Legal win for the Grand Canyon against uranium minng
Judge Upholds Uranium Mining Ban on 1 Million Acres Near Grand Canyon http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2013/uranium-mining-03-20-2013.html GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK— U.S. District Judge David Campbell today denied a uranium industry motion to overturn the Obama administration’s ban on new uranium mining on 1 million acres near the Grand Canyon. The ban was adopted January 2012 to protect the Grand Canyon’s watersheds. The withdrawal prohibits new mining claims and development on old claims that lack “valid existing rights” to mine.
“It’s a great day for the Grand Canyon, and for rivers, wildlife, and communities across the West,” said Ted Zukoski of Earthjustice, one the attorneys representing conservation groups and the Havasupai tribe in the case. “The uranium industry was hoping to cripple the Interior Department’s ability to temporarily protect lands from destructive mining. Today’s opinion upholds the Interior Department’s authority to take such protective measures.” Continue reading
European laws on competition may stall UK’s nuclear power plans
Nuclear power plans threatened by European commission investigation Proposed nuclear reactor in Somerset could be delayed by two years if competition directorate launches full-scale investigation, Juliette Jowit and Ian Traynor The Guardian, 14 March 2013 Britain’s planned nuclear reactor programme could be delayed for years, and the nation’s long-term energy policy thrown into turmoil, as European commission officials launch the first stage of a formal investigation into the use of taxpayer subsidies to support the development.
Sources in Brussels have indicated that Britain hopes to win approval for a multibillion-pound deal with French energy giant EDF at the initial stage, which usually takes two months.
But if after a preliminary investigation the EC’s competition directorate decides to launch a full-scale investigation, that would last at least 18 months and probably two years or more. Such an outcome is made more likely by reports that ministers and EDF are discussing a minimum or “strike” price for the nuclear-generated electricity of a little under £100 per megawatt hour – nearly double the current market rate. Continue reading
Court martial of Bradley Manning, for telling the truth, and being humane
I am the type of person who likes to know how things work. And, as an analyst, this means I always want to figure out the truth
Bradley Manning’s personal statement to court martial: full text 
Guardian UK , Alexa O’Brien 1 March 13“…..The fact neither CENTCOM or Multi National Forces Iraq or MNF-I would not voluntarily release the video troubled me further. It was clear to me that the event happened because the aerial weapons team mistakenly identified Reuters employees as a potential threat and that the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting to assist the wounded. The people in the van were not a threat but merely “good samaritans”. The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have.
The dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as quote “dead bastards” unquote and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers. At one point in the video there is an individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety. The individual is seriously wounded. Instead of calling for medical attention to the location, one of the aerial weapons team crew members verbally asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage. For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass.
While saddened by the aerial weapons team crew’s lack of concern about human life, I was disturbed by the response of the discovery of injured children at the scene. In the video, you can see that the bongo truck driving up to assist the wounded individual. In response the aerial weapons team crew – as soon as the individuals are a threat, they repeatedly request for authorization to fire on the bongo truck and once granted they engage the vehicle at least six times. Continue reading
Full text transcript of Bradley Manning’s statement to court martial
Bradley Manning’s personal statement to court martial: full text Guardian UK , 1 March 13,
In the absence of a full official copy of Manning’s statement, journalists have had to rely on their own note-taking from court Bradley Manning read out a personal statement to the court in Fort Meade, Maryland, at a pre-trial hearing over his prosecution for leaking the largest trove of state secrets in US history. It provides the first account in his own words and under his own name of how he came to download hundreds of thousands of classified documents and videos from secure military databases and transmit them to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The US government has refused to publish contemporaneous transcripts and documents from the Manning court martial, prompting legal complaints from open government groups. In the absence of a full official copy of Manning’s statement, journalists covering the case have had to rely on their own note-taking from the courtroom.
Here the Guardian publishes a transcript compiled by independent journalist Alexa O’Brien, who has been covering the pre-trial hearings. It provides the most comprehensive and accurate account of a highly significant statement. This transcript was compiled by O’Brien from her contemporaneous notes, not from a recording nor from an official document. Inevitably, it may contain errors…..http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-manning-wikileaks-statement-full-text
Legal action by residents of Fukushima, Miyagi, Ibaraki against Japanese govt and TEPCO
NHK: Residents from outside Fukushima to sue gov’t over radioactive contamination — Compensation for health concerns (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/nhk-residents-miyagi-ibaraki-sue-govt-fukushima-contamination-victims-request-compensation-health-concerns-video
Title: Fukushima people to sue govt., TEPCO
Source: NHK
Date: Feb. 8, 2013
h/t Anonymous tip
[…] About 350 residents of Fukushima, Miyagi, Ibaraki and other prefectures will participate in the [class] action against the national government and Tokyo Electric Power Company.
At a news conference on Friday in Fukushima City, their representatives said they will demand that the defendants reduce the radiation levels of the areas where they have homes to those before the nuclear accident in March 2011.
They will also seek some 550 dollars per plaintiff per month in compensation for health concerns and indirect damage to their businesses. […]
NHK: “Some evacuees are so fed up they’re taking legal action…”
Lawyer: “This case has huge significance because we’re trying to show that blame not only lies with Tepco, but also with the government.”
Fukushima survivors to file class action lawsuit against Japanese govt, plant operator
A TEPCO spokesman admitted that the utility gave inaccurate information to the parliamentary commission but claims it did not intentionally lie about conditions within the structure.
In July a parliamentary report said Fukushima was a man-made disaster stemming from Japan’s culture of “reflexive obedience.”
Published: 08 February, 2013, 20:10
Edited: 09 February, 2013, 02:51
RT
At least 350 people affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown will file a class action lawsuit against the Japanese government and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) on the second anniversary of the disaster.
This handout picture, taken by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) on March 18, 2011 and released on February 1, 2013 shows water discharged against unit 3 reactor building at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture. (AFP Photo/TEPCO)
Lawyers representing residents whose homes and farms were hit by radiation in the wake of the disaster said it was the largest suit on the issue filed against the government.
The plaintiffs will further seek some US$535 each in compensation from TEPCO for every month they have been displaced as a result of the accident.
They also plan to seek a court injunction that will require both the government and TEPCO to reduce radiation levels in the affected area to pre-disaster levels.
The suit will be filed on March 11, the two-year anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Several other similar class-action suits against both the government and TEPCO will be filed with the Tokyo District Court on the same day.
“The government promoted nuclear power as a national policy and has been closely involved with it,” lawyer Izutaro Managi told AAP news agency.
“Being fully aware of the danger of losing power due to a tsunami, the government neglected its duty to prevent such an event,” he said. “This is a suit to recover a Fukushima with neither radiation nor nuclear power,” he continued.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster occurred after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami crashed into the power station and knocked out its cooling system leading to the meltdown of three reactor cores. Tens of thousands were forced to flee the area and many are still unable to return.
TEPCO ‘lies’ to government
With residents preparing to sue the government and TEPCO for their role in the worst nuclear disaster in a generation, on Thursday the power company found itself in hot water for allegedly misleading a government panel over possible quake damage to its reactor building.
TEPCO said that radiation levels were “dreadfully high” in order to prevent an onsite inspection of its crippled nuclear plant, according to Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former member of the now-disbanded Diet commission, which had been tasked with uncovering the cause of the nuclear crisis.
The commission had hoped to determine to see if the isolation condensers – key safety components at nuclear plants – had been damaged in the earthquake.
The National Diet is Japan’s bicameral legislature. It consists of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councilors.
TEPCO had denied they were damaged in the quake and falsified actual conditions within the plant to keep inspectors out, Tanaka said in a statement submitted to the chiefs of the two Diet chambers on Thursday.
Toshimitsu Tamai, then chief of TEPCO’s corporate planning department, urged Tanaka not to carry out the probe in light of major safety concerns, saying “If you got lost, you would run into areas with dreadfully high levels of radiation,” The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports.
“Zombie” uranium mines can keep operating near Grand Canyon
conservation groups that had challenged the decision to reopen Arizona
1 said the court’s ruling sets a precedent that will let “zombie
mines” operate under old regulations and ignore years of new
environmental science.
“They are basically zombie mines that will live perpetually without
ever being subject to new environmental reviews,”
Appeals court upholds reopening of uranium mine near Grand Canyon By
Mary Shinn, Cronkite News Service February 5, 2013
WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court Monday upheld the government’s
decision to let a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park
continue to operate under environmental standards now decades old. Continue reading
Federal court rules against Cameco getting money from uranium spill ship
No money for Cameco after sale of ship that had uranium spill By Kevin O’Connor CBC News Feb 7, 2013 Saskatchewan mining company Cameco will not get any money from the sale of a ship that once had a uranium spill at sea — and that it spent millions cleaning up.
Instead, according to a recent Federal Court decision, a German bank that held a mortgage on the shipping vessel MCP Altona will get most of the $4.6 million raised when it was sold.
The case stems from an incident at sea two years ago….. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/02/07/sk-radioactive-spill-on-boat-case-1302.html
$35 million awarded to Sacramento utility over nuclear waste
Sacramento utility gets $35M in nuclear waste case, SF Gate, February 1, 2013 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal court has awarded nearly $35 million to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District because of the federal government’s failure to build a permanent home to store nuclear waste.
The utility filed had filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, seeking to recover $80 million in payments it was required to make from 1992 to 2009 to eventually house nuclear waste from the closed Rancho Seco plant near Sacramento.
Since Rancho Seco closed in 1989, the utility has been storing the spent fuel because Congress never opened its planned facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain….. similar lawsuits have been filed across the country…….
Court puts Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the spot, about public participation
“Now the burden isn’t on the public to show why they need to be part of the exemption process,’’
“The burden is on the N.R.C. to show why they shouldn’t be.
Court Seeks More Public Input on Nuclear Safety, NYT, By MATTHEW L. WALD, 9 Jan 13 A federal appeals court has ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must either allow more public participation in its decisions about fire safety at the Indian Point 3 nuclear reactor or to show why such input is impractical or inappropriate.
A lawsuit brought by Richard L. Brodsky a former New York State assemblyman and opponent of Indian Point, involves exemptions granted by the commission from compliance with some fire regulations. Like many reactors around the country, Indian Point installed a fire retardant called Hemyc around critical electric cables in the 1980s to meet a rule that the cables had to be safe from fire for one hour. But the material turned out to be nowhere near as fire-resistant as advertised. Continue reading
Federal Appeals judge sides with NRC against environment groups
AUDIO Anti-Nuclear Groups Won’t Have Role In Seabrook Re-Licensing
http://www.nhpr.org/post/anti-nuclear-groups-wont-have-role-seabrook-re-licensing
By ROGER WOOD, 8 Jan 13
Anti-Nuclear groups are disappointed by a recent Federal Court
decision regarding their role in the Seabrook Nuclear Plant
re-licensing process. On Friday, the Federal Appeals Court in Boston
rejected the petition from three anti-nuclear groups to re-instate
their intervenor status in the plant’s re-licensing application. The
petition sought to overturn a Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruling
excluding them from public hearings on the issue. A Three judge panel
decided that the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing board erred in
granting opponents of the plant intervenor status. Doug Bogen, of the
Seacoast Anti-Pollution League says that the groups sought to make the
point that wind power could replace nuclear energy.
“It seemed pretty clear that the judges were taking the side of the
industry and the NRC. At least, they didn’t seem inclined to go
against their decision.”
NextEra Energy seeks a 20 year extension of its current license, which
expires in 2030. Bogen says he now believes that the Seabrook Plant
will ultimately receive its operating extension.
Judge rules that Bradley Manning was illegally treated
Military judge rules Bradley Manning was illegally treated, awards 112
days credit By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. January
8, 2013. After more than two weeks of intense litigation by
Bradley Manning’s defense, and hearing how Quantico brig staff
blatantly disregarded Navy Rules, military Judge Denise Lind has
confirmed that Bradley was punished unlawfully before trial by
awarding 112 days credit. Instead of awarding 10-for-1 credit (or
dismissing the charges altogether), which would severely reprimand the
military and significantly impact Bradley’s potential sentence, Judge
Lind gave 1-to-1 credit for selected portions of his Quantico
confinement.
Judge Lind has granted credit for the 7 days Bradley was kept on
suicide risk watch against Navy Rules, 75 days from November 1 to
January 18 when he was kept needlessly on Prevention of Injury watch,
and 20 days from April 1-20 when he was forced to remove his underwear
at night. Lind said Bradley’s confinement was “more rigorous than
necessary,” and that it “became excessive in relation to legitimate
government interests.”……
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/military-judge-rules-bradley-manning-was-illegally-treated-awards-112-days-credit
Navy men’s lawsuit against Japan alleges cover-up of radiation harm
Navy rescue workers sue Japan over Fukushima cover-up — “Irreparable harm to life expectancy” — Gov’t and Tepco conspired http://enenews.com/navy-rescue-workers-sue-japan-over-fukushima-cover-up-irreparable-harm-to-their-life-expectancy-govt-and-tepco-conspired
Title: U.S. Sailors Sue Japan Over Fukushima
Source: Courthouse News Service
Author: By ELIZABETH WARMERDAM
Date: Dec 26, 2012
[…] Eight crew members of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, whose home port is San Diego, sued the Tokyo Electric Power Co. in Federal Court. […]
Lead plaintiff Lindsay R. Cooper claims Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) intentionally concealed the dangerous levels of radiation in the environment from U.S. Navy rescue crews working off the coast of Japan […]
The complaint states: “Defendant TEPCO and the government of Japan, conspired and acted in concert, among other things, to create an illusory impression that the extent of the radiation that had leaked from the site of the FNPP was at levels that would not pose a threat to the plaintiffs, in order to promote its interests and those of the government of Japan, knowing that the information it disseminated was defective, incomplete and untrue, while omitting to disclose the extraordinary risks posed to the plaintiffs who were carrying out their assigned duties aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan.” […]
And, they say: “Defendants had actual and/or constructive knowledge of the properties of radiation that would ensure that, once released into the environment, radiation would spread further and in concentrations that would cause injury to the plaintiffs.” […]
The sailors say they “face additional and irreparable harm to their life expectancy, which has been shortened and cannot be restored to its prior condition.”
Legal action against Japan by American Navy men over Fukushima radiation
TEPCO, “a wholly owned public benefit subsidiary of the government of Japan,” misrepresented radiation levels after the meltdown in order to lull the US Navy “into a false sense of security.”
US Navy sailors sue Japan for lying about Fukushima radiation http://rt.com/usa/news/sailors-japan-fukushima-radiation-878/ 26 December, 2012, American sailors have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government for allegedly lying about the health risks they faced while assisting in rescue efforts after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Crewmembers from the USS Ronald Reagan filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in San Diego, California this week in an attempt to hold Japan accountable for any long-term damage they’ll caused during “Operation Tomadachi,” the spring 2011 relief effort that sent sailors near the coast of Japan to assist in the days after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami ravaged the island nation and caused a level 7 meltdown at three reactors in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The plaintiffs, eight sailors from the 5,500 or so that were aboard the USS Reagan at the time, say Japan did not act honestly in regards to explaining the severity of the meltdown and the risks they faced in involving themselves in the relief efforts. They are asking the state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for $10 million in compensatory damages, as well as another $30 million in punitive damages for fraud, negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, public and private nuisance and defective design, Courthouse News Service reports.
Additionally, the sailors want TEPCO to set up a $100 million fund to pay for any future medical expenses they’re accrue as a result of the relief effort. Continue reading
Only 5 Polynesians to get compensation for French nuclear tests
Pacific Islands Development Program, East-West Center With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Radio New Zealand International, Dec. 12, 2012) – France has agreed to compensate five French Polynesians for the damage caused to their health by its nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific.
The Nouvelles de Tahiti says this was announced after a meeting of the compensation committee at the defense ministry in Paris.
In July, France had deemed that only four of the 720 applications were eligible for any compensation under a law passed three years ago.
Veterans’ organizations have strongly criticized the law for being far too restrictive, but the new defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, says any change to it is not on the agenda.
Until 2008, France claimed that its nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific were clean and had caused no harm.
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