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Show Monday, December 25, 1W5 THE DAILY HER Alt), Provo, I tah Page Bl Ambassador baffles for reform reduce its "elephantine" bureauera- ber states want," she said. peacekeeping missions and Reformins. but not abaWSmg. international conter-virtuend teccW expensive the United Nations has rallying cry for Albright, ltsTnces"The pressures hy Congress she presses her case on Capitol Hill. in the halls of the United Nations have clearly focused everybody's and on speaking trips across the minds on this." Albright said. United States. Early in December. Washington Criticisms of the organization announced it would pull out of the have been sharp. U.N. Industrial Development Organization by the end of 1996. The "Would any of you voluntarily which Washington organization, allow your neighborhood to be defended by the U.N.?" House has long claimed was inefficient, industrial Speaker Newt Gingrich asked at a finances and oversees World counin Third meeting of the Center for Strategic development tries. and International Studies in Wash- By LOUIS MEIXLER Associated Press Writer al V fi - B- -- '.V'-.,Vt- h X- - SMI! , i ' - , - 41 a ; ff ' " . ,' - "9- - UNITED NATIONS In her office, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright keeps a broomstick on display, a gift from a critic. It came with a note calling her a witch for backing the U.N. embargo on Iraq. Albright revels in her reputation as a fighter and exhibits the broomstick as a trophy. Now, the energetic, Czechoslovak-born professor faces her deepest test: pushing to reform the United Nations while fighting a rear guard battle with Congress over demands for drastic cuts in U.S. funds for the world body. "The most negative reactions to g the U.N. are from the members of Con cress that are opposed to it." Albright said, firing a broadside at Republicans who want to cut U.S. contributions. The United Nations "is not some kind of an extraterrestrial organization that is run by a magician that kind of reaches out and expands its own power," Albright said in an interview in her spacious office across the street from U.N. - ington. The United Nations "is a collection of a wide range of countries with a bizarre voting pattern which makes no sense in real power," Gingrich said. The stakes are high. Congress is balking at paying SI. 25 billion in back dues and peacekeeping assessments, creating a cash crisis that has left the U.N. budget depleted. Some Republicans are demanding cutbacks so severe it would essentially end U.S. contributions to peacekeeping. Echoing it demand of many U.N. critics, Albright has insisted that the United Nations slash its budet. know-nothin- v. AP Photo U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright gestures during an interview at the U.S. Mis- sion in New York in this September photo. Albright faces her deepest test as she pushes to reform the United Nations and fights a rear guard battle with Congress over demands for drastic cuts in U.S. support for the world body. The call to reform has been well required at the United Nations. headquarters. The United Nations "is the member states and what the mem The call to reform has been well received at the United Nations. But even U.S. allies have criticized Washington for championing austerity while withholding more than $1 billion from the Organization. At the General Assembly in late October. Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen accused Washington of "holding the organization hostage." In the Security Council. Albright also faces criticism for spending too much time in Washington and for brusquely pushing action on matters that her colleagues feel need more deliberation and work to reach consensus. Dismantling nation's nuclear stockpile proves difficult task By MARTHA MENDOZA Associated Press Writer LOS ALAMOS, N.M. They go in looking like bombs and come out looking like beer cans. Deadly beer cans. Rattling around inside each can is a hockey puck-siz- e disc of the lethal remains of a nuclear bomb. The United States and other countries that for years stockpiled weapons of mass destruction are now having to figure out ways to destroy massive numbers of those ARIES, a $30 million project to design and produce a machine for dismantling nuclear bombs. "We've long said we handle plutonium from cradle to grave here. ARIES is the means by which we put these weapons to bed," said Joe Martz, a weapon component technology group leader at the lab. Fifty years ago, Los Alamos researchers designed the world's first atomic weapon. Since then, weapons. world. plu-toniu- m Congress is considering the ratification of START II, which would reduce stockpiles in the former Soviet Union and the United States from an estimated 55,000 four years ago to about 3,500 nuclear weapons apiece by 2003. The politics of reducing national arsenals are complex. But scien; tists say those negotiations, are far simpler than the technical chal- lenge of weapons. dismantling nuclear "It is incredibly complicated to handle plutonium and package it fof long-terstorage. If too much too close together, it can spongets a nuclear reaction." start taneously said Jim Toevs. who is in charge of nuclear materials disposition at m Los Alamos National Laboratory. . Last month, the lab and the U.S. Department of Energy invited glimpse of reporters for a the Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System, or first-ev- er tens of thousands of nuclear weapons were designed, produced r WIT" f - waste. For environmental and safety reasons. Rocky Flats was closed in 1989. These days the pits are stored in World War II bunkers near Pantex with doors so thick they don't even use locks. Inside the pits, the plutonium is disinte- V ir ' fas.- I r i v: I I ' grating. I ' Y--r X Flamm is part of an elite team of 30 researchers w ho have designed nuclear ARIES the bomb disarming machine that can flip pits upside-dowpry open one end, and inject hydrogen gas. The gas turns the plutonium into a powder that filters down into a crucible where it is melted into an ingot. The ingot is welded into a canister that is backfilled with heli- I - - v- . it. n, and maintained throughout the In the United States, components were built in different states and assembled into weapons at the Pantex plant in the Texas panhandle. Pantex workers now are dismantling most of the estimated 20,000 nuclear warheads the United States owned when the Cold War ended in 1992. Most of what was once a nuclear bomb is crushed beyond um. 'j j The entire process is completed within a large box. Workers stand outside of the box. and use gloves hermetically sealed to the exterior to reach inside. "It's a project that starts with a pit and winds up with material plutonium packaged for long-terstorage." said Toevs. ARIES was recognized this year by R & D Magazine as one of 1995's 100 most significant technological innovations in the world. So far. project workers have cleaned plutonium out of 30 pits in one year. Eventually, they hope to have their technology mounted and taken to onto a tractor-traile- r Pantex and to Russia, where one pit a day could be reduced to a pile f recognition to prevent national secrets about the weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. Gold and other precious materials are recycled and sold. But the pits spherical sealed containers with plutonium inside at cause the heart of each weapon the most consternation. "That's the big question: What do we do with all those pits?" said Bart Flamm, an ARIES researcher at Los Alamos. m &r4 1 AP Photo Los Alamos National Laboratory senior technical worker Gary Isom e disc of plutonium during a media displays a tour of the highly secured plutonium area at the lab. The discs are the lethal remains of nuclear bombs. three-kilogra- high-grad- In the 1980s, pits were sent to the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver where the pluto nium was leached out by acid in a process that produced unwieldy amounts of radioactive liquid of scrap metal and a canister of ; plutonium. Another advantage of ARIES is that it shifts plutonium from a classified shape to an unclassified one. Even pits that are in good enough condition to store cannot be inspected by members of the Vienna-base- d International Atomic Energy Commission, who are supposed to verify START compliance. After they've been through ARIES, the sinister portion of the pit looks as innocuous as a can of without the label. beer In addition. ARIES makes the dismantling of the bomb final. When pits are stored intact. Toevs said, there remains a possibility they could be reused. But the pucklike pieces are almost impossible to recycle back into a weapon. The Energy Department reports that ARIES will cost about S14 million next year and another $14 million in 1997. In 1996. about SI0 million of the ARIES funding will go to the Los Alamos lab $5.6 million in operations and $4.3 million in capital. An additional S3. 8 million w ill go to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and at least $100,000 w ill go to Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. ARIES researchers say that's a small price to pay to solve one of the world's greatest threats. "Here's an opportunity to help make the world safer." said Toevs. Stanford researcher gets signal before earthquake For SAN FRANCISCO (AP) the second time, Antony Fraser-Smit- h has picked up a sharp electromagnetic signal a month before a California earthquake, fueling hope that some quakes may be predictable. The first time was in 1989. before Loma Prieta the magnitude-7.- 1 quake struck near San Francisco, killing 63. The signal persisted for two months afterward. The second time was almost a year ago, before a more benign magnitude quake at Parkfield. a tiny community about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the San Andreas Fault. The signal persisted for more than a week. his results at the ; Explaining American Geophysical Union fall meeting here, the Stanford University professor of geophysics and electrical engineering said he was noticeably wary of proclaiming that he's found the elusive quake precursor scientists have long sought, t But, he said Dec. II, the tenfold increase in the ultralow-fiequenc- y magnetic field signal he detected underground makes electromagnetic signals a fertile area for additional research. ; !'It's just an extra brick on this pyramid I'm trying to build up," he Said. "Right now, I'm not even saying we're going to be able to predict (quakes) using these fields." Frascr-Smit- h believes that the signals are generated deep in the earth before the faults actually rupture. He can only theorize that as pressure builds on a fault, cracks open up and water trapped in the earth is pushed through them, creating a iflow of electric currents that pro duces a magnetic field. The water flow ing along the crack of the fault acts like an underground antenna. Fraser-Smith- 's latest result came from the magnitude-- 5 quake at 2:27 a.m. on Det 20. 1994. It registered at two monitoring sites just to the north and just to the south of Park-field. 4- - Just two years ago, his instruments picked up a signal change, but no quake ever followed. Later, he and his colleagues showed the signal came from outside, not from underground. The Stanford scientist notes that he's alone in monitoring magnetic field changes before quakes and that "no one else has been in a position to confirm" his findings. In the Soviet Union, scientists are "absolutely convinced there are electromagnetic precursors to quakes." and Greek scientists are showing successes with predictions of magnitude-- 6 quakes whose results he has examined. DAMAGED COPY , . I, V1 Parkfield is the site of a nationally sponsored quake prediction experiment that has yet to yield the magnitude-- 6 quake that has been expected since 1988. A large quake hits the area about every 22 years. Fraser-Smit- h has instruments lying in wait at Parkfield. in Southern California and in Northern California. "I am fishing for an earthquake." he joked. "I'm" sort of sitting with my bait out. Our biggest problem has been gophers gnawing on our cables." fancy, high-tec- h He was lucky the last time: His instruments were practically sitting atop of the earthquake some three miles below. V v. 'M 4 M .juw,-.--- , f" i r J 1 - f 1 r" in p jr.t. jMKHf;. ...mosiu ' ... 4, , . i:;:h"i;''t'r .J A A AP Photo wish for a fish shark swims by as aquarium staff dressed in scuba gear and Claus suits hold up a banner wishing all the aquarium animals a Happy Christmas m at the Barcelona Aquarium in Barcelona, Spain. The banner they are holding, which is In the Catalan language, reads "Happy Christmas to our fish friends,," writ-San- ten POOR COPY ta |