2 Hanford whistleblowers sue. They say they lost their jobs for raising safety concerns, Tri City Herald, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com, November 15, 2018 RICHLAND, WA
November 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
Leave a comment
Court forces VA to reveal extent of veterans’ contamination in Spanish nuclear disaster https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/11/14/court-forces-va-to-reveal-extent-of-veterans-contamination-in-spanish-nuclear-
By: Leo Shane III WASHINGTON — An appeals court will force Veterans Affairs officials to identify how many troops may have been exposed to radioactive debris from a 1966 plane crash, a move that supporters hope will be the precursor to
a class-action lawsuit against the department for overdue benefits.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims made the unusual ruling demanding the records’ release six weeks after VA lawyers argued the information is nearly impossible to obtain, given aging and missing military records from the accident.
But the court, by a 6-3 ruling, gave the department 30 days to determine the number of military personnel assigned to the accident clean-up, the number of veterans who have applied for benefits connected to the event, and the number who have been denied compensation. That information will be used to decide how a lawsuit on the benefits denial may proceed.
Veterans involved in the accident have been unsuccessfully petitioning VA on their case since the mid-1970s, after a host of strange cancers and other illnesses began appearing among individuals involved.
In January 1966, seven airmen were killed and four more injured when a B-52 crashed into a KC-135 during a refueling mission off the coast of Spain. The B-52 was carrying four nuclear weapons at the time of the accident, and two of them exploded near the town of Palomares, spreading radioactive plutonium over hundreds of acres.
U.S. officials quickly ordered military personnel into the area to collect contaminated debris, crops and soil in an effort to repair the damage. But veterans involved in that cleanup say they were given no protective clothing or respiratory devices, and told very little about the potential long-term health effects from exposure to the nuclear material.
Earlier this year, the appeals court ruled in a separate case that veterans can file suit against the Department of Veterans Affairs as a class rather than individuals, in limited circumstances.
Since then, legal experts have been monitoring a host of lawsuits before the court to see which could be the first class recognized, a move which will set important precedents for future legal cases.
The three judges who argued against the records request in the Palomares lawsuit said the move would effectively force VA to justify the need for a class-action lawsuit against itself, and that the majority ignored concerns that Defense Department records for the incident may not exist.
But the majority opinion noted that no final decision on whether to recognize a class of Palomares has been made, and data on the denied benefits is the sole property of VA, inaccessible in any way for outsiders.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit have contended that more than 1,600 veterans should be eligible for disability benefits related to the toxic exposure, but VA thus far has denied their requests because not enough scientific evidence exists to classify all of the health problems as service-related illnesses.
November 15, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
health, incidents, Legal, Spain, USA |
Leave a comment
The State. BY TOM BARTON, tbarton@thestate.com, November 14, 2018 COLUMBIA, S.C.
An attorney involved in hiring a consultant to study problems at a failed $9 billion nuclear expansion project Wednesday defended deleting items from that critical report.
Atlanta-based attorney George Wenick testified during Day 10 of S.C. Public Service Commission hearings into the failed effort by SCE&G, a SCANA subsidiary, to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County. The commission also is considering SCE&G’s future electric rates and a proposal by Dominion Energy to buy SCE&G’s parent, SCANA.
The report by the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., completed in February 2016, showed SCE&G knew the project was troubled long before it collapsed……
SCANA chief executive Jimmy Addison last week testified he never had read the damning Bechtel report and never intends to, calling it “history.” But, he added, he wished it had been disclosed to the Public Service Commission and the public in 2015.
At stake is who will pay for the failed nuclear project — SCE&G’s customers, SCANA’s shareholders or both — and how big the future power bills will be for SCE&G’s roughly 730,000 electric customers.
SCE&G increased the electric rates for its typical residential customer by about $27 a month to pay for the nuclear project before it pulled the plug on the unfinished reactors in July 2017. Subsequently, the PSC cut SCE&G’s nuclear-related rates temporarily.
Wenick’s testimony could also be used in ongoing federal investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article221641145.html
November 15, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
Leave a comment
Independent 4th Nov 2018 , The Supreme Court has refused to halt a novel lawsuit filed by young
Americans that attempts to force the federal government to take action on
climate change, turning down a request from the Trump administration to
stop it before trial.
The suit, filed in 2015 by 21 young people who argue
that the failure of government leaders to combat climate change violates
their constitutional right to a clean environment, is before a federal
judge in Oregon. It had been delayed while the Supreme Court considered the
emergency request from the government.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/climate-change-lawsuit-trump-us-young-people-children-supreme-court-allows-julia-olsen-a8616136.html
November 5, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, legal, USA |
Leave a comment
SCANA accountant says CEO put her on medical leave over complaints about nuclear project, Independent Mail, Avery G. Wilks, The State Nov. 2, 2018 COLUMBIA — In newly unsealed documents, a former SCANA employee says the utility’s then-chief executive, Kevin Marsh, put her on “special medical leave” after she went to him with concerns about a failing, $9 billion nuclear project.
Carlette Walker, once SCANA’s vice president of Nuclear Finance Administration, also testified that, in 2015, her bosses filed misleading testimony under her name with state regulators about how much the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion project would cost.
Carlette Walker, once SCANA’s vice president of Nuclear Finance Administration, also testified that, in 2015, her bosses filed misleading testimony under her name with state regulators about how much the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion project would cost.
“While I was out, they wrote testimony under my name, and they filed testimony under my name with the (lower cost) number that I had fought against,” Walker said in an April 24 deposition.
Walker’s full sworn statement — parts had been released before with sections blacked out, or redacted — was made public Thursday as the S.C. Public Service Commission began its weeks-long hearing into the nuclear-related power rates of SCE&G, SCANA’s electric subsidiary.
A spokesman for SCE&G said the utility would not comment except during the PSC hearing.
Previously, most of the pages of Walker’s 187-page deposition had been at least partially blacked out at SCE&G’s request. However, PSC hearing officer David Butler ruled Wednesday the entire document should be made public.
The state’s utility watchdog, the Office of Regulatory Staff, plans to use Walker’s deposition as evidence SCE&G misled the PSC — which sets utility rates — in order to keep the project alive, and its revenues and executive bonuses flowing.
In her deposition, Walker said she had projected the cost to finish the floundering project was about $500 million higher than contractors had estimated. But, she said, her SCANA bosses submitted the contractors’ lower numbers — which she considered unrealistic — to regulators in her name while she was out of work on leave, taking care of her sick husband.
Another former SCE&G employee, Ken Browne, said in his deposition the contractor’s cost projections were based upon productivity rates that V.C. Summer construction workers never had attained. Work was going so slowly, the project could have taken far longer — until 2030 — to complete, Browne said.
According to Walker’s deposition, when Browne objected internally to SCE&G using the lower cost submitted to the PSC, under Walker’s name, he was “pretty much cussed out by (SCE&G outside attorney) Mitch Willoughby and put in his place, and so he just shut up.”
In the formerly redacted portions of her deposition, Walker said she went to both then-SCANA CEO Marsh and current CEO Jimmy Addison — then the company’s chief financial officer — with concerns about the nuclear project in the fall of 2015………. https://www.independentmail.com/story/news/2018/11/02/v-c-summer-nuclear-station-fiasco-scana-accountant-put-leave/1856615002/
November 3, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA |
Leave a comment
SCE&G regulatory trial: Who will pay for the failed nuclear project? The State, BY FRANK KNAPP JR., October 19,
On Nov. 1, the S.C. Public Service Commission (PSC) will start a hearing that will impact the electric rates of SCE&G customers for decades.
The primary issue to be decided is how much if anything SCE&G customers will be forced to pay for the incurred construction costs of its abandoned nuclear project in Fairfield County.
Essentially, this is a regulatory trial.
SCE&G is being accused of intentionally withholding critical information from the S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) and the PSC.
ORS is the state agency that was responsible for analyzing data received from SCE&G for the approval of construction cost increases, construction schedule delays and rate hike requests to pay for construction cost financing. ORS then made recommendations to the PSC for decisions on these matters.
After reviewing more than a million pages of SCE&G-produced documents, ORS concluded that by March 2015, the company knew that it would take several years longer to complete the nuclear project and the cost would be billions higher than it was telling the regulators.
By not providing this information to ORS and the PSC, critics contend that SCE&G enabled itself to obtain undeserved electric rate increases to fund the doomed project.
The principle SCE&G challengers — ORS, Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth — maintain that had ORS and the PSC known what SCE&G knew in March 2015, the regulators might have pulled the plug on the project then, saving the ratepayers billions……….https://www.thestate.com/opinion/op-ed/article220308855.html
October 20, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
Leave a comment
Two Federal Courts May Have Just Saved The Nuclear Power 
Industry, Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianpotts/2018/10/15/two-federal-courts-may-have-just-saved-the-nuclear-power-industry/#4802adfa762e, Brian H. Potts
States that want to keep their aging nuclear power fleet from retiring now have a court-approved roadmap for doing so. That’s because two federal courts of appeals last month upheld very similar state laws in Illinois and New York aimed at subsidizing those states’ under-performing and at-risk nuclear power plants.
The current market conditions are, quite literally, killing the nuclear power industry. With natural gas prices low and cheap renewable energy flooding the markets, it’s been virtually impossible for many nuclear power plants to compete.
Some view this as simply the market picking winners and losers. But others see this as a problem. To significantly lower this country’s greenhouse gas emissions, they argue, we’ll need baseload power (i.e., power plants that can run all of the time). And only three current large-scale power sources fit that bill: coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Of those three, only nuclear power can generate energy without carbon dioxide emissions. [ What a lie!!]
Yet in Illinois (and in most other states), nuclear energy does not qualify as a “renewable energy resource,” which means nuclear generation facilities are categorically ineligible to produce and sell renewable energy credits.
That’s why, in response to concerns that two of Exelon Corporations’ nuclear generation facilities were on the brink of closing and that the zero-emission value of nuclear generation was not being recognized, the Illinois legislature passed the Future Energy Jobs Act.
The Act directed the Illinois Power Agency to create a subsidy program requiring generators that use coal or natural gas to buy zero-emissions credits (ZECs) from nuclear power plants connected to the regional grid. The price of each credit was set at $16.50 per megawatt-hour, a number Illinois derived from a federal working group’s calculation of the social cost of carbon emissions. But, to ensure that the new program does not cause power prices to skyrocket, the price of ZECs under the program goes down if average annual energy prices on the market exceed a set cap.
Almost immediately, a group of generation facilities and consumers filed a lawsuit challenging the Illinois law. The group alleged, among other things, that the ZEC program invades the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) exclusive authority over the wholesale sale of electricity in the interstate markets.
Under the Federal Power Act, FERC has sole jurisdiction over the interstate sale of electricity at wholesale; yet states are authorized to regulate energy production within their borders, including the power plants that produce that energy.
The challengers in the case, called Electric Power Supply Association v. Star, argued that Illinois’ ZEC program went too far because it tied the price of ZECs to future wholesale market prices.
On September 13, 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. “The zero-emissions credit system can influence the [market] price only indirectly,” according to the Court, because the value of a credit does not depend on the producer’s bid in the market.
Interestingly, at the Seventh Circuit’s request, FERC submitted a brief in the case, which argued that Illinois’ ZECs program was “not preempted” by the Federal Power Act because it does not expressly require generation facilities to participate in the FERC-regulated markets.
Exactly two weeks after the Seventh Circuit issued its decision, the Second Circuit issued a strikingly similar ruling in a case called Coalition for Competitive Electricity v. Zibelman.
Plaintiffs in the Zibelman case, a group of electrical generators and trade groups, also alleged that the Federal Power Act preempts New York’s ZEC program.
That program subsidizes three specific nuclear plants: FitzPatrick, Ginna, and Nine Mile Point, all of which are also owned by Exelon Corporation. Each of the plants under the New York program will obtain an additional $17.48 per megawatt-hour over the program’s first two years, and then the ZEC price every two years thereafter will be reset.
Brushing aside similar arguments from the challengers as the Seventh Circuit did, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on September 27, 2018 ruled that the ZEC program is not preempted “because Plaintiffs have failed to identify an impermissible ‘tether’ . . . between the ZEC program and wholesale market participation.”
Together, these two decisions won’t just save the specific nuclear power plants at issue. They may give a lifeline to the entire nuclear power industry.
Unless, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court decides to weigh in. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianpotts/2018/10/15/two-federal-courts-may-have-just-saved-the-nuclear-power-industry/#4802adfa762e
October 16, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
Leave a comment
France to defend itself against nuclear tests complaint, France says it will defend itself against allegations of crimes against humanity for its nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific. The overseas minister, Annick Girardin, made the comment in the senate two days after French Polynesian opposition politician Oscar Temaru told a UN meeting in New York that a complaint had been lodged in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Ms Girardin said France would defend itself and restate the facts, adding that it accepted its nuclear legacy with serenity……..https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/368543/france-to-defend-itself-against-nuclear-tests-complaint
October 13, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
France, legal |
Leave a comment
nuclear-news 