Vogtle Opponents Sue Georgia Regulators Over Nuclear Decision, WABE, MOLLY SAMUEL • Opponents of a nuclear power expansion in Georgia are suing over it. Environmental groups claim state regulators didn’t follow their own rules when they decided to let construction at Plant Vogtle continue.
In December, the Georgia Public Service Commission voted unanimouslyto keep work on two new nuclear reactors going, even though they’re five years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
The groups Georgia Interfaith Power and Light and the Partnership for Southern Equity claim the commission rushed the decision and should have gathered more information.
“This was the wrong way to go about making a multi-billion dollar decision,” said Kurt Ebersbach, an attorney at Southern Environmental Law Center, who represents the groups.
Romandie 9th Feb 2018,[Machine Translation] EDF and the director of the Cruas-Meysse nuclear power plant (Ardèche) were sentenced on Friday by the Privas police court to fines of several thousand euros for nuclear waste management problems.
The French energy group has been sentenced to six fines of 1,000 euros and the director of the site to six fines of 500 euros suspended. The network
Outir du Nucléaire, initiator of the lawsuit, criticized EDF and its director for failing to meet several waste management obligations, citing the detection, on November 6, 2015, of nuclear waste in a waste container, conventionals that was about to leave the site. https://www.romandie.com/news/EDF-condamne-pour-sa-gestion-des-dechets-radioactifs-a-la-centrale-de-Cruas-Ardeche/889092.rom
The first in a series of meetings that should lead to the formation of a Council to prepare a criminal lawsuit against the 19 member states of NATO, who bombed Serbia in 1999, was held on Thursday night in Nis. According to the lawyer Srdjan Aleksic each country will be sued separately and invites lawyers and doctors to join them.
“We have been preparing documentation for the writing of the lawsuit for years. Several countries had to pay damages to the soldiers who were hired in Kosovo. I believe that citizens of Serbia, especially those who have cancer, have identical rights. Because of the depleted uranium our health is endangered and the environment is polluted,” says Aleksic.
Uranium caused cancer – probehttp://www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2018/02/07/uranium-caused-cancer-probe_560c540f-b60e-4f90-8ce4-29c0dc42cd6d.html But expert denies saying there was causal link, Redazione ANSA, 7 Feb 18 ANSA) -Rome – The final report of a commission on depleted uranium said Italian soldiers had been exposed to “shocking” levels of it in Italy and on foreign missions, and that it had “helped sow deaths and illnesses”.
However, the doctor whose expert opinion informed the panel’s conclusions denied a link between uranium and cancer. Levels of uranium in the sectors of security and workplace health for soldiers had been toxic and deadly, said the report from the parliamentary commission of inquiry. The report highlighted that military chiefs had been in “denial” on the phenomenon, and also stressed the “deafening silences maintained by government authorities.” Experts heard by the panel had verified the links between exposure to depleted uranium and tumours, the report said.
Commission Chair Gian Piero Scanu of the Democratic Party said “repeated judicial sentences have consistently affirmed the existence of a causal link between exposure to depleted uranium and the pathologies cited by the soldiers: this is a milestone and now those who were exposed will have the possibility of getting justice without having to struggle as they have done so far”.
But the Italian doctor whose expert testimony was cited by the commission as evidence that depleted uranium caused cancer in soldiers denied “ever saying that”. “That is absolutely not my thinking, I never said that depleted uranium is responsible for the tumours found in the soldiers,” said Giorgio Trenta of the Italian association for medical radioprotection. Trenta’s report was cited by the panel as proof of the causal link between depleted uranium and cancer.
The relatives of soldiers who died of uranium-linked cancer have been suing the government for years and pursuing cases in the courts, amid denials from military authorities. In 2016 a Rome appeals court upheld a guilty verdict for the defence ministry in the 1999 death from leukemia due to depleted uranium exposure of 23-year-old Corporal Salvatore Vacca who handled uranium-tipped munitions during a 150-day mission in Bosnia in 1998-99.
The court found the ministry guilty of not having protected Vacca.
It ordered the ministry to pay more than one and a half million euros in compensation to Vacca’s family.
The families of other victims are suing the ministry for deaths allegedly due to depleted uranium exposure on several Italian missions.
Domenico Leggiero of the Military Observatory group said the sentence was “historic, because it confirms that the ministry was aware of the danger the soldiers sent to those zones were subject to”.
He said “I am sure Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti will bear this ruling in mind when she appears before the parliamentary depleted uranium commission”.
Italian authorities consistently played down the uranium risks
Julian Assange ‘has suffered enough’, his lawyers tell British judge, SMH, Nick Miller, 7 Feb 18, London: Julian Assange has suffered enough and shouldn’t face prison for absconding from justice, his lawyers have told a court.
The Wikileaks editor is depressed, in constant pain from an infected tooth, and has been stuck in the Ecuador Embassy in London’s Kensington far longer than the maximum 12-month jail penalty for breaching bail, his barrister said.
On Tuesday Assange lost a legal bid at Westminster Magistrates Court to quash the arrest warrant that has awaited him since he entered the Ecuador embassy in June 2012.
However his lawyers immediately launched a new push to end the UK government’s attempt to bring him to justice – arguing that it is against the public interest to punish him for refusing to leave the embassy.
It is a criminal offence for someone on bail to refuse to surrender to police without “reasonable cause” – and Assange refused to leave the embassy despite a court order for his arrest.
But Assange’s barrister Mark Summers QC told Judge Emma Arbuthnot that it was not in the interests of “justice and proportionality” to bring an action against Assange.
Assange went into the embassy after he exhausted his line of appeal against a decision to extradite him to Sweden to face rape allegations. Sweden last year ended its investigation into the allegations, and the European arrest warrant against Assange was cancelled. However the British warrant for his arrest still stood – and judge Arbuthnot said she was not persuaded it should be quashed simply because the underlying investigation had stopped.
Mr Summers said Assange was not “thumbing his nose” at justice and his five and a half years in the embassy were “adequate if not severe punishment for the actions that he took”.
Assange had genuine fears – later proved correct – that the US were keen to prosecute him over his work with Wikileaks, Summers said.
If arrested he would face rendition to the USA, treatment similar to that meted out against Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning – and possible “persecution, indefinite solitary confinement and the death penalty”, Summers said in a written submission……….
Judge Arbuthnot said it was a “very interesting” case.
She will rule on the public interest application on February 13.
Outside court, Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson said whether or not the warrant is quashed Assange would not leave the embassy until he had an assurance he wouldn’t be extradited to the US.
“Mr Assange remains willing to answer to British justice in relation to any argument about breaching bail, but not at the expense of facing injustice in America,” she said.
We aren’t lawyers, but extortion sounds like a serious charge. NextEra Energy, parent of Florida Power and Light and owner of several nuclear power stations around the country recently launched a lawsuit against the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry’s trade group.
NextEra, which is also a major player in the renewable energy business, withdrew from NEI after that group backed the Trump Energy Department’s ill-fated proposed rulemaking. This measure was designed to prop up less-than-economically-viable nuclear and coal-fired power generating stations disguised as a reliability booster for the nation’s power network. However, the proposed rule did not even pass muster with the President’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Nevertheless NextEra was not happy about the NEI’s stance, accusing the organization of trying to instill a false panic about reliability.
Disputes within trade organizations are not unusual, although the organization usually manages to keep them in house. Outright member withdrawals though occur less frequently. There are real downsides to withdrawing from a trade group like NEI.
NextEra as a major nuclear plant operator depends on a data base maintained by the NEI on existing and prospective nuclear workers. Like many nuclear facilities operators, NextEra hires outsider contractors and consultants to aid in refueling its nuclear power stations. And it cannot do so without a thorough personnel evaluation–which NEI’s data base conveniently provides.
According to the lawsuit, NEI denied NextEra access to its nuclear personnel data base without an $860,000 payment. NextEra claimed this was like being forced to pay for membership yet again. That’s where the charge of extortion comes in.
Let’s assume the name calling is the work of over-excited corporate litigators. It’s in both parties interest to allow NextEra access to the data they need to hire qualified workers. But there’s another, bigger issue here.
What does this say about nuclear policy issues and splits within the industry? Do we have two warring industry groups: regulated nuclear power generators, who are plugging along just fine, economically versus nuclear power generators experiencing difficult conditions in competitive power markets. The latter group look desperate for any lifeline. This is often the fate of high cost producers in a commodities market. (Not to be unsympathetic, but these firms willingly chose to enter competitive wholesale electricity markets. Nobody forced them.)
Under its previous leadership the NEI carefully parsed its arguments and lauded the improvements in nuclear operations for example. Attempting always to look and sound like a voice of industry reason (not always an easy task for an organization in an often controversial industry). And even attempting to paper over intramural differences so to speak.
Jumping into the polar vortex/reliability fracas and taking the easy political “bait” may have affected the credibility of the organization. But it also ends up discrediting the nuclear power endeavor by presenting such a weak or bogus rationale for keeping aging nuclear plants running. The nuclear industry still provides one fifth of our nation’s electricity. It needs to get its act together.
Ian Jails ‘Nuclear Spy’ For Six Years, Radio Free Europe 4 Feb 18 Tehran’s prosecutor says an unnamed person has been sentenced to six years in prison for relaying information about Iran’s nuclear program to a U.S. intelligence agent and a European country.
Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told judiciary news website Mizan that the Iranian court also ordered the confiscation of the money the convict allegedly received for the information.
Dolatabadi said the alleged spy met the U.S. agent nine times and provided him with information about “nuclear affairs and sanctions.”
The convict also provided the information to a European country, the prosecutor added, without providing further details.
In December, Dolatabadi said Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld a death sentence against Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic convicted of providing information to Israel about Iran’s nuclear and defense plans and personnel.
Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, while the United States and other countries claim it has been trying to develop nuclear weapons………
Baquer Namazi, a retired UNICEF official, and his son Siamak are serving 10-year prison sentences.
Contracting within the nuclear sector , World Nuclear News, Elina Teplinsky and Vincent Zabielski 30 Jan 18, “………..Liability for Nuclear Damage……… Geographical Coverage – Nuclear damage can be transboundary and there is no single international nuclear liability regime that covers all jurisdictions. The three international nuclear liability regimes – the Vienna Convention, Paris Convention and Convention of Supplemental Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC) – provide a patchwork of protections by channelling nuclear liability, yet each contains large geographical gaps in coverage. This means that, even though a customer country is party to a nuclear liability convention, a supplier could be sued for transboundary damage in a country that is not a member of that convention. Further, a number of major nuclear markets like China and the Republic of Korea are not party to any nuclear liability regime, maintaining only domestic legislation. Finally, protections can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction even among parties to the same nuclear liability treaty.
Significance of the Gaps– The risks arising out of the gaps in geographic coverage vary greatly. These risks are significantly related to plaintiffs’ economic incentives. Lack of coverage in a country where the vendor has significant access presents a greater risk than a gap in a country where the vendor has none. Further, plaintiffs may have little incentive to sue in countries where no nuclear damage compensation funds have been established. Finally, some jurisdictions (such as the United States) are more likely to allow suit with tenuous connections to the damage than others. For example, the Ninth Circuit allowed U.S. service members’ $1 billion lawsuit for injuries related to the Fukushima disaster to proceed against Tokyo Electric Power Company. ………http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/V-Contracting-within-the-nuclear-sector-30011801.html
Early victory for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater in battle over upstate nuke plant bailout,Thomas C. Zambito, tzambito@lohud.com Jan. 26, 2018 Environmental groups scored an early-round victory in the legal battle over the state’s plan to bail out three upstate nuclear power plants with billions of dollars in subsidies backed by ratepayers….
A state Supreme Court judge in Albany on Tuesday turned back the Public Service Commission’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and Goshen Green in Rockland County, among others.
At issue is the commission’s decision to hand over an estimated $7.6 billion in subsidies over 12 years so that three upstate nuclear power plants – R.E. Ginna near Rochester and the James A. FitzPatrick and Nine Mile Point in Oswego County – can continue operating………
Manna Jo Greene, the environmental director of Clearwater, called Acting Judge Roger McDonough’s decision a “David vs. Goliath victory.”
“It doesn’t serve the public interest or even follow the law that New York’s ratepayers are required to pay to keep these nuclear plants open, when they are no longer economically viable without a subsidy,” Greene said.
Tribunal rules in favour of man who claims he developed cancer from radiation at work CTVNews.ca Staff , January 26, 2018The labour tribunal in Quebec has ruled in favour of a Trois Rivieres man who says he developed “aggressive” cancer from radiation exposure at work.
As the director of quality control at a sugar refinery previously known as Sucre BBR, Michel Plante used an X-ray machine to ensure the sugar was free of metal. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2014, and underwent surgery. Less than a year later, he was also diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Plante is now taking legal action because he claims his workplace made him sick. His claim is backed by the labour tribunal, which recently ruled that there’s reason to believe the X-ray machine exposed Plante to unsafe amounts of radiation.
After the X-ray machine Plante used at work was sold to a company in Ontario, it was tested and determined to be emitting higher levels of radiation than permitted. Plante’s lawyer, Sophie Mongeon, said the objective of the legal action is “not financial.” “Our objective is purely for the workers,” she told CTV Montreal.
Radiation oncologist Dr. Bernard Fortin, who studied the files related to Plante’s case, said he agrees that the workplace radiation exposure was unsafe.
EU Observer, By ESZTER ZALANAustria decided on Wednesday (24 January) to sue the European Commission for allowing the expansion of Hungary’s controversial Paks nuclear plant, to be built and financed by Russia.
The project is viewed by critics as an example of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, cosying up to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Austrian sustainability minister Elisabeth Koestinger tweeted: “Austria will take action against the use of nuclear power plants at all levels. That is why today we have taken a decision in the council of ministers to sue Paks II at European level”.
“There are enough reasons to sue Paks II. We are optimistic to prevail. To protect our country and our children,” she added in a tweet. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, whose services were responsible for scrutinising the state aid plans for the nuclear plant, told reporters on Wednesday that the EU executive takes Austria’s decision “very seriously”.
“We will of course defend our decision with the arguments that are in the decision,” she added.
Last March the Commission gave its final approval for the project, and that said Hungary’s state aid is not illegal after commitments Budapest had made to limit distortions in competition.
An earlier infringement procedure looking into whether the project was in line with EU procurement rules, as it was initiated without a tender, was closed in 2016 with the ruling that Hungary did not break EU rules.
The project, signed in 2014 in Moscow, would see Russian state-owned company and its international sub-contractors build two new reactors.
The Russian state has also loaned up to €10 billion to Hungary to finance 80 percent of the project.
On track
Austria, Hungary’s neighbour, has no nuclear power plants. Last October, then prime minister Christian Kern said Austria would challenge the Commission’s decision on Paks.
Vienna launched a similar legal action against the Commission in 2015 over its approval of the UK’s state aid support for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project.
“EU assistance is only permissible when it is built on common interest. For us, nuclear energy is neither a sustainable form of energy supply, nor is it an answer to climate change,” a spokesman for Koestinger, a member of right-wing Austrian People’s Party, was quoted by Reuters………
Green MEP Benedek Javor, who has challenged the commission’s decisions and shed light on shady dealings between commissioner Guenther Oettinger and German lobbyist of Russian interests Klaus Mangold with possible links to Paks , argued it is time to rethink the Euratom treaty.
“Is this possible to exempt a major energy generating sector, nuclear energy, from common competition or public procurement law, based on a 60 years old and never really updated regulation, the Euratom treaty? Without giving a clear negative answer to this question, any plans of the Energy Union or the single European energy market might remain a dream,” he said, arguing that the case is not only an Austro-Hungarian dispute.
“It is simply not true, that high amount of state subsidy for a nuclear power plant with 2400 MW of capacity does not distort the market. And it is simply misinterpretation of the Euratom treaty, that the paragraph saying that ‘the development of nuclear energy is a community interest’ means that unprofitable powerplants producing electricity for the market and built from Russian money, with Russian technology and using Russian fuel should be regarded as a community interest and heavily subsidised,” Javor argued………https://euobserver.com/energy/140690
Challenge to N.Y. Nuclear Subsidies Will Go to Trial, Power, 01/25/2018 | Sonal Patel A lawsuit challenging subsidies for New York’s nuclear plants will head to trial after the state’s Supreme Court rejected motions to dismiss it.
The measure deals a small setback for Exelon Corp., whose subsidiaries own the R.E Ginna and Nine Mile Point nuclear plants in upstate New York. Defendants in the lawsuit also include Entergy Corp., which owns Indian Point 2 and 3, and the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC).
Exelon had successfully lobbied the state to approve the Clean Energy Standard in August 2016, a program that requires all six New York investor-owned utilities and other energy suppliers to pay for the intrinsic value of carbon-free emissions from nuclear power plants by purchasing “Zero-Emission Credits” (ZECs) between 2017 and 2029.
The measure has drawn strong opposition. The lawsuit filed by several citizens’ groups—including the Nuclear Information Research Service, Beyond Nuclear, New York Public Interest Research Group, Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy, and Goshen Green Farms—charges that PSC failed to follow the law by giving up more than $7.6 billion in ratepayer funds over 12 years to the companies’ financially ailing nuclear plants.
Specifically, the groups argued that the PSC failed to follow requirements in the State Administrative Procedure Act, and that the PSC’s actions were arbitrary and capricious—both by misapplying the social cost of carbon metric as a legal basis to include nuclear reactors in the Clean Energy Standard, and by declaring the reactors “publicly necessary.” Other stated causes of action allege that the PSC violated pubic service law by setting rates that are “unjust, unreasonable, unjustly discriminatory, and unduly preferential.”
The state and nuclear plant owners sought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that some claims are untimely because they were filed outside of the four-month statute of limitations after the Clean Energy Standard became final and binding. Respondents also argued that petitioners lack sufficient standing to pursue some claims, because alleged economic injuries were outside a defined zone of interests.
On Monday, Judge Roger D. McDonough dismissed claims by 56 of the 61 petitioners on the basis that they were time-barred. However, he denied five of the six objections posed by the respondents, ruling that the lawsuit should be fully heard rather than preempted by the respondents’ objections. “The Court declines to entertain such discussions without the benefit of answers and the full administrative record,” he wrote.
The ruling notes that at least three of the nuclear plants—James A. Fitzpatrick, R.E. Ginna, and Nine Mile Point Unit 1 and Unit 2—have received an estimated $360 million in subsidies over the past nine months. McDonough ruled, however, that while Indian Point was eligible for ZECs amounting to about $2 billion, contentions concerning that plant were not ripe for adjudication as the plant has not yet received them.
MKG 23rd Jan 2018,The Swedish Environmental Court says no to the power industry’s Nuclear
Waste Company SKB’s license application for a final repository for spent
nuclear fuel in Forsmark, Sweden.
This is a huge triumph for safety and environment – and for the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review
(MKG), the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), and critical
scientists who have been presenting risks of the malfunction of the
selected method. Now it is up to the Swedish government to make the final
decision. This is a triumph for us.
From now on, the work on evaluating safer disposal solutions will continue. The decision that will be made
concerns waste that will be hazardous for thousands of years. Several
independent researchers have criticized both the applied method and the
selected site. There is a solid documentation as base for the Environmental
Court’s decision. It is hard to believe the Swedish Government’s
conclusions will be any different from that of the Court’s, says Johan
Swahn, Director at MKG. http://www.mkg.se/en/the-swedish-environmental-court-s-no-to-the-final-repository-for-spent-nuclear-fuel-a-triumph-for-th
Reuters, Shadia Nasralla, VIENNA -23 Jan 18, Austria is planning to sue the European Commission for allowing Hungary to expand its Paks atomic plant, it said on Monday, not viewing nuclear energy as the way to combat climate change or as being in the common European interest.
The country, which shares a border with Hungary, prides itself on supporting environmentally sound energy. It has for decades opposed nuclear power, which triggers huge disagreements about cleanliness, safety, and renewability.
The anti-nuclear position was reiterated in a coalition agreement struck last month between Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party.
“We in the government have agreed that there are sufficient reasons to sue (the Commission),” a spokesman for Austrian Sustainability Minister Elisabeth Koestinger said.
A federal judge in Columbia on Thursday designated lead lawyers and plaintiffs in two types of shareholder lawsuits against SCANA over its bungled V.C. Summer expansion.
The lawsuits charge SCANA and its top officers with misconduct and breaches of fiduciary duty in their handling of the failed $9 billion construction project.
Cayce-based SCANA, the corporate parent of the SCE&G utility, denies any wrongdoing.
The moves, involving nearly 20 lawyers, were the initial steps in moving the lawsuits forward. U.S. District Judge Margaret Seymour also dealt a mild setback to SCANA, rejecting its plea to give one group of shareholders suing the company only three weeks to amend their lawsuits.
“I would like to make sure that whatever is filed (by the plaintiffs) in this court is complete,” said Seymour, granting lawyers for the shareholders 60 days to amend their lawsuits against SCANA and some of its top executives.
The numerous lawsuits against SCANA in both state and federal courts are expected to take months, if not years, to play out.
On Thursday, Seymour:
▪ Designated the New York firms of Bernstein Litowitz and Labaton Sucharow as the lead attorneys in one class of shareholder lawsuits against Cayce-based SCANA. The Motley Rice law firm of Charleston was named local liaison counsel.
The lawsuits allege shareholders suffered huge losses when SCANA’s stock price plummeted — from almost $75 a share to the just more than $42 Thursday — after the nuclear project failed. They also allege SCANA misled shareholders about the project for years, propping up its share price.
If shareholders prevail, SCANA will have to pay monetary damages to numerous shareholders, including pension funds and individuals.
▪ Designated the Weiser law firm of Philadelphia and Bernstein Liebhard of New York as lead counsel in a second group of lawsuits, called “shareholder derivative” actions. S.C. liaison counsel include Bill Hopkins of Pawleys Island and Eric Bland of Columbia.
In the cases, the plaintiffs allege SCANA and its officers exposed the utility to liability by violating federal securities laws – including laws that require them to be open with regulators and the public – by their handling of the nuclear project.
SCANA and its officers artificially drove up the utility’s stock price by issuing false public statements and using a “strategy of deception and misdirection” about the nuclear project’s progress, cost and completion schedule, the lawsuits allege.
The goals of the shareholder derivative lawsuits include forcing top SCANA officers and board members to give back all “profits, benefits and other compensation,” including annual incentive bonuses.
Another group of lawsuits against SCANA is pending in state court. Those suits, mostly brought by ratepayers who claim they were cheated when SCANA hiked their monthly bills for years to pay for the failed project, were not affected by Thursday’s actions.
Seymour — who has 20 years’ experience as a federal judge, and widely is regarded as fair, low key and methodical — is overseeing one of South Carolina’s most complex, high-stakes legal battles in years.
Although many of the almost 20 lawyers in the Columbia courtroom Thursday came from Atlanta, New York and Philadelphia, S.C. lawyers also were present.
South Carolinians I.S. Leevy Johnson, Stephen Pugh and George Johnson are representing SCANA. The attorneys for the various plaintiffs suing SCANA included South Carolinians Bland, Hopkins and Marlon Kimpson, a Democratic state senator from Charleston.
nuclear-news 