Reuters 14th Nov 2017,Pohjolan Voima Oy (PVO), the largest shareholder in Finland’s
long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor, could make additional
compensation claims against suppliers Areva and Siemens following a recent
setback, PVO said on Tuesday.
The start of regular power production at
Olkiluoto 3 – Finland’s largest reactor – was last month postponed by
another five months to May 2019. “It (further compensation) has been
briefly discussed (within PVO). I don’t want to enter further this topic
as it is an issue for (reactor operator) Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) to
decide,” PVO CEO Lauri Virkkunen, told Reuters.
The owners and supplier are locked in a dispute over the plant’s delays at the International
Chamber of Commerce, where TVO is claiming 2.6 billion euros ($3.06
billion) from the Areva-led consortium, which has filed a counter-claim of
3.6 billion euros….
Abide by nuclear procurement ruling or we go to court, state told https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2017-11-10-abide-by-nuclear-procurement-ruling-or-we-go-to-court-state-told/ Failure by Energy Minister David Mahlobo, Eskom and Nersa to halt any tender process for nuclear energy will end in court 10 NOVEMBER 2017 LINDA ENSOR The government, Eskom and the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) have been urged to abide by the judgment of the High Court in Cape Town and immediately halt any tender process for nuclear energy.
The call comes from the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute and Earthlife Africa.
Failure by Energy Minister David Mahlobo, Eskom and Nersa to give an undertaking by Monday that they will halt the process could result in an urgent application being brought to the high court to ensure that its judgment is respected and that the government acts “openly and transparently” with regard to nuclear procurement.
The two organisations have sent lawyers’ letters to Mahlobo, Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, Eskom and Nersa recalling the April judgment, which ruled that any decision made about new electricity generation must be made in conjunction with Nersa through a lawful and procedurally fair determination under section 34 of the Electricity Regulation Act.
The determination would have to specify why new
nuclear energy electricity generation was needed so urgently and what percentage of SA’s energy mix it would fulfil.
Earthlife Africa’s Johannesburg co-ordinator, Makoma Lekalakala, noted that the judgment emphasised the need for public participation as part of the determination processes.
The letters follow news reports that Mahlobo is fast-tracking finalisation of the Integrated Resource Plan by four months so he can expedite nuclear procurement. The plan will determine the energy mix the country will require in future, what proportion of this will be provided by nuclear and when the construction of new nuclear plants should begin.
Eskom has signalled its intention to begin the tender process immediately if the Integrated Resource Plan showed the nuclear programme could go ahead.
Liz McDaid of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute said the fast-tracking of the plan was being undertaken despite Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba having stated that the country did not need nor could it afford new nuclear plants.
The many serious allegations of state capture and irregular procurement processes by senior Eskom officials could not be ignored, McDaid added.
Stanford professor sues critics of his 100% renewables article, Washington Post, By Chris MooneyNovember 1 2017, Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University professor who has prominently contended that the United States can fully power itself with wind, water and solar energy, is suing the National Academy of Sciences and the lead author of a study published in its flagship journal that criticized Jacobson’s views — pushing an already bitter academic dispute into a courtroom setting.
The suit, which asks for more than $10 million in damages and retraction of the study, charges that lead author Christopher Clack “knew and was informed prior to publication that many of the statements in the [paper] were false.” It adds that the NAS “knowingly and intentionally published false statements of fact” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences despite being aware of Jacobson’s complaints.
Jacobson declined to comment on Wednesday, and William Kearney, a spokesman for the academy, said it does not comment on pending litigation……..
Clack’s study had 21 authors, but Jacobson’s lawsuit only names him and the academy. The other authors include a number of high-profile academic names in energy and climate change research and policy — a list that Jacobson charges magnified the impact of the article in the media and thus the damage to his reputation.
“We stand behind the paper, and we think this is a scientific issue that needs to be debated by scientists and not in the courts,” said one co-author, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing litigation.
The suit was filed in late September in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
The dispute turns on Jacobson’s idea, itself published in the PNAS and other journals, that it is feasible to construct a grid for the entire country that would be powered entirely by wind, solar and water energy (hydropower), with additional help from forms of energy storage. “No natural gas, biofuels, nuclear power, or stationary batteries are needed,” Jacobson and his colleagues wrote in 2015.
This idea of “100 percent clean energy” has been embraced by many environmental and climate change advocates, including actor Mark Ruffalo and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). And no wonder, for it presents a highly ambitious and optimistic outlook on how the current transition toward clean energy — which would be central to stopping climate change — could continue to develop.
But Clack argued in PNAS earlier this year that Jacobson’s idea was not only infeasible but also that his work used “invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions.” He and his co-authors said the transition toward cleaner energy will require “a broad portfolio of energy options,” which presumably includes nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and more.
That’s where the legal dispute begins, since Jacobson charges that after seeing that study prior to publication, he sent a list of its purported errors to the NAS. These were not corrected in the final published version, his lawsuit says. …..
One of his greatest objections is over the claim that his work contained “modeling errors,” which turns on a technical dispute over how much U.S. electricity could be provided by hydropower and how much the current system of dams can be altered to increase their electricity-generating capacity.
This claim is “particularly harmful and damaging to Dr. Jacobson’s reputation because his primary expertise is in computer modeling,” the suit asserts……
Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE) 25th Oct 2017 Over the coming months, in remembering this epic and historic case in theLondon High Court when West Cumbrian families sued Sellafield over cancersin children of radiation workers, CORE will be publishing the 1992/93 daily court transcripts.
The initial two test cases were brought by Leigh Day & Co. The first by Elizabeth Reay whose 10-month-old baby, Dorothy, died ofleukaemia in 1962. George Reay, the baby’s father, died of cancer in the mid- 1980s and had received one of the highest radiation doses of any of the Sellafield workers.
The second by Vivien Hope, 28, who had been diagnosed in 1988 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, another blood cancer. Her father, David, was a fitter at the plant for more than 20 years.
Iran sentences ‘Mossad agent’ to death over nuclear scientist killings, SMH, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin , 25 Oct 17, London: Iran has sentenced to death a person found guilty of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists, Tehran’s prosecutor has said.
Dolatabadi did not identify the defendant on Tuesday, but Amnesty International said Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian doctor who studied and taught in Sweden, had been sentenced to death in Iran on espionage charges.
At least four scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said was a program of assassinations aimed at sabotaging its nuclear energy program. Iran hanged one man in 2012 over the killings, saying he had links to Israel.
On the latest conviction, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told the judiciary’s news agency: “The person had several meetings with [Israeli intelligence agency] Mossad and provided them with sensitive information about Iran’s military and nuclear sites in return for money and residency in Sweden”…….
Djalali, a doctor and lecturer at Stockholm medical university the Karolinska Institute, was arrested in April 2016 and held without access to a lawyer for seven months, three of which were in solitary confinement, according to London-based Amnesty.
Subsidizing coal and nuclear power plants would not be legal, says PJM, By John Funk, The Plain Dealer, CLEVELAND, Ohio— The independent company that manages competitive wholesale power markets in Ohio and 12 other states believes a federal proposal to subsidize the owners of old nuclear and coal plants is unworkable and would not even be legal.
The U.S. Department of Energy proposal “is simply unworkable,” said Andrew Ott, CEO of PJM Interconnection, in a press conference today. “We believe it is contrary to law.”
PJM intends to file formal comments later today with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regarding the proposal from the DOE.
The DOE in September, following intense lobbying from the coal industry and from FirstEnergy and other traditional utilities, proposed that FERC require PJM and other grid managers to credit the owners of the big coal and nuclear plants for providing “resiliency” to the grid because they store fuel on-site and run 24 hours a day. They also generate power at higher prices than new gas turbine plants.
In other words, the DOE wants PJM’s fiercely competitive markets to accept higher priced power from old coal and nuclear plants at whatever it cost to generate — plus a profit — the way the old plants did business before de-regulation……..
PJM’s announcement that it will oppose a direct handout to old coal and nuclear because it would distort competitive markets came just three days after the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio announced it would argue against the proposal, primarily because it could raise customer electric rates.
PUCO Chairman Asim Haque said the DOE had not done a cost analysis of the impact the plan would have on power prices before ordering the FERC to weave it into competitive market pricing. The PUCO was to file its formal arguments later today…….
The formal comments of PJM and PUCO will reach the FERC on the heels of comments from the independent developers building gas turbine plants.
Threat of court action if Govt steps out of line with nuclear plans, fin 24, Oct 22 2017 Cape Town – Should the details of any progress on trying to push through a costly and deemed unnecessary nuclear build programme not be open to the public, the DA will not hesitate to go to court to interdict it.
DA MP Gordon Mackay said in a statement on Sunday that allegations in the media regarding a high-level Russian delegation which met with President Jacob Zuma shortly before the second Cabinet reshuffle earlier this week are “startling to say the least”.
The reshuffle saw David Mahlobo appointed as new energy minister, raising concerns that this step was ostensibly to push through the nuclear deal in favour of the Russians.
Zuma reshuffled his Cabinet allegedly just hours after a meeting with a group of Russian officials in efforts to implement a R1tn new nuclear build project deal, reported the Sunday Times.
Mackay pointed out that the previous minister of energy, Mmamoloko Kubayi, committed on record to abide by the Western Cape High Court’s nuclear ruling in April this year. He added that Mahlobo is bound by the court judgment as well and any deviation will be illegal.
In order for the nuclear deal to be approved, five key pieces of legislation or regulations would need to be updated and amended by Parliament, according to Mackay.
These include the Integrated Resource Plan; the electricity pricing path; procurement regulations; the framework agreements; and changes to the energy act to allow for a different funding/ownership model.
“In addition, the court ruling made clear the need for a substantial public participation process,” emphasised Mackay.
“The fact is that we cannot afford nor do we need the nuclear deal. In any event, it is doubtful that we need nuclear in the energy mix bearing in mind that by the time reactors come online, green energy will be able to fill the gap sufficiently.”
It hopes its case will make the Perry proposal dead on arrival once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moves through the comment period and rules on the plan. But even the public comment period is not legally necessary, according to the law school’s Harvard Environmental Policy Initiative.
“The commission has no legal obligation to accommodate” Perry’s notice of proposed rule-making, the law school’s environmental policy arm said in a five-page legal analysis filed with FERC Thursday. “Its simplest path forward is to reject the [proposal] because it is fundamentally inadequate to provide the basis for a final rule.”
Harvard’s analysis was sent ahead of the Oct. 23 deadline for submitting public comments on the proposed rule that would implement the Perry grid plan. The plan has attracted a growing number of detractors from nearly all segments of the energy industry, conservative and liberal think tanks, former FERC chairmen and members of Congress.
Perry’s proposal seeks to provide market-based incentives for coal and nuclear power plants that are able to store 90 days of fuel onsite in the event of a severe supply disruption from a hurricane or other severe weather.
The core of Harvard’s legal case stems from Perry’s lack of basis for taking the action under the Federal Power Act, the law from which the commission derives its authority over the power grid.
“Critically, the [rule-making] does not propose that wholesale rates are currently unjust and unreasonable or unduly discriminatory,” Harvard’s comments read. “This glaring omission dooms DOE’s proposal under section 206 of the Federal Power Act and allows the commission to issue a swift rejection without weighing in on the merits.”
FERC must justify any regulation that provides cost recovery or incentives for fuel resources on the Federal Power Act’s primary charge that the commission must protect energy prices from becoming burdensome on the consumer. Harvard argues that the Energy Department does not address this central tenant of FERC’s authority in proposing the regulation and therefore the commission can reject it at any time.
The legal analysis refutes the Energy Department’s argument that “wholesale markets do not price ‘resiliency'” and therefore FERC must take action. Perry’s resilience argument “does not substitute for an explicit proposed finding that current rates are unjust and unreasonable,” according to the analysis.
On top of the legal flaws, the Energy Department “does not define ‘resiliency,’ nor has the commission ever used that word in connection with wholesale rates,” the Harvard analysis said. So, there is no common definition to debate or discuss. Harvard goes even further by saying the proposal should not be considered adequate for public comment.
“DOE’s bare assertion that rates do not account for undefined attributes does not provide adequate notice necessary for meaningful public comments,” according to the analysis.
The analysis could provide a legal argument for challenging the Perry plan in court, although groups haven’t reached that stage. Typically, lawsuits come after a regulation is finalized. Perry wants FERC to finalize the rule within 60 days of the proposal appearing in the Federal Register, which points to December.
A group of eight former FERC chairmen and commissioners also filed commentsThursday, calling the proposal “a significant step backward from the commission’s long and bipartisan evolution to transparent, open, competitive wholesale markets.”
“Pursuing the worthy goal of a resilient power system, the commission’s adoption of the published proposal would instead disrupt decades of substantial investment made in the modern electric power system, raise costs for customers, and do so in a manner directly counter to the commission’s long experience,” the former FERC officials stated.
Client Earth 17th Oct 2017,The construction of nuclear power plants in a transboundary context require the government of the country of origin to ensure participation of the public concerned in its own territory as well as that of the neighbouring countries affected.Analysis by Linli-Sophie Pan-Van de Meulebroeke.
In the context of a bilateral cooperation agreement with Germany regarding the
construction of a nuclear power plant in Temelín, the Czech Republic was
alleged to be in non-compliance with Articles 3(9), 6 and 9 of the Aarhus
Convention.
The nation’s top stock market regulator is investigating SCANA Corp.’s failed nuclear construction project, piling onto the growing stack of legal challenges and criminal probes now dogging South Carolina’s largest company.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the stock market, has asked SCANA for documents tied to its effort to expand the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station north of Columbia. The company disclosed the investigation to its investors Tuesday.
Cayce-based SCANA, which owns South Carolina Electric & Gas, said the SEC’s subpoena was connected to “an investigation they are conducting relating to the new nuclear project.” The SEC declined to comment on the probe or its focus.
The state-owned power company Santee Cooper, meantime, hasn’t received a subpoena from the SEC, spokeswoman Mollie Gore said. Santee Cooper owned a minority stake in the project, which cost some $9 billion before it was abandoned in July.
The SEC inquiry is one of several investigations into the project, which was once heralded as the beginning of an American nuclear renaissance with a pair of new reactors in Fairfield County.
SCANA and Santee Cooper have already received a subpoena from a federal grand jury in Columbia, and the State Law Enforcement Division has opened a criminal inquiry into potential fraud surrounding the project. The state Legislature has formed two panels looking into what went wrong……..
The plunge has inspired at least three shareholders to sue SCANA, accusing the company and its executives of breaking securities laws by hiding the project’s problems from investors. The allegations have focused in part on the so-called Bechtel report, a highly critical audit that questioned the reactors’ viability in 2016.
And while legal challenges have piled up for SCANA, the SEC has already been involved on the edges of the V.C. Summer project.
Recent news means we should change our perspective on nuclear weapons Independent UK , Robert Forsyth, 8 Oct 17Caroline Lucas spelled out on Saturday 7 October what the PM should now do about nuclear weapons. To which I would add that the PM’s first and immediate action should be to rescind her statement that she is prepared to carry out pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
Such an action, or even the threat of doing so, is in contravention of Nuremberg and Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and a 1996 ruling by the International Court of Justice and therefore places our Trident submarine commanding officers in an impossible position as to whether they should carry out such an order, bearing in mind they are not absolved of responsibility by the military chain of command. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/recent-news-means-we-should-change-our-perspective-on-nuclear-weapons-a7988846.html
5minutes 5th Oct 2017 [Machine Translation] Luxembourg and Austria filed a complaint against thebillions of euros of aid granted to the Hinkley Point C power plant.
OnThursday, the case will be examined before the Court of Justice of the
European Union. After years of negotiations, Britain and the French
electricity giant, EDF, finally signed a contract a year ago for the
construction of the power plant. A Chinese company is also participating in
the billions project.
The project is controversial because of the public
subsidies of billions granted to the project. It is for this reason that
Luxembourg and Austria filed a complaint before the Court of Justice of the
European Union: this form of state aid would undermine the rules of
competitiveness.
Thursday is the first hearing on this issue. The experts
believe that a judgment at first instance is not to wait for two months. As
for the final decision on the question of the subsidy principle for nuclear
power plants, it should be made no later than early 2019. http://5minutes.rtl.lu/monde/europe/1082666.html
New nuclear lawsuit goes after SCANA officials’ bonuses, The State, BY JOHN MONK jmonk@thestate.com, SEPTEMBER 27, 2017 A new lawsuit filed this week in state court by a SCANA stockholder names 12 top SCANA officials and seeks to recover more than $21 million in bonuses top executives got during the 10 years that a now-failed nuclear project was under construction.
This is the first of some half-dozen lawsuits filed against SCANA to date that names individual top SCANA executives and board members as defendants. It seeks to hold them individually responsible for “willfully violating their fiduciary duties,” or failing to act in the best financial interests of the company.
The lawsuit is also the first of the lawsuits filed by a stockholder. The others have been filed by SCANA customers, ratepayers who allege their monthly bills were unlawfully inflated by the company to pay for the bungled nuclear project.
“While driving SCANA to the brink of financial disaster, the Board (of directors) simultaneously rewarded SCANA executives with millions of dollars of bonus compensation, based upon their performance related to the (nuclear) project and other short-term performance metrics …,” the lawsuit alleges.
Three top SCANA officials – CEO Kevin Marsh, executive vice president Jimmy Addison, and executive vice president Steven Byrne – “totally failed to perform their duties owed to the company and its shareholders,” the lawsuit said……….
DEFENDANTS
Defendants in the lawsuit are:
▪ Kevin Marsh, SCANA board chair and CEO since 2011. He also served as president of SCANA’s principal subsidiary, SCE&G, from 2006-11.
▪ Gregory Afliff, a SCANA director since 2015. Afliff, a Virginia resident, is a certified public accountant.
▪ James Bennett, a SCANA director since 1997. Bennett, a Richland County resident, is chair of the board’s compensation committee, and an area executive for First Citizens Bank & Trust.
▪ John Cecil, SCANA director since 2003, a former president of Biltmore Farms and a North Carolina resident.
▪ Sharon Decker, SCANA director from 2005-13 and from 2015 to the present who serves on the nuclear oversight and compensations committees. A North Carolina resident, she is chief operating officer of Tryon Equestrian Partners.
▪ Maybank Hagood, SCANA director since 1999. A Charleston County resident, he is head of Southern Diversified Distributors.
▪ Lynn Miller, a SCANA director since 1997. A resident of Virginia, she is an environmental consultant.
▪ James Roquemore, a SCANA director since 2007. He is chair of the board’s nuclear oversight committee and sits on the compensation committee. An Orangeburg County resident, he is general manager of a company that produces and markets turf grass and sod.
▪ Maceo Sloan, a SCANA director since 1997. He is a member of the compensation and nuclear oversight committees. A North Carolina resident, he is president of a financial holding company in Durham.
▪ Alfredo Trujillo, a SCANA director since 2013. A member of the nuclear oversight committee, Trujillo is an investment advisor and president of the Georgia Tech Foundation.
▪ Jimmy Addison, SCANA executive vice president and SCE&G president. A Lexington County resident, he is responsible for nuclear financing.
Scana Says S.C. Is Seeking Criminal Probe of Nuclear Project, Bloomberg, By Jim Polson and Mark Chediak, 26 September 2017,
Cost recovery for project ‘constitutionally suspect;’ A.G.
Utility owner intends to cooperate with all government probes
South Carolina’s attorney general called for a criminal probe into Scana Corp.’s handling of the canceled V.C. Summer nuclear expansion project, adding that it may not be entitled to charge customers for the plant.
Attorney General Alan Wilson was joined by state legislators in calling on the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to open a probe, Scana said Tuesday in a filing. Separately, Wilson questioned the state law that allows utilities to recover the costs of unfinished or abandoned power plants. Scana said it will fully cooperate “with any potential government investigation.”…..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-26/scana-says-s-c-is-seeking-criminal-probe-of-nuclear-project
It is the second time a court has ruled against Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. in a suit filed by residents forced to abandon their homes when three reactor cores melted following the deadly 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which knocked out their cooling systems.
The triple meltdown spewed massive amounts of radioactive material into the air.
The Chiba District Court awarded ¥376 million to 42 of the 45 plaintiffs who fled Fukushima Prefecture for Chiba Prefecture and filed the suit in March 2013, seeking around ¥2.8 billion in damages from the government and Tepco.
The focal point of the Chiba case was whether the government and Tepco were able to foresee the huge tsunami that hit the seaside plant on March 11, 2011, and take preventive measures beforehand. Conflicting claims were made by the parties regarding the government’s long-term earthquake assessment, which was made public in 2002.
The assessment, made by the earthquake research promotion unit, predicted a 20 percent chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake occurring along the Japan Trench in the Pacific Ocean, including the area off Fukushima, within 30 years.
Based on the assessment, the plaintiffs argued that, with the plant standing on ground roughly 10 meters above sea level, a tsunami higher than that level striking the plant could have been predicted.
They claimed the disaster was therefore preventable by placing emergency generators on higher ground, and that the government should have made Tepco take such measures by exercising its regulatory powers.
The government and Tepco, for their part, claimed the assessment was not established knowledge, and that even if they had foreseen a tsunami higher than the elevation of the plant and taken measures against it, they cannot be held liable as the actual tsunami was much higher, at around 15.5 meters.
The government also argued that it obtained regulatory powers to force Tepco to take anti-flooding measures only after a legislative change following the disaster.
In Friday’s ruling, the court found the state not liable, saying that while the government indeed has such powers, not exercising them was not too unreasonable.
The Chiba case is among around 30 similar lawsuits brought by groups of people forced to evacuate by the nuclear disaster.
In March, the Maebashi District Court in Gunma recognized negligence on the part of not just Tepco, but also the government, saying they were able to foresee a tsunami high enough to inundate the plant.
At the time, it was the first such ruling issued among around 30 similar suits and the first to rule in favor of plaintiffs.
The Maebashi court acknowledged the state had regulatory authority over Tepco even before 3/11, noting that “failing to exercise it is strikingly irrational and illegal.”
But because the court awarded to 62 of 137 plaintiffs a total of ¥38.55 million in damages — far less than the ¥1.5 billion sought in total — many of the plaintiffs have appealed the district court decision.
In the Chiba suit, the 45 plaintiffs, including four who evacuated voluntarily, sought ¥20 million each in compensation for their evacuations and the loss of their hometowns, jobs and personal relationships because their lives were uprooted.
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, causing multiple meltdowns and hydrogen blasts at the nuclear plant.
As of the end of August 2017, around 55,000 people who lived in Fukushima Prefecture at the time of the disaster remained at the locations where they evacuated, both within and outside the prefecture.
nuclear-news 