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Nuclear-test veterans' outrage as legal bill soars to £16m - mirror.co.uk
Lawyers have charged £16million in the battle to get justice for Britain's nuclear test veterans.
The money has been spent by legal teams for the UK Ministry of Defence and the veterans during a fiercely contested High Court action. It means the final bill could be much higher than any com-pensation eventually received.
The revelation comes after a judge told both sides, who are meant to have been negotiating a settlement for the past six months, to start talks. Some 22,000 men, who were sent to Australia and the South Pacific to witness atomic bomb tests, allegedly suffered a range of health problems.
Many of the 3,000 survivors have joined together in a major legal case to sue the MoD for negligence. But the case has descended into farce, with the MoD claiming a confidential offer has been made, but vets' lawyers saying they haven't received one. The High Court was told on Friday that costs are already at £15m for the three-year case, with a further £1m expected to pay for an appeal brought by the MoD which will be heard in May.
Dispute over radioactive dirt going to Calif site - Friday, Dec. 11, 2009 | 11:17 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun
Activists are protesting a decision by the California Department of Public Health that would allow the Boeing Co. and NASA to send contaminated dirt from a nuclear accident site to a waste facility in the San Joaquin Valley that is not licensed to accept radioactive waste.
The Department of Toxic Substances Control, which has the final say, has sent a letter to the agency requesting more information on its decision that the dirt "does not represent a public health threat" and could be sent to the hazardous waste facility in Kettleman City.
The dirt was dug up as part of a cleanup effort at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Los Angeles, where a partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor took place in 1959. The field lab was also used for rocket engine tests.
MoD unmoving on atomic veterans - politics.co.uk
The government is refusing to back down over attempts to force it to compensate British nuclear test veterans.
Armed forces minister Kevan Jones admitted he had sympathy for over 1,000 veterans of nuclear tests carried out in the 1950s who are seeking compensation.
But he said their attempts would continue to be rejected by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) because of a lack of "hard evidence" that their illnesses were caused by exposure to radiation.
Labour backbencher Siobhain McDonagh, who obtained the adjournment debate, told the Commons the husband of one of her constituents had committed suicide in 1976 "after 18 years of pain".
LIVERMORE LAB 'ENRON ACCOUNTING' HIDES CONTROVERSIAL MEGA-LASER'S TRUE COSTS
An internal U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) study details how managers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) shifted costs to understate total spending on the controversial National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser. The previously secret document, released today by the nuclear watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs, pegs the current hidden costs of NIF at $80 million annually.
"Livermore Lab is systematically disguising the true costs of the NIF," charged Tri-Valley CAREs' executive director, Marylia Kelley. "When calculated over the life of the project, these hidden costs total more than $2 billion." Kelley continued, "This illegal scheme circumvents the United States Congress, which sets NIF's budget each year, and violates our nation's most basic federal contracting laws." According to the report by the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Field Financial Management (OFFM), Livermore Lab’s practice of assigning NIF overhead expenses to other Lab programs violates Public Law 100-679 Cost Accounting Standards (CAS). This law is an integral part of the structure set up to regulate government contracts. Some of the NIF fee reductions date back to 2001. The OFFM investigators noted that the misleading cost accounting, "materially misstates the actual costs by LLNL for the NIF/National Ignition Campaign... and may result in an undercapitalization of the NIF/NIC's total project costs."
Report: Livermore National Lab hid $80 million of new nuclear fusion lab's cost - Inside Bay Area
Improper accounting practices have hidden the true cost of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to the tune of $80 million in this fiscal year alone, according to a leaked report.
Critics say this fiscal sleight of hand means the facility's already-huge cost — $3.5 billion to $4 billion overall, already three times its original estimated cost, and almost a half-billion dollars this fiscal year — has been significantly lowballed.
Construction began in 1997 on the NIF, which uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point of nuclear fusion; scientists hope it will be the first in the world to achieve "ignition," producing more energy than was put in to start the reaction, ultimately providing a new source of clean, renewable energy. After years of delays and rampant cost overruns, it was finished in March and dedicated in May to great fanfare.
The NIF already eats up about a quarter of the Livermore Lab's budget. But a report prepared in October by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Field Financial Management — leaked to Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), which in turn provided it to this newspaper — says managers have hidden the NIF's true costs by making other parts of the Livermore Lab pick up the tab. Besides weapons research, the lab's many programs include research in environmental science,
SA Current - CPS Energy Board Chair resigns after weeks of pressure
It took some doing, and some help from his friends, but Mayor Julián Castro appears to have finally wrested a resignation from CPS Energy Board Chair Aurora Geis this week. Geis was repolishing her resignation Tuesday afternoon, while stating she felt strongly that she is leaving utility on the right path despite the challenges that are ahead.
“The timing of it is not what I would have preferred because there is so much stability that needs to be put in place,” Geis said. “But now the greater challenge that we face is identifying a candidate who will be willing to serve.”
Conspiracy theory puts NRG on the grassy knoll
CPS Energy's longest-serving board trustee, Steve Hennigan, hasn't actually given me a copy of his nine-page “not so far-fetched theory document,” but we spoke at length Friday night and Saturday afternoon about what's in it as he fights to keep his board seat and remain a major player at the municipal utility.
“I'm not a conspiracy theorist,” said Hennigan, a credit union executive by day and an unmistakably nice man.
Conspiracy theory, nevertheless, is making the rounds these days in one of those “truth stranger than fiction” scenarios as business and civic leaders ask what went wrong with a multibillion-dollar plan to expand the South Texas Project nuclear facility, the source of 30 percent of the city's current energy usage.
Wilbanks: climategate embarrassing, but shouldn't have huge effect in long term | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxnews.com
Tom Wilbanks, a corporate fellow at ORNL and a significant contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change work that shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, said the reports emerging out of the University of East Anglia's climate research unit are embarrassing and indefensible. But he said he doesn't believe there will be a huge effect long-term on studies of global climate change.
Wilbanks said he was stunned to read reports of the e-mails, including some reported to be from scientists he knows well from Lawrence Livermore and the National Center for Atmospheric Research and other institutions.
Secret pacts on Okinawa | The Japan Times Online
For the first time, a former high-ranking diplomat testified in court on Tuesday that secret pacts existed between Japan and the United States over the May 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japan.
On behalf of a group of citizens seeking disclosure of three diplomatic documents related to the reversion, Mr. Bunroku Yoshino, former director of the Foreign Ministry's American Bureau, told the Tokyo District Court that the two countries concluded secret pacts under which Japan agreed to shoulder the burden of not only $16 million to move a Voice of America relay station abroad, but also $4 million that the U.S. was supposed to pay to help restore U.S. military areas to farmland.
VPR News: Lawmakers, Regulators Question Yankee Spin Off
Lawmakers and state utility regulators are asking tough questions about a plan to spin off Vermont Yankee into a new company.
They want to know if the new corporation is taking on too much debt. And they're asking whether the company will have enough money to make major repairs and dismantle the nuclear plant after it's shut down.
VPR's John Dillon reports:
(Dillon) First the background: Entergy, the Louisiana company that owns Vermont Yankee, wants to create a new company that would own the reactor in Vernon and five other nuclear plants.
This new spin-off corporation is called Enexus. And it would control the part of Entergy's nuclear fleet that sells power to the wholesale market.
JAPAN – UNITED STATES Secret nuclear deals between Tokyo and Washington | Spero News
For decades, the authorities have denied that nuclear weapons were present in Japan; yet it allowed United States to stockpile and transport them on Japanese soil. The credibility of the Liberal Democratic Party, now in the opposition, sinks further.
Tokyo – The people of Japan was deceived for decades, this according to declassified documents that are only now coming to light about secret deals between Washington and Tokyo with regards to the presence of nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. Since 1960, the government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has repeatedly denied that nuclear weapons were ever present in Japan or that any agreement existed to that effect.
In mid-October, the National Security Archives in Washington released declassified telegrams, background papers and top-secret minutes regarding US nuclear weapons policy in Okinawa and, more broadly, Japan between the 1950s and 1972. Information about secret deals comes from this source, but it is neither the only nor the main one.
The ‘secret’ US-Japan pact with loaded content — William Choong
Most visitors to Japan, this writer included, are usually impressed by the politeness of the Japanese. Taxi drivers are not gruff, department store staff bow, hotel porters try their best to help.
In this light, the country's former Foreign Minister Sunao Sonoda was rather un-Japanese when he denounced Dr Edwin Reischauer, America's envoy to Tokyo in the 1960s, a figure who was widely respected in Japan.
In 1981, Reischauer had spoken of a secret pact between the United States and Japan, whereby nuclear-armed US ships were allowed into Japan. This defied Japan's cherished “three 'no's” — that it shall not produce, possess or introduce nuclear arms.
“I have never met Dr Reischauer,” Sonoda told the Japanese Diet. “But he is an uncalled-for meddler who pokes his nose into matters that are absolutely none of his business.”
Nearly 30 years later, the issue of the secret pact has popped up again.
Japan says it will soon release details of nuclear pact with U.S. - washingtonpost.com
Japan's new government, already bickering with the United States about the location of a Marine air station on Okinawa, appears intent on revealing evidence of a decades-old secret pact between Tokyo and Washington that allowed U.S. ships and aircraft to carry nuclear weapons on stopovers in Japan.
Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said that the investigation is in its final stages and that its findings will be announced in January. "We'll be unburdening ourselves of the insistence of past governments that a secret agreement did not exist," Okada said in a speech last weekend.
The pact violates a Japanese law that prohibits nuclear weapons from being made, possessed or stored on its territory. But disclosure of the 1960s-era agreement is hardly new. In general outline, its existence has been known for years because of declassified U.S. government documents.
CPS board postpones decision on executives
CPS Energy trustees took no action Wednesday morning after deliberating for nearly 11 hours over the fate of several top executives connected to a nuclear cost estimate — much higher than expected — that was kept from the utility's board and the City Council.
The board came out of executive session shortly before 1 a.m. to announce that it would continue deliberation Monday.
“The seriousness of this issue warrants that this board takes care, takes caution,” Chairwoman Aurora Geis told the sparse crowd that waited. “People's lives are at stake.”
Tuesday's meeting was a continuation of Monday's nearly five-hour session, during which the board heard results of an internal investigation into how contractor Toshiba Inc.'s high cost estimate for the multibillion-dollar nuclear expansion was kept under wraps.
Japan Finds Documents Indicating Secret Nuclear Pact, NHK Says - Bloomberg.com
Japan’s government has discovered documents indicating the existence of a secret agreement allowing the U.S. to transport nuclear weapons through its territory, public broadcaster NHK reported on its Web site.
The government will set up a panel of experts to examine the documents and will announce the findings early next year, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said yesterday, according to NHK.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Cooper in Tokyo at ccooper1@bloomberg.net
CPS knew of higher STP cost year ago
CPS Energy knew a year ago that contractor Toshiba Inc. wanted at least $4 billion more than San Antonio was willing to pay for the nuclear expansion, according to several sources close to the deal.
Despite this, utility officials used a much lower figure as they pitched the project at public meetings during the summer, arguing that nuclear was the most cost-effective way for San Antonio to meet its future energy needs.
They took the same message to elected officials who were to vote on a $400 million bond issue and rate increases to finance the multibillion-dollar expansion of the South Texas Project near Bay City.
The response of City Council members and CPS Energy trustees to the 2008 estimate was muted Saturday. “Nothing can surprise me anymore,” Councilwoman Elisa Chan said.
But several officials said the revelation only deepens their mistrust of the city-owned utility's leadership.
“It concerns me greatly that neither the council nor the board was informed,” said Mayor Julián Castro, who acknowledged he, too, recently learned of the existence of the 2008 high estimate.
The high price of a deal gone bad: Rebuilding CPS leadership
It's come to this: The simple truth withheld from the community by CPS Energy was revealed last week by NRG Energy executives to a Houston gathering of financial analysts: San Antonio can't afford the high price of expanding the South Texas Project nuclear facility.
Not that we need another example, but once again Wall Street enjoys the advantage over Main Street. Ratepayers don't have a need to know, but let's not deny institutional investors a little inside information.
The project will cost billions more than CPS estimated, even after interim General Manager Steve Bartley went to Japan to seek concessions. Utility executives want until January to bring a new number to Mayor Julián Castro and the City Council. Why wait?
What CPS once promised was a good deal for the city is now, clearly, a bad deal. It's a bad deal made worse by utility executives who deliberately withheld critical financial data, thus misleading elected city leaders, the Express-News and the public. Even as we were told the project would cost CPS and NRG a total of $13 billion, utility executives knew Toshiba Inc. was estimating $4 billion more.
Security 'cover-up' at nuclear plants | Environment | The Observer
Ministers refuse to release details of five incidents last year
The government is refusing to provide details on five separate security breaches at Britain's nuclear power stations last year.
The breaches have prompted accusations that ministers are suppressing damaging information at a time when they are attempting to sell the idea of more nuclear power stations. Earlier this month, 10 new sites in England and Wales were approved.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, told MPs that nuclear was a "proven and reliable" energy source. But the latest annual report from the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS) has prompted questions about the measures being taken to protect the country's ageing plants. The report states that nuclear operators must disclose "events and occurrences which may be of interest from a security point of view". It notes: "Five reports were made which warranted further investigation and subsequent follow-up action."
Nuclear waste moved off the agenda (environmentalresearchweb blog) - environmentalresearchweb
The governments new draft National Policy Statement on nuclear power, indicating which issues the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) should take on board, and which it can ignore, contains this remarkable statement:
“The Government is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations. As a result the IPC need not consider this question.” The draft Statement goes on to say that ‘Geological disposal will be preceded by safe and secure interim storage’.
So it seems, the waste issue is all in hand and we needn’t bother too much about it, or any problems with the much more active spent fuel that the new reactors’ high fuel ‘burn up’ approach will create. Despite the fact that the highly active spent fuel is to be kept on site at the plant for perhaps several decades, that is evidently not something IPC will have to consider in its assessment of whether the proposed plants can go ahead. Instead the IPC will just focus on any conventional local planning and environmental impact issues that may emerge in relation to the 10 new nuclear plants that the government has now backed.
EPA's Secret Plan to Raise Public Radiation Exposure Levels Challenged
Public employees have filed a lawsuit demanding documents related to the U.S. EPA's plans made "in secrecy" to allow public exposure to increased levels of radioactivity following nuclear accidents or attacks.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility under the Freedom of Information Act claims that the agency "wrongfully withheld" comments submitted by EPA and other federal and state agency officials and by representatives of private corporations or trade associations to the EPA Office of Radiation and Indoor Air as it prepared its updated Protective Action Guides.
The radiation guides are protocols for responding to incidents ranging from nuclear power plant accidents to transportation spills to dirty bombs.
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