Antinuclear

The nuclear lobby’s education invasion – masters of the weasel word.

Look it’s just one little word – or sort of two-bit word – “DE-RISK”.

I came across it today, and puzzled over it. T’was in a rapturous article about Sheffield University, launching a major new manufacturing and testing facility in South Yorkshire, in partnership with Rolls Royce.

“SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors that are designed to be factory-built and transported to operational sites for installation. The technology is seen as a clean energy solution that is easier to deliver, scale and is more affordable than building new larger nuclear power stations. Each Rolls-Royce SMR could provide enough low-carbon electricity to power a million homes for more than 60 years.“

There were other words to ponder about – for example “The technology is seen as a clean energy solution” – seen by whom?

But I will stay with “de-risk”, because it’s a lovely word – chosen to impress, – and also to confuse and obfuscate the financial realities of the situation.

These are the meanings that I found

• To de-risk to take steps to make (something) less risky or less likely to involve a financial loss.
• De-Risking is a strategy that companies apply when they cannot manage the money laundering risks that they have obligations to.
• De–risking. means mitigating the risks of doing business in high-risk environments through concessionary finance or investment guar- antees. 
• The de-risking process involves a strategic assessment by companies to reduce exposure to high-risk activities in order to minimize compliance- and operations-related risks 

Well, to cut to the chase.

ECONOMICS. There is a wealth of information about the costs of small nuclear reactors (SMRs). Those in submarines are not suitable for electricity production. The only operating SMRs are in China (The HTR-PM) and Russia (The KLT-40S), and they’re not doing too well.

Meanwhile we have the fiasco of the NuScale SMR venture in the USA – . And with dozens of SMR designs on paper – none are even licensed let alone operative.

And here’s what that radical industrial journal Utility Dive has to say:

“Small modular reactors are at an economic disadvantage. The lower power output of these reactors, less than 300 MW per unit by definition as compared to the roughly 1,000 MW for the typical reactors that have been constructed for over four decades, means less revenue for the owning utility. But the cost of construction is not proportionately smaller. Engineers call this economies of scale. In terms of cost per unit (megawatt) of generation capacity, SMRs and the electricity they produce will be more expensive than power from large nuclear plants currently under construction. As the Lazard estimates show, these large plants are themselves not competitive with renewables.“

In Mirage News’ glowing regurgitation of nuclear hype for small nuclear reactors – not a word about their relatively more toxic radioactive wastes, not a word about their military and weapons, connection not a word about the long time scale, that makes them irrelevant to action on climate change.

But the military-industrial-nuclear-media-complex juggernaut rolls on – conning us with their weasel words – like “de-risk”.

May 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Assange Wins Right to Appeal on 1st Amendment Issue

The High Court in London ruled Monday that Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the U.S. on the grounds that he is being denied his First Amendment rights. 

May 20, 2024, By Joe Lauria in London Consortium News,  https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/20/assange-wins-right-to-appeal-on-1a-issue/—

The High Court in London on Monday granted Julian Assange the right to appeal the order to extradite him to the United States on the grounds that the U.S. did not satisfy the court that it would allow Assange a First Amendment defense in a U.S. court. 

“We spent a lot of time listening to the United States putting lipstick on a pig, but the judges didn’t buy it,” Stella Assange told reporters outside the court building. “As a family we are relieved but how long can this go on? The United States should read the situation and drop the case now.”   

Assange has been imprisoned in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison for more than five years on remand pending the outcome of his extradition.  He must now spend an untold number of more months in the maximum security prison awaiting the start of his appeal.

In that sense it was a bitter victory for Assange. He gets to stay in prison another year or more, Joe Biden doesn’t have to worry about a journalist showing up in chains in Alexandria, VA during a presidential campaign and of course Assange could lose his appeal and arrive in the U.S. at a more opportune time for Biden. 

In another sense, it was a victory for the supremacy of European law when it comes to free speech,

Background to Monday’s Action

The High Court in London on March 26 had ruled that Assange had three grounds to appeal, because 1). his extradition was incompatible with his free speech rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights; 2.) that he might be prejudiced because of his nationality (not being given 1st Amendment protection as a non-American) and 3). because he had inadequate protection against the death penalty. (Without such protection Britain cannot extradite him.).

Rather than proceed with the appeal on those three grounds, the High Court gave the U.S. the chance, fours years after the extradition process began, to promise it would not use the death penalty, and to guarantee his free speech rights. 

Because it is an executive branch decision, the U.S. was able to assure the British government that it would not seek the death penalty, and Assange’s lawyers on Monday said they did not contest that.  Left unexplained, however, was why the British home office waited four years to seek what is normally a routine assurance in an extradition case. 

The free speech issue was more complicated because a decision about Assange asserting a First Amendment defense at trial will be up to a U.S. federal court and not the Department of Justice. Therefore the DOJ could not issue such an assurance on the free speech issue.

That ultimately led the two judges, Justice Jeremy Johnson and Victoria Sharp, to allow Assange to launch a formal appeal of his extradition because of an apparent violation of British extradition law, based on the European Convention on Human Rights, that requires the receiving country to allow an extradited person the right to free speech. 

Johnson and Sharp did not buy the convoluted argument of James Lewis KC for the United States, on why the U.S. should get their hands on Assange despite being unable to guarantee his freedom of expression.

Edward Fitzgerald KC, and Mark Summers KC, barristers for Assange, easily picked apart three pieces of Lewis’ somewhat desperate presentation:

• pointing out how Lewis had misled the court by saying the U.S. assurance would allow Assange to rely on the First Amendment, when in fact it says he can “seek to rely” on it;
• how none of a slew of case law Lewis cited to supposedly bolster his argument actually dealt with a trial, which of course Assange will, if he goes to the U.S.;
• that saying Chelsea Manning was not able to invoke First Amendment rights in defense of leaking classified defense information meant Assange shouldn’t either was “nonsense” because Manning was a government whistleblower who had signed non-disclosure agreements and Assange is a publisher. 

The judges apparently also rejected a drawn-out, arcane and overly lawyered argument from Lewis about the difference between citizenship and nationality that to most laymen was nearly incomprehensible. 

A Watershed Moment

“This was a watershed moment in this very long battle,” said WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn at an event following the hearing. “Today marked the beginning of the end of the persecution.  The signaling from the courts here in London was clear to the U.S. government: We don’t believe your guarantees, we don’t believe in your assurances.”

1st Amendment & Espionage Act

The First Amendment is at the core of the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act, which makes no exception for a journalist to possess and disseminate defense information. 

The Assange case could lead to a constitutional challenge of it, said Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National Lawyers’ Guild. That may be one reason the Department of Justice does not want Assange to invoke the First Amendment in court. 

The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Act “bars extradition if an individual might be prejudiced due to his nationality and due to the centrality of the First Amendment to his defense,” Cohn told CN Live! last month.  “If he’s not permitted to rely on the First Amendment because of his status as a foreign national, he’ll thereby be prejudiced, potentially very greatly prejudiced by reason of his nationality.”

Assange contends that if he’s given First Amendment rights, “the prosecution will be stopped,” Cohn said. “The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defense.”

Cohn added: ‘If he has the right to free expression and freedom of speech, then what he did, what he’s accused of doing, would not violate the law.”

[See: 1st Amendment Authorized Assange’s Possession of Classified Data]

Though allowing First Amendment rights at trial would be ultimately a judge’s decision, and not the executive branch’s, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, who is prosecuting Assange, has not only not indicated that he wouldn’t file a motion against it in court, but has said explicitly that non-U.S. citizens do not have First Amendment rights in the U.S. for acts committed abroad. 

A date has not yet been set for Assange’s appeal to begin.

May 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dutton’s nuclear would spike electricity bills when (if) they start in the 2040s

Odd that Peter Dutton hasn’t mentioned the commencement of the latest nuclear reactor in the US — or the big price hike it has caused consumers.

BERNARD KEANE AND GLENN DYER, MAY 20, 2024,  https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/05/20/peter-dutton-nuclear-power-proposal-energy-bills-usa/

Why has Peter Dutton pulled another disappearing act — this time with his major policy, nuclear power?

In March, the Coalition’s media arm “exclusively” revealed he “will announce the Coalition’s signature energy policy before the May federal budget”. A few weeks later, we were told that timeline was abandoned, with Nationals leader David Littleproud complaining the Coalition was being “bullied” into announcing it before the budget, but that it could be announced “as soon as June or July”. When you live in the fantasy world of The Australian, the calendar’s a very flexible thing.

Dutton mentioned nuclear power several times in his budget reply speech last week. He did claim that “because of nuclear power, residents in Ontario, Canada pay up to a quarter of the cost of what some Australians pay for electricity”. But there was no detail — especially the electorates he wants to locate nuclear power plants in.

We know the Coalition is split over nuclear power, but you would have thought recent events in the United States would be encouraging Dutton to push forward. At the end of April, the most recent new nuclear reactor, in Georgia, began operating. “Georgia Power announced this week that the 1,114-megawatt (MW) Unit 4 nuclear power reactor at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Georgia, entered into commercial operation after connecting to the power grid in March 2024,” the US Energy Information Administration (IEA) announced on May 1. Vogtle 3 began operating in mid-2023.

Good news, surely? Why wouldn’t Dutton be mentioning Vogtle (OK, it’s a little hard to pronounce) in his budget reply — rather than Canada?

Well, for one thing, the two new reactors have cost around US$35 billion to construct — that’s around US$20 billion over budget — and were completed seven years late. The final cost makes them the most expensive nuclear power plants in history, and they were only completed because Donald Trump provided $12 billion in loan guarantees to the ailing project.

Preliminary construction began on the two Vogtle reactors in 2009. On that timetable — remembering Australia has no nuclear power regulatory structures or industry expertise to draw on — a Dutton government’s first nuclear power would become available in 2040, assuming building started the day after the election.

But mammoth delays and massive cost blowouts are neither here nor there to the Coalition, remembering that nuclear power is actually all about keeping coal-fired power going, not building any nuclear power stations. The reason Dutton might not want to mention Vogtle is what the enormous cost of the new reactors has done to power prices: cause a permanent 10% increase in electricity bills for consumers across Georgia and beyond. According to the Associated Press:

Regulators in December approved an additional 6% rate increase on Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers to pay for $7.56 billion in remaining costs at Vogtle, with the company absorbing $2.6 billion in costs. That’s expected to cost the typical residential customer an additional $8.97 a month in May, on top of the $5.42 increase that took effect when Unit 3 began operating.

That means consumers have faced a total 9.6% increase in electricity costs to pay for the new reactors.

That’s not modelling or estimates — that’s cold hard cash that American consumers are having to fork out, every quarter, forever, to pay for nuclear power.

Who would bear the cost of the inevitable budget blowouts of Dutton’s reactors? There is literally no major infrastructure project in Australia in recent years that has not experienced major cost blowouts. Consumers would be looking at similar increases in their power bills as the residents of Georgia — or higher.

This is why, as the IEA said, “no nuclear reactors are under construction now in the United States”. American electric utilities have learned from Vogtle’s delays, cost overruns, regulatory problems and massive lift in power costs for consumers. They have shelved plans for 24 other reactors proposed between 2007 and 2009.

The much-vaunted — by the Coalition — NuScale small modular reactor in Idaho was abandoned earlier this year amid cost blowouts that saw the likely consumer price of electricity produced by the plant rise by more than 50% to US$89/MWh. Two half-built reactors under construction in South Carolina were abandoned in 2017.

Westinghouse, whose technology is used in the Vogtle 4 station, is focused on trying to sell its reactor design abroad, as Americans come to realise that, even despite having had a nuclear power industry since the 1950s, more nuclear power plants are too costly for consumers to wear. But the penny hasn’t dropped with Dutton and his media champions yet.

May 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment