Long-secret report details ‘significant’ problems at failed nuclear reactor project, The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL AND AVERY G. WILKS, 5 SEPT 17 sfretwell@thestate.com, awilks@thestate.com The doomed V.C. Summer nuclear project suffered from flawed construction plans, faulty designs, inadequate management of contractors, low worker morale and high turnover, according to a lengthy and long-secret report released Monday by S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.
The report, completed by the Bechtel Corp. about 18 months before the project was shut down in July, also notes strained relationships between the project’s contractors, as well as a lack of shared vision and accountability among the major companies involved.
Bechtel’s report, which senior partner SCE&G did not want released, might answer questions from lawmakers about what went wrong with the project. Many lawmakers want to know whether the fiasco could have been prevented.
Cayce-based SCE&G and state-owned Santee Cooper spent nine years and $9 billion on the Fairfield County project before pulling the plug July 31. Ratepayers at both companies have been charged at least $2 billion for two nuclear reactors that won’t be completed. The utilities have said rising costs, construction delays and the bankruptcy of chief contractor Westinghouse led them to walk away……..
The Bechtel report cited “significant issues” facing the project that needed addressing.
Among the problems, the report says, was that plans and schedules for the project did not reflect actual circumstances; the construction contract did not appear to be serving Santee Cooper, SCE&G or Westinghouse well; and construction designs often were “not constructable,” which caused significant changes and delays.
Construction modules, built off site and touted as a way to ensure the project’s success, were a “detriment to the project progress and consequently the budget,” Bechtel wrote.
A key finding in the report addresses the utilities’ plan to use the AP 1000 reactor, a technology that had not been used in U.S. nuclear plants before. The report said challenges were to be expected because of the reactor type and because no nuclear plants had been built in the U.S. in decades. But it also said the V.C. Summer project “suffers from various fundamental” contract and management problems that needed resolution for the effort to succeed.
The report said contractors had not been transparent or accurate to the utilities about the project’s progress, and the utilities did not have an appropriate project team to assess or verify those contractors’ progress reports…..
Investor-owned SCE&G did not want the report released. In a Sunday letter to McMaster, the utility pleaded with the governor to keep the report confidential if Santee Cooper, the project’s minority owner, gave it to him.
If released, the report could hurt SCE&G in lawsuits, the company said. The letter also said releasing the document could hurt SCE&G and Santee Cooper in their efforts to recover “potentially billions” of dollars from Westinghouse.
Monday’s release follows two weeks of efforts by lawmakers to obtain the Bechtel report…….http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article171238277.html
September 6, 2017
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Hitachi UK reactors to get full Japanese loan insurance https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Hitachi-UK-reactors-to-get-full-Japanese-loan-insurance, Lenders seek guarantees as nuclear projects face post-Fukushima cost overruns, 2 Sept 17, TOKYO — Japan intends to fully insure bank loans for one of Hitachi‘s British nuclear plant projects in order to encourage domestic lenders to finance a particularly risky type of infrastructure export that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government seeks to promote.
When Abe met with U.K. counterpart Theresa May here Thursday, the two leaders reaffirmed bilateral cooperation on nuclear plant construction. Japan’s support will include coverage for two reactors at the proposed Wylfa Newydd nuclear station in Wales — a rare example of loan insurance for a project in an advanced economy.
State-owned Nippon Export and Investment Insurance will write the loan insurance for reactors, which Hitachi will build through British arm Horizon Nuclear Power. The Japanese conglomerate, together with Tokyo and London, will conduct working-level talks to hash out a funding support framework, with the aim of breaking ground in 2019.
The project is estimated to cost over 2 trillion yen ($18.1 billion). Hitachi, the U.K. government and two state-backed entities — Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Development Bank of Japan — are expected to pick up part of the tab. But private-sector financing will also be needed to close the funding gap.
NEXI, which normally indemnifies private lenders for 90-95% of financing, will enter into talks with Japanese banks toward fully guaranteeing loans for the Wylfa project.
Nuclear project costs have tended to balloon since since Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster owing to increased safety precautions. Seeing a higher risk of debt default, Japanese megabanks Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho Bank have sought full coverage by NEXI for any loans for nuclear plant development. Such insurance typically covers financing for projects in developing countries. NEXI is expected to impose conditions, such as a loan period of several decades, in return for an exception.
An accident or other troubles at the plant could expose BTMU and Mizuho to lawsuits from third parties because the banks would bear responsibility for financing the project. The two banks will decide on Wylfa financing based partly on discussions between Tokyo and London concerning damage compensation.
A default on the Wylfa loans would entail a taxpayer-funded repairs to the balance sheets of NEXI and JBIC. The loan insurance proposal is likely to spark a debate on whether promoting infrastructure exports in this way is worth the risk. The Abe government, for its part, will try to use the NEXI assurances to elicit more funding, public and private, from the British side.
With little prospect of constructing new reactors in Japan following the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, domestic builders have focused their business offshore. Chinese state-owned enterprises are undertaking more global infrastructure projects, emboldening those who argue that Japan will be left behind in the race for overseas orders unless the country takes risks. In 2015, the U.K. became the first developed nation to approve a Chinese-made reactor.
September 4, 2017
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Trump Quietly Promises Billions in New Nuke Contracts, This could trigger a new arms race with Russia 
and China. The American Conservative By SCOTT RITTER • September 1, 2017 “………Nuclear Armageddon was a pervasive reality during the Cold War, and America had an arsenal and doctrine to make it a reality. Again, flashbacks from my childhood make it all-too real: F-100 fighter-bombers carried nuclear bombs on air-strip alert at an air base in Turkey. F-106 fighter-interceptors armed with nuclear “Genie” air-to-air missiles were on constant air patrol over the skies of Michigan. My father told my mother how he never wanted to be assigned to Strategic Air Command because the “Chrome Dome” mission was insane—packs of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers constantly in the air, flying towards the Soviet Union only to be called back on a routine basis……..
The generals and politicians who controlled this arsenal were schooled in the art of global apocalyptic warfare, having fought and prevailed against fascism in the Second World War. Nuclear war wasn’t an abstraction to them, but reality—America was prepared to fight and win a nuclear exchange with the Soviet enemy, using doctrines with names such as “counterforce,” “first strike,” and “mutually assured destruction,” better known as MAD. Only when the absurdity of the MAD acronym sunk in did these leaders finally undertake to control the arsenal of Armageddon they had created. One of the first agreements reached between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (the anti-ballistic missile, or ABM Treaty) limited their respective defenses against nuclear missile attack, so that neither side would be lulled into a false sense of security and thus be tempted to do the unthinkable.
And yet, even as both American and Soviet leaders sought to limit their respective nuclear forces through negotiations, each side continuously modernized and improved their arsenals to increase the responsiveness, survivability—and ultimately, accuracy and lethality—of the very weapons both parties claimed they never wanted to use. Nuclear war was always a math problem: The first planners calculated that 400 nuclear bombs were all it would take to destroy the communist world. One can assume that the Soviets had similarly calculated that a like-number of their bombs was all they needed to destroy western civilization as well. By the 1970s, each side possessed an arsenal of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the planet hundreds of times over………
America’s collective nuclear amnesia has led to the lessons of the past having been largely forgotten. Our military and political leaders have not been schooled by global wars of destruction where hundreds of millions died, but rather minor battlefields where the death toll, while tragic, numbers in the thousands and tens of thousands. We have become accustomed to a war of precision strikes, where threats can be largely dealt with by remote control, either through a drone-delivered missile or a satellite-guided bomb dropped from 30,000 feet. American bodies come home singly or in small groups, enough to remind us of the cost of conflict, but not enough to be painful for anyone but the immediate family and friends of the deceased. The Civil Defense movement has morphed into Emergency Preparedness that is more focused on Mother Nature than nuclear Armageddon.
The Trump administration has just announced that it is moving ahead with an Obama-era plan to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, sprucing up the nuclear Triad with a new fleet of land-based missiles, missile-carrying submarines, and air-delivered nuclear weapons that will cost the American taxpayer well over $1 trillion in the coming years. The ostensible purpose behind this modernization effort is to maintain America’s nuclear deterrence capability for decades to come. The harsh reality, however, is that through this nuclear upgrade, America is simply repeating the mistakes of the past, building weapons whose precision and speed will trigger a new arms race with Russia and China as they seek to match this new American capability with weapons designed to sustain their version of nuclear deterrence.
Mutually assured destruction (MAD), once relegated to the trash bin of history, has had new life breathed into it. This time there is no foundation of arms control in place to limit the insanity—the ABM treaty is a thing of the past, and America today hides behind the false promise of a missile-defense shield that has questionable utility against a North Korean madman armed with a handful of missiles, let alone a Russian or Chinese military armed with hundreds. Disarmament talks with Russia—once a hallmark of the Trump foreign-policy vision—are stillborn in the face of allegations of election meddling from Moscow.
American tanks patrol the Polish frontier opposite their Russian counterparts, while U.S. and Russian warplanes share the skies over Syria, and play cat and mouse over the Baltics. Into this volatile mix, President Trump now wants to deploy a new generation of nuclear weapons that any enemy possessing a modicum of strategic insight would have no choice but to view as possessing genuine first-strike capability. Given the enhanced performance of these weapons, there will be no “fail safe” mechanism to limit the scope and scale of inadvertent use. There won’t be time for military officers to call home with a furtive warning of impending doom, and “Bert the Turtles” lyrical admonitions to “duck and cover” will be rendered meaningless to a population who has long ago forgotten what it was like to live under the threat of imminent nuclear holocaust. Today Americans are unable or perhaps unwilling to hold their elected leaders responsible as they play nuclear Russian roulette—a game as avoidable as it is insane.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War(Clarity Press, 2017). https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-quietly-promises-billions-in-new-nuke-contracts/
September 4, 2017
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SC nuclear debacle, by the numbers, The State 29 Aug 17 , CINDI ROSS SCOPPE “…..What you’ll find here is almost all numbers: the budget, the rate hikes, market share of SC utilities. I’ve also included what state law says about abandoning a nuclear project.
The money
$11 billion: Original projected cost of the two reactors
$20 billion: Minimum projected cost, due to delays and cost overruns, when SCE&G and Santee Cooper decided to abandon the project
$9 billion: What SCE&G and Santee Cooper have spent already on the project
SCE&G
$4.9 billion: Amount of borrowed and stockholder money SCE&G has invested and hopes to recoup
$2 billion: Tax credits SCE&G hopes to receive to offset $4.9 billion investment
$700 million: Payment from Westinghouse parent Toshiba that SCE&G hopes to receive to offset $4.9 billion investment
$2.2 billion: Amount SCE&G will seek to recoup from ratepayers if it receives the tax credits and Toshiba payments
$1.4 billion: Amount SCE&G customers have paid in rate increases to bankroll the two new reactors
9: Rate hikes, so far, that SCE&G has passed on to its customers to pay for the now-abandoned reactors
18 percent: Portion of SCE&G bills that pay for the nuclear project
SANTEE COOPER
$4 billion: Amount borrowed by Santee Cooper, which will have to be paid by ratepayers or taxpayers
$540 million: Amount Santee Cooper customers have paid in rate increases to bankroll the two new reactors
5: Rate hikes, so far, that Santee Cooper has passed on to its customers to pay for the now-abandoned reactors
8 percent: Portion of Santee Cooper bills that pay for the nuclear project
Future SCE&G rate increases*
State law, at 58-33-280, allows SCE&G to request “revised rates” annually during construction of a nuclear facility. These are in addition to normal rate increases and, unlike normal rate increases, are nearly impossible for the PSC to reject…….http://www.thestate.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/cindi-ross-scoppe/article170003262.html
September 4, 2017
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White House Hires Billionaire War Profiteers To Aid In War Planning, Mint Press News, Blackwater founder Erik Prince and billionaire Stephen Feinberg reportedly “recruited” for war planning, by Jake Johnson July 11th, 2017[good tweets included on original]
Two of President Donald Trump’s closest aides have reportedly solicited advice from two wealthy private military contractors — Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, and Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire owner of DynCorp International—on how to proceed with the sixteen-year-long war in Afghanistan.
According to the New York Times, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Jared Kushner “recruited” the contractors, who have made a hefty sum from perpetual conflict in the Middle East, “to devise alternatives to the Pentagon’s plan to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.”
Following a meeting with Bannon and Kushner, Prince and Feinberg have “developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan,” the Times notes.
“The highly unusual meeting dramatizes the divide between Mr. Trump’s generals and his political staff over Afghanistan, the lengths to which his aides will go to give their boss more options for dealing with it and the readiness of this White House to turn to business people for help with diplomatic and military problems,” the Times reports. “But it also raises a host of ethical issues, not least that both men could profit from their recommendations.”
As Common Dreams reported last month, Prince penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he recommended a “viceroy approach” in Afghanistan that would rely heavily on private security forces.
Critics characterized Prince’s proposals as tantamount to “colonialism” and argued they exude “sheer 19th-century bloodlust and thirst for empire.”
Following the Times reporting on Monday, commentators denounced the attempt to give credence to the ideas of war profiteers as “lunacy.” http://www.mintpressnews.com/white-house-hires-billionaire-war-profiteers-aid-war-planning/229664/
September 2, 2017
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Retiring utility CEO to receive $1 million in 1st year, Seattle Times, By SEANNA ADCOX, The Associated Press, COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The retiring chief executive of South Carolina’s state-owned utility will be paid more than $1 million in the first year of his retirement, which follows the abandonment of a nuclear power project.
Documents provided Friday by Santee Cooper show CEO Lonnie Carter will also leave with nearly $859,000 in a 401K-style plan to invest or draw down from as he wishes.
The 58-year-old will receive roughly $800,000 annually for the next two decades, then $345,000 yearly for the rest of his life. His contract provides an additional $270,500 — half of his current salary — over the first year of his retirement.
Carter announced his resignation last week after 35 years with the public utility, the last 13 as CEO. But he remains at the helm until the board names an interim replacement, expected within the next several weeks. His impending departure marks the first executive to leave following the July 31 decision to halt construction on two partly built reactors that customers have been funding since 2009.
The retirement package involves his state pension, his 2011 contract and Santee Cooper’s two benefit plans for executives. One is the 401K-style account. The other provides up to $455,200 annually for 20 years, depending on this year’s bonus. It’s unclear whether he’ll receive the total compensation his contract allows.
Carter’s salary is $541,000. Last year, he received a $330,500 bonus for meeting corporate goals such as power costs, safety and customer satisfaction, according to the utility.
Carter had been eligible for retirement since 2011, but the utility’s board had asked him to remain until the nuclear project’s completion. Carter was not asked to leave, and no other executive departures are expected, board Chairman Leighton Lord said last week.
Santee Cooper was a 45 percent partner with South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. in the effort to expand the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County north of Columbia, where they have shared ownership of an existing reactor for more than 30 years.\
The two decided to abandon construction after jointly spending nearly $10 billion, leaving nearly 6,000 people jobless. The utilities’ customers have already paid more than $2 billion on the failed project through a series of rate hikes since 2009, which covered interest costs on financing.
The companies don’t expect to refund anything. Customers could end up paying off that debt over decades…….
Since 2011, Santee Cooper executives were paid more than $70,000 in bonuses for the now-abandoned project. More than half of that went to Carter, The State newspaper reported in Friday’s papers.
“The performance goals tied to the nuclear project were specific and measurable, and all payouts were based on those goals being met,” said Santee Cooper spokeswoman Mollie Gore.
SCE&G paid nearly $21 million in bonuses to top executives, some of which was for reaching milestones in the nuclear project. The privately owned SCE&G did not say how much of the bonus money was specifically for the nuclear project. http://www.seattletimes.com/business/state-owned-utility-also-paid-bonuses-for-nuclear-project/
September 2, 2017
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Power company kills nuclear plant, plans $6 billion in solar, battery investment
Duke Energy Florida is just the latest utility to walk away from nuclear. Ars Technica MEGAN GEUSS – 8/31/2017, On Tuesday, power provider Duke Energy Florida announced a settlement with the state’s public service commission (PSC) to cease plans to build a nuclear plant in western Florida. The utility
INSTEAD INTENDS TO INVEST $6 BILLION
in solar panels, grid-tied batteries, grid modernization projects, and electric vehicle charging areas. The new plan involves the installation of 700MW of solar capacity over four years in the western Florida area.There’s excitement from the solar industry, but the announcement is more bad news for the nuclear industry. Earlier this year, nuclear reactor company Westinghouse declared bankruptcyas construction of its new AP1000 reactors suffered from contractor issues and a stringent regulatory environment. Two plants whose construction was already underway—the Summer plant in South Carolina and the Vogtle plant in Georgia—found their futures in question immediately.
At the moment, Summer’s owners are considering abandoning the plant, and Vogtle’s owners are weighing whether they will do the same or attempt to salvage the project.
Duke Energy Florida hadn’t started building the Levy nuclear plant, but it did have plans to order two AP1000 reactors from Westinghouse. Now that Westinghouse company is in dire financial straits, the Florida utility decided that its money is better spent elsewhere.
Just last week, Duke told its PSC that it would have to increase rates by more than eight percentdue to increased fuel costs. But with the new settlement that directs the utility toward solar and storage, customers will see that rate hike cut to 4.6 percent…….
overall, the changes will save residential customers future nuclear-related rate increases. Those customers will see a cost reduction of $2.50 per megawatt-hour (MWh) “through the removal of unrecovered Levy Nuclear Project costs,” the utility said.
The 700MW of solar won’t exactly cover the nameplate capacity of the Levy plant, which was supposed to deliver 2.2 gigawatts to the region. But the Tampa Bay Times wrote that Duke “is effectively giving up its long-held belief that nuclear power is a key component to its Florida future and, instead, making a dramatic shift toward more solar power.”……https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/florida-power-company-exchanging-nuclear-plans-for-solar-plans-cutting-rates/
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September 1, 2017
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The U.S. Backs Off Nuclear Power. Georgia Wants to Keep Building Reactors, NYT, By BRAD PLUMER, AUG. 31, 2017 WASHINGTON — Even as the rest of the United States backs away from nuclear power, utilities in Georgia are pressing ahead with plans to build two huge reactors in the next five years — the only nuclear units still under construction nationwide.
September 1, 2017
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Secretive report on South Carolina nuclear reactor construction never given to state utility regulators, Post and Courier, By Andrew Brown abrown@postandcourier.com, Aug 31, 2017 COLUMBIA — SCANA Corp. may have misled state utility regulators about the existence of a secretive report that detailed construction failures at two troubled nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer station in Fairfield County, months before the $9 billion energy project was abandoned.
The director of the state Office of Regulatory Staff told The Post and Courier on Thursday that SCANA officials repeatedly told state agency employees they didn’t have a copy of a report that was produced by Bechtel Corp., an engineering and project management company that observed the nuclear construction near Jenkinsville in past years.
“They have continued to ask for it,” said Dukes Scott, the regulatory staff director. “As we asked for it, they never said, ‘Yes, here it is.'” Those state regulators were surprised last week when SCANA and Santee Cooper officials admitted under oath in a Senate hearing the document did exist, and they were again denied access to it by SCANA, who is now claiming it as legally privileged information……http://www.postandcourier.com/business/secretive-report-on-nuclear-reactor-construction-never-given-to-state/article_6d7d5560-8e56-11e7-a0f0-cf722935ab39.html
September 1, 2017
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Don’t you think that there’s something surreal about the idea of nuclear reactors in Bangladesh? the whole place is likely to be under water before too long – nuclear reactors and all!
Russia officially agrees to take back nuke plant wastes, Dhaka Tribune, Aminur Rahman Rasel August 30, 2017 Russia will take back the spent fuel from Bangladesh territory for reprocessing, recycling and management
Bangladesh has signed an agreement with Russia to return the spent nuclear fuel from Rooppur nuclear power plant, which is being built with Russian assistance.
Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman and Alexey Likhachev, director general of Rosatom, Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, signed the agreement in Moscow on Wednesday.
Earlier on March 15, the two countries had approved a draft of the agreement on spent fuel management of the project after a bilateral meeting in Dhaka.
According to the agreement, Russia will take back the spent fuel from Bangladesh territory for reprocessing, recycling and management, confirmed Science and Technology Ministry’s Information Officer Md Kamrul Islam Bhuiyan.
From the outset of the project, Bangladesh has been keen to return nuclear waste to Russia, he added…..http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/power-energy/2017/08/30/russia-officially-agrees-take-back-nuke-plant-wastes/
September 1, 2017
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Fill the Swamp: Trump to Put Military Industrial Complex Lobbyist in Charge of the Army, Last Wednesday, it was
reported that Donald Trump was moving to nominate
Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper for secretary of the Army. Raytheon is one of the “big five” defense contractors, and the president’s decision comes at a time when concerns are being
raised over the idea of defense industry executives being placed in senior positions at the Pentagon.
Daily Liberator, By: James Holbrooks, 29 Aug 17
This article first appeared at ANTIMEDIA……
The Washington Examiner, which broke the news in an exclusive after speaking with unnamed D.C. sources, reported that Pentagon officials “privately expressed confidence that Esper, with his military, Pentagon and Capitol Hill experience, will win quick Senate confirmation.”
That would be a change of pace. Esper’s nomination is Trump’s third attempt to fill the position of Army secretary.
A ROCKY ROAD
Trump’s first choice, New York billionaire and owner of the Florida Panthers hockey team, Vincent Viola, withdrew back in February over concerns about financial conflicts of interest……..
Assuming Mark Esper hangs in there and keeps his name in the running for Army secretary, he’ll need to pass vetting by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). That hearing isn’t expected to take place until September. But it was within that committee, back in June, that SASC chairman John McCain first voiced concern over members of the defense industry taking key positions at the Pentagon.
THE CHAIRMAN MAKES NOISE
In a hearing Defense News called “surprisingly contentious,” McCain threatened to block the SASC confirmation of Patrick Shanahan for deputy defense secretary, the number two spot at the Pentagon below defense secretary James Mattis. One of the reasons, the Arizona senator made clear, was Shanahan’s ties to industry contractors.
Shanahan had been with Boeing since 1986 before accepting Trump’s nomination. He was a member of the Boeing Executive Council and had even earned the nickname “Mr. Fix-it” within the corporation for his ability to turn around troubled projects.
At the hearing, McCain cited Shanahan’s industry past, saying he was “not overjoyed” that the would-be deputy secretary spent so much time at one of the big five defense contractors. He also said Shanahan’s ilk serving at the Pentagon was “not what our Founding Fathers had in mind.”
McCain, a Republican, went further weeks later, bluntly stating in a hallway interview in Congress that he “did not want people from the top five corporations” to fill positions at the Pentagon. Party politics aside, at least some lawmakers across the aisle appear to share his concern.
Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who sits on the SASC, told Defense News in early July that “real concern about the concentration of these people” exists because decision-making processes may be “influenced by [their]prior employment.”
Similarly, Senator Richard Durbin, another Democrat, said the Trump administration has “turned a blind eye to the whole question of conflicts of interest from start to finish.”
Despite such criticisms, the SASC gave Shanahan the green light, and the Senate officially confirmed him last Tuesday. This means that right now, the two most powerful men at the Pentagon have significant past connections to the defense industry.
For those unaware, for years Secretary of Defense James Mattis was a board member of one of the big five contractors, General Dynamics, and up until the point of his nomination had nearly $600,000 in vested stock options with the corporation, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.
LUCKY BREAK
In a convenient bit of timing, John McCain was absent at Shanahan’s full Senate confirmation on July 18, as he was recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot, which ultimately revealed a brain tumor. The same could be said for Ellen Lord, who went through SASC vetting relatively unscathed on the very same day and now awaits the committee’s nod to move on to a full Senate vote.
Lord has been CEO of Textron Systems, a global aerospace and defense conglomerate, since 2012. As with what happened to Shanahan, Lord likely would have faced a harsh grilling from McCain. Commenting on Lord’s smooth sail through her SASC hearing, Defense News wrote:
“That may have been due to the absence of Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs SASC. McCain, recuperating at home from a recent surgery, previously told Defense News he is concerned about the number of defense industry figures entering key Pentagon roles.”
The same good fortune was bestowed upon a former Lockheed Martin vice president on Thursday. Ryan McCarthy passed his SASC vetting for undersecretary of the Army, and if the Senate eventually confirms both him and Mark Esper, it would mean the top two Army positions at the Pentagon would be filled by defense industry executives.
It was speculated that former Lockheed Martin attorney David Ehrhart would come under heavy scrutiny at his SASC hearing for Air Force General Counsel, the department’s chief legal officer. The same would have surely gone for John Rood, Trump’s expected pick for undersecretary of defense for policy and current head of international sales at Lockheed.
But with the SASC confirming defense industry figures in McCain’s absence, it now appears the Arizona senator’s leeriness was the only substantive thing holding up the show.
DOWN A DARK PATH
Like Senator Richard Durbin and others in Congress who don’t like the emerging trend under Donald Trump, most in the mainstream media will only go so far as to highlight the myriad conflicts of interest between the Trump administration and the corporate world.
Right now, for example, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is catching fire for being the CEO of ExxonMobil when it violated sanctions on Russia back in 2014. The U.S. Treasury Department just hit Exxon with a $2 million fine for that move, and Exxon promptly filed a lawsuit against the government in response………http://www.thedailyliberator.com/fill-swamp-trump-put-military-industrial-complex-lobbyist-charge-army/
August 30, 2017
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Armed Services Dem accuses Trump admin of rushing nuclear contracts, The Hill, BY ELLEN MITCHELL – 08/27/17 House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Sunday accused the Trump administration of rushing two major nuclear weapons programs.
“This week, the Air Force awarded four contracts worth nearly $2.5 billion to begin developing two new nuclear weapons. Yet this administration has not even completed its Nuclear Posture Review,” Smith said in a statement.
“We are rushing on autopilot to fund these programs.” The Pentagon in April officially began the nuclear posture review, which was ordered by President Trump in January. It’s the first review of the U.S. nuclear weapons policy since 2010, and won’t be done for several more months.
The Pentagon, however, has not waited for the review’s completion in moving ahead with two new nuclear weapons programs.
Last week the Defense Department awarded contracts for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which will replace the current Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon, the next nuclear-capable cruise missile to be fired from aircraft…..http://thehill.com/policy/defense/348197-armed-services-dem-accuses-trump-admin-of-rushing-nuclear-contracts
August 28, 2017
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Duke Energy Corp. asked to cancel its planned nuclear plant in South Carolina, citing the bankruptcy of reactor manufacturer Westinghouse Electric Co.
North Carolina utility regulators should require customers of the company’s Duke Energy Carolinas unit to pay $353 million of pre-construction costs spent on the Lee Nuclear Station over the next dozen years, the Charlotte-based company said Friday in a state filing.
The decision is the latest blow to the U.S. nuclear industry in the wake of the Westinghouse bankruptcy. South Carolina utilities Scana Corp. and Santee Cooper pulled the plug on a half-finished plant earlier this month after delays and cost overruns, and Southern Co. is weighing whether to halt work on two Georgia reactors. Nuclear units that were operating for decades have shut, unable to compete with low-cost renewable energy and abundant supplies of natural gas from shale basins.
“Risks and uncertainties to initiating construction on the Lee Nuclear project have become too great and cancellation of the project is the best option for customers,” Duke said in a separate statement
A similar request will be made with South Carolina utility regulators in the future, Rick Rhodes, a company spokesman, said by phone Friday. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction and operating license for the plant last year and Duke will maintain that license “to build new nuclear at this site in the future if it is in the best interest of customers.”
NextEra Energy Inc. has said it’s decided to “pause” an expansion of its Turkey Point nuclear plant in Florida, but the company is still seeking approval to obtain and then maintain a federal license for two reactors there.
Duke shares rose 0.8 percent to $87.46 at 12:28 p.m. in New York.
August 26, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, USA |
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Saudi Arabia signs cooperation deals with China on nuclear energy, Gulf News, 24 Aug 17
Kingdom launched a renewable energy programme this year, and winning bid for first utility-scale solar project is due in November
Khobar, Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia and China are to cooperate on nuclear energy projects following discussions between the two countries this week on ways to support the kingdom’s nuclear energy programme, state news agency SPA reported.
Saudi Arabia has been for years trying to diversify its energy mix so that it can export more of its oil, rather than burning it at power and water desalination plants.
It launched a renewable energy programme this year with the announcement of the winning bid for its first utility-scale solar project due in November.
In addition to that programme, Riyadh is in the early stages of feasibility and design studies for its first two commercial nuclear reactors, which will total 2.8 gigawatts.
China’s leading state nuclear project developer China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) has now signed a memorandum of understanding with the Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) to promote further existing cooperation between the two sides to explore and assess uranium and thorium resources, SPA said…….
Saudi Arabia has also set up a joint investment fund with China and on Thursday signed 11 deals worth $20 billion (Dh73.4 billion) with China as part of an official visit of Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli to Saudi Arabia. http://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/energy/saudi-arabia-signs-cooperation-deals-with-china-on-nuclear-energy-1.2079896
August 26, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
China, marketing, Saudi Arabia |
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Call for climate change risk disclosures, news.com.au AUGUST 25, 2017 Ross Kerber, Reuters Vanguard Group has urged companies to disclose how climate change could affect their business and asset valuations, reflecting how the environment has become a priority for the investment industry.
August 26, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
2 WORLD, business and costs, climate change |
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