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If there was another cliché, I would gladly use it. But never has it seemed more apt: as Rome burns, Nero fiddles - or, in this case, as the world heats up, politicians play games with figures. Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raised the stakes on global warming. It revised its assessment of the speed at which the Earth is heating up, and said that greenhouse gas emissions were now increasing at three times the rate of the 1990s, largely because of the huge consumption of coal-fired energy in India and China.

By Michele Boyd and Arjun Makhijani A Fact Sheet Produced by Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Thorium "fuel" has been proposed as an alternative to uranium fuel in nuclear reactors. There are not "thorium reactors," but rather proposals to use thorium as a "fuel" in different types of reactors, including existing light-water reactors and various fast breeder reactor designs. Thorium, which refers to thorium-232, is a radioactive metal that is about three times more abundant than uranium in the natural environment. Some of the largest reserves are found in Idaho in the U.S. Large known deposits are in Australia, India, and Norway. The primary U.S. company dvocating for thorium fuel is Thorium Power (www.thoriumpower.com). Unlike the claims made or implied by thorium proponents, however, thorium doesn't solve the proliferation, waste, safety, or cost problems of nuclear power, and it still faces major technical hurdles for commercialization.

On January 15, outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a nuclear cooperation accord with her United Arab Emirates (UAE) counterpart Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The treaty, which to become law needs to be presented to the U.S. Congress, would help the Persian Gulf state become the first Arab country to develop a nuclear power sector. Along with last year's nuclear agreement with India, this treaty emphasizes a trend away from decades of U.S. policy dominated by the fear of nuclear proliferation. Not since the 1950s Eisenhower-era "Atoms for Peace" program has so much hope been placed in peaceful nuclear cooperation. Background The pact marks an astonishing diplomatic journey for the UAE and Shaikh Abdullah. Ten years ago in 1999, the shaikh, a son of the then ruler and a half-brother of the current UAE president, was an honored guest during a visit to Pakistan's unsafeguarded Kahuta uranium enrichment and missile facility. While there, he saw the prefabricated structures built in Sharjah, a member sheikhdom of the UAE, which were hiding the production line of the nuclear-capable Ghauri missile from U.S. satellites passing overhead. For a quarter century, until 2004, the UAE helped Pakistan elude Western export controls by serving as a vital transit point for Pakistan's purchases of nuclear-weapon-related parts and manufacturing equipment.

When the Israeli ambassador to Japan attended the peace memorial ceremony in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, the United States, Britain and France became the only nuclear powers never to have participated in the annual event marking the atomic bombing of the city. The city of Hiroshima has issued invitations to the peace ceremony to the world's nuclear powers every year since 1998. In the first year, India and Pakistan sent their ambassadors to the ceremony, followed by the Russian ambassador in 2000 and a Chinese consul in 2008. However, the U.S., France and Britain have never dispatched a representative to the solemn occasion.

In an explosive revelation that may well have unsavory foreign policy repercussions, a senior official of India's premier defense organization - the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) - who played a pivotal role in orchestrating India's nuclear program during the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998, has declared that the tests that year were a dud and not nearly as successful as projected to the world. The declaration by K Santhanam - remarkable as it comes from a top nuclear scientist directly associated with India's nuclear program - has stirred a hornet's nest in New Delhi. The scientific community and political parties - primarily the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and its principal right-wing opposition Bharatiya Janata Party under whose stewardship the tests were conducted - are scrambling to offer explanations to counter Santhanam's statement.

In an explosive revelation that may well have unsavory foreign policy repercussions, a senior official of India's premier defense organization - the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) - who played a pivotal role in orchestrating India's nuclear program during the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998, has declared that the tests that year were a dud and not nearly as successful as projected to the world. The declaration by K Santhanam - remarkable as it comes from a top nuclear scientist directly associated with India's nuclear program - has stirred a hornet's nest in New Delhi. The scientific community and political parties - primarily the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and its principal right-wing opposition Bharatiya Janata Party under whose stewardship the tests were conducted - are scrambling to offer explanations to counter Santhanam's statement.

On September 24th, U.S. President Barack Obama will preside over a U.N. Security Council session on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. In March 2010, Moscow will host a Global Nuclear Summit that the U.S. has agreed to attend. The next six months could prove hopeful or harmful-depending on the impact on Israel's nuclear arsenal. With U.S. backing, Tel Aviv has thus far avoided compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty-joining North Korea, India and Pakistan.

A U.S. official says dialogue about a global ban on nuclear blasts is under way in Washington. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty outlawing all nuclear explosions will only enter into force once adopted by the 44 states that participated in a 1996 disarmament conference and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time. So far 35 have ratified the document, excluding the United States. The U.S. Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration chief Thomas D'Agostino said Tuesday: "everyone is talking about what it takes" but acknowledged opinions were split. Other holdouts include China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan. On the Net: * http://www.ctbto.org/

A global shift toward nuclear power is prompting countries to rush to lock in long-term access to tight supplies of uranium, and China and India look to be the next players to get in on the action. A tie-up between Rosatom, the Russian state-owned producer, Rosatom and Canada-based miner Uranium One announced this week is just the latest in a series of moves on the part of Asian and European countries to lock in uranium supply to fuel construction of dozens of new reactors over the next decade.

Ending the mystery over the disappearance of the Kaiga Nuclear power plant scientist, N Mahalingam, naval divers today recovered his body from the Kali river, six days after he went missing. Naval divers fished out the body of Mahalingam, the scientific officer at the plant, who was reported missing during a morning walk on 8 June, from the river flowing near the Kaiga township, police said. Police said they are investigating whether Mahalingam had drowned or there was any foul play. sociated with its training department. Police said his family members have also confirmed the body belonged to the scientist.

In a statement June 12, Kazatomprom sought to reassure worried foreign investors that no existing agreements with foreign shareholders would be changed, despite turnover at the company and the reported arrest of its former president, Moukhtar Dzhakishev, last month. Kazatomprom, or KAP, is the world's third-largest uranium producer. In the statement, KAP's new president, Vladimir Shkolnik, said the company "understands its responsibility for resources provision of the world nuclear power industry." Shkolnik said KAP would continue the same pace of development "in order to cover the growing demand [for] our products." KAP said that its top management had met with foreign partners over the past two weeks to discuss implementation of plans ranging from uranium mining to new joint ventures. In particular, it said, negotiations were held with the representatives of Marubeni, Sumitomo, Nuclear Fuel Industries, and Japanese financial and credit and insurance companies and banks, including NEXI, JBIC, ERM, and ING. KAP said management had also met with Atomredmetzoloto, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co. Ltd., Areva, Uranium One, Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd., and others which it did not name. The statement said KAP management would meet soon with Cameco, Toshiba and Westinghouse Electric on further development of cooperation.

Numbers of nuclear explosions carried out by individual nations: UNITED STATES - 1,032 RUSSIA (SOVIET UNION) - 715 FRANCE - 210 CHINA - 45 BRITAIN - 45 INDIA - 3 PAKISTAN - 2 NORTH KOREA - 2

Pakistan's nuclear programme has been under attack right from its inception. The decade of seventies saw conspiracy theories of Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear technology clandestinely. The decades of 80s and 90s saw an orchestrated campaign to malign its programme. After being forced to cross the nuclear threshold in May 1998, Pakistan established its Nuclear Command Authority three years before India; put in place, its Strategic Plans Division (SPD) to perform functions relating to planning, coordination, and establishment of a reliable command, control, communication, and intelligence network; yet Pakistan faces a concerted campaign to instil fears regarding the security of its nuclear assets. Frederick Kagan, former West Point military historian, who devised the Bush administration's Iraq troop surge, called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan, including the US to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos. The Washington Post carried a detailed report on war-games to take out Pakistan's nukes. Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer, senior advisor to three US presidents including President Obama on Middle East and South Asian issues came up with an Op-Ed Pakistan and the bomb: How the US can divert a crisis in WSJ (May 30, 09) based on half truths, conjectures and apparent twisting of facts in pursuit of an agenda. It has been refuted by various analysts including this scribe so let it rest at that though because of Mr Bruce Riedel's position in the US government, it may be construed that his views are reflective of the Obama administration.

A group committed to eliminating nuclear weapons presented on Monday a four-step plan to achieve that goal by 2030, while acknowledging that Iran could be a "show stopper." The plan by the nonpartisan Global Zero Commission calls for the United States and Russia - the world's largest nuclear powers - to agree to reduce first to 1,000 warheads each, then to 500 each by 2021. The U.S. is believed to have about 2,200 active strategic nuclear warheads and Russia about 2,800. Each has thousands more in reserve as well as large numbers of non-strategic, or tactical, nuclear arms. During the second phase of cuts to 500, all other nuclear weapons countries would have to agree to freeze and then reduce their warhead totals. Those other countries are China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel but not North Korea, which has conducted nuclear tests but may not have a useable weapon.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher in a written response to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the EU, India and Japan reprocess nuclear fuel within their own territories at present, but she did not think the Obama administration must apply those cases of authorized reprocessing to other countries, including South Korea. She added there was no need for a revision in the Atomic Energy Agreement signed between South Korea and the United States. The comments effectively slap down calls within South Korea to start reprocessing its own spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. government seems wary of South Korea reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from the standpoint of "peaceful" use of nuclear energy, suspecting that the country over the long-term wants to make its own nuclear weapons. South Korea tried to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s, but scrapped the plan. Now the issue has re-emerged after North Korea's second nuclear test.

Admittedly, it sounds like bad science fiction, but long-term exposure to such products as diverse as reclining chairs, common kitchen utensils and tableware, elevator buttons and construction steel could be a long-term health hazard. That's because radioactively tainted metal is increasingly turning up in common consumer goods and industrial products, thanks to widespread use of radioactive isotopes, increased recycling in the United States that sometimes inadvertently processes them and imports of metal products from countries like China that have a relaxed attitude toward consumer safety. And there are reports that exporters in China, India, the former Soviet bloc and some African nations are taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying unacceptable levels of radiation in imports.

While the US has never admitted that its ally Israel has nuclear weapons, the last Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted last year to the existence of the arsenal. Anti-nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu spent eighteen years in Israeli prison for exposing the Israeli nuclear program with photos and testimony. As a condition for his release he was denied the right to speak to foreigners and reporters. But the U.S. and Israel have both continued to maintain a 'don't ask, don't tell' stance toward Israel's nuclear arsenal of approximately thirty warheads. Now, assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller may be breaking that taboo. She gave a speech in New York listing the countries that must adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. By including Israel in that list, she broke a thirty year silence by U.S. officials on the existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal.

An Israeli official on Wednesday criticized a U.S. call to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as hard to understand, citing the pact's failure to prevent countries from obtaining atomic arms. "It is therefore hard to understand why there should be such an insistence on a treaty that has proven its inefficiency," a senior official at the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller urged Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea to join the treaty. Israel does not confirm or deny foreign reports it has what arms control experts assume to be a sizeable atomic arsenal.

The Nikkei Report, Tokyo, reports that Russia has announced it will build 26 new nuclear reactors with electricity generation capacities of 1,000-1,200 MWe each by 2030. Assuming the Russian pricing model, in constant dollars, prevails over the next two decades, the new build has a staggering cost of $78-to-$104 billion. The Japanese newspaper said that although Russia is encountering increasing financial difficulties, it is putting nuclear power at the center of its energy policy. Success will depend in part on the Russian rouble being worth more than a plugged nickel when the current world financial crisis turns around. Russia plans to pay for its domestic new build in part with earnings from export of its nuclear reactors in deals such as the one it inked with India last December.

Toshiba Corp., Japan's largest supplier of reactors, will spend 10 billion yen ($103 million) buying a nuclear-fuel manufacturer to help compete with global rivals such as Areva SA for new atomic power plants. Toshiba subsidiary Westinghouse Electric Co. agreed to buy a 52 percent stake in Nuclear Fuel Industries Ltd. from Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. and Furukawa Electric Co., Toshiba said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange today. It plans to complete the purchase in May, it said. Better access to fuel may help Toshiba win orders as competition with France's Areva and an alliance between Hitachi Ltd. and General Electric Co. intensifies. Nuclear power generation is set to increase as developing countries led by China and India build more reactors to meet demand and cut carbon emissions blamed for global warming.