Court rules that NRC must review Yucca nuclear waste plan
Court Keeps Yucca Mountain in Play http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323446404579011122577985720.html WSJ, TENNILLE TRACY and KEITH JOHNSON, 13 Aug 13 WASHINGTON—A federal court on Tuesday directed the Obama administration to revive consideration of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste project in Nevada, breathing new life into a long-running controversy over a final resting place for the country’s roughly 70,000 metric tons of spent commercial nuclear fuel.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was “simply flouting the law” by refusing to take up a Yucca Mountain license application roughly five years after it was submitted by the Bush administration.
The Obama administration has attempted to abandon the project, in part because it wants local support for any nuclear-waste repository and Yucca Mountain faces opposition in Nevada.
The appeals court, citing a 1982 law directing the NRC to complete reviews within three years of an application, said “the president and federal agencies may not ignore statutory mandates or prohibitions merely because of policy disagreements.”
The ruling doesn’t guarantee that Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will move forward. Rather, it applies pressure on Congress to finally decide the project’s fate since it controls its funding. Continue reading
Public Service Board may find Vermont nuclear plant “not in the public good”
the ruling affirmed that the Public Service Board has a say in the future of the plant, based on whether the plant’s operation is in the public’s interest.
the court’s decision clearly leaves the Public Service Board with authority over the plant.
“There’s a valid basis for the Public Service Board to find it’s not in the public good to operate the plant,”
Vermont Yankee focus shifts to Public Service Board after appeal court ruling, Burlington Free Press, 14 Aug 13 Appeals court: Legislature overstepped authority 
regarding Vermont Yankee All eyes are on a state Public Service Board decision expected later this year after a federal appeals court rejected the Legislature’s efforts to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Although the state tried to argue otherwise, the court ruled Wednesday that legislators were overwhelmingly concerned with nuclear safety as they sought to close the Vernon plant when its license expired in 2012. States have no authority over nuclear safety, which is regulated by the federal government.
“We conclude that Vermont lawmakers have undertaken a sustained effort to shut down Vermont Yankee based on this impermissible reason,” a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated in its decision. “We have considered the legislative history … and found that it contains innumerable expressions of concern for radiological safety from Vermont legislators and regulators.”
The 53-page ruling, which affirmed a 2012 decision from Judge J. Garvan Murtha at U.S. District Court in Brattleboro, dealt another blow to the state’s effort to have a say in the fate of Vermont Yankee……. Continue reading
Court rules against Vermont State’s attempt to close nuclear plant
Court: Vt. Can’t Use Law to Close Nuclear Plant abc news, MONTPELIER, Vt. August 14, 2013 (AP)By DAVE GRAM Associated Press Vermont’s attempts to close its lone nuclear power plant were deceptive and misleading, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in largely upholding a lower-court ruling against the state.
State legislators passed laws in 2005, 2006 and 2008 making it harder for the Vermont Yankee plant to win permission to operate for another 20 years. They were concerned about the plant’s safety but tried to hide that because they were aware that nuclear safety is the sole province of the U.S. government under federal law, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
There was “obvious coaching of Vermont legislators to avoid explicit statements about nuclear safety,” the court wrote.
A state board is expected to rule this year on whether allow the plant to continue operating, but the laws passed last decade injected the Legislature into the state’s decision-making process. They require that lawmakers vote to approve the plant’s continued operation.
Plant owner New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. has argued in court that the state has no say over whether to keep the plant open and points to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to extend the plant’s license to operate in 2011…….
Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell called the ruling disappointing. He said the state could ask the full appeals court to reconsider the three-judge panel’s decision, or, more likely, appeal the decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sandra Levine of the Conservation Law Foundation, one of several New England-based groups seeking the plant’s closure, called the decision “a disappointing failure to allow Vermont a stronger say in regulating this tired old plant on the banks of the Connecticut River.” http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/court-vt-law-close-nuclear-plant-19957625
Petition to NRC – Pilgrim Nuclear plant can’t afford safety costs
“In recent months, an escalating number of equipment failures, especially related to Fitzpatrick’s condenser have made the plant unreliable and have unduly put the public at risk,” Jessica Azulay, of the Alliance for a Green Economy, said. “We believe the dire financial situation at Fitzpatrick is an underlying cause.
PILGRIM STATION: Can Entergy afford Pilgrim Petition says ‘no’By Frank Mand Wicked Local Plymouth
Aug 14, 2013 PLYMOUTH —
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review a petition alleging that Pilgrim-owner Entergy no longer meets the NRC’s minimum financial standards for safely operating nuclear power plants.
The petition groups Pilgrim with two other Entergy-owned plants, Vermont Yankee and the James A. Fitzpatrick facility in upstate New York.
The four petitioners – Citizens Awareness Network, Alliance for a Green Economy, Vermont Citizens Awareness Network and Duxbury-based Pilgrim Watch – were denied their request for an immediate shutdown of the reactors, but the NRC is allowing their petition to move to the next step in the review process. Continue reading
Clean wind power to help boost dirty nuclear weapons in USA
Nuclear Wind The government’s largest wind farm is to be used to generate electricity for atomic bombs. TIME By Mark Thompson @MarkThompson_DCAug. 14, 2013 The Obama Administration is building the nation’s biggest wind farm to generate electricity to help…assemble the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
It’s boasting of the great environmental stewardship the project represents – breezes for bombs? — and has contracted with Siemens USA, the American subsidiary of a German company, for the wind turbines at the heart of the operation.
The government broke ground Tuesday for the Pantex Renewable Energy Project. When finished next summer, it will include five 2.3 megawatt wind turbines on 1,500 acres of government-owned property east of the Pantex plant in the Texas panhandle…….
The wind farm “will be funded by the energy savings guaranteed by Siemens,” Pantex says – an estimated $50 million over 18 years.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/14/nuclear-wind/#ixzz2c5WBzzzc
Questions raised on safety of U.S. nuclear missile force,
Another nuclear stumble by Air Force raises doubts Boston.com, 14 Aug 13WASHINGTON (AP) — Another embarrassing stumble by the U.S. nuclear missile force, this time a safety and security inspection failure, is raising questions about the Air Force’s management of arguably the military’s most sensitive mission.
The head of nuclear air forces, Lt. Gen. James M. Kowalski, revealed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., had failed what the military calls a ‘‘surety’’ inspection — a formal check on the unit’s adherence to rules ensuring the safety, security and control of its nuclear weapons.
The 341st is one of three units that operate the Air Force’s 450 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs……. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/2013/08/14/another-nuclear-stumble-air-force-raises-doubts/rDGNmeaq4Li2VB7xfIkBwK/story.html
A political advantage: the reason why USA bombed Japanese cities
.it wasn’t necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war but our possession and demonstration of the bomb would make the Russians more manageable in Europe.
The real purpose in incinerating two high-density civilian population centers, says Stimson, was “to persuade Russia to play ball.”
that’s the very definition of terrorism: using violence or the threat of violence as the means to achieve political ends. It’s terrorism with a vengeance. Americans just don’t do that kind of thing. Americans would never behave in such a horribly depraved and cruel manner. But, in fact, we did. And, as Part II of this article will make devastatingly clear, we still do. And it won’t stop until America awakens to the truth about itself, and, openly acknowledging that truth with a show of genuine heartfelt remorse, proceeds to make amends where amends are due.
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) By Robert Quinn” OpEdNews 8/11/2013 “………The inhumanity of it all couldn’t be more telling. The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki was especially brutal and cruel. Knowing of the horrendous horrors that had already been unleashed in Hiroshima, three days later the U.S. did the same thing to the civilian population of Nagasaki. Why? Japan’s surrender was already assured without the bombs. Surely surrender would soon be following on the heels of Hiroshima’s decimation. So, again, why the second bomb?
The answer is as simple as it is grotesque. The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki because Japan’s surrender was never the issue. Getting Japan to surrender was the pretext. The bombs were dropped to make a point. There were political reasons for nuking those two high-density civilian populations, and the United States was not going to let Japan interfere with its political agenda by way of an untimely surrender. The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki was part of a political maneuver that had already been decided upon — a one-two punch stratagem designed to strike fear into post-war Russia (our ally in the war against Germany) and convince them to accept their subordinate position on the postwar world stage.
Atomic Bombs Were Dropped On High-Density Civilian Populations In Japan To Make A Political Statement Continue reading
America needs to apologise to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Apparently, in the minds of most Americans America can do no wrong. An act that would be perceived as profoundly immoral if any other nation were behind it, is seen as being quite acceptable and even laudable when it is America that sits in the driver’s seat. No matter how grossly immoral a particular action may be, when America is the actor that action is somehow magically transformed in light of America’s perceived exceptional greatness into something good, wholesome, and even holy — certainly nothing deserving of an apology.
I can think of no better example of this than America’s 1945 atomic bombing of the two high-density civilian population centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki..
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) OpEd, By Robert Quinn, 12 Aug 13, ” The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. — George Orwell
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. — Thomas Jefferson
This month marks the 68 th anniversary of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki………..right-wing media made much of a Wikileaks-released diplomatic cable claiming to tell of plans President Obama had to apologize for America’s 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his 2009 visit to Japan. Investors Business Daily castigated Obama for his alleged plans to “apologize” to Japan “for defending freedom” and “for winning with devastating finality the war Japan started.”The National Review Online, Rush Limbaugh, The Drudge Report, and Fox News, among other right-wing media outlets, followed Investor Business Daily’s lead, claiming that the only reason Obama’s planned apology failed to materialize is that Japan had the good sense to disapprove of the plan.
The White House denied that there ever was any plans to apologize to Japan for America’s WW II atomic decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Wikileaks cable bears this out. Following a meeting with Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan cabled Secretary of State Clinton expressing Japan’s concern that a visit by Obama to Hiroshima, coming on the heels of Obama’s previously expressed commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, would fuel speculation, particularly among anti-nuclear groups, whether an Obama apology might be in the offing. Japan worried that such speculation would play into the hands of these anti-nuclear groups, providing them with greater visibility and a stronger voice in their efforts to garner increasing public support for their anti-nuclear agenda. The diplomatic cable was sent, then, not to ward off a planned Obama apology as Obama’s detractors have claimed, but rather to ward off any speculation that such an apology might be in the works, and that an Obama visit to Hiroshima might serve to provoke. To this end, Japan’s foreign ministry recommended that both governments do what they can to keep all such speculation to a minimum, and that this could be accomplished by having Tokyo be the primary focus of Obama’s 2009 visit. End of story.
What if Obama actually did have plans to apologize to Japan on behalf of America for its atomic incineration of two Japanese high-density civilian population centers? What of it? What exactly is the crime in this? Might it just be that such an apology is in order, and long overdue? The media has given no consideration to this at all. Instead, the entire focus has been on whether Obama is guilty or not of having had plans to apologize for America. The right-wing conservative media assumed Obama’s guilt, the left-leaning liberal media came to his defense, and the mainstream media, where it wasn’t following the right wing’s deceptive lead, reported on the controversy. The important issue in all of this — the moral justification, or lack thereof, of America’s atomic bombing of Japan — was entirely ignored.
Is Apologizing When You’ve Said Or Done Something Detestable Un-American? Continue reading
So who’s lying about nuclear waste to Nevada?
Mystery memos fuel battle between Nevada, DOE over nuclear waste Fox News,By Barnini Chakraborty August 12, 2013 WASHINGTON – U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz plans to meet with Nevada’s governor on Tuesday to discuss an escalating dispute between the state and the federal government over where to dump hundreds of canisters of radioactive waste, FoxNews.com has learned.
Tensions have risen in recent weeks over who should be forced to keep the nuclear material. The federal government says Nevada signed off on a series of memos agreeing to take it, but Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval says those talks never happened — and says his state shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of burying toxic waste in its backyard.
“The state of Nevada is not aware of any signed memos between the state and DOE regarding the approval of the material in question,” Mac Bybee, the governor’s communication director, told FoxNews.com.
Both Sandoval’s office and the Department of Energy confirmed that Moniz and the governor will meet on Tuesday.
Bybee says his office hasn’t located any memo from any state-level agency that has had contact with the Energy Department regarding the security, transportation or disposal of nuclear material.
That’s a problem because Moniz testified under oath during a July 30 Senate hearing to their existence. Continue reading
Confusing nuclear data: Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
Nuclear Energy Activist Toolkit #12: Finding Stuff in ADAMS Dave Lochbaum, director, Nuclear Safety Project August 13, 2013 In November 1999, the NRC discontinued providing information to local public document rooms near nuclear plants around the country in favor of an online electronic library it calls the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
Finding records in ADAMS is wicked easy.
Finding records one actually wants in ADAMS is often just wicked.
One can search by key word or phrase or date or docket and literally get up to 1,000 hits (ADAMS will only return 1,000 hits even when 1,000,000 records match the search criterion. This makes it easier for you to find the record of interest among the 1,000 hits – unless, of course, that record is among the hits not returned.)
To make finding stuff even “easier,” records can be viewed in ADAMS by folders for the day they were added to the electronic library. The very descriptive information provided for each record make it extremely easy to zero right in on stuff of particular interest.,,,,,,,
the absolute easiest way to find a record in ADAMS is to have a hard copy in your hand before you start searching. If so, read the hard copy and save yourself the wasted time and undue agony trying to find it in ADAMS even when equipped with its date, subject, addressee, etc.
Even for immortals, life is just too short to become an ADAMS aficionado.
There are times when the federal government should not award contracts to the lowest bidder. Like when it seeks an online document library that is not “electronic keep away.”
The UCS Nuclear Energy Activist Toolkit (NEAT) is a series of post intended to help citizens understand nuclear technology and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s processes for overseeing nuclear plant safety.
Few barriers between Nevada and nation’s nuclear waste
….That view was not unanimous in the 2-1 decision. Judge Merrick B. Garland wrote a dissent scoffing at the assumed import of the decision, chiding that an order to send $11 million would do more than “order the commission to spend part of those funds unpacking its boxes, and the remainder packing them up again.”….
Published Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013
The pressure on Nevada lawmakers to see a new nuclear waste disposal act through Congress this session just skyrocketed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., decided Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must continue reviewing plans for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain until they have zero funds to continue.
That leaves only two barriers to Nevada getting dumped with the nation’s nuclear waste: Sen. Harry Reid’s ability to block funding – which depends entirely on Democrats keeping a majority in the Senate – or a scientific determination that Yucca Mountain is unfit.
Neither is as sure a thing as a law that simply designates a new destination for nuclear waste.
But it may take a small miracle to get such legislation passed.
“We’re not going to get any laws passed to change this,” Reid told reporters during a summit on clean energy in Las Vegas on Tuesday, blaming Tea Party opposition for stymieing any positive momentum toward siting a new repository.
In fact, the problem runs far deeper than that.
Last month, Congress began considering a bill to site new temporary and permanent repositories to store spent nuclear fuel by a consent-based process. Such a process, which would rely on the host community agreeing to the project, won tentative approval of members of the Nevada delegation, including Sen. Dean Heller, who got a whole lot more vocal about his support for the legislation immediately after the appeals court decision.
“Today’s decision serves as yet another example of why Yucca Mountain needs to be taken off the table once and for all,” Nevada Sen. Dean Heller said in a statement released after the ruling. “Instead of continuing to try to force Yucca Mountain on the people of Nevada, my colleagues should focus on moving toward a new process that will allow for consent-based siting.”
But last month, lawmakers in the House of Representatives also overwhelmingly rejected amendments presented by Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., to divert money appropriated for the Yucca Mountain licensing process by a vote of 335 to 81.
Votes like that – which occur on an annual basis – make it clear that support for Yucca is strong in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s false safety assumptions
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Is Using Obviously Faulty Models to Pretend Crumbling Nuclear Reactors Are Safe By Washington’s Blog Global Research, August 12, 2013 Ignoring Basic Engineering Science Puts Us All At Risk
Faulty assumptions by America’s financial regulators led to the 2008 crash … and many other disastrous results.
Similarly, America’s main nuclear regulator – the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – made numerous assumptions before Fukushima that turned out to be totally false. For example, the NRC wrongly assumed: Continue reading
America’s official lies about the reasons for atomic bombing of Japanese cities
Regardless of the number of American lives Truman claims to have saved, the vast majority of Americans accept the official story as gospel. The indoctrinating media and sixty-eight years of propagandistic history texts from grammar school through high school did its job well. But, except for the fact of the bombs having been dropped, the official story is a lie. Not merely mistaken, but a lie.
In terms of moral justification, the official story no doubt provides a great deal of comfort to a great many Americans. Unfortunately, all indications are that this moral centerpiece of the official story just isn’t true. The truth, as it turns out, is so barbaric that it’s almost inconceivable..
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) By Robert Quinn“ OpEdNews 8/11/2013 “………..The Official Story
Sixty-eight years ago, August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb to ever be used in warfare on the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. All toll, nearly a quarter of a million civilian men, woman, children, and babies lost their lives in those blasts. Of those who survived the blasts, many were maimed for life and many more would later die slow, painful deaths due to radiation poisoning and various forms of cancer.
In Hiroshima, a city with a population of 290,000, the initial death count by the end of August 1945 was estimated at 100,000. By the end of 1950 the estimated death toll had risen, according to some estimates, to 200,000. In Nagasaki, a city with a population of 240,000, including 400 prisoners of war, it’s estimated that some 70,000 were killed by the initial blast, with 140,000 dead within the next five years.
The official story at the time was that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets whose destruction was necessary to bring the war to an end. This was a lie. The American public was also told that leaflets were dropped warning the inhabitants of these cities of the impending destruction and that they should leave. This, too, was a lie. The official story tells of President Truman’s decision to go nuclear on Japan as a necessary last resort designed to hasten a Japanese surrender, thereby saving American soldiers the horrors of a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland. As we will see, this, too, was a lie.
The official story claims that dropping the bombs saved the lives of many thousands of American soldiers which otherwise most certainly would have been lost. In October 1945, two months after the bombs were dropped, Truman wrote in his diary: Continue reading
Nevada’s secret nuclear radiation guinea pigs
“Nuclear Guinea Pigs”: Deadly Experiments and Contaminated Reality By Greg Guma Global Research, August 11, 2013 Half a century ago, on the spurious grounds that extreme sacrifices were required in the battle to prevent a communist takeover of the world, the US government decided to use the citizens of Nevada as nuclear guinea pigs.
Although atomic testing was pursued there for several years in the 1950s, notification would have alarmed area residents. As a result, they weren’t even advised to go indoors. Yet, according to declassified documents, some scientists studying the genetic effects of radiation at the time were already concerned about the health risks of fallout.
For most of those committed to the US nuclear program, the need to keep this type of research secret was a no-brainer. After all, if the public realized that the technology used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki had led to experiments at home, early nuclear research – not to mention weapons deployment – might have met stronger opposition. The government badly wanted its nukes, and the scientists yearned to unlock the secrets of human mutation. Thus, an unholy alliance was struck. Continue reading
No military need for atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) By Robert Quinn” OpEdNews 8/11/2013 “………….Japan Had Already Been Defeated Prior To Dropping the Bombs After the war had ended, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (a board consisting of more than 1,000 individuals, both military and civilian), was tasked by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson with the examination and analysis of U.S. involvement in WW II. The Survey concluded in 1946 that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
But it was not only with the advantage of hindsight that this conclusion was reached. General Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of allied forces in Europe) and General MacArthur (Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific) came to the same conclusion before the bombs were ever dropped. I don’t think there’s any question that both General Eisenhower and General MacArthur would have done whatever was necessary to spare their troops the horrors of a ground invasion. But the fact is that neither of them believed that a ground invasion of mainland Japan was necessary. Continue reading
1 This Month
23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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