Massachusetts judge requires Exxon to hand over climate documents, Reuters 11 Jan 17 A Massachusetts judge has refused to excuse Exxon Mobil Corp from a request by the state’s attorney general to hand over decades worth of documents on its views on climate change, state officials said on Wednesday.
The decision by Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Heidi Brieger denying Exxon’s request for an order exempting it from handing over the documents represents a legal victory for Attorney General Maura Healey, who is investigating the world’s largest publicly traded oil company’s climate policies.
“This order affirms our longstanding authority to investigate fraud,” Healey said on Twitter following the decision, adding that Exxon “must come clean about what it knew about climate change.”……
The investigations follow separate reports by online news publication Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times showing that Exxon worked to play down the risks of climate change despite its own scientists’ having raised concerns about it decades earlier.
The news came on the day former Exxon Chief Executive Rex Tillerson faced a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on his nomination to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state…….http://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-massachusetts-idUSKBN14W04Z
January 13, 2017
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Mattis strikes sharp contrast to Trump on F-35, nuclear weapons 12 JANUARY, 2017: FLIGHTGLOBAL.COM BY: LEIGH GIANGRECO WASHINGTON DC
Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense supports Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme, the NATO alliance and restrained use of nuclear weapons during his confirmation hearing, marking a stark departure from the president-elect……..https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/mattis-strikes-sharp-contrast-to-trump-on-f-35-nuc-433139/
January 13, 2017
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Tillerson and Trump at odds on nuclear http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/tillerson-and-trump-at-odds-on-nuclear/news-story/20c6219abce5929b3aa29ef8f2095b8d JANUARY 12, 2017
US Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson says that he doesn’t agree with President-elect Donald Trump’s comments that it would not be a bad thing if other countries, including Japan, acquired nuclear weapons.
Asked by Democratic Senator Edward Markey about Trump’s comments, Tillerson said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he did not think anyone would advocate for more nuclear weapons on the planet.
Pressed further by Markey on whether he agreed with Trump’s remarks, Tillerson replied: “I do not agree.”
January 13, 2017
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Tillerson Backs Paris Climate Agreement At Confirmation Hearing http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Tillerson-Backs-Paris-Climate-Agreement-At-Confirmation-Hearing.html By Irina Slav Oilprice.com Jan 12, 2017, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson said during his Senate confirmation hearing that the U.S. would be better off sticking with the Paris agreement to tackle climate change. His position stands in contrast to President-elect Donald Trump’s stated opposition to the agreement and his intention to break away from the agreement when he enters office.
Climate change was among the topics on which a 21-senator panel grilled Tillerson yesterday, and was also one of the topics on which his stance differed from that of Trump. Also among these were nuclear proliferation, and to a certain extent, Iran.
Asked to comment on Trump statements that he would not object if U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia obtained nuclear weapons, Tillerson said that hardly anyone would advocate the global proliferation of nuclear weapons.
As for the Iran deal that several Western governments closed with Iran last year to deter the country from building its own nuclear weapons, Tillerson was wary in his approach, telling the Foreign Relations Committee he would recommend “a full review” of the deal.
Tillerson was also measured in his responses to questions concerning Russia and bilateral relations. Urged by Republican senator – and former Trump rival for the Republican presidential nomination – Marco Rubio to agree that Russia’s President Putin was a war criminal because of Russia’s involvement in Syria, Tillerson declined, saying these were “serious charges to make,” adding that he needed more information before reaching that determination.
Back to climate change and more specifically Exxon’s role in it and its alleged attempt to hide knowledge about the effect of human activity on climate, Tillerson referred the panel to Exxon itself. Asked whether he was unwilling to answer or rather lacking the knowledge that would allow him to do so, Tillerson responded with “A little of both.”
January 13, 2017
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Generators call New York nuclear subsidies an ‘existential threat’ to wholesale markets, Utility Dive by Robert Walton @TeamWetDog 12 Jan 17
Dive Brief:
January 13, 2017
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Another Climate Change Push Comes From Exxon Shareholders, Inside Climate News,
Investors have introduced seven more resolutions, asking the company to address climate change and its risks, moving beyond Rex Tillerson’s resistant stance. David Hasemyer, 12 Jan 17
Once again this year, dissident ExxonMobil stockholders have filed several resolutions with the company asking it to be more forthright in addressing the climate crisis.
Submitted months before Exxon’s annual meeting in May, by a twist of fate it also helps set the stage for Wednesday, when Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s former chief executive and Donald Trump’s pick to become secretary of state, appears at a Senate confirmation hearing.
At the hearing, Tillerson’s critics are likely to connect the dots between his stance on climate change as the head of the oil giant and how he would approach the problem as the nation’s top diplomat, in light of the global climate treaty that Trump has opposed.
And that may mean Tillerson finds himself facing questions about the treaty’s goals that shareholders have pressed him about before.
Most of the seven shareholder resolutions filed under Exxon’s deadline in recent days resemble those the company vehemently opposed in recent years under Tillerson’s leadership.
They ask Exxon to add a board member with environmental expertise; disclose funding of lobbyists and organizations dedicated to influencing climate policy; and to explain in detail how the company might align its business with a low-carbon economy.
Exxon is expected to oppose those resolutions, as it has consistently for more than two decades…….. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11012017/exxon-shareholders-climate-change-rex-tillerson
January 13, 2017
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Nuclear plant official’s widow: ‘Monju was not worth dying for’ Asahi Shimbun By KEISHI NISHIMURA/ Staff Writer January 12, 2017 A question has haunted Toshiko Nishimura since she saw her husband’s swollen body in a hospital 21 years ago.
“What did he die for?”
Her husband, Shigeo, was a deputy chief of the general affairs department at Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp. (PNC).
His duties changed significantly after a fire and sodium leak occurred at PNC’s Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, on Dec. 8, 1995.
Shigeo was put in charge of the internal investigation of the suspected cover-up over the accident.
PNC, now the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), entered the plant twice on the day after the incident and took video recordings of the damage.
However, the company only released the second video to the public, and that footage was heavily edited to cover up the extent of the accident.
On the morning of Jan. 12, 1996, Toshiko made a cup of coffee for her husband as usual, but he left for work without drinking it.
That evening, Shigeo appeared at a news conference to explain the sodium leak. Through his investigation, he and others knew the truth about the videos, but he gave false statements to the media about when the video footage came to the knowledge of PNC managers.
After the news conference, Shigeo is believed to have jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a hotel where he was staying. He was 49.
Toshiko, now 70, could not believe her husband would kill himself. Just days before his death, during the New Year break, their son announced his wedding plans.
Shigeo left a letter to his wife, but it did not mention the reason for the suicide.
PNC could not provide a satisfactory explanation to Toshiko, so she asked police officers, hospital workers, hotel staff and people at other places.
In 2004, she took legal action against the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, the successor of PNC, thinking that the testimonies of workers would give a clear account of what Shigeo was going through before his death.
But no details were revealed, and she lost the case.
She also joined an “anti-Monju movement” because she “could not forgive Monju for continuing to run at the sacrifice of human life.”
The Monju reactor, plagued by numerous problems, has proved a costly failure in the government’s plans for a nuclear fuel recycling program…..
Toshiko, meanwhile, is still involved in a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding the return of her husband’s personal belongings that he left at the hotel.
She says she wants to tell Shigeo, “Monju was not worth dying for.” http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201701120001.html
January 13, 2017
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By TATSUYUKI KOBORI/ Staff Writer January 11, 2017 Coral bleaching has killed 70.1 percent of the nation’s largest coral reef as of the end of 2016, up from 56.7 percent just a few months earlier, the Environment Ministry said.
Warmer seawater temperatures last summer are believed to have caused coral bleaching to spread to 90 percent of the Sekiseishoko coral reef in Okinawa Prefecture…….http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201701110028.html
January 13, 2017
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The White House Wants Scientists To Explore Geoengineering, Gizmodo, Maddie Stone Jan 12, 2017, Geoengineering, or hacking the climate system to cool it off, is the latest science fictional idea to make its way into a White House strategic roadmap, following a report last week on how we should be preparing for the apocalypse asteroid. Seeing as the apocalypse asteroid won’t have a chance to annihilate us if the climate spirals out of control first, it would appear the White House is trying to cover all bases.
The fact that geoengineering, a controversial subject the White House avoided mentioning for years, is now getting serious treatment in a policy roadmap is also the latest indication that Obama does not think we are acting to reduce our emissions quickly enough, and that aggressive technological interventions may be required.
The roadmap, which was submitted to Congress this week by the US Global Change Research Program, the governing body of the 13 federal agencies conducting research on global environmental change, lays out future directions of study on familiar topics, such as the rapidly-warming Arctic and humanity’s impact on the global water cycle. It also urges research into two of the most widely discussed planet-hacking concepts: Solar engineering, or injecting particles into the stratosphere to make it more reflective, and carbon capture, or sucking CO2 right out of the sky.
While the report does not suggest scientists conduct a climate experiment any time soon — solar engineering and direct carbon capture from the air are both highly speculative ideas — it recommends we start laying some groundwork, by improving models and observational capabilities that can predict the consequences of geoengineering. “Such research would also define the smallest scale of intervention experiments that would yield meaningful scientific understanding,” the report reads…….
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and an outspoken critic of geonengineering, had a somewhat darker view on the new White House recommendations. “I do believe it is dangerous to consider engaging in massive planetary interventions with a system we understand imperfectly,” he told Gizmodo. “The law of unintended consequences reigns supreme.”
“The one possible exception is direct air capture, a relatively benign form of geoengineering,” Mann continued. “With respect to other schemes, like stratospheric sulphate aerosol injection, the only legitimate reason to study them right now, in my view, is to get a better sense of just what dangers might result from implementing such schemes.”…… more http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/01/the-white-house-wants-scientists-to-explore-geoengineering/
January 13, 2017
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Further concern over French nuclear compo law Radio NZ 12 Jan 17 A French Polynesian member of the French National Assembly Jean-Paul Tuaiva has raised his concerns about the revision of the nuclear compensation law. A decree is about to be approved in Paris that will amend the 2010 law by loosening the criteria for claims to be accepted.
Tuaiva has asked the French government to reconsider compensation claims which had been rejected – a call already made by two other Assembly members…….
France tested its atomic weapons first in Algeria and then from 1966 to 1996 in the South Pacific in a programme which involved more than 100,000 personnel. http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/322239/further-concern-over-french-nuclear-compo-law
January 13, 2017
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Copeland by-election goes nuclear By Ross HawkinsPolitical correspondent, BBC Radio 4 Today 12 January 2017 “……. Conservatives are putting Jeremy Corbyn at the centre of their Copeland by-election campaign.
His image is all over Tory leaflets, and their logic is very simple. Copeland relies on the nuclear industry and Jeremy Corbyn has opposed new nuclear power stations.
It means that when a by-election date is set, the contest in Cumbria could reveal a lot about how national politics will play out in the coming months. Tories will highlight an issue that divides Mr Corbyn and his colleagues……..
The economy revolves around Sellafield, and job numbers are set to fall there as reprocessing work ends. A new nuclear power station is proposed. Labour backs new nuclear energy, and local politicians certainly do. But Mr Corbyn has made plain in the past that he disagrees.
A policy document for his leadership campaign in 2015 says plainly: “I am opposed to fracking and to new nuclear on the basis of the dangers posed to our ecosystems.”
In a 2011 speech in the wake of the Fukushima disaster he went further, suggesting existing nuclear power stations should be decommissioned………
If it’s successful, a Labour strategy of responding to relentless attacks on Mr Corbyn with an equally relentless focus on the NHS may provide a model for the opposition in the years ahead. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38589306
January 13, 2017
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China Is Building Britain ANOTHER Nuclear Reactor, Daily Caller ANDREW FOLLETT Energy and Science Reporter 12 Jan 17 Britain’s nuclear regulators are considering whether another Chinese-funded and designed nuclear reactor should be built in Bradwell, Essex.
The reactor would be funded and designed by the state-controlled China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and the French power company Électricité de France (EDF). It could take British authorities up to four years to formally approve or reject the new reactor.
“The robust independence of the UK’s regulators is seen across the world as a key strength for nuclear in Britain,” Zhu Minhong, General Manager of CGN in Britain, told Reuters. “CGN and EDF will bring to this enterprise their joint experience in China, Britain and France over many years.”
The U.K.’s previous attempt to build a nuclear power plant with the exact same Chinese company didn’t got well.
British Prime Minister Theresa May almost cancelled a previous China-backed nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point due to its high costs and environmentalist opposition. The U.S. charged the Chinese company behind the Hinkley Point plant with nuclear espionage in August.
A columnist for a Chinese state-run media outlet called May’s reluctance to approve of the Hinkley Point nuclear power project a result of “China-phobia.” CGN agreed to pay about $8 billion of the reactor’s $24 billion dollar cost.
China’s ambassador to Great Britain issued an ultimatum over the delay earlier in August, pointing out Chinese companies have invested more in the U.K. over the past five years than in France, Germany and Italy combined.
EDF agreed in July to build the Hinkley Point nuclear reactors by 2025 after years of delays. If the reactors aren’t built, U.K. taxpayers could be on the hook for $31.6 billion, according to documents released by the government. EDF is still planning to build the reactors, despite the company’s serious financial problems and the fact that the project is below investment grade.
EDF previously delayed making a decision about Hinkley Point several times before finally approving it after already investing $2.85 billion. EDF is more than $40 billion in debt and has a history of abandoning or delaying similar reactors in France……. http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/10/china-is-building-britain-another-nuclear-reactor/#ixzz4VZwv59yK
January 13, 2017
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Toshiba may face still heavier losses in U.S. nuclear business: source http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/12/business/corporate-business/toshiba-may-face-heavier-losses-u-s-nuclear-business-source/#.WHfi9NJ97Gg KYODO Toshiba Corp. anticipates that total losses at its nuclear business in the United States could be larger than earlier stated due to a write-down at its subsidiary Westinghouse Electric Co., a source familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
The development may further taint the financial standing of the company that has been battling to overcome a massive window-dressing scandal.
Toshiba is finalizing the size of an impairment loss at Westinghouse, which could reach tens of billions of yen, ahead of the release of its group earnings report for the April to December period in mid-February, the source said.
Last month Toshiba said it may need to write down the value of assets at CB&I Stone & Webster Inc., a nuclear plant builder Westinghouse obtained in 2015, possibly by several hundred billion yen.
Toshiba believes the devaluation of CB&I Stone & Webster may have seriously undermined the value of Westinghouse, the source said.
The source said Toshiba estimated the final write down in connection with U.S. nuclear plant operations may reach up to ¥500 billion as of the end of last year, but the total amount could change as the company combed through their financial data.
Toshiba has been focusing on nuclear energy operations as its core business but has been struggling to win orders for new power plants both at home and abroad, particularly after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The company booked an impairment loss of about ¥250 billion in its U.S. nuclear business in the last fiscal year through March 2016.
January 13, 2017
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British nuclear weapons workers to go on strike over Atomic Weapons Establishment pensions dispute The Independent, 12 Jan 17 Staff manufacture and maintain nuclear weapons including the Trident programme Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden Employees responsible for manufacturing and maintaining the UK’s nuclear weapons are to go on strike.
Workers at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) are to stage two 48-hour walk-outs as part of a long-running dispute over pensions.
Unite said 600 of its members, who work as managers, craft and manual workers at the AWE’s two sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, will strike on 18 and 30 January.
A spokesperson said workers felt “deeply betrayed” by promises made decades ago guaranteeing their pensions, when they were transferred from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to the private sector, being broken………
“The four days of strike action later this month are not being taken lightly. It is not a ‘political’ strike, but one taken reluctantly by our members who have no desire to see thousands of pounds wiped off their retirement incomes.”
Unite claimed new pensions proposals, which would see the AWE’s pension contributions lowered, violated pledges made in a ministerial statement to the Commons in the 1990s. The AWE, owned by a consortium of Lockheed Martin, Jacobs Engineering and Serco, is contracted by the MoD to build and maintain nuclear warheads for Royal Navy submarines. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-nuclear-weapons-factory-workers-berkshire-go-on-strike-prospect-union-awe-atomic-weapons-a7523516.html
January 13, 2017
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U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada. Christian Science Monitor, Matthew Brown Associated Press JANUARY 10, 2017 BILLINGS, MONT. —U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada, more than three decades after the tribes said the leases were illegally sold…….http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0110/Thirty-years-later-Blackfoot-tribes-see-environmental-win-on-sacred-grounds
January 13, 2017
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Canada, indigenous issues, USA |
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