According to prosecution, 82 year old anti nuclear nun is “violent”, “a danger to community”
Prosecutor Kirby……asserting that their action was a “crime of violence.” Kirby got worked up enough to hiss, “Their description of nonviolence is not right. They are willing to die for what they believe. That’s violence.”
Unarmed Octogenarian Nun Called ‘Danger to Community’ by Prosecutors Nuclear Security Unmasked by JOHN LaFORGE, AUGUST 08, 2012 “……. something our nuclear war mafia hates as much as vampires hate daylight — is that the gravity of the Y-12 shut-down, along with the government’s wish to keep the interveners behind bars, moved prosecutors to up the charges. The three were at first charged only with federal trespass.
On Aug. 3, prosecutors added a felony count — “willful and malicious destruction or injury to a structure, conveyance, personal or real property” or its attempt — which carries a max of 5 years in prison, 3 years’ probation, and/or a $250,000 fine. Continue reading
Kudankulam nuclear power plant – Russians want to avoid liability
India’s Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant – Caveat Emptor Oil Price.com, By John Daly, 07 August 2012 As India’s nationwide power outage last week showed, the country needs new energy resources – fast.
And New Delhi sees nuclear power as a shortcut to alleviating its energy shortages, adding to its six current nuclear power plants (NPPs) containing 20 reactors which generate 4,780 megawatts, an additional seven reactors are expected to generate an additional 5,300 megawatts.
The poster child for this expansion is the $2.5 billion, Kudankulam NPP in Tamil Nadu state, containing six 1,200 megawatt and two 1,000 megawatt reactors.
Despite sustained civil protests during its construction, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) Chairman and Managing Director K.C. Purohit told the media, “Our inspection (of the reactor pressure vessel) is almost complete,” he said from Mumbai. “We will submit our observations and reports to a committee of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and load the fuel based on its decision,” adding that “the day is not far off” for the nuclear fuel rod assemblies to be loaded into the reactor pressure vessel beginning in mid-August. But this sunny picture has recently been somewhat clouded by the increasing skepticism of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is now querying the Department of Atomic Energy about liability and who will pay if there is a mishap at the Kudankulam NPP. It doesn’t help nuclear proponents that Prime Minister Singh is also India’s Minister for Atomic Energy.
Needless to say, everyone involved with the Kudankulam NPP has been furiously backpedaling from the issue of liability….. All of this loose talk about liability has officials at Atomstroieksport, the Russian Federation’s nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, increasingly worried. Its not like business is booming – in 2011 the company’s net losses doubled from their 2010 rate to $469 million. So, hardly surprisingly, Russian Atomstroieksport officials, who also built Iran’s controversial Bushehr NPP, have their fingers crossed that the Indian government will not saddle them with liability for the Kudankulam NPP, which could cause yet more oceans of red ink to wash across their books…… http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Indias-Kudankulam-Nuclear-Power-Plant-Caveat-Emptor.html
At last France accepts liability for cancers in nuclear test victims
Under the provisions of the bill the new compensation scheme will apply to former soldiers and civilians that developed cancers and other illnesses after exposure to radiation from nuclear tests carried out in Algeria and French Polynesia.
Parliament approves compensation bill for nuclear test victims The French parliament voted Tuesday to pay compensation to victims of nuclear tests France carried out in Algeria and French Polynesia over the course of more than three decades. By FRANCE 24 17 July 12
The French parliament on Tuesday approved a compromise bill offering compensation to the victims of nuclear tests carried out by France between 1960 and 1996, overturning decades of official failure to accept general liability for health problems suffered by those present at or near the test sites. Continue reading
Delhi High Court considers radiation poisoning of university researcher
“Strontium 90 is a toxic radioactive substance having a half life of about 28 years, a beta rays emitter and is one of the most hazardous products … Which if enters the human body, it accumulates within the bone marrow and over a period of time would cause certain type of cancers/tumors of the bone and of the blood cell….
they mixed the “hazardous and radioactive Strontium in a liquid form in cups of tea which the petitioner used to consume without knowing that those were contaminated.”
Researcher Affected by Radiation: Centre’s Reply Sought http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=769120 PTI | NEW DELHI | JUL 17, 2012 The Delhi High Court today sought the Centre’s response to a plea by a researcher in a Haryana university accusing his guide and other staffers of making him drink tea, laced with radioactive element Strontium 90. Continue reading
Injustice of USA cases against Julian Assange and Bradley Manning
Public opinion can make a great difference in determining that such a prosecution not take place. Such a situation as not very different from what eventually happened in the case of David Hicks.
Think of the different amount of attention given by the Australian Government to Assange’s case, compared to that given to the case of the Australian woman solicitor in Libya by Bob Carr, our Foreign Minister.
It can’t be that Assange has a bad reputation. He is the recipient of many awards testifying as to his courage and excellence as a journalist and about him generally.
A Support Assange & WikiLeaks Coalition Statement by Mr Kep Enderby QC JULY 15, 2012 BY KELLIE TRANTER ” ….There is something terribly wrong going on in both the Assange and Manning cases, and we are being told very little about it.
Sweden’s sex laws are unrealistically repressive, the most repressive in the world! That was made clear in the recent ABC interview with Phillip Adams and in the recent book by Oscar Swartz “A History of Sex in Sweden”.
Bradley Manning has been in custody for long periods of solitary confinement on the ground that he might injure himself, despite psychiatric opinion to the contrary and despite public protest that it amounts to pre-trial punishment without being brought to trial. He was arrested more than 2 years ago.
America still uses the ancient archaic old English medieval grand jury system of determining whether a criminal trial should take place to determine whether a person has committed a serious crime or not, with all its scope for the manipulated injustice. During the hearing the target of grand jury, the person perhaps to be an accused,
cannot put on a defence.
In America, in Virginia, a federal grand jury has already commenced investigating WikiLeaks – which means Julian Assange – to determine whether an indictment should be served on him. Eminent commentators are claiming that the evidence is mounting that the WikiLeaks case is part of a much broader campaign by the Obama Administration to crack down on all leakers. Continue reading
Legal action – no confidence in USA’s nuclear Waste Confidence Rule
Beyond Nuclear files Nuke Waste Con Game contentions against 4 atomic reactors 12 July 12, Beyond Nuclear has filed intervention contentions against a total of four atomic reactors (proposed new reactors at Grand Gulf Unit 3, MS and Fermi Unit 3, MIseeking construction and operating licenses, as well as degraded old reactors at Grand Gulf Unit 1, MSand Davis-Besse Unit 1, OH seeking 20 year license extensions) based on a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling gutting the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) “Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision.”
That confidence game has been used against states, environmental groups, and concerned citizens for decades, blocking them from challening the generation of high-level radioactive waste in atomc reactor licensing proceedings, as the NRC has flippantly expressed “confidence” that storage on-site was safe for decades or even centuries, and that a geologic repository for permanently disposing of irradiated nuclear fuel was just over the horizon — despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Continue reading
90 cancer victims bring lawsuit against nuclear power plant operators
Patricia Ameno, a plaintiff in a previous round of litigation, told Post-Gazette reporter Rich Lord that, due to health problems, “A lot of people have lost not only their entire savings but their homes.”
Families have been torn apart by illnesses and deaths, she said.
Radioactive: Revelations on nuclear plants sound a warning 
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/editorials/radioactive-revelations-on-nuclear-plants-sound-a-warning-633299/#ixzz20deylWXd July 3, 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Like a dark family secret long suspected but never confirmed, the shock of discovery is all the more lurid for coming into the light years later. So it is with the news of radioactive material released into the air — at levels higher than any seen in the nation — at closed nuclear fuels plants in Armstrong County.
Incredulity feeds the first reaction: Surely this could not have happened. But apparently it did, according to good authority. That would be Joseph P. Ring, a Harvard University radiation safety officer who teaches at Harvard and the University of Massachusetts. He
wrote a 37-page report that was filed Tuesday as part of federal lawsuits brought against plant operators Babcock & Wilcox Co. and Atlantic Richfield Co. by about 90 cancer victims. Continue reading
Charges on conspiracy to sell uranium to Iran
Iranian Charged With Illegal Nuclear Shipments Via China Bloomberg, By Emily Grannis – Jul 13 An Iranian and a Chinese resident were charged with conspiring to sell uranium and cobalt to Iran, and successfully shipping lathes and alloy wire, using a Chinese company to evade U.S. export controls…..
Today’s indictment follows charges filed in federal court in Manhattan yesterday against another Iranian national accused of illegally exporting $390,000 worth of industrial parts to Dubai and sending them on to Iran. The case is U.S. v. Khaki, 12-cr-00061, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-13/iranian-charged-with-illegal-nuclear-shipments-via-china.html
Nuclear industry continues to need a law to protect itself from itself!
this is the only industry that has a law protecting it from itself. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act of 1957 caps the liability of power plant owners and their insurance companies for nuclear accidents at $12.6 billion, after which taxpayers are on the hook. Chernobyl is estimated to have cost some $235 billion for containment, cleanup, and resettlement. Similar costs for the Fukushima disaster are yet to be determined, but estimates have also been in the several hundred-billion dollar range. Many proponents of nuclear power are the same “let the market work” advocates in economics and politics today. If the market were allowed to function in this case, would any new nuclear power plants be built in America — or existing ones re-licensed — if Price-Anderson were repealed?
Is New Nuclear Energy Just Mission Impossible? HUFFINGTON POST, Terry Tamminen Former Secretary, California EPA 07/11/2012 “….the Mission Impossible assignment facing global economies today — powering growth with nuclear energy.
The debate over nuclear energy has generally boiled down to the challenge of waste disposal. Of course there is always talk of safety, but proponents quickly point to the half-century of global experience with nuclear energy and the very few, albeit disastrous, incidents of the proverbial genie escaping its lead-lined, super-cooled, concrete bottle.
Proponents are also quick to dismiss waste issues by pointing to new technologies that recycle much of the spent fuel. The wild card that is common to every nuclear facility and which puts this technology squarely in the Mission Impossible category however, is not technology or waste — it’s human error….. the fact that engineers did not predict it [the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe] and that everyone at Edison is surprised by the failure attests to the limits of human calculation — even after that half-century of experience.
Nor can we dismiss the waste disposal issue so quickly, especially in an age when terrorists are thought to covet spent nuclear material for making mayhem. Delaware Senator Tom Carper commented recently that Congress has tried to solve the disposal issue for decades, but “over 30 years later, we find ourselves at what is really a dead end,” he said. Continue reading
USA: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rules that Pilgrim Watch cannot challenge NRC’s safety rulings
Judges rule against nuclear plant foes http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120711/NEWS/207110334/-1/NEWSMAP by PATRICK CASSIDY, July 11, 2012 A panel of three judges on the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has rejected a bid by opponents of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth to be heard on the response of U.S. nuclear regulators to the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster last year in Japan.
Duxbury-based Pilgrim Watch had argued that orders issued after the earthquake- and tsunami-fueled nuclear meltdown did not go far enough.
In their ruling issued Tuesday the judges found that, based on judicial and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission precedent, the enforcement orders issued by the NRC “are not open to challenge in an adjudicatory proceeding on Pilgrim Watch’s claim of inadequacy.”
Pilgrim Watch had challenged two orders from the NRC that required that all boiling-water reactors similar to Pilgrim and Fukushima have reliable venting systems and instrumentation to measure water levels in spent fuel pools.
Pilgrim Watch can appeal the ruling to the five-member NRC, according to agency spokesman Neil Sheehan. A group of 14 opponents of Pilgrim’s operations who were arrested for trespassing during a protest there in May are scheduled to appear today in Plymouth District Court.
Court judgment makes USA, not Australia, the leader in cutting carbon emissions
Three judges –two Democrats and one Republican – upheld the EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Result? No new coal-fired power stations! Under the Clean Air Act, carbon emissions are limited to 1,000 pounds of CO2 per MW hour of power produced.
the United States has pledged a much more responsible cut of 17 per cent by 2020,
EPA Clean Air to end coal in the US http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/epa-clean-air-to-end-coal-in-the-us/ 4 July, 2012 Last week, in a milestone announcement that went largely unreported in Australia, the US Court of Appeals upheld the EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse emissions under the Clean Air Act. Today is the 4th July and Independent Australia believes this decision is cause to celebrate. Environment editor Sandi Keane reports. Continue reading
Public participation eliminated, as Nuclear Regulatory Commission ‘streamlines’ nuclear licensing
David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientis’s said “The old Soviet system was efficient, too,” arguing that the streamlining sets up a system that approves an entire plan’s construction and operation upfront, a step that happens entirely based on blueprints and that offers fewer opportunities to contest a new project.
“It’s a paper battle – you’re looking at things that are done in cyberspace, and 
there’s no real evidence to point at,” Lochbaum said. “It has the effect of eliminating public participation.”
Streamlining Nuclear Regs, Energy Biz 28 June 12, AGENCY SEEKS TO
REMOVE IMPEDIMENTS FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been in the process of implementing new, streamlined licensing procedures, and this spring the first new nuclear projects in decades were approved – two new reactors at the SCANA-owned V.C. Summer Plant, and two others at the Southern Company-owned Plant Vogtle. Continue reading
Legal action not an option for vast majority of Fukushima’s nuclear victims
Victims and lawyers in Japan say the dearth of nuclear-related suits reflects both a national mindset — a distaste for confrontation — and a stunted judicial system that doesn’t allow for class-action cases or punitive damages. Japanese speak of the court system as more likely to deliver frustration than vengeance, and jobless evacuees who urgentlyneed money have little appetite for long trials with uncertain outcomes.
Without the threat of legal action, ……”the state and companies can take advantage of victims.”
Nuclear redress will never approximate losses, By CHICO HARLAN, The Washington Post, 26 June 12, It was 15 months ago that the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant suffered three meltdowns and contaminated a broad circle of countryside and left hundreds of thousands of people without homes, jobs or both. But for all the damage and despair it wrought, the disaster so far has unfolded without one conventional element: a widespread and contentious legal fight by those who say they should be compensated for their losses.
Victims of the worst nuclear crisis in a quarter-century have filed roughly 20 lawsuits against Tokyo Electric Power Co., according to the utility. That compares with the several hundred suits filed against BP within weeks of the 2010 Gulf oil spill, including the near-finalized settlement of a class-action suit that will pay 120,000 plaintiffs upward of $7.8 billion. BP also paid out some $6.2 billion to victims via a neutral claims settlement process, administered by a lawyer appointed by the Obama administration. Continue reading
Not a good look for the USA – Nuclear Regulatory Commission can override State’s wishes
Christina Macpherson’s websites & blogs
Not a good look for the USA.
It seems now that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and its friends, the nuclear industry, can now override any State in America that wants to get rid of dirty, dangerous nuclear energy – Christina Macpherson
“The New England Coalition, and all Vermonters, have now been deprived of the right that was guaranteed to them by Congress, to have a say in how this plant affects clean water,”
State Loses Another Legal Round In Vt. Yankee Relicensing, Vermont Public Radio, 06/26/12, John Dillon A federal court has handed the state of Vermont another loss in its ongoing challenge to Vermont Yankee’s operating license.
The Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington rejected the state’s arguments that the new 20-year license was invalid because Entergy Vermont Yankee failed to get a new water quality permit.
The court found Vermont missed its chance to raise the issue before the Nuclear Regulator Commission. Continue reading
Court found that USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission could not just ignore nuclear wastes
In its ruling the court concluded that the NRC’s standard finding during the relicensing process that permanent nuclear-waste storage will be available “when necessary” did not calculate the environmental effects of failing to secure permanent storage – “a possibility that cannot be ignored.”
The court also found that the NRC’s finding that spent fuel could safely be stored on site at nuclear plants for 60 years after expiration of a plant’s license, “failed to properly examine future dangers and key consequences.”
Nuclear waste: why environmentalists are pressing NRC on reactor licenses After a US appeals court ruled the NRC had not adequately evaluated nuclear waste provisions when licensing reactors, the groups are seeking to ensure the public has input on the process. Christian Science Monitor, By Mark Clayton, June 20, 2012 The nation’s top nuclear power plant regulator is being petitioned by environmental groups to halt all further license extensions for 35 power reactors nationwide until their on-site nuclear-waste storage systems undergo more in-depth environmental evaluation. The legal petition filed Monday followed a June 8 ruling by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which found that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had failed to adequately evaluate on-site nuclear waste storage prior to granting license extensions. Continue reading
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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