The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, a nonprofit organization that represents native Aleuts in Alaska has rejected lower cost heating oil from Venezuela because of (T)Hugo Chavez's remarks at the UN. These are among the poorest people in the entire state of Alaska and they pay some of the highest oil prices because of the high cost of transportation.

And they rejected the bribe Chavez wanted to give them.

And yet a few villages are refusing free heating oil from Venezuela, on the patriotic principle that no foreigner has the right to call their president "the devil."

The heating oil is being offered by the petroleum company controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President Bush's nemesis. While scores of Alaska's Eskimo and Indian villages say they have no choice but to accept, others would rather suffer.

"As a citizen of this country, you can have your own opinion of our president and our country. But I don't want a foreigner coming in here and bashing us," said Justine Gunderson, administrator for the tribal council in the Aleut village of Nelson Lagoon. "Even though we're in economically dire straits, it was the right choice to make."

Nelson Lagoon residents pay more than $5 a gallon for oil — or at least $300 a month per household — to heat their homes along the wind-swept coast of the Bering Sea, where temperatures can dip to minus-15. About one-quarter of the 70 villagers are looking for work, in part because Alaska's salmon fishing industry has been hit hard by competition from fish farms.

The donation to Alaska's native villages has focused attention on the rampant poverty and high fuel prices in a state that is otherwise awash in oil — and oil profits. In 2005, 86 percent of the Alaska's general fund, or $2.8 billion, came from oil from the North Slope.

The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, a native nonprofit organization that would have handled the heating oil donation on behalf of 291 households in Nelson Lagoon, Atka, St. Paul and St. George, rejected the offer because of the insults Chavez has hurled at Bush.

Maine has also refused any dealings with Citgo. About 150 Aleut villages have accepted the aid from Citgo (and it is hard to fault them, please do not take it that way). But I have to tell you, the action by the the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association is one that makes me proud.

The Association's website is here. If you can spare a few bucks, I'm sure they can find a good use for it. If you can't afford to send money, a thank you email would probably be appreciated.

Cross post from Blue Crab Boulevard.

Where that plutonium that North Korea is using came from, the "Agreed Framework" arranged for the stabilization of 8,000 spent fuel rods the North Koreans had allowed to deteriorate to a point where they were in danger of falling apart. I'm still trying to find the inspector's report that stated how close to an accident those rods were. You know, where they would have been rendered unusable and unrecoverable. (Found it here. That fuel was almost at a stage where the plutonium would have been unrecoverable).

The remaining 7,700 fuel rods were in a window-lit cinder block building with peeling paint, where they sat in a concrete-lined pool of water roughly the size of a rectangular backyard swimming pool. The entire core had been hastily removed from the reactor in the spring of 1994 after a growing confrontation with the IAEA.

Two years earlier, the agency had found evidence that North Korea had reprocessed more than the 80 grams of plutonium 239 it had officially disclosed. When the IAEA then asked to inspect the reprocessing laboratory and radioactive waste tanks and analyze the spent fuel, North Korea refused, declaring instead that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But now, tensions were reduced.

Because of the sunlight and seasonal temperatures, there was a layer of algae on the top of the water. We could barely see several rods not so neatly tumbled into the metal baskets, which were stacked two or three upon each other. The water was made murky by a suspension of magnesium oxide–rust from the fuel cladding. It looked something like a diluted form of "Milk of Magnesia" (also a form of magnesium oxide).

Attempts to clean the water and reduce the erosion of the cladding had clogged the filter equipment; it was broken and heavily contaminated. The North Koreans had then added large amounts of sodium hydroxide (lye), a caustic chemical, to try to retard the erosion. Unfortunately, sodium hydroxide can create pinhole leaks in the cladding–exposing the uranium metal to water. Once that happens, the uranium will interact with the moisture and give off flammable and explosive hydrogen. If the uranium fuel is pulled out of the water it may spontaneously ignite.

Our fears about the danger of the North Korean spent fuel were confirmed. The cladding could seriously erode in the not so distant future, allowing highly radioactive materials to escape into the pool, creating a severe radiological hazard. Fires caused by wet uranium added another risk. We left a few days later, sobered by what we had observed.

However, the new, Republican-controlled Congress did not share our urgency, and congressional leaders made no secret of their desire to kill the Agreed Framework. Despite the unprecedented access we were given to the Yongbyon nuclear complex, Congress only grudgingly funded the spent fuel project, which cost about $20 million.

Each individual spent fuel rod was brushed in clean water, rinsed, and placed in a stainless steel tube. To retard the generation of hydrogen, inert gas was injected before the tubes were sealed and tagged for IAEA inspectors. U.S. contractors with special equipment were brought in, and North Korea supplied labor. Because of radiation and fire concerns, the operation involved partitioning the existing pool to allow for an area of clean water where the underwater processing and canning of the rods by remote instruments could be observed. My last visit to North Korea was in January 1995, when we finalized arrangements. Subsequently, I was responsible for hiring contractors and developing the project budget for congressional approval in the fall of 1995.

By October 1997, the spent fuel rods were safely encased in steel containers, under IAEA inspection. The reactor remained closed, construction on two other, larger reactors had stopped, and the reprocessing plant sat idle. After the spent fuel project was established, I went on to other work, leaving my memories locked away like a disturbingly vivid dream.

Before they were helpfully stabilized by the Clinton administration. At US taxpayer expense.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. John "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat" Kerry is, of course, laying all the blame at Bush's feet. Kind of misses the point of where Kim got his plutonium there, Johnny-boy.

Cross post from Blue Crab Boulevard.com. (Yes, I know I've been really bad about posting here).