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New Office in Justice Dept. to Fight Environmental Racism

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2022
Julia Kane, Grist
https://www.justice.gov/oej

The Biden administration on May 5th unveiled a new government office for communities that have been targeted and plagued by polluters for decades.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is launching its first-ever Office of Environmental Justice, which, along with other federal agencies, will bring cases against polluters, prioritizing the communities most affected by environmental harm.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference, “Communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-income communities often bear the brunt of the harm caused by environmental crime, pollution, and climate change.”

The new environmental justice office commits the DOJ to fighting these problems by “vigorously and transparently working to secure environmental justice … in communication with the communities most affected by the underlying violations of federal law,” Garland said.

The Office of Environmental Justice will be led by Cynthia Ferguson, an attorney in the department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan noted the return of “supplemental environmental projects” as a law enforcement mechanism the Trump administration had banned. The projects allow convicted polluters to fund local anti-pollution initiatives as part of penalties for breaking environmental laws. Regan said the projects were “a tool to secure tangible public health benefits for communities harmed” by illegal pollution.

Jane English, the NAACP’s environmental and climate justice program manager, welcomed the news writing: “As climate change worsens, it is imperative that our leaders produce real, tangible solutions to protect Black and frontline communities and correct existing and past harms, all while initiating direct law enforcement corrective responses to egregious harms and environmental injustices.”

 

–Grist, May 6, 2022; U.S. Department of Justice original document

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Cape Cod Bay in the Crosshairs — Holtec’s Reactor Waste Water Threat

By John LaForge

Still dreaming of a nuclear reactor that is clean, safe and cheap? Holtec Decommissioning International Corp. is trying to turn that dream to a nightmare.

The newly minted subsidiary intends to dump roughly one million gallons radioactively contaminated nuclear reactor waste water into Cape Cod Bay, which happens to be a part of the protected Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The million gallons are stagnating in the shutdown Pilgrim reactor’s waste fuel pool, formerly used to cool extremely hot uranium fuel rods which are taken from the reactor core (at around 5,092 degrees Fahrenheit)  when fresh fuel is emplaced.

Holtec’s pollution plan has produced such a tsunami of public opposition that Massachusetts Senator Ed Marky convenes a congressional subcommittee field hearing in Plymouth, Massachusetts Friday, May 6, to air questions about an array of vexing problems with decommissioning the Pilgrim reactor, which is on the northwest shore of Cape Cod Bay. Markey is Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety.

Diane Turco is director of Cape Downwinders, a grassroots watchdog group working to protect local communities from the radiation risks created by Pilgrim. The group has helped bring critical attention to Holtec’s scandalous proposal and has organized gut-reaction outrage into a broad-based coalition of resistance that includes the fishing community, the labor movement, the real estate industry, as well as country’s major environmental organizations.

While Markey’s field hearing is being arranged, and Holtec works the bribery zone trying to win support, Turco has had to spend countless hours preparing to defend against trumped-up trespass charges resulting from a tour of the Pilgrim site she gave to a pair of National Public Radio reporters. The charge is crass political harassment, since neither of the reporters were charged, and attorneys have told Turco that a motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution is a no-brainer. But the court has not agreed to hold a motion hearing, so she has to prepare testimony and expert witnesses for a May 9 trial, even though the court could do the right thing and dismiss.

Waste water’s contents still secret

In a phone interview, Turco told me that Holtec has not even made public the radioactive character of the waste water it wants to spew to the public commons. If the state department of environmental protection has been informed, it has not divulged either the sorts of isotopes in the water or their concentration. This secrecy makes impossible an valid assessment of the risks involved and only aggravates public fear and hostility.

“If Holtec had true concern for public health and the environment and worked with transparency as they promised, it would halt any dumping until a viable solution is found acceptable”, Turco told the Cape Cod Times last December. “[D]umping into Cape Cod Bay just highlights the fact that the [US] Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec don’t have a solution for what to do with nuclear waste. Contaminating our environment is …is immoral.”

The thought of Holtec’s river of poison being poured into Cape Cod brings to mind a wartime atrocity like poisoning wells. Holtec says it intends to dilute the radioactive waste water (like Tepco Corp’s plan to pour 1 million tons of radioactive waste water into the Pacific beginning next spring), but this is an irrelevant distraction.

The volume of radioactive chemicals, metals, or isotopes will not be changed or reduced at all by diluting. The same total of radioactive materials and their radioactivity are merely spread through a larger volume of water — all of which will then be poisoned for a very long time. Strontium-90 taints the water for 300 years (ten half-lives); iodine-129 for 160 million years; carbon-14 for 57,000 years. All such cancer-causing radionuclides cio-accumulate and bio-concentrate in the ocean’s web of life and can contaminate seafood like Cape Cod’s famous mussels, clams and oysters — becoming internal radiation emitters.

Last January 12, Sen. Markey and three other members of congress wrote to Holtec opposing the proposed discharge into Cape Cod Bay. The letter encouraged Holtec to consider alternative methods of disposal, none of which are good answers to nuclear power’s endless waste dilemma. Operators of the closed Vermont Yankee reactor shipped its poison water out of state, which moved the radiation risk to someone else’s water table. Evaporation is an option that risks spewing radionuclides on the wind. Nuclear power stories just don’t have happy endings. ####

— A version of this piece ran at CounterPunch (https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/06/cape-cod-bay-in-the-crosshairs-holtecs-reactor-waste-water-threat/) May 6-8, 2022

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Russia Can Get In Line: Investigate U.S. Atrocities First

On April 23, 1999, the U.S. rocketed the central state broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building, killing 16 civilian employees and wounding 16. Human rights groups around the world said the attack was a war crime.

 

By John LaForge

Before the International Criminal Court confronts the criminal outrages currently being committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine, there are scores of alleged U.S. war crimes to be investigated.

Nukewatch, CounterPunch and World Beyond War published part of this list of headlines (below) ten years ago, but in view of relentless ongoing U.S. wars and the outpouring of legitimate, agonized of grief for civilian victims of Russia’s illegal war, an updated compilation is in order.

The U.S. military has a long record of apparent atrocities during its attacks and its unprovoked wars of aggression or occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Like Russia in Ukraine today, the crimes include bombing hospitals, desecrating corpses, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, attacking allied troops, torturing and executing prisoners, and using banned cluster bombs.

But unlike todays’ wall-to-wall news coverage of Russia’s onslaught, the U.S. media mostly withdrew from reporting on U.S. military occupations and still chooses not to present many photos or film of alleged U.S. crimes. Like news censorship inside Russia, our media’s blind eye helps maintain U.S. public support for its wars-of-choice, so protests have been raised mostly by victims, survivors, human rights groups, anti-war coalitions, and international law advocates.

The most notorious and well-documented U.S. crimes have involved its torture of prisoners. “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” concluded the nonpartisan 11-member panel of the Constitution Project in 2013. The group’s 577-page report found that President George W. Bush and others bore ultimate responsibility for it.[1]

While bombing Libya in March 2011, U.S. forces refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog.[2]

On Feb. 12, 2010, in an atrocity kept secret until March 13, U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan killed a teenage girl, a pregnant mother of 10, a pregnant mother of six, a police officer and his brother, and were accused of trying to cover-up the killings by digging bullets out of the victims’ bodies, washing the wounds with alcohol and lying to superior officers.[3]

U.S. jets bombed and rocketed an allied Pakistani military base for two hours Nov. 26, 2011, killing 26 members of a force called the Frontier Corps and wounding dozens more.[4]

During the war in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, U.S. pilots deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade May 7, 1999 using five GPS-guided bombs. President Bill Clinton, CIA director George Tenet, and Defense Secretary William Cohen all claimed it was a mistake.[5]

On April 23, 1999, the U.S. rocketed the central state broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building, killing 16 civilian employees and wounding 16. Human rights groups around the world said the attack was a war crime.[6]

In spite of international treaty law banning cluster bombs, the Unites States has used them widely its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia.[7]

The headlines below highlight U.S. conduct in the world, and provide an outline for prosecutors in The Hague to begin investigations.

Headlines allege U.S. war crime spree

 “How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 2019

“U.S. Drone Kills 30 Civilians, Afghans ay, Target Was ISIS,” New York Times, Sept. 20, 2019

“U.S. Airstrikes and Raids Killed 120 Civilians in 2018, Pentagon Says,” New York Times, May 3, 2019

“U.S. and Afghan Forces Killed More Civilians in Early 2019 Than Taliban did, U.N. Finds,” New York Times, April 25, 2019

“For Afghan Civilians, 2018 Was the Deadliest in a Decade” (“Among the dead last year were 927 children” the United Nations report found), New York Times, Feb. 25, 2019

“U.S. Airstrikes Said to Kill at Least 0 Afghan Civilians,” New York Times, Feb. 11, 2019

“American Airstrikes Kill Civilians, Including Children, Afghans Charge,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 2019

“Decorated Navy SEAL Is Accused of War Crimes in Iraq,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2018

“Report: 3,301 civilians killed in US-led strikes in Syria since 2014,” Duluth News Tribune, Sept. 24, 2018

“Study: US killed 500 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, June 3, 2018 (“Pentagon may be grossly undercounting.”)

“More Afghan Civilians are Victims of Targeted Attacks, UN Says,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2018

“Afghan Pedophiles Get Pass from US Military, Report Says,” New York Times, January 24, 2018

“‘Killed, Shovel in Hand’: Afghan Farmers are the Latest Victims of a Chaotic War,” New York Times, March 19, 2018

“American Airstrikes in Afghanistan Stir Debate Over Who Was Killed,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2017

“US Airstrikes kill at least 13 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Nov. 5, 2017

“Airstrike Kills at Least 25 at Street Market in Yemen,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2017

“Civilian deaths from US-led strikes on Isis surge under Trump administration” (“Airwars, a UK-based watchdog group, estimates the civilian death toll from coalition airstrikes at over 3,800.”), The Guardian, June 6, 2017

“11 Afghans Killed in US Airstrike,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 2017

“3 Children Among Dead in a Raid In Somalia,” New York Times, Aug. 26, 2017

“Afghans Say US Strike Hit Civilians,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 2017

“Civilian deaths a windfall for militants’ propaganda,” AP/Minneapolis StarTribune, April 2, 2017

“US Airstrike ‘Probably Had a Role’ in Mosul Civilian Deaths, Commander Concedes,” New York Times, March 29, 2017

“US strike reportedly killed 30 Syrians,” New York Times & Minneapolis StarTribune, March 23, 2017

“US military says fight with Taliban killed 33 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 13, 2017

“US-led strikes in Iraq, Syria have killed at least 188 civilians, military says,” Duluth NewsTribune, Jan. 3, 2017

“US admits its airstrikes likely killed Afghan civilians.” Washington Post & Minneapolis StarTribune, Nov. 6, 2016

“US Drones Hit Civilians, U.N. Says,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 2016

“Residents Say US Strike Killed Civilians” (killed at least 15 civilians), Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, 2016

“Pentagon: Errors led to hospital strike,” (“which killed 42 people”), New York Time & Minneapolis StarTribune, May 1, 2016

“A Moral Debt for Bombing a Hospital” (“killing 42 innocent people”), editorial, New York Times, April 30, 2016

“Airstrike on Afghan hospital stirs fury,” New York Times, & Minneapolis StarTribune; and “19 die in apparent US airstrike on Afghan hospital,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 4, 2015

“Afghanistan Says NATO Airstrike in East Killed Civilians,” New York Times, April 16, 2014

“U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes,” New York Times, April 16, 2013

“US marine pleads guilty to urinating on corpse of Taliban fighter in Afghanistan,” The Guardian, Jan. 16, 2013

“US troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2012

“Drones at Issue… Raids Disrupt Militants, but Civilian Deaths Stir Outrage,” New York Times, March 18, 2012

“G.I. Kills 16 Afghans, Including 9 Children In Attacks on Homes,” New York Times, March 12, 2012

“NATO Admits Airstrike Killed 8 Young Afghans, but Contends They Were Armed,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2012

“Informer Misled NATO in Airstrike That Killed 8 Civilians, Afghans Say” (“seven shepherd boys under 14”), New York Times, Feb. 10, 2012

“One of the U.S. Marines who was caught on video urinating on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters [in July 2011] has said that he’s not sorry for what he did and he’d do it again.” –ABC News
“Video [of Marines urinating on dead fighters] Inflames a Delicate Moment for US in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 2012

“Commission alleges US detainee abuse,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 8, 2012

“Six Children Are Killed by NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Nov. 25, 2011

“American Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2011

“US Drone Strike Kills Brother of a Taliban Commander,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2011

“G.I. Killed Afghan Journalist, NATO Says,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 2011

“Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2011

“Civilians Die in a Raid by Americans and Iraqis,” New York Times, Aug. 7, 2011

“NATO Strikes Libyan State TV Transmitters,” New York Times, July 31, 2011

“NATO admits raid probably killed nine in Tripoli,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 20, 2011

“US Expands Its Drone War to Take On Somali Militants,” New York Times, July 2, 2011

“NATO airstrike blamed in 14 civilian deaths,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 30, 2011

“Libya Effort Is Called Violation of War Act,” New York Times, May 26, 2011

“Raid on Wrong House Kills Afghan Girl, 12,” New York Times, May 12, 2011

“Yemen: 2 Killed in Missile Strike,” AP, May 5, 2011

“NATO Accused of Going Too Far With Libya Strikes,” New York Times, May 2, 2011

“Disposal of Bin Laden’s remains violated Islamic principles, clerics say,” AP, May 2, 2011

“Photos of atrocities seen as threat to Afghan relations,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 22, 2011

“Missiles Kill 26 in Pakistan” (“most of them civilians”), New York Times, March 18, 2011

“Afghans Say NATO Troops Killed 8 Civilians in Raid,” New York Times, Aug. 24, 2010

“‘A dozen or more’ Afghan civilians were killed during a nighttime raid Aug. 5, 2010 in eastern Afghanistan, NATO’s officers said.” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 2010

“Afghans Say Attack Killed 52 Civilians; NATO Differs,” New York Times, July 27, 2010

“Afghans Die in Bombing, As Toll Rises for Civilians,” New York Times, May 3, 2010

“Marines Used ‘Excessive Force’ in Afghan Civilian Deaths,” Washington Post, April 14, 2007

See you in court.

Notes:

[1] “U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes,” New York Times, April 16, 2013

[2] “NATO Failed to Aid a Boat of Migrants Off Libya Last Year, Rights Group Says,” New York Times, March 30, 2012

[3] Times of London, Mar. 13, 2010; & “US Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women,” New York Times, April 4, 2010

[4] “NATO Strikes Kill Pakistani Forces, Raising Tensions,” New York Times, Nov. 27, 2011

[5] The Guardian, “NATO bombed Chinese deliberately: Nato hit embassy on purpose,” Oct 16, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans

[6] Amnesty Int’l, “NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: ‘Collateral damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO During Operation Allied Force,” June 6, 2000, p. 40

[7] Human Rights Watch, “US Using Cluster munitions in Iraq,” April 1, 2003, https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/04/01/us-using-cluster-munitions-iraq#; The Lancet, “Pressure groups condemn US use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan”, Nov. 3, 2001,

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(01)06627-2.pdf; UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, “Cluster bombs were used by NATO forces during the bombing campaign,” https://www.icty.org/en/press/final-report-prosecutor-committee-established-review-nato-bombing-campaign-against-federal

 

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 “End war, build peace” by Ray Acheson

RAY ACHESON, 1 MARCH 2022

Ray Acheson is an activist for peace, justice and abolition, director of the Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom disarmament program in New York City, WILPF representative on the steering committee of ICAN, and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy (Roman and Littlefield 2021).

Russia’s war in Ukraine is intensifying, with cities and civilians being targeted with missiles and rockets and a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding. The threat of nuclear war, the billions of dollars being promised to militarism, racist border crossing restrictions and ideas about conflict, and the ongoing climate crisis are intertwined with the already horrific violence in Ukraine. To confront these compounding crises, war and war profiteering must end, nuclear weapons must be abolished, and we must confront the world of war that has been deliberately constructed at the expense of peace, justice, and survival.

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report, finding that human-induced climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly. “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of an IPCC working group.

The IPCC report was released five days after Russia launched an imperial war of aggression against Ukraine—a war that itself is fossil-fueled and wrapped up with energy and economic interests, and that will contribute further to carbon emissions. Furthermore, this report comes one day after the Russian president ordered his country’s nuclear forces to be put on “combat duty,” escalating the risk of nuclear war and threatening climate catastrophe.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has already seen violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, including Russian forces using banned weapons such as cluster munitions and using explosive weapons in populated areas, hitting hospitals, homes, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. The conflict has also already involved severe environmental impacts, including pollution from military sites and material, as well as from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, radiation risks from fighting at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility, groundwater contamination, and more.

Now, it risks becoming nuclear, putting the entire world at risk. The use of even a single nuclear bomb would be absolutely devastating. It would kill hundreds of thousands of people, it would destroy critical infrastructure, [and] it would unleash radiation that will damage human bodies, animals, plants, land, water, and air for generations. If it turns into a nuclear exchange with NATO or the United States, we will be facing an unprecedented catastrophe. Millions of people could die. Our health care systems, already overwhelmed by two years of a global pandemic, will collapse. The climate crisis will be exponentially exacerbated; there could be a disastrous decline in food production and a global famine that might kill most of humanity.

In this moment, everyone must condemn the threat to use nuclear weapons, as well as the ongoing bombing of civilians, the war in general, and the Russian government’s act of imperial aggression. Providing humanitarian relief, ending the war, and preventing it from turning nuclear are top priorities. But we must also recognize what led us here. This crisis is the inevitable result of building a world order based on militarism, just as the nuclear dimension is an inevitable result of the possessing nuclear weapons and claiming they are a legitimate tool of “security”.

READ THE FULL POST HERE:

End war, build peace

 

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“Most, if not all” US Reactors Dangerously Operating Using Counterfeit Parts

By John LaForge

The lead paragraph from Reuters was originally correct: “Most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants contain counterfeit or fraudulent parts, potentially increasing the risk of a safety failure…”

This hair-raising news is just one of the shocking findings in a set of seven reports released February 10 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG), now headed by Robert J. Feitel.

Among the findings of the first of the seven reports were: 1. “Counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI) are present in operating plants”; 2. “The extent of CFSI in operating plants is unknown because the NRC does not usually require licensees to track CFSI” … “if done at all, tracking is voluntary and methods and data quality vary among licensees”; 3. The questionable “termination of [some] rulemaking in 2016 that addressed CFSI oversight concerns”; and 4. “Department of Energy staff identified more than 100 incidents involving CFSI in FY 2021 alone, including 5 incidents involving safety-significant components.”

“Counterfeit parts are safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences in critical power plant equipment required to perform a safety function,” the OIG report says in its understated bureaucratese. And, “According to the Electric Power Research Institute, counterfeit parts have been found in valves, bearings, circuit breakers, pipe fittings, and structural steel, and can be difficult to spot.”

The antiseptic euphemism “serious consequences” resulting from the failure of critical but counterfeit “safety function” parts, means, in plain-spoken terms, nuclear reactors going out-of-control, suffering loss-of-coolant meltdowns, and causing massive radioactive releases with its acute and long-term damage to environmental and human health.

The finding that “most, if not all” of the country’s 94 operating reactors are more dangerous than we thought is potentially so devastating to the environmentally toxic and financially bailed-out nuclear power sector (Reuters said the OIG’s reports are “a blow to a US nuclear industry”), that public relations agents and industry allies in the media must have run headlong to the phones and demanded retractions. Somehow, they were rewarded almost immediately with a so-called “correction” which misstates and weakens the OIG findings — a “correction” that was placed at the beginning of most follow-up reports.

The retraction misleadingly states that it, “Corrects lead paragraph to say many counterfeit parts are in U.S. nuclear plants instead of most, if not all, plants contain counterfeit parts.”

In fact, the report from the OIG — based on confidential testimony from several industry and NRC whistle-blowers — says that “well placed NRC sources” allege that “most, if not all” nuclear reactors operating in the United States today have counterfeit or faulty, substandard parts essential for preventing disasters.

The lead paragraph in The Energy Daily improved on the Reuters report by including the word “operating” before “nuclear plant” — a salient point considering their increased potential for radiation disasters compared to the 23 shuttered units.

The “most, if not all” bombshell follows from the fact, as OIG found, that “the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may be underestimating the number of CFSI in plants and their impact because it does not require licensees [reactor operators] to report CFSI except in extraordinary circumstances” like “the failure of equipment that performs a significant safety function.”

One such fraudulently manufactured, purchased and installed part identified after it failed was a “service water pump shaft” that was found to be counterfeit after if snapped. The loss of cooling water circulation, either inside a reactor vessel, or in the deep pool of ferociously hot waste fuel rods, has caused some of the industry’s worse radiation release disasters.

Inspector General Savages ‘Misleading’ NRC Actions, Thanks Comley

The depth of deliberate malfeasance or deception by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is justifiably savaged in the OIG report. The investigation found that NRC staff had for more than 10 years dismissed, ignored and even misfiled so as to hide allegations regarding FCSI. “This investigation revealed that the alleger communicated CFSI concerns to the agency staff via letters, e-mails, phone calls, and discussions at public meetings over 10 years. Most of the alleger’s concerns involved Seabrook Station.”

“… we found that the NRC did not investigate or pursue any substantive actions regarding an alleger’s concerns about the presence of CFSI, nor did the NRC process any of the information provided by the alleger over the last 10 years through its Allegation Review Boards.”

Indeed, the NRC’s Office Allegation Coordinator was found to have classified the alleger’s charges as “non-allegations,” and then kept secret the details of how such a designation is applied. The OIG politely condemned the agency’s action, writing, “Such missing information regarding the NRC’s approach to reviewing allegations could be construed as misleading to the public.”

“The alleger” is a reference to Mr. Stephen J. Comley, Jr., of the national whistle-blower protection organization We the People, in Rowley, Mass. In a February 10 cover letter to Comley accompanying the reports, OIG head Feitel wrote appreciatively, “Thank you for taking considerable time to bring your concerns to the OIG,” and noted that “my staff has completed its investigations” into “your allegations that CFSI are present in most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants.…”

Feitel confirmed to Comley that “OIG investigators interviewed several individuals you identified.” They are some of the over two-dozen whistle-blowers who have spoken with We the People, and who are referred to in the OIG reports as “a well-placed NRC principle” or “an NRC source.”

As I reported last October in Steve Comley has for 35 years been haranguing the NRC and its inspectors, demanding that they take the whistle-blowers’ charges seriously. So the OIGs’ damning and alarming February findings (too many to report on in one or two articles) are the long-awaited validation and vindication of Comley’s steadfast work that goes back almost four decades.

Feitel’s letter to Comley speaks to his group’s repeated warnings to the NRC about the impossibility of safely evacuating the Seabrook, New Hampshire reactor site during an emergency, and, beyond this, to the whistle-blowers’ allegations that they as first responders — State Patrol and National Guard forces — have been gag-ordered by state authorities not to discuss the endangerment caused by the lack of a feasible evacuation plan. (Nuclear reactors are the only industrial operations required to earn the approval of an emergency evacuation plan prior to startup.)

“The OIG also investigated your allegation that Seabrook Station’s evacuation plan is inadequate,” Feitel wrote. This report is complete, but a response from the NRC is pending, and only after the response is filed with OIG can the public “request a copy of the report via the Freedom of Information Act,” Feitel advised.

For now, the NRC can continue to hide behind its PR hacks that manage major news services with bald-faced lies. An NRC Public Affairs Officer named Scott Burnell told Reuters, “Nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern.” And Burnell has a point. The report doesn’t “suggest” anything. While using more polite language then me, it directly condemns the deceitful, bogus, unscrupulous, immoral, deceptive, dodgy, and duplicitous chicanery of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when dealing with its own whistle-blowers, and warns against the reckless endangerment of operating counterfeit, substandard nuclear power reactors.

published at CounterPunch, Feb. 18, 2022: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/18/us-reactors-dangerously-operating-using-counterfeit-parts/

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