1. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CALLS HUGO CHAVEZ A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE

BY

STEPHEN LENDMAN

You won't find commentary and language any more hostile to Hugo Chavez than on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Their June 23 piece by Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the Americas column is a clear, jaw-dropping example. It's practically blood-curdling in its vitriol which calls Hugo Chavez a threat to world peace. The sad part of it is Journal readers believe this stuff and are likely to support any US government efforts to remove the "threat."

The O'Grady article is about the elections scheduled to take place in the fall for five non-permanent UN Security Council seats to be held in 2007. One of them will be for the Latin American seat now held by Argentina. The two countries vying to fill the opening are Guatemala and Venezuela, and the other countries in the region will vote on which one will get it. You won't have to think long to guess the one the US supports - its Guatemalan ally, of course. And why not. For over 50 years its succession of military and civilian governments have all followed the dictates of their dominant northern neighbor. In so doing, they all managed to achieve one of the world's worst human rights records that hasn't abated even after the 1996 Peace Accords were signed ending a brutal 36 year conflict. Although the country today is nominally a democratic republic, it continues to abuse its people according to documented reports by Amnesty International.

Amnesty is aware of sexual violence and extreme brutality against women including 665 murders in 2005 gotten from police records; 224 reported attacks on human rights activists and organizations in the same year with little or no progress made investigating them; forced evictions and destruction of homes of indigenous people in rural areas (echoes of Palestine); and no progress by the government and Constitutional Court in seeking justice for decades of genocidal crimes and crimes against humanity committed by paramilitary death squads and the Guatamalan military. The sum of these and other unending abuses led Amnesty to call Guatamala a "land of injustice."

That record of abuse hardly matters to the Bush administration nor did it bother any past ones either since the CIA fomented a coup in 1954 ousting the country's democratically elected leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. That coup began a half century reign of terror against the country's indigenous Mayan majority. It was fully supported by a succession of US presidents who were quite willing to overlook it as long as Guatamalan governments maintained a policy of compliance with the US agenda. They all did, and in return received the support and blessing of the US and its corporate giants that continue to suck the life out of that oppressed country.

Guatamala fills the bill nicely for the Bush administration and would be expected to be a close ally in support of US positions that come up for votes in the UN Security Council. Venezuela, on the other hand, is a different story. Since he was first democratically elected in 1998, Hugo Chavez has done what few other leaders ever do. He's kept his promises to his people to serve their interests ahead of those of other nations, especially the US that's dominated and exploited Venezuela for decades. He's served them well, and in so doing engendered the wrath of his dominant northern neighbor that already has tried and failed three times to oust him and is now planning a fourth attempt to do it.

The idea of a Chavez-led government holding a seat on the Security Council does not go down well in Washington, and the Bush administration is leading a campaign to prevent it with aid and support of the kind of attack-dog journalism found in the Wall Street Journal. Honest observers know this newspaper of record for corporate America has a hard time dealing with facts it dislikes so it invents the ones it does to use in their place.

The June 23 editorial is a good example. It extolls the record of the Guatamalan government with its long-standing record of extreme abuse against its own people falsely claiming it's been "accumulating an impressive record of international cooperation on a variety of UN efforts." It claims one of its main qualifications is its "active role in international peacekeeping" and that the country is now home to a Central American regional peacekeeping school and training center. Oddly, it mentions that Guatamalan peacekeepers are now serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Haiti. What it fails to mention is that those so-called "peacekeepers," along with those from other countries serving with them, have in large part functioned as paramilitary enforcers, and in that capacity have committed gross human rights abuses against the local people rather than trying to protect them. The WSJ writer surely knows this but didn't choose to share that information with her readers. Instead she extolls the country's "democratic credentials." But readers with any knowledge of recent Guatamalan history surely know that country's true record is one of extreme violence and abuse against its own people and one no one would think of as a nation representing them democratically.

The WSJ's June 23 editorial is titled "A Vote for Venezuela Is a Vote for Iran." The commentary in it is one of the paper's most extreme diatribes against the Venezuelan leader which would seem to indicate the Bush administration and corporate America are stepping up their attack on Hugo Chavez in advance of when they plan to make their move to oust him. The Journal writer calls him a "strongman" in an "oil dictatorship" leading a government that values "tyranny and aggression" who'll use his seat and Council presidency when his nation assumes it to support "hostile states" like Iran, Cuba, Sudan and North Korea. Observers knowledgeable about Venezuela under Chavez would have a hard time containing themselves as the true Chavez record is totally opposite the one the Journal portrays. The Journal writer, of course, knows this, but would never report it in her column. Her employer and the interests it serves wouldn't be pleased if she did.

While claiming that a Guatamala seat on the Council is a "voice for the region, not its own national interests," it says Venezuela's "rests largely on oil 'diplomacy' and the capacity to push anti-American buttons around the UN." It goes on to state "It may seem strange Venezuela has any support in the region. Over the past seven years, its meddling in its neighbors' politics 'have' (even the grammar is wrong) earned it a reputation as a bully. Mr. Chavez is persona non grata in more than a few Latin nations. Many countries are worried about Venezuela's 'big spending' to acquire fighter jets and 100,000 kalisnikovs from Russia." Readers may need to pause to catch their breath.

What the Journal writer doesn't explain is far more important than what she does - but she's doing her job as a servant of the US empire. Chavez's so-called "oil diplomacy," in fact, is based on his Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas or ALBA. It's based on the principles of complementarity (not competition), solidarity (not domination), cooperation (not exploitation) and respect for other nations' sovereignty free from the control of dominant powers like the US and its large transnational corporations. It's the mirror opposite of US-style predatory capitalism and the one-sided trade agreements it uses to exploit other countries for its own gain.

The nations participating in ALBA-style agreements are able to operate outside the usual international banking and corporate trading system in their exchange of goods and services so that each country benefits and none loses - just the opposite of the one-sided way the US operates. Because Venezuela is rich in oil, it's been able to trade that vital commodity with its neighbors who need it, even sell it to them at below-market prices, and get back in return the products and services its trading partners can supply on an equally favorable basis. It's a true "win-win" arrangement for participating countries but one that angers the US because it cuts its corporations and big banks out of the process. The Chavez plan is to help his people, not serve the interests of the corporate giants or dominant US neighbor. The WSJ calls this "meddling" and Chavez a "bully." What glorious meddling it is, in the true spirit of the country's Bolivarian Revolution, and "bully" to Hugo Chavez for doing it.

As for Chavez's so-called "big spending" for weapons that has "many countries worried," one must wonder which countries the Journal writer means. She mentions none, which she surely would have and quoted their officials if, in fact, there were any. The truth, of course, is Hugo Chavez is acting no differently than most all other countries in the region or elsewhere, has expressed no hostility toward any of them, has never invaded a neighbor or threatened to, and is a model of a peace-promoting leader who's only taking sensible steps to upgrade his small military and protect his nation against a hostile US he has every reason to believe will attack him. But you'll never find that commentary on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal editorial ends in grand style. It demeans the poor countries of the region benefitting from below-market priced Venezuelan oil as likely supporting that country for the Latin American Council seat. It also attacks Argentina for being a "Venezuelan pawn," calling it "once a haven for Nazis" (the US was and still is), and stating "the country has been so incompetent about managing its 'resources' that it too needs charity from Mr. Chavez." Indeed, Argentina had big financial trouble at the end of the 1990s, but the Journal writer doesn't explain why. It was because the country became the "poster child" model for US-style neoliberal free market capitalism in the 1990s. It wrecked the economy causing it to collapse into bankruptcy it's still struggling to recover from.

The Journal writer also attacks Bolivia and Cuba for supporting Chavez but is particularly hostile to the Lula government in Brazil for its siding with the Venezuelan leader. She calls that support "surprising" and accused the Brazilian government of being "Bolivia's unofficial energy advisor (that) orchestrated the confiscation of Brazilian assets (in Bolivia) recently." Bolivian president Evo Morales nationalized his nation's energy resources which Bolivian law clearly states the nation owns. He confiscated nothing, which the Journal writer surely knows but failed to tell her readers. She also mentioned a so-called "eternal Brazilian struggle to prove that it can challenge US 'hegemony' in the region (that) trumps the need to regain dignity and protect its investments abroad." Left out of the commentary is any mention that Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba and Brazil are sovereign states with the right to support whatever policies and other countries they wish without needing US approval to do it.

About the only final comment the Journal writer can make is to claim Guatamala has the "solid backing of the 'more serious democracies' in the region - such as Colombia and Mexico." It's likely what the writer means by "serious" is those countries' elections are about as free and fair as ours - meaning, they only are for the power-elites controlling them who arrange the outcomes they want.

The June 23 Wall Street Journal editorial was a typical example of what this newspaper calls journalism and editorial commentary. This writer follows it to learn what the US empire likely is up to. In the case of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, it's no doubt up to no good. The continued hostile rhetoric is clearly to signal another attempt to oust the Venezuelan leader at whatever time and by whatever means the Bush administration has in mind. Stay tuned.

3. MORE ATOMIC BOMB BALM FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

BY

HARVEY WASSERMAN

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has chimed in for the "bring back nukes" crowd with an ill-conceived screed that completely ignores the reality that the world's power must ultimately come from clean, safe renewable energy and increased efficiency.

Entitled "Atomic Balm," the lengthy Sunday magazine piece tries to portray a nuke industry on its way back. But hidden throughout the article are trap after trap that will doom atomic power, and that show the Bush Administration's attempt to revive it to be ever more futile and corrupt.

To begin with, this very long article fails to mention that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has issued a draft report showing that between 99% and 124% of the nation's electricity can be supplied by renewable means by the year 2020. Since nuclear power supplies only electricity, this simple fact makes complete mincemeat of any pretext for bringing it back. If we can get the juice cheaper, safer, cleaner and more quickly from nature, why build sitting ducks for terrorists that have only 50 years of failure to show for a trillion dollars invested?

The industry rap against renewables, repeated briefly in this piece, is that they are too diffuse, expensive and futuristic to deploy. But none of that is true. Today's wind turbines could supply 100% of the nation's electricity from available wind just in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas, and 300% from all the states between the Mississippi and the Rockies. It is a sophisticated, advanced industry worth $10 billion/year or more. It is growing worldwide at 25-35% per year, with far more new installed capacity than nukes. There are political and environmental challenges to be faced with wind power. But they pale in the face of nuclear waste, radioactive emissions and the likely melt-downs from error and terror.

Photovoltaic cells (PV), which convert sunlight directly to electricity, are plummeting in price. Their deployment on homes and buildings avoids transmission costs. While fossil/nuke backers dismissively charge that PV needs huge desert areas to supply our nation's needs, in fact the deployment of solar cells on our building stock will happen, it will be hugely profitable and it will fill an enormous chunk of our coming needs for electric supply.

Bio-fuels such as ethanol and diesel will also play a huge role. In the future they will not come from annual food crops like corn and soy, but rather from inedible perennials like switchgrass, poplar trees, Jerusalem artichoke and hemp.

Grounding the mix will be vastly increased efficiency, the cheapest way to increase our available supply. The Times piece gives short shift to the pioneering "negawatt" work of Amory Lovins, who has shown that immense amounts of energy are being wasted, and could be regained cheaply and cleanly with basic efficiency measures.

Like so much else in this piece, the obvious green path to increased efficiency is presented in straw man fashion and then dismissed.

Conveniently overlooked is the vast failure of atomic power to pay for itself, or to prove out an engineering regimen for the future. The first commercial reactor went on line in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957. Now, a half-century later, the industry is selling a totally new set of unproven designs, essentially telling us that the trillion dollars invested in the first set left us with a technology that can't cut it.

The Times also makes the obligatory genuflection toward increased security, ignoring the fact that no reactor can be defended from the air, or from inside infiltrators who could make a nuke the ultimate suicide bomb. In fact, nuclear power plants are pre-deployed weapons of mass radioactive destruction for terrorists, capable of doing us damage on an apocalyptic scale.

The article admits, but does not emphasize, that the entire push for new nukes is a massive welfare program for rich Bush backers. Without gargantuan government subsidies, there would be no talk whatsoever of another generation of reactors. Without federal liability limits on the obvious consequences of a major melt-down, all the plants now in operation would shut today.

The article also glosses over the immense problems with nuclear waste, with regular radioactive emissions and with environmental damage done with huge emissions of heat into the air and water. While reactor operations themselves avoid large CO2 emissions, they do spew out heat directly into the biosphere, avoiding the middle man. They also create substantial greenhouse gases throughout the course of construction, fuel enrichment, and decommissioning.

Overall the attempt to revive atomic energy is far more the product of a corrupt, pay-to-play Bush cash machine than a real need to get at our crisis in energy and the environment. All the means of meeting our future energy needs are available in technologies that are clean, green and don't double as pre-deployed nuclear weapons for terrorists.

This latest screed from the Times Magazine will be played out again and again in major media that grovel for corporate monsters with direct interests in reviving this failed, obsolete technology.

But nothing will change the reality that Solartopia is upon us. In the real world, wind, solar, biofuels and increased efficiency are streaking ahead of atomic power, which is headed in the opposite direction.

Sooner or later, the federal handouts and liability limits that keep this failed experiment on life-support must stop.

By then, maybe even the New York Times will understand that if we are to survive ecologically and economically, it will be with clean, safe, efficient and abundant green power and efficiency.

4. KICKBACKS, CARTELS AND CHATROOMS: HOW UNSCRUPULOUS DRUG FIRMS WOO THE PUBLIC
(Companies violate own ethical codes, says study.
Patient group promotions bypass ban on advertising)

BY

SARAH BOSELEY

Drug companies use unscrupulous and unethical marketing tactics not only to influence doctors to prescribe their products but also subtly to persuade consumers that they need them, a report claims today.

Consumers should be concerned because time and again the companies violate their own industry's ethical marketing codes. Patients' health may suffer if a drug like Vioxx - a painkiller later withdrawn - is over-promoted. Yet, says Consumers International, which has compiled the report, there is "a shocking lack of publicly available information about the $60bn [£33bn] spent annually by the industry on drug promotion".

The report examines the marketing practices of 20 of the world's biggest drug companies. It alleges that:

· Drug companies are promoting their products through patients groups, students and internet chatrooms to bypass the ban on advertising except to doctors.

They offer information to the public on "modern" lifestyle diseases, such as stress and poor eating habits, to encourage people to ask their doctors for medicines.

They make inaccurate claims about the safety and efficacy of their drugs.

Doctors are offered incentives to prescribe and promote drugs including kickbacks, gifts, free samples and consulting agreements.

Many companies have been implicated in anti-competitive strategies, including cartels and price hikes.

Drug companies are not permitted to advertise products to the public. But companies are increasingly looking to influence consumers directly through funding patient groups and launching "disease awareness campaigns", which do not name a product but are likely to encourage patients to seek treatment.

"This type of 'nice-and-friendly' marketing is often disguised as corporate social responsibility and has been shown to create a subtle need among consumers to demand drugs for the conditions, while giving consumers a sense of trust in the pharmaceutical companies," says Consumers International.

Pfizer sponsored a campaign by the Impotence Association which bore the company logo. The UK prescription medicines code of practice authority - part of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) - ruled that this was inappropriate because it could encourage patients to ask doctors for Viagra, a Pfizer product, by name.

Eli Lilly, which has a rival drug, is currently sponsoring a TV advertising campaign in the UK for a website called Love Life Matters, which urges women whose husbands have an erection problem to see their doctor. The website bears the company logo and a downloadable booklet clearly spells out the Lilly sponsorship.

In the US, where advertising to consumers is allowed, a still more subtle tactic has been employed. In 2002, Lauren Bacall, being interviewed on NBC's Today programme, told an anecdote about a friend who had gone blind from macular degeneration and mentioned a new drug for the condition made by Novartis - without disclosing she had been paid by the company for her appearance.

The Consumers International report, called Branding the Cure, reveals a novel tactic by Wyeth. Its website offers women what it calls a "social service" - a regular text message to remind them to take their contraceptive pill. But to get the service, they need a special code from their doctor, which is only available to those taking Wyeth's brand.

All the companies say they have internal codes of practice in line with industry principles on ethical marketing. Most say they have tightened them following rulings against them by regulatory bodies.

Best placed to persuade doctors of the merits of a new drug are other doctors. Drug companies often pay specialised medical communication agencies to recruit and train leading doctors, specialists and academics as "key opinion leaders", or KOLs, as they are known in the business. These people will be paid to promote drugs to other doctors through presentations, research papers, discussions and debates.

"The relationship between companies and KOLs is not explicitly transparent," says the report. "As a consequence, consumers and patients, and in some cases health professionals, may not always be aware how motivation for individual profit could play into the drug information they receive via the KOLs."

Studies have shown that the published results of drug trials are more likely to be positive where the funding is provided by the manufacturer. Many research articles are ghostwritten in the name of eminent doctors who may or may not have had access to all the relevant study data.

"All the while, consumers are in the dark about how their medicine consumption choices are the result of veiled relationships between doctors and the pharmaceutical companies," says the report. "We believe that doctors should have their patients' interests as a priority rather than personal profit."

Violations of industry-wide drug promotion codes occur with regular fre-quency, says the report. The 20 companies were involved in 972 breaches of the ABPI's rules on ethical drug practices between 2002 and 2005. More than 35% of those breaches, the largest category, had to do with misleading drug information.

More than half of the 20 companies whose marketing practices are examined in the report have been implicated in controversies regarding free samples, kickbacks and gifts to medical professionals, it says. Half have breached the ABPI code of practice on the conduct of the medical representatives who visit doctors.

Most of them - 17 out of 20 - have been involved in publicising irresponsible or controversial promotional materials. Only two companies, GSK and Novartis, are transparent in reporting the number of confirmed breaches of marketing codes and any sanctions imposed.

This record raises questions about the efficacy of self-regulation. "The sheer volume of reported breaches indicates that even the companies with apparently the most comprehensive compliance programmes are not fully effective in preventing breaches of marketing codes. This problem extends to the biggest companies, such as GSK and Pfizer," says the report.

The ABPI says that the large number of cases brought under the code shows that self-regulation is effective.

"We think it shows that it is working," said its spokesman, Richard Ley. "We are pleased that so many reports or complaints made under the code are by one company against another. It shows how determined a company is not to let another one get away with it."

Its code of practice has been strengthened this year and widened to encompass dealings with patient groups. Companies will have to declare which ones they sponsor, although they do not have to say how much money they give them.

Mr Ley said they did not know whether there would be more or fewer complaints following the changes.

"It may be that we get a huge increase because it is even more stringent than the old one. On the other hand, there has been renewed commitment by the companies to it and it may not make a big difference."

Backstory

Consumers International is a federation of consumer organisations dedicated to the protection and promotion of consumers' rights worldwide. Based in London, it represents more than 230 organisations in 113 countries.

Since its launch in 1960, it claims to have become the voice of the international consumer movement on issues such as product and food standards, health and patients' rights, the environment and sustainable consumption, and the regulation of international trade and public utilities.

It has official representation on international bodies such as the United Nations Economic and Social Council and the World Health Organisation. It receives funding from membership fees, project grants and supporters, including the UK government.

5. A DYING PLANET

BY

CHRIS FLAVIN

Weather-related disasters like Hurricane Katrina—or the intense heat wave now hitting the United States—are on the rise. The toll of these catastrophes is exacerbated by growing ecological stresses and the future health of the global economy. The stability of nations will be shaped by our ability to address the huge imbalances in natural systems that now exist. While governments and businesses around the world are beginning to take action to stem the damage, our future demands more aggressive responses.

Earlier this month, we at the Worldwatch Institute released a new report, "Vital Signs 2006-2007," examining trends that point to unprecedented levels of commerce and consumption, set against a backdrop of ecological decline in a world powered overwhelmingly by fossil fuels. In 2005, the average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increased 0.6 percent over the high in 2004, representing the largest annual increase ever recorded. The average global temperature reached 14.6 degrees Celsius, making 2005 the warmest year ever recorded on the Earth’s surface.

Our report shows that some 40 percent of the world’s coral reefs have been damaged or destroyed, water withdrawals from rivers and lakes have doubled since 1960, and species are becoming extinct at as much as 1,000 times the natural rate. While ecosystems can be overexploited for long periods of time with little visible effect, many ultimately reach a “tipping point” after which they begin to collapse rapidly, with far-reaching implications for all who depend on them.

Abrupt change was evident in southern Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005. For decades, the flow of the Mississippi River had been altered, the wetlands at its mouth destroyed, and massive amounts of water and oil extracted from beneath the delta. Only an unheeded minority noticed that this gradual destruction of natural systems had left New Orleans as vulnerable as a sword-wielding soldier on today’s high-tech battlefields. Thanks to a combination of human and geological causes, a city that was at sea level when the first settlers arrived in the 18th century had sunk as much as a meter below that level when the hurricane season began in 2005.

Weather-related catastrophes have jumped from an average of 97 million a year in the early 1980s to 260 million a year since 2001. This mounting disaster toll has several causes, including rapid growth in the human population and the even more dramatic growth in human numbers and settlements along coastlines and in other vulnerable areas.

Climate change may be contributing to the rising tide of disasters as well, according to several scientific studies published in 2005. Three of the 10 strongest hurricanes ever recorded occurred last year, and the average intensity of hurricanes is increasing, recent research concludes.

This is not surprising, considering the main “fuel” driving hurricanes is warm water. Temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were at record-high levels in the summer of 2005, turning Hurricane Katrina in just over 48 hours from a low-level Category 1 hurricane to the strongest Atlantic storm ever recorded. (In September 2005, Hurricanes Wilma and Rita each broke Katrina’s record as the strongest storm ever in that region.)

Yet all of this is merely a foreshadowing of what is to come. The concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that is driving climate change, has reached its highest level in 600,000 years, and the annual rate of increase in cardon dioxide levels is accelerating, according to atmospheric measurements taken in 2005.

Scientists are beginning to shed their usual reserve in the face of ever-more alarming evidence. In early 2006 James Hansen, the lead climate researcher at NASA, and five other top climate scientists warned that “additional global warming of more than 1 degree C above the level of 2000 will constitute ‘dangerous’ climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species.”

If either the Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, hundreds of millions of coastal residents would be displaced—effects a thousand times the scale of the New Orleans evacuations. In the Shanghai metropolitan area alone, 40 million people could lose their homes. Large sections of Florida’s peninsula would simply disappear.

If melting ice and catastrophic storms are not enough to bring on an energy transition, the oil market is offering a helping hand. Oil prices in 2005 and early 2006 gyrated wildly, flirting several times with over $70 a barrel, the highest prices in real terms in more than 20 years. The cause is simple: geologists are no longer finding enough oil to replace the 83 million barrels being extracted each day.

However, the reality of a new energy era has begun to sink in. In the United States, sales of large sport utility vehicles have plummeted, while those of hybrid-electric cars have doubled in little more than a year. And in China, govern¬ment leaders have responded to rising fuel prices by increasing the tax on large vehicles and mandating higher levels of efficiency.

None of this has yet been sufficient to bring energy markets into balance. But signs are now growing that the world is on the verge of an energy revolution. The already-rapid growth of renewable energy industries has accelerated in the past year, with ethanol production increasing 19 percent, wind power capacity 24 percent, and solar cell production 45 percent.

The energy technology growth surge is propelled by scores of new government policies and by surging private investment. And it is attracting major commitments by multinational companies such as General Electric, Siemens, and Sharp, while also becoming one of the hot¬test fields for venture capitalists, who are financing scores of small start-up firms. Even oil companies are getting into the act: BP and Shell are both investing in solar energy and wind power.

These developments are impressive and are likely to provoke far-reaching changes in world energy markets within the next five years. But the change is still not fast enough to bring on the broader changes in the global economy that could stave off imminent ecological and economic crises. Government leaders and private citizens will have to mobilize in an unprecedented way if we are to have any chance of passing a healthy and secure world on to the next generation.

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6. DOCUMENTS REVEAL HIDDEN FEARS OVER BRITAIN'S NUCLEAR PLANTS

(Unexplained cracks in reactor cores increase likelihood of accident, say government inspectors)

BY JOHN VIDAL AND IAN SAMPLE

Government nuclear inspectors have raised serious questions over the safety of Britain's ageing atomic power stations, some of which have developed major cracks in their reactor cores, documents reveal today.

The safety assessments, obtained under Freedom of Information legislation, show the Nuclear Safety Directorate (NSD) has issued warnings over the deterioration of reactor cores at Hinkley Point B in Somerset and other British nuclear plants. The directorate also criticises British Energy, which operates 13 advanced gas-cooled nuclear reactors including Hinkley.

According to the papers, the company does not know the extent of the damage to the reactor cores, cannot monitor their deterioration and does not fully understand why cracking has occurred. They reveal that in June last year, the NSD said it was faced with "significant regulatory issues ... for all operating AGR reactors".

The NSD's most recent safety assessment of Hinkley, completed in April, warns that its continued operation is likely to increase the risk of an accident. While the NSD says it does not believe that there is any immediate radiation danger to the public, it says there is a possibility of serious faults developing that would force the long term or permanent closure of other nuclear plants of the same design.

"While I do not believe that a large release [of radiation] is a likely scenario, some lesser event ... is, I believe, inevitable at some stage if a vigilant precautionary approach is not adopted. There is an an increased likelihood of increased risk should we agree to continued operation," says the inspector.

The documents show the NSD wants more frequent and more probing inspections of the reactor cores at all Britain's AGR plants. These inspections require the reactors to be shut down for weeks. The premature closing of any nuclear power plant could throw Britain's electricity supplies into chaos. Closure of Hinkley Point would be likely to lead to closure of at least three other nuclear stations built at the same time, which are also known to be suffering from cracks in their cores.

Cracks in the graphite brick cores of ageing reactors have been observed for some time but until now there has been little public knowledge of the extent of the problem. British Energy warned in 2004 that its Hinkley Point B, Hunterston B, Heysham 2 and Torness plants might not be able to be extend their 30-year lives because of cracked bricks, but it gave few details of the extent of the problem.

British Energy is keen to extend the life of its AGR reactors but the papers, obtained by Greenpeace via Stop Hinkley, a local nuclear watchdog group, suggest that unless British Energy improves safety checks, the plants might have to be closed.

The revelations come at a critical point, with the government's energy review expected to be published in the next two weeks and both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown having indicated that a new generation of nuclear power is needed. Yesterday the prime minister told the Commons liaison committee that he had altered his position in favour of nuclear power since the last white paper on energy policy in 2003. "I'll be totally honest with you, I've changed my mind," he said.

However, John Large, an independent nuclear engineer who has advised the government and who reviewed the FoI papers for Greenpeace yesterday said it was "gambling with public safety" to allow Hinkley Point to continue operating. Calling for other AGR stations to be closed, he said: "The reactors should be immediately shut down and remain so until a robust nuclear safety case free of uncertainties has been established".

He accused the NSD of being reluctant to call for the closure of Hinkley Point because of the Mr Blair's stated intention to review nuclear power. "What nuclear installations inspector is going to close a plant down at such a politically critical time?", he asked.

In the papers from June 2005, an inspector concludes of Britain's AGR power stations: "I judge that there is significant uncertainty in the likelihood and consequences for the core safety functionality posed by ... core damage. The assessor needs to assume worst case consequences of ... core damage unless the licensee is able to provide robust arguments."

In a 2004 assessment, the inspector complains about the "lack of clarity" by British Energy, "continued uncertainty" in the prediction of behaviour in reactor cores, and the "lack of progress" made by British Energy in addressing issues in all AGR reactors.

British Energy said yesterday it had provided new evidence to the NSD. "If the health and safety executive [the government body that oversees the NSD] were not confident in the safety of the reactor cores we would not allow the reactors to operate. The assessment report was part of the ongoing regulatory process ... The Nuclear Safety Directorate is monitoring closely British Energy's work on graphite and, where necessary, is influencing the scope and extent of the reactor core inspections that the company carries out.

"British Energy has also been working on methods to monitor the cores whilst the reactors are in service. This will provide added re-assurance on the condition of the cores."

Stephen Tindale , executive director of Greenpeace said: "These documents show the incompetence of the government and British Energy who have known about these cracks yet have refused to do anything about it."

Problem sites

Hinkley Point B, Somerset(switched on 1976) Known to have core damage

Hartlepool, Cleveland (1983) Known to have core damage

Hunterston B, Ayrshire (1976) Known to have core damage

Heysham 1, Lancashire (1983) Known to have core damage

Dungeness, Kent (1983) Documents hint that core damage found

Torness, East Lothian (1988) Documents hint that core damage found

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