Probe Finds Ongoing Radioactive Leaks at Illinois Nuclear Plants VOA News, 17 Nov 17, Radioactive waste continues to pour from Exelon’s Illinois nuclear power plants more than a decade after the discovery of chronic leaks led to national outrage, a $1.2 million government settlement and a company vow to guard against future accidents, an investigation by a government watchdog group found.
Since 2007, there have been at least 35 reported leaks, spills or other accidental releases in Illinois of water contaminated with radioactive tritium, a byproduct of nuclear power production and a carcinogen at high levels, a Better Government Association review of federal and state records shows.
No fines were issued for the accidents, all of which were self-reported by the company.
The most recent leak of 35,000 gallons (132,000 liters) occurred over two weeks in May and June at Exelon’s Braidwood plant, southwest of Chicago. The same facility was the focus of a community panic in the mid-2000s after a series of accidents stirred debate over the safety of aging nuclear plants.
A 2014 incident at Exelon’s Dresden facility in Grundy County involved the release of about 500,000 gallons (1,900,000 liters) of highly radioactive water. Contamination was later found in the plant’s sewer lines and miles away in the Morris, Illinois, sewage treatment plant.
Another leak was discovered in 2007 at the Quad Cities plant in Cordova. It took eight months to plug and led to groundwater radiation readings up to 375 times of that allowed under federal safe drinking water standards.
Exelon had threatened to close the Quad Cities plant, but relented last year after Gov. Bruce Rauner signed bailout legislation authorizing big rate hikes……..
David Lochbaum, an analyst with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, says “Leaks aren’t supposed to happen. Workers and the public could be harmed. There is a hazard there.”
Among the 61 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S., more than half have reactors that are at or near the end of their originally expected lifespans — including the Dresden and Quad Cities plants.
Associated Press Augusta Chronicle, 17 Nov 17 WASHINGTON — Congress on Thursday sent President Donald Trump a sweeping defense policy bill authorizing a $700 billion budget for the military, including $340 million for MOX at Savannah River Site. The defense authorization bill for 2018 sailed through the Senate by voice vote. The House had approved the measure earlier this week.
Public Watchdogs Files Lawsuit to Stop Burial of Spent Nuclear Waste at SONGS San Clemente Times, By Staff, November 16, 2017 By Eric Heinz
An organization that scrutinizes government activity is making a last effort to prevent the storage of spent nuclear fuel rods at San Onofre.
Public Watchdogs, a nonprofit organization based in La Mesa, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday against the United States government, the Department of Defense and Secretary James Mattis, as well as Southern California Edison, the operators of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), and San Diego Gas and Electric to prevent the storage of more than 3.6 million pounds of radioactive fuel rods.
The lawsuit claims that under Public Law 88-82, a declaration from 1963 that allows the secretary of the Navy to authorize a permit for the nuclear power plant, storage of the spent nuclear waste was not authorized in the law.
The Navy owns the land where SONGS and Camp Pendleton are established.
Public Watchdogs is seeking an injunction that would find the “storage of spent nuclear fuel at SONGS is not authorized by, and is outside the scope of the authority granted to the Federal Defendants under, Public Law 88-82,” as well as “an order or judgment enjoining Federal Defendants from authorizing SCE and SDGE from storing spent nuclear fuel at SONGS and further enjoining SCE and SDGE from storing spent fuel at SONGS……. http://www.sanclementetimes.com/public-watchdogs-files-lawsuit-stop-burial-spent-nuclear-waste-songs/
Feinstein seeks contact with FBI informant in Russia nuclear bribery case, The Hill
BY JOHN SOLOMON – 11/16/17Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has sought access to an undercover informant who helped the FBI chronicle bribery, kickbacks and money laundering inside Moscow’s nuclear industry as part of an Obama-era Russia corruption case.
Heather Sawyer, the general counsel for Feinstein — the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — sent an email this week to the lawyer for the former FBI informant, William Campbell, seeking to be included in conversations involving the committee.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the committee, secured an agreement with the Justice Department to allow Campbell to talk to Congress about the evidence he gathered for the FBI from 2009 to 2014 when he worked as a consultant for Tenex, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned commercial nuclear arm Rosatom.
Campbell’s work led to the indictments of three major players, including Tenex official Vadim Mikerin, a key Russian nuclear figure inside the United States who was sentenced to 48 months in prison in December 2015.
Grassley wants to know what the FBI did with the evidence it first gathered in 2009 that Mikerin and others inside the Russian nuclear industry were engaged in illegal activity.
The GOP chairman also wants to know whether the Obama administration was alerted to the illegal activity before it approved the sale of U.S. uranium assets to Rosatom and made other favorable decisions worth billions of dollars to Russia’s nuclear industry………
SCE&G proposes gas, solar for Summer replacement , WNN, 17 November 2017
South Carolina Electric & Gas Company (SCE&G) has unveiled a proposal that would see some of the capacity that should have been provided by the VC Summer nuclear power plant project replaced with gas and solar generation. The company’s shareholders would absorb the net construction costs of the abandoned nuclear project.
The proposal issued yesterday by the Scana Corporation subsidiary provides about $4.8 billion in benefits to SCE&G customers, and will require approval from South Carolina’s Public Service Commission (PSC).
SCE&G proposes acquiring a 540 MWe gas-fired power plant to replace “more than” 40% of the power that was projected to be provided from the two-unit Summer plant. The $180 million purchase price of the gas-fired plant will be borne by Scana shareholders, who will also forego any shareholder return over the life of the plant. The company said it will also add about 100 MWe of large-scale solar capacity to its system.
Electric rates for SCE&G’s customers – commercial, industrial and residential – will roll back to where they would have been in March 2015, which represents a reduction of about 3.5%. Scana shareholders will absorb the net nuclear construction costs through lower earnings over 50 years, which the company says will account for about $2.9 billion of the total $4.8 billion.
NASA reveals ‘nuclear engine’ that could provide power to the first humans on Mars
NASA plans to test the Kilopower engines on Earth this year
Will use a uranium rector the size of a toilet roll to create heat
High efficiency Stirling engine would then convert this to electricity, By Mark Prigg For Dailymail.com, 15 November 2017 |NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) has provided multi-year funding to the Kilopower project.
The technology could produce from one to 10 kilowatts of electrical power, continuously for 10 years or more. The average U.S. household runs on about five kilowatts of power.
Testing is due to start in November and go through early next year, with NASA partnering with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Nevada National Security Site to appraise fission power technologies.
‘The Kilopower test program will give us confidence that this technology is ready for space flight development.
‘We’ll be checking analytical models along the way for verification of how well the hardware is working,’ said Lee Mason, STMD’s principal technologist for Power and Energy Storage at NASA Headquarters.
NASA is set to begin testing a radical ‘nuclear engine’ that could provide power for astronauts on the Martian surface.
Dubbed the ‘Kilopower’ it would use a uranium rector the size of a toilet roll to create heat.
In a show of power, Japan, US begin joint naval drills off Korean Peninsula Trump’s harsh rhetoric, coupled with the North Korean regime’s ongoing weapons tests, have escalated regional tension to unprecedented levels
IANS | Tokyo Business Standard, November 16, 2017Japan and the US on Thursday began joint naval drills south of the Korean Peninsula in a show of power against North Korea.
The US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three destroyers and around 14,000 troops to participate in the drills that will be conducted until November 26 in waters near the Okinawa archipelago, the US Navy said in a statement cited by Efe news.
Below is a statement by Lisbeth Gronlund, senior scientist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“I strongly support this effort to change U.S. nuclear weapons policy. The United States should take all steps possible to prevent a nuclear war—by increasing the threshold for deliberate use and reducing the risk of accidental use.
“Under current policy, the United States would consider using nuclear weapons first against Russia, China and North Korea. Deliberately starting a nuclear war with any of these countries would be disastrous. The United States would increase its own security and that of the rest of the world by eliminating the option of using nuclear weapons first and declaring that the only purpose of its nuclear weapons is to deter—and, if necessary, respond to—nuclear attacks on itself and its allies.”
Peach Bottom nuclear plant operator fails drug test, Lancaster Online, AD CRABLE | Staff Writer, 16 Nov 17, A control room operator at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant has been barred from the controls after the employee failed a controlled substance test.
Plant owner Exelon notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week that a licensed operator tested positive following a fitness-for-duty test.
The NRC is investigating and has asked Exelon for more information. The operator’s test showed the presence of a controlled substance, according to Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.
The operator’s access to the plant has been frozen, pending further reviews of the employee, Sheehan said.
“We consider control room operators to be in a position of high responsibility and, in line with that, a failed test indicating substance use that could impair job performance is taken very seriously,” he said.
“A positive drug or alcohol test involving a control room operator is a rare occurrence. It takes years of training to become an operator and then regular retraining and requalification in subsequent years.”
Every U.S. nuclear power plant owner is required to maintain a comprehensive fitness-for-duty program that includes random and for-cause testing for drug and alcohol use.
World War 3: US military command ‘ERROR’ sent North Korea ‘false nuclear arsenal’ info
US MILITARY command tweeted false information about its nuclear arsenal sparking fears of an escalation from paranoid North Korea. Express UK, By TARYN TARRANT-CORNISHAn article that falsely boasted of “secret” US silos and B-1 bombers that can drop nuclear warheads was quickly debunked by experts online.
It is feared this move could lead to a catastrophic escalation of tensions with a military force seeming to confirm Pyongyang’s suspicions that B-1s can carry nukes, Asian security expert Van Jackson has warned.
The article that US Strategic Command shared said: “The USS Kentucky is part of what is called the ‘nuclear triad’.
“The triad are the three components of a nuclear defence system: land-based missiles fired from secret silos, B-1 bombers that can drop them from the air, and submarine launched ballistic missiles.” This could provoke a retaliation from North Korea next time the US flies a B-1 bomber over the Korean peninsula, it is feared.
SCE&G will rollback residential rates to where they would have been in March 2015, resulting in an immediate annual reduction to rates by about $90 million, or 3.5 percent, the company said.
It said there would be $2.9 billion in reduced shareholder earnings over 50 years as they absorb the nuclear construction amortization costs. The company also said it would write off $810 million. “This proposal gives customers additional power generation while also lowering rates for customers,” he said.
SCE&G said it will add a 540-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant to its system, replacing more than 40 percent of the projected power that was to be provided from the V.C. Summer nuclear construction project.
The company also said it will add about 100 megawatts of large-scale solar energy to its system.
V.C. Summer, which was majority-owned by Scana, was ditched in July after estimated costs to build two nuclear reactors spiraled to as much as $24 billion.
Analysts have said the failure of the Summer project and the bankruptcy in March of its designer and contractor, Westinghouse Electric, will likely result in no new nuclear reactors being built in the United States for many years, if ever.
In October, Scana announced the resignation of its chief executive, Kevin Marsh, as the utility company grappled with billions of dollars in cost overruns tied to the abandoned nuclear project.
Summer was one of only two new nuclear power plants under construction in the United States. The other is at Southern Co’s Vogtle plant in Georgia, which is still being built. The two
Vogtle reactors are expected to be completed in 2021 and 2022.
Senators deadlock in debate over whether to restrain Trump’s nuclear launch authority Chicago Tribune,Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post, 14 Nov 17
Senators trying to prevent President Donald Trump from launching an unprovoked nuclear attack were stymied Tuesday, after a panel of experts warned them against rewriting laws to restrain a commander in chief many worry is impulsive and unpredictable enough to start a devastating international crisis.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who has said Trump’s threats to global rivals could put the country “on the path to World War III,” began Tuesday’s session warning of the inherent danger in a system where the president has “sole authority” to give launch orders there are “no way to revoke.” By the time Corker emerged from the hearing — the first to address the president’s nuclear authority in over four decades — he was at a loss for what to do next.
Why the desire for so many nukes? There is, in fact, a dirty little secret behind the massive US arsenal: It has more to do with the power and profits of this country’s major weapons makers than it does with any imaginable strategic considerations.
It may not surprise you to learn that there’s nothing new about the influence the nuclear weapons lobby has over Pentagon spending priorities. The successful machinations of the makers of strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, intended to keep taxpayer dollars flowing their way, date back to the dawn of the nuclear age and are the primary reason President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex” and warned of its dangers in his 1961 farewell address.
Without the development of such weapons, that complex simply would not exist in the form it does today. The Manhattan Project, the vast scientific-industrial endeavor that produced the first such weaponry during World War II, was one of the largest government-funded research and manufacturing projects in history. Today’s nuclear warhead complex is still largely built around facilities and locations that date back to that time.
The Manhattan Project was the first building block of the permanent arms establishment that came to rule Washington. In addition, the nuclear arms race against that other superpower of the era, the Soviet Union, was crucial to the rationale for a permanent war state. In those years, it was the key to sustaining the building, funding, and institutionalizing of the arms establishment.
As Eisenhower noted in that farewell address of his, “a permanent arms industry of vast proportions” had developed for a simple enough reason. In a nuclear age, America had to be ready ahead of time. As he put it, “We can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.” And that was for a simple enough reason: In an era of potential nuclear war, any society could be destroyed in a matter of hours. There would be no time, as in the past, to mobilize or prepare after the fact.
In addition, there were some very specific ways in which the quest for more nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles drove Eisenhower to give that farewell address. One of his biggest fights was over whether to build a new nuclear bomber. The Air Force and the arms industry were desperate to do so. Eisenhower thought it a waste of money, given all the other nuclear delivery vehicles the United States was building at the time. He even cancelled the bomber, only to find himself forced to revive it under immense pressure from the arms lobby. In the process, he lost the larger struggle to rein in the nation’s nuclear buildup and corral the burgeoning military-industrial complex.
At the same time, there were rumblings in the intelligence community, the military establishment, the media, and Congress about a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. The notion was that Moscow had somehow jumped ahead of the United States in developing and building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). There was no definitive intelligence to substantiate the claim (and it was later proved to be false). However, a wave of worst-case scenarios leaked by or promoted by intelligence analysts and eagerly backed by industry propaganda made that missile gap part of the everyday news of the time.
Such fears were then exaggerated further, thanks to hawkish journalists of the era like Joseph Alsop and prominent Democratic senators like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, as well as Stuart Symington, who just happened to be a friend and former colleague of an executive at the aircraft manufacturing company Convair, which, in turn, just happened to make ICBMs. As a result, he lobbied hard on behalf of a Pentagon plan to build more of that corporation’s Atlas ballistic missiles, while Kennedy would famously make the nonexistent missile gap a central theme of his successful 1960 campaign for the presidency.
Eisenhower couldn’t have been more clear-eyed about all of this. He saw the missile gap for the fiction it was or, as he put it, a “useful piece of political demagoguery” for his opponents. “Munitions makers,” he insisted, “are making tremendous efforts towards getting more contracts and in fact seem to be exerting undue influence over the Senators.”
Once Kennedy took office, it became all too apparent that there was no missile gap, but by then it hardly mattered. The damage had been done. Billions of dollars more were flowing into the nuclear-industrial complex to build up an American arsenal of ICBMs already unmatched on the planet.
The techniques that the arms lobby and its allies in government used more than half a century ago to promote sky-high nuclear weapons spending continue to be wielded to this day. The twenty-first-century arms complex employs tools of influence that Kennedy and his compatriots would have found familiar indeed—including millions of dollars in campaign contributions that flow to members of Congress and the continual employmentof 700 to 1,000 lobbyists to influence them. At certain moments, in other words, there have been nearly two arms lobbyists for every member of Congress. Much of this sort of activity remains focused on ensuring that nuclear weapons of all types are amply financed and that the funding for the new generations of the bombers, submarines, and missiles that will deliver them stays on track.
When traditional lobbying methods don’t get the job done, the industry’s argument of last resort is jobs—in particular, jobs in the states and districts of key members of Congress. This process is aided by the fact that nuclear weapons facilities are spread remarkably widely across the country. There are nuclear weapons labs in California and New Mexico; a nuclear weapons testing and research site in Nevada; a nuclear warhead assembly and disassembly plant in Texas; a factory in Kansas City, Missouri, that builds nonnuclear parts for such weapons; and a plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that enriches uranium for those same weapons. There are factories or bases for ICBMs, bombers, and ballistic missile submarines in Connecticut, Georgia, Washington State, California, Ohio, Massachusetts, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Such a nuclear geography ensures that a striking number of congressional representatives will automatically favor more spending on nuclear weapons.
In reality, the jobs argument is deeply flawed. As the experts know, virtually any other activity into which such funding flowed would create significantly more jobs than Pentagon spending. A study by economists at the University of Massachusetts, for example, found infrastructure investment would create one and one-half times as many jobs as Pentagon funding and education spending twice as many.
In most cases it hasn’t seemed to matter that the jobs claims for weapons spending are grotesquely exaggerated and better alternatives litter the landscape. The argument remains remarkably potent in states and communities that are particularly dependent on the Pentagon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, members of Congress from such areas are disproportionately represented on the committees that decide how much will be spent on nuclear and conventional weaponry…….. https://www.thenation.com/article/whos-really-driving-nuclear-weapons-production/
Senator Chris Murphy made a damning assessment of US President Donald Trump on Tuesday as Congress discussed if the country’s leader should have the authority to launch a nuclear attack.
Mr Trump has recently been taunting North Korea and vowed to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on the rogue nation if its nuclear armament program was not pulled back.
While the hearing was not about Mr Trump specifically, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy appeared to refer to the 45th president as “unstable” and “volatile” when discussing concerns over his ability to launch a missile attack.
“We are concerned that the president is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with US national-security interests,” Mr Murphy said in Congress.
“Let’s just recognise the exceptional nature of this moment.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said the examination was about the structure that allows presidents to make critical decisions.
“Making the decision to go to war of any sort is a heavy responsibility for our nation’s elected leaders,” Senator Corker said.
“And the decision to use nuclear weapons is the most consequential of all.”
The topic on the US president’s authority to launch a nuclear missile has not been discussed in nearly four decades since a four-day hearing.
Mr Corker has broken publicly with Trump, warning last month that the president was setting the nation “on the path to World War III” with his statements about North Korea and verbal jousting with Kim.
Robert Kehler, who headed US Strategic Command from 2011 to 2013, referred to a basic military precept: “The military is obligated to follow legal orders, but is not obligated to follow illegal orders.”
So, what constitutes a legal order? Kehler, a retired US Air Force general, said the military principles of “necessity” and “proportionality” also apply to decisions about nuclear weapons.
But when asked what he would do if he determined that a presidential nuclear order was illegal, Kehler hesitated about such a hypothetical.
“I don’t know exactly,” he responded. “The human factor kicks in.”
In such a situation, said Bryan McKeon, a former undersecretary of defense under Barack Obama, the president could replace the commander in question, or even the secretary of defense.
“But you’d have a real constitutional crisis on your hands,” McKeon said.
The discomfort among some Republican senators was visible.
Evidence Mounts That Coal, Nuclear Interests Influenced Perry’s Grid Resiliency Rule
The political pressures behind DOE’s request to declare coal and nuclear power plants as vital to a reliable grid. GreenTech Media, JEFF ST. JOHN NOVEMBER 13, 2017 Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s effort to change federal energy regulations to favor coal and nuclear power plants in the name of grid resilience has received a barrage of criticism for misstating the facts, ignoring the evidence, and attempting to ram through a major disruption in interstate energy markets on an emergency timeframe.
While Perry insists the initiative is necessary to “rebalance the market” and “keep our families warm,” there’s mounting evidence the proposal was taken from an industry playbook.
The accelerated timeline for DOE’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) is outside of the norm for such a radical market shift, but it does match up with a major political ask from one of President Donald Trump’s key supporters in the coal industry: Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy.
Over the past week, new details have emerged linking efforts by the outspoken private coal company owner to obtain federal financial aid for the industry, as well as the DOE’s highly unusual decision in September to directly ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for an emergency intervention in the country’s interstate energy markets.
The interests of Murray Energy run through FirstEnergy, the Ohio-based utility that’s facing near-term financial challenges in managing money-losing coal plants in the region served by grid operator PJM — the same region that would be most heavily hit by DOE’s proposal. As the Houston Chronicle noted in a Sunday article, more than 70 percent of Murray Energy’s coal delivered to U.S. power plants went to PJM.
And the timeline for FirstEnergy to seek relief is fast approaching. In its third-quarter 2017 earnings report late last month, the company noted that it has cash on hand to fund operations through March 2018. But starting in the second quarter, with $515 million of maturing debt that will “likely to be difficult to refinance” coming due, and absent any moves by Ohio state regulators to re-regulate its plants, the company’s power generation division, FirstEnergy Solutions, may be forced to “restructure debt and other financial obligations with its creditors and/or seek protection under U.S. bankruptcy laws” — a move that could push FirstEnergy to do the same. …….
Appointees with long connections to Murray, FirstEnergy and coal industry
PUCO recently joined a long list of state regulators, former FERC commissioners, and other energy-sector insiders in coming out against the NOPR on the grounds that it will raise costs and prop up inefficient resources to the detriment of cheaper, less polluting alternatives. A collection of 14 different energy industry trade groups — ranging from wind and solar, to oil and natural gas — have argued that the NOPR’s proposed payments go beyond those provided to so-called “reliability must-run” power plants, amounting to a bailout to keep certain units running.
FERC has said it will vote on the NOPR in a December 11 meeting. Most observers, including former FERC members, don’t believe that FERC will be able to turn the vague NOPR document into a final rule by next month. But with coal industry allies playing major roles in the agencies tasked with reviewing and implementing the NOPR, opponents are worried that FERC could take some action to prop up coal plants in the short term, while leaving the NOPR’s larger challenges to a future date.
Longtime FirstEnergy lobbyist Sean Cunningham, now executive director of DOE’s office of energy policy and systems analysis, has been the sole DOE representative outside of Perry himself to speak publicly in support of the NOPR. In a debate last month, Cunningham repeated the assertion that coal and nuclear plants weren’t being valued properly and that failing to act on the NOPR could jeopardize grid reliability in the short term.
Meanwhile, FERC acting chairman Neil Chatterjee, a Trump appointee and former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken), said last week that he’s working on an interim plan to “rescue” FirstEnergy’s ailing coal plants, based largely on the utility’s proposals in comments before FERC.
Chatterjee said he has met with FirstEnergy Corp. CEO Chuck Jones to “really kick the tires on what they proposed and challenge them on some of what they had put forward.” Under FirstEnergy’s plan, plants would receive a monthly payment from grid operators that fully offsets operation costs and includes a “fair return on equity.”https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/murray-energy-firstenergy-doe-coal-nuclear-nopr#gs.Rt5kXnk
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