A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study (pdf, 945kb) of market influences affecting the cost-effectiveness of nuclear power found that carbon dioxide charges levied at fossil fuel plants, coupled with incentives for nuclear capacity, would enhance the economic viability of nuclear power generation. The CBO study was undertaken to assess “the commercial viability of advanced nuclear technology as a means of meeting future demand for electricity by comparing the costs of producing electricity from different sources under varying circumstances.”

The CBO report said that its “reappraisal of nuclear power is motivated in large part by the expectation that market-based approaches to limit greenhouse-gas emissions could be put in place in the near future. Several options currently being considered by the Congress—including ‘cap-and-trade’ programs—would impose a price on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. If implemented, such limits would encourage the use of nuclear technology by increasing the cost of generating electricity with conventional fossil-fuel technologies.”

In addition, “[c]urrent energy policy, especially as established and expanded under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct), provides incentives for building additional capacity to generate electricity using innovative fossil-fuel technologies and an advanced generation of nuclear reactor designs that are intended to decrease costs and improve safety. Among the provisions of EPAct that specifically apply to newly built nuclear power plants are funding for research and development; investment incentives, such as loan guarantees and insurance against regulatory delays; and production incentives, including a tax credit. Since the enactment of EPAct, about a dozen utilities have announced their intention to license about 30 nuclear plants,” the report said.

The study found that “[c]arbon dioxide charges of about $45 per metric ton would probably make nuclear generation competitive with conventional fossil-fuel technologies as a source of new capacity, even without EPAct incentives.” Carbon dioxide charges at that level would also “probably make nuclear generation competitive with existing coal power plants and could lead utilities in a position to do so to build new nuclear plants that would eventually replace existing coal power plants.”

Even in the absence of carbon dioxide charges, “EPAct incentives would probably make nuclear generation a competitive technology for limited additions to base-load capacity,” according to the report. “However, because some of those incentives are backed by a fixed amount of funding, they would be diluted as the number of nuclear projects increased; consequently, CBO anticipates that only a few of the 30 plants currently being proposed would be built if utilities did not expect carbon dioxide charges to be imposed.”

Uncertainty about long-range costs, including the costs of fuel, construction, and financing, will influence decisions about building new plants, the report said. “The commercial viability of nuclear capacity depends both on generators’ perceptions of future market conditions at the point they consider committing to the construction of a plant—which might not occur for a few years—and the return that investors would require if confronted with carbon dioxide charges. An array of factors—recent volatility in natural gas prices and construction costs, nuclear power’s history of construction cost overruns, and uncertainty about future policy on carbon dioxide emissions—suggests that a wide range of costs are plausible for each of the base-load technologies. Those ranges in costs for new power plants demonstrate that each technology faces considerable uncertainty.”

A March 2008 report produced by the Institute for Defense Analyses and released by the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) entitled The Iraqi Perspectives Project — Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents claims evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein provided support to groups “associated” with al-Qaeda.

Saddam’s interest in, and support for, non-Iraqi non-state actors was spread across a wide variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. For years, Saddam maintained training camps for foreign “fighters” drawn from these diverse groups. In some cases, particularly for Palestinians, Saddam was also a strong financial supporter. Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives. (vol.1, p.42).

That assessment is a departure from one given in a September 2006 Senate Intelligence Committee report entitled Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments (pdf, 9.6mb), which stated that “[a]ccording to debriefs of multiple detainees – including Saddam Hussein and former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz – and captured documents, Saddam did not trust al-Qa’ida or any other radical Islamist group and did not want to cooperate with them.” (p.67)

A survey of nearly 1,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria (pdf, 230kb) found that nearly 90% do not plan to return to Iraq. The survey conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) revealed that about two-thirds of the respondents fled Iraq because of a “direct threat to themselves or their family,” while 30% cited the “general insecurity” in Iraq. A UNHCR release about the survey quoted an agency spokesperson saying that the UNHCR “remains committed to identifying obstacles to a safe and dignified return to Iraq and to working with the Iraqi government on measures aimed at addressing these obstacles to ensure that a voluntary return will someday be possible.”

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study (pdf, 276kb) of e-mail records management by federal agencies found that “not all are meeting the challenges posed by e-mail records.” Linda Koontz, GAO’s director of information management issues, said in testimony to Congress that GAO’s review of e-mail management practices for senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that for “about half” of the senior officials reviewed, “recordkeeping requirements for e-mail were not always met.”

The study outlined the unique challenges e-mail records pose for records management, including a lack of uniformity of content which often necessitates individual review of each message, the number of people both within and outside an organization who may be part of an e-mail string, and the high volume of e-mails sent and received by federal employees. E-mail messages were generally retained in systems which did not have the required recordkeeping capabilities to group records into classifications for easier retrieval. Instead, agencies tended to rely on a print-and-file system, an approach which “takes advantage of the recordkeeping system already in place for the agency’s paper files and requires little or no technological investment,” but which produces “unsynchronized parallel paper and electronic systems, resulting in extra work, confusion regarding which is the recordkeeping copy, and retention of many records beyond their disposition date.”

The testimony was delivered as Congress held hearings on the Electronic Communications Preservation Act (H.R. 5811), which would require agencies to make a transition to electronic records management for e-mail records. “Such a transition could help agencies improve their recordkeeping practices in this area,” the GAO study said.

“As our review shows, agencies recognize that devoting significant resources to creating paper records from electronic sources is not a viable long-term strategy and have accordingly begun to plan or implement such a transition,” the GAO study said. Once implemented, “electronic recordkeeping systems could potentially help agencies obtain the efficiencies of automation and avoid expenditure of resources on duplicative manual processes and storage.”

The Washington Post has posted a Department of Defense Inspector General report (pdf, 3.39mb) which found evidence of preferential treatment in the awarding of a $49.9 million contract to Strategic Message Solutions (SMS) in December, 2005. The redacted report obtained by the Post detailed how the contract to produce multimedia services for the Air Force’s Thunderbirds air show was steered to SMS even though the company had “submitted references for past performance which occurred before the partnership even existed,” and submitted a proposal “for a cost/price amount that far exceeds what is reasonable and prudent for the requirements of the solicitation,” a proposal which came to “almost double the cost of the equipment, services and personnel” submitted by two competitors. The contract was subsequently terminated by the Air Force in February, 2006 after a competing firm filed a bid protest.

An accompanying memo (pdf, 376kb) from the inspector general said “[t]he investigation found that the December 2005 award to SMS was tainted with improper influence, irregular procurement practices, and preferential treatment… Lower priced offers from qualified vendors and capabilities in-house were bypassed in an apparent effort to obtain services from [redacted], president of SMS, who had a longstanding relationship with senior Air Force officers and members of the Thunderbirds.”

Referring to one member of the Source Selection Team (SST), the report said “[redacted] stated that being part of the SST was ‘the dirtiest thing I ever experienced.’ He said it was a ‘Kangaroo Court,’ in which it was obvious from the beginning that SMS was going to be awarded the contract.”

In a response posted on the Air Force website, Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne said he was “deeply disappointed that our high standards were not adhered to in this case. This is not how the Air Force does business and we are taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.” The release said the inspector general’s report “indicated responsibility for the flawed procurement rested with five Air Force members who participated in the source selection process. Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Goldfein, who was commander of the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base at the time the contract was awarded, was one of the members determined to bear some responsibility for the flawed procurement.” Secretary Wynne “took administrative action on three members… and referred action for two others to their chain of command,” according to the release.

The Learned Fangirl has a nice post on the myriad ways that US government publications, which should be planted firmly in the public domain, often get “locked up” in private vendor databases or behind erroneous copyright protection walls by Google. Her post includes a discussion of the most recent high-profile incident, when GAO contracted with Thompson-West to publish its library of legislative histories. She also takes a look at the authenticity and “citability” problems created when public domain government information moves online.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study (pdf, 1.27mb) of efforts to eradicate security threats in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along its border with Afghanistan found that the US “has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA region.” Rather, GAO’s investigation “found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate (pdf, 172kb), State, and embassy documents, as well as Defense officials in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.”

The report found that “[n]o comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003) (pdf, 268kb), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated by congressional legislation (2007) (pdf, 748kb, see Sec.2042 (b)(2)). Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power—diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support—called for by the various national security strategies and Congress. As a result, since 2002, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan has had no Washington-supported, comprehensive plan to combat terrorism and close the terrorist safe haven in the FATA.

GAO’s report recommended “that the National Security Advisor and the Director of the NCTC, in consultation with the Secretaries of Defense and State, the Administrator of USAID, the intelligence community, and other executive departments as deemed appropriate, work to develop a comprehensive plan using all elements of national power to combat the terrorist threat and close the associated safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA region. The comprehensive plan should also include key components called for in the Intelligence Reform Act and components that we have previously reported as being needed to improve the effectiveness of plans involving multidepartmental efforts to combat terrorism.”

Greenhouse gas emissions in the US declined 1.1 percent in 2006 from the previous year, according to the latest inventory report published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The report identified three “primary contributors” to the decrease:

“ (1) compared to 2005, 2006 had warmer winter conditions, which decreased consumption of heating fuels, as well as cooler summer conditions, which reduced demand for electricity, (2) restraint on fuel consumption caused by rising fuel prices, primarily in the transportation sector and (3) increased use of natural gas and renewables in the electric power sector.”

“Overall, total US emissions have risen by 14.7 percent from 1990 to 2006, while the US gross domestic product has increased by 59 percent over the same period,” the report said.

The Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks is published annually by the EPA to fulfill the conditions of Article 4(1)a of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (pdf, 84kb), signed by the United States in 1992. Previous editions of the Inventory are available on the EPA website.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its projection for global economic growth in the April edition of its World Economic Outlook. The executive summary (pdf, 200kb) of the April Outlook projected that global growth would slow to 3.7 percent, one-half percent lower than the projection in the January Outlook Update.

Furthermore, the IMF “now sees a 25 percent chance that global growth will drop to 3 percent or less in 2008 and 2009—equivalent to a global recession. The greatest risk comes from the still-unfolding events in financial markets, particularly the potential for deep losses on structured credits related to the US subprime mortgage market and other sectors to seriously impair financial system balance sheets and cause the current credit squeeze to mutate into a full-blown credit crunch,” the executive summary said.

The IMF projected that the US economy “will tip into a mild recession in 2008 as the result of mutually reinforcing cycles in the housing and financial markets, before starting a modest recovery in 2009 as balance sheet problems in financial institutions are slowly resolved.” In contrast to a slowdown in the developed economies of the US and Western Europe, the IMF projected that “growth in emerging and developing economies is expected to ease modestly but remain robust in both 2008 and 2009.”

The National Security Archive at George Washington University released six Air Force documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation pertaining to the US role in the war in Southeast Asia. The Archive’s press release said the documents “disclose for the first time that Central Intelligence Agency contract employees had a direct role in combat air attacks when they flew Laotian government aircraft on strike missions and that the Air Force actively considered nuclear weapons options during the 1959 Laos crisis.” The documents also reveal “Air Force interest in nuclear options” during the battle of Khe Sanh in 1968, the release said.