Yucca Mountain News Clips - Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
July 15, 2003

Energy Department offers $30 million to mitigate Nevada nuke dump

Associated Press

Energy Department offers $30 million to mitigate Nevada nuke dump LAS VEGAS (AP) - The federal Energy Department is dangling a $30 million "carrot" for Nevada and its counties to ease the impact of nuclear waste burial in the state.

A year after Congress designated Yucca Mountain for a nuclear waste repository, legislation set to be considered Tuesday in a U.S. House committee would set aside money for communities to mitigate potential economic, social, public health, safety and environmental impacts.

"What we've done is show the community that there's an economic development benefit to them by getting involved in the program and getting it moving," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the bill's chief author. He characterized the measure as a carrot for Nevadans.

Officials in rural Nevada counties welcomed the move, saying they have to begin planning for the effect the Yucca project could have on hospitals, police services, schools and transportation systems.

"They are turning their attention to local impacts and funding that gives us the wherewithal to prepare wisely," Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I'm just glad they're moving this program off the dime."

Critics said Yucca supporters in Congress are trying to build a sense that development of the repository 90 miles northwest is inevitable, even though the state is challenging it on legal and technical grounds.

Bob Loux, who heads Nevada's anti-Yucca efforts at the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said federal law requires DOE to offer impact aid, so taking the money should not be interpreted as an acceptance of "benefits" for hosting a repository.

The impact aid is part of a fiscal 2004 Energy Department spending bill that the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to consider.

The bill proposes allocating $765 million for the Yucca Mountain Project next year - the largest annual amount to date.

However, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has in the past engineered deep cuts in congressional spending on Yucca Mountain.

Among other provisions, the House bill directs the Energy Department to revive plans to store nuclear waste at a temporary aboveground facility at the Yucca site three years before the permanent underground repository is projected to open in 2010.

It also directs DOE to abandon two proposed railroad corridors that would ship nuclear waste through Clark County. It tells the department to pick a corridor through central Nevada within 60 days, formalize it as the preferred route by June 30, 2005, and have it ready for construction by 2007.

The bill also specifies $3 million to begin designing a transfer station in Caliente where waste canisters could be shifted from railroad cars to legal-weight trucks for shipment to Yucca Mountain.

Nevada counties and Inyo County in California would split an additional $6.5 million to continue monitoring repository development in the coming year.

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal

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Las Vegas Review Journal
July 15, 2003

YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT: Spending bill offers Nevada $30 million

Sum set aside to mitigate nuclear waste repository impacts

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A new Energy Department spending bill earmarks $30 million for Nevada and its counties to ease the impact of nuclear waste burial in the state.

Millions more would go for local spending on the Yucca Mountain Project.

A year after Congress designated Yucca Mountain for a nuclear waste repository, legislation set to be considered in a U.S. House committee on Tuesday sets aside the first sizable sum for communities to mitigate potential economic, social, public health, safety and environmental impacts from the project.

Officials in rural counties lauded the bill Monday, saying it acknowledges that they have to begin planning soon for major disruptions to hospitals, police services, schools and transportation systems as the Yucca project takes shape over the next half-dozen years.

"They are turning their attention to local impacts and funding that gives us the wherewithal to prepare wisely," Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips said. "I'm just glad they're moving this program off the dime."

Critics, however, said Yucca supporters in Congress are seeking to build a sense that a Nevada repository is a done deal when it still faces significant legal and technical challenges.

The impact fund, coupled with other bill provisions that boost the repository project, "seem to try to make this thing seem inevitable one way or another," said Bob Loux, director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Loux and other Nevada officials said federal law requires DOE to offer impact aid, so taking the money should not be interpreted as an acceptance of "benefits" for hosting a repository.

But Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the bill's chief author, said the measure offers a carrot to Nevadans.

"What we've done is show the community that there's an economic development benefit to them by getting involved in the program and getting it moving," he said.

The impact aid is among a handful of significant features in a fiscal 2004 Energy Department spending bill that the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to consider.

The bill specifies $765 million be spent on the Yucca Mountain Project next year, which would be the largest annual amount ever set aside for the nuclear waste effort if Congress adopts the spending.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is said to be working behind the scenes to engineer deep cuts in the project that could be announced later this week.

Among other provisions, the House bill directs the Energy Department to revive plans to store nuclear waste at a temporary above-ground facility at the Yucca site as many as three years before a permanent underground repository is projected to begin accepting waste.

The bill also specifies $3 million to begin designing a transfer station in Caliente where waste canisters could be shifted from railroad cars to legal-weight trucks for the final leg to Yucca Mountain. DOE is considering trucking waste to the repository in its initial years while a rail line is being built.

Nevada counties and Inyo County in California would split an additional $6.5 million to continue monitoring repository development in the coming year.

Irene Navis, head of Clark County's nuclear waste planning division, said it's unclear whether the impact fund envisioned by House lawmakers aims to help counties improve public safety and emergency planning.

If so, counties would need far more than $30 million, Navis said. For instance, she said, Clark County developed a $2.7 billion estimate for public safety and emergency management needs associated with the project. The county has emergency response duties for rural counties and neighboring states, she said.

The bill also appears to raise questions about Clark County's share if a rail line avoids Southern Nevada. Considering some waste will need to be trucked to Yucca Mountain, Navis said it will be difficult for DOE to avoid Clark County entirely.

"This section is going to need a little more work before it is finalized," Navis said.

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Las Vegas Review Journal
July 15, 2003

Letter: Waste costs

To the editor:

Your recent editorial "Metastasizing Yucca budget" commits a blunder. Fees charged to energy customers -- not "taxpayer money" -- are paying for 71 percent of Yucca Mountain. The military contributes only 29 percent -- real taxpayer money -- to dispose defense nuclear waste.

At its current size, Yucca Mountain replaces the mining and burning of 6 billion tons of coal. With transmutation of the heavy radioactive elements in spent nuclear fuel, a single Yucca Mountain could hold the residual wastes for some 50 times greater energy production -- equivalent to more than a century of current, worldwide coal consumption.

Nuclear energy is different because nuclear consumers pay for their waste disposal. Contrast this to fossil fuels, which discharge their waste into the environment, and to renewables such as wind energy, that generate their major waste emissions during the production of the vast quantities of steel and concrete that make their construction costs so high. The distinction is important.

Per F. Peterson
Berkeley, Calif.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 14, 2003

Hearing scheduled on DOE requests for Yucca water

By Cy Ryan
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Capital Bureau

CARSON CITY -- The state engineer's office has set August hearings on the Energy Department's application to draw water to build and run the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

The office also denied a proposal by the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office to introduce evidence that the casks of nuclear waste may leak and contaminate underground water.

Susan Joseph-Taylor, chief hearing officer for the engineer's office, said Friday it is sticking by a previous ruling that "evidence as to whether the stored casks will leak is not relevant to the use of the water."

"If the Nuclear Waste Project Office can show that the pumping or actual use of water has the potential to degrade the water quality, such evidence would be relevant and can be presented," Joseph-Taylor said.

The engineer's office has set Aug. 20-22 to hold the public hearings in Carson City. Both sides must file pre-hearing briefs by Aug. 13.

Bob Loux, director of the nuclear office, said it may ask the engineer's office to reconsider its opinion on the casks. He said the engineer's office may have misunderstood request.

He said the DOE's own plan shows there will be radioactivity leaked into the aquifer as the casks start to leak.

"They (DOE) know they (the casks) are not going to last," he said.

The DOE expects some leakage into the aquifer but says it will be naturally diluted to the point that it will comply with radiation standards, Loux said.

The government wants to pump 430 acre-feet of water from the Fortymile Canyon-Jackass Flat Groundwater Basin in Nye County each year.

The state issued temporary permits in 1992 and 1994.

Former state Engineer Mike Turnipseed denied a permanent permit on grounds that the Legislature had determined that Yucca Mountain was not in the public interest and it was unlawful for the storage of nuclear waste in Nevada.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling and further hearings were ordered.

Current state Engineer Hugh Ricci refused to extend the temporary permits to draw water at Yucca Mountain. He said the government had completed its studies and the temporary exploration was completed.

The two sides later reached a temporary agreement allowing the government to pump water from the J-13 well until its potable water tanks are filled to their capacity of 290,000 gallons. That includes 140,000 gallons in reserve for fire and emergency use.

The Energy Department will be allowed to pump water to fill the tanks when they decline to a level of 165,000 gallons.

Meanwhile arguments will be held in October on the suits in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington on the state's effort to stop Yucca Mountain from being a repository.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 14, 2003

House again raising specter of temporary Yucca dump

Las Vegas SUN

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are trying to head off an effort in the House to revive a proposal to ship nuclear waste to a temporary dump site at Yucca Mountain until a permanent national waste repository is completed at the location 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The proposal was included in an energy and water spending bill approved last week by the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water projects. The bill set a $765 million Yucca Mountain project budget for the next fiscal year, although Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a key Senate appropriator, plans to reduce that figure during budget negotiations.

Late last week Nevada lawmakers discovered the bill also included a provision that would pave the way for a temporary waste site in Nevada. The bill would allow nuclear power plant operators to begin shipping their waste to the state by 2007. That's well before the 2010 target date the Energy Department has set for completing Yucca Mountain.

Congress had previously debated the plan to ship waste to a temporary waste site in Nevada, but President Bill Clinton vetoed the proposal.

Nevada lawmakers would like to have the provision removed from the spending bill before it is approved by the full committee and sent to the House floor for a vote, but it's unknown if they would be able to negotiate the change.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., intends to register his objection with Appropriations Committee leaders, Gibbons spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer said. Gibbons is also considering an amendment that would remove the language, she said.

"We'll be looking at all of our alternatives to get this stripped out of the bill," Spanbauer said.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., has spoken to the subcommittee chairman, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio., and plans to talk to him again soon, Porter spokeswoman Traci Scott said. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., plans to send a letter to House members objecting to the bill language.

The bill is expected to be considered by the full House Appropriations Committee this week.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 14, 2003

Editorial: Whistleblowers need additional protection

Las Vegas SUN

For at least 120 years, since it passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, Congress has been affording protections to whistleblowers -- federal workers who expose wrongdoing. The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, with its subsequent amendments, is the present-day law protecting federal workers. Critics abound who say the law has failed to eliminate what workers fear the most -- reprisals against their careers, even when using the sanctioned complaint process.

Granted, the law is not perfect but nevertheless functions in the interests of both employees and the public. Without protection in the law, very few workers would report fraud, abuse, waste and violations of rules and regulations. And without whistleblowers, the public would more frequently be victimized by such wrongdoing.

That's why we support Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., who have introduced legislation to expand the Whistleblower Protection Act to cover all federal employees of the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To date, they have been excluded, an omission that has cast a pall over whistleblowing at Yucca Mountain. At the Energy Department, employees of its contractors are covered by the law, but its direct employees are not. At the NRC, the law covers only those who are employed by the agency's licensees, such as workers at a nuclear power plant.

Also, the legislation would give everyone covered by the act the option of filing their complaints in federal court if the heavily criticized administrative complaint process fails to render timely decisions. The proposed reforms would allow the Whistleblower Protection Act to come closer to actually reflecting its name.

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 11, 2003

Commission Slate: Lobbyists to report on efforts

By Mark Waite
PVT

Representatives of the Russ Reid Company will make a presentation on their attempts to lobby Congress for Nye County funding, when county commissioners meet at the Beatty Community Center Tuesday.

The meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. Russ Reid, which was awarded a $10,000-per-month contract for six months, will make a presentation at 10 a.m. The Beatty Community Center is located at 100 A Avenue South.

Commissioners will hold a public hearing at 10:30 a.m. on an ordinance to ban horse tripping. A proposal to establish a Nye County Health Department will be considered at 11 a.m.

Results of a U.S. Department of Energy Inspector General's report, which resulted in a cutback of funding for the Nye County nuclear waste oversight program, will be discussed.

A resolution by the Town of Beatty Advisory Board, is up for approval "delineating prophylactic measures deemed to be necessary by the unincorporated town of Beatty and its citizens to remediate, ameliorate and/or safeguard it and them against the foreseeable effects of the siting of the nation's high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain."

Commissioners will consider amending the Nye County Code, setting up a new licensing fee allowing brothel owners to pay $3,500 per quarter for from six to 10 prostitutes and $7,500 for 11 to 25 prostitutes, instead of $7,500 for six to 25 prostitutes. The request includes a letter from Bobbi Davis, operator of the Shady Lady Ranch brothel.

Commissioners will consider funding a retreat at the Longstreet Inn and Casino Aug. 9.

An appointment of a financial administrative staff member for the Nye County Debt Management Commission will be considered, as well as naming Tracie Ward to replace Shawn Hall as the Nye County school board representative on the Nye County Parks and Recreation Board.

An amended contract with Dr. Rexene Worrell for forensic services is up for approval.

In personnel matters, commissioners will consider opening an assistant sheriff position, continue the employment of a temporary computer support/administration assistant and two temporary kennel assistants. Fencing for the Nye County Sheriff's Office impound lot, donating an unused fire truck to the Beatty Museum and a bid for the Beatty chip seal program will up for approval.

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Las Vegas Review Journal
July 13, 2003

NRC declines state's requests for Yucca changes

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week rejected the idea of appointing outside experts to weigh plans for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Nevada leaders on April 3 had petitioned the NRC for a series of changes in agency procedures, saying they wanted to to ensure "fairness" in licensing for the Yucca Mountain Project.

On Tuesday, the NRC declined the state's requests and notified Attorney General Brian Sandoval.

"The NRC is fully committed to a fair adjudication," NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said. "The commission has concluded that its current provisions will ensure those ends."

Bob Loux, director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Friday the denial came as little surprise, even though "we thought we were putting forward some reasonable thoughts."

Nevada's nuclear waste lawyers are studying the 10-page NRC ruling. Loux said the state may consider challenging one of the agency's decisions affecting the state's hiring of former Energy Department officials to fight the Yucca project.

"The issue is whether the commission is really interested in fair and unbiased hearings, and we don't think under the procedures that that's possible," Loux said.

Sandoval had called on the NRC to appoint nongovernment scientists to the licensing board that will evaluate the Energy Department's application to bury nuclear waste at the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 12, 2003

Bill calls for DOE to hasten nuclear waste storage in Nevada

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - New legislation moving through Congress revives a controversial plan for the Energy Department to begin storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain years before the completion of an underground repository.

Federal law forbids an interim repository in Nevada, but a bill to be considered by the House Appropriations Committee next week says the landscape has changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and since Congress designated Yucca Mountain last year as the site to bury the nation's nuclear waste.

Highly radioactive spent fuel stored in 39 states is now at a greater risk and should be moved to "a centralized storage facility, located at the Yucca Mountain repository site, at the earliest possible date," according to a copy of the bill report obtained Friday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The provisions are part of a 2004 spending bill for Energy Department programs and sets an aggressive path for the Yucca Mountain Project, setting aside $765 million in spending for next year - 29 percent more than the Bush administration requested.

"Nevada's worst nightmare is about to be realized unless we can stop this insanity," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said. "This is going to be heavy lifting, no doubt."

The long-held prohibition against interim storage in Nevada was established to prevent nuclear waste from being sent to the state and kept in canisters aboveground if plans fail for an underground repository. President Clinton vetoed a bill in 2000 that would have accelerated delivery of nuclear waste to the Yucca site before underground storage could be completed.

The new bill, authored by Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, directs the Energy Department to draft legislation to repeal the restriction.

It also orders the department to put together a budget plan for aboveground storage and a strategy to acquire shipping containers that could be used both for transportation and for interim storage.

Under the bill, the DOE would be allowed to spend up to $4 million next year on early waste acceptance.

The bill also would allow for the "movement of significant quantities of spent nuclear fuel beginning in 2007." Current DOE plans call for an underground repository to become operational in 2010.

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal

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Las Vegas SUN
July 12, 2003

Columnist Benjamin Grove: Nuke waste case points to future battles

Benjamin Grove covers Washington, D.C., for the Sun. He can be reached at grove@lasvegassun.com or (202) 662-7245.

A CONTROVERSY over a plutonium-tainted waste shipment through California was settled last week -- at least for now -- when the Energy Department gave in to objections from state leaders and agreed not to make the shipment.

The incident raised larger questions about the Energy Department's plan to ship far more dangerous high-level nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain from sites nationwide, including sites in California.

Was the California case a preview of countless looming battles in states across the country over how to ship high-level waste to Yucca?

Nevada officials think so.

"There is enormous potential for fights between states, between states and the DOE, and between regions of states," said Bob Halstead, a waste transportation consultant for Nevada. "These transportation routes are not an easy thing to plan. The DOE is putting it off because they don't want the political controversy."

At issue in California was a shipment of transuranic waste that now sits at the Nevada Test Site. Similar waste stored at 23 sites across the country is ultimately bound for the nation's "low-level" waste dump in New Mexico, the four-year-old Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP.

The Test Site shipment bound last week for New Mexico, via a California route that avoided Las Vegas, never got under way pending objections by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein said the route had limited emergency response capability and wasn't engineered for heavy trucks.

The waste would have been shipped south on Nevada State Route 373/California State Route 127, west on Interstate 40 to Barstow, then back east again on Interstate 40.

On Wednesday the Energy Department agreed to indefinitely cancel the shipment until California and the Western Governors Association could come up with a solution. It's department policy to first obtain state permission for waste shipments, which states typically grant, department spokesman Joe Davis said.

Davis noted that Route 127 has been used 259 times since the beginning of last year for hauling low-level waste from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to the Test Site. He also noted that eight months ago a shipment of waste similar to the waste Feinstein blocked had been shipped out of California from a site near Burbank to Washington state.

"We didn't hear a peep from the senator then," Davis said.

Davis told the Associated Press that the California objection set a "dangerous precedent" for the future waste shipments.

The Energy Department aims to open Yucca Mountain as the nation's first high-level waste repository by 2010, despite budget cuts and project delays. High-level waste, in the form of solid "spent" uranium fuel rods from nuclear reactors, would be shipped to Nevada from reactor and U.S. Defense sites scattered across the nation.

But Energy Department officials still have not announced an official Yucca waste-hauling plan. So questions linger about whether the waste would be shipped mostly by rail or mostly by truck, and about which routes would be used.

Probable routes have already been published by the department, Davis noted. Final routes will be negotiated by federal officials and the states, and determined not long before the waste shipments roll -- years from now, he said. Routes also may change year to year, based on construction and other variables, Davis said.

The bottom line, according to Energy Department and nuclear industry officials, is that waste can be shipped safely.

But Nevada officials disagree. And they say the routes should be finalized far in advance of shipments, and that transportation planning should be much further along by now.

"It's foolish," Halstead said. "They spent 10 years arguing about routes to WIPP."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., still says people across the country will be "up in arms" once they find out their homes, schools and hospitals are within a few miles of waste routes.

"The Energy Department knows as well as I do that the American people won't stand for it," Berkley said. "This is just the beginning."

But Davis told me that he didn't think the California case was a preview of countless battles to come over Yucca shipments.

Still, in an earlier interview Davis acknowledged that politicians may be tempted to engage in those battles.

"Anybody who thinks they can get press out of the issue probably is going to try," Davis said. "People need to make up their minds. Are we going to leave the waste where it is, or are you going to allow us to take it out and do our jobs?"

A note to readers: This is my last column for awhile. In a quest for some adventure beyond the Beltway, I'm moving Aug. 2 to Japan to teach English for a year. I plan to return to my job covering Washington for the Las Vegas Sun when I get back in 2004. My replacement is Suzanne Struglinski, a Washington-based reporter who has most recently covered Yucca Mountain and nuclear issues for Environment and Energy Daily, an online news service. Beginning Monday she can be reached at the Sun's Washington bureau at (202) 662-7245.

Benjamin Grove covers Washington for the Sun.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 12, 2003

Poll: Majority of Nevadans say they would re-elect Bush

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A majority of Nevadans would vote to re-elect President Bush, according to poll published Saturday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and reviewjournal.com.

Fifty-one percent of 625 Nevadans surveyed by phone said they would vote for Bush while 21 percent said they would consider voting for the Democratic nominee. Five percent said they were unsure how they would vote.

The poll, conducted July 8-9 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc., had an error margin of 4 percentage points.

The poll also showed 57 percent of the state's residents hold a favorable opinion of Bush, compared to a 23 percent unfavorable rating.

"It's too early to tell which way things are going to go, but I suspect the president's numbers (in Nevada) are going to go up if the economy improves," said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon, which is based in Washington, D.C.

Bush narrowly won Nevada in the 2000 presidential election. A week before the election, Bush polled 4 percentage points ahead of Democratic nominee Al Gore, within the margin of error.

The latest poll indicates the state is not holding a grudge for the president's decision in February 2002 to recommend Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for the storage of the nation's high-level nuclear waste.

"Voters tend to have a short memory," said Washington, D.C., analyst Stuart Rothenberg. "While Yucca Mountain is a concern in Nevada, the war against terrorism is really grabbing attention everywhere, and that's what we're seeing in this support for Bush."

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal

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The Guardian
July 12, 2003

Trading on fear

From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen in the US as a marketing project. Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all seized the moment to capitalise on the war. PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain how it worked.

"The United States lost the public relations war in the Muslim world a long time ago," Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, said in October 2001. "They could have the prophet Mohammed doing public relations and it wouldn't help."

At home in the US, the propaganda war has been more effective. And a key component has been fear: fear of terrorism and fear of attack.

Early scholars who studied propaganda called it a "hypodermic needle approach" to communication, in which the communicator's objective was to "inject" his ideas into the minds of the target population. Since propaganda is often aimed at persuading people to do things that are not in their own best interests, it frequently seeks to bypass the rational brain altogether and manipulate us on a more primitive level, appealing to emotional symbolism.

Television uses sudden, loud noises to provoke a startled response, bright colours, violence - not because these things are inherently appealing, but because they catch our attention and keep us watching. When these practices are criticised, advertisers and TV executives respond that they do this because this is what their "audience wants". In fact, however, they are appealing selectively to certain aspects of human nature - the most primitive aspects, because those are the most predictable. Fear is one of the most primitive emotions in the human psyche, and it definitely keeps us watching. If the mere ability to keep people watching were really synonymous with "giving audiences what they want", we would have to conclude that people "want" terrorism. On September 11, Osama bin Laden kept the entire world watching. As much as people hated what they were seeing, the power of their emotions kept them from turning away.

And fear can make people do other things they would not do if they were thinking rationally. During the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, psychologist Gustave Gilbert visited Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering in his prison cell. "We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction," Gilbert wrote in his journal, Nuremberg Diary.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? ... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Politicians and terrorists are not the only propagandists who use fear to drive human behaviour in irrational directions. A striking recent use of fear psychology in marketing occurred following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. During the war, television coverage of armoured Humvees sweeping across the desert helped to launch the Hummer, a consumer version of a vehicle originally designed exclusively for military use. The initial idea to make a consumer version came from the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted a tough-looking, road-warrior vehicle for himself. At his prodding, AM General (what was left of the old American Motors) began making civilian Hummers in 1992, with the first vehicle off the assembly line going to Schwarzenegger himself.

In addition to the Hummer, the war helped to launch a broader sports utility vehicle (SUV) craze. Psychiatrist Clotaire Rapaille, a consultant to the automobile industry, conducted studies of postwar consumer psyches for Chrysler and reported that Americans wanted "aggressive" cars. In interviews with Keith Bradsher, the former Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, Rapaille discussed the results of his research. SUVs, he said, were "weapons" - "armoured cars for the battlefield" - that appealed to Americans' deepest fears of violence and crime.

Another hostility-intensification feature is the "grill guard" promoted by SUV manufacturers. "Grill guards, useful mainly for pushing oryx out of the road in Namibia, have no application under normal driving conditions," says writer Gregg Easterbrook. "But they make SUVs look angrier, especially when viewed through a rearview mirror ... [They] also increase the chance that an SUV will kill someone in an accident."

Deliberately marketed as "urban assault luxury vehicles", SUVs exploit fear while doing nothing to make people safer. They make their owners feel safe, not by protecting them, but by feeding their aggressive impulses. Due to SUVs' propensity for rollovers, notes Bradsher, the occupant death rate in SUVs is actually 6% higher than for cars, 8% in the largest SUVs. Of course, they also get worse mileage. According to dealers, Hummers average a mere eight to 10 miles a gallon - a figure that takes on additional significance in light of the role that dependency on foreign oil has played in shaping US relations with countries in the Middle East. With this combination of features, selling SUVs on their merits would be a challenge, which is why Rapaille consistently advises Detroit to rely instead on irrational fear appeals.

Other products and causes have also exploited fear-based marketing following September 11. "The trick in 2002, say public affairs and budget experts, will be to redefine your pet issue or product as a matter of homeland security," wrote PR Week. "If you can convince Congress that your company's widget will strengthen America's borders, or that funding your client's pet project will make America less dependent on foreign resources, you just might be able to get what you're looking for."

Alaska senator Frank Murkowski used fear of terrorism to press for federal approval of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, telling his colleagues that US purchases of foreign oil helped to subsidise Saddam Hussein and Palestinian suicide bombers. The nuclear power industry lobbied for approval of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as a repository for high-level radioactive waste by claiming that shipping the waste there would keep nuclear weapons material from falling into the hands of terrorists. Of course, they didn't propose shutting down nuclear power plants, which themselves are prime targets for terrorists.

The National Drug Council retooled the war on drugs with TV ads telling people that smoking marijuana helped to fund terrorism. Environmentalists attempted to take the fund-a-terrorist trope in a different direction, teaming up with columnist Arianna Huffington to launch the "Detroit Project", which produced TV ads modelled after the National Drug Council ads. "This is George," a voiceover said. "This is the gas that George bought for his SUV." The screen then showed a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his SUV." The picture switched to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his SUV." In Detroit and elsewhere, however, TV stations that had been only too happy to run the White House anti-drugs ads refused to accept the Detroit Project commercials, calling them "totally inappropriate".

September 11 was frequently compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with White House officials warning that the war on terror would be prolonged and difficult like the second world war, and would require similar sacrifices. But whatever those sacrifices may entail, almost from the start it was clear that they would not include frugality. During the second world war, Americans conserved resources as never before. Rationing was imposed on petrol, tyres and even food. People collected waste such as paper and household cooking scraps so that it could be recycled and used for the war effort. Compare that with the headline that ran in O'Dwyer's PR Daily on September 24, less than two weeks after the terrorist attack: "PR Needed To Keep Consumers Spending."

President Bush himself appeared in TV commercials, urging Americans to "live their lives" by going ahead with plans for vacations and other consumer purchases. "The president of the US is encouraging us to buy," wrote marketer Chuck Kelly in an editorial for the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune, which argued that America was "embarking on a journey of spiritual patriotism" that "is about pride, loyalty, caring and believing" - and, of course, selling. "As marketers, we have the responsibility to keep the economy rolling," wrote Kelly. "Our job is to create customers during one of the more difficult times in our history."

Fear also provided the basis for much of the Bush administration's surging popularity following September 11. In the week immediately prior to the terrorist attacks, Bush's standing in opinion polls was at its lowest point ever, with only 50% of respondents giving him a positive rating. Within two days of the attack, that number shot up to 82%. Since then, whenever the public's attention has begun to shift away from topics such as war and terrorism, Bush has seen his domestic popularity ratings slip downward, spiking up again when war talk fills the airwaves. By March 13-14 2003, his popularity had fallen to 53% - essentially where he stood with the public prior to 9/11. On March 18, Bush declared war with Iraq, and the ratings shot up again to 68% - even when, briefly, it appeared that the war might be going badly.

Only four presidents other than Bush have seen their job rating meet or surpass the 80% mark:

· Franklin Delano Roosevelt reached his highest rating ever - 84% - immediately after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

· Harry Truman hit 87% right after FDR died during the final, crucial phase of the second world war.

· John F Kennedy hit 83% right after the colossal failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

· Dubya's dad, President George HW Bush, hit 89% during Operation Desert Storm.

It seems to be a law of history that times of war and national fear are accompanied by rollbacks of civil liberties and attacks on dissent. During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. The second world war brought the internment of Japanese-Americans and the cold war McCarthyism. These examples pale compared with the uses of fear to justify mass killings, torture and political arrests in countries such as Mao's China, Stalin's Russia or Saddam's Iraq. Yet these episodes have been dark moments in America's history.

Although the Bush administration took pains to insist that "Muslims are not the enemy" and that it viewed Islam as a "religion of peace", it was unable to prevent a series of verbal attacks against Muslims that have occurred in the US following 9/11 - with some of the attacks coming from Bush's strongest supporters in the conservative movement. "This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack," wrote columnist Ann Coulter - now famously - two days after the attacks. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

Of course, Coulter's column does not reflect the mainstream of US opinion. But it offers a telling illustration of the way that fear can drive people to say and do things that make them feel brave and powerful while actually making them less safe by fanning the flames of intolerance and violence.

Shortly after Coulter's column appeared, it resurfaced on the website of the Mujahideen Lashkar-e-Taiba - one of the largest militant Islamist groups in Pakistan - which works closely with al-Qaida. At the time, the Lashkar-e-Taiba site was decorated with an image that depicted a hairy, monstrous hand with claws in place of fingernails, from which blood dripped on to a burning globe of planet earth. A star of David decorated the wrist of the hairy hand, and behind it stood an American flag. The reproduction of Coulter's column used bold, red letters to highlight the sentence that said to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity". To make the point even stronger, the webmaster added a comment: "We told you so. Is anyone listening out there? The noose is already around our necks. The preparation for genocide of ALL Muslims has begun ... The media is now doing its groundwork to create more hostility towards Islam and Muslims to the point that no one will oppose this mass murder which is about to take place. Mosques will be shut down, schools will be closed, Muslims will be arrested, and executed. There may even be special awards set up to kill Muslims. Millions and millions will be slaughtered like sheep. Remember these words because it is coming. The only safe refuge you have is Allah."

Corporate spin doctors, thinktanks and conservative politicians have taken up the rhetoric of fear for their own purposes. Even before 9/11, many of them were engaged in an ongoing effort to demonise environmentalists and other activist groups by associating them with terrorism. One striking indicator of this preoccupation is the fact that Congressman Scott McInnis (Republican, Colorado) had scheduled congressional hearings on "eco-terrorism" to be held on September 12 2001, one day after Congress itself was nearly destroyed in an attack by real terrorists. (The September 11 attacks forced McInnis temporarily to postpone his plans, rescheduling his hearings to February 2002.)

On October 7 2001, the Washington Times printed an editorial calling for "war against eco-terrorists," calling them "an eco-al-Qaida" with "a fanatical ideology and a twisted morality". Conservatives sometimes used the war on terrorism to demonise Democrats. The then Democratic Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was targeted by American Renewal, the lobbying wing of the Family Research Council, a conservative thinktank that spends most of its time promoting prayer in public schools and opposing gay rights. In newspaper ads, American Renewal attempted to paint Daschle and Saddam Hussein as "strange bedfellows". "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle have in common?" stated a news release announcing the ad campaign. "Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

William J Bennett, Reagan's former education secretary, authored a book titled Why We Fight: Moral Clarity And The War On Terrorism. Through his organisation, Empower America, he launched Americans For Victory Over Terrorism, a group of well-connected Republicans including Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Trent Lott. "The threats we face today are both external and internal: external in that there are groups and states that want to attack the United States; internal in that there are those who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first'. Both threats stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their practice," he stated.

Washington Times reporter Ellen Sorokin used terrorist-baiting to attack the National Education Association, America's largest teachers' union and a frequent opponent of Republican educational policies. The NEA's crime was to create a "Remember September 11" website for use as a teaching aid on the first anniversary of the attack. The NEA site had a red, white and blue motif, with links to the CIA and to Homeland Security websites, and it featured three speeches by Bush, whom it described as a "great American". In order to make the case that the NEA was somehow anti-American, Sorokin hunted about on the site and found a link to an essay preaching tolerance towards Arab- and Muslim-Americans. "Everyone wants the terrorists punished," the essay said, but "we must not act like [the terrorists] by lashing out at innocent people around us, or 'hating' them because of their origins ... Groups of people should not be judged by the actions of a few. It is wrong to condemn an entire group of people by association with religion, race, homeland, or even proximity."

In a stunning display of intellectual dishonesty, Sorokin took a single phrase - "Do not suggest any group is responsible" (referring to Arab-Americans in general) - and quoted it out of context to suggest that the NEA opposed holding the terrorists responsible for their deeds. Headlined "NEA delivers history lesson: Tells teachers not to cast 9/11 blame", her story went on to claim that the NEA simultaneously "takes a decidedly blame-America approach".

This, in turn, became the basis for a withering barrage of attacks as the rightwing media echo chamber, including TV, newspapers, talk radio and websites, amplified the accusation, complaining of "terrorism in the classroom" as "educators blame America and embrace Islam". In the Washington Post, George Will wrote that the NEA website "is as frightening, in its way, as any foreign threat". If, as Will insinuated, even schoolteachers are as scary as Saddam or Osama, no wonder the government needs to step in and crack the whip.

Since 9/11, laws have been passed that place new limits on citizen rights, while expanding the government's authority to spy on citizens. In October 2001, Congress passed the ambitiously named USA Patriot Act, which stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism". In addition to authorising unprecedented levels of surveillance and incarceration of both citizens and non-citizens, the Act included provisions that explicitly target people simply for engaging in classes of political speech that are expressly protected by the US constitution. It expanded the ability of police to spy on telephone and internet correspondence in anti-terrorism investigations and in routine criminal investigations. It authorised secret government searches, enabling the FBI and other government agencies to conduct searches without warrants and without notifying individuals that their property has been searched. It created a broad new definition of "domestic terrorism" under which political protesters can be charged as terrorists if they engage in conduct that "involves acts dangerous to human life". It also put the CIA back in the business of spying on US citizens and allowed the government to detain non-citizens for indefinite periods of time without trial. The Patriot Act was followed in November 2001 by a new executive order from Bush, authorising himself to order a trial in a military court for any non-citizen he designates, without a right of appeal or the protection of the Bill of Rights.

As if determined to prove that irony is not dead, the Ad Council launched a new series of public service advertisements, calling them a "Freedom Campaign", in July 2002. "What if America wasn't America? Freedom. Appreciate it. Cherish it. Protect it," read the tag line at the end of each TV ad, which attempted to celebrate freedom by depicting what America would look like without it. In one ad, a young man approaches a librarian with a question about a book he can't find. She tells him ominously that the book is no longer available, and the young man is taken away for questioning by a couple of government goons. The irony is that the Patriot Act had already empowered the FBI to seize book sales and library checkout records, while barring booksellers and librarians from saying anything about it to their patrons. It would be nice to imagine that someone at the Ad Council was trying to make a point in opposition to these encroachments on our freedoms. No such point was intended, according to Phil Dusenberry, who directed the ads.

In response to complaints about restrictions on civil liberties, the attorney general, John Ashcroft, testified before Congress, characterising "our critics" as "those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil." Dennis Pluchinsky, a senior intelligence analyst with the US state department, went further still in his critique of the media. "I accuse the media in the United States of treason," he stated in an opinion article in the Washington Post that suggested giving the media "an Osama bin Laden award" and advised, "the president and Congress should pass laws temporarily restricting the media from publishing any security information that can be used by our enemies".

At MSNBC, a cable TV news network, meanwhile, a six-month experiment to develop a liberal programme featuring Phil Donahue ended just before the war began, when Donahue's show was cancelled and replaced with a programme titled Countdown: Iraq. Although the network cited poor ratings as the reason for dumping Donahue, the New York Times reported that Donahue "was actually attracting more viewers than any other programme on MSNBC, even the channel's signature prime-time programme, Hardball with Chris Matthews". Further insight into the network's thinking appears in an internal NBC report leaked to AllYourTV.com, a website that covers the television industry. The NBC report recommended axing Donahue because he presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and sceptical of the administration's motives." It went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity".

At the same time that Donahue was cancelled, MSNBC added to its line-up Michael Savage, who routinely refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations" and who charges that the US "is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives". In one broadcast, Savage justified ethnic slurs as a national security tool: "We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy."

In addition to restricting the number of anti-war voices on television and radio, media outlets often engaged in selective presentation. The main voices that television viewers saw opposing the war came from a handful of celebrities such as Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Janeane Garofalo and Susan Sarandon - actors who could be dismissed as brie-eating Hollywood elitists. The newspapers and TV networks could have easily interviewed academics and other more traditional anti-war sources, but they rarely did. In a speech in the autumn of 2002, Senator Edward Kennedy "laid out what was arguably the most comprehensive case yet offered to the public questioning the Bush administration's policy and timing on Iraq", according to Michael Getler, the Washington Post's ombudsman. The next day, the Post devoted one sentence to the speech. Ironically, Kennedy made ample use in his remarks of the public testimony in Senate armed services committee hearings a week earlier by retired four-star army and marine corps generals who cautioned about attacking Iraq at this time - hearings that the Post also did not cover.

Peace groups attempted to purchase commercial time to broadcast ads for peace, but were refused air time by all the major networks and even MTV. CBS network president Martin Franks explained the refusal by saying, "We think that informed discussion comes from our news programming."

Like all good TV, the war in Iraq had a dramatic final act, broadcast during prime time - the sunlight gleaming over the waves as the president's fighter jet descended from the sky on to the USS Abraham Lincoln. The plane zoomed in, snagged a cable stretched across the flight deck and screeched to a stop, and Bush bounded out, dressed in a snug-fitting olive-green flight suit with his helmet tucked under his arm. He strode across the flight deck, posing for pictures and shaking hands with the crew of the carrier. He had even helped fly the jet, he told reporters. "Yes, I flew it," he said. "Yeah, of course, I liked it." Surrounded by gleaming military hardware and hundreds of cheering sailors in uniform, and with the words "Mission Accomplished" emblazoned on a huge banner at his back, he delivered a stirring speech in the glow of sunset that declared a "turning of the tide" in the war against terrorism. "We have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world," Bush said. "Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free." After the day's festivities, the Democrats got their chance to complain, calling Bush's Top Gun act a "tax-subsidised commercial" for his re-election campaign. They estimated it had cost $1m to orchestrate all of the details that made the picture look so perfect.

In the end, though, the spin doctors agreed that these were images that would stay in the minds of the American people. It is impossible, of course, for anyone to predict whether the Bush administration's bold gamble in Iraq has succeeded or whether, as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak warned at the peak of the war, "there will be 100 Bin Ladens afterward". But in the wake of this conflict, we should ask ourselves whether we have made the mistake of believing our own propaganda, and whether we have been fighting the war on terror against the wrong enemies, in the wrong places, with the wrong weapons.

· Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, by Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber. Published by Robinson on July 28 2003.

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