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.
Whistleblower helps secure $2 million settlement over contract rigging at Hanford,Thomas Clouse , The Spokesman Review, Sept. 22, 2017 A whistleblower has been paid $470,000 out of a $2 million settlement after successfully challenging what she and government prosecutors say was a shell company at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The subcontractor charged with setting up the shell company, Federal Engineers & Constructors, worked under the huge, three-headed joint venture Washington Closure Hanford (WCH), which between 2005 and 2016 received a multibillion-dollar contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to operate the site. The contract paid for cleanup following decades of plutonium production.
WCH was comprised of engineering powerhouses AECOM, Bechtel National and CH2M Hill, which were required as part of the contract to funnel a percentage of those funds to small, disadvantaged and women-owned businesses.
In 2009, Federal Engineers & Constructors awarded a $2 million contract to Sage Tec. Sage Tec, however, was owned by Laura Shikashio – the wife of former company vice president Larry Burdge. “Ms. Shikashio knowingly misrepresented Sage Tec to be a qualified disadvantaged small business in order to be eligible for” the contract, court records state.
Federal prosecutors wrote that Sage Tec should not have received the contract and instead “was a pass-through front company for FE&C, which performed substantially all of the work on WCH’s improperly awarded subcontracts,” court records state………
A conservative-leaning court just issued a surprise ruling on climate change and coal mining
In a rebuke to Trump, the federal court said greenhouse gas emissions need to be considered in lease approvals. Vox by Umair IrfanLate last week, a federal court knocked down plans to expand coal mining in the Western US, adding to a growing body of rulings against the Trump administration’s efforts to push climate change off the agenda.
The surprising decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which has jurisdiction in Colorado, Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, told the Bureau of Land Management to redo its math on greenhouse gas emissions from coal leases and sent the approval of these leases back to a lower court.
Under the National Environmental Policy Act, federal agencies have to consider how a given proposal both affects climate change and is affected by climate change.
The 10th Circuit is the highest court to rule on climate change accounting so far, and its opinion undercuts President Donald Trump’s efforts to resuscitate the dying US coal industry.
“It’s reaffirming what a lot of people already knew: Government has to take a hard look at what their environmental impacts are,” said Sam Kalen, a law professor at the University of Wyoming. “Cases like this are sending signal that regardless of what the administration wants to do, the law says you have to take a look at these issues.”
In March, President Trump lifted President Barack Obama’s moratorium on coal leasing and stopped a comprehensive review of federal coal policy, with the goal of spurring more coal mining.
At issue are four proposed leases in the Powder River Basin, a 14-million-acre region spanning Wyoming and Montana containing 40 percent of US coal deposits and responsible for 13 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Sierra Club, one of the groups joining the lawsuit against BLM………
This is of particular interest to Australia. The Australian government touts Finland as the great model for acceptance of nuclear waste dump. But in fact, the model adopted by Finland, (by a poorly informed public) was taken from the one refused by Sweden – where a much more informed community used a much more democratic process to study the waste dump issue. See “When haste makes risky waste: Public involvement in radioactive and nuclear waste management in Sweden and Finland” http://bellona.org/…/radioactive-waste…/2016-08-21710
The Environmental Court’s main licensing hearing about a final repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark – September 5 to October 27http://www.mkg.se/en/the-environmental-court-s-main-licensing-hearing-about-a-final-repository-for-spent-nuclear-fuel-in#.WbJtaWAl7II.facebookThe Environmental Court’s main hearing concerning the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company SKB’s license application for a final repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark, Sweden, began September 5, at Quality Hotel Nacka in Stockholm. The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, SSNC, and the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review, MKG, are working together during the main hearing. Follow and get updates during and after the main hearing from the Twitter account of the director of MKG, Johan Swahn, and MKG’s Facebook.
On September 5, the Environmental Court’s main hearing concerning the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company SKB’s license application for a final repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark, Sweden, began at Quality Hotel Nacka in Stockholm. The main hearing will be in progress for five weeks, between September 5 and October 27. The first two weeks take place in Stockholm. Then, there will be a break for two weeks. The third week will take place in Oskarhamn (were the interim storage Clab is located and were the Waste Company wants to build an encapsulation facility, Clink) and the fourth week will take place in Östhammar (nearby the selected site for the final repository). After another break for one week, the main hearing will be concluded in Stockholm.
The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, SSNC, and the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review, MKG, are working together during the main hearing. The organisations will bring their statements, which fundamentally are:
The chosen solution for a final repository will not be safe since there is a large risk of the malfunction of the barrier system of copper and clay – the licence application should be denied or rejected!
There is a large risk that the copper canisters will break down within 1 000 years – a possible scenario is that it might be a contaminated, uninhabitable, forbidden zone in Forsmark!
The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, SSM, is aware of the large problems with the license application, but still wants to give an OK to continue towards a Government decision and afterwards ensure that the copper canister will function as intended – this is unaccepted and legal questionable!
There is an alternative method, the use of very deep boreholes – that might be environmentally safer, entails less risks for human intrusion, and is most likely a less expensive solution for final disposal!
The nature existing on the suggested site in Forsmark is of high value (there is a number of red-listed species and species protected by the Habitats Directive’s appendix 4) – this, in itself, constitutes a reason to reject the license application!
Follow and get updates during and after the main hearing at the director of MKG’s Twitter (@jswahn) and at MKG:s Facebook (mostly written in Swedish but can be translated directly on the website).
Bradly Keck, who was assistant director of health physics at IU Health in Indianapolis, is alleging job discrimination in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana.
He has named IUPUI and the Indiana University Board of Trustees in his filing.
According to his lawsuit, there was a highly radioactive nuclear spill on Jan. 11. Keck blames two female technicians, one a student and the other an employee, for contaminating the lab.
Keck and another co-worker began assisting the co-worker performing cleanup. Keck addressed the contamination of the technicians by scanning them with a meter and found them contaminated with radioactive isotopes.
He ordered them to go to a women’s locker room, remove their clothes and shower individually.
He claims that failure to remove the contamination could have resulted in serious health risks. Each showered between two and four times.
Keck again ran the meter over contaminated areas of their skin. He told them to go back into the shower where he washed their calves to remove any remaining contamination, he says.
He provided them with clean lab scrubs.His lawsuit alleges that the women thanked him as did his supervisor. He alleges that the director of environment health and safety said, “That’s emergency response. You trade a little nudity for safety.”
However, he was suspended pending an investigation. On Jan. 25, he notified the university that he was alleging sex discrimination. He was fired Jan. 31.
Keck is asking that he be reinstated to his job and be paid compensatory damages.
Indiana University has not responded to the lawsuit.
nuclear-news 