Sunday, March 13, 2011
Japan quake: Possible meltdown in nuclear plants, say officials
Japan quake: Possible meltdown in nuclear plants, say officials
Tokyo: Japanese officials struggled on Sunday to contain a widening nuclear crisis in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, saying they presumed that partial meltdowns had occurred at two crippled reactors and that they were facing serious cooling problems at three more.
video of Nuclear Power Plant explodeing
The emergency appeared to be the worst involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. The developments at two separate nuclear plants prompted the evacuation of more than 200,000 people. Japanese officials said they had also ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defence Forces since World War II to assist in the relief effort.
On Saturday, Japanese officials took the extraordinary step of flooding the crippled No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles north of Tokyo, with seawater in a last-ditch effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown.
Then on Sunday, cooling failed at a second reactor - No. 3 - and core melting was presumed at both, said the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. Cooling had failed at three reactors at a nuclear complex nearby, Fukushima Daini, although he said conditions there were considered less dire for now.
With high pressure inside the reactors at Daiichi hampering efforts to pump in cooling water, plant operators had to release radioactive vapor into the atmosphere. Radiation levels outside the plant, which had retreated overnight, shot up to 1,204 microsieverts per hour, or over twice Japan's legal limit, Mr. Edano said. (Watch: Japan, the day after)
NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, flashed instructions to evacuees: close doors and windows; place a wet towel over the nose and mouth; cover up as much as possible. At a news conference, Mr. Edano called for calm. "If measures can be taken, we will be able to ensure the safety of the reactor," he said.
One result of the venting may have been setting off an explosion, caused by either steam or hydrogen, that tore the outer wall and roof off the building housing reactor No. 1, although the steel containment of the reactor remained in place, officials said.
Even before the statement on Sunday by Mr. Edano, it was clear form radioactive materials turning up in trace amounts outside the reactors that fuel damage had occurred. The existence or extent of melting might not be clear until workers can open up the reactors and examine the fuel, which could be months. (See pics: Japan earthquake triggers tsunami)
A meltdown occurs when there is insufficient cooling of the reactor core, and it is the most dangerous kind of a nuclear power accident because of the risk of radiation releases. The radiation levels reported so far by the Japanese authorities are far above normal but still too small to pose a hazard to human health if the exposure continued for a brief period. The fear was that more core damage would bring bigger releases.
The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation around the plant, and Japanese news media said that three workers at the facility were suffering from full-on radiation sickness.
Even before the explosion on Saturday, officials said they had detected radioactive cesium, which is created when uranium fuel is split, an indication that some of the nuclear fuel in the reactor was already damaged.
How much damage the fuel suffered remained uncertain, though safety officials insisted repeatedly through the day that radiation leaks outside the plant remained small and did not pose a major health risk.
However, they also told the International Atomic Energy Agency that they were making preparations to distribute iodine, which helps protect the thyroid gland from radiation exposure, to people living near Daiichi and Daini.
Worries about the safety of the two plants worsened on Saturday because executives of the company that runs them, Tokyo Electric Power, and government officials gave confusing accounts of the location and causes of the dramatic midday explosion and the damage it caused.
Late Saturday night, officials said that the explosion at Daiichi occurred in a structure housing turbines near its No. 1 reactor at the plant, rather than inside the reactor itself. But photographs of the damage did not make clear that this was the case.
They said that the blast, which may have been caused by a sharp buildup of hydrogen when the reactor's cooling system failed, destroyed the concrete structure surrounding the reactor but did not collapse the critical steel container inside. This pattern of damage cast doubt on the idea that the explosion was in the turbine building.
"We've confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged," Mr. Edano said in a news conference on Saturday night. "The explosion didn't occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside. At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside, so we'd like everyone to respond calmly."
Japanese nuclear safety officials and international experts said that because of crucial design differences, the release of radiation at Daiichi would most likely be much smaller than at Chernobyl even if the plant had a complete core meltdown, which they said it had not.
After a full day of worries about the radiation leaking at Daiichi, Tokyo Electric Power said an explosion occurred "near" the No. 1 reactor at Daiichi around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. It said four of its workers were injured in the blast.
The decision to flood the reactor core with corrosive seawater, experts said, was an indication that Tokyo Electric Power and Japanese authorities had probably decided to scrap the plant. "This plant is almost 40 years old, and now it's over for that place," said Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector for the I.A.E.A., and now a visiting scholar at Harvard.
Mr. Heinonen lived in Japan in the 1980s, monitoring its nuclear industry, and visited the stricken plant many times. Based on the reports he was seeing, he said he believed that the explosion was caused by a hydrogen formation, which could have begun inside the reactor core. "Now, every hour they gain in keeping the reactor cooling down is crucial," he said.
But he was also concerned about the presence of spent nuclear fuel in a pool inside the same reactor building. The pool, too, needs to remain full of water to suppress gamma radiation and prevent the old fuel from melting. If the spent fuel is also exposed -- and so far there are only sketchy reports about the condition of that building -- it could also pose a significant risk to the workers trying to prevent a meltdown.
Both Daiichi and Daini were shut down by Friday's earthquake, but the loss of power in the area and damage to the plants' generators from the ensuing tsunami crippled the cooling systems. Those are crucial after a shutdown to cool down the nuclear fuel rods.
The malfunctions allowed pressure to build up beyond the design capacity of the reactors. Early Saturday, officials had said that small amounts of radioactive vapor were expected to be released into the atmosphere to prevent damage to the containment systems and that they were evacuating people in the area as a precaution.
Those releases apparently did not prevent the buildup of hydrogen inside the plant, which ignited and exploded Saturday afternoon, government officials said. They said the explosion itself did not increase the amount of radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. However, safety officials urged people who were not evacuating but still lived relatively nearby to cover their mouths and stay indoors.
David Lochbaum, who worked at three reactors in the United States with designs similar to Daiichi, and who was later hired by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to teach its personnel about that technology, said that judging by photographs of the stricken plant, the explosion appeared to have occurred in the turbine hall, not the reactor vessel or the containment that surrounds the vessel.
The Daiichi reactor is a boiling-water reactor. Inside the containment, the reactor sends its steam out to a turbine. The turbine converts the steam's energy into rotary motion, which turns a generator and makes electricity.
But as the water goes through the reactor, some water molecules break up into hydrogen and oxygen. A system in the turbine hall usually scrubs out those gases. Hydrogen is also used in the turbine hall to cool the electric generator. Hydrogen from both sources has sometimes escaped and exploded, Mr. Lochbaum said, but in this case, there is an additional source of hydrogen: interaction of steam with the metal of the fuel rods. Operators may have vented that hydrogen into the turbine hall.
Earlier Saturday, before the explosion, a Japanese nuclear safety panel said the radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at Daiichi. Some radioactive material had also seeped outside, with radiation levels near the main gate measured at eight times normal levels, NHK quoted nuclear safety officials as saying.
The emergency at Daiichi began shortly after the earthquake struck Friday afternoon. Emergency diesel generators, which kicked in to run the cooling system after the electrical power grid failed, shut down about an hour after the earthquake. There was speculation that the tsunami had flooded the generators, knocking them out of service.
For some time, the plant was able to operate in a battery-controlled cooling mode. Tokyo Electric Power said that by Saturday morning it had also installed a mobile generator to ensure that the cooling system would continue operating even after reserve battery power was depleted. Even so, the company said it needed to conduct "controlled containment venting" in order to avoid an "uncontrolled rupture and damage" to the containment unit.
Why the controlled release of pressure did not succeed in addressing the problem was not immediately explained. Tokyo Electric Power and government nuclear safety officials also did not explain the precise sequence of failures at the plant.
Daiichi and other nuclear facilities are designed with extensive backup systems that are supposed to function in emergencies to ensure the plants can be shut down safely.
For NDTV Updates, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook
video of Nuclear Power Plant explodeing
The emergency appeared to be the worst involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. The developments at two separate nuclear plants prompted the evacuation of more than 200,000 people. Japanese officials said they had also ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defence Forces since World War II to assist in the relief effort.
On Saturday, Japanese officials took the extraordinary step of flooding the crippled No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles north of Tokyo, with seawater in a last-ditch effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown.
Then on Sunday, cooling failed at a second reactor - No. 3 - and core melting was presumed at both, said the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. Cooling had failed at three reactors at a nuclear complex nearby, Fukushima Daini, although he said conditions there were considered less dire for now.
With high pressure inside the reactors at Daiichi hampering efforts to pump in cooling water, plant operators had to release radioactive vapor into the atmosphere. Radiation levels outside the plant, which had retreated overnight, shot up to 1,204 microsieverts per hour, or over twice Japan's legal limit, Mr. Edano said. (Watch: Japan, the day after)
NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, flashed instructions to evacuees: close doors and windows; place a wet towel over the nose and mouth; cover up as much as possible. At a news conference, Mr. Edano called for calm. "If measures can be taken, we will be able to ensure the safety of the reactor," he said.
One result of the venting may have been setting off an explosion, caused by either steam or hydrogen, that tore the outer wall and roof off the building housing reactor No. 1, although the steel containment of the reactor remained in place, officials said.
Even before the statement on Sunday by Mr. Edano, it was clear form radioactive materials turning up in trace amounts outside the reactors that fuel damage had occurred. The existence or extent of melting might not be clear until workers can open up the reactors and examine the fuel, which could be months. (See pics: Japan earthquake triggers tsunami)
A meltdown occurs when there is insufficient cooling of the reactor core, and it is the most dangerous kind of a nuclear power accident because of the risk of radiation releases. The radiation levels reported so far by the Japanese authorities are far above normal but still too small to pose a hazard to human health if the exposure continued for a brief period. The fear was that more core damage would bring bigger releases.
The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation around the plant, and Japanese news media said that three workers at the facility were suffering from full-on radiation sickness.
Even before the explosion on Saturday, officials said they had detected radioactive cesium, which is created when uranium fuel is split, an indication that some of the nuclear fuel in the reactor was already damaged.
How much damage the fuel suffered remained uncertain, though safety officials insisted repeatedly through the day that radiation leaks outside the plant remained small and did not pose a major health risk.
However, they also told the International Atomic Energy Agency that they were making preparations to distribute iodine, which helps protect the thyroid gland from radiation exposure, to people living near Daiichi and Daini.
Worries about the safety of the two plants worsened on Saturday because executives of the company that runs them, Tokyo Electric Power, and government officials gave confusing accounts of the location and causes of the dramatic midday explosion and the damage it caused.
Late Saturday night, officials said that the explosion at Daiichi occurred in a structure housing turbines near its No. 1 reactor at the plant, rather than inside the reactor itself. But photographs of the damage did not make clear that this was the case.
They said that the blast, which may have been caused by a sharp buildup of hydrogen when the reactor's cooling system failed, destroyed the concrete structure surrounding the reactor but did not collapse the critical steel container inside. This pattern of damage cast doubt on the idea that the explosion was in the turbine building.
"We've confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged," Mr. Edano said in a news conference on Saturday night. "The explosion didn't occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside. At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside, so we'd like everyone to respond calmly."
Japanese nuclear safety officials and international experts said that because of crucial design differences, the release of radiation at Daiichi would most likely be much smaller than at Chernobyl even if the plant had a complete core meltdown, which they said it had not.
After a full day of worries about the radiation leaking at Daiichi, Tokyo Electric Power said an explosion occurred "near" the No. 1 reactor at Daiichi around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. It said four of its workers were injured in the blast.
The decision to flood the reactor core with corrosive seawater, experts said, was an indication that Tokyo Electric Power and Japanese authorities had probably decided to scrap the plant. "This plant is almost 40 years old, and now it's over for that place," said Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector for the I.A.E.A., and now a visiting scholar at Harvard.
Mr. Heinonen lived in Japan in the 1980s, monitoring its nuclear industry, and visited the stricken plant many times. Based on the reports he was seeing, he said he believed that the explosion was caused by a hydrogen formation, which could have begun inside the reactor core. "Now, every hour they gain in keeping the reactor cooling down is crucial," he said.
But he was also concerned about the presence of spent nuclear fuel in a pool inside the same reactor building. The pool, too, needs to remain full of water to suppress gamma radiation and prevent the old fuel from melting. If the spent fuel is also exposed -- and so far there are only sketchy reports about the condition of that building -- it could also pose a significant risk to the workers trying to prevent a meltdown.
Both Daiichi and Daini were shut down by Friday's earthquake, but the loss of power in the area and damage to the plants' generators from the ensuing tsunami crippled the cooling systems. Those are crucial after a shutdown to cool down the nuclear fuel rods.
The malfunctions allowed pressure to build up beyond the design capacity of the reactors. Early Saturday, officials had said that small amounts of radioactive vapor were expected to be released into the atmosphere to prevent damage to the containment systems and that they were evacuating people in the area as a precaution.
Those releases apparently did not prevent the buildup of hydrogen inside the plant, which ignited and exploded Saturday afternoon, government officials said. They said the explosion itself did not increase the amount of radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. However, safety officials urged people who were not evacuating but still lived relatively nearby to cover their mouths and stay indoors.
David Lochbaum, who worked at three reactors in the United States with designs similar to Daiichi, and who was later hired by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to teach its personnel about that technology, said that judging by photographs of the stricken plant, the explosion appeared to have occurred in the turbine hall, not the reactor vessel or the containment that surrounds the vessel.
The Daiichi reactor is a boiling-water reactor. Inside the containment, the reactor sends its steam out to a turbine. The turbine converts the steam's energy into rotary motion, which turns a generator and makes electricity.
But as the water goes through the reactor, some water molecules break up into hydrogen and oxygen. A system in the turbine hall usually scrubs out those gases. Hydrogen is also used in the turbine hall to cool the electric generator. Hydrogen from both sources has sometimes escaped and exploded, Mr. Lochbaum said, but in this case, there is an additional source of hydrogen: interaction of steam with the metal of the fuel rods. Operators may have vented that hydrogen into the turbine hall.
Earlier Saturday, before the explosion, a Japanese nuclear safety panel said the radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at Daiichi. Some radioactive material had also seeped outside, with radiation levels near the main gate measured at eight times normal levels, NHK quoted nuclear safety officials as saying.
The emergency at Daiichi began shortly after the earthquake struck Friday afternoon. Emergency diesel generators, which kicked in to run the cooling system after the electrical power grid failed, shut down about an hour after the earthquake. There was speculation that the tsunami had flooded the generators, knocking them out of service.
For some time, the plant was able to operate in a battery-controlled cooling mode. Tokyo Electric Power said that by Saturday morning it had also installed a mobile generator to ensure that the cooling system would continue operating even after reserve battery power was depleted. Even so, the company said it needed to conduct "controlled containment venting" in order to avoid an "uncontrolled rupture and damage" to the containment unit.
Why the controlled release of pressure did not succeed in addressing the problem was not immediately explained. Tokyo Electric Power and government nuclear safety officials also did not explain the precise sequence of failures at the plant.
Daiichi and other nuclear facilities are designed with extensive backup systems that are supposed to function in emergencies to ensure the plants can be shut down safely.
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Story first published:
March 13, 2011 07:23 IST
Saturday, March 12, 2011
'Unsafe' Fort McMurray apartments evacuated - Calgary - CBC News
'Unsafe' Fort McMurray apartments evacuated - Calgary - CBC News
Penhorwood Street in Fort McMurray, Alta.,
CBC News
Posted: Mar 12, 2011 7:05 PM MT
Last Updated: Mar 12, 2011 7:05 PM MT
Back to accessibility linksBeginning of Story Content
More than 300 people have been evacuated from the seven apartment buildings in Fort McMurray, Alta. after a structural engineer's report found the buildings unsafe.
The report, commissioned by the Penhorwood Condominium Association, said parts of the buildings could shift and cause a break in gas line, leading to a fire that would be difficult to control.
'Some people were angry, some people were upset, some people were afraid, some people were really concerned.'—Allan Vinni, president of the Penhorwood Condominium Association
Tyran Ault, a spokesperson for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, said his office received the report Friday and began evacuating the 168 units shortly before midnight under an emergency order pursuant to the Safety Codes Act.
"We were told around 11 o'clock and then we were able to organize our emergency personnel and start the door-knocking at 11:30 last night," Ault said Saturday.
Tenants of the Penhorwood apartments were given 10 minutes to gather some belongings before they had to leave.
'Pretty traumatic'
Allan Vinni, president of the Penhorwood condominium association, said the evacuation was "pretty traumatic" for many of the residents.
"Some people were angry, some people were upset, some people were afraid, some people were really concerned," Vinni said.
"Those are all valid things to feel when you get rousted our of your home at midnight with no understanding of what's going on or when you can go back."
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo set up an information and reception centre across the street from some of the apartment buildings in a gymnasium at the Syncrude Sport and Wellness Centre on Franklin Ave.
"We're making sure that all residents have proper lodging for however long they may be affected, as well as food services and personal services should they require it," Ault said.
Approximately 190 people registered with the reception centre, but only two required lodging by Saturday afternoon, he said. Most are staying with friends and family and no one spent the night in the gymnasium Friday night.
Ault said it is now up to the property management association to secure a structural engineer to examine the facilities and recommend or oversee necessary changes.
Knew it was coming
Although the evacuation was sudden, Ault said, "it seemed that a lot of people knew this was coming."
"The condo association has been aware of these structural concerns in the past and this report seems to reaffirm those for them," he said.
For the past few years, the condo association has been engaged in a lawsuit with the developer over deficiencies in the buildings.
Vinni, speaking as a member of the condo board, said the board had engaged the services of "a very experienced" professional structural engineer. The engineer told Vinni and others in a conference call on Friday that he was concerned about the immediate structural integrity of the buildings.
"He saw a lot of fresh failures of load-bearing structural pieces, like beams, rim blocks and mash blocks," Vinni said. "He issued a letter in his capacity as a registered engineer that he didn't think it was safe for people to be in that building — in any of those buildings."
The decision to evacuate was made at 4:30 p.m. MT, Vinni said.
A day later, many of the displaced residents are calmer. "They're better today than they were last night," Vinni said Saturday afternoon.
But the upheaval is not over: "We still don't know, to this minute, when anybody will be able to go back in to retrieve any more personal possessions," he said.
A team of engineers is flying up Sunday morning to determine how to safely let residents back inside to retrieve their belongings.
The Penhorwood apartments are located at Penhorwood Street in the lower townsite of Fort McMurray, Alta.
With files from CBC's Andrea Huncar in EdmontonStory Tools
Japanese authorities rush to save lives, avert nuclear crisis - CNN.com
Japanese authorities rush to save lives, avert nuclear crisis - CNN.com
Sendai, Japan (CNN) -- Japanese authorities are operating on the presumption that possible meltdowns are under way at two nuclear reactors, two days after a massive earthquake, a government official said Sunday.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano added, however, that there have been no indications yet of hazardous emissions of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
The attempts to avert a possible nuclear crisis, centered on the Fukushima Daiichi facility in northeast Japan, came as rescuers frantically scrambled to find survivors following the country's strongest-ever earthquake and a devastating tsunami that, minutes later, brought crushing walls of water that wiped out nearly everything in their paths.
Edano told reporters there is a "possibility" of a meltdown at the plant's No. 1 reactor, adding, "It is inside the reactor. We can't see." He then said authorities are also "assuming the possibility of a meltdown" at the facility's No. 3 reactor.
A meltdown is a catastrophic failure of the reactor core, with a potential for widespread radiation release.
Edano said only a "minor level" of radiation has been released into the environment -- saying it all came from a controlled release of radioactive steam, insisting there have been no leaks and it is not harmful to human health.
About 180,000 people were being evacuated from within 10 to 20 kilometers (6 to 12 miles) of the Daiichi plant, in addition to the thousands that have already been taken away who live closer by. More than 30,000 more were being evacuated from their homes within 10 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiini nuclear facility located in the same prefecture.
The news of the possible meltdowns came as rescue efforts resumed Sunday morning in areas devastated by the 8.9-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami, which unleashed a wall of seawater that decimated entire neighborhoods.
Rescuers dug through mud and rubble to find the buried, both alive and dead. Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said more than 3,000 people have been rescued, according to the nation's Kyodo News Agency.
The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami rose to 801, with hundreds more missing, authorities said Sunday.
At least 678 are missing, according to the National Police Agency Emergency Disaster Headquarters. The number of dead is expected to go up as rescuers reach more hard-hit areas
The number is expected to rise as rescuers reach more hard-hit areas. In one coastal town alone -- Minamisanriku, in Myagi Prefecture -- some 9,500 people, half the town's population, were unaccounted for.
With most stores and gas stations closed, a main task for many in the hardest-hit areas Sunday morning was getting by -- and, in some cases, getting out. Scores lined up at the few gas stations, drug stores, and supermarkets that had opened, with the shelves largely empty amid the rush to get food and the difficulty in restocking it.
They also braved an seemingly endless barrage of aftershocks. The U.S. Geological Survey reported more than 140 such quakes -- magnitude 4.5 and higher, including a 6.2-magnitude quake just before 10:30 a.m. Sunday -- in, near, or off of the east coast of the Japanese island.
Friday's quake was centered about 130 kilometers (80 miles) from Sendai, a coastal city with a population of about a million. While there was little visible earthquake damage in that city, the tsunami brought devastation at least several miles inland.
Sunday's sunshine highlighted muddy tsunami debris on every street. The force of the water wiped away houses, stacked cars on top of each other, and left the ground covered in thick, brown mud.
Search-and-rescue helicopters flew over the city to rescue anyone trapped in the rubble. A few hundred people were still unaccounted for in just one neighborhood of Sendai.
Meanwhile, millions more around Japan were dealing with other repercussions of Friday's quake.
About 2.5 million households -- just over 4% of the total in Japan -- were without electricity Sunday, according to Ichiro Fujisaki, the nation's U.S. ambassador. This marks a drop from the previous number, when 6 million households had no power.
A desire to conserve power prompted decisions to turn off lights Saturday at a host of landmarks all around Japan -- some of them hundreds of miles from the main quake's epicenter, like the Tsutenkaku Tower in Osaka, Tokyo Tower and Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo, and Bay Bridge in Yokohama, the Kyodo News Agency reported.
Japan plans to dispatch 100,000 members of its defense forces to the quake-ravaged region -- double the previous number -- Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said Sunday, according to Kyodo.
Japan's government also has made a formal request for U.S. aid, including military support, and full planning for deployment is in effect, with the U.S. military in Japan taking the lead, according to Sgt. Maj. Stephen Valley with U.S. Forces Japan.
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrived off Japan's coast Sunday morning to support Japanese forces in disaster relief operations, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement.
The U.S. Agency for International Development sent two search and rescue teams of about 150 people and 12 rescue dogs trained to find survivors. They were expected to arrive Sunday morning and immediately begin working alongside Japanese and international teams.
At least 48 other countries and the European Union also have offered relief to Japan, and supplies and personnel are already on the way.
Friday's quake is the strongest earthquake in recorded history to hit Japan, according to U.S. Geologic Survey records that date to 1900. The world's largest recorded quake took place in Chile on May 22, 1960, with a magnitude of 9.5, the USGS said.
CNN's Tom Watkins, Anna Coren, Kyung Lah, Paula Hancocks, Brian Walker, Kevin Voigt and Sean Morris contributed to this report.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Rebels in Libya Gain Firepower and Defectors - NYTimes.com
Rebels in Libya Gain Firepower and Defectors - NYTimes.com
Published: February 27, 201
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi chanted slogans in the center of Zawiya, Libya, on Sunday. More Photos »
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM
Published: February 27, 201
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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Benghazi on Sunday. More Photos »
In a further sign of their strength, the rebels also talked about tapping revenue from the vast Libyan oil resources now under their control — estimated by some oil company officials to be about 80 percent of the country’s total. And in recognition of the insurrection’s growing power, Italy’s foreign minister suspended a nonaggression treaty with Libya on the ground that the Libyan state “no longer exists.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States was reaching out to the rebels to “offer any kind of assistance.”
The most striking display of strength was seen here, 30 miles from Colonel Qaddafi’s Tripoli redoubt. Zawiyah is one of several cities near the capital controlled by rebels, who have repulsed repeated attempts by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces to retake them. And the arsenal they displayed helped to explain how the rebels held Zawiyah.
“Army, army, army!” excited residents shouted, pointing to a defected soldier standing watch at Zawiyah’s entrance as he raised his machine gun in the air and held up two fingers for victory.
A few yards away a captured anti-aircraft gun fired several deafening salutes into the air, and gleeful residents invited newcomers to clamber aboard one of several army tanks now in rebel hands. Residents said that when Colonel Qaddafi’s forces mounted a deadly assault to retake the city last Thursday — shell holes were visible in the central mosque and ammunition littered the central square — local army units switched sides to join the rebels, as about 2,000 police officers had done the week before.
And on Sunday, scores of residents armed with machine guns and rifles joined in a chant that has become the slogan of pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and across the Arab world: “The people want to bring down the regime!”
The opposition’s display came as a global effort to isolate Colonel Qaddafi and possibly force his resignation gained momentum over the weekend, with the United Nations Security Council moving to impose punitive financial sanctions and NATO allies discussing steps that included a possible no-fly zone over Libya.
But with their increasing firepower, the rebels appeared to break the pattern of nonviolent revolts set by neighboring Egypt and Tunisia and now sweeping the Middle East — just as Colonel Qaddafi has shown a willingness to shed far more of his citizens’ blood than any of the region’s other autocrats.
The maneuverings by both sides suggested they were girding for a confrontation that could influence the shape of other protest movements and the responses of other rulers who feel threatened by insurrections. Colonel Qaddafi’s militias, plainclothes police and other paramilitary forces have kept the deserted streets of Tripoli under a lockdown.
And residents of Zawiyah said Sunday that his forces were massing again on its outskirts. As a caravan of visiting journalists left Zawiyah, a crowd of hundreds of Qaddafi supporters waving green flags and holding Qaddafi posters blocked the highway for a rally against the rebels. “The people want Colonel Muammar!” some chanted.
In interviews with ABC News, two of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons appeared to mix defiance and denial. “The people — everybody wants more,” said Saadie el-Qaddafi, apparently dismissing the public outcry for a more accountable government. “There is no limit. You give this, then you get asked for that, you know?”
He described the uprisings around the region as “an earthquake” and predicted, “Chaos will be everywhere.” If his father left, he said, Libya would face a civil war “one hour later.”
His brother, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, seemed to challenge journalists to look for signs of unrest. “Please, take your cameras tomorrow morning, even tonight,” he said. “Everything is calm. Everything is peaceful.”
But when government-paid drivers and minders took visiting journalists on an official tour to visit here Sunday morning, they found a town firmly in rebel hands, where Libyan officials and military units did not even attempt to enter. It was the second consecutive day that an official tour appeared to do more to discredit than bolster the government’s line, and questions arose about the true allegiance of the official tour minders, who appeared to mingle easily with people of rebel-held Zawiyah. Some suggested that the Qaddafi government might in fact have believed its own propaganda: that the journalists would discover in Zawiyah radical Islamists, or young people crazed by drugs procured by Osama bin Laden.
But the residents showed little interest in Islamist politics or hallucinogenic drugs. They mocked Colonel Qaddafi’s allegations, painted the tricolored pre-Qaddafi flag that has become the banner of the revolt on the side of a burned-out government building, and chanted, “Free, free, Libya.”
Several said that on Thursday morning the Qaddafi forces had blasted peaceful protesters gathered in the square with machine guns and artillery, pointing to holes in the sides of pillars and even a mosque. They showed journalists seven fresh graves dug in the square to bury those killed in the fight.Multimedia
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The Lands Autocracy Won’t Quit (February 27, 2011)
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But the battle had made them even more confident of their power, they said, because military units had joined their cause instead of fighting against them. Some said that in the fights against Italian occupation and other battles in Libya’s pre-Qaddafi history, their city of 300,000 had earned the nickname “the silent lion,” and was living up to it again. “When Qaddafi killed people, Zawiyah became like a volcano,” said Tariq Mohamed, a resident.
They said the city was now under the control of a committee of prominent citizens — doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers and the like — who were organizing its public services and continued defense. “We are really suffering for 42 years, and people are asking here for the same things as other people of the world — they want the real democracy,” said Ahmed el-Hadi Remeh, an engineer standing in the square.
In Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt began, rebels said that Libyan soldiers had joined the rebels in securing vital oil industry facilities around that part of the country. Some oil industry workers fleeing across the Tunisian border in recent days said they had seen Libyan soldiers fire their weapons to drive off foreign mercenaries or other security forces that had approached oil facilities not far from here.Hassan Bulifa, who sits on the management committee of the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, the country’s largest oil producer, said that the rebels control at least 80 percent of the country’s oil assets, and that his company, based in Benghazi, was cooperating with them.
The company resumed oil shipments on Sunday, loading two tankers at a port in Tobruk, Mr. Bulifa said. The ships — one bound for Austria and the other for China represent the company’s first shipments since Feb. 10.
Although the revenue from those sales go the company’s umbrella organization, Libya’s National Oil Company, Mr. Bulifa said Arabian Gulf Oil Company had ceased any coordination with the national company, though it was honoring oil contracts. And he insisted the proceeds would ultimately flow to the rebels, not Colonel Qaddafi. “Qaddafi and his gangsters will not have a hand on them. We are not worried about the revenues,” he said.
Some in Washington, including Senator John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, urged the Obama administration to consider military action and recognize a rebel government. But the rebels themselves seemed far from ready for international relations.
On Saturday, the country’s former justice minister, Mustafa Mohamed Abd al-Jalil, said in an interview on Al Jazeera that he would head a transitional government, with the aim of holding elections within three months. But on Sunday, another figure in the rebel movement, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, seemed to dismiss that claim, saying a national council had been formed to manage the “day to day living” of the “liberated” territories.
The Qaddafi government implicitly acknowledged for the first time on Sunday that it feared elements of its military falling into rebel hands, as Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif said in the television interview that the Libyan government had bombed its own ammunition depots in the east.
And General Ahmed el-Gatrani, a former senior commander in the Libyan army who now leads the rebel forces, said his troops were awaiting a call for support from the capital. “Our brothers in Tripoli say: ‘We are fine so far, we do not need help.’ If they ask for help we are ready to move,” he told Reuters. Many rebels in the west, however, say they believe General Gatrani is trying to hide the true rebel plans. Mr. Ghoga, for his part, vowed Sunday that Tripoli and other Libyan cities would be liberated using “our national army.”
Egypt Unveils Proposed Constitutional Changes - WSJ.com
Egypt Unveils Proposed Constitutional Changes - WSJ.com
By MATT BRADLEY And DAVID LUHNOW
CAIRO—Egypt's military rulers, hoping to set the stage for transparent democratic elections in six months, have unveiled a raft of proposed constitutional changes that include adopting a U.S.-style term limits of two four-year presidential terms.
The changes, announced late Saturday, come amid growing tensions between the military and protesters who ousted former President Hosni Mubarak from power earlier this month. Hours before the proposed amendments were announced, protesters and army personnel clashed near Tahrir Square, the site of this month's successful revolt.
Reuters
Egyptian university students shouted slogans in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday, demonstrating for schools to reopen.
n Sunday, some protest leaders welcomed the proposed constitutional amendments but said they fell short in some key areas.The proposed changes would overturn a Mubarak-era law that effectively allowed his ruling National Democratic Party to oversee elections, restoring full supervision of the vote to the country's independent judiciarThe changes also seek to loosen restrictions on the eligibility of presidential candidates, creating a more open field, and to forbid trials of civilians in military courts.
amendments will be put to a referendum in about two months, according to members of an eight-man legal panel appointed by the military to draft the new rules.
Some opposition and protest leaders said the committee's suggestions don't go far enough toward removing the instruments of autocracy that allowed Mr. Mubarak to cling to power for nearly 30 years.
"With all due respect, it's not enough," said Gamal Eid, the general director for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, a Cairo-based advocacy organization. "We're not happy with the changes they made, and we're not happy with the way they chose the committee members to start with."
Mr. Eid said the NDP would retain too much influence in organizing elections, opening the door to vote rigging. He said the opposition movement also wanted a constitutional guarantee of independent and foreign monitoring of the vote.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces convened the eight-member committee two weeks ago to amend 10 of the most undemocratic articles in Egypt's constitution, which was suspended by the military following Mr. Mubarak's ouster Feb. 11.
The group was led by a prominent Islamist and historian and included a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a once-outlawed Islamist group, as well as a Coptic Christian—appointments that were intended to signal tolerance and consensus, members said.
"There were no real disagreements, and everyone got along well," said Sobhi Saleh, a lawyer and former parliament member from the Muslim Brotherhood legislative bloc.
Members of the committee studied other constitutions, including the U.S. constitution, in drafting the changes. Indeed, the group could draw parallels to the U.S. Founding Fathers in one way: There were no women on the panel."We felt these were the first steps to hold clean elections and allow Egypt to move forward," said Hatem Bagato, the deputy head of Egypt's Constitutional Supreme Court, one of three court members on the panel. Mr. Bagato was emblematic of the committee's diversity: He is a Muslim who is known for his tolerant views and sends his daughters to private Catholic school.
Committee members defended the reform process, saying their proposals are meant as a temporary measure before parliamentary elections, tentatively scheduled to be held in about four months. The popularly elected parliament is then expected to select a constitutional congress of about 100 people to draft an entirely new document.
"Making a new constitution is not the role of eight people," said Atif Al Banna, a committee member. "This has to be with the participation of the political parties, political powers and civil-society organizations."
The committee's proposals come amid unsteady relations between Egypt's military and leaders of the revolt, some of whom are still organizing protests to meet their residual demands, such as prosecuting corrupt former regime officials, freeing hundreds of political prisoners and removing Mubarak-appointed ministers from Egypt's cabinet.
Some protesters who returned to Tahrir Square last Friday clashed with police and army personnel Saturday morning. Several demonstrators were briefly detained, including revolutionary youth leader Shadi El Ghazali.
In a nod toward reconciliation, the military apologized to the protesters on its Facebook page on Saturday morning for "unintentional clashes" between the military police and the "sons of the revolution."
Analysts and opposition leaders said the apology itself was a sea change in Egyptian politics.
"This was the first time the people in power in Egypt apologized for anything, but they did not take responsibility for what they did," said Ziad Al Alimi, one of the youth protest leaders.
Mr. Al Alimi said protesters are continuing to negotiate with the military while marshalling their numbers for further protests on Friday.
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Global warming message cooked
Global warming message cooked
| Written by Administrator |
| Friday, 07 January 2011 17:07 |
| As winters get harsher and the snow piles up, more and more scientists are now warning of global cooling. That's the message that more and more scientists want to get out as the global warming message slowly disappears from the mainstream media stage.
On his website "NoTricksZone" Peter Gosselin lays out a list of 31 international scientists in the fields of climate and meteorology who disagree with AGW science (man-caused global warming) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts, and are projecting much cooler weather for the next one to three decades. "Expect global cooling for the next two to three decades that will be far more damaging than global warming would have been," says Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University. Easterbrook points out that 30-year cooling trends in the past including 1945-1977, 1880-1915 and 1790-1820 are similar to trends that the earth could face in the next 30 years. full story at http://www.interlakespectator.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2918102 editorial by John Coward |
Monday, December 27, 2010
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