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Prosecuting Julian Assange – a dangerous precedent threatening journalists’ rights

Judges Hear Warning on Prosecution of WikiLeaks https://www.courthousenews.com/judges-hear-warning-on-prosecution-of-wikileaks/  July 24, 2018MARIA DINZEO   NAHEIM, Calif. (CN) – Prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing leaked documents related to the 2016 presidential election would set a terrible precedent for journalists, the top lawyer for The New York Times said Tuesday.

Addressing a room full of federal and circuit judges at the Ninth Circuit’s annual judicial conference, David McCraw, the deputy general counsel for The New York Times, explained that regardless of how one feels about Assange and traditional news outlets receiving the same kind of deference over publishing leaked materials, his prosecution would be a gut punch to free speech.

“I think the prosecution of him would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers,” McCraw said. “From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”

McCraw went on to clarify that while Assange employs certain methods that he finds discomfiting and irresponsible, such as dumping unredacted documents revealing the personal information of ordinary people, Assange should be afforded the same protections as a traditional journalist.

“Do I wish journalism was practiced in a certain way, like it is with The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal? Of course. But I also think new ways of publishing have their value. Our colleagues who are not only challenging us financially but journalistically have raised an awareness that there are different ways to report,” McCraw said.

“But if someone is in the business of publishing information, I think that whatever privilege happens to apply – whatever extension of the law that would apply – should be there. Because the question isn’t whether he’s a journalist. It’s in that instance was he committing an act of journalism.”

Assange has long considered himself a journalist operating no differently than other news outlets. This has complicated matters, because if Assange can be prosecuted for publishing leaked information, why not prosecute news organizations like The New York Times?

Earlier this month, a grand jury returned an indictment against twelve Russian military spies for hacking into the servers and emails of the Democratic National Committee and state election officials, stealing documents and staging the release of those documents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. While the indictment did not name Assange and WikiLeaks specifically, it has been widely suggested that WikiLeaks received the materials and could very well be the group referred to in the indictment as “Organization Number 1.”

Barry Pollack, who represents Assange in an ongoing criminal investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia, weighed in on the indictment Tuesday.

“If you read the indictment that just came out on Russians and you look at what Organization Number 1, which is clearly WikiLeaks, is alleged to have done in that indictment, it is doing exactly what The New York Times and The Washington Post do every day of the week,” Pollack said. “He [Assange] is communicating with a source, the source provides him with information, he publishes that information.

“There are no questions about the truthfulness or accuracy or authenticity of that information. And then he encourages the source to give him more information. He says ‘don’t give it to my competitors, give it to me. This story will have more impact if I publish it.’”

Pollack and McCraw spoke as part of a panel titled “The Law of Leaks,” a session on how the United States has ramped up efforts to prosecute people who have leaked state secrets. Thirteen people have been prosecuted under the first law against leaking state secrets, the Espionage Act of 1917, most under the Obama administration.

President Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented war against the media, taking to Twitter last year to call the media “the enemy of the American people.”  Yet no publisher has ever been indicted over leaks, and both McCraw and Pollack expressed doubts about whether it will happen any time soon.

“Unlike firing off a tweet, bringing a prosecution requires a career professional prosecutor to sign off on the prosecution, so there also is a tremendous check there that doesn’t exist in some of the rhetoric we hear,” Pollack said.

“Prosecutions of journalists would be difficult,” McCraw said. “I think they’d be unpopular, I think they’d be wrong, and I think they’d be unsuccessful. I see this PR campaign against the press as almost an alternative to legal measures.”

 

July 28, 2018 Posted by | civil liberties, media, USA | Leave a comment

Iowa nuclear power station to close in 2020, five years early

Owner of Iowa’s lone nuclear plant plans to shutter it by 2020   Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register July 27, 2018 

NextEra Energy, owner of the Duane Arnold Energy Center, says it will retire Iowa’s lone nuclear plant in late 2020, five years earlier than anticipated.

The Florida-based utility said Alliant Energy, the plant’s largest power user, has agreed to pay NextEra $110 million to shorten its agreement to purchase power from Duane Arnold.

Alliant said it will partially replace the nuclear energy with wind energy from NextEra and expects new energy deals will save Iowa customers nearly $300 million over 21 years, even after the utility pays NextEra to end its contract early.

Alliant Energy’s plan must go through the Iowa Utilities Board for approval. Duane Arnold, which is located near Cedar Rapids, was licensed to operate until 2034. ……..

Bill Cherrier, CEO of Central Iowa Power Cooperative said low-cost natural gas and the declining cost of renewable energy such as wind and solar have created challenges for nuclear power generators.

NextEra said it plans to invest about $650 million in existing and new renewable energy generation in Iowa by the end of 2020. That includes a $250 million investment to repower four wind facilities, providing about 340 megawatts of electricity for Alliant’s Iowa customers.

Repowering these facilities is expected to create 200 new construction jobs, NextEra said, and will extend payments to landowners and tax revenues for local communities for decades.

NextEra said it’s evaluating redevelopment opportunities at Duane Arnold, including the “construction of new solar energy, battery storage or natural gas facilities.” https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2018/07/27/duane-arnold-nuclear-power-plant-close-alliant-energy-nextera-wind-power-renewables/848824002/

 

July 28, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Renewable energy ballots in Arizona may spell the end for Palo Verde nuclear station

Arizona’s nuclear power caught in crossfire, A renewable energy ballot measure could shutter the largest nuclear plant in the country. High Country News, Elena Saavedra Buckley  July 27, 2018 “……. in the light of a controversial ballot measure meant to steer Arizona towards renewable energy, Palo Verde’s fate has been caught in the crossfire of a battle between state utilities and environmentalists.

Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, a committee backed by former Californian hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, drives the initiative. They submitted over twice the amount of signatures needed to get on the ballot. If successful, the measure would constitutionally require Arizona utilities to use 50 percent renewable resources by 2030, holding them accountable for certain percentages each year.

But Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, funded a lawsuit filed last week against the initiative. The political action group that filed the suit claims most of the signatures are fraudulent, which the initiative denies. The utility has bigger worries than the signatures, though — they’re worried the measure would force Palo Verde to close in six years. An oversupply of solar, they say, would render the plant useless.

………..In Nevada, an identical, Steyer-backed measure is already on the ballot. If the measures pass in November, the two states will join California as the West’s most ambitious examples of renewable commitment.

…….. Beyond Arizona, nuclear energy’s place in the carbon-free future of the West is an open question. In California, whose renewable goal is already 50 percent by 2030, nuclear plants have closed decades before their licensed expiration dates, struggling to compete with cheaper natural gas and solar. Whether nuclear plants should stay open as a stable alternative to fossil fuels divides environmentalists. Amanda Ormond of the Western Grid Group, which promotes incorporating clean energy into the grid, thinks nuclear power is an obstacle to a functional renewable future.

“Transitions have costs, and this is a huge transition,” Ormond said of the ballot measure’s proposals. “Palo Verde might close anyway. It’s an inflexible, expensive resource, and it will face the consequences of any resource.”

…….. Time and legislative obstacles stand in the way of the Clean Energy initiative. But even if it fails, numbers show that Arizona voters are ready for renewables—in two recent polls, Arizonans wanted their state to prioritize solar power over all other resources. “We’re moving to renewable energy,” Ormond. “The question is how fast.”…….https://www.hcn.org/articles/energy-industry-arizona-nuclear-power-caught-in-crossfire

July 28, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Senator wants answers from DHEC about uranium that leaked from SC nuclear plant

BY SAMMY FRETWELL, sfretwell@thestate.com  July 26, 2018 

A state senator says he wants answers on why uranium leaked through a hole in the floor of a Richland County nuclear plant with a history of troubles and groundwater contamination.

State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, is asking the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to explain what it knows about uranium contamination discovered recently at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory on Bluff Road.

At Jackson’s request, DHEC has agreed to hold a public meeting to discuss the leak and other problems. Jackson sent a letter to DHEC on Thursday outlining his concerns………

A state senator says he wants answers on why uranium leaked through a hole in the floor of a Richland County nuclear plant with a history of troubles and groundwater contamination.

State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, is asking the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to explain what it knows about uranium contamination discovered recently at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory on Bluff Road.

At Jackson’s request, DHEC has agreed to hold a public meeting to discuss the leak and other problems. Jackson sent a letter to DHEC on Thursday outlining his concerns.

………The uranium leak is the latest in a series of problems that have plagued the facility for decades. In the early 1980s, regulators discovered the groundwater was contaminated with fluoride and ammonia. Solvents later were found in groundwater. Solvents are particularly toxic to people exposed to them. The agency also found nitrate in the groundwater that dates to the 1980s. Nitrate is toxic to babies who drink formula with contaminated water.

Efforts to clean up the contamination have produced mixed results, with some pollution continuing to show up in the water……..

In addition to those problems, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has fined and cited Westinghouse more than a dozen times dating to at least 1993. Those problems range from buildups of uranium in air-pollution control devices and incinerators to worker accidents.https://www.thestate.com/latest-news/article215543880.html

July 28, 2018 Posted by | incidents, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump using inappropriate Defense Production Act to prop up failing coal and nuclear power plants.

USA Today 25th July 2018 For all the serious national security threats currently facing our country,
it seems like a waste of time and resources to use a nearly 70-year-old
defense law to rescue failing, outdated industries.

Yet that is precisely what the Trump administration is planning to do. The administration
indicated last month that it intends to use the Defense Production Act of
1950, enacted as a drastic national-security measure to be deployed in time
of war, to prop up failing coal and nuclear power plants.

Invoking this act would be a blatant misuse of the law, which came into effect at the outset
of the Korean War and with the intent of ensuring rapid mobilization of
U.S. industries within the larger context of the Cold War. And it will be
costly for anyone who pays an electric bill.

Today, the president wants to rely on the act to intervene in the energy market and bail out unprofitable
power plants that can no longer compete against natural gas and renewables.
The administration claims these plants are necessary to prevent blackouts
on the grid — a claim nearly all experts say is untrue. The
administration is instead motivated largely by politics — Trump promised
repeatedly on the campaign trail and while in office to bring about a
renaissance in an industry that is in irreversible decline.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/25/donald-trump-energy-plan-save-coal-cost-consumers-column/792523002/

July 28, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant clean-up to be restarted

Daily Mail 27th July 2018 , Work to demolish a former nuclear weapons production factory in Washington
state may resume in September, about six months after it was halted when
workers were exposed to radioactive particles, the U.S. Department oEnergy said Thursday.
The agency will implement extra safety measures for
workers demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant on the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation, which is near Richland. The plant was involved in producing
much of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Hanford officials
issued a report in late March that said a total of 42 Hanford workers
inhaled or ingested radioactive particles when they were exposed during
contamination events in June and December of last year. Radioactive
contamination was also found outside plant offices and inside two dozen
vehicles, the report said.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-5997239/Work-demolish-nuke-weapons-plant-resume-September.html

July 28, 2018 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

South Carolina Nuclear Plant leaking radioactive uranium into ground below

Uranium Leaked Through Floor of South Carolina Westinghouse Nuclear Plant https://www.ecowatch.com/south-carolina-nuclear-plant-leak-2590122072.html 26 July 18 A nuclear plant in Richmond County, South Carolina with a history of contaminating groundwater has leaked radioactive uranium into the soil below the plant, The State reported Tuesday.

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) officials said there was no reason to believe this leak left the the site of the Westinghouse plant or posed a threat to public drinking water, but state senator Darrell Jackson is calling for a public meeting to discuss the leak and other historic issues at the plant, The State further reported Wednesday.

“This is very disturbing,” Jackson said. “This is one of the fears that those of us who grew up in that area, and lived in that area, have always talked about. I’m asking DHEC to get to Westinghouse officials and let’s have a public meeting, not just with elected officials, but we need citizens there also.”

The company informed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the leak July 12, which came through a hole in a part of the plant where acid is used. The hole was three inches and extended six feet into the ground, the NRC told The State.

The NRC found uranium levels in the soil of 4,000 parts per million, more than 1,000 times higher than average for soil.

“That’s a lot, oh yeah,” U.S. Geological Survey scientist Frank Chapelle told The State.

The company has covered the hole with a metal plate and said it would not use the area until it was completely repaired.

The DHEC said they were still testing the groundwater on the site to see if it was contaminated, but said the plant itself was far enough away from public drinking water that it shouldn’t cause a problem.

“Based on existing information, there is no threat to the public from this recent release or from historical groundwater contamination at this secured site as there is no exposure risk to the general public,” DHEC spokesperson Tommy Crosby told The State.

But Jackson was not reassured.

“What we don’t know is what kind of impact that’s going to have 20 years from now on the groundwater, this drip, drip, drip,” Jackson said. “I don’t know of too many people too receptive to living in the area when they know the groundwater is contaminated.”

DHEC spokesperson Cristi Moore said the agency would consider the senator’s request for a meeting.

This isn’t the first time safety concerns have surrounded the Westinghouse plant.

Part of the plant had to shut down two years ago because of uranium found accumulating in an air pollutiondevice, The Associated Press reported. It was also cited by the federal government this year for failing to plan adequately for a potential radiation burst.

Groundwater below the plant has also been found to be contaminated with nitrate since 1984. While clean up efforts were made, the nitrate was not entirely removed, The State reported.

The leak comes as the Trump administration has promised to assist unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. Its most recent plan, reported in June, would require that grid operators buy power from struggling plants for the sake of national security.

July 27, 2018 Posted by | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

USA Unlikely To See New Nuclear Power Anytime Soon

Study: US Unlikely To See New Nuclear Power Anytime Soon, WABE MOLLY SAMUEL • Nuclear power doesn’t have much of a future in the U.S., according to a recent paperthat says the country is unlikely to see many new reactors in coming decades, unless there are major policy changes.

That means the only nuclear reactors under construction in the country right now, which are here in Georgia, could be the last ones built in the U.S. for years.

A fifth of the nation’s electricity comes from nuclear power, but the number of plants is shrinking. Some have already closed, and others are scheduled to. Low natural gas prices have made building new nuclear reactors less competitive, and renewable energy is getting more competitive………..The findings in the paper weren’t a surprise to Sara Barczak, regional advocacy director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a group that has been critical of the nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle in Georgia.

She said years ago, there were more than 15 new reactors planned in the Southeast, but now there are only the two at Vogtle going forward. A similar project in South Carolina was canceled last year.

“The authors took a hard look at the realities … coming to the conclusion that it’s extremely costly, it takes quite a long time for these things to come online if they do, ever,” she said.

And the idea that nuclear power faces an uncertain future isn’t bad news to everyone.

“Nuclear energy is too expensive and too dangerous, and uses a ton of water,” said Colleen Kiernan, executive director of the group Georgia Conservation Voters.

Instead, she supports investing more in energy efficiency, renewable power and battery storage.

The two nuclear reactors under construction at Plant Vogtle, near Augusta, are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Last year, when the future of that project was up in the air, there were questions of whether it was really needed in Georgia. ….https://www.wabe.org/study-us-unlikely-to-see-new-nuclear-power-anytime-soon/

July 27, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Tactical nuclear weapons for U.S. submarines: why this is a bad idea

U.S. Submarines Will Soon Carry Tactical Nuclear Weapons https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a22550758/us-submarines-will-soon-carry-tactical-nuclear-weapons/  By Kyle Mizokami 

Critics argue it’s a bad idea. Here’s why.
The U.S. Navy’s fleet of ballistic missile submarines will soon carry tactical nuclear weapons, as Congress prepares to fund development of a new, low-yield nuclear warhead. The submarines, which form a functional invulnerable retaliatory force in case of surprise nuclear attack, will soon be able to launch missiles with less powerful tactical nuclear weapons. Not everyone is sold on the new weapon, which critics charge is unnecessary and could lower the threshold for nuclear war.

The U.S. Navy’s fourteen Ohio nuclear ballistic missile submarines provide a powerful deterrent to surprise nuclear attack. The submarines embark on lengthy deterrence patrols, hiding in the world’s oceans, effectively a moving cache of nuclear weapons that an adversary would find extremely difficult to destroy. As long as the subs are at sea, the U.S. maintains the ability to counter a surprise attack with a counterattack of its own.

Every four years, the sitting presidential administration conducts a review of U.S. nuclear forces. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, commissioned by President Trump, calls for replacing some of the existing nuclear warheads on the Ohio-class submarines with low-yield warheads. The goal is to have the ability to strike urgent, time sensitive targets virtually any place on Earth.

Each Ohio submarine carries twenty Trident D-5 missiles, and each missile is outfitted with an unknown number of W76-1 nuclear warheads. (The U.S. keeps the number of submarines at sea and warheads per submarine intentionally ambiguous, although we know Washington has pledged to never deploy more than 240 missiles at sea at any one time.) Now it appears at least some of those warheads will be replaced with the W76-2, which has a much smaller explosive yield.

The Administration argues that the U.S. may need to strike quickly strike targets with tactical nuclear weapons. An example might be a nuclear-armed missile sitting on a North Korean missile launch pad. Most tactical nukes are aircraft delivered bombs, and could take the better part of a day to ready and then reach their target. A tactical nuke delivered by a submarine-launched ballistic missile, on the other hand, could be delivered in less than an hour.

How small a warhead yield are we talking about? That’s a good question. The existing W76-1 warhead has an explosive yield of 100 kilotons (for reference, the Hiroshima bomb was 16 kilotons.) The B61-12 tactical nuclear gravity bomb has a “dial-a-yield” mechanism that allows for yields of .3 (or just 300 tons of TNT), 1.5, 10, and 50 kilotons. The W76-2 would likely have a yield similar to the B61-12’s low end.

Critics, on the other hand, believe the new warhead is unnecessary and dangerous. They believe that the W76-2 is a solution in search of a problem, noting that sudden “bolt from the blue” crisis that suddenly demands a tactical nuclear weapon placed on a target in less than an hour is very unlikely. They believe that existing tactical nuclear weapons would be forward deployed near a potential crisis, making them available more quickly than commonly believed.

The new weapon also comes under fire for being needlessly escalatory. The United States has an overwhelming amount of conventional firepower, which critics of the new weapon argue can just as effectively destroy a time-sensitive threat. Using a tactical nuclear weapon could be just plain unnecessary. Furthermore, unless nukes have already been used in the conflict, the use of the new warhead would cause the the United States to cross the nuclear threshold first, inviting adversaries to use their own nukes against U.S. and allied forces.

Congress is preparing to fund development of the W76-2, to a tune of $65 million. The process won’t involve building any new weapons–instead the government will convert existing W76-1 warheads into low yield versions. Meanwhile, the controversy as to whether the weapons are needed and ultimately dangerous to U.S. national security rages on.

July 27, 2018 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

St. Lucie nuclear power plant is protected against flooding—unless a flood happens

Leaked video of post-Fukushima flooding risk at American nuclear power plant

Flooding at a Florida Nuclear Plant, UCS, DAVE LOCHBAUM, DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR SAFETY PROJECT | JULY 26, 2018, Role of Regulation in Nuclear Plant Safety #5

St. Lucie Unit 1 began operating in 1976. From the beginning, it was required by federal regulations to be protected against flooding from external hazards. After flooding in 2011 led to the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan, the NRC ordered owners to walk down their plants in 2012 to verify conformance with flood protection requirements and remedy all shortcomings. The owner of St. Lucie Unit 1 told the NRC that only one minor deficiency had been identified and it was fixed.

But heavy rainfall in January 2014 flooded the Unit 1 reactor auxiliary building with 50,000 gallons through flood barriers that had been missing since at least 1982. Unit 1 became as wet as the owner’s damp assurances and the NRC’s soggy oversight efforts.

Parade of Flood Protection Promises

Operators achieved the first criticality, or sustained nuclear chain reaction, of the Unit 1 reactor core at the St. Lucie nuclear plant located about miles southeast of Ft. Pierce, Florida at 8:30 am on April 22, 1976. Federal regulations adopted more than five years earlier required the plant to be protected against natural phenomena. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), forerunner to today’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), issued guidance in August 1973 that explicitly informed nuclear plant owners and applicants that the natural phenomena to be protected against included heavy local precipitation.

En route to the AEC issuing an operating license for Unit 1 on March 1, 1976, the owner submitted a Preliminary Safety Analysis Report and later a Final Safety Analysis Report, now called the Updated Final Safety Analysis Report (UFSAR), describing the design features and operational procedures that demonstrated conformance with all applicable regulatory requirements such as flood protection. The design bases external flood was a Probable Maximum Hurricane (PMH) while the design bases internal flood was the postulated rupture of a 14-inch diameter low pressure safety injection system pipe. The analyses summarized in the UFSAR reported the flooding rates, flooding depths needed to submerge and disable safety components, alarms alerting workers to the flooding situation, and response actions and associated times for workers to intervene and successfully mitigate a flooding event.

…………The owner reported to the NRC on December 27, 2012, the results of its evaluation of the missing and degraded conduit seals. The NRC was told that the electrical manholes have 4-inch and 1.5-inch diameter drain lines to the storm water system. In the event of site flooding due to a storm, water could flow through these drain lines into the electrical manholes. When the water filled the manholes to a certain depth, water would flow through the missing and degraded conduit seals into the reactor auxiliary building and disable components needed for safe shutdown of the reactor. The owner reported that the conduit seals had been missing since original construction in the 1970s. This potential hazard no longer existed because the missing and degraded conduit seals had been corrected.

The NRC evaluated the missing and degraded conduit seals reported by the owner via its November 27 and December 27 submittals. On April 25, 2013, the NRC issued its report for its evaluation. The NRC noted:

The licensee’s design basis does not allow for any external leakage into safety-related buildings during a PMH. Unit 1 UFSAR section 3.4.4, states in part, that “All external building penetrations are waterproofed and/or flood protected to preclude the failure of safety related system or component due to external flooding.”

Even though the flood protection deficiency existed for over three decades before being found and fixed, the NRC elected to impose no sanction for violating federal safety regulations.

The NRC reported on July 30, 2013, about additional walkdowns its inspectors made of the Unit 1 and 2 reactor auxiliary buildings. The NRC inspectors also reviewed documents in the owner’s corrective action and work order databases for weather-related problems that could result in site flooding. No problems were found.

Raining on the Promise Parade

On January 9, 2014, it rained on St. Lucie. A culvert in the storm water drain system obstructed by debris caused rain water to pool around the reactor auxiliary building instead of being carried away. Rain water leaked into the reactor auxiliary building via two electrical conduits that lacked the proper flood barriers. A video obtained by UCS via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows water pouring from an electrical junction box mounted on the inside wall of the Unit 1 reactor auxiliary building. (We don’t have a video of this location before the flood, but we know that it wasn’t nearly as wet and noisy.)

An estimated 50,000 gallons of water flooded Unit 1. Workers periodically manipulated valves to allow flood water to drain into the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) pump room sumps where it was transferred to an outdoor collection tank. Their efforts successfully prevented any safety components from being disabled and Unit 1 continuing operating through the rainfall.

When the dust dried, workers found four other electrical conduits that lacked proper flood barriers. The six conduits passed through the reactor auxiliary building wall below the design bases flood elevation. Consequently, they should have been equipped with flood barriers, but the required barriers had not been provided. These six conduits were not part of the plant’s original design, but had been installed via modifications implemented in 1978 and 1982.

The NRC issued a White finding, the second least serious among its Green, White, Yellow and Red classification scheme, on November 19, 2014, for two violations of regulatory requirements:

……..the owner violated federal regulations in 1978 and 1982 by not providing flood barriers with the installed conduit and re-violated federal regulations in 2012 by not finding the flood barriers missing when commanded by NRC to do so after Fukushima.

UCS Perspective

In the letter transmitting the White finding to the plant’s owner, NRC noted that the severity of the two violations of federal regulations would normally have also resulted in a $70,000 fine, but explained:

Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions within the last two years, the NRC considered whether credit was warranted for Corrective Action in accordance with the civil penalty assessment process in Section 2.3.4 of the Enforcement Policy. … Therefore, to encourage prompt identification and comprehensive correction of violations, and in recognition of the absence of previous escalated enforcement action, I have been authorized, after consultation with the Director, Office of Enforcement, not to propose a civil penalty in this case.

What?

“Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions within the last two years” is largely because the owner violated federal regulations by not finding, fixing, and reporting the missing flood barriers on the six electrical conduits that factored in the January 9, 2014, flooding event. So, the reason the owner has a clean slate over the past two years is because the owner violated federal regulations two years ago that would otherwise have uncleaned that slate. Who says crime doesn’t pay?


……… Is the White finding without the usual (and entirely appropriate) $70,000 fine a slap on the wrist of this owner?I don’t know. But I do know that it is a slap in the face of the many plant owners who took the NRC’s order seriously by doing a thorough job of walking down their plants for flooding and earthquake vulnerabilities and remedying all deficiencies (not just a token one or two).

By “encouraging” owners who perform badly, the NRC is discouraging owners who perform well. ……..

For over 30 years, St. Lucie operated without flood barriers it was required by federal regulations to have.  ………

St. Lucie is adequately protected against flooding—unless a flood happens. That flood might reveal still more deficiencies for the NRC to “encourage” the owner to promptly find and comprehensively fix (assuming the reactor still hasn’t melted down.)

The only reason this event goes into the “under-regulation” bin is that there are no lower bins for it.  https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/flooding-at-a-florida-nuclear-plant

July 27, 2018 Posted by | climate change, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Citizens group: Radiation from Grumman plume needs to be addressed

 http://longisland.news12.com/story/38720928/citizens-group-radiation-from-grumman-plume-needs-to-be-addressedBETHPAGE –

A citizens group called Long Island Pure Water held its first public meeting to share with residents what it’s learned about the area under the former Grumman site in Bethpage.

James Rigano, an attorney representing the 70-member group, says radiation from the toxic plume is in the groundwater and must be addressed.

The group has filed a lawsuit against the Navy and the state Department of Environmental Conservation in an effort to have the radiation investigated.

“The Navy and the DEC have refused to investigate it. They have no plans, they have no intentions to investigate it and they would just let it go and be silent about it,” said Rigano.

The Navy has said that the radium found in the plume occurred naturally and that they are continuing to monitor it. Environmentalists have argued that the levels of radium found are far from natural.

Geologist Nick Valkenberg says that the Navy based it’s conclusion on 1,270 samples – but he says none of them were collected on Long Island.

Among those in attendance was Pat Stuart of Bethpage, who says six of eight of her family members have cancer. She says she doesn’t know whether the former Grumman site is to blame.

“I think the amount of time that they’ve known about this, they could be doing better,” Stuart says. “They’re dragging their heels, and there’s a lot of people’s lives at risk here.”

July 27, 2018 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission stifled research into nuclear radiation’s effects on pregnancy

Does living near a nuclear plant give children cancer? https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2018/07/23/does-living-near-a-nuclear-plant-give-children-cancer/by beyondnuclearinternational

US cancer study that would have told us was killed by NRC,  by beyondnuclearinternational, By Cindy Folkers

More than 60 studies have shown increases of childhood leukemia around nuclear facilities worldwide. Despite this finding, there has never been independent analysis in the US examining connections between childhood cancer and nuclear facilities. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had tasked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct such a study, but then withdrew funding, claiming publicly that it would be too expensive. 

n fact, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process reveal that NRC employees had already determined the study would show no impact. Internal emails indicate that staff was presupposing a conclusion for which they had no evidence, demonstrated by statements like “even if you found something that looked like a relationship [between cancer and radiation], you wouldn’t know what to attribute it to,” and “[m]ost people realize that all the evidence shows you’re not going to find anything.” The evidence, however, had not yet been fully collected and examined.

Not protective and unaccountable

While the NRC claims it protects public health, its radiation exposure standards fail to account fully for:


  • impacts on the placenta 
  • impacts on fetal blood forming cells 
  • impacts on fetal and embryonic organs 
  • estrogenic impacts 
  • disproportionate impacts on women 
  • genetic impacts past the second generation 
  • cumulative damage of repeated radiation exposure

NRC exposure data and modeling is designed to demonstrate compliance with the NRC’s regulations but not to assess health impacts. The NRC has already stated numerous times that it believes low doses of radiation, the kind NRC claims its licensees are allowed to release, pose risks so low that health impacts may not be discernible. We don’t know if NRC’s claims of no discernible or attributable public health impact from nuclear power are actually true since no one has ever looked properly. 

Studies in other countries show association between nuclear facilities and childhood cancer. However, given the demonstrable bias of the US NRC toward low doses having no health impact, it is essential that a US study go forward under the auspices of outside, independent experts, in order to examine what is happening in the US.

Ground-breaking study plans were threat to current health assumptions

Under the original and now canceled study, the NRC had tasked the NAS to use the most advanced methods in order to update the study the NRC currently uses to claim its reactors are safe. That study, published in 1990, had several shortcomings including the way the authors define and examine disease, assumptions about doses, location of cases, and who is examined.

The NAS was considering two study designs, one examining specifically children. This study type, dubbed by one expert as a case-control nested in a cohort, is very similar in basic design to studies conducted in France and Germany, which show increases in childhood leukemia around nuclear power facilities.

The NRC scuttled the NAS study in 2015, dubiously claiming it would have cost too much and taken too long. Upon examination, however, it is clear that the NAS study would have challenged the fundamentals of the NRC’s health assessment regime.

To date, most radiation studies have routinely suffered from a host of improper methodologies, making it impossible to discern health impacts. The NAS was considering using new ways of examining the issue by implementing a more detailed, more thorough, publicly shared research protocol. The protocol included:

  • Making the study process and underlying assumptions public while the study was being conducted
  • Allowing public comment during the study process 
  • Standardizing raw health data and making it available to researchers and the public 
  • Standardizing and verifying pollutant data
  • Integrating independently collected pollutant and meteorological data 
  • Examining and redoing the current health models 
  • Tailoring health studies to local conditions
  • Creating new health models, specifically for the radionuclide carbon
    • 14, which concentrates in fetal tissue more than maternal tissue.

    This detailed and accessible protocol could have opened the NRC’s regulatory regime to exhaustive scrutiny, revealing just how inadequate it is for examining health impacts in the first place, never mind protecting public health. Further, with such careful research, NRC could have feared that the NAS study would point to an association between environmental radiation and cancer, as other studies have, although FOIA documents consisting mostly of internal emails did not specifically demonstrate this fear.

    Moribund study could be revived, made better

  • While the NAS child study design and protocol had much to recommend it, it is unclear whether it would have been free of all of the flaws that have historically plagued radiation health assessments. At the point of study cancellation, independent experts still had concerns. 
  • Historically, industry and radiation regulators have insisted that a causal link must be absolutely established between radiation and disease. For protection of the public, however, experts claim the standard should be a lower bar of association with disease. If this study moves forward under the NAS, it needs to relinquish concepts and methods that favor causation. 

    To date, researchers have started radiation health studies by presuming that there will be no impact because doses are too low — a contention that, in reality, remains scientifically unproven. Many studies reveal the opposite. Any new such research needs to ensure that the basis for health assessments is a focus on health outcomes, not dose models that are fraught with uncertainties. 

    While NRC licensees attempt to monitor environmental contamination, the NRC has never incorporated biological monitoring, which might prove useful after spike releases from various facility outages. There are several techniques that have been used in other health studies, which a revived cancer study could weave into any child or adult health assessment.

    A truly independent and scientifically robust study would attempt to address these issues in addition to using the other enlightened protocols the NAS was considering. With the public process and protocol review suggested by the NAS for this now moribund study, perhaps these remaining shortcomings would finally have been addressed as well. The NRC made sure that did not happen. However, according to Ourania Kosti, NAS researcher coordinating the study, the NAS has left the door open to completing it. “I think it is important to update the findings of the 1990 study using better methodologies and information,” Kosti said. “This is the reason the Academies agreed to carry out the update. The Academies remain willing to do the study, if asked to.”

    Cindy Folkers is the radiation and health specialist at Beyond Nuclear.

 

July 25, 2018 Posted by | USA, women | Leave a comment

Who Wants to Buy a Pair of Half-Built Nuclear Reactors? Nobody

 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-23/who-wants-to-buy-a-pair-of-half-built-nuclear-reactors-nobody, By Brian Eckhouse, 

Nobody seems keen to buy the partially built V.C. Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina, so now the state’s biggest power provider is trying to sell off the equipment.

“No other utilities have shown interest in purchasing part or all of the Summer construction project,” Jim Brogdon, interim chief executive officer of Santee Cooper, said in an emailed statement Monday. The board declared the equipment as “surplus property” and authorized the state-owned utility to pursue a sale.

Santee Cooper and its partner Scana Corp. pulled the plugon the project about a year ago after costs ballooned to more than $20 billion and put the two half-done reactors on the block.

July 25, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

It’s a worry that USA’s Dept of Energy aims for cheaper commercial treatment of Hanford nuclear waste

Feds push for low-cost commercial treatment of Hanford waste. State has concerns, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com, RICHLAND, WA

The Department of Energy is making plans to encase 2,000 gallons of waste now held in Hanford’s underground tanks in concrete-like grout, part of a continuing demonstration project.

DOE recently released a fact sheet that indicated its interest in continuing the demonstration project and listing what it sees as the benefits of the project, called the test bed initiative.

The project is a departure from plans to turn radioactive and hazardous chemical waste into a stable glass form at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction at the nuclear reservation.

But DOE still needs to get other parties on board.

The Washington Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, has sent DOE a list of questions about the project. The state would need to issue permits and approvals for some aspects of the demonstration project.

“Current core work at the Hanford Site is already being deferred and delayed due to a lack of funds,” said Maia Bellon, Ecology director, in the letter to DOE. “We are concerned about (Department of) Energy pursuing a new initiative that could divert even more funding away from existing priorities that are tied to consent decree deadlines.”

The project also faces a congressional hurdle.

Language included in the Senate’s fiscal 2019 Hanford budget recommends no money be spent on the test bed initiative.

The Senate budget language must be reconciled with the House budget language for the same year, which was bullish on the project. It directed $15 million be spent on the next phase of the demonstration.

The first phase of the demonstration project, grouting three gallons of the 56 million gallons of waste held in Hanford’s underground tanks, was successfully completed in December.

………The state of Washington and the Hanford Advisory Board have advocated for more double-shell tanks to be built to provide more space for waste to be emptied from single-shell tanks. DOE has been opposed to building more storage tanks, saying it would rather spend money on treating waste………https://www.tri-cityherald.com/latest-news/article215368935.html

July 25, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

USA Congress abandons plan to loosen Cabinet control over nuclear security

Congress drops bid to loosen supervision of nuclear agency  abc   By MATTHEW DALY, ASSOCIATED PRESS, WASHINGTON — Jul 23, 2018, 

Congress is abandoning an effort to loosen Cabinet control over an agency responsible for securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

A provision in a defense policy bill would have removed the National Nuclear Security Administration from direct control of the Energy Department, where it’s been housed since its creation in 2000.

The provision was dropped as House and Senate lawmakers negotiated a compromise defense bill, aides said Monday. The defense bill could come up for a vote in the House this week.

The Trump administration and senior lawmakers from both parties opposed the nuclear provision, but it was included in a defense bill passed by the Senate in June.

The measure would have empowered the NNSA to act nearly on its own, freed from what a report by the Senate Armed Services Committee calls a “flawed DOE organizational process” that has led to “weak accountability, … insufficient program and budget expertise and poor contract management.”

That report cites a series of delays and cost overruns at the agency, including a contentious project to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into fuel for commercial reactors at a site in South Carolina.

The White House and Energy Secretary Rick Perry oppose the reorganization, saying it would usurp Perry’s authority to set policy in crucial areas. The bill also would make the nuclear agency’s general counsel independent of the Energy Department’s legal division……….

Criticism of the nuclear agency isn’t new.

A congressional commission led by a former Army undersecretary and retired Navy admiral concluded in 2014 that it had failed in its mission and relied too heavily on private contractors that had turned it into a massive jobs program with duplicative functions and a “dysfunctional management and operations relationship.”

The commission, however, did support the current oversight arrangement.

Perry told Congress this year that there have been “historically questionable expenditures of dollars” by the NNSA, including at the South Carolina nuclear project, but he said officials were working to ensure taxpayers “are getting a good return on our investment.”

Perry has moved to cancel the South Carolina project, known as the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, but it remains open — at a cost of $1.2 million a day — amid a legal challenge by the state. The project’s cost has ballooned from $1.4 billion in 2004 to more than $17 billion, and completion is decades away. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/congress-considers-changing-supervision-nuclear-weapons-56751787

 

July 25, 2018 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

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