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Nuclear Solutions Lost In Ambiguity
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Ambiguity:
Mordechai Vanunu; a lawyer in Israel representing
Dimona employees; two solutions for nuclear waste
that give us alternative viable energy; a portable
nuclear weapons detection system since 1999;
blackmail and extortion; another dead scientist
and the closing of the National Lab in Los Alamos
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Mary La Rosa • 26 August 2004
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While Mordechai Vanunu awaits further reprisals, perhaps
further punishments for what he continues to declare
proudly his act of good conscience, a dynamic new
company in the same country that does not want him
but also does not want to allow him to leave, has
acquired a contract to clean up some of the nuclear
mess for which Vanunu has sacrificed almost 20 years
of his life. This nuclear clean up does not
begin in the Negev, but will take place in Chernobyl and is projected to
be only the beginning of an enormous
projected profit as well as long awaited remedy
for that which Vanunu has been trying to get our
attention and that which his government has denied
exists yet alone has ever acknowledged as a radioactive
problem.
Similar to Mr Vanunu's ambiguous existence as"free"
man, and similar to the Israeli government's position
on its nuclear weapons count and policy about its
count, Israel's nuclear waste follows in much
the same ambiguity, or perhaps until this future
Plasma-Gasification-Melting process can begin to
work an ambiguous miracle at home as well contracts
abroad.
Ambiguity is a word that serves political agendas
better than it does justice to individual citizens,
unless of course you live in a country where you
are innocent until proven guilty. Ambiguity
in Israel has not afforded Mordechai Vanunu any
benefit, either in benefit of doubt for his
good conscience or benefit of justice for his
completion of eighteen and a half years' retribution,
most of which was spent in solitary confinement
with ongoing torture provided by an ambiguous
prison authority.
Mordechai Vanunu's unique case as a whistleblower
in a country that seems not capable of even
self scrutiny or criticism, further challenges that
government's policies of ambiguity about a
variety of legal, moral and ethical issues. But
other Israeli citizens also make such challenges
and continue to suffer from ambiguity in how a government
assumes or will not assume its responsibility in
assurances and /or compensation for complete, in
depth reportage on public safety and illnesses that
have predominated among those who have worked or
live(d) near nuclear reactor activities.
Israel�s Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has always
denied any negligence or culpability with regards
to radiation levels and the hazards of working with
nuclear energy. And the AEC in Israel
makes very good use of the state�s policy of ambiguity
by avoiding any sort of inspections while continuing
to deny any problems from the past have ever existed.
The average citizen is left to wonder about
exposure and the official denials,
especially as they become ill due to sicknesses
associated with radiation.
"The reactor said I did not work in radioactive
elements but my medical records show I had uranium
in my urine," said one former employee
from Dimona.
In 1999, while Mordechai
Vanunu was still languishing in his prison cell,
a Jerusalem lawyer named Reuven Laster questioned the authority
of the state in its denial that any problem
exists and began to represent groups of
people who worked at the reactor in the early
years, fifties, sixties and seventies.
This American
born lawyer has a record for championing
the environment as well as individuals who suffer
from health hazards within the environment.
Mr Laster represents clients who press for accountability
of official but ambiguous policies involved
in the failure to monitor workers who were specifically
active in chemical or radioactive accidents.
Obviously,trying
to prove a link between the exposure and the illness
has been extremely difficult for any kind of legal
procedure and even after a struggle to obtain
a review of all the medical records from the reactor
during certain periods of time, Mr Laster found
various years 'suspiciously' deleted. Now partner
in a larger law firm, this advocate continues
to pursue justice for employees who worked at
risk at Dimona where exposure to harm seems
to have led to cancers and/or an early deaths.
The number of clients he represents is growing
but there are those who will never know just and
fair compensation, because those in government
who have been silent choose to remain silent and
without the good conscience required to afford
justice to those who have suffered illness and
death by ambiguity and silence of government
officials. Recent evidence of migratory birds seems to point to the
suffering of wild life as well.
In the midst of this dismal
guessing about exactly how harmful old nuclear
reactors are, comes such bright news and
such hope for the world at large that
one simply must pause and consider why hasn't
there been a celebration in all mainstream
medias around the world? One can also
only wonder why entire countries and governments
do not sell off every other project in order to
get some clean up sooner rather than
too later. Add to the discovery a way of
turning harmful waste products into an energy
source other than oil!
A process called PGM, Plasma-Gasification-Melting
works the remedy by using plasma (ionized
gas) in a reactor in order to melt down the radioactive
materials. A fairly new (2002) Israeli company
called Environmental Energy Resources, Ltd. (EER) has developed the PGM method for changing nuclear waste into a
variety of useful byproducts such as electricity.
The contract for the Chernobyl clean up is spread
over 20-25 years with annual gross revenues estimated
presently at $30-35 million. EER is under management of Itschak
Shrem, one of Israel�s top financial wizards of
venture capital and a partner in the premiere
investment house, SFK (Shrem, Fudim and Kelner).
Shrem has plans to raise money from international
sources as well as homeland.
According to Isra Cast Technology News, "The PGM
process was originally designed and developed
over twenty years ago at the Russian Research
Center, 'Kurchatov Institute'. The development
and adaptation of the PGM Technology involves
active participation of Russian scientists who
are among the original developers of this technology."
The process by which to change radioactive waste
into something less harmful, however, could NOT
have come as revelation to the Institute of Industrial
Mathematics in Beersheva Israel, where previous
to Environmental Energy Resources, IIM had worked
out a deal to lease its technologies to an American
nuclear physicist called Dr Paul M. Brown who
had developed a process with similar end results
called GHR in 2001. GHR tritium removal
technology involves the irradiation of specific
radioactive isotopes to force the emission of
a neutron, thus producing an isotope of reduced
atomic mass.
On February 28th, 2001, Los Alamos National Laboratory
also entered into a support contract with Paul
Brown's company Nuclear Solutions. In November 14 of
2001 The Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire
Service reported, �Japanese Scientists Corroborate
Nuclear Waste Remediation Technology Owned by
Nuclear Solutions" and confirmed the viability
of photonuclear transmutation for nuclear waste
remediation and the development of a photonuclear-based
system for transmutation of nuclear waste and
safe, clean generation of electricity.
Then in March 14, 2002 Dr Brown announced that
a deal was made with Israel's Institute of Industrial
Mathematics that involved the treatment of radioactive
water (separate and different from GHR).
"Upon conclusion of the commercialization phase,
which is expected to last 12 to 15 months, IIM
and NSOL will aggressively pursue the filling
of worldwide patents. IIM will own the intellectual
property and
NSOL will have the
exclusive worldwide rights for a period of 20
years."
Dr Brown and the team at Nuclear Solutions, seemed
poised in leading the clean up of nuclear waste
and yet the company was troubled financially and
Dr Brown was under peersonal attack. Tragically
on April 7, 2002 Dr Brown was dead at 47 from
a car accident about which there still lurks the
previous threats he had received over a period
of time just prior to the accident.
Dr Brown's death put an odd tilt to the
company's plans for the future and the company took
another spiral plunge down. The company
AND Dr Brown appear to have been victims of criminal
extortion and racketeering via the machinations
of an Egyptian born financial analyst later charged
in a nationwide stock swindle that involved FBI
agents and FBI computers and who was also
under suspicions for having made large amount
of stock transactions just prior to 911.
Lynn Wingate, an FBI agent assigned to the bureau's
Albuquerque office; Jeffrey Royer, a former Oklahoma
City agent who resigned late last year; and short-seller
Amr "Tony" Elgindy were among five charged in a securities fraud
indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn,
N.Y. In exchange for money, the two FBI agents
used confidential databases to provide Elgindy
and other co-conspirators with information about
publicly traded companies, the indictment said.
Elgindy then spread negative information about
the companies on his Web site and to subscribers
of his e-mail newsletter, InsideTruth.com, thus
bringing down the price of the stock. According
to the indictment, a FBI agent searched the agency's
confidential National Crime Information Center
database and discovered a "criminal" history of
a top executive for a company called Nuclear Solutions.
The same day, Elgindy began sending e-mail
calling the executive "a convicted felon", he
then sold the company's stock short.
The indictment accused Messrs.
Royer and Elgindy of repeatedly short selling
stock. Mr Elgindy is also charged with extortion.
There is no mention why a company directly
involved with nuclear waste would be highlighted
for such an operation as Elgindy had going but
Mr. Elgindy spread info that Dr Brown was a convicted
felon and the stock sold short six times. Mr Elgindy
continued to personally threaten Dr Brown.
But by the time Elgindy and the FBI agents
were arrested, Brown was no longer alive to tell
a different tale.
Fortunately for Nuclear Solutions,
just one month before his death, John Dempsey
came on board. Dr Brown, while still under
threat, announced the appointment
of John Dempsey. Mr Dempsey was a
graduate of the Naval academy and had served
as a commissioned officer onboard nuclear submarines
with an area of expertise in nuclear engineering followed
by a 21 year old career at Bechtel. Just before his untimely death,
Brown made Dempsey executive vice president
and chief operating officer.
Did John Dempsey's appointment herald the
trouble or anticipate it? How significant was
his past at Bechtel?
Since Brown's death, an office in Moscow
has been opened. There is a "new" scientist at
Nuclear Solutions named Boris
Muchnik. He not
only replaced Dr Brown but another original
team member, Dr. Qi Ao, as former Vice President
of Research and Development. Dr Muchnik's prior
record of technology had less to do with nuclear
physics claim and more to do with the invention
of recordable and erasable cd and laser technology.
In lauding the rising company, medias such
as CNet News have made no mention of Brown
and his life long creative effort to solve the
problems of nuclear waste and his creation of
nuclear solutions.
Meanwhile, the National Labs at Los Alamos, where
Dr Brown had serious relationship, especially
in discussing his betavoltaic batteries, has now
suspended all activities since it is in the throes
of a security
scandal proving
how negligent and lax the lab has been
with regards to equipment gone missing, credit
card bills and now more recently, non existent
but missing disks and the unauthorized presence
of international scientists allowed access to
materials of high level security concerns.
In other words, the National Lab at Los Alamos,
dealing in particular with nuclear energy
and weaponry has placed US national security at
grave risk before, during and after the 911 attacks
via careless that merited its closing and reassessment.
Most of Dr Brown's life
and creative talent had a practical focus in
the present and dealt almost exclusively with
the recycling of nuclear waste and including
radioactive water remediation. But it is astounding
that he also created a portable detection system for nuclear weapons. This particular invention was created well before his death but
only now is being featured as important industry.
Since 1999, he and his work was known to
First International Conference On Free
Energy US Dept of State hosts in Washington,
DC.
However, he simply could not get the backing,
nor depend upon a government to protect
him from FBI computers and extortion. Questions
remain but will probably fade fast into the
first couple of million dollars in profit that
Nuclear Solutions potentially will be earning
in the near future. The company will probably
do every bit as well as its Israeli counterpart,
EER, even if it did not get a Chernobyl contract.
After all we do not need Vanunu's commitment to
tell us all that there seems to be enough dangerous
nuclear waste for everyone to make money.
Dr Paul Brown's commitment to solution for a better
environment remains a life's work lost
in the ambiguity of business deals and political
intrigue.
Jerusalem lawyer, Reuven Laster's ongoing advocacy
for the environment and victims' rights struggles
against the persistent ambiguity presented by
a government that lacks moral and ethical concerns
about its citizens' well being
Mordechai Vanunu's good conscience and less
than free life continues to be currently threatened
by ambiguity. Despite the advocacy of faithful
supporters in Israel and the international community
at large, Vanunu remains under restrictions
meant to keep 20 year old policies and wrongs
camaflouged as present security risks.
"I have no
more secrets to tell" ..but YOU do!, YOU do! seems
to keep coming from Vanunu.
Without structure and scrupulous guidance, ambiguity
in government and business practice does NOT protect
the innocent but seems rather willfully inplace
with specific intent to provide legal shield for
all sorts of injustices and immoral and unethical
acts.
Ambiguity about nuclear weapons reflects unaccountability
and irresponsibility not exclusive to
Israel's government; it reflects the previous
and ongoing potential disaster of an
ambiguous nuclear presence and most recently
it has led another country rushing into war without
as much regard for human life as company contracts.
Mary La Rosa is a librarian and artist living
in ambiguity 20 miles from NYC
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All
censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging
current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress
is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and
executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently
the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.
- George Bernard Shaw
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