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U.S. nuclear spent fuel liability jumps to $44.5 billion

 Nov 27, 2024, https://www.ans.org/news/article-6587/us-spent-fuel-liability-jumps-to-445-billion/

The Department of Energy’s estimated overall liability for failing to dispose of the country’s commercial spent nuclear fuel jumped as much as 10 percent this year, from a range of $34.1 billion to $41 billion in 2023 to a range of $37.6 billion to $44.5 billion in 2024, according to a financial audit of the DOE’s Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) for fiscal year 2024.

The estimated liability excludes $11.1 billion already paid out to nuclear power plant owners and utilities for the DOE’s breach of the standard contract for the disposal of spent fuel (10 CFR Part 961), which required the DOE to begin taking title of spent nuclear fuel for disposal by January 1998. Owners of spent fuel routinely sue the federal government for the continued cost of managing the fuel. The recovered costs are paid out from the Treasury Department’s Judgement Fund and not from the DOE.

According to the audit, conducted by the independent public accounting firm of KPMG, the liability estimate “reflects a range of possible scenarios” regarding the operating life of the current fleet of nuclear power reactors. The estimate is also based on when the DOE thinks it may begin taking spent fuel. In May, the DOE received initial approval (Critical Decision-0) for a consolidated interim storage facility for spent fuel that, if constructed, would be operational by 2046.

The Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Fund’s Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Statement Audit was released by the DOE Office of Inspector General on November 14.

The fund: The NWF, which was intended to finance the DOE’s disposal of spent fuel, had a balance of $52.2 billion as of September, according to the KPMG audit.

The NWF was funded through annual fees—initially, $0.001 for every kilowatt hour provided by a nuclear power plant—levied by the DOE on owners and generators of spent fuel. The DOE stopped collecting annual NWF fees, however, in 2014 following an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which found that the DOE failed to justify the continued imposition of the fee following the suspension of the Yucca Mountain repository project.

January 14, 2025 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

‘Alarming’ environmental breaches at nuclear sites spark calls for tougher action

Paul Dobson, Rob Edwards, January 12, 2025

 The Dounreay nuclear facility in Caithness was found to be in breach of
rules on eleven occasions in recent years, making it one of the most
frequent offenders in Scotland. Dounreay – which houses radioactive waste
– was a hub of nuclear research between the 1950s and 1990s but is now
the site of the largest nuclear clean up in Scotland.

There was also a breach at the Faslane naval base, although this did not involve
radioactivity. The findings come from data released to The Ferret by the
Scottish Government’s green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection
Agency (Sepa). The agency kept a further 25 sites which had broken rules
secret. The Ferret understands this is because they house radioactive
materials which governments fear could be targeted by terrorists aiming to
build a dirty bomb.

 The Ferret 12th Jan 2025,
https://theferret.scot/environmental-breaches-spark-calls-tougher-action/

January 14, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

UK will explore nuclear power for new AI data centre plan

 The UK is planning special districts for constructing data centers and
will explore dedicating nuclear energy to the sites as part of a Labour
government project to boost technology growth and the ecosystem for
artificial intelligence. These “AI Growth Zones” will include enhanced
access to electricity and easier planning approvals for data centers, the
government said on Sunday. It said the first such zone will be in Culham,
home of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

 Bloomberg 12th Jan 2025,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-12/uk-will-explore-nuclear-power-for-new-ai-data-center-plan

January 14, 2025 Posted by | technology, UK | Leave a comment

S. Korea’s nuclear agency launches investigation into abnormal discharge of radioactive waste

Xinhua 2025-01-12,  https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202501/12/WS6783d766a310f1265a1da509.html

SEOUL — South Korea’s nuclear safety agency has launched an investigation into the abnormal discharge of liquid radioactive waste from a nuclear reactor to the southeast of the country, Yonhap news agency said Sunday.

The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) received a report from Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP), the operator of nuclear power plants, at about 10:23 am local time (0123 GMT) Sunday that the liquid waste of a radioactive storage tank in the Wolseong No 2 nuclear power plant in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang province was discharged into the ocean without going through a sample analysis.

The KHNP took measures to block leakage immediately after finding the tank outlet valve was open while preparing to release the liquid waste into the ocean, the NSSC said in a bulletin posted on its official website.

According to the KHNP’s analysis of samples left in the tank, the concentration of the leaked liquid waste, estimated at about 29 tons, stood at normal levels.

The NSSC said it had dispatched experts to the power plant in a bid to investigate the exact amount and the cause of the leakage, planning to check any environmental impact by collecting seawater near the power plant.

The agency promised to announce the results of the investigation once available

January 14, 2025 Posted by | South Korea, wastes | Leave a comment

EDF’s UK nuclear plan – salt marsh consultation delay reaction

Author: LDRS, 11th Jan 2025

EDF has been urged to “end the uncertainty” over its plans to turn part of North Somerset into a salt marsh after it announced it was delaying the plans.

The power company, which is building Hinkley Point C, wants to create 340 hectares of new salt marsh habitats along the Severn — including at Kington Seymour in North Somerset — to compensate for the 44 tonnes of fish expected to be sucked into the power plant’s cooling systems each year. Farmers and the communities who could see their land become salt marsh have expressed dismay at the plans.

A consultation on the plans had been set to launch this month — but now EDF has said it is marking sure all options are “fully explored” and is delaying the consultation until later in 2025. A letter sent to people in the areas affected on Monday said: “We have listened carefully to all views and the feedback has provided us with a great deal of insight as we consider what proposals to put forward in our public consultation.”

But the letter has not impressed locals. Local councillor Steve Bridger, who represents the Yatton ward which includes Kingston Seymour on North Somerset Council, said: “It is clear to me that EDF’s preference is to find voluntary ways to meet its planning obligations, so I would ask that they end the uncertainty for residents and businesses and just drop their proposals to create salt marsh and put their energy into a genuine and open conversation with our communities to develop a strategy that protects all our residents and funds all sorts of biodiversity gains in North Somerset that we actually want and need.”

Claire Stuckey, whose parents’ land and a business faces becoming part of the Kingston Seymour salt marsh, said: “We have unanimous community opposition and significant evidence it won’t work. It’s their decision what they are going to do.”

Farmers and landowners found out their lands were being looked at in September, when they received letters from EDF. Ms Stuckey said that EDF’s statement that they needed more time to look at their options “goes against the original excuse for their heavy handed approach.”

EDF is also looking at Littleton-upon-Severn in South Gloucestershire, and Rodley and Arlingham  in Gloucestershire — where the plans have also met with outrage — as potential locations for salt marsh. The controversial plans were debated in Parliament in October, and North Somerset Council resolved in November to write to the government to urge it to block the plans.

But EDF says it has to find a way to compensate for the deaths of fish in its cooling system as it draws in water from the Severn Estuary. Although it does have a fish return mechanism to reduce the numbers of fish killed — the first British nuclear power station to have one — it is predicted that 44 tonnes of fish a year will slip through the mechanism.

The planning permission for Hinkley Point C originally stipulated that it would use loudspeakers by the water intakes on the sea floor to scare off fish, but EDF has warned it would be dangerous for divers to install the speakers and instead proposed creating salt marshes to compensate for the dead fish………….


 Rayo 11th Jan 2025,
https://hellorayo.co.uk/greatest-hits/bristol/news/edf-consultation-delay/

January 14, 2025 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

While Los Angeles burns, AI fans the flames

Artificial intelligence is a water-guzzling industry hastening future climate crises from California’s own backyard.

By Schuyler Mitchell , Truthout, January 11, 2025

“………………………………………………. Trump’s latest smear campaign is little more than political football. But the renewed attention on California’s water does highlight ongoing tensions over the conservation and management of this finite resource. As the climate crisis worsens, it’s expected to exacerbate heat waves and droughts, bringing water shortages and increasingly devastating fires like those currently scorching southern California. The situation in Los Angeles is already a catastrophe. Climate change-induced water shortages will make imminent disasters even worse.

In the face of this grim reality, it’s worth revisiting one of the major water-guzzling industries that’s hastening future crises from California’s own backyard: artificial intelligence (AI).

Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the global AI boom, and hundreds of Bay Area tech companies are investing in AI development. Meanwhile, in the southern region of the state, real estate developers are rushing to build new data centers to accommodate expanded cloud computing and AI technologies. The Los Angeles Times reported in September that data center construction in Los Angeles County had reached “extraordinary levels,” increasing more than sevenfold in two years.

This technology’s environmental footprint is tremendous. AI requires massive amounts of electrical power to support its activities and millions of gallons of water to cool its data centers. One study predicts that, within the next five years, AI-driven data centers could produce enough air pollution to surpass the emissions of all cars in California.

Data centers on their own are water-intensive; California is home to at least 239. One study shows that a large data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, or as much as a town of 50,000 people. In The Dalles, Oregon, a local paper found that a Google data center used over a quarter of the city’s water. Artificial intelligence is even more thirsty: Reporting by The Washington Post found that Meta used 22 million liters of water simply training its open source AI model, and UC Riverside researchers have calculated that, in just two years, global AI use could require four to six times as much water as the entire nation of Denmark.

Many U.S. data centers are based in the western portion of the country, including California, where wind and solar power is more plentiful — and where water is already scarce. In 2022, a researcher at Virginia Tech estimated that about one-fifth of data centers in the U.S. draw water from “moderately to highly stressed watersheds.”

According to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the U.S. government’s leading report on climate change, California is among the top five states suffering economic impacts from climate crisis-induced natural disaster. California already is dealing with the effects of one water-heavy industry; the Central Valley, which feeds the whole country, is one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, and the Central Valley aquifer ranks as one of the most stressed aquifers in the world. ClimateCheck, a website that uses climate models to predict properties’ natural disaster threat levels, says that California ranks number two in the country for drought risk.

In August 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared the first-ever water shortage on the Colorado River, which supplies water to California — including roughly a third of southern California’s urban water supply — as well as six other states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. The Colorado River water allotments have been highly contested for more than a century, but the worsening climate crisis has thrown the fraught agreements into sharp relief. Last year, California, Nevada and Arizona agreed to long-term cuts to their shares of the river’s water supply.

Despite the precarity of the water supply, southern California’s Imperial Valley, which holds the rights to 3.1 million acres of Colorado River water, is actively seeking to recruit data centers to the region.

“Imperial Valley is a relatively untapped opportunity for the data center industry,” states a page on the Imperial Valley Economic Development Corporation’s website. “With the lowest energy rates in the state, abundant and inexpensive Colorado River water resources, low-cost land, fiber connectivity and low risk for natural disasters, the Imperial Valley is assuredly an ideal location.” A company called CalEthos is currently building a 315 acre data center in the Imperial Valley, which it says will be powered by clean energy and an “efficient” cooling system that will use partially recirculated water. In the bordering state of Arizona, Meta’s Mesa data center also draws from the dwindling Colorado River.

The climate crisis is here, but organizers are not succumbing to nihilism. Across the country, community groups have fought back against big tech companies and their data centers, citing the devastating environmental impacts. And there’s evidence that local pushback can work. In the small towns of Peculiar, Missouri, and Chesterton, Indiana, community campaigns have halted companies’ data center plans.

“The data center industry is in growth mode,” Jon Reigel, who was involved in the Chesterton fight, told The Washington Post in October. “And every place they try to put one, there’s probably going to be resistance. The more places they put them the more resistance will spread.”  https://truthout.org/articles/while-los-angeles-burns-ai-fans-the-flames/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=3634e1951f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_01_11_08_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-3634e1951f-650192793

January 13, 2025 Posted by | climate change, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Outgoing CIA director says ‘no sign’ Iran developing nuclear weapons

William Burns stated that the Islamic Republic made a decision in 2003 not to pursure nuclear weapons and has not changed its policy

The Cradle News Desk, JAN 12, 2025

Outgoing CIA director William Burns stated in an interview on 10 January that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, following a decision it made in 2003, and that the US is concerned about the revival of ISIS.

In an interview with state broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) to discuss his time as director of the notorious spy agency under President Joe Biden, Burns was asked whether Iran may accelerate its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons given the setbacks the Islamic Republic and its allies in the regional Axis of Resistance have sustained over the past year.

Burns answered that “the Iranian regime could decide in the face of that weakness that it needs to restore its deterrence as it sees it and, you know, reverse the decision made at the end of 2003 (an oral fatwa issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) to suspend their weaponization program.”

However, Burns clarified, “We do not see any sign today that any such decision has been made, but we obviously watch it intently. “

He added that Iran’s weakness could instead lead to negotiations for a nuclear deal similar to the one signed by Iran and the United States under President Obama in 2014. President Trump later withdrew from the deal following intense lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“You know that that sense of weakness could also theoretically create a possibility for serious negotiations, too. And, you know, that’s something the new administration is going to have to sort through. I mean, it’s something I have a lot of experience in with the secret talks a decade ago, a little more than a decade ago with the Iranians. So, you know, that’s that’s also a possibility,” Burns stated………………………………………………………………………………………. more  https://thecradle.co/articles-id/28431

January 13, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Now By Fire, Next by Quake, then by Apocalyptic Radiation: Will Gavin Newsom’s Diablo Canyon Atomic Folly Kill Us All?

Los Angeles is now being destroyed by fire.

by Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman, January 11, 2025, more https://freepress.org/article/now-fire-next-quake-then-apocalyptic-radiation-will-gavin-newsoms-atomic-folly-kill-us-all-0

Los Angeles is now being destroyed by fire.

Next will be the “Big One” earthquake everyone knows is coming.

And then—unless we take immediate action—Diablo Canyon’s radioactive cloud will make this region a radioactive dead zone. 

My family is now besieged by four fires raging less than four miles away.  We don’t know how long our luck will hold.

We are eternally grateful to the brave fire-fighters and public servants who are doing their selfless best to save us all.

We are NOT grateful that Gavin Newsom has recklessly endangered us by forcing continued operation at two unsafe, decrepit nuclear power plants perched on active earthquake faults, set to pour radioactive clouds on us from just four hours north of here.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s resident site inspector—Dr. Michael Peck—after five years at Diablo warned that it cannot withstand the earthquakes we all know are coming.  

In 2006 the NRC confirmed that Unit One was already seriously embrittled.  Its fragile core makes a melt-down virtually certain to cause a catastrophic explosion, shooting a lethal apocalyptic cloud right at us…and then across the state and continent.  

These wildfires make clear that these city, state and federal governments—maybe NO government ANYWHERE—can begin to cope with these kinds of mega-crises.  

Imagine watching our public servants trying to cope while dressed in radiation suits, knowing everything around us has been permanently contaminated.

Imagine leaving all you own forever behind while racing to get yourself and your family out of here under the universal evacuation order demanded by radioactive clouds like those that decimated the downwind regions from Chernobyl and Fukushima, not to mention Santa Susanna and Three Mile Island, Windscale and Kyshtym.

Pre-empting such a catastrophe was a major motivation for the 2018 plan to phase out the two Diablo nukes in 2024 and 2025,

That landmark blueprint was crafted over a two-year period with hundreds of meetings, scores of hearings involving the best and brightest in energy, the economy, the ecology and the hard engineering realities of aging atomic power reactors.

It was signed by the then-Governor (Jerry Brown), Lieutenant Governor (Gavin Newsom), state legislature, state regulatory agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plant owner (PG&E), labor unions, local governments, environmental groups and many more, .  

The economic and energy security goals of this plan have been far exceeded by advances in renewable generation and battery storage.  California now regularly gets 100% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal.  Battery back-up capabilities exceed Diablo’s capacity by a factor of four or more.  Its inflexible baseload productions unfortunately interferes with far cheaper renewables filling our grid.

The grid’s most serious blackout threats now come from disruptive malfunctions and potential disasters at Diablo Canyon. 

All this has been well known since 2018, when Newsom signed the Diablo agreement.

The phase-out proceeded smoothly for four years, largely exceeding expectations.

But in 2022, Newsom strongarmed the legislature into trashing the phase-out plan.  His Public Utilities Commission decimated the statewide rate structure, costing our solar industry, billions in revenues and at least 17,000 jobs.

Instead Newsom fed PG&E about $1.4 billion in public subsidies and $11 billion in over-market charges to keep Diablo running through 2030.

Neither the NRC nor state nor PG&E have done the necessary tests to guarantee Diablo’s safety, refusing to re-test for embrittlement even though such defects forced the NRC to shut the Yankee Rowe reactor in 1991.

Diablo has no private liability insurance.  Should it irradiate Los Angeles, NONE of us can expect compensation.  

So as we shudder amidst the horrors of this firestorm, we know that our loss of life, health and property will be orders of magnitude—literally, infinitely—more devastating when, by quake or error, the reactors at Diablo Canyon melt and explode.

Responsibility for this needless, unconscionable threat lies strictly with Gavin Newsom.  There is no sane economic, electric supply or common sense reason for him to impose this gamble on us.   

Governor Newsom: NOTHING can make public sense of this radioactive throw of the dice.  

We respectfully beg, request, demand, beseech that you honor the sacred word you gave in 2018 to phase out the Diablo Canyon atomic reactors.  

As we see the devastation engulfing us, and the inability of government to make it right, there is zero mystery as to why these nukes must shut.  

  NOW!!!

January 13, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

How to dismantle the deadly arms trade

The devastating human impact of the arms industry is clear, but war is good news for industry shareholders. The market value of military equipment manufacturers in the US and Europe increased by nearly 60 per cent between February 2022 and March 2024, thanks to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

Activists forced Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia to halve its stake in Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms company. In October 2024, Elbit shut down its promotional booth at the Japan International Aerospace Exhibition in Tokyo after protests.

New Internationalist, Amy Hall, 6 Jan 25

People across the world are standing up to the power of the arms trade. Amy Hall explores its threat to life and democracy.

It’s a cold, bright morning on a narrow street in Brighton, on the south coast of England. Neighbours are peering through windows, or coming out onto the pavement, to see why around 15 protesters are standing outside the business premises at the end of the road with a banner declaring: ‘Genocide in Gaza made in Brighton’.

The answer is that the campaigners say they saw this company, London & Brighton Plating – which specializes in metal coating and plating used in a range of industries, including aerospace – delivering to L3Harris. The latter is one of the world’s biggest arms companies, and makes bomb release mechanisms for fighter jets used by Israel at its site on the outskirts of the city.

At least here in Brighton we have a strong protest movement,’ says Gummy Bear, one of the protesters. They point to the number of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza. On 14 November 2024, the day of the protest, the death toll stood at well over 43,000. ‘We’re calling on supplier companies to divest from L3Harris and to stop working with them. We want L&B Plating to end their contract.’

Before they decided to form this picket, the Stop L3Harris group says it tried to contact L&B Plating in other ways but not had any response; they did not respond to New Internationalist’s request for comment either. The campaigners have drawn up a list of companies that they believe are working with L3Harris. While the group has held several protests and actions at the factory itself, it is also working along the supply chain to try and make it harder for L3Harris to stay open in their city.

The trading of arms and military equipment has always faced opposition, but since 7 October 2023, when Israel began its genocidal assault on Gaza, there has been an explosion of activism against the arms industry. In neighbourhoods across the world, people are taking action – from shutting down shipyards or destroying equipment, to encampments at universities and divestment campaigns.

The devastating human impact of the arms industry is clear, but war is good news for industry shareholders. The market value of military equipment manufacturers in the US and Europe increased by nearly 60 per cent between February 2022 and March 2024, thanks to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

But despite the might of the industry, many ordinary people around the world have been winning where they have acted against it. Activists forced Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia to halve its stake in Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms company. In October 2024, Elbit shut down its promotional booth at the Japan International Aerospace Exhibition in Tokyo after protests. And in November, Palestine Action – a group which has been taking direct action against Elbit Systems since 2020 – announced that Hydrafeed, which had been supplying equipment to Elbit, had cut ties with the arms company ‘as a direct result’ of the group’s actions.

‘I’ve never see this level of activism against the arms trade,’ says Emily Apple of Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).

People are not just taking action over Palestine. There has been a growing campaign against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for its complicity in the war in Sudan, which has killed up to 150,000 people. In England, activists have protested outside Arsenal football club’s Emirates Stadium in north London, due to its sponsorship from the airline Emirates, which is owned by the UAE state. There have also been demonstrations in a number of cities calling on the British government to take action.

Some of the most inspiring solidarity has come from workers normally key to the arms trade’s operation. After Israel’s latest assault on Gaza began, Palestinian trade unions called for support from fellow workers – and many answered. In November 2024 dockers in the Moroccan port of Tangiers refused to load a ship belonging to the logistics company Maersk, after the vessel was found to have received a number of US military shipments bound for Israel. The month before, members of a Greek dock-workers’ union in Athens Pireaus port blocked the loading of a container of ammunition on its way for use in Gaza.

Nor is Palestine the only cause that provokes such practical solidarity. Since 2019 workers in Genoa, Italy have declared a ‘war against the war’ in Yemen, refusing to load ships with weapons or other military equipment that could be used to kill civilians.

A global industry

Another frontier of the movement is the legal system, as campaigning lawyers push governments to stop arming the violence of states such as Israel. Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) have been fighting the British state over its arms exports to Israel……………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://newint.org/arms/2025/how-dismantle-deadly-arms-trade?utm_source=ni-email-whatcounts%20&utm_medium=1%20NI%20Main%20List1%20-%20enews%20-%20International%20AND%20North%20America&utm_campaign=2025-01-10%20enews

January 13, 2025 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Lancet Study: Gaza Health Ministry Undercounted Death Toll By 41%

The study doesn’t account for indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege

by Dave DeCamp January 9, 2025,  https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/09/lancet-study-gaza-health-ministry-undercounted-death-toll-by-41/

A new study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip has significantly undercounted the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s genocidal war.

The study reviewed the period between October 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024, and found there were 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in that timeframe. At the end of June 2024, Gaza’s Health Ministry said there were 37,877 dead, an undercount of about 41%.

As of October 2024, the study said the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli military action likely exceeds 70,000. The latest numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll at 46,006.

Explaining the methodology, the study said it used “capture-recapture methods to estimate total deaths from traumatic injury in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024. By combining three data lists—official hospital lists, an MoH survey, and social media obituaries—we provide an estimate of mortality that accounts for under-reporting.”

The study accounts only for deaths caused by violence and not indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and the destruction of medical and other civilian infrastructure.

The figures coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry have been under significant scrutiny from Israeli officials and their supporters in the West. In the early days of the genocidal war, President Biden cast doubt on their accuracy, but a high-level US State Department official later acknowledged the real number of dead was likely higher than what the Health Ministry was reporting.

The number of indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege is unclear but is likely significantly higher than the violent deaths. A letter written by experts and published by The Lancet in July 2024 estimated that if the war ended at that time, the conflict could account for 186,000 deaths, including 37,396 violent deaths (based on June 2024 Health Ministry figures) and indirect deaths.

January 13, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Judge Orders Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to Come Clean on Deleted Assange Docs

A  judge in London has ruled that Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) must explain what happened to certain documents in the Julian Assange case that it claims no longer exist, reports Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, January 10, 2025,  https://consortiumnews.com/2025/01/10/judge-orders-cps-to-come-clean-on-deleted-assange-docs/

Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi has been waging a legal battle for seven years against the Crown Prosecution Service to discover the truth about a CPS claim that it deleted a number of documents Maurizi has sought in a Freedom of Information request about the case of Julian Assange.  

Now a judge on the London First-tier Tribunal has ruled that the CPS must explain to Maurizi what it knows about when, why and how the documents were allegedly destroyed. The Jan. 2 ruling was first reported by Maurizi’s newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano on Friday.

Judge Penrose Foss has given the CPS until Feb. 21 to respond or it could be held in contempt of court. 

The ruling says: 

The Crown Prosecution Service must, by no later than 4.00 p.m. on 21 February 2025:

  1. (1)  Confirm to the Appellant whether it held recorded information as to when, how and why any hard or electronic copies of emails referred to in the Appellant’s request to the Crown Prosecution Service of 12 December 2019 were deleted;
  2. (2)  If it did hold such information, either supply the information to the Appellant by 4.00 p.m. on 21 February 2025 or serve a refusal notice under section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, identifying the grounds on which the Crown Prosecution Service relies.A failure to comply with this Substituted Decision Notice could lead to contempt proceedings.”  

Swedish Case

The documents Maurizi seeks were in relation to Sweden’s request to the U.K. for Assange’s extradition. 

Her argument was heard before the three judges of the tribunal on Sept. 24, 2024. The allegedly deleted emails involved a CPS exchange with Sweden about a Swedish prosecutor’s attempt, beginning in 2010, to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher from Britain.  

Assange was wanted at the time in Sweden for questioning during a preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual assault, which was dropped three times, definitively in 2017.  He was never charged. After losing his battle against extradition to Sweden at the U.K. Supreme Court, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in June 2012, fearing that Sweden would send him to the United States.

Assange spent seven years in the embassy protecting himself from arrest until April 2019, when British police dragged him from the diplomatic mission and threw him into London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison.  

It was only when the U.S. realized it would lose on appeal after a four-year extradition battle that the Department of Justice cut a plea deal with Assange who was released on June 24, 2024 and returned to his native Australia. 

Assange had been charged in the United States under the Espionage Act for possessing and publishing defense information, which revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes. Britain took an active role in Assange’s prosecution.

In the earlier Swedish case, the CPS sought to stop Sweden from going to the embassy to question him. 

Seeking to learn more about Britain’s role, Maurizi first made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2015 for all emails between the British and Swedish governments concerning Assange. 

Some of the emails she obtained showed political motivation on the part of the lead British prosecutor, Paul Close.

One email Maurizi obtained from the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) revealed that Close appeared to be pressuring Swedish prosecutors to continue seeking Assange’s extradition instead of dropping the case or questioning him at the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange had been granted asylum.

“My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant [Julian Assange] in the UK,” Close wrote to the SPA, in 2011, according to one of the emails obtained by Maurizi. 

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, was head of the CPS at this time. He led the service from 2008 to 2013, though it is unknown what role Starmer may have played in this correspondence.

“Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!,” he wrote to Marianne Ny, Sweden’s director of public prosecutions, in 2012. A year after that, Close wrote, “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

After Maurizi noticed a sizeable gap in the emails released to her she filed another FIOA seeking to obtain the missing emails. 

The CPS first claimed that it had destroyed the emails. It said that when Close retired, his account along with his emails, were automatically destroyed.  

But Maurizi did not buy it.  She asked the court at the hearing last month to order the CPS to turn over “metadata” — data about data, such as file creation and modification dates, email sender and recipient addresses, timestamps, email routing information, keywords, and subject lines — proving the emails really were deleted and when.

“We have NO certainty whatsoever” that the emails were destroyed, Maurizi wrote in a message to Consortium News. Maurizi went to court because she believes the allegedly deleted emails could provide additional evidence of a politically motivated prosecution of Assange.

She also wants metadata on a CPS document that it says is from 2012 explaining the CPS’ email deletion policy, which was only sent to her in 2023. 

The supposed 2012 policy document says that 30 days after an email account is disabled, the “email data” associated with it “will be automatically deleted and no longer accessible.” 

“How is it possible that they provided this document only in 2023, after multiple requests, multiple appeals, no-one ever mentioned it or knew about it?” Maurizi told CN.  

Such a policy does not explain why thousands of emails related to an ongoing case would be deleted.

Denied on the Metadata

In order to figure out whether the 2012 policy document on deletions is genuine, Maurizi requested the relevant metadata of the file. She wanted to make sure it was not created years later as an attempt at retroactively justifying the deletion of Close’s emails. 

Judge Foss for the Tribunal, however, ruled against Maurizi on the release of the metadata. Foss ruled

“In our view there was nothing in the letter or spirit of the 2019 Request as to when, how and why the emails of the CPS lawyer were deleted, which required the CPS to disclose the metadata of any document which substantiated the information it provided in response to that request. […]

It would be extraordinary, in our view, if every time a public authority was presented with a request for information recorded in such a way as to have meant that the creation of that record generated metadata, the request should be taken inevitably to require the metadata behind the form of record.”

Unsatisfactory Explanations

It is simply “not credible” Maurizi’s lawyer argued during the September hearing that Close neither sent nor received emails to Swedish prosecutors when Sweden issued the arrest warrant for Assange; when Assange took refuge in the embassy; and when he was granted asylum by Ecuador.

“[I]t has never been established that there was anything untoward in those gaps, that there were emails that weren’t published,” argued Rory Dunlop KC, on behalf of the prosecution authority, during his closing remarks.

“The CPS are keen to make clear that it has never been accepted and [it has] never been established one way or another,” he insisted. Over the years, in response to FOIA requests and appeals, the CPS’ position on the deletion of Close’s account has varied.

For example, in 2017, after Maurizi challenged the gap in the emails, a CPS employee said in a witness statement that, “If there ever existed further emails they were not printed off and filed” and therefore “are no longer in the possession of the CPS.”  


According to an article by Maurizi in  il Fatto Quotidiano, five years later, the CPS said in response to a separate FOIA request from Labour MP John McDonnell that “deletion of an email account of a former member of staff at the time would not have led to the deletion of emails held on the case file.”

The CPS also admitted to McDonnell that they are only aware of one other case in the last decade which resulted in the premature destruction of case materials, according to Maurizi’s article. 

The Sept. 24 tribunal also heard that the CPS’ Records Management Manual states that general correspondence “should be retained in the case file within five years from the date of the most recent correspondence,” which would not allow for deletion upon retirement by the prosecutor on the case.

Mohamed Elmaazi contributed to this article.

January 13, 2025 Posted by | Legal, UK | Leave a comment

Are Blinken and Biden’s Gaza genocide denials any different than Nazi WWII genocide denials?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 12 Jan 25.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the NY Times he’s not worried about history judging him as a genocide enabler.

When asked he replied, “No. It’s not (genocide), first of all. Second, as to how the world sees it, I can’t fully answer to that.”

Blinken will deny to his death his $22 billion in weapons that Israel has used to utterly destroy sustainable life for 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza’s 139 square miles is genocide. But the entire world aside from the Biden administration is correct in viewing it as genocide

It isn’t that Blinken “Can’t answer to that” (the world viewing it as genocide). He simply won’t answer to what is the most monstrous crime a national leader can commit. From Day 1 in the genocide Israel embarked upon in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Blinken and his boss Biden have been calling the genocide their weapons enable ‘self-defense.’

Denying genocide is what the Nazi war criminals did to a man at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials after WWII.

There will be no war crime trials for Blinken and Biden for the genocide that could not take place their tens of billions in weapons, vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the US Security Council, public support and their endless ‘self-defense’ refrain.

In a bitter irony for humanity, it was the US which helped establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 to ferret out and prosecute war criminals. But with criminal US wars devastating Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has turned on the ICC in fear of becoming ICC war crime targets. The US has abstained from membership and has blasted the ICC indicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his Gaza genocide. President Biden called the indictment “outrageous” and declared “We will always stand with Israel.”

Is that any different from denying, even condoning WWII Nazi genocide?

Blinken and Biden, barreling toward historical infamy with their blank check enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza.

January 13, 2025 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Lawsuit challenges NRC on SMR regulation

Friday, 10 January 2025, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/lawsuit-challenges-nrc-on-smr-regulation

The States of Texas and Utah and microreactor developer Last Energy Inc are challenging the US regulator over its application of a rule it adopted in 1956 to small modular reactors and research and test reactors.

Under the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Utilization Facility Rule, all US reactors are required to obtain NRC construction and operating licences regardless of their size, the amount of nuclear material they use or the risks associated with their operation. The plaintiffs say this imposes “complicated, costly, and time-intensive requirements that even the smallest and safest SMRs and microreactors – down to those not strong enough to power an LED lightbulb” must satisfy to secure the necessary licences. This does not only affect microreactors: existing research and test reactors such as those at the universities in both Texas and Utah face “significant costs” to maintain their NRC operating licences, the plaintiffs say.

In the filing, Last Energy – developer of the PWR-20 microreactor – says it has invested “tens of millions of dollars” in developing small nuclear reactor technology, including USD2 million on manufacturing efforts in Texas alone, and has agreements to develop more than 50 nuclear reactor facilities across Europe. But although it has a “preference” to build in the USA, “Last Energy nonetheless has concluded it is only feasible to develop its projects abroad in order to access alternative regulatory frameworks that incorporate a de minimis standard for nuclear power permitting”.

Noting that only three new commercial reactors have been built in the USA over the past 28 years, the plaintiffs say building a new commercial reactor of any size in the country has become “virtually impossible” due to the rule, which it says is a “misreading” of the NRC’s own scope of authority.

They are asking the court to set aside the rule, “at least as applied to certain small, non-hazardous reactors”, and exempt their research reactors and Last Energy’s small modular reactors (SMRs) from the commission’s licensing requirements.

Houston, Texas-based law firm King & Spalding said the lawsuit, if it is successful, would “mark a turning point” in the US nuclear regulatory framework – but warns that it could also create greater uncertainty as advanced nuclear technologies get closer to commercial readiness.

“Regardless the outcome, the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit highlights the challenges in applying the Utilization Facility Rule to the advanced nuclear reactors now under development in the US,” the company said in in analysis released on 9 January.

But the NRC is already addressing the issue: in 2023, it began the rulemaking process to establish an optional technology-inclusive regulatory framework for new commercial advanced nuclear reactors, which would include risk-informed and performance-based methods “flexible and practicable for application to a variety of advanced reactor technologies”. SECY-23-0021: Proposed Rule: Risk-Informed, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors is currently open for public comment until 28 February, and the NRC has said it expects to issue a final rule “no later than the end of 2027”.

The lawsuit has been filed with the US District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

January 13, 2025 Posted by | Legal, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Trident nuclear submarines leave UK reliant on the US, in lockstep with the US.

By Lynn Jamieson and Samuel Rafanell-Williams

 The special relationship has meant that UK leaders typically fall in lockstep with US superpower logic, most catastrophically in Iraq, no matter how devastating the consequences.
An important and easily overlooked reason why Westminster is so willing to
do Washington’s bidding is the reliance of our supposedly
“independent” nuclear weapons capability on US military infrastructure
and technology.

The nuclear weapons based on the west coast of Scotland,
are arguably more of a US technology than British. The submarines, whilst
built in Barrow-in-Furness in England, are assembled according to US
blueprints and with US components. The Trident missiles fired by the
submarines are built, supplied and maintained in the US.

 The National 10th Jan 2025,
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24846637.trident-nuclear-submarines-leave-uk-reliant-us/

January 13, 2025 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ireland formally joins ICJ genocide case against Israel

Ireland is the latest country to join South Africa in attempting to hold Israel accountable at the International Court of Justice in the Hague

News Desk, JAN 7, 2025,  https://thecradle.co/articles/ireland-formally-joins-icj-genocide-case-against-israel

Ireland has submitted a declaration to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide.

“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” or South Africa versus Israel, the ICJ said in a statement on 7 January.

Under Article 63, any state party to a convention that is under judicial consideration has the right to intervene, making the ICJ’s interpretation of that convention binding on them as well.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin announced in December his government would join the ICJ case.

Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in response, while the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, described Ireland’s Prime Minister, Simon Harris, as antisemitic.

Harris responded by saying, “You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible. You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza. You know what I think is reprehensible? People are being left to starve, and humanitarian aid is not flowing.”

US-Palestinian entrepreneur and art curator Faisal Saleh said he has begun efforts to lease the closed Israeli embassy building and convert it into a Palestinian museum.

“This will be a very powerful symbolic move where Palestinian art replaces the genocidal entity representation in Ireland,” Saleh told Anadolu Ajansi on 3 January.

Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, placing the strip under total siege and unleashing a horrific bombing campaign targeting Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters alike.

In December of that year, South Africa filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel, claiming its actions in Gaza were in violation of the Genocide Convention.

Several countries have since joined the case, including Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, and Turkiye.

In fifteen months of war, Israeli forces have killed over 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, while injuring over 105,000.

The campaign has laid waste to much of the enclave, including homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, agricultural land, and water infrastructure, making Gaza largely unlivable.

Israeli soldiers and politicians have declared it their goal to forcibly expel all 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and to build Jewish settlements on the ruins of the destroyed Palestinian cities and refugee camps.

January 12, 2025 Posted by | Ireland, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

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