SCE&G misled lawmakers about critical nuclear report, state agency says, Greenville News, Sammy Fretwell and Avery G. Wilks, The Stat May 24, 2018
SCE&G executives misled S.C. legislators about why a report was commissioned to investigate troubles at the failing V.C. Summer nuclear expansion project, state regulators say.
In sworn testimony to lawmakers last fall, Kevin Marsh, then chief executive of SCE&G and its parent company SCANA, told legislators the Bechtel Corp. was hired to complete a study on problems at the ill-fated project to help prepare for a possible lawsuit against Westinghouse, the project’s lead contractor.
Because the report — kept secret until after the V.C. Summer project collapsed — was part of an anticipated lawsuit, it could remain confidential from regulators, legislators and the public, utility officials told legislators last fall.
However, in filings late Wednesday with the S.C. Public Service Commission, regulators at the state Office of Regulatory Staff said the Bechtel report was put together to assess what was going wrong with the construction of two new nuclear reactors northwest of Columbia, not to support a lawsuit………..
Documents released Wednesday by Regulatory Staff indicate the Bechtel report was kept confidential at the insistence of Westinghouse. Westinghouse wanted protection from legal liability at another nuclear construction project that it was in charge of, the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion effort in Georgia, records show.
………Last fall, McMaster obtained the final Bechtel report from state-owned Santee Cooper and released it to the public.
Loujain is a well-known campaigner for women’s right to drive in the ultra-conservative kingdom. Late last week, we learned that she had been arrested from her home. She was one of at least six prominent women’s rights activists detained by the Saudi Arabian authorities.
Loujain has been arrested several times in recent years for campaigning for women’s right to drive and the abolition of the male guardianship system. Now, she is the victim of a state-orchestrated smear campaign, designed to undermine the important campaigning that she and other human rights activists have been undertaking.
Along with the other human rights activists, Loujain has been detained and accused of crimes including “suspicious contact with foreign entities” and undermining the “security and stability” of the country. She was branded a ‘traitor’ to the country by state-aligned media. These arrests come one month before Saudi Arabian authorities will lift the ban on women driving in the kingdom. It is a cruel irony that the very women who championed the right to drive campaign may not be able to benefit from their activism – instead, they may be behind bars instead of behind the wheel.
These accusations are nothing more than ludicrous lies, intended to silence strong feminist voices speaking up for women’s rights.
The following morning, it only got worse. A vile and unprecedented smear campaign took over the front pages of Saudi newspapers and spread across social media platforms. Local newspapers like Okaz and Al-Jazirah were filled with aggressive front-page headlines, photos and countless opinion articles, calling the activists spies. On Twitter, one graphic was widely shared, revealing the faces and names of these activists with the word “traitor” stamped across their photos.
We fear that they, like many other peaceful activists and human rights defenders, will be tried and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their activism. This continued criminalization of peaceful activism and human rights work is repulsive. It’s been a week since their arrests, and we still don’t know where the activists are, if they have been presented with clear legal charges, or have had access to a lawyer of their choosing.
In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has travelled the world on a PR blitz, shaking hands with fellow leaders while promising positive change in the kingdom. MbS (as he’s known) claims women’s rights will be respected as part of his reforms. These arrests show those promises to be a lie.
How can the Crown Prince tell the world that he is an advocate for women’s rights while locking up activists who have called for the reforms he claims credit for? How can he claim to support women’s empowerment when the brave activists who have sacrificed their freedom for the rights and freedoms of Saudi Arabian women in the country won’t be able to drive next month?
For government leaders around the world who have been taken in by MbS’ talk of reform, we have a simple message: as long as human rights activists are deemed a threat to state security, and as long as the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly are equated with terrorism, Saudi reform is not meaningful.
It is clear that underneath all the PR hype and spin, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman doesn’t care about women’s rights and real human rights reforms. Saudi Arabian authorities cannot continue to publicly state they are dedicated to reform, while treating women’s rights campaigners in this cruel way. It’s time to end the systematic discrimination against women and the repression of the human rights community in Saudi Arabia.
Samah Hadid is Amnesty International’s Middle East Director of Campaigns
Saudi Arabia has widened its crackdown on women’s rights activists, bringing the number of arrests up to 11 people, according to human rights groups.
Since the sweep began on May 15, the detained activists, most of whom are women, have been branded “traitors” by pro-government news outlets and social media accounts, according to Human Rights Watch. Over the weekend, several state-linked newspapers published the names and photographs of those detained in what rights groups dubbed a “smear campaign“.
Those arrested reportedly include prominent women’s rights defenders who have long advocated for ending the ban on women driving, among them, Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef and Eman al-Nafjan, along with Mohammed al-Rabea, an activist, and Ibrahim al-Modaimeegh, a human rights lawyer. They may face charges for “suspicious contact with foreign parties” and undermining “stability,” according to the Presidency for State Security, an office which reports to the king.
Since the kingdom is expected to soon lift its prohibition on women driving, rights groups said the motivation behind the escalating arrests remains unclear.
King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, drew international plaudits last year when they announced the ban on female drivers would end on June 24.
But now international outrage over the arrests threatens to derail the crown prince’s image as liberalizer.
“The crown prince, who has styled himself as a reformer with Western allies and investors, should be thanking the activists for their contributions to the Saudi women’s rights movement,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director said in a statement. “Instead, the Saudi authorities appear to be punishing these women’s rights champions for promoting a goal bin Salman alleges to support — ending discrimination against women.”
New Documents Raise Questions About Increased Nuclear Spending, A nuke agency is up to its old tricks War is Boring, WIB POLITICS May 22, 2018 Lydia Dennett
There are many reasons to keep certain parts of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex a secret. But fraud, waste, and abuse run rampant when the mystique and awe of nuclear bombs gets in the way of effective oversight. And it is the taxpayer who ends up suffering.
The secrets to creating a nuclear explosion and the materials to do so are kept by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy, and it has a $1.2 trillion plan to build new nuclear warheads and facilities over the next 30 years.
But new documents obtained by the Project on Government Oversight discussing the life expectancy of nuclear weapons components show that the uranium cores may have a longer life span than originally thought. This may undermine some justifications for an expansive—and expensive—nuclear modernization plan.
Although much of the documents are redacted, likely to keep safe the most sensitive details of the U.S. nuclear enterprise, the remaining details seem to suggest that initial life-span estimates were too conservative. These initial estimates were partially used as justification for plans to build an expensive new facility and revising plans based on these findings could result in billions of savings for taxpayers.
But there’s no getting around the fact that twice now the NNSA has either obscured facts that would suggest a more limited capacity is all that’s required or has pursued an expensive plan without knowing all the facts beforehand.
In light of NNSA’s rhetoric about the aging nuclear arsenal and the desperate need for more money to modernize, POGO endeavored to determine exactly what upgrades were truly needed to support a credible nuclear deterrent. In 2013, we released a report that called for a study into the lifetime of uranium secondaries in order to determine what capacity would be required of a proposed new facility.
A study would make clear how many of these secondaries would need to be manufactured in the new building. POGO’s report on the proposed Uranium Processing Facility highlighted how the public was being kept in the dark about this number, an important justification for continued and increased funding. At the time, a number of Energy Department sources told POGO several hundred warheads had already gone through the life extension process and would not need remanufactured secondaries.
Initially, the NNSA had claimed publicly that it needed a “big box” design, a large facility that would replace several different buildings in the complex and that had the capacity to remanufacture 160-200 secondaries per year. But just a few years later the department’s own Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan stated the need was really only 80.
Given this shift within the department, as well as a litany of design missteps, cost overruns, and poor project oversight, POGO recommended a lifetime study for uranium secondaries and a scaled-down design utilizing existing facilities.
Shortly after POGO released our UPF report, the NNSA formed a “Red Team” to review the design. That review echoed many of POGO’s findings and recommendations including the need for “significant and sustained oversight” as well as immediately scrapping the big box design.
“Design efforts on the current ‘big box,’ single structure UPF concept should be stopped while a comprehensive reevalution of program requirements and applicable design standards is undertaken,” the report stated.
The new documents from the time suggest that a study into the lifetimes of secondaries supported this decision. One of the newly obtained documents is a 2010 peer review analysis conducted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory of the life expectancy study for one nuclear warhead type, the W78. The review committee examined work and analysis done by the “life expectancy team” charged with concluding how long these secondaries will remain effective…………
NNSA’s pattern of exaggerating spending needs
A remarkably similar situation occurred with the agency’s planned plutonium operations replacement facility. The NNSA claimed the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement – Nuclear Facility needed to be able to manufacture 450 plutonium cores per year. But after a lifetime study found they can last for over 150 years without significantly degrading the number plummeted to less than 80 per year, dramatically decreasing what would be required of the new building.
Congress ultimately canceled the facility when cost overruns and delays made it impossible to continue, and the NNSA is now pursuing a scaled down approach. But there’s no getting around the fact that twice now the NNSA has either obscured facts that would suggest a more limited capacity is all that’s required or has pursued an expensive plan without knowing all the facts beforehand. Either explanation is an unacceptable exploitation of taxpayer dollars.
……… Despite these nearly constant warnings and recommendations for improvement from all the four corners of the nuclear complex world, the NNSA plans to move full steam ahead with their incredibly expensive upgrade plan. A plan that is partially justified by rhetoric suggesting that age has significantly deteriorated parts of the complex.Without an independent study it’s impossible to know if these claims are true. And with NNSA’s track record, Congress would be more than justified in asking questions. Before pouring billions of dollars into this effort, Congress should commission an independent, scientist-led study by the JASON advisory group to ensure NNSA’s future spending plans match up with the overall U.S. national security needs.
By Kyle Whitmire kwhitmire@al.com “……Franklin Haney is a very rich man, and his money is hard at work in Alabama, in Washington, D.C., and maybe even the Middle East. The Chattanooga developer’s campaign cash has given him access to politicians from city council members to presidents of the United States.
And now, according to the Wall Street Journal, he has the help of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and political fixer, Michael Cohen, with designs on bringing online a nuclear power plant in northeast Alabama.
Two years ago, when I first wrote about Haney’s dream to buy a half-finished nuclear power plant in north Alabama and bring it online, I didn’t take his plans seriously for a couple of reasons.
Even if Haney could convince TVA to sell him the Bellefonte plant, even he — a billionaire — probably couldn’t afford to finish it, could he? Haney’s own projection was that the project would cost about $13 billion to complete. By most accounts, including Haney’s company’s website, he is worth less than that.
And even if he managed to finish it, there was no way the federal government would allow him to turn the thing on, would they?
The logistics and regulation of nuclear power make it nearly impossible to stop a project and then restart it again, which was a big reason the TVA never finished the job.
I wasn’t alone in that assessment.
Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said then that Haney’s plans for Bellefonte were delusional.
“The first concrete was poured in 1974,” he said. “That reactor is approaching 50 years old. Do you think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is going give a license for a reactor that has been sitting around for 50 years?”
But Haney didn’t give up.
Once a door-to-door Bible salesman, Haney became a self-made billionaire through working as the government’s landlord. He acquires and develops property, which he leases to local, state and federal agencies.
And he makes connections first with political donations. He’s donated to Democrats and Republicans. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have benefited from his largess, as have Republicans, including Alabama Gov. Bob Riley………
TVA agreed to sell the power plant to Haney, but he still had those two hurdles left — regulation and capital.
Enter Donald Trump.
After the president’s victory in 2016, Haney donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and last summer Bloomberg reported that Haney had bragged about dining with Trump about a dozen times during the president’s first six months in office. Haney could have had those opportunities because he’s a member of Trump’s club, Mar-a-Lago.
And it turns out, the Wall Street Journal reports, Haney had another connection, too. He is a client of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and political fixer, who appears to have turned his proximity to the president into a lucrative business opportunity.
Previously, Cohen had solicited $1 million from Qatar for access to the Trump administration, the Washington Post reported last month. The Qatar government declined that solicitation.
It’s unclear whether the meeting was fruitful for Haney, but what is clear is that the law might not allow significant foreign investment in the Bellefonte project. Under the Atomic Energy Act, the NRC may not issue licenses for projects owned or controlled by a foreign entity.
But laws change, especially when men with money need them fixed, and if the Trump administration has shown anything, it’s that it cares little about regulations, environmental protections and foreign influence in domestic affairs.
Haney’s hurdles are still high. They are still there. But his money is working harder than ever to tear them down.
More secrecy at SCE&G? Utility won’t give up V.C. Summer records, state agency says, The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, sfretwell@thestate.com, May 17, 2018
A state agency says SCE&G is refusing to give up records that could be used to justify rolling back monthly power bills the utility charges customers for the failed V.C. Summer nuclear construction project.
The state Office of Regulatory Staff says it needs the records to better understand what went wrong with the failed effort to build two reactors in Fairfield County, northwest of Columbia.
According to Regulatory Staff, the information being withheld by SCE&G includes:
▪ Summaries of auditors’ reports.
▪ A 2016 estimate of the cost to complete the nuclear construction project.
▪ Records given to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, investigating possible criminal fraud in the construction project.
▪ Meeting notes about the Bechtel report, a study that outlined massive problems with the project at least two years before SCE&G publicly revealed them.
“Many responses do not appear to comply in good faith’’ with laws requiring SCE&G to give up records, Regulatory Staff lawyer Jenny R. Pittman wrote in a May 9 letter obtained Thursday by The State.
Regulatory Staff is seeking the documents as part of its legal effort to roll back the $27-a-month charge that SCE&G continues to charge its residential customers for the bungled nuclear plant. The state Public Service Commission is expected to hold hearings on that issue late this year as well as Dominion Energy’s proposed buyout of SCE&G’s parent, SCANA.
………SCE&G’s refusal to release records to Regulatory Staff is the latest skirmish in a growing battle over documents that regulators and lawyers say they need to review. Attorneys for Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club, which have cases before the PSC seeking to roll back SCE&G’s rates, also have been rebuffed by the utility in their requests for records.
Bob Guild, a lawyer for the two environmental groups, said Thursday that SCE&G’s reluctance to work with the Office of Regulatory Staff isn’t surprising. The utility doesn’t want regulators, or the public, to see potentially damning information, he said……..http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article211324814.html
Is there enough space for all the wind turbines and solar panels to provide all our energy needs? What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Won’t renewables destabilise the grid and cause blackouts?
In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Master of Science Benjamin Heard (at left) and colleagues presented their case against 100% renewable electricity systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.
Now scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues.The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Delft University of Technology and Aalborg University have analysed hundreds of studies from across the scientific literature to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks on the way to a 100% renewable future.
“While several of the issues raised by the Heard paper are important, you have to realise that there are technical solutions to all the points they raised, using today’s technology,” says the lead author of the response, Dr. Tom Brown of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
“Furthermore, these solutions are absolutely affordable, especially given the sinking costs of wind and solar power,” says Professor Christian Breyer of Lappeenranta University of Technology, who co-authored the response.
Brown cites the worst-case solution of hydrogen or synthetic gas produced with renewable electricity for times when imports, hydroelectricity, batteries, and other storage fail to bridge the gap during low wind and solar periods during the winter. For maintaining stability there is a series of technical solutions, from rotating grid stabilisers to newer electronics-based solutions. The scientists have collected examples of best practice by grid operators from across the world, from Denmark to Tasmania.
The response by the scientists has now appeared in the same journal as the original article by Heard and colleagues.
“There are some persistent myths that 100% renewable systems are not possible,” says Professor Brian Vad Mathiesen of Aalborg University, who is a co-author of the response.
“Our contribution deals with these myths one-by-one, using all the latest research. Now let’s get back to the business of modelling low-cost scenarios to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy system, so we can tackle the climate and health challenges they pose.”
For more information, please contact:
Tom Brown, Young Investigator Group Leader, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | tom.brown@kit.edu
Kornelis Blok, Professor, Delft University of Technology | k.blok@tudelft.nl
Christian Breyer, Professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology | christian.breyer@lut.fi
Brian Vad Mathiesen, Professor, Aalborg University | bvm@plan.aau.dk
Greenpeace France 14th May 2018 [Machine Translation] On the eve of EDF’s Annual General Meeting,
Greenpeace France points to the deception that EDF’s CEO has been driving for several months and will present the shareholders of the company tomorrow.
With a lot of communication on the energy transition, the company is far from developing renewable energies and directs almost all of its investments in nuclear power. That is a losing strategy, both for the company, and for France, which is lagging far behind the implementation of its energy transition.
Faced with EDF shareholders, Jean-Bernard Lévy will no doubt say tomorrow that the company plays a central role in the energy transition, with its solar plan for 2035 presented in December 2017. ” In reality, when we compare the calendars and EDF budgets, we realize that the company will mainly give priority to investments in the nuclear fleet and
postpone its investments in solar …
Supes question Navy over cleanup fraud, SF Bay, By Scott MorrisMay 14, 2018, San Francisco elected officials Monday called for re-testing for radioactive material at an inhabited parcel of a former U.S. Navy shipyard in Hunters Point after revelations of fraudulent data by a Navy contractor.
At a meeting of the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee, Supervisor Malia Cohen, whose district includes the project area, as well as Supervisors Jane Kim and Sandra Lee Fewer called the credibility of the Navy’s cleanup efforts into question following the criminal conviction of two employees of a federal contractor for falsifying records. ……https://sfbay.ca/2018/05/14/supes-question-navy-over-cleanup-fraud/
The Canary 11th May 2018, Theresa May has reportedly just agreed to loan a Japanese firm £13.4bn to
spend on a nuclear power plant. But according to Caroline Lucas, she’s doing it “without any transparency or scrutiny”, effectively lending out public money behind closed doors.
The government has given the go-ahead for a replacement plant at the Wylfa Newydd nuclear power site on Anglesey.
It will be constructed by a consortium of three companies: Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe, US-based Bechtel Management Company, and Japanese firm JGC Corporation (UK). Horizon Nuclear Power will oversee the £14bn project.
Julian Assange stuck without a phone, can’t see guests at Ecuador’s embassy in London, Washington Examinerby Anna Giaritelli | May 11, 2018
Ecuador’s embassy in London will continue to ban WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from using the phone or meeting guests, after British and Ecuadoran officials failed to reach an understanding on whether and how to reconnect him to the outside world.
In late March, Assange tweeted criticism about the United Kingdom’s decision to expel Russian diplomats from England following the poisoning of former Kremlin operative Sergei Skripal.
Assange’s outside communications were shut off in an attempt to prevent him from issuing statements reflecting his personal views, over fears they could further complicate relations between Ecuador, England, and Russia. “He still has no access to the Internet and communications (…) there is a dialogue, there is a will and an interest to move forward in the solution of that matter,” Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa told reporters this week……https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/julian-assange-stuck-without-a-phone-cant-see-guests-at-ecuadors-embassy-in-london
150 padlocks disappear from ‘cursed’ French nuclear plant, Times UK, Adam Sage, Paris, 8 May 18, The French nuclear plant touted as a model for Britain’s new reactors was under scrutiny yesterday after 150 of the padlocks protecting its command-control computers disappeared.
Electricity of France (EDF), the state electricity group, filed a criminal lawsuit over the disappearance of the padlocks from cabinets containing the computer system at the plant under construction at Flamanville in northern France.
EDF is leading the £19.5 billion project to build two similar reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, which are expected to supply 7 per cent of Britain’s electricity.
The company said police were investigating the incident and that it had started an internal audit. None of the computers had been tampered with.
The Sun 4th May 2018, Theresa May urged to come clean on ‘secret’ meeting with Hitachi boss
over £2bn taxpayer bailout for new nuclear power project. Hitachi, responsible for the £20bn new nuclear power plant in Anglesey, North Wales, said the project was unaffordable without state support.
The group is reported to have claimed the £20 billion project due to start generating in the mid-2020s is unaffordable without state support. It’s the latest blow to the Government’s energy policy after huge delays to the construction of the Hinkley Point nuke plant in Somerset.
The PM’s official spokesman would only say Mrs May was taking part in “private meetings” at Downing Street yesterday afternoon. Hannah Martin, Greenpeace’s UK head of energy, said: “The information blackout about government nuclear policy is unjustifiable.
The SNP demanded the Government rule out public money on “failing nuclear projects”. Drew Hendry, the Scottish Nationalists’ business spokesman, said: “This is yet another damning report of the UK government’s misguided nuclear obsession. “Hinkley Point is already set to cost consumers a fortune because of the appalling strike price deal the UK government made with EDF. “The Prime Minister must now categorically rule out any public bail out of this, or any other nuclear project and put an end to secret discussions behind closed doors.” https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6207351/theresa-may-hitachi-secret-meeting-bailout-nuclear/
How the Manhattan Project’s Nuclear Suburb Stayed Secret, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, once home to 75,000, went up fast and under the radar. But it was built to last, too. Atlas Obscura , BY JESSICA LEIGH HESTER , MAY 03, 2018 “…… Oak Ridge isn’t like most of the country’s other suburbs. The town was conceived and built by the United States government in the early 1940s as base for uranium and plutonium work, as part of the Manhattan Project. As the nuclear effort marched along, the town grew, too. By 1945, a dense suburb had taken shape, home to roughly 75,000 people. At war’s end, Oak Ridge was the fifth-largest city in the state—and all along, it was supposed to be a secret.
…….. the pace of building there was stunning enough, but doing it all under the radar required a little willful blindness. The town didn’t appear on any official maps, and visitors were screened by guards posted at the entrances. Still, at that scale, it couldn’t be truly clandestine. “People saw stuff, certainly,” Moeller says, but probably chose not to wonder too deeply about what was happening there out of a combination of patriotism and ignorance. Moeller speculates that those who saw workers and supplies streaming into the site may have sensed that asking too many questions would have been un-American. The idea was, “it’s not my business; it’s for the war effort,” he says. “There was a much greater spirit of national unity than we could even fathom now.”
Billboards were installed all over town to remind workers to keep their mouths shut about their work, even though most workers knew very little about the project’s true scope.
Similar “secret cities” were built in other parts of the country, such as Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington, home to 125,000. Designers of these towns had additional tactics to obscure specifics. In Los Alamos and Hanford, sometimes everyone was given the same mailing address. At Oak Ridge, street addresses were designed to be confusing to outsiders. Bus routes might be called X-10 or K-25 or Y-12, in reference to the factories they led to, while dorms had simple names such as M1, M2, and M3. If you didn’t already know where you were trying to go, none of it would make sense. “There weren’t any signs on buildings, just numbers, codes names, and numbers,” Wilcox recalled. The town was full of such ciphers, and even employees didn’t know how to decode them all. ……https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-build-secret-nuclear-city
nuclear-news 