As the “mainstream” ‘Establishment” “corporate” world enthuses over (demonstrably uneconomic) small nuclear reactors, it really is time to put a searchlight onto the nuclear industry.
Can there be any other industry so enmeshed in corruption as the nuclear industry?
I won’t try to enter here into the wholescale government lying and deception of the public that has gone on in Russia and China – poisoning whole regions with radioactive waste.
Just a brief look at what’s gone on in North America should be enough to raise our suspicions about the companies and individuals leading the push for small nuclear reactors.
Illinois, in March 2022, a federal grand jury indicted the powerful Speaker of the House, Michael Madigan, on racketeering and bribery charges for allegedly using his official position to corruptly solicit and receive personal financial rewards for himself and his associates.
How about the Ohio First Energy case, with the fraud conviction of Larry Householder, the former Speaker of the House, and in South Carlina the gaoling of Kevin B. Marsh, former SCANA CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors?
Canada’s SNC- Lavalin should take the cake for corruption. There’s the 2019 $10 million hospital bribery case. And between 2004 and 2011 $117,803 flowed from SNC-Lavalin to federal party funds, including Liberal and Conservative. Which politicians received the money remains a mystery. In late November 2018, former SNC-Lavalin vice-president Norman Morin quietly pleaded guilty to charges of violating Canada’s election financing laws. Because Morin accepted the plea deal, the evidence gathered for the trial was never presented in court.
The company faced charges of fraud and corruption in connection with nearly $48 million in payments made to Libyan government officials between 2001 and 2011.
CBC news detailed SNC-Lavalin’s corruption scandals – MUHC contract scandal…….Corruption scandal in Bangladesh …….Libya scandal……Elections Financing in its story – A closer look at SNC-Lavalin’s sometimes murky past.
So many murky areas around nuclear deals – the political gymnastics as powerful individuals like Bill Gates and Elon Musk get involved in government measures that facilitate their nuclear/space enterprises.
The secrecy involved in the nuclear industry lends itself to corruption. The industry chips away at laws that impose safety or transparency limits on it.
To give one scary example – President Vladimir Zelensky has signed an amendment that reduced financial oversight of politicians. The measure “practically kills” efforts to combat money-laundering, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) claimed. The body is funded by the US government and EU member states and elites in Kiev have long been hostile to its work, despite their dependence on Western funding and support. This, as Ukraine aims to build, with USA’s Westinghouse, new nuclear reactors.
We get to hear of some of the shenanigans that corrupt nuclear executives get up to. As the clearly illogical and unaffordable small nuclear reactor push goes on, it is critically time to focus on why on earth this is happening, and who is getting paid to lie about it?
Inside the ‘clandestine world’ of SNC-Lavalin’s fallen star Riadh Ben Aissa, Financial Post, Brian Hutchinson, Financial Post Staff | March 18, 2015 “……..This is one of the details revealed in a 98-page document prepared by Swiss prosecutors (called an acte d’accusation en procédure simplifiée, it is comparable to a North American plea bargain agreement) and obtained by the Financial Post. It brings to light previously unknown details of how Mr. Ben Aissa, a 56-year-old citizen of both Tunisia and Canada, and now facing charges in Canada on a different matter, directed 12.5 million euros and US$21.9 million into Swiss bank accounts controlled by Saadi Gaddafi, from 2001 to 2007.
These were kickbacks, paid to Saadi by Mr. Ben Aissa in return for certain Libyan contracts awarded to SNC. According to Swiss authorities, tens of millions more dollars moved through Mr. Ben Aissa’s own Swiss accounts, from September 2001 to March 2011. The money came from SNC……..
the Swiss proceedings raise new questions about SNC, its vulnerability, and its future, which even its current CEO, Robert Card, has publicly worried may be at risk of either breaking up, ceasing to exist or being taken over. Since it found itself embroiled in scandal, the company has seemed in perpetual crisis, with more drama this week in its boardroom, with the sudden resignation of its chairman, and in a Montreal courtroom, where Mr. Ben Aissa and another former SNC executive began a preliminary hearing over allegations of bribery in a Canadian hospital deal.
While some might question how SNC did not know about Mr. Ben Aissa’s conduct in Libya, some insiders still seem inclined to blame him alone for setting into motion the company’s stunning fall from grace.
“Good luck sorting out Riadh Ben Assia’s clandestine world,” former SNC chairman Gwyn Morgan wrote in a brief response to questions put to him by email about certain activities that allegedly took place during his leadership……..
SWwiss authorities identified five specific areas of corruption where SNC cash was used to obtain contracts in Libya. ……
Last month, the RCMP laid criminal charges against SNC Lavalin itself, in connection to allegedly corrupt activities in Libya. The charges came as a blow; sources claim the company’s management and its lawyers had negotiated with Canadian authorities for two years, in an attempt to avoid prosecution. A criminal conviction for corruption could result in the company being prohibited — “debarred” — from bidding on public works projects in Canada…….
On Monday, SNC announced the resignation of Ian Bourne, its board chairman, effective immediately. He’d been in the position just two years, having replaced Mr. Morgan in 2013. SNC did not give specific reasons why Mr. Bourne decided to leave.
The same morning, two former SNC executives walked into a Montreal courtroom for the start of a preliminary hearing on other corruption-related matters. One was Pierre Duhaime, SNC’s former CEO and president. The second was Mr. Ben Aissa, back in Canada after his Swiss incarceration and extradition. Both are charged with fraud, related to alleged construction bid-rigging in Montreal, in what one police investigator has called the “biggest corruption fraud in Canadian history.”
Mr. Duhaime, Mr. Ben Aissa, former SNC controller Stéphane Roy and five other men, among them Canada’s former spy watchdog, Arthur Porter, allegedly participated a corrupt scheme that saw an international consortium led by SNC win a $1.34-billion hospital construction and maintenance contract for the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), in 2010. Dr. Porter has publicly refuted the allegations and none have been proven in court. Mr. Duhaime has pleaded not guilty. Mr. Ben Aissa is also in court fighting the allegations………. http://business.financialpost.com/legal-post/inside-the-clandestine-world-of-snc-lavalins-fallen-star-riadh-ben-aissa
A closer look at SNC-Lavalin’s sometimes murky past CBC, 12 Feb 19 One of Canada’s biggest engineering companies is at the centre of what appears to be a growing scandal engulfing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government.
The Globe and Mail reported Thursday that SNC-Lavalin lobbied the government to agree to a deferred prosecution agreement or remediation agreement. The company faces charges of fraud and corruption in connection with nearly $48 million in payments made to Libyan government officials between 2001 and 2011.
Trudeau denies he directed his former justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to intervene in the prosecution. Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of her position last month and has refused to comment on the story. Days after the story broke, the federal ethics commissioner confirmed he will investigate claims the prime minister’s office pressured Wilson-Raybould to help SNC-Lavalin avoid prosecution.
SNC-Lavalin has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The case is at the preliminary hearing stage. If convicted, the company could be banned from bidding on any federal government contracts for 10 years.
But the Libya case is just one scandal among many linked to SNC-Lavalin in the past decade.
Allegations of criminal activity are what led to the resignations in February 2012 of top executives Riadh Ben Aïssa and Stéphane Roy. CEO Pierre Duhaime followed them out the door the following month.
MUHC contract scandal…….
Corruption scandal in Bangladesh …….
Libya scandal……
Elections Financing
In late November 2018, former SNC-Lavalin vice-president Normand Morin quietly pleaded guilty to charges of violating Canada’s election financing laws.
According to the compliance agreement reached with the company in 2016, Morin orchestrated a scheme between 2004 and 2011 that used employees to get around the restrictions on companies donating directly to federal political parties. Morin would get employees to donate to political parties, riding associations or Liberal leadership candidates. The company would then reimburse them for their donations through false refunds for personal expenses or fictitious bonuses.
In total, $117,803 flowed from SNC-Lavalin to federal party funds during that period. The Liberal Party of Canada got the lion’s share — $83,534 to the party and $13,552 to various riding associations. Another $12,529 went to contestants in the 2006 Liberal Party leadership race won by Stephane Dion. The Conservative Party of Canada received $3,137 while Conservative riding associations got $5,050.
Ottawa, Monday, March 27, 2023 – Environmental and civil society groups are giving a thumbs-down after the federal government announced new funding on Friday towards the development of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). The groups will be looking closely at the numbers in Tuesday’s budget.
The “Prime Minister Trudeau and President Biden Joint Statement,“ issued on Friday March 24, committed Canada to provide funding and in-kind support for a US-led program to promote SMRs.
The Canadian government’s Strategic Innovation Fund has already given close to $100 million to corporations working on experimental SMR technologies. In addition, the Canada Infrastructure Bank has committed $970 million to Ontario Power Generation’s plan for a 300-megawatt SMR at Darlington. Federal funding is benefiting US-based companies GE-Hitachi and Westinghouse, and Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, among others.
All the funded SMR projects are still in the research and development phase. Worldwide, no SMRs have ever been built for domestic use.
In addition, the federal government is giving Atomic Energy of Canada Limited $1.35 billion a year to conduct nuclear research and development and to manage its toxic radioactive waste. Nearly all this funding is transferred to a consortium of SNC-Lavalin and two US-based companies (Fluor and Jacobs) that that are heavily involved in nuclear weapons and SMR research.
Over 100 groups from all across Canada have criticized the federal government’s plan to promote SMR nuclear technology, stating that:
SMRs are a dirty, dangerous distraction that will produce radioactive waste of many kinds. Especially worrisome are those proposed reactors that would extract plutonium from irradiated fuel, raising the spectre of nuclear weapons proliferation.
SMRs will take too long to develop to address the urgent climate crisis in the short time frame necessary to achieve Canada’s goals.
SMRs will be much more expensive than renewable energy and energy efficiency. Small reactors will be even more expensive per unit of power than the current large ones, which have priced themselves out of the market.
Nuclear power creates fewer jobs than renewable energy and efficiency. Solar, wind and tidal power are among the fastest-growing job sectors in North America. The International Energy Agency forecasts that 90% of new electrical capacity installed worldwide over the next five years will be renewable.
The federal government needs to invest urgently in renewables, energy conservation and climate action, not slow, expensive, speculative nuclear technologies.
QUOTES:
“Taxpayer dollars should not be wasted on a future technology whose time is past, like nuclear reactors, when truly clean renewable solutions are up-and-running and getting more affordable all the time.” – Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
“Let’s compete to be world leaders in renewables. Pouring public funding into speculative reactor technologies is sabotaging our efforts to address the climate crisis.” – Dr. Ole Hendrickson, Sierra Club Canada Foundation
The SMR technologies are all at the early R&D stage, yet the funding is not following good governance practices by requiring high standards of peer review.“ – Dr. Susan O’Donnell, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has joined a growing list of Pacific leaders to object to the $US250 billion nuclear submarine deal between Australia, United Kingdom and the United States (Aukus).
The Aukus project, which will allow Australia to acquire upto eight nuclear-powered submarines, has been widely condemned by proponents of nuclear non-proliferation.
It has also fuelled concerns that the submarine pact, viewed as an arrangement to combat China, will heighten geopolitical tensions and disturb the peace and security of the region, which is a notion that Canberra has rejected.
Brown, who is the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) chair, told Cook Islands News he was concerned about the Aukus deal because it is “going against” the Pacific’s principal nuclear non-proliferation agreement.
We’ve all abided by the Treaty of Rarotonga, signed in 1985, which was about reducing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear vessels,” he told the newspaper.
The Treaty of Rarotonga has more than a dozen countries signed up to it, including Australia and New Zealand.
But it is what it is,” he said of the tripartite arrangement.
“We’ve already seen it will lead to an escalation of tension, and we’re not happy with that as a region.”
Other regional leaders who have publicly expressed concerns about the deal include Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare, Tuvalu’s foreign Minister Simon Kofe, and Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu.
With Cook Islands set to host this year’s PIF meeting in October, Brown has hinted that the “conflicting” nuclear submarine deal is expected to be a big part of the agenda.
“The name Pacific means peace, so to have this increase of naval nuclear vessels coming through the region is in direct contrast with that,” he said.
“I think there will be opportunities where we will individually and collectively as a forum voice our concern about the increase in nuclear vessels.”
Brown said “a good result” at the leaders gathering “would be the larger countries respecting the wishes of Pacific countries.”
“Many are in opposition of nuclear weapons and nuclear vessels,” he said.
“The whole intention of the Treaty of Rarotonga was to try to de-escalate what were at the time Cold War tensions between the major superpowers.”
This Aukus arrangement seems to be going against it,” he added.
JEFFERSON CITY — Utility companies like Ameren Missouri could begin billing customers for the upfront costs of building nuclear power facilities under a plan advancing in the General Assembly.
In debate Monday, the Missouri House gave preliminary approval to legislation allowing utility companies to add the cost of a new nuclear plant or renewable energy generator to customers’ rates while they’re under construction.
That’s a practice that was banned by Missouri voters in 1976 in response to the utility company’s attempt to collect costs while it was building the state’s first and only nuclear power plant in Callaway County.
Then, and now, consumer advocates object to the concept of forcing utility users to pay for something that is not yet in service, especially when Ameren recently obtained a rate increase and, in February, announced a 7% increase in its quarterly cash dividend, signaling healthy economic times.………………………..
The Consumers Council of Missouri is among those who oppose the plan, saying if the plant is never completed, electric customers still bear the costs.
In South Carolina, the concept enabled a utility to charge ratepayers for the construction of two nuclear reactors that were never completed. During that period, South Carolina ratepayers were charged billions of dollars until the project faltered and ultimately collapsed, the watchdog organization said.
Large industrial users of electricity, including Ford Motor Co. and other manufacturers, also oppose the plan……………………………
Rep. Doug Clemens, D-St. Ann, warned that the measure could hurt consumers.
“This particular scheme is essentially giving a blank check to our utility companies,” Clemens said. “We’ll never see productivity out of this scheme.”………………………
The proposal needs a final vote in the House before moving to the Senate for further deliberations.
Letter: The UK Government is advocating the increasing use of nuclear energy, and the generation thereof, as if it is ‘green’. I SUPPORT the very important contribution of Frances McKie in Saturday’s letters page. For several years now we have witnessed the Great British nuclear policy: to push as many people as possible – in vehicular private and public transport, private homes, commercial premises, and public buildings – to convert to using only electricity as a power source. More than persuasion, it is becoming obligatory in some cases, all in the name of climate change. We need a new expression of the 70s organisation which campaigned under the banner Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace.
Across the UK, businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors face increasing competition for talent. But the big question is: does the country – with its long-standing skills gap in a number of industries – have the foundations to build a workforce which can meet our economic and environmental ambitions?
Nuclear faces a perfect storm in developing future talent with the combination of a historic lack of investment, an ageing workforce and the government’s aspirations for growth in civil and defence (due to the drive to reach net zero and national security concerns). This means the sector must increase its recruitment levels by 300% at a time of fierce competition for talent.
Like a lot of what Vladimir Putin says about nuclear weapons, his suggestion that Russia would start storing its bombs in Belarus may add up to less than it appears. In February last year, Putin said he was putting Russia’s nuclear arsenal on high alert, but there was no perceptible change in the country’s nuclear posture, or any unusual movements of its weapons. Putin and the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, have been hinting at some kind of nuclear basing arrangement for some time. Over a year ago, the Belarus leader staged a referendum to change the constitution to allow for that. Nuclear experts are sceptical of such ambitious timelines, and point out that Russia has been working on a nuclear weapon storage facility in Kaliningrad for at least seven years and it is still not clear whether the bombs have actually arrived there.
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