Legal case begins against Sizewell C nuclear project.
High Court hearing for Sizewell C legal challenge campaigners. Campaigners
who have issued a legal challenge against the building of nuclear power
plant Sizewell C have a High Court hearing starting on Wednesday 22 March.
Together Against Sizewell C will argue that the environmental impacts of
securing a permanent water supply of two million litres per day at the
proposed site in Suffolk were never assessed.
As a result, the government
cannot guarantee the date the nuclear power plant will open, which means it
has no way of knowing for sure that the plant’s contribution to climate
change is enough to override the environmental harm it will cause.
Together Against Sizewell C will also make the case that no alternatives to nuclear
power, including renewables, were considered when the Secretary of State
for Energy, then Kwasi Kwarteng, gave the go ahead for the building of
Sizewell C on 20 July 2022. He rejected the recommendation of the Examining
Authority which ruled in February 2022 that unless the outstanding water
supply strategy could be resolved and sufficient information provided to
enable the Secretary of State carry out his obligations under the Habitats
Regulations, there was no case for a development consent order.
Leigh Day 20th March 2023
National remembrance day , and huge civil case penalty for Tepco executives, but memory of Fukushima now fading in Japan
Japanese offered tearful prayers Saturday on the anniversary of the deadly
tsunami that triggered the Fukushima disaster, but public support for
nuclear power is growing as memories of the 2011 meltdown fade. A minute’s
silence was observed nationwide at 2:46 pm (0546 GMT), the precise moment
when a 9.0-magnitude quake – the fourth strongest in Earth’s recorded
history – devastated northeastern Japan 12 years ago.
In January, Tokyo’s,High Court upheld the acquittal of three former TEPCO executives, again
clearing them of professional negligence over the disaster. But in a
separate civil verdict last year, the trio – plus one other ex-official –
were ordered to pay a whopping 13.3 trillion yen ($97 billion) for failing
to prevent the accident. The enormous compensation sum is believed to be
the largest ever for a Japanese civil case, although lawyers acknowledge it
is well beyond the defendants’ capacity to pay.
The government also plans
to start releasing more than a million tonnes of treated water from the
stricken Fukushima plant into the sea this year. A combination of
groundwater, rainwater that seeps into the area, and water used for
cooling, it has been filtered to remove various radionuclides and kept in
storage tanks on site, but space is running out. The water release plan has
been endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency but faces staunch
resistance from local fishing communities and neighbouring countries.
France24 11th March 2023
Another executive goes to prison for lying about doomed nuclear project
Is 15 months long enough?
By JEFFREY COLLINS, March 9, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/stephen-byrne-scana-power-plant-prison-c97cb1aaa33c991020551b2ae5c4dd85
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A former executive utility who gave rosy projections on the progress of two nuclear power plants in South Carolina while they were hopelessly behind will spend 15 months in prison for the doomed project that cost ratepayers billions of dollars.
Ex-SCANA Corp. Executive Vice President Stephen Byrne apologized in court Wednesday, saying he thinks about how he let down customers, shareholders, employees, taxpayers and his family almost every day.
The two nuclear plants, which never generated a watt of power despite $9 billion of investment, were supposed to be “the crowning achievement of my life,” Byrne said. “But I failed.”
Byrne is the second SCANA executive to head to prison for the nuclear debacle. Former CEO Kevin Marsh was sentenced to two years in prison in October 2021 and released earlier in March after serving about 17 months.
Two executives at Westinghouse, which was contracted to build the reactors, are also charged. Carl Churchman, who was the company’s top official at the Fairfield County construction site at V.C. Summer, pleaded guilty to perjury and is awaiting sentencing. Former Westinghouse senior vice president Jeff Benjamin faces 16 charges. His trial is scheduled for October.
‘David and Goliath’ – legal case, as indigenous group fights the Australian government to stop a nuclear waste dump on their traditional land
Stephanie Richards, 6 March 23, https://indaily.com.au/news/2023/03/06/david-and-goliath-kimba-nuke-waste-fight-heads-to-federal-court/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=InDaily%20Lunchtime%20%206%20March%202023&utm_content=InDaily%20Lunchtime%20%206%20March%202023+CID_654499187b614fa7e1f09bd8ceb7100e&utm_source=EDM&utm_term=READ%20MORE
Barngarla Traditional Owners’ fight to stop a nuclear waste facility being built near Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula has reached the Federal Court, with the first substantive case hearing in Adelaide today.
They were supporting the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation, which has applied for judicial review in an attempt to thwart construction of the federal government’s planned radioactive waste storage facility at Napandee near Kimba.
“We’re fighting against injustices that have been happening to the Barngarla people regarding this waste dump in Kimba,” Barngarla Traditional Owner Harry Dare told InDaily outside court.
“We’re actually fighting for a seven sisters and women’s dreaming site and we’re fighting for a vote in our local governance.
“The Australian Government has given back our Native Title, but they haven’t given us a voice in those Native Title areas, so we’re fighting for equality and for all of Australia to be nuclear free.”
The Napandee site was selected by the former Morrison Government, with then Resources Minister Keith Pitt saying the government had secured “majority support” from the local community after more than “six years of consultation”.
But Barngarla Traditional Owners opposed the project and argued they were not included in the consultation.
During today’s hearing, the Federal Court was told of how the decision to locate the dump at Napandee, near Kimba, played out.
After beginning the process to select the site through its administrative powers, the then Coalition Government changed tack and decided to legislate, partly to avoid delays through legal challenges.
However, when the legislation failed in the Senate, the government restarted the administrative process.
Counsel for the Barngarla told Justice Natalie Charlesworth that raised questions over whether Pitt, who ultimately named the Napandee location and who strongly supported the legislative approach, could properly carry out his administrative role.
“That, of itself, would excite a reasonable apprehension that the minister might be unable or unwilling to approach the matter with an open mind,” he said.
“Because, effectively, the decision had already been made.”
The court was also told that the Barngarla disagreed with the former government’s view that the dump had wide community support in Kimba and would also argue the decision on the dump was unreasonable given the lack of proper consultation with the Indigenous owners.
Given Pitt’s correspondence with the Barngarla people and his other statements, the impression that might arise was that consultation would largely amount to “matters around the edges”.
“In terms of identifying culture and the like in the implementation of the site, which had already been selected and to which the minister was committed,” counsel said.
With the case listed for several days, the federal government is expected to argue that much of the material to be relied on by the applicants is subject to parliamentary privilege.
The Barngarla launched their action in 2021 after being denied the right to participate in a community ballot to gauge local support for the Napandee site because many did not live in the Kimba council area.
The community ballot returned about 61 per cent in favour of the dump.
But when the Barngala conducted their own ballot among their community members, 83 voted no and none voted yes.
They argue they were denied the right to participate in a community ballot to gauge local support for the site, because many did not live in the Kimber council area.
Traditional Owner Linda Dare told protestors ahead of this morning’s hearing that the proposed location for the nuclear waste facility was near an important women’s site for the Barngarla people.
“It just seems to be that every time the government wants to put something it’s always around a women’s site,” she said.
“We need to fight as women around Australia to protect our sites.
“We need to say ‘no’ because it’s going to affect the waterways, not just in South Australia but everywhere.”
InDaily reported in September that the federal government was spending three times more than Barngarla Traditional Owners fighting the project in the Federal Court.
Information released to SA Greens Senator Barbara Pocock showed that between December and July, the government had spent $343,457.44 on legal fees.
That compares to the approximate $124,000 spent by the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation over the same period.
The Native Title group estimates that the total cost incurred by the federal government would run into the millions.
Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation chairperson Jason Bilney told InDaily the judicial review was a “David and Goliath battle”.
“But, we’re dedicated. It took us 21 years to win our Native Title, come out of Native Title six months later and we’re fighting a nuclear waste dump on our country,” he said.
“What does that tell you about truth telling, the Statement From The Heart or the Voice?
“Our Voice isn’t being heard, truth telling isn’t being told and they’re going to break the First Nations’ heart – Barngarla – and put it (the nuclear waste dump) on our country.”
Bilney said Traditional Owners expected the Federal Court would take months to reach a decision, with hearings scheduled each day this week.
“It could take a year, but we would like it to have it sooner than later,” he said.
It comes after the Barngarla Native Title group last month won a separate Supreme Court bid to overturn former Premier Steven Marshall’s decision to allow a mineral exploration company to drill at Lake Torrens in the state’s outback.
At the time, Bilney said the group was buoyed by the win as they continued their legal fight to stop the Napandee nuclear waste facility from going ahead.
South Australian Labor has long called for Barngarla people to have the right to veto the project, with Premier Peter Malinauskas previously saying that the state government had expressed its views to the federal government.
Greenpeace will sue the European Commission over its decision to include gas and nuclear as “clean”
Greenpeace will take the European Commission to court over its decision to
include gas and nuclear energy in the EU’s list of investments that can be
labelled as “green”, the campaign group said on Thursday.
Greenpeace requested a formal review in September of the Commission’s decision,
arguing the European Union had violated its own climate laws by labelling
some gas and nuclear energy investments as green.
Reuters 9th Feb 2023
U.S. Court of Appeals rejects New Mexico’s challenge to Nuclear Waste License
10th Cir. Tosses New Mexico’s Challenge to Nuclear Waste License
Bloomberg Law, Feb. 11, 2023
- NRC granted license to store spent nuclear fuel near border
- New Mexico lacks jurisdiction to bring challenge, court found
New Mexico lost its challenge to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to grant a license to store nuclear waste in the state, after the Tenth Circuit dismissed the state’s petition for review on Friday.
A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit agreed with the federal government that the petition should be dismissed, finding that New Mexico lacked jurisdiction to bring the action under the Hobbs Act and Atomic Energy Act.
New Mexico didn’t participate in the licensing proceeding or qualify as an aggrieved party, Judge Robert E. Bacharach wrote for the three-judge panel. The …………………. [Subscribers only] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/10th-cir-tosses-new-mexicos-challenge-to-nuclear-waste-license
Outline of Greenpeace’s legal arguments against including gas and nuclear in the EU Taxonomy
Greenpeace’s legal arguments against including gas and nuclear in the EU
Taxonomy. This briefing provides a short outline of Greenpeace’s request
for internal review (RIR), sent to the European Commission on 8 September
2022, concerning the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/1214 of 9 March 2022
which qualified economic activities in the nuclear energy and in the gas
energy sectors as “sustainable” for the purpose of the EU Taxonomy
Regulation.
Greenpeace 9th Feb 2023 https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/issues/climate-energy/46567/media-briefing-greenpeaces-legal-arguments-against-including-gas-and-nuclear-in-the-eu-taxonomy/
Julian Assange’s Biggest Fight in Notorious Prison Isn’t Over Extradition
NewsWeek, BY SHAUN WATERMAN ON 01/27/23 “…………………………………………….. Assange’s physical and mental health have declined severely during more than a decade in confinement — first sheltering from U.S. authorities in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from 2012-2019, where he lived in two rooms and never left the building, and for the last almost four years, since he was dragged from the embassy by British police in April 2019, in Belmarsh fighting extradition.
…………………… The proceedings in London continue to drag on. It has been more than a year since the High Court cleared the way for his extradition and his appeal was filed in August. But the court continues to weigh it, with no deadline to reach a decision. Even if he loses, there remains the possibility of an appeal to the British Supreme Court, or to the European Court of Human Rights. Assange could be in the U.S. within months, but he might remain in Britain for years.
His family says that with uncertainty about his extradition hanging over him like the sword of Damocles, he has lost weight and become depressed and anxious.
A confinement of uncertain duration
The worst part about the confinement is having no idea when or how he would be able to leave, Stella Assange said. “It is the uncertain duration that makes it so hard to bear … It’s a kind of torture.”…………..
The uncertainty has exacerbated Assange’s physical and mental deterioration, his wife said. In October 2021, during a High Court hearing about his extradition, Assange, attending via video link from Belmarsh, suffered a “transient ischaemic attack” — a mini-stroke. He has been diagnosed with nerve damage and memory problems and prescribed blood thinners.
“He might not survive this,” she said.
As a remand prisoner, not convicted or sentenced, and facing extradition, not prosecution, Assange is an anomaly in Britain’s most secure prison — designed to hold “Category A” inmates such as IRA militants, jihadis and murderers. One of a tiny handful of unconvicted prisoners, prison regulations require him to be treated differently, his wife said.
“He’s supposed to be able to get visits every day, he’s supposed to be able to work on his case,” she said, “But that’s only on paper. The way the prison system works, it is more efficient to treat everyone like a Cat A prisoner rather than to try to adapt the rules for individuals. In reality, that just doesn’t translate at all.” She said Assange is allowed one or two legal visits, and one or two social visits each week.
In between visits, time can stretch. And the isolation has been hard on him……………………………..
Phone calls, his half-brother Gabriel Shipton told Newsweek from Assange’s native Australia, are limited to 10 minutes. “You’ll just be getting into it and click, it’s over.”
Neither the governor’s office at Belmarsh, nor the press office for the British Prison Service, responded to emails requesting responses to detailed questions.
A source of inspiration and power
Assange gets thousands of letters and parcels from all over the world, Stella Assange said, but the authorities interdict banned items, such as books about national security, paintings and other forbidden objects.
His father, John Shipton, told Newsweek from Australia that Assange draws a lot of inspiration and power from the letters that people write to him. During their phone conversations, he will often read snippets or recall memorable letters, Shipton said. “He loves getting them … You can hear him light up a bit” when he talks about them………………………………………… more https://www.newsweek.com/2023/02/10/julian-assanges-biggest-fight-notorious-prison-isnt-over-extradition-1774197.html
The Belmarsh Tribunals Demand Justice for Julian Assange
Never before has a publisher been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act. The Assange prosecution poses a fundamental threat to the freedom of speech and a free press.
President Biden, currently embroiled in his own classified document scandal, knows this, and should immediately drop the charges against Julian Assange
JANUARY 26, 2023, By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan https://www.democracynow.org/2023/1/26/the_belmarsh_tribunals_demand_justice_for
“The first casualty when war comes is truth,” U.S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson of California said in 1929, debating ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a noble but ultimately failed attempt to ban war. Reflecting on World War I, which ended a decade earlier, he continued, “it begins what we were so familiar with only a brief period ago, this mode of propaganda whereby…people become war hungry in their patriotism and are lied into a desire to fight. We have seen it in the past; it will happen again in the future.”
Time and again, Hiram Johnson has been proven right. Our government’s impulse to control information and manipulate public opinion to support war is deeply ingrained. The past twenty years, dominated by the so-called War on Terror, are no exception. Sophisticated PR campaigns, a compliant mass media and the Pentagon’s pervasive propaganda machine all work together, as public intellectual Noam Chomsky and the late Prof. Ed Herman defined it in the title of their groundbreaking book, “Manufacturing Consent,” borrowing a phrase from Walter Lippman, considered the father of public relations.
One publisher consistently challenging the pro-war narrative pushed by the U.S. government, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has been the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Wikileaks gained international attention in 2010 after publishing a trove of classified documents leaked from the U.S. military. Included were numerous accounts of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the killing of civilians, and shocking footage of a helicopter gunship in Baghdad slaughtering a dozen civilians, including a Reuters journalist and his driver, on the ground below. Wikileaks titled that video, “Collateral Murder.”
The New York Times and other newspapers partnered with Wikileaks to publish stories based on the leaks. This brought increased attention to the founder and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, Julian Assange. In December, 2010, two months after release of the Collateral Murder video, then-Vice President Joe Biden, appearing on NBC, said Assange was “closer to being a hi-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers.” Biden was referring to the 1971 classified document release by Daniel Ellsberg, which revealed years of Pentagon lies about U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.
With a secret grand jury empanelled in Virginia, Assange, then in London, feared being arrested and extradited to the United States. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum. Unable to make it to Latin America, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He lived inside the small, apartment-sized embassy for almost seven years. In April 2019, after a new Ecuadorian president revoked Assange’s asylum, British authorities arrested him and locked him up in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison, often called “Britain’s Guantánamo.” He has been held there, in harsh conditions and in failing health, for almost four years, as the U.S. government seeks his extradition to face espionage and other charges. If extradited and convicted in the U.S., Assange faces 175 years in a maximum-security prison.
While the Conservative-led UK government seems poised to extradite Assange, a global movement has grown demanding his release. The Progressive International, a global pro-democracy umbrella group, has convened four assemblies since 2020 called The Belmarsh Tribunals. Named after the 1966 Russell-Sartre Tribunal on the Vietnam War, convened by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sarte, The Belmarsh Tribunal has assembled some of the world’s most prominent, progressive activists, artists, politicians, dissidents, human rights attorneys and whistleblowers, all speaking in defense of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
We are bearing witness to a travesty of justice,” Jeremy Corbyn, a British Member of Parliament and a former leader of the Labour Party, said at the tribunal. “To an abuse of human rights, to a denial of freedom of somebody who bravely put himself on the line that we all might know that the innocent died in Abu Ghraib, the innocent died in Afghanistan, the innocent are dying in the Mediterranean, and innocents die all over the world, where unwatched, unaccountable powers decide it’s expedient and convenient to kill people who get in the way of whatever grand scheme they’ve got. We say no. That’s why we are demanding justice for Julian Assange.”
Corbyn is joined in his call by The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel–major newspapers that published articles based on the leaked documents. “Publishing is not a crime,” the newspapers declared.
Never before has a publisher been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act. The Assange prosecution poses a fundamental threat to the freedom of speech and a free press. President Biden, currently embroiled in his own classified document scandal, knows this, and should immediately drop the charges against Julian Assange.
Appeals Court Tosses Suit from Environmentalists, Midland Oil Company Contesting Nuclear Waste Storage Permit
Various suits against the NRC and the storage site linger in courts across the country.
The Texan BRAD JOHNSON 27 Jan 23
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed a challenge from anti-nuclear organization Beyond Nuclear, environmental groups the Sierra Club and Don’t Waste Michigan, and a Midland-based oil company against the approval of a spent nuclear fuel interim storage permit for a facility in West Texas.
In September 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a permit application for the storage of spent nuclear fuel at an Andrews County facility. Interim Storage Partners is jointly owned by Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists — the latter of which has operated a storage facility for low-level radioactive waste at the site for more than a decade.
During the second special session of 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature abruptly passed legislation banning the storage of high-level radioactive waste, including spent nuclear fuel, in response to the NRC. That led to the state suing the NRC over the permit, a case still pending in court.
But the permit approval also sparked other lawsuits from a collection of activists, interest groups, and Fasken Oil & Ranch, the Midland company, consolidated into one proceeding.
On Wednesday, the court dismissed the group’s various claims and tossed the suit; Beyond Nuclear contended that the NRC acted “arbitrarily and capriciously,” the environmental groups alleged the agency “ignor[ed] deficiencies in the project’s environmental impact statement,” and Fasken asserted that it was wrongfully denied the ability to insert into the record its arguments against issuance of the permit by the NRC.
Kevin Kamps, a spokesman for Beyond Nuclear, told The Texan, “We are certainly disappointed and unfortunately the ruling focuses on a procedural technicality.” Kamps said that there is a similar permit and suit in development in New Mexico for a planned interim storage site there. He’s also optimistic that a ruling in the State of Texas’ suit will help their case here, potentially creating contradicting court decisions.
He added that “we’re not going anywhere” and hopes that courts will consider whether the NRC even has the authority from Congress to grant these permits — which he argues the agency doesn’t…………………. more https://thetexan.news/appeals-court-tosses-suit-from-environmentalists-midland-oil-company-contesting-nuclear-waste-storage-permit/
The Ohio nuclear scandal: Davis-Besse and Perry power plants in northern Ohio couldn’t cover costs, let alone make a profit.
An arm of FirstEnergy Corp. was “bleeding cash” as it explored options
for the two aging nuclear plants eventually rescued by Ohio House
legislation that federal prosecutors say former Speaker Larry Householder
championed in exchange for corporate bribes, a utility executive testified
Tuesday.
Steven Staub, the company’s vice president and treasurer, told
jurors on the second day of Householder’s corruption trial that power
prices had gotten so low in the years leading up to the bill’s passage in
2019 that the Davis-Besse and Perry power plants in northern Ohio couldn’t
cover costs, let alone make a profit.
Independent 24th Jan 2023
Fukushima: court upholds acquittals of three Tepco executives over disaster
Three former executives from the company that operates the wrecked
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have had their not-guilty verdicts upheld
by a court in Japan, dealing a blow to campaigners demanding the firm take
legal responsibility for the disaster in March 2011.
The Tokyo high court
on Wednesday cleared Tsunehisa Katsumata, the former chairman of Tokyo
Electric Power (Tepco), along with former vice-presidents Ichiro Takekuro
and Sakae Muto, of professional negligence resulting in death. The court
said the defendants could not have predicted the massive tsunami that
crippled the power plant and triggered the world’s worst nuclear accident
since Chornobyl in 1986.
The three men were indicted in 2016 for allegedly failing to take measures
to defend the plant against tsunamis, resulting in the deaths of 44 people,
including elderly patients at a hospital, who had to be evacuated after the
disaster.
Guardian 18th Jan 2023
Pacific states entitled to claims against Japan for discharge of radioactive nuclear wastewater
As a contracting party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, and the Convention on Nuclear Safety, Japan has knowingly violated them all by making such a dangerous decision. Without exhausting all safe means of disposal, disclosing all information, or fully consulting with surrounding countries and international organizations, the Japanese government went ahead and unilaterally decided to dump its wastewater into the ocean in a flagrant attempt to pass on the disastrous consequences to other Pacific countries. Those countries have every right to defend their rights and interests through legal means.
Li Weichao http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/view/2023-01/06/content_10210311.htm
“We must remind Japan that if the radioactive nuclear wastewater is safe, just dump it in Tokyo, test it in Paris and store it in Washington, but keep our Pacific nuclear-free.” Vanuatu’s famous politician Motarilavoa Hilda Lini spoke for all people living in the Pacific region when making this statement.
The Japanese government announced in April 2021 that it will begin dumping the nuclear wastewater stored at Fukushima into the ocean from the spring of 2023. As that day is approaching, the international community is voicing waves of objection, and people living in the Pacific region have consistently expressed their strong protest. Analysts said if Japan did discharge the wastewater into the Pacific Ocean as planned, the Pacific countries would have the right to claim damages.
Japan decided to just dump the wastewater into the ocean in order to save trouble and money, at the price of transferring nuclear contamination to the whole world, which is extremely irresponsible and selfish. South Pacific countries have suffered enough from nuclear contamination. From 1946 to 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapon tests on the Marshall Islands, the aftermaths of which are still haunting the local residents in the form of radioactive poisoning, contamination of marine species, and leak from radwaste landfill.
The Fukushima nuclear station had the highest-level nuclear accident that produced an enormous amount of nuclear wastewater – more than 1.3 million tons in storage right now. Even though Japanese politicians claimed that the wastewater is safe enough for drinking after being treated with the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), that’s simply not true.
A Japanese NGO recently released an article saying that treated nuclear wastewater still contains 64 kinds of radioactive substances, including tritium, which, once released into the ocean, will contaminate the marine environment and spread through the food chain, till eventually taking a toll on human health and the ecological environment. A report released by Greenpeace, an international environmental protection organization, showed that the technology currently adopted by Japan cannot get rid of the Sr90 and C14 in the wastewater, which are even more damaging than tritium with their half-life of 50 years and 5,730 years respectively.
It’s foreseeable that dumping Fukushima’s more than 1.3 million tons of nuclear wastewater into the ocean is a murderous move for people living along the ocean and will put the marine ecology at stake with irreversible outcomes. A renowned environmental protection organization of Pacific island countries said that such an irresponsible move of transboundary pollution is no different from waging a nuclear war against the people and the islands in the Pacific region.
As a contracting party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, and the Convention on Nuclear Safety, Japan has knowingly violated them all by making such a dangerous decision. Without exhausting all safe means of disposal, disclosing all information, or fully consulting with surrounding countries and international organizations, the Japanese government went ahead and unilaterally decided to dump its wastewater into the ocean in a flagrant attempt to pass on the disastrous consequences to other Pacific countries. Those countries have every right to defend their rights and interests through legal means.
In fact, there are already precedents for claims of this kind. For instance, the International Arbitration Tribunal ruled in 1938 and 1941 that Canada’s Trail Smelter should compensate America’s State of Washington for the damages caused by the SO2 it emitted. The “Trail Smelter case” is generally considered the basis for holding countries committing transboundary pollution accountable. Countries along the Pacific Ocean can totally refer to it and pursue claims against Japan after scientifically measuring the damages imposed upon them.
The ocean is the common wealth and symbiotic home for humanity. Dumping nuclear wastewater into it is not Japan’s internal affair. Right now the IAEA is still conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the wastewater at Fukushima, and Japan’s pushing for the dumping plan reveals its intention to make it a fait accompli regardless of the concerns of other parties. Japan’s egregious atrocities in history have already caused horrendous miseries to the surrounding countries. Does it plan to add another entry to its infamous track record now?
Editor’s note: Originally published on news.cri.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
John LaForge Set to Be First US Activist Jailed in Germany for Anti-Nuke Protests
More than a dozen German anti-nuclear activists and one Dutch campaigner have also been jailed in Germany for protesting U.S. hydrogen bombs housed at Büchel Air Base.
BRETT WILKINS, Common Dreams, Jan 03, 2023
As Russia’s invasion and NATO’s support of Ukraine have heightened nuclear tensions in Europe to their highest level since the Cold War, a Wisconsin peace activist is set to become the first American jailed in Germany for an anti-nuclear protest.
John LaForge, the 66-year-old co-director of Nukewatch, was convicted in December 2021 by the Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany on two charges of trespassing in connection with two 2018 protests against U.S. nuclear weapons at Büchel Air Base near Cochem. LaForge has been ordered to serve 50 days behind bars at JVA Billwerder prison in Hamburg and was also fined €600 ($633).
During one of the demonstrations, LaForge and other activists entered the base, and climbed a bunker likely housing B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs.
LaForge has refused to pay the fine and has appealed his convictions to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
In an opinion piece published last month by Common Dreams, LaForge noted that the $28 billion-per-bomb, variable-yield B61—whose military value U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chair Gen. James Cartwright admitted is “practically nil”—”has 24 to 40 times the destructive power of the U.S. bomb that killed 170,000 people at Hiroshima in 1945.”
As Beyond Nuclear International points out, Büchel Air Base and six other facilities in Europe each house at least 20 B61s “under a controversial U.S./NATO program known as ‘nuclear sharing.’ The U.S. Air Force’s 702nd Munitions Support Squadron maintains the U.S. bombs in readiness for German PA 200 Tornado jet fighter/bomber crews.”
Writing for Counterpunch last year, LaForge asserted that “NATO’s cold-blooded ‘strategic’ preparation for meaningless, genocidal atomic violence is cosmetically presented in defensive, sanctimonious, antiseptic language depicting hydrogen bombs as reasonable, measured, protective security blankets. This is a childishly naïve mindset that the wargamers promote but do not share.”
The Nuclear Register reports:……………….
More than a dozen German activists and Dutch anti-nuclear campaigner Frits ter Kuile have been jailed for Büchel protests.
At the peak of the anti-nuclear movement during the Cold War’s perilous closing decade, hundreds of thousands and even over a million demonstrators would turn out to protests in then-West Germany.
Nukewatch will host a “jail sendoff” for LaForge via Zoom on Thursday, January 5 at 7:00 pm Central European Time, which is 1:00 pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time. https://www.commondreams.org/news/activists-buchel
Take Japan to court for nuclear water dumping
By Zhang Zhouxiang | China Daily 2023-01-05
The Japanese government had announced in April 2020 that it plans to dump nuclear waste water from its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean from the spring of 2023.
As the date approaches, and given Japan’s record, it will not be surprising if Japan starts dumping the water any time soon without giving other countries advance notice.
While the action will save the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company money and trouble, it will also shift the trouble and cost onto other nations, the Pacific ones in particular. There is a precedent here. Years after the United States carried out nuclear tests on the Bikini Atoll, also in the Pacific, from 1946 to 1958, radiation levels there were considered too high to allow resettlement in 1998.
Fishermen from China, the Republic of Korea and other Southeast Asian countries, including from Japan, depend on the waters in the region to make a living. No wonder, Japanese fishermen were protesting the move to dump nuclear waste into the waters.
The US, which Japan always looks up to, has supported Japan’s plan despite studies showing that the region most polluted by the discharge will be the US’ west coast in two years…………
Senior Japanese officials, despite bowing politely at news conferences, have shown no sincerity in negotiating with their Pacific neighbors. When they announced the decision to dump the water into the ocean, they did not ask for understanding from any side except the US.
There is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and multiple nuclear safety conventions to which Japan is a signatory, but it has helped little. It is time for all sides involved to sue the Japanese government in international courts. Japan cannot do this evil deed and just walk away unpunished. https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202301/05/WS63b613aba31057c47eba7bd1.html
1 This Month
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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