2021 January 14 « nuclear-news

What could Biden’s nuclear policy look like?

What could Biden’s nuclear policy look like?

King County sits only miles away from one-third of the deployed U.S. nuclear arsenal. Courier Herald By Aaron January 12, 2021 For Leonard Eiger, having the U.S. Navy’s entire Pacific fleet of nuclear-armed submarines only a short excursion away doesn’t sit well with him.

The longtime anti-nuclear weapons activist and former North Bend resident has for decades worked to educate Puget Sound residents about Naval Base Kitsap Bangor, which houses around one-third of the nuclear weapons that are actively deployed. Eight of the 14 Ohio-class submarines, which carry powerful nuclear weapons, are stationed out of the base in Kitsap County.

“For me there’s a real futility in thinking of, and preparing to fight, a nuclear war,” Eiger said. “Because any nuclear war, any nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, is game over.”

Eiger lived in North Bend for 26 years, before recently moving to the San Juan Islands. He’s been involved with the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which stages demonstrations against — and education campaigns about — nuclear weapons.

As the Donald Trump administration winds down, he’s hoping that a Joe Biden presidency will mark a turning point in the way the U.S. approaches nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration didn’t make significant progress toward renewing the New START Treaty, which expires on Feb. 5 and began deploying “low-yield” nuclear weapons on submarines, he said. The administration also did not subscribe to a “no first use” policy. It also pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.

And if a nuclear weapon was fired at one country, other nuclear powers wouldn’t know where it was destined, and could launch their own nukes, fearing an attack, he said.

These missiles are something that Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, is thinking about. He said that this could make military leaders more comfortable using them from technical and humanitarian points of view because there could be less collateral damage and fallout ……..

On the first use of nuclear weapons, Biden’s policy platform states that he believes the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter other countries from attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons. If he holds to this statement, then he would enact a no first use policy, according to Kristensen……….

Treaties

Biden is also hoping to resurrect two important nuclear treaties. The first is the Iran nuclear deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration while he served as vice president. Trump withdrew from the treaty and put additional sanctions on Iran…….

The second significant nuclear agreement is the New START Treaty between Russia and the U.S. The treaty limits the number of nuclear weapons that the countries can own, and have deployed, at any given time. It includes all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, including submarine, bomber and land-based missiles.

Biden’s policy platform states he will try to renew and extend the New START Treaty. The treaty could be extended up to five years, but Kristensen said the administration could choose a shorter term.

If Biden chose to go with a longer five year renewal, it would likely have a calming effect on nuclear competition between the U.S. and Russia. However, a shorter term would send signals that the two countries need to address the problems with the treaty and create something stronger, Kristensen said…..

………… For activist Leonard Eiger, the world of today is only here because of a series of fortunate events. He cited the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the U.S. and Russia came close to nuclear war in 1962.

“We still live under the threat of either accidental or intentional nuclear war,” he said. “So long as nuclear weapons exist, that threat will continue to exist.”………

https://www.courierherald.com/news/what-could-bidens-nuclear-policy-look-like/

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As pandemic cripples America, Donald Trump orders funding for military Small Nuclear Reactors in space

Trump orders DoD to explore use of nuclear power for space, Defense News,

By: Aaron Mehta 14 Jan 21, WASHINGTON — In the waning days of his administration, U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at pushing the Department of Defense toward quickly developing and producing small nuclear reactors for military use — and to see if they could be used by military space vehicles.

The order, signed Jan. 5 and posted publicly Jan. 12, is not the first time the value of nuclear power for military operations has been studied. There is a long history of the Pentagon considering the issue, which proponents believe could alleviate the department’s massive logistics challenge of keeping fuel moving around the world………

In terms of terrestrial efforts, the executive order requires the defense secretary to, within 180 days, “establish and implement a plan to demonstrate” a micro-reactor at a domestic military installation — in other words, setting up an actual test of a nuclear reactor at a U.S. military location.

However, that doesn’t mean the first test will be on a military base. One location to keep an eye on is the Nevada National Security Site, a Department of Energy location roughly 65 miles from Las Vegas…….

Noted Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, “the signing of this at the very last minute of the Trump administration suggests someone is concerned [President-elect Joe Biden] might not support the program.”

Specific to space, the order calls for the defense secretary, in consultation with the secretaries of state, commerce and energy as well as the NASA administrator, to “determine whether advanced nuclear reactors can be made to benefit Department of Defense future space power needs” and to “pilot a transportable micro-reactor prototype.”

In addition, the order directs an analysis of alternatives for “personnel, regulatory, and technical requirements to inform future decisions with respect to nuclear power usage” as well as “an analysis of United States military uses for space nuclear power and propulsion technologies and an analysis of foreign adversaries’ space power and propulsion programs.”

……… While the order speeds up the timetable for a test of a nuclear reactor at a military installation, the idea of using nuclear power is hardly a new one for the DoD. In fact, the Pentagon currently has two different development tracts for small nuclear reactors.

The first is “Project Pele,” an effort to create a small mobile nuclear reactor in the 1-5 MWe power range, being run out of the Strategic Capabilities Office. In March 2020, the department awarded three companies a combined $39.7 million to start design work for Project Pele, with plans to select one firm in 2022 to build and demonstrate a prototype.

The second effort is run through the office of the undersecretary of acquisition and sustainment. That effort, ordered in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, involves a pilot program aiming to demonstrate the efficacy of a small nuclear reactor, in the 2-10 MWe range, with initial testing at a Department of Energy site around 2023. If all goes well, the goal is to have a permanent small nuclear reactor on a military base around 2027.

Even if all those timelines are hit, it is unlikely microreactors could proliferate quickly throughout the military………. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2021/01/13/trump-orders-dod-to-explore-use-of-nuclear-power-for-space-systems/

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, space travel, USA | 1 Comment

Trump chaos highlights risks of sole nuclear launch authority

Trump chaos highlights risks of sole nuclear launch authority, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/trump-chaos-highlights-risks-of-sole-nuclear-launch-authority/, 12 Jan 2021, |Ramesh Thakur, Critics of nuclear weapons have long pointed to two sets of risks. First, deterrence stability depends on all fail-safe mechanisms working every single time in every bomb-possessing country. That is an impossibly high bar for nuclear peace to hold indefinitely. Second, it also requires that rational decision-makers be in office in all the world’s nine nuclear-armed states.

In the past four years the latter risk has intensified in particular because of the personality traits of two of the nine leaders concerned, which is why US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were described as the godfathers of the UN nuclear ban treaty. The late Bruce Blair, a former nuclear launch officer and respected anti-nuclear campaigner, said in 2016: ‘The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death.’

The issue acquired unexpected urgency amid ugly scenes outside and inside Congress after it duly certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. On 8 January, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed with General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, precautions for ‘preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike’. Milley’s office confirmed to the New York Times that he had answered her questions about the nuclear command authority.

The US has no extant legal mechanism for addressing Pelosi’s concern. On 22 December 2008, in the final days of the George W. Bush presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed the unchecked presidential authority.

” For 50 years, he said, ”the US president has been ‘followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football [so-called because the code word for the first set of nuclear war plans was ‘Dropkick’] that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use … He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.’

Because of the launch-on-warning posture of nuclear weapons on high-alert status, the US nuclear system is designed to respond to a commander-in-chief’s launch order instantaneously. Missiles would leave their silos just four minutes after the president’s command authorising a strike, so that they launch before they’re destroyed by enemy missiles and hit their targets within 30 minutes of launch.

The one historical occasion on which the president’s unchecked power was an issue was in the dying days of Richard Nixon’s presidency amid the Watergate crisis. Writing in Politico in 2017, Garett Graff recalled how Defense Secretary James Schlesinger had issued an unprecedented set of orders, directing that if Nixon gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders were to check either with him or with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them. This was after Senator Alan Cranston had phoned Schlesinger to warn him about ‘the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust’. Apparently Nixon had alarmed congressmen by telling them during a meeting: ‘I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead’.

In 1973, Harold Hering, a US Air Force major on training to command nuclear missile silos, asked: ‘How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?’ Good question. Instead of receiving an answer, Hering was eased out of the military, lost his final appeal in 1975 and changed careers to take up long-haul trucking. Recalling Hering’s ‘forbidden question’, Ron Rosenbaum comments in How the end begins: the road to a nuclear World War III:

You might think such a question—the sanity of a president who gives a nuclear launch order—would require some extra scrutiny, but Major Hering’s inconvenient query put a spotlight on the fact that the most horrific decision in history could be executed in less than fifteen minutes by one person with no time for second-guessing.

According to law professor Anthony Colangelo, military officers have ‘a legal duty to disobey illegal nuclear strike orders’ and the use of nuclear weapons wouldn’t satisfy the tests of legality under international humanitarian and human rights laws. However, a Congressional Research Service note on 3 December restated the prevailing consensus: ‘The US President has sole authority to authorize the use of US nuclear weapons.’

A former head of US Strategic Command, General Robert Kehler, notes that military officers are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice ‘to follow orders provided they are legal and have come from competent authority’. In a statement on 7 January, even the International Crisis Group, whose primary field of interest is the conflict-riven regions of the world, highlighted the president’s ‘unfettered power to launch nuclear weapons’ among the perils of the chaotic transition from Trump to Biden.

An angry and vengeful president in denial about the election outcome but with his finger still on the nuclear button—the same one that he’d boasted was ‘bigger and more powerful’ than Kim’s—has helped to reconcentrate minds. In the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy kept his head while the military advisers around him, led by the notorious General Curtis LeMay, wanted to deploy nuclear weapons and invade Cuba.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the world has desperately hoped that, given the strategically challenged president’s unpredictability and unreliability, former generals in his cabinet would act as the adults in the room in any crisis situation. It was in the context of Trump’s failure to grasp core nuclear realities that his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, famously remarked that Trump was a ‘fucking moron’.

The sole launch authority is so powerful and so unchecked that it’s truly scary. Bruce Blair’s two-step recommendation was adoption of a no-first-use policy in the short term and total elimination of all nuclear weapons through ‘global zero’ in the medium term. Biden can and should change the nuclear command structure once he’s in office and require the agreement of at least one other senior official for authorisation of a nuclear strike to be legal.

If this can be of more than theoretical concern with respect to the US, we surely are justified in having even graver concerns about the potential for nuclear weapons being used irresponsibly by some of the other leaders with their fingers on nuclear triggers. Having put ‘guardrails around the sole authority of the US president … to launch nuclear weapons’, Biden could then focus on the urgent need to reduce nuclear risks globally.

AUTHOR

Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and director of its Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA will be bound by nuclear weapons ban treaty, and should join it.

U.S. should join nuclear weapons ban treaty https://www.syracuse.com/opinion/2021/01/us-should-join-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-your-letters.html– Michaela Czerkies Jan 13, 2021

On Jan. 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will enter into force. This treaty is a historic achievement in the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons, making it illegal under international law for participating nations to “develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” The treaty also acknowledges the suffering that nuclear weapons testing and use have inflicted around the world, and includes provisions for environmental remediation and assistance to people affected.

It is fitting that the TPNW enters into force just after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King clearly stated that nuclear disarmament was deeply linked to racial justice and essential to our survival. He called for a ban on nuclear weapons, understanding that, “a full-scale nuclear war would be utterly catastrophic.”

It is unconscionable that neither the United States nor any of the other eight nuclear-armed countries have signed the TPNW and are therefore not bound by it. The national Back from the Brink campaign outlines five common-sense steps that the U.S. should take to reform its nuclear policy, the final step being to pursue a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals — i.e., the TPNW. Organizations, faith communities, and elected officials can endorse and amplify the Back from the Brink campaign’s call to action and move us closer to a world free of the nuclear threat. Contact the Syracuse Peace Council at spc@peacecouncil.net to get involved.

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Scientists must tell the truth on our consumerist, ecology-killing Ponzi culture

Scientists must not sugarcoat the overwhelming challenges ahead. Instead, they should tell it like it is. Anything else is at best misleading, and at worst potentially lethal for the human enterprise.

Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp , The Conversation, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University. Daniel T. Blumstein, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, Paul Ehrlich, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Bing Professor of Population Studies, January 13, 2021

Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.

The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now.

The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own………

academics tend to specialise in one discipline, which means they’re in many cases unfamiliar with the complex system in which planetary-scale problems — and their potential solutions — exist.

What’s more, positive change can be impeded by governments rejecting or ignoring scientific advice, and ignorance of human behaviour by both technical experts and policymakers.

More broadly, the human optimism bias – thinking bad things are more likely to befall others than yourself – means many people underestimate the environmental crisis.

Numbers don’t lie

Our research also reviewed the current state of the global environment. While the problems are too numerous to cover in full here, they include:…………

A bad situation only getting worse

The human population has reached 7.8 billion – double what it was in 1970 – and is set to reach about 10 billion by 2050. More people equals more food insecurity, soil degradation, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss.

High population densities make pandemics more likely. They also drive overcrowding, unemployment, housing shortages and deteriorating infrastructure, and can spark conflicts leading to insurrections, terrorism, and war.

Essentially, humans have created an ecological Ponzi scheme. Consumption, as a percentage of Earth’s capacity to regenerate itself, has grown from 73% in 1960 to more than 170% today.

High-consuming countries like Australia, Canada and the US use multiple units of fossil-fuel energy to produce one energy unit of food. Energy consumption will therefore increase in the near future, especially as the global middle class grows.

Then there’s climate change. Humanity has already exceeded global warming of 1°C this century, and will almost assuredly exceed 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052. Even if all nations party to the Paris Agreement ratify their commitments, warming would still reach between 2.6°C and 3.1°C by 2100.

The danger of political impotence

Our paper found global policymaking falls far short of addressing these existential threats. Securing Earth’s future requires prudent, long-term decisions. However this is impeded by short-term interests, and an economic system that concentrates wealth among a few individuals.

Right-wing populist leaders with anti-environment agendas are on the rise, and in many countries, environmental protest groups have been labelled “terrorists”. Environmentalism has become weaponised as a political ideology, rather than properly viewed as a universal mode of self-preservation.

Financed disinformation campaigns against climate action and forest protection, for example, protect short-term profits and claim meaningful environmental action is too costly – while ignoring the broader cost of not acting. By and large, it appears unlikely business investments will shift at sufficient scale to avoid environmental catastrophe.

Changing course

Fundamental change is required to avoid this ghastly future. Specifically, we and many others suggest:

abolishing the goal of perpetual economic growth………..

Don’t look away………

Scientists must not sugarcoat the overwhelming challenges ahead. Instead, they should tell it like it is. Anything else is at best misleading, and at worst potentially lethal for the human enterprise. https://theconversation.com/worried-about-earths-future-well-the-outlook-is-worse-than-even-scientists-can-grasp-153091

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, culture and arts, environment | Leave a comment

Joe Biden under pressure from nuclear lobby, despite the failing state of their industry

Nuclear power backers hopeful Biden’s climate focus will boost industry, By Nina Chestney, Timothy Gardner, Reuters, 13 Jan 20, – Backers of nuclear power hope U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s focus on curbing climate change will boost the industry which is currently plagued with shutdowns, executives told a Reuters Next conference on Monday.

This is a great opportunity for our country to get our groove back after a number of years of challenges,” said Dan Poneman, the president and chief executive officer of Centrus Energy Corp, a maker of fuel for advanced nuclear reactors that are expected to become commercial in coming years.

Biden, who takes over on Jan. 20, wants to make curbing climate change one of the pillars of his administration and has supported research and development for advanced nuclear technologies……..

The United States has about 94 traditional reactors, out of the 440 worldwide, but rising costs have forced many plants to shut with five more expected to close this year in Illinois and New York.

Nuclear power faces competition from electricity stations that burn cheap, plentiful natural gas and from renewable power, including wind and solar.

In addition, around the world, nuclear plants face rising maintenance and safety costs, including protection against attacks by militants or regulatory responses to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan…….

It is not clear how Biden’s administration will prevent more of the current reactors from shutting. Rick Perry, President Donald Trump’s former energy secretary, tried to set up subsidies for nuclear power, but the idea was rejected by energy regulators.

In addition, non-proliferation experts have concerns about the supply chains of advanced nuclear, which could involve small plants in more remote locations, and that the waste that they generate could be even more concentrated than spent nuclear fuel from traditional plants…….. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclearpower-energy/nuclear-power-backers-hopeful-bidens-climate-focus-will-boost-industry-idUSKBN29G2AY

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

As Britain’s plan for Wyfla nuclear project founders, it’s time to start a green revolution

PAWB 11th Jan 2021, On the last day of troubled 2020, the Westminster Government has deferred a decision on a Development Consent Order for a nuclear power station at Wylfa until the end of April 2021.

This is the fourth time this has happened, and the second time in a row for Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive Horizon, to ask for a deferral.

On January 10 the Times revealed that Hitachi is winding Horizon up completely by March 31, 2021. This is the logical conclusion of the process that started exactly two years ago when Hitachi suspended Horizon’s operations at Wylfa. Then in September 2020, they announced that they were ditching their plans to build two huge reactors at Wylfa completely.

The attempt to build Wylfa B has been shambolic from the start. It’s high time to abandon the foolish dream that has paralyzed Anglesey’s development since 2006. As we approach the 10th
anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, the latest to be mentioned as ‘saviours’ of the radioactive poisoning project that would threaten the health of everyone on the island and beyond are three US companies.

Here they are: Bechtel Corporation, Westinghouse and Southern Company. Here are
some of the trio’s transgressions: Bechtel – recently fined nearly $58million for financial fraud with another company over a 10-year periodat Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the most radioactively contaminated site in the United States. This followed a fine of $125million for low quality work on the same site in 2016. Much more could be said about Bechtel. Westinghouse and Southern Company – Westinghouse went bankrupt while trying to build Vogtle Power Station in the state of Georgia.

The two AP1000 reactors of the type destined for Wylfa are five years behind Schedule, have doubled in cost to $25billion, and there is no guarantee that thepower station will ever be completed. Another of their projects was the V C Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina. It was abandoned unfinished in 2017, and is still being paid for by taxpayers.

However, with this latest information, it looks very unlikely that these three American companies are prepared to pay through their noses for two white elephant sites at Wylfa and Oldbury.

This is the end of Horizon’s journey. And the end once and for all of the nuclear industry’s plans to destroy an especially beautiful part of northern Ynys Môn. It is high time that politicians on Ynys Môn andGwynedd Councils, the Senedd in Cardiff, and at Westminster to recognise
this fact and to turn their attention towards cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable ways of producing electricity. The renewable technologies are available. This is the time to start a real green revolution.

https://www.stop-wylfa.org/2021/01/12/2304/

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Czech government plans to impose nuclear dump on municipalities against their will

Euractiv 12th Jan 2021, Czech municipalities fight against nuclear waste repository. Czech
municipalities chosen to provide space for a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel are ready to fight against the government’s decision “with all possible means”.

On 21 December, the Czech government decided that a radioactive waste repository will be created in one of the four selected sites.

However, although the government intends to launch exploratory works in order to find the most suitable location, there is no possibility for affected areas to have their say in this matter. Four municipalities hoped that their negotiating position would be strengthened by a new law but it has never been proposed by the government despite its previous promises.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/czech-municipalities-fight-against-nuclear-waste-repository/

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, wastes | Leave a comment

Amid ongoing lawsuits about nuclear corruption, Ohio regulators will stall the nuclear bailout law

Ohio regulators set to officially pause nuclear bailout fees created through tainted energy bill https://www.cleveland.com/open/2021/01/ohio-regulators-set-to-officially-pause-nuclear-bailout-fees-created-through-tainted-energy-bill.html Jan 11, 2021 By Andrew J. Tobias, cleveland.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — State regulators have ordered a pause on the $170 million in annual new fees created through the controversial House Bill 6, following a judge’s recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and officials in Cincinnati and Columbus.

The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority will formally suspend the charges, $150 million of which would bail out two financially troubled Ohio nuclear plants owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary, during a scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the agency’s executive director wrote in a recent letter to officials with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. As part of the same official process, the PUCO on Dec. 30 acted to prevent the new fee from going into effect while the legal challenge continues.

Both agencies cited a Dec. 21 ruling from a Franklin County judge who, ruling on the lawsuit from Yost and two Ohio cities, ordered the fees be blocked from going into effect.

The fees, worth more than $1 billion to the nuclear plants, were to have appeared on Ohioans’ power bills starting on Jan. 1.

But the pause could remain in place at least until a March 5 hearing in the Franklin County case, according to a PUCO spokesman.

Yost and the local officials sued over the law after federal investigators said it was the product of an elaborate corruption scheme financed by FirstEnergy and its affiliates that led to the arrest of former House Speaker Larry Householder and others last July. Prosecutors have said in exchange for $61 million, spent to help Householder become speaker and on a political campaign supporting the law, Householder agreed to push the bill through the legislature.

FirstEnergy, based in Akron, hasn’t been charged or officially accused of wrongdoing. Householder has pleaded not guilty to a federal corruption charge, but two associates who helped pass House Bill 6, Jeff Longstreth and Juan Cespedes, have pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme.

The fees will remain blocked even though the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a different HB6 legal challenge filed by the Ohio Manufacturers Association, a business group. The Supreme Court previously ordered the fees paused while it considered OMA’s arguments.

The OMA had asked permission to drop its challenge, saying the issue was moot since the PUCO had agreed to pause the nuclear subsidies in response to the Franklin County case.

DeWine and state legislative leaders have called for House Bill 6 to be repealed or at least, revisited. But state lawmakers failed to do so during their lame duck session in December, since House members were unable to agree on what specific action to take. The law’s future remains unclear, with legislators expected to reconvene in the coming weeks.

Numerous HB6-related state and federal investigations, including from the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are ongoing, as are numerous lawsuits.

January 14, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | legal, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Quakers welcome nuclear weapons ban treaty

Richmondshire Quakers welcome nuclear weapon treaty http://www.richmondshiretoday.co.uk/richmondshire-quakers-welcome-nuclear-weapon-treaty/January 13, 2021 Joe Willis Quakers in the district have welcomed an international treating prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons.

On January 22, the United Nation’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons passes into international law.

Over 50 nations have now signed the treaty to eliminate the weapons and the threat opponents say they pose to the environment and human survival.

Members of Wensleydale and Swaledale Area Quaker Meeting have joined Quakers around the world to call for the weapons to be banned and the treaty to be adopted.

A spokesperson said: “Practically, their use is becoming obsolete as warfare moves towards cyber crime and drone warfare.

“Our government wants to spend over £200 billion on upgrading our nuclear weapons and Trident submarines when the threat to us all is Covid-19 and climate change.

“We welcome this moment of light in these dark times and urge our government to join others working for a more peaceful solution to our problems.”