Nuclear Energy

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq assured Iran yesterday that it supports Iran's right to develop nuclear energy and will not allow Iraqi territory to be used to threaten Iran, adopting a position at odds with America's view that Iran should abandon its nuclear program. Speaking during a visit by the Iranian foreign minister to Iraq to congratulate the new Iraqi government formed a week ago, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraq's new government "is a friendly government to Iran." "Iraq definitely will not be a place to threaten Iran from," Zebari said at a news conference in Baghdad, with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, standing at his side.

WASHINGTON -- What do President Bush and the former director of Greenpeace International, Patrick Moore, have in common? They both back expansion of nuclear energy use. A growing number of prominent environmentalists are hopping on the nuclear bandwagon because of alarm about global warming. The process from uranium mining to nuclear power generation emits less greenhouse gases than conventional coal or oil-fired power generation. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush played to concerns about energy dependency and perhaps global warming by calling for more investment in "clean, safe nuclear energy."

LONDON -- Global criticism rained down on Iran yesterday after it broke seals set by the International Atomic Energy Agency on a nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz, ending a two-year freeze on activities that Western leaders fear could lead to the building of nuclear weapons. In response, European ministers scheduled an urgent meeting for tomorrow to determine whether to recommend that Iran face proceedings before the U.N. Security Council that could result in economic sanctions. Several governments said the action by Iran's new hard-line government led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unnecessary and provocative.

PHILADELPHIA -- For those who oppose any more U.S. adventures in regime change, last month presented a big challenge: What do you do when Mideast leaders behave in ways that put them beyond the international pale? Last week, Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He was speaking to 4,000 students attending a conference called "The World Without Zionism." Virulent anti-Israel sentiments are nothing new to Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

Who says Peter Angelos turns a deaf ear to critics? After that lousy Orioles season, armchair owners said the club needed rebuilding from the ground up. And Angelos is responding - by tearing out the sod at Camden Yards. For only the second time since the ballpark opened in 1992, the club is pulling up every blade of Kentucky bluegrass and putting down new sod - 12 tractor-trailer loads of it. "As everybody knows here in town, we could use something to change our luck a little bit," jokes Dave Nehila, head groundskeeper at Camden Yards.

WASHINGTON -- Iran is headed toward a showdown with the West over its nuclear ambitions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted recently to report Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The IAEA didn't set a timetable for reporting Iran in the hope that Iran would abandon its plans before the Security Council is forced to take action. Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claims that his country isn't pursuing nuclear weapons - indeed, that it doesn't need them.

LONDON -- Mohamed ElBaradei, who angered the Bush administration by disputing its claims that Saddam Hussein's regime had an active nuclear weapons program, won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, sharing the award with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. agency he leads. ElBaradei, as the IAEA's director general, has been a central figure in efforts to monitor the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, and he had publicly pressed for his agency's weapons inspectors to be given more time to search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction before the American invasion.

MY WIFE and I are building a "green" home, mainly to live in but also to show how the biggest investment most of us will ever make can lessen our impacts on the environment. The solar panels we've installed on the roof will supply about 40 percent of our annual energy needs. Wired into the power company's grid, they involve no muss, no fuss with storage batteries. During daylight hours, they'll simply make our electrical meter spin slower - perhaps backward at times, feeding energy back into the grid faster than we're consuming it. The benefits of reducing the electricity that needs to be generated from traditional fuels are huge.

THE TIME for diplomacy with Tehran may be over. Iran has flatly rejected an offer from European negotiators to ensure a steady supply of nuclear energy to meet its civilian needs and head off development of new nuclear weapons. Despite the claims of its new president, Iran can't be truly interested in continued bargaining - not unless some international pressure can be brought to bear. Iran wasted little time in revving up its nuclear facility near Isfahan to renew its uranium conversion process, albeit with international inspectors watching.

THE FUTURE of energy use in this country seems increasingly a matter of choosing between inadequate options. Oil is scarce and expensive and dirties the air. Coal is more plentiful and cheaper but just as dirty, and is extracted in ways that mutilate the landscape. Natural gas: cleaner, but also scarce and expensive. Renewables such as wind, solar power, biomass and plant-based fuels each has limitations and can't be a sole energy source. Against such competition, nuclear power is emerging from its quarter-century in limbo since the 1979 radiation leak at Three Mile Island scared everybody silly.