Attorney: Utilities meant to hide report on nuclear project, abc news, BY SEANNA ADCOX, ASSOCIATED PRESS, COLUMBIA, S.C. — Sep 15, 2017
For at least two years before a South Carolina nuclear power construction project was abandoned, its owners had a report that they intended to keep secret showing the reactors couldn’t be completed as planned, an attorney for a legislative panel investigating the debacle said Friday.
“The report is very, very troubling,” said Scott Elliott, hired by the House for the hearings. “It was designed to never see the light of day.”
State-owned Santee Cooper and South Carolina Electric & Gas hired Bechtel Corp. in 2015 to assess construction on two new reactors at V.C. Summer Nuclear Station north of Columbia. The utilities were briefed on the findings later that year, though the official report is dated February 2016.
Essentially, the report says “this wasn’t going to work. … If things don’t change dramatically, you’ll never finish these projects,” Elliott said. Its findings included a lack of proper oversight by SCE&G, the majority owner.
SCE&G should have disclosed the report’s existence as it successfully sought approval in 2015 and 2016 to spend more on the project. Instead, executives told state regulators they were confident in the presented completion dates, said Elliott, also an attorney for South Carolina Energy Users Committee, a coalition of large industries that need a lot of energy.
Legislators accused SCE&G executives of intentionally hiding the report from regulators and lawmakers, withholding information that could have resulted in “no” votes.
…..The utilities abandoned the project July 31 after jointly spending nearly $10 billion, leaving nearly 6,000 people jobless. A 2007 state law allows SCE&G to recoup its debt from customers if state regulators determine money was spent prudently.
Legislators who are seeking ways to fix the law want to stop that. Customers have already paid more than $2 billion on interest costs through a series of rate hikes since 2009. The project accounts for 18 percent of SCE&G customers’ electric bills.
Elliott said the Bechtel report puts into question every decision made by the utilities over at least the last two years.
……The Bechtel report’s existence became public as executives testified at a legislative hearing last month. Lawmakers threatened to subpoena it if the utilities refused to provide it. Gov. Henry McMaster released it to reporters earlier this month, over SCANA’s written objections, after receiving a copy from Santee Cooper…….http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/legislators-review-secret-report-nuclear-project-49869620
Paul Waldon, fight to stop nuclear waste dump in flinders ranges sa, 15 Sept 17, Today the 15th of September is another red letter day in the nuclear arena, with the 72nd anniversary of the death of Haroutune Krikor “Harry” Daglian, physicist with the Manhattan Project. Harry was NOT the only person working on the project to die from “Acute Radiation Syndrome” but he was the youngest at only 24 years of age. Three members of the big four were to follow Harry to a early grave with cancer deemed to be from the radiation they were subjected to during their time on the Manhattan and other projects. The contaminated materials left over from the development of the bombs are still having a impact on life and the environment, and will continue to do so for generations. However the deaths and contamination on American soil from the development of the bombs, outnumber Japans. RIP Harry. https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
The U.S. Department of Energy has extended a contract for the management of the government’s only underground nuclear waste repository.Sept. 15, 2017CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy has extended a contract for the management of the government’s only underground nuclear waste repository that will allow the Nuclear Waste Partnership to continue operating the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad through September 2020.
WIPP resumed operations earlier this year following a shutdown that followed a 2014 radiation release caused by inappropriate packaging of waste by workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The extension of the contract with Nuclear Waste Partnership will include a new safety focus and cost incentives. It’s good through Sept. 30, 2020, and can be extended beyond that.
As Nation Reels from Disasters, 300+ Groups Endorse Sweeping Climate Bill
“Disaster after climate-induced disaster is proving that we can’t fail to address our rampant burning of fossil fuels—too much is at stake.” Common Dreams, by Jessica Corbett, staff writer, 15 Sept 17
In the wake of massive storms that scientistsagree were made much worse by global warming, more than 300 national, state, and local groups have endorsed the OFF Act, proposed legislation that’s been called “the strongest climate bill ever.“
The Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act, or OFF Act, was introduced this month by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who said the proposal “paves the way for the United States to replace fossil fuels with 100 percent clean energy generation and use by 2035.”
The coalition backing the legislation—which includes Food & Water Watch, Progressive Democrats of America, National Nurses United, Our Revolution, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, and hundreds of others—sent a joint letter to lawmakers explaining why the bill is more necessary than ever.
“We are in a climate emergency. The threat of climate chaos from global warming is real, and the evidence continues to mount,” the groups stated. “The OFF Act will stop fossil fuel projects, create tens of thousands of new jobs while transforming our energy economy, begin to address environmental injustices, and put us on the path towards the national mobilization necessary to address the climate crisis.”
Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, said the number of organizations coming together is reflective of the concerns shared by millions of Americans. “From small communities and large urban areas,” Smith said, “Americans understand that in order to address the climate emergency with an appropriate level of urgency, we must take effective, rapid action to get off fossil fuels.”……https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/09/14/nation-reels-disasters-300-groups-endorse-sweeping-climate-bill
Rowley activist and presidential candidate and nuclear safety activist Steve Comley Sr. has spent decades challenging the Seabrook, N.H., nuclear power plant about safety concerns, and now he has upped his effort in big, bold letters.
Comley and his non-profit group We The People have put a massive electronic sign up along Route 1 in Salisbury warning President Donald Trump that the region has no clear evacuation plan in the event of a nuclear catastrophe at the plant.
“CAUTION PRESIDENT TRUMP; SEABROOK NUCLEAR ZONE NO EVACUATION POSSIBLE; INVESTIGATE THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION,” the sign reads.
It also includes a quote from Albert Einstein: “To the Village Square We Must Take the Facts Of Atomic Energy, From There Must Come America’s Voice.”…….Comley ran for president as a Republican in the New Hampshire primary in 2016, garnering just 31 votes statewide, and he says he’s running for president again in 2020. http://ipswich.wickedlocal.com/news/201
Elon Musk: World War 3 Will Be Started by a Preemptive AI Nuclear Attack http://theantimedia.org/elon-musk-world-war-3-ai-nuclear-attack/ by Jake Anderson, (ANTIMEDIA) — Stating in a tweet this week that artificial intelligence would be the most likely cause of World War 3, entrepreneur and tech mogul Elon Musk added a new chapter to his crusade against unregulated AI. Coming on the heels of Vladimir Putin’s pronouncement that the best innovator in AI technology would be the next global leader — as well as Musk’s own statement that AI is more dangerous than North Korea — the new tweet comes amid a peak of global tensions regarding nuclear ICBMs.
Musk’s tweet, which was a response to Putin’s fairly obvious statement last week, made it clear that the SpaceX and Tesla founder believes the next nuclear strike is more likely to come from a preemptive AI attack than from a nation-state. With all three major superpowers — the United States, China, and Russia — pursuing militarized AI, Musk also asserted that governments, not corporations, would be the ones to control the existential risk presented by AI.
Musk has positioned himself as a neo-Luddite in the AI race but has also made the controversial claim that the best way for us to safeguard human civilization against runaway AI is to essentially merge our minds symbiotically with AI technology. This is why his company, OpenAI, is working on the creation of a “neural lace” that will act as a transhumanist brain-machine interface (BMI) capable of merging the human mind with AI in a cloud-type environment.
Is Musk’s posturing a brilliant marketing move meant to permanently nestle his brand into the next generation of tech development? Or does he legitimately fear a preemptive nuclear strike by an advanced artificial intelligence that sees the human race — not killer robots — as the greatest threat to life on Earth?
There’s no great answer for nuclear waste, but almost anything is better than perching it on the Pacific, LA Times. 12 Sept 17 One of the great failures in U.S. energy policy was that we’ve never figured out what to do with the lethally radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. That’s why the owners of the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear plant have had little choice but to keep their spent fuel rods on site, bundled up in concrete bunkers at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, dangerously close to an earthquake fault and millions of people — and hope for the best until the federal government finds a good place to put the deadly waste.The feds don’t have one yet, but developments in court and in the marketplace could help move San Onofre’s waste somewhere considerably less risky. As part of a legal settlement earlier this month, Southern California Edison, which is the majority owner of the shuttered nuclear power plant, promised to make a good-faith effort to find a safer home for the 3.55 million pounds of nuclear waste at the plant. That’s a welcome shift for the company, which has been focused on moving its spent fuel rods into safer containers on-site.
And unlike in the past, it may have several choices for where to send the waste. Although there still are no federally licensed nuclear waste dumps, despite the billions of dollars ratepayers have paid to fund them, as of this year there are two proposals for temporary storage sites that could conceivably be ready for business by the early 2020s……..
Granted, when it comes to waste that’s going to remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years, there are no great solutions. But there are certainly better ones than continuing to hold more than 70,000 tons of nuclear fuel at about 120 operating and decommissioned nuclear plants across the country in facilities never intended for long-term storage, then hoping for the best.http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-nuclear-waste-storage-20170911-story.html
In a joint statement, the experts said the 2015 agreement, negotiated by the Obama administration and the governments of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, was a “net plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.”
Because of the monitoring powers contained in the agreement, they said, Iran’s capability to produce nuclear weapons had been sharply reduced. They also said the agreement made it “very likely that any possible future effort by Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, even a clandestine program, would be detected promptly.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly assailed the agreement — a signature achievement of his predecessor — describing it as ”a terrible deal” and a giveaway to Iran.
He also has said that he believes Iran is violating the accord, an assertion that has been contradicted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear monitor that polices Iran’s compliance. The accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, severely limited Iran’s nuclear activities in return for ending or easing many sanctions that were hurting the Iranian economy.
Under an American law, Mr. Trump must recertify every 90 days that Iran is complying with the nuclear accord, or the American sanctions that were lifted could be reinstated. The next 90-day deadline is in mid-October.
When he reluctantly signed the last recertification in July, Mr. Trump said “if it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days ago.”
The possibility that Mr. Trump may find a reason to declare Iran noncompliant, regardless of the merits, alarmed the nonproliferation experts.
They warned in their statement that “unilateral action by the United States, especially on the basis of unsupported contentions of Iranian cheating, would isolate the United States.”
Last week, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, suggested in a Washington speech that the president would be justified in decertifying Iran even if it was technically honoring the accord.
Iranian officials have said that any resumption of the nuclear-related sanctions by the United States would violate the accord.
Whether that would lead to its unraveling is unclear, but President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has suggested the country could quickly restore the nuclear-fuel enrichment capabilities that had been limited by the agreement.
The signers of the statement urging Mr. Trump to respect the agreement are experts in nuclear nonproliferation diplomacy from around the world.
They included Nobuyasu Abe, commissioner of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission; Hans Blix, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Thomas E. Shea, a former safeguards official at the International Atomic Energy Agency; and Thomas M. Countryman, a former assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.
The statement was organized by the Arms Control Association, a disarmament advocacy group based in Washington.
The Trump administration’s concerns with Iran have come as the United Nations Security Council, prodded by the United States, has ratcheted up pressure on North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile testing and resume disarmament talks.
Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, expressed worry that if the administration abandoned the Iran agreement, any possibility of inducing North Korea to negotiate would be lost.
“Given that we are already struggling to contain the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis, it would be extremely unwise for the president to initiate steps that could unravel the highly successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which would create a second major nonproliferation crisis,” she said.
Tensions surface between UK and US over Iran nuclear deal, But Boris Johnson and Rex Tillerson unite in urging Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out against massacre of Rohingya, Guardian, Patrick Wintour, 15 Sept 17, Tensions between the US and UK over whether to tear up the Iran nuclear deal were exposed on Thursday when the secretary of state Rex Tillerson said the US viewed Iran in default of the deal’s expectations, but the British foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged the world to have faith in its potential to create a more open Iran.
Macomd Daily 12th Sept 2017, The Canadian federal government has all but approved plans by Ontario Power
Generation to build an underground nuclear waste dump on the shores of Lake
Huron but U.S. officials are still making their objections known.
,Newsweek, BY MELINA DELKICOperators of a nuclear power plant in the path of Hurricane Irma kept one reactor operating during the cyclone, despite failing to bring the plant up to federal safety code and long-known concerns about the danger faced by nuclear power plants during power outages.
The Turkey Point nuclear plant in Homestead, along the southeast Florida coast, was in the midst of a region with 5 million power outages —”unprecedented,” according to Florida Power and Light CEO Eric Silagy — yet kept operating even though the risk of a serious accident rises significantly in a power outage, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“When there’s a possibility to lose power, why would you take the risk of increasing that?” Maggie Gundersen, founder of Fairewinds Energy Education and former nuclear industry employee, told Newsweek.
Operators of a nuclear power plant in the path of Hurricane Irma kept one reactor operating during the cyclone, despite failing to bring the plant up to federal safety code and long-known concerns about the danger faced by nuclear power plants during power outages.
The Turkey Point nuclear plant in Homestead, along the southeast Florida coast, was in the midst of a region with 5 million power outages —”unprecedented,” according to Florida Power and Light CEO Eric Silagy — yet kept operating even though the risk of a serious accident rises significantly in a power outage, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“When there’s a possibility to lose power, why would you take the risk of increasing that?” Maggie Gundersen, founder of Fairewinds Energy Education and former nuclear industry employee, told Newsweek.
….
A VALVE FAILURE AMID DANGEROUS STORM SURGE AND WINDS
The plant dodged a bullet — power outages in the state did not ultimately lead to a disaster. But a part of the reactor’s all-important cooling system, a piece called the steam generator’s feed regulating valve, did fail on Sunday night, prompting engineers to finally shut the lone reactor in operation that night.
Again, disaster was averted. There is “no known primary-secondary steam generator tube leakage” — jargon for radiation — according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Extreme wildfires in the US could lead to long-term lung damage https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147141-extreme-wildfires-in-the-us-could-lead-to-long-term-lung-damage/, 12 September 2017,And it looks like there is more to come. Most western states will remain at risk throughout September. “Fuel moisture levels and fire danger indices in these areas are at near-record to record levels for severity,” warns the NIFC. In August, rainfall was 25 per cent below average in western states – and temperatures were 2 to 6°C higher than normal.
As part of its wildfire outlook for the rest of the year, the NIFC predicts fires this month in parts of Idaho, Nevada and Utah. There, grasses were two to three times more profuse than usual, but have since dried out.
The NIFC says states such as Montana are so bone dry that they could still be at risk in October. Fires are also likely as late as December in central Texas and most of Oklahoma, following a predicted dry spell in late autumn.
Don’t breathe
Charities supporting lung health warn that people exposed to smoke and other pollution from the fires are at higher risk of short and long-term lung damage. Children, whose lungs are still immature, and the elderly are most at risk.
“We consider unhealthy air to contain around 35 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metre, but in Montana, they’re looking at just under 1000 over many days on a regular basis,” says Janice Nolen of the American Lung Association in Washington DC. “A colleague of mine up there is saying he can’t breathe.”
“Man-made climate change is making things incrementally hotter and allowing for fuels to dry out that much faster,” says John Abatzoglou at the University of Idaho. There is also “a legacy of fire suppression and fuel accumulation” that has intensified the natural pattern of wildfires in the US.
“We need to prevent this going forward, and one reason we’re having this crisis is climate change,” says Nolen. “It’s exacerbating these events, making them more likely and moBy Andy Coghlan
There is no relief on the horizon for beleaguered citizens in California, Montana, Oregon and other western states besieged by an abnormally large profusion of forest fires.
Nationally, wildfires this year have scorched 3.3 million hectares. That is roughly the size of Maryland, and way ahead of the 2.25-million-hectare annual average up to September seen between 2006 and 2016.
The US National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Idaho says there are currently 64 very large fires. Montana has been worst hit, suffering 25, and Oregon now has 17. And it looks like there is more to come. Most western states will remain at risk throughout September. “Fuel moisture levels and fire danger indices in these areas are at near-record to record levels for severity,” warns the NIFC. In August, rainfall was 25 per cent below average in western states – and temperatures were 2 to 6°C higher than normal.
As part of its wildfire outlook for the rest of the year, the NIFC predicts fires this month in parts of Idaho, Nevada and Utah. There, grasses were two to three times more profuse than usual, but have since dried out.
The NIFC says states such as Montana are so bone dry that they could still be at risk in October. Fires are also likely as late as December in central Texas and most of Oklahoma, following a predicted dry spell in late autumn.
Yet National Hurricane Center forecasts suggest the Texas-size storm may penetrate deep into the US mainland after pummelling Florida, blowing down trees, knocking out power, and triggering flooding far away from the sea.
On Friday, one inland area still well within Irma’s threat zone was the Savannah River Site: a sprawling 310-square-mile nuclear reservation in South Carolina that borders northeast Georgia.
During the Cold War, scientists and technicians there produced weapons-grade bomb material for the US military as well as plutonium-238 for NASA’s pluckiest spacecraft. These activities also created millions of gallons of nuclear waste that’s stored in dozens of tanks, plus burial grounds filled with contaminated objects.
With Irma threatening powerful wind and heavy rains across the Savannah River watershed, of which SRS is a part, some experts have expressed concern.
“If Hurricane #Irma track predictions hold, it will pass close to or even directly over DOE’s Savannah River Site. That could be very bad,” Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear-weapons policy analyst and author of “Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940,” wrote in a tweet on Thursday. (Irma’s path later shifted west, but the NHC still has the site on the edge of the storm’s “cone of probability.”)
Schwartz went on to sum up the cache of SRS’ waste, which includes about 35 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, 195 acres of dirt-trench burial grounds filled with contaminated gear, and even thousands of tons’ worth of nuclear contamination from Greenland and Spain.
The most dangerous waste is contained in 51 large storage tanks. Less dangerous “low-level” waste (clothes, tools, equipment, and more laced with radioactive contamination) was dumped into unlined pits and covered with earth over the decades.
A major effort is underway to empty and seal the storage tanks, solidify the waste into glass, and entomb it underground, as well as construct up-to-standard disposal units.
However, there’s still billions of dollars’ and perhaps decades’ worth of work that remains, given current nuclear-cleanup funding levels.
“The problem with the tanks and flooding isn’t so much that the tanks will leak … it’s more the stuff that has leaked out over the years,” Schwartz told Business Insider. “If there’s severe flooding, it could move that stuff around and into the ground water.”
Schwartz also said the burial grounds may pose a lesser though significant risk. “If you’ve got a contaminated tool or bulldozer, which there are, that’s not going to move,” he said. “But the uranium, plutonium, and other stuff stuck to clothing and dirt and equipment could potentially start migrating very far.”
The US wants tough sanctions to maximise pressure on North Korea to come to the table and negotiate an end to its nuclear and missile tests. he US has formally requested a UN Security Council vote on Monday to impose tough new sanctions against North Korea despite resistance from China and Russia.
Washington has presented a draft UN resolution calling for an oil embargo on North Korea, an assets freeze on Kim Jong-Un, a ban on textiles and an end to payments of North Korean guest workers.
Diplomatic sources said Russia and China opposed the measures as a whole, except for the ban of textiles, during a meeting of experts on Friday.
“This evening, the United States informed the UN Security Council that it intends to call a meeting to vote on a draft resolution to establish additional sanctions on North Korea on Monday, September 11,” a statement from the US mission to the UN read.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov earlier said it was too early to talk about a vote at the Security Council on new North Korea sanctions, insisting any pressure should be balanced against restarting talks.
“Along with pressure on the North Korean regime to induce it to abandon provocations in the implementation of its nuclear and missile programs, it is necessary to emphasize and increase the priority of efforts to resume the political process,” Lavrov said.
The US wants tough sanctions to be imposed to maximise pressure on Pyongyang to come to the table and negotiate an end to its nuclear and missile tests.
The proposed raft of sanctions would be the toughest-ever imposed on North Korea and seek to punish Pyongyang for its sixth and largest nuclear test.
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