JEA sues to get out of Georgia nuclear contract https://www.news4jax.com/news/jea-sues-to-get-out-of-nuclear-plant-contract, Lawsuit filed in Florida court same day Georgia utility filed federal suit, By Steve Patrick – News4Jax digital managing editor, September 12, 2018 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – JEA and the city of Jacksonville have filed a complaint with a Florida court asking for declaratory judgment on an agreement with the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG Power) agreeing to power electricity from Plant Vogtle, a nuclear power plant under construction in Georgia.
JEA entered into the power purchase agreement in 2008. The power provided under the agreement was to be from two new Plant Vogtle units that would provide power to JEA customers in addition to ratepayers across Georgia beginning in April 2016. The project was expected to cost $9.5 billion in direct costs ($14.8 billion total, including indirect and financing costs). The total cost of the portion attributable to JEA was $1.4 billion. The project cost was capped under the 2008 agreement.
Today, the project’s total cost-to-completion estimates have increased to more than $30 billion, with no guarantees that costs could grow beyond that and with a delayed completion date of November 2021.
A new unlimited cost-plus reimbursement agreement was implemented without JEA’s approval in June 2017 after the project’s initial general contractor, Westinghouse, declared bankruptcy. The amended agreement has increased JEA’s liability to more than $2.9 billion, although that amount is uncapped and has continued to rise.
The city and JEA’s complaint seeks to clarify the validity of the amended purchase power agreement. It was never approved by the Jacksonville City Council and the JEA and city lawyers believe the agreement violates the Florida Constitution, and therefore should be void and is unenforceable.
The suit was filed in an effort to protect JEA’s ratepayers from the escalating costs from the project.
“It has become clear that this purchase agreement should be considered ‘ultra vires’ since it was implemented without the approval of the City Council, which violates Florida law,” JEA Interim Managing Director Aaron Zahn said. “A favorable judgment from the court deeming the agreement void will have the added benefit of providing relief to ratepayers across northeast Florida from having to shoulder the financial burden of this project.”
The complaint was filed in the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Tuesday, the same day that MEAG Power filed a breach of contract lawsuit against JEA in the Federal Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
L’usine nouvelle 12th Sept 2018 , [Machine Translation]EDF will have to consult the CCE again on Hinkley
Point. EDF will again have to consult the Central Works Council (CCE) on
the construction of two EPR reactors as part of the Hinkley Point project
in England, the CCE announced Wednesday in a statement.
The CCE appealed to
the courts in June 2016 to request the submission of additional information
on this major project. A court of appeal was right, saying that EDF had not
communicated to staff representatives “objective, accurate and complete
information up to the technical and financial issues raised by the project
HPC” and therefore had them not allowed “to give a reasoned opinion on this
project,” writes the CCE in a statement.
BBC, 10 September 2018, Opponents to a controversial scheme to dump mud from a nuclear plant off the coast of Cardiff have launched a last-minute legal challenge.
About 300,000 tonnes will be dredged from the seabed near the Hinkley Point C building site in Somerset.
The Campaign Against Hinkley Mud Dumping submitted an application to the High Court in Cardiff on Monday seeking an interim injunction.
However, a barge made its first trip to dump mud on Monday evening.
Hundreds so far have protested against the plan.
Campaigners have argued Natural Resources Wales (NRW) failed to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment and said core samples were insufficient under international rules and did not cover all significant radioactive substances from the Hinkley plant.
Super Furry Animals keyboard player Cian Ciaran, who submitted the legal challenge, said: “I have one simple argument – absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, therefore, the precautionary principle should dictate a re-think.”
Developer EDF began moving mud and sediment to Cardiff Grounds, a licensed disposal site a mile out to sea off Cardiff Bay, on Monday evening.
The barge, called the Sloeber, spent about half an hour off the coast of Cardiff before heading back down the Bristol Channel to Hinkley……….https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45467461
THE MELTDOWN AT the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine on April 26, 1986 was a massive tragedy that ultimately claimed at least 9,000 lives and affected millions more. It also created a toxic mess. Radioactive particles choked the atmosphere and rained down on cities, forests, and roads. In the immediate aftermath, fires had to be put out, debris cleared, contaminated waste buried deep underground.It was, obviously, not an easy task. Remote-controlled bulldozers and other robots proved too weak for the job, their circuitry fried by radiation. So the Soviet Union sent in humans—600,000 of them. These brave firefighters, soldiers, janitors, and miners—the so-called “liquidators”—did everything from hosing down streets to felling trees to building a concrete sarcophagus around the exposed reactor … all the while charged subatomic particles ravaged their cells and shortened their life spans.
“No personal sacrifice was too much for these men and women,” says photographer Tom Skipp. Moved by their story, he visited Slavutych, Ukraine in April to photograph survivors, now in their golden years. The portraits make up his haunting series The Liquidators.
“The liquidators were sent into impossible scenarios where even machines failed,” Skipp says. “Each has a human story seemingly entangled in the complex history of communism and duty to the motherland….
On average, the liquidators were exposed to 120 millisieverts of radiation, about 1,200 times the amount you get from a simple x-ray. In the years following the meltdown, more than 4,000 of them died from radiation-caused cancers, and another 70,000 were disabled by exposure. Still, the liquidators shared a steadfast sense of duty to their government and fellow citizens, even when they didn’t agree with the ruling system or found it difficult to talk about. “I think that there’s a certain amount of fear aligned with speaking out against any wrongdoings that were committed,” Skipp says. “Many live on a state pension.”
Skipp photographed the men and women with his Fujifilm GFX 50 in their homes, as well as at at a local museum dedicated to explaining the history of Chernobyl and Slavutych. Many of the portraits capture them standing proudly but solemnly before an image of the destroyed reactor and beneath a clock stopped at the exact time of the meltdown—the moment that defined their lives forever. https://www.wired.com/story/chernobyl-liquidators-photo-gallery/
A denied claims specialist will be meeting later this month with former atomic workers in eastern Idaho whose claims for compensation for possible work-related illnesses were denied.
Former atomic workers nationwide, such as former Idaho National Laboratory employees, employees of other national labs and uranium miners, who have developed serious illnesses due to radiation and toxin exposure are eligible for care under the federal Energy Employee Occupational Illness Program Act. Angela Hays Carey, who works for Nuclear Care Partners, specializes in such claims.
“I see many people who were denied their EEOICPA benefits simply because they are missing paperwork,” Carey said in a statement. “They give up on the filing process because they don’t know what they need to get to the next step in the filing process and get their claim approved. That’s why we’re having this event, to review workers’ claims and help them through the approval process.”
Carey will be available to review denial papers and answer questions, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and by appointment:
• Sept. 24 at the Nuclear Care Partners office, 354 West Sunnyside Road, Idaho Falls
• Sept. 25 at Golden West Cafe, 2431 Highway 20, Arco
• Sept. 26 at the Blackfoot Library, 129 North Broadway, St., Blackfoot
• Sept. 27 at Bru House Galilei, 502 North Main St., Pocatello
To make an appointment, call 208-715-3025. If someone is unable to attend they can request a free information kit. People who have been denied benefit should bring their denial paperwork with them.
Reporter Nathan Brown can be reached at 208-542-6757. Follow him on Twitter: @NateBrownNews.
Penarth Times 6th Sept 2018 , THE dumping of mud from a nuclear plant site off the coast of Penarth is
due to start today. Around 300,000 tonnes will be dredged from the seabed
near the Hinkley Point C site and will be moved to Cardiff Grounds, not far
from Penarth.
Although the grounds are a licensed disposal site for
sediment, the plan has been met with anger and thousands of people have
protested against it. Around 7,000 people signed a petition sent in to the
National Assembly and now anti-nuclear power activists say they are
prepared to go to court to get an injunction. http://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/16693340.mud-dumping-to-begin-today/
Liberation 5th sept 2018 Austria continues its legal crusade against nuclear power in Europe. The
government has decided to appeal against an ECJ ruling authorizing public
subsidies to the British Hinkley Point EPR. “Just back from her maternity
leave, the Minister of Sustainable Development, Elisabeth Köstinger,
declares war again at the Atomic Lobby.”
The Kronen Zeitung , the country’s
leading newspaper, set foot on the plate announcing Tuesday, that the
Austrian government would appeal, before the Court of Justice of the
European Union (CJEU), a judgment that authorized public subsidies from the
British government for the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. The Austrian
Council of Ministers will decide this Wednesday to appeal, with the support
of Luxembourg.
Austria does not want to abandon the legal battle against
nuclear energy in Europe, which it is conducting on several fronts. Last
March, Vienna also filed another complaint, this time concerning the Paks
reactors in neighboring Hungary. On the left, right and even far right, no
Austrian political party defends atomic energy. Antinuclearism is indeed
the subject of a broad consensus in the country. Since 1978, this type of
energy is de facto prohibited. That year, a referendum prevented the
commissioning of the Zwentendorf atomic power plant, which would have been
the first in Austria. http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2018/09/05/l-autriche-poursuit-sa-croisade-juridique-contre-le-nucleaire-en-europe_1676553
Fukushima disaster: Japan acknowledges first radiation death from nuclear plant hit by tsunami Japan has acknowledged for the first time that a worker at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami more than seven years ago, has died from radiation exposure.
Key points:
The man had worked at the plant since the earthquake and tsunami in 2011
He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2016, in his 50s
The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry ruled that compensation should be paid to the family
The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry ruled that compensation should be paid to the family of the man in his 50s who died from lung cancer, an official said.
The worker had spent his career working at nuclear plants around Japan and worked at the Fukushima Daiichi plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power at least twice after the March 2011 meltdowns at the station.
He was diagnosed with cancer in February 2016, the official said. ……..
The ministry had previously ruled exposure to radiation caused the illnesses of four workers at Fukushima, the official said.
But this was the first death……
Tokyo Electric is facing a string of legal cases seeking compensation over the disaster.
VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria plans to appeal against a ruling by Europe’s second-highest court which rejected its objections to Britain’s plans for a nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point, the country’s sustainability minister said on Monday.
“Our lawyers have examined this in detail in the past weeks. We believe the chances of an appeal remain intact,” Sustainability Minister Elisabeth Koestinger said in an interview with newspaper Kronen Zeitung.
The ministry said it expects Austria’s cabinet to formally give the go-ahead for an appeal when it meets on Wednesday.
French utility EDF and China General Nuclear Power Corp aim to have the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station on line in 2025 with costs for the project seen at 19.6 billion pounds ($25.3 billion).
The European Commission cleared the project in 2014, saying it did not see any competition issues. But Austria took its objections to the General Court in Luxembourg, which dismissed them in July.
One aspect Vienna objects to is a guaranteed price for electricity from the plant which is higher than market rates. It also opposes state credit guarantees of up to 17 billion pounds being provided for the project.
Austria can appeal to the European Court of Justice but only on matters of law.
Opposition to nuclear power is widespread in Austria, which built a nuclear reactor but never brought it on line.
Voters rejected plans to bring it into operation in a referendum in 1978 and the reactor, at Zwentendorf on the Danube northwest of Vienna, now serves as a training center.
($1 = 0.7757 pounds) Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Jason Neely
Two years before their nuclear ambitions foundered, Santee Cooper’s top executives and lawyers got on the phone to talk about a top-to-bottom study of their $9 billion plant project, one that would later cast serious doubts about its viability.
They hadn’t gotten results yet, but the utility wasn’t expecting a positive review: They had demanded an audit by the engineering and construction giant Bechtel Corp. to show just how far off track the V.C. Summer nuclear plant project had gone. They wanted to use it as leverage to get their partner, South Carolina Electric & Gas, to hire professional help.
But while they waited for the audit’s findings, someone asked a pivotal question, one that would come to define the fallout from the project’s failure:
S&P Global 20th Aug 2018, Delayed reactor returns slash French nuclear availability nearly 9 GW. Available nuclear power generating capacity in France fell sharply by almost 9 GW after EDF delayed the return of multiple nuclear plants, while high temperatures continued to restrict production at its Saint Alban power station, the operator said. This amounted to a total nuclear output loss of around 2.37 TWh, according to S&P Global Platts calculations.
In updates over the weekend and on Monday, EDF announced plans to delay the return of its 1.31-GW Nogent-1 reactor by more than five weeks to September 19, after initially expecting a two-day outage that started on late Thursday night. Also restarting on September 19 is EDF’s 890-MW Dampierre nuclear unit-1, where production stopped on Saturday. The return of Dampierre-3, with the
same generating capacity on the other hand, was delayed by two days after it was taken off the grid on August 6. The 1.31-GW Golfech-2 reactor, which was taken off the grid for planned outage in May, is now expected to restart on Friday, extending the outage by four days. The restart of both 915-MW Cruas-4 and 1.495-GW Civaux-1, which was scheduled for Tuesday, was set to return on Friday and Saturday, respectively, EDF said.
Medium 22nd Aug 2018 , The dumping of radioactive mud would break the law because the project has
had no Environmental Impact Assessment carried out to ensure that the
radioactive mud has been properly assessed as to the risk to the
environment and people’s health!
Without such an assessment it would also
fall foul of Section 4 of the Environment Wales Act 2016 which requires
full consideration of all relevant evidence and gather evidence on
uncertainties, the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 which requires
public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their
decisions, to work better with people, communities and each other and the
Marine Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Amendment) Regulations
2017. https://medium.com/@tomstanger/hinkley-c-a-project-literally-stuck-in-the-mud-an-update-a7891d8803de
· COLUMBIA — Attorneys suing South Carolina Electric & Gas say the power company should have to refund everything it collected for its failed nuclear project over the past year — some $452 million in all.
· In a motion filed Wednesday, lawyers representing SCE&G ratepayers say the utility should have dropped its nuclear financing charges from electric rates as soon as it told construction workers at the V.C. Summer power plant to leave the site.
· They say state law only allows SCE&G to charge people for the nuclear project while it is under construction or if it’s fully built — something the company gave up after it abandoned the $9 billion investment on July 31, 2017.
· The nuclear project was dropped after nine years of work on the power plants. SCE&G’s customers paid more than $1.8 billion to finance the endeavor. The troubled utility company is now facing a wave of legal challenges due to the unfinished reactors —now considered the biggest economic failure in state history.
· The new motion threatens to pile another massive liability onto SCE&G’s books.
· State lawmakers already forced the power company earlier this month to temporarily slash its nuclear charges, a move that reduced its customers’ bills by 15 percent and will cost the company roughly $270 million by the end of this year.
· Those customers will also receive a rebate for the power they purchased between April and July.
Trib Live 9th Aug 2018 The volunteer efforts of a Hyde Park environmental activist and a retired
Washington Township engineer helped about 300 former nuclear workers in the
region collect $60 million from the federal government for cancers likely
caused by their jobs.
A federal entitlement program that was enacted in 2000, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program pays$150,000 tax-free, plus medical benefits, to workers who became ill,
because of their work for the government or contractors for nuclear weapons
and Cold War-related work.
Julian Assange should ensure he’s granted immunity from prosecution before testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee, former CIA officer John Kiriakou told RT, citing previous US attempts to charge those who did testify.
“If Assange is offered immunity by the committee, he then could not be charged with the crime because anything he said before the committee could not be used against him,” Kiriakou stressed, recalling how in 1987 former marine Oliver North was granted congressional immunity in exchange for his testimony on the Iran-Contra affair.
The Department of Justice then filed multiple felony charges against North, and he was arrested. But the Supreme Court later dismissed the charges, citing his immunity. Kiriakou believes the same measure can shield Assange, who has spent the last six years living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearing extradition to the US.
The WikiLeaks founder was earlier requested to give a closed interview to the staff of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee as part of the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election – an accusation Moscow flatly denies.
In October, 2017, WikiLeaks published the cache of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, whose account the US Intelligence Community claims was hacked by ‘Russian operatives.’
Kiriakou reminded viewers that while many view Assange as a journalist and publisher, American lawmakers generally have a much more negative perception of the whistleblower. “On the Senate Intelligence Committee almost nobody believes that,” he said, explaining why the potential trip to the US can be risky for Assange.
Over the years, US politicians and intelligence officers have branded Assange a “traitor” and an “enemy of the state” for publishing classified materials on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as leaking US diplomatic cables. Last year, the then-head of the CIA Mike Pompeo, who now serves as the secretary of state, labeled WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
The animosity harbored towards Assange suggests that the US Senate has “ulterior motives” for summoning him, human rights activist Peter Tatchell believes.
“I believe they want to snare him into somehow admitting or implying that he got information from Russian sources. That seems to be the focus of their attention,” the activist said, adding that the US authorities might use the interview to collect new evidence to prosecute Assange in the future.
Former MI5 officer Annie Machon, meanwhile, argues that it may be “difficult” for Assange to agree to a closed interview with US officials on such a sensitive subject. She believes he “always has got to be very careful about how they approach this, how it might be perceived, and what might be the outcome.” But crucially, the very nature of the hearing goes against the principles of WikiLeaks which Assange has staunchly defended.
“The whole ethos of WikiLeaks is to be open and transparent, and to bring the information out for the public’s good,” she said.
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