February, 09 2021, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Diane Curran, Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg, LLP, (240) 393-9285, dcurran@harmoncurran.com
Mindy Goldstein, Director, Turner Environmental Law Clinic, Emory University School of Law, (404) 727-3432, mindy.goldstein@emory.edu
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear, (240) 462-3216, kevin@beyondnuclear.org
Rose Gardner, Alliance for Environmental Strategies (and Beyond Nuclear member), (575) 390-9634, nmlady2000@icloud.com
Stephen Kent, KentCom LLC, (914) 589-5988, skent@kentcom.com
Beyond Nuclear Files Federal Lawsuit Challenging High-Level Radioactive Waste Dump Targeted at Texas/New Mexico Border
Petition charges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knowingly violated the U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act and up-ended settled law which prohibits transfer of ownership of commercial irradiated fuel to the federal government unless and until a permanent geologic repository is ready to receive it
WASHINGTON
The non-profit organization Beyond Nuclear filed suit in federal court today to prevent the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from licensing a massive "consolidated interim storage facility" (CISF) for highly radioactive waste in Andrews County, west Texas.
In its Petition for Review filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Beyond Nuclear asked the Court to dismiss the NRC licensing proceeding for a permit to build and operate a CISF proposed by Interim Storage Partners (ISP), a business consortium. It plans to use the facility to store 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated fuel generated by nuclear reactors across the U.S. (also euphemistically known as "used" or "spent" fuel), amounting to nearly half of the nation's current inventory.
The irradiated fuel would be housed on the surface of the land, on the site of an existing facility for storage and disposal of so-called "low-level radioactive waste" (LLRW). The LLRW facility is owned and operated by Waste Control Specialists (WCS). WCS and Orano (formerly Areva) comprise ISP. ISP's CISF is located about 0.37 miles from the New Mexico border, and very near the Ogallala Aquifer, an essential source of irrigation and drinking water across eight High Plains states.
The Beyond Nuclear petition charges that orders issued by the NRC in 2018 and 2020 violate federal law by contemplating that the U.S. government will become the owner of the irradiated fuel during transportation to and storage at the ISP facility. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the government is precluded from taking title to irradiated fuel unless and until a repository is licensed and operating. No such repository has been licensed in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) most recent estimate for the opening of a geologic repository is the year 2048 at the earliest.
In its 2020 decision, in which the NRC rejected challenges to the license application, the NRC Commissioners admitted that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would indeed be violated if title to irradiated fuel were transferred to the federal government so it could be stored at the ISP facility. But they refused to remove the proposed license provision which contemplates federal ownership of the irradiated fuel. Instead, they ruled that approving ISP's application would not directly involve NRC in a violation of federal law - according to the NRC, that violation would occur only if DOE acted on the approved license - and therefore they could approve it, despite the fact the provision is illegal. The NRC Commissioners also noted with approval that "ISP acknowledges that it hopes Congress will change the law to allow DOE to enter storage contracts prior to the availability of a repository" (December 17, 2020 order, page 5).
But the petition contends that the NRC may not approve license provisions that violate federal law in the hope the law will change. "This NRC decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President," said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear. "The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that ISP or the Department of Energy won't complete the illegal activity it authorized. The buck must stop with the NRC." Co-counsel Diane Curran stated, "Our claim is simple. The NRC is not above the law, nor does it stand apart from it."
In a separate case, filed in June 2020, Beyond Nuclear challenged a similar application, by Holtec International, to store up to 173,600 metric tons of irradiated fuel on another CISF site in southeastern New Mexico. The Holtec site lies just over 40 miles west from the ISP facility in Texas. Like ISP's license application, Holtec's application illegally assumes that the federal government will take title to the irradiated fuel during transportation and storage.
Background on the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. According to a 1996 D.C. Circuit Court ruling, the NWPA is Congress' "comprehensive scheme for the interim storage and permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste generated by civilian nuclear power plants" [Ind. Mich. Power Co. v. DOE, 88 F.3d 1272, 1273 (D.C. Cir. 1996)]. The law establishes distinct roles for the federal government, versus the owners of facilities that generate irradiated fuel, with respect to storage and disposal of the highly radioactive wastes. The "Federal Government has the responsibility to provide for the permanent disposal of...spent nuclear fuel" but "the generators and owners of...spent nuclear fuel have the primary responsibility to provide for, and the responsibility to pay the costs of, the interim storage of...spent fuel until such...spent fuel is accepted by the Secretary of Energy" [42 U.S.C. SS 10131]. Section 111 of the NWPA specifically provides that the federal government will not take title to spent fuel until it has opened a permanent geologic repository [42 U.S.C. SS 10131(a)(5)].
"Congress acted wisely when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and refused to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a permanent repository was up and running," said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. "It understood that irradiated fuel remains hazardous forevermore, and that the only safe long-term strategy for safeguarding irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation from the living environment." Certain radioactive isotopes in irradiated fuel remain dangerous for more than a million years, Kamps pointed out.
"Today, the NWPA remains the public's best protection against a so-called consolidated 'interim' storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national, surface 'parking lot dump' for radioactive waste," Kamps said. "But if we ignore it or jettison the law, communities like west Texas and southeastern New Mexico can be railroaded by the nuclear industry and its friends in government, and forced to accept mountains of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste other states are eager to offload."
In addition to impacting Texas and New Mexico, shipping the waste to the ISP facility would also endanger 43 other states plus the District of Columbia, because it would entail hauling several thousands of high-risk, high-level radioactive waste shipments on their roads, rails, and/or waterways, posing risks of release of hazardous radioactivity all along the way.
"The communities near the nuclear plants that generated this dangerous high-level radioactive waste do not want it, and neither do we," said Rose Gardner of Eunice, New Mexico, whose home and business are just several miles from the ISP CISF site. She is a co-founder of the grassroots environmental justice organization Alliance for Environmental Strategies, and a member of Beyond Nuclear. "Every single one of the thousands of high-risk shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel would pass through my community, which is unacceptable," Gardner said.
Besides threatening public health, safety, and the environment, evading federal law to license the ISP facility would also impact the public financially. Transferring title and liability for irradiated fuel from the nuclear utilities that generated it to DOE would mean that federal taxpayers would have to pay many billions of dollars for so-called "interim" storage of the waste. That's on top of the many tens of billions of dollars that ratepayers and taxpayers have already paid to fund a permanent geologic repository that hasn't yet materialized.
While emphasizing the essential role of a repository to isolate irradiated fuel from the environment over the long term, Kamps said that the government should cancel the Yucca Mountain Project once and for all. "A deep geologic repository for permanent disposal should meet a long list of stringent criteria: scientific suitability, legality, environmental justice, consent-based siting, mitigation of transport risks, regional equity, intergenerational equity, and safeguards against nuclear weapons proliferation, including a ban on irradiated fuel reprocessing," Kamps said. "But the proposed Yucca Mountain dump, sited on land owned by the Western Shoshone in Nevada without their consent, fails to meet any of those standards. That's why a coalition of more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest organizations, representing all 50 states, has opposed it for 34 years."
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.
(301) 270-2209LATEST NEWS
Listen Live: US Supreme Court Hears Outrageous Argument That Trump Is Above the Law
"The American people deserve a Supreme Court that does not hesitate to declare that no one is above the law, including a former president," said one campaigner.
Apr 25, 2024
After months of delay, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday will hear oral arguments in a closely watched case on whether former President Donald Trump should be immune from criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss—an argument that legal experts say is both absurd and dangerous.
Listen live to the oral arguments, which are set to begin at 10:00 am ET:
Thursday's proceedings mark the high court's final argument of its current term, and pro-democracy campaigners are calling on the justices to quickly reject the former president's sweeping immunity claim so he can face trial on federal election subversion charges before his November rematch with President Joe Biden.
As Bloomberg's Greg Stohr noted earlier this week, Thursday's oral arguments give "Special Counsel Jack Smith only a narrow window to put the former president in front of a Washington jury before voters go to the polls on November 5."
"With the trial on hold until the high court rules," Stohr added, "Smith needs a clear-cut victory, and he needs it quickly."
Sean Eldridge, founder and president of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said in a statement Thursday that "the Supreme Court's right-wing majority has already handed Trump a temporary victory by stalling this case for months, allowing him to delay accountability for his criminal attempts to cling to power."
"With so much at stake for our democracy, the Supreme Court should rule swiftly and decisively in this case," said Eldridge. "Accountability delayed could mean accountability denied."
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Grand Jury Indicts Top Trump Aides, 11 Arizona Republicans Over 'Fake Electors' Scheme
Had it succeeded, said the state's attorney general, the scheme would have "deprived Arizona's voters of their right to have their votes counted for their chosen president."
Apr 25, 2024
A grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday charged seven aides to Donald Trump and nearly a dozen Republican officials over a "fake electors" scheme in the state that aimed to keep the former president in power after his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump, who is currently facing nearly 90 charges across four criminal cases as he runs for another White House term, was described as "unindicted co-conspirator 1" in the 58-page indictment, which was announced by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
"The people of Arizona elected President Biden," Mayes, a Democrat, said Wednesday. "Unwilling to accept this fact, the defendants charged by the state grand jury allegedly schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency. Whatever their reasoning was, the plot to violate the law must be answered for."
The indictment names former Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, sitting state Republican Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, and seven others as the "fake electors" who sought to declare Trump the rightful winner of the state's presidential contest.
The names of other individuals indicted by the state grand jury are redacted, but the document's descriptions make clear that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and top Trump legal strategist Boris Epshteyn are among those facing felony charges—including fraud, forgery, and conspiracy.
"In Arizona, defendants, unindicted coconspirators, and others pressured the three groups of election officials responsible for certifying election results to encourage them to change the election results," the document reads. "Discussions about using the Republican electors to change the outcome of the election began as early as November 4, 2020. Those plans evolved during November based on memos drafted by [an attorney for the Trump campaign, Kenneth Chesebro]."
Mayes said Wednesday that had the fake elector scheme succeeded, it would have "deprived Arizona's voters of their right to have their votes counted for their chosen president."
"It effectively would have made their right to vote meaningless," said Mayes.
A state grand jury, made up of everyday, regular Arizonans, has handed down felony indictments in the ongoing investigation into the fake elector scheme in Arizona. pic.twitter.com/Nu8GcD4ZqJ
— AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes (@AZAGMayes) April 24, 2024
Alex Gulotta, state director of All Voting Is Local Action Arizona, said Wednesday that "the indictment of the eleven fake electors is one of the first steps required in holding these election deniers accountable for their alleged attempts to take power away from voters by disrupting our free and fair elections."
"Arizonans deserve to trust the election officials responsible for administering our elections and preserving our democracy," said Gulotta, "and this is a positive step forward as we continue to strengthen the foundations of our democracy and restore faith in our elections."
The Arizona Republicreported Wednesday that "several of the Arizona electors have previously claimed they were merely offering Congress a backup plan, though nothing in the documents they sent to Congress and the National Archives backs up that assertion."
"The indictment includes several statements the false electors made on social media that contradict those claims," the newspaper observed.
Jenny Guzman, director of Common Cause's Arizona program, said the indictment "marks the start of a new chapter for the fake elector scheme that has plagued Arizona."
"Arizonans are still dealing with the fallout from the false electors and the Big Lie about the 2020 elections," said Guzman. "We are relieved that the investigation by Attorney General Mayes has concluded and Arizonans can now know that what comes next is accountability. These efforts by these fake electors to undermine the will of Arizona’s voters have had implications far beyond their failed attempt to overthrow the 2020 election."
"This indictment can reassure all Arizonans that if anyone, regardless of their political affiliation, attempts to undermine their vote, consequences will follow," Guzman added.
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Watchdog Urges FEC to Investigate Trump Campaign Over Scheme for Legal Fees
"By not disclosing the vendors that actually provided legal services, the Trump-affiliated committees effectively blocked the public from knowing which attorneys and firms are being paid—and how much."
Apr 24, 2024
A campaign finance watchdog on Wednesday filed a Federal Election Commission complaint accusing former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, affiliated political groups, and an accounting firm of violating U.S. law in a scheme "seemingly designed to obscure the true recipients of a noteworthy portion of Trump's legal bills."
The Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center (CLC) said that "evidence appears to show an illegal arrangement between several Trump-affiliated committees and a compliance firm named Red Curve Solutions that is designed to obscure the identities of those providing legal services and how much they are being paid."
"Voters have a right to know how the presidential campaigns and other committees supporting presidential candidates spend their money."
CLC alleges that the Trump campaign, Trump's political action committee (PAC) Save America, and three affiliated organizations "violated federal reporting requirements based on a scheme in which the committees reportedly paid over $7.2 million—described as 'reimbursement for legal' costs or expenses"—to Red Curve.
The watchdog also said that Red Curve appears to be "making or facilitating illegal contributions that violate either federal contribution limits or the prohibition on corporate contributions."
According to CLC:
Red Curve is a domestic limited liability company that offers compliance and FEC reporting services but does not appear to offer any legal services. It is managed by Bradley Crate, who also serves as the treasurer for each of the five Trump-affiliated committees concerned in this complaint, as well as over 200 other federal committees.
According to filings with the FEC, Red Curve appears to have been fronting legal costs for Trump since at least December 2022, with Trump-affiliated committees repaying the company later. This arrangement appears to violate FEC rules that require campaigns to disclose not only the entity being reimbursed (here, Red Curve) but also the underlying vendor. By not disclosing the vendors that actually provided legal services, the Trump-affiliated committees effectively blocked the public from knowing which attorneys and firms are being paid—and how much they are being paid—through this arrangement.
"Voters have a right to know how the presidential campaigns and other committees supporting presidential candidates spend their money," CLC senior director of campaign finance Erin Chlopak said in a statement. "When campaigns and committees obscure that information from the public, not only do they make it difficult to determine if the law has been violated, but they deny voters the ability to make an informed choice when casting a ballot."
"The steps taken by the Trump campaign, its affiliated committees, and Red Curve Solutions concealed information about how campaign funds were used to pay former President Trump's legal expenditures, including the amounts and ultimate recipients of these expenditures—and the FEC must investigate immediately," Chlopak added.
Trump—who is the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee—faces 91 federal and state felony charges related to his role in the January 6 insurrection and his organization's business practices. He is currently on trial in New York for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election cycle. The twice-impeached former president has been open about his use of campaign donations to pay his legal costs.
The new CLC filing comes a day after the watchdog filed separate FEC complaints urging investigations into a pair of Trump-affiliated "scam PACs," which "pretend to fundraise for major candidates or issues while secretly diverting almost all of their donors' money back into fundraising or the fraudsters' own pockets."
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