USA adds new indictment to charges against Julian Assange
WASHINGTON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought to recruit hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia who could provide his anti-secrecy website with classified information, and conspired with members of hacking organizations, according to a new Justice Department indictment announced Wednesday.
The superseding indictment does not contain additional charges beyond the 18 counts the Justice Department unsealed last year. But prosecutors say it underscores Assange’s efforts to procure and release classified information, allegations that form the basis of criminal charges he already faces.
Beyond recruiting hackers at conferences, the indictment accuses Assange of conspiring with members of hacking groups known as LulzSec and Anonymous. He also worked with a 17-year-old hacker who gave him information stolen from a bank and directed the teenager to steal additional material, including audio recordings of high-ranking government officials, prosecutors say.
Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said in a statement that “the government’s relentless pursuit of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to journalists everywhere and to the public’s right to know.”
“While today’s superseding indictment is yet another chapter in the U.S. Government’s effort to persuade the public that its pursuit of Julian Assange is based on something other than his publication of newsworthy truthful information,” he added, “the indictment continues to charge him with violating the Espionage Act based on WikiLeaks publications exposing war crimes committed by the U.S. Government.”
Assange was arrested last year after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault, and is at the center of an extradition tussle over whether he should be sent to the United States.
The Justice Department has already charged him with conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history by working together to crack a password to a government computer.
Prosecutors say the WikiLeaks founder damaged national security by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.
Assange maintains he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection. His lawyers have argued the U.S. charges of espionage and computer misuse were politically motivated and an abuse of power.
Assange generated substantial attention during the 2016 presidential election, and in investigations that followed, after WikiLeaks published stolen Democratic emails that U.S. authorities say were hacked by Russian military intelligence officials. An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller revealed how Trump campaign associates eagerly anticipated the email disclosures. One Trump ally, Roger Stone, was found guilty last year of lying about his efforts to gain inside information about the emails. Assange, however, was never charged in Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The allegations in the new indictment center on conferences, in locations including the Netherlands and Malaysia in 2009, at which prosecutors say he and a WikiLeaks associate sought to recruit hackers who could locate classified information, including material on a “Most Wanted Leaks” list posted on WikiLeaks’ website.
According to the new indictment, he told would-be recruits that unless they were a member of the U.S. military, they faced no legal liability for stealing classified information and giving it to WikiLeaks “because ‘TOP SECRET’ meant nothing as a matter of law.”
At one conference in Malaysia, called the “Hack in the Box Security Conference,” Assange told the audience, “I was a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and I’ve been reading generals’ emails since I was 17.”
Holtec International Under Criminal Investigation
Holtec International, a subsidiary of which owns and is decommissioning the inactive nuclear plant in Plymouth, is under criminal investigation, Politico New Jersey reported based on a legal brief filed by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.
According to the report, New Jersey-based Holtec International sued the NJ EDA in March over the payment of $26 million of a $260 million New Jersey tax incentive, which the agency held up because Holtec allegedy gave a false answer on its 2014 tax credit application.
“Holtec’s misrepresentations — which include its failure to disclose a prior government debarment by the Tennessee Valley Authority (the ‘TVA’) for bribing an official of that agency — first came to light during an investigation conducted by the Governor’s Task Force on the Economic Development Authority’s Tax Incentive Program, and they are now the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation,” the brief read, according to Politico.
A spokesperson and a lawyer for Holtec did not respond to Politico New Jersey, and the company did not immediately return a News Service email seeking a response.
Last week, two Holtec subsidiaries — Holtec Decommissioning International and Holtec Pilgrim LLC — agreed to a settlement with Attorney General Maura Healey and the Baker administration that requires the company to maintain a decommissioning trust fund at a minimum balance and puts other guardrails on the decommissioning of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
Last September, Healey and Baker’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs sued the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the agency’s decision to approve the transfer of Pilgrim’s license from Entergy to Holtec.
The attorney general, Baker’s administration and members of the state’s Congressional delegation mounted an effort to block the transfer unless the NRC held a full hearing on concerns over Holtec’s ability to safely decommission the nuclear plant, the company’s financial stability and its alleged involvement in a kickback scheme. No hearing was held before the NRC approved the transfer.
Holtec has said that it can complete decommissioning work in Plymouth by the end of 2027 and is in the process of removing all spent nuclear fuel from the plant’s spent fuel pool and placing it on a newly constructed Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation by early 2022. AT TOP https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2020/06/25/plymouth-nuclear-plant-decommissioning-company-criminal-investigation
LAWSUIT ALLEGES COVERUP AT US NUCLEAR WEAPON FACILITY
Nuclear Coverup
A physicist who was fired by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is suing over an alleged coverup that he claims could have compromised the U.S.’s ability to predict the behavior of nuclear weapons.
Peter Williams, the plaintiff, claims in the lawsuit that he was terminated in retaliation after complaining that his superiors tinkered with his models of nuclear weapon explosions, Science Magazine reports. In doing so, Williams alleges, his superiors were trying to make data align with the models rather than improving their accuracy — leaving the U.S. clueless as to how the weapons would actually behave when actually detonated.
Difficult Math
While he was at Livermore, Williams modeled the behavior of an explosive called a PBX 9502. When equipped to a nuclear warhead, the explosive first triggers a nuclear fission explosion that, in turn, sets off an even more powerful fusion blast, Science reports.
It’s a particularly-difficult dynamic to model, especially because the PBX 9502 is relatively slow-burning, and models also need to account for how the explosion travels through the sample of PBX.
Routine Maintenance
Williams’ central allegation, Science reports, is that supervisors would adjust the parameters of tests after the fact to make the models seem more accurate than they were — rendering them incapable of making meaningful predictions.
But astrophysicist Robert Rosner, a Livermore board member, told Science that modeling adjustments of that sort are commonplace and an expected part of improving them. Still, Williams sees his lawsuit as a matter of duty.
“I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it,” he told Science.
Lawsuit alleges scientific misconduct at U.S. nuclear weapons lab
Researchers familiar with the labs say Williams’s allegations should be taken seriously. ……https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/lawsuit-alleges-scientific-misconduct-us-nuclear-weapons-lab
Environmental problems, and legal holdup for Russia’s $20 billion nuclear power project in Turkey
Russia’s $20 billion nuclear power project located in Mersin on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has long come under fire over safety and environmental concerns, including claims of large cracks in the concrete foundations due to loose and unstable ground in the area.
Officials broke ground on the Akkuyu power plant in 2018, which is set to be Turkey’s first nuclear power station and is due to come online in 2023 – the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey.
But engineers and workers began ringing alarm bells over a potential nuclear disaster soon after its inception, and a group of NGOs filed a lawsuit with a Turkish court demanding for construction to be halted…….
A Turkish court in the southern province of Mersin ruled on Friday to accept a request by the NGOs for relevant ministries and the National Security Council (MGK) to be able to intervene in the project, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported.
The court said the case would be reported to the MGK, which has no obligation to intervene in construction, but may now choose to do so. Lawyers involved in the case hd also said that the Russian power power plant could pose a national security threat to Turkey.
The court also gave the green light to a request by the NGOs for the involvement of a number of Turkish ministries in the case, including the Health Ministry, the Treasury and Finance Ministry, as well as the Food, Agriculture and Livestock Ministry.
How this latest development will play out in the ambitious Russian-Turkish joint-venture remains to be seen. But it arrives at a time of ongoing tensions between Ankara and Moscow over Idlib province in northwest Syria, where the two countries back opposing sides……https://ahvalnews.com/nuclear-energy/turkeys-russian-nuclear-power-project-hits-legal-hurdle
Covid-19 pandemic being used to prevent proper public consultation on Bradwell nuclear project
Ecologist 17th June 2020, Bradwell B, a proposed nuclear power plant, appears to be moving forward to its construction phase during the Covid-19 pandemic without proper public consultation.
China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), a Chinese state-owned energy corporation, and Électricité de France (EDF), are seeking to build a new nuclear power plant in Bradwell-on-Sea, opposite Blackwater Estuary Natural Nature Reserve on the Essex coast. A statement released by JAN (Japanese Against Nuclear) UK stated: “The companies cancelled two-thirds of the planned public consultation events due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the pandemic should not be used to avoid the legal requirement of public engagement.
Massachusetts officials have dropped a lawsuit against Holtec over $1B Nuclear cleanup
Holtec Settles Legal Battle with Massachusetts Over $1B Nuclear Plant Cleanup, ENR, 19 June 20, Massachusetts officials have dropped a lawsuit against Holtec International, now site owner and intended cleanup manager of the closed Pilgrim Nuclear Plant near Plymouth that allows the $1.13 billion-decontamination and decommissioning of the 670-MW site to move forward to be completed in 2027.
The state also dropped its challenge to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s transfer of the site operating license from Entergy Nuclear to Holtec.
Under the agreement reached June 16, Holtec will set aside $193 million of the plant’s decommission trust fund to pay for cost increases, project delays and possible hidden contamination.
Once cleanup is competed, $38.8 million will be set aside to cover the cost to transport spent nuclear fuel stored at the site to out-of-state storage. ….. https://www.enr.com/articles/49588-holtec-settles-legal-battle-with-massachusetts-over-1b-nuclear-plant-cleanup
South Carolina Electric and Gas lawyers and executives could face gaol for fraud
SCE&G LAWYERS MAY BE CHARGED IN NUCLEAR FRAUD, https://www.lexingtonchronicle.com/news/sceg-lawyers-may-be-charged-nuclear-fraud More utility executives may face prison time, too
By Jerry Bellune
JerryBellune@yahoo.com
Former SC Electric & Gas executive Steve Byrne may have company.
His plea agreement on fraud charges reveals that other executives and lawyers for SCANA, the owner of SCE&G, are at risk of being charged,.
Federal officials believe a conspiracy of executives and their lawyers hid a $9 billion nuclear failure from state officials, investors and the public for years.
An official federal document filed in US District Court in Columbia revealed:
• Byrne and unidentified “others” orchestrated a cover-up of costly errors at the nuclear construction site.
• They “deceived regulators and customers to maintain financing for the project and to financially benefit SCANA” and themselves.
• “As construction problems mounted, costs rose and schedules slipped,” Byrne and others hid the truth.
For the rest of what the federal documents reveal, see Thursday’s Lexington County Chronicle.
South African activists threaten to sue over nuclear plan
 South African activists threaten to sue over nuclear plan JOHANNESBURG, June 11 (Reuters) – South African activists have written to the energy minister threatening to take legal action if he moves to build new nuclear power plants without proper consultation.The letter to Gwede Mantashe from Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI) comes after energy officials said last month they planned to procure 2,500 megawatts (MW) of new nuclear capacity by 2024.
The activists said they would go to court if Mantashe tried to procure nuclear power, or seek information about it from vendors, without following proper regulatory processes and seeking public input. Three years ago, the same groups succeeded in persuading a court to block a nuclear power agreement with Russia, signed under then-president Jacob Zuma……. https://www.reuters.com/article/safrica-nuclear/update-1-south-african-activists-threaten-to-sue-over-nuclear-plan-idUSL8N2DO5SN |
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Continuing court battle against proposed nuclear waste site near Carlsbad
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Legal battle continues against proposed nuclear waste site near Carlsbad, Carlsbad Current Argus, Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus June 10, 2020 A planned nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad was challenged in federal court, as opponents sought to appeal a decision by the federal government to reject contentions to the project that would see spent nuclear fuel rods stored temporarily at a location near the Eddy-Lea county line. Beyond Nuclear filed its appeal on June 4 in the U.S. Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia, questioning the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s April 23 decision to reject challenges to Holtec International’s application for a license to build and operate a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) that would hold nuclear waste at the surface until a permanent, deep geological repository was available to hold the waste permanently. The facility would store up to 173,000 metric tons of the waste. Such a permanent repository does not exist, and Beyond Nuclear — a non-profit organization that addresses nuclear issues nationwide — worried one wouldn’t be available until 2048. The group also pointed to another NRC order in October 2018 where the NRC deemed contentions inadmissible but argued against both decisions that it said upheld a regulatory process that violated federal law. The licensing process itself was illegal, read NRC’s court filing, because it considered the possibility that the U.S. Department of Energy would take ownership of the waste — a move illegal under federal law unless a permanent repository is available to hold the waste. “This NRC decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President,” said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear. “The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that Holtec or the Department of Energy won’t complete the illegal activity it authorized. The buck must stop with the NRC.”…….. https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2020/06/10/federal-appeal-filed-against-nuclear-waste-site-proposed-near-carlsbad/5317995002/ |
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Number two executive of the defunct SCANA Corpto plead guilty to fraud conspiracy in nuclear plant failure
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Top SCANA ex-official to plead guilty to fraud conspiracy in nuclear plant failure https://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article243356621.html, BY JOHN MONK
JUNE 08, 2020 The number two executive of the defunct SCANA Corp. — whose top officials engineered the biggest business failure in South Carolina history: the $10 billion V.C. Summer nuclear plant fiasco — has agreed to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy fraud charges in connection with the nuclear failure, according to a document filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Columbia.
The upcoming guilty plea of Stephen A. Byrne, 60, is a centerpiece of a Monday filing involving his alleged criminal actions. He will need to have his guilty plea formally accepted by a U.S. District Court judge before it becomes official. Byrne is charged with conspiring to commit mail fraud, the document said. The document is a motion requesting a stay in a Securities and Exchange civil fraud lawsuit against Byrne and SCANA’s former CEO, Kevin Marsh. That civil lawsuit was filed in February. One big difference between civil and criminal proceedings is that in a criminal proceeding, a defendant can be subject to a prison term. The document alleges that “through intentional and material misrepresentations and omissions, Byrne and others deceived regulators and customers to maintain financing for the (nuclear) project and to financially benefit SCANA.” The Monday filing said there is “an ongoing criminal investigation” and indicated more criminal charges against other former SCANA top officials may be in the offing. |
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Legal challenge to “Interim” storage of nuclear wastes, before permanent disposal determined
Holtec’s interim nuclear waste application challenged in court, BY THERESA DAVIS / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER, AlbuquerquebJournal, June 6th, 2020
Holtec International’s proposed nuclear waste interim storage facility in southeast New Mexico faces a new legal challenge.
Anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear filed a petition for review Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The group asks for review of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rejection of their petitions.
The group alleges that the NRC cannot issue Holtec a license because the company’s application includes a provision that the U.S. Department of Energy may be the owner of the facility’s nuclear waste. The group says approval would violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
That law prevents the government from taking ownership of nuclear waste from private utilities before a permanent repository is in operation. The government has yet to open such a site.
“The reason that provision is in the NWPA is to protect a state like New Mexico from being forced to store this waste before a permanent repository is opened,” said Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist with Beyond Nuclear. “(Holtec has) now added a clause that includes ‘and/or nuclear utilities’ in the list of potential customers. That was good enough for the NRC, apparently.”
Beyond Nuclear presented its petition to NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. In April, the NRC upheld that board’s dismissal of the petition.
An April 23 NRC order says Holtec “hopes Congress will change the (NWPA) law to allow DOE to enter into temporary storage contracts with Holtec.”………
The petition alleges that the NRC is also violating the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Agencies have to work with what Congress gave (them),” said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear and the director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at the Emory University School of Law. “We feel NRC is stepping around that requirement. Congress has said that DOE can’t own this waste.”
The proposed facility would store spent nuclear fuel in 500 canisters on a 1,000-acre site between Carlsbad and Hobbs. The full project could store 10,000
Beyond Nuclear Files Federal Lawsuit Challenging High-Level Radioactive Waste Dump
 Beyond Nuclear Files Federal Lawsuit Challenging High-Level Radioactive Waste Dump for Entire Inventory of U.S. “Spent” Reactor Fuel, Common Dreams, 5 June 20
Petitioner charges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knowingly violated U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act and up-ended settled law prohibiting transfer of ownership of spent fuel to the federal government until a permanent underground repository is ready to receive it. WASHINGTON – Today the non-profit organization Beyond Nuclear filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requesting review of an April 23, 2020 order and an October 29, 2018 order by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), rejecting challenges to Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance’s application to build a massive “consolidated interim storage facility” (CISF) for nuclear waste in southeastern New Mexico. Holtec proposes to store as much as 173,000 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated or “spent” nuclear fuel – more than twice the amount of spent fuel currently stored at U.S. nuclear power reactors – in shallowly buried containers on the site. But according to Beyond Nuclear’s petition, the NRC’s orders “violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by refusing to dismiss an administrative proceeding that contemplated issuance of a license permitting federal ownership of used reactor fuel at a commercial fuel storage facility.” Since it contemplates that the federal government would become the owner of the spent fuel during transportation to and storage at its CISF, Holtec’s license application should have been dismissed at the outset, Beyond Nuclear’s appeal argues. Holtec has made no secret of the fact that it expects the federal government will take title to the waste, which would clear the way for it to be stored at its CISF, and this is indeed the point of building the facility. But that would directly violate the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), which prohibits federal government ownership of spent fuel unless and until a permanent underground repository is up and running. No such repository has been licensed in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) most recent estimate for the opening of a geologic repository is the year 2048 at the earliest. In its April 23 decision, in which the NRC rejected challenges to the license application, the four NRC Commissioners admitted that the NWPA would indeed be violated if title to spent fuel were transferred to the federal government so it could be stored at the Holtec facility. But they refused to remove the license provision in the application which contemplates federal ownership of the spent fuel. Instead, they ruled that approving Holtec’s application in itself would not involve NRC in a violation of federal law, and that therefore they could go forward with approving the application, despite its illegal provision. According to the NRC’s decision, “the license itself would not violate the NWPA by transferring the title to the fuel, nor would it authorize Holtec or [the U.S. Department of Energy] to enter into storage contracts.” (page 7). The NRC Commissioners also noted with approval that “Holtec hopes that Congress will amend the law in the future.” (page 7). “This NRC decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President,” said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear. “The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that Holtec or the Department of Energy won’t complete the illegal activity it authorized. The buck must stop with the NRC.” “Our claim is simple,” said attorney Diane Curran, another member of Beyond Nuclear’s legal team. “The NRC is not above the law, nor does it stand apart from it.”……… “When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and refused to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a permanent repository was up and running, it acted wisely,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. “It understood that spent fuel remains hazardous for millions of years, and that the only safe long-term strategy for safeguarding irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation from the living environment. Today, the NWPA remains the public’s best protection against a so-called ‘interim’ storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national, surface dump for radioactive waste. But if we ignore it or jettison the law, communities like southeastern New Mexico can be railroaded by the nuclear industry and its friends in government, and forced to accept mountains of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste other states are eager to offload.” In addition to impacting New Mexico, shipping the waste to the CISF site would also endanger 43 other states plus the District of Columbia, because it would entail hauling 10,000 high risk, high-level radioactive waste shipments on their roads, rails, and waterways, posing risks of radioactive release all along the way………. “When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and refused to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a permanent repository was up and running, it acted wisely,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. “It understood that spent fuel remains hazardous for millions of years, and that the only safe long-term strategy for safeguarding irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation from the living environment. Today, the NWPA remains the public’s best protection against a so-called ‘interim’ storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national, surface dump for radioactive waste. But if we ignore it or jettison the law, communities like southeastern New Mexico can be railroaded by the nuclear industry and its friends in government, and forced to accept mountains of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste other states are eager to offload.” In addition to impacting New Mexico, shipping the waste to the CISF site would also endanger 43 other states plus the District of Columbia, because it would entail hauling 10,000 high risk, high-level radioactive waste shipments on their roads, rails, and waterways, posing risks of radioactive release all along the way. Besides threatening public health and safety, evading federal law to license CISF facilities would also impact the public financially. Transferring title and liability for spent fuel from the nuclear utilities that generated it to DOE would mean that federal taxpayers would have to pay for its so-called “interim” storage, to the tune of many billions of dollars. That’s on top of the many billions ratepayers and taxpayers have already paid to fund a permanent geologic repository that hasn’t yet materialized. https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/06/04/beyond-nuclear-files-federal-lawsuit-challenging-high-level-radioactive-waste?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=twitter |
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Beyond Nuclear files petition to be heard in U.S. Court of Appeals
IN BRIEF: Watchdog petitions D.C. Circuit for a voice in nuclear waste battle, https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-energy-lawsuit/in-brief-watchdog-petitions-dc-circuit-for-a-voice-in-nuclear-waste-battle-idUSL1N2DI1PH, Sebastien Malo 5 June 20
A nuclear watchdog has petitioned a federal appeals court to review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) refusal to hear its opposition to the licensing of a proposed Holtec International “interim” facility to store commercial nuclear reactor waste in southeastern New Mexico.
Beyond Nuclear filed the petition on Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, seeking the court’s review of the NRC’s denial in 2018 and 2020 of its request for a hearing over the storage plan on grounds it would violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act.
To read the full story on Westlaw Practitioner Insights, click here: bit.ly/2ALiCzH
Assange too sick to attend the very unjust process of the UK extradition hearings
Monica Del Mestre 3 June 202. In addition to other ongoing health concerns, Assange faces the serious risk of exposure to Covid in Belmarsh prison, and has been advised that even going to the video room to take part in hearings is unsafe. This is another reason he should be immediately released.
3. Assange’s lawyers have long complained they have had insufficient access to him in prison. Under lockdown conditions, they have had no access to him at all. They have repeatedly flagged that this lack of access seriously impacts their ability to prepare his defence.
4. One of the next steps agreed today is that psychiatric reports on Assange from the prosecution and defence will be due to the court on 31 July. Remember that UN Special Rapporteur @NilsMelzer has expressed alarm many times that Assange shows symptoms of psychological torture.
5. It is a welcome step that the continuation of the full extradition hearing was adjourned, as lockdown conditions present clear barriers to open justice – but 7 September may not be late enough to make a meaningful difference. Also the court is still struggling to find a venue.
6. It remains extremely frustrating that the court does not adequately accommodate NGO observers. I have never experienced so much difficulty accessing a trial in any country as at Woolwich Crown Court in February, and the teleconference option we now have is far from sufficient.
7. The press are also facing severe restrictions. Only 6 journalists have been allowed to attend in person the past 2 hearings, with others limited to the awful phone line. This case is of high public interest and a better solution must be found before the full hearing resumes.
8. Assange’s next callover hearing has been scheduled for 29 June at 10 am. We urge the court to find workable solutions to enable his safe attendance and ensure the press and observers are able to properly monitor proceedings. /END
1 This Month
22 June – Virtual Event –Climate Change: New Data, New Debate
Monday, June 22, 2026 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CT
YouTube. Register here
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity st July, 7 pm
Report Launch Online: We are seeing an increasing exploitation of space for military and commercial purposes. This must change.
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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