paris and elsewhere that Iran's nuclear program is geared toward development of a nuclear-arms capability. France, the United States, and four other nations negotiated the pact with the Persian Gulf power, which denies harboring any military ambitions for its atomic activities.

Speaking at the press conference, Hollande said he had urged participants in last week's trip to refrain from entering into business deals with Iran prior to the enactment of sanctions relief. He added, though, that the French government ultimately cannot restrict the private actions of businesses.

"The president of the republic is not the president of the employers’ union in France," he said.

Obama said he and Hollande both saw a "need to continue enforcing existing sanctions even as we believe that new sanctions during these negotiations would endanger the possibility of a diplomatic solution," Reuters reported.

U.S. Agency Wants Machines to Scan Through Your Coat, Shoes and Belt

Feb. 12, 2014 — By Aliya Sternstein

Airplane passengers could keep their shoes on as they breeze through security checks at a speed of 250 people per hour, under a new U.S. agency plan.

New technology could skip today's wait times for screeners to probe a video screen, according to the Homeland Security Department blueprint for next-generation body imagers.

The pods "will automatically detect the required threats with no operator interpretation required," states a market research survey released on Tuesday. "People being scanned should not be required to significantly alter walking paths or divest beyond current procedures. An ultimate goal is to significantly reduce divesting of personal items such as shoes and reach a 'screen-while-walk' operational capability."

The plan does not include a timeline for system development or installation. Contractors have until March 11 to submit machine proposals.

The automatons would be required to detect concealed explosives, homemade bombs, shrapnel, small handguns and knives, with some privacy constraints. Tuesday's call for ideas requires that submissions include "privacy protection features, software and algorithms for individuals being screened."

Security personnel at checkpoints will be notified of a potential threat by an alarm connected to the system.

Fliers might also be permitted to keep on bulky coats during the winter holiday travel season. "Detection should occur through a minimum of 2 layers of clothing concealment where those layers are composed of cotton, cotton-polyester, wool, silk and leather materials among others," DHS officials said.

Other Homeland Security components that might use the scanning robots include Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protective Services, which is responsible for guarding 9,000 federal facilities and checkpoints.

The department is "in the planning stages" for the development program and the research request is part of an "alternatives analysis to assess the overall technical risk and readiness" of the plan, according to officials. "This program will incorporate recent scientific discoveries in imaging technology into commercial people screening systems for eventual deployment to DHS operational components.”

Shoe-viewing tools have tripped up the Transportation Security Administration in the past. In late 2012, the agency abandoned a project to buy footwear scanners, saying proposals didn’t meet technical or operational requirements. Contracting experts translated that to mean the tools were either expensive, unreliable or emit too much radiation -- though not at levels as toxic as half a century ago. 

Retailers between 1930s and 1950s measured customers' feet with a device called a shoe-fitting fluoroscope  that subjected customers to 4 milliroentgens per hour -- eight times as much as the present day limit. "When you put your feet in a shoe-fitting fluoroscope, you were effectively standing on top of the X-ray tube," said a report by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, an academic consortium. "The only 'shielding' between your feet and the tube was a 1-millimeter thick aluminum filter."

Reprinted with permission from Nextgov.com. The original story can be found here.

Obama Demands Russia Hold Syria to Account on Chemicals

Feb. 12, 2014

President Obama on Tuesday demanded Russian action in pushing Syria to fulfill its pledges on relinquishing its chemical arsenal, RIA Novosti reports.

"Syria must meet its commitments, and Russia has a responsibility to ensure that Syria complies," Obama told journalists in Washington.

President Bashar Assad's government admitted possessing chemical weapons and agreed to give them up several weeks after sarin nerve agent allegedly killed more than 1,400 people on the edge of Damascus. Russia, a backer of Assad's regime, has supported the regime's denials of responsibility for the chemical strike in rebel-occupied territory.

Washington recently accused the Syrian government of dragging its feet in the disarmament effort, which last week missed a deadline for moving most of the chemical-warfare stocks onto foreign vessels for removal and destruction. Damascus has blamed delays on the dangerous nature of shipping the materials across territory ravaged by nearly three years of civil war. Still, Syrian and Russian officials have suggested an end-of-June deadline remains within reach for the stockpile's full destruction.

A key international official on Tuesday said Assad's government is demonstrating "constructive cooperation" in the disarmament effort, and voiced confidence that the mid-year goal "will be met," Agence France-Presse reported.

"What's important ... is that there is an acceleration and intensification of efforts as we progress in time towards the deadline," said Sigrid Kaag, special coordinator of the international disarmament operation overseen by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Meanwhile, Obama said Washington has not ruled out the option of attacking Syrian government targets.

"Right now we don't think that there is a military solution per se to the problem, but the situation is fluid and we are continuing to explore every possible avenue to solve this problem," he said.

The potential for the United States to employ armed force in Syria became widely discussed immediately following the Aug. 21 chemical strike in the Syrian capital's Ghouta suburbs.

Japan Said to Eye Reactor Restarts if Pro-Nuclear Candidates Win Office

Feb. 12, 2014

The Japanese government plans to restart at least 10 reactors if voters in the coming months elect more pro-nuclear candidates, Deutsche Welle reports.

The Sunday election of nuclear-energy supporter Yoichi Masuzoe to the post of governor of Tokyo has given Japan's Shinzo Abe administration some confidence that the public may finally be moving past the March 2011 atomic plant disaster at Fukushima, which sparked nationwide opposition to nuclear power.

The meltdown of three of the Fukushima Daiichi facility's six reactors was caused by an earthquake and  tsunami.

The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Agency is still conducting comprehensive reviews of the nation's 42 nuclear plants to confirm they have implemented the new safety rules passed in the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe.

Anti-nuclear power groups are concerned the reforms do not go far enough in limiting the potential for another Fukushima-style disaster.

"The industry and the regulators say they have learned the lessons of Fukushima and that they will be installing new emergency equipment, such as better sea walls and so on, but the companies have been given permission to defer implementation for several years," Aileen Mioko-Smith of Green Action Japan said in an interview. "What happens if we have an earthquake sooner than that?"

Some political analysts also cautioned against reading too much into the election of Masuzoe, who campaigned largely on a platform of restarting atomic plants, the New York Times reported.

"Tokyo’s voters ended up feeling cool toward the idea of using the governor’s election as a referendum on nuclear power," Meiji Gakuin University political expert Kazuhisa Kawakami told the Times. "They felt suspicious that candidates were trying to whip them up with simple-minded populist appeals."

"The no-nukes candidates lost, but that doesn't mean there is suddenly a consensus in favor of nuclear power," retired politics professor Shiro Asano said In a separate Times article.

Nuclear-Armed Nations to Sit Out Humanitarian Meeting

Feb. 12, 2014

The world's recognized nuclear powers are expected to skip a meeting this week on the humanitarian consequences of potential nuclear strikes, Kyodo News reports.

"No nuclear weapon state, permanent member of the U.N. Security Council ... will participate," Mexican Ambassador to Japan Claude Heller said on Wednesday, one day before the scheduled start of the Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Nayarit, Mexico. "The information that we have received is that there is right now no registration [of delegates] by the nuclear-weapons states."

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty acknowledges the atomic arsenals of five countries, none of which took part in a similarly focused meeting held last year in Oslo, Norway. Representatives from 127 countries joined that conference, and even wider participation is anticipated at this week's two-day gathering.

A rebuff from the recognized nuclear-armed nations -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- could heighten tensions between those countries and non-nuclear weapons states, according to Kyodo. Members of the latter group have led calls to move toward eliminating atomic arms, and the nuclear powers may fear the humanitarian conferences could foment discussion of potentially abolishing their stockpiles, the news agency said.

The nonproliferation accord calls for "good faith" efforts by its signatories to pursue eventual nuclear disarmament.