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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.
TAKOMA PARK, MD - Beyond Nuclear has filed an appeal with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), against the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) ruling on an application by Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance. Holtec proposes a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for 173,600 metric tons of highly radioactive, commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in Southeastern New Mexico. (See the Brief on the Appeal, as well as the Notice of the Appeal, posted at Beyond Nuclear's homepage, www.beyondnuclear.org.) On May 7, the ASLB rejected Beyond Nuclear's legal objections to the proposed CISF. Beyond Nuclear's appeal requests the NRC to order immediate denial of Holtec's license application to the extent that it violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended (NWPA). By considering and approving an application that requires violation of the NWPA, Beyond Nuclear asserts the NRC is violating both the NWPA and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
Diane Curran, lawyer for Beyond Nuclear, stated "The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board's decision is legally erroneous, because there are no exceptions to the clear mandates of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Administrative Procedure Act. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must make its decisions in accordance with the law. Beyond Nuclear therefore seeks reversal of the licensing board, and also respectfully requests the Commission to order immediate denial of Holtec's license application to the extent that it violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act."
Holtec's application still retains the option for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to take ownership of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, to be temporarily stored at its proposed facility, which even Holtec has admitted is not allowed under the NWPA. During the oral argument in Albuquerque, NM last January, counsel for Holtec conceded that, under such "interim storage" circumstances, DOE ownership of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel would violate the NWPA: " I will agree with you that, on their current legislation, DOE cannot take title to spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, under the current statement of facts, but that could change, depending on what Congress does." (Transcript, pages 250-252, exchange between ASLB chief judge Ryerson and Holtec's counsel Silberg).
To get around this admitted illegality at the heart of the Holtec application, the ASLB stated in its May 7 ruling:
"...the Board assumes Holtec will honor its commitment not to contract unlawfully with DOE to store any other spent nuclear fuel (that is, the vast majority of spent fuel from commercial reactors, which is currently owned by the nuclear power companies). Likewise, we assume DOE would not be complicit in any such unlawful contracts." [Pages 32-33]
"Even assuming for purposes of argument that the Administrative Procedure Act would countenance the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board's disregard of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the licensing board's rationalization that Congress may change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in the future is unreasonable, unfair, arbitrary, and capricious, and therefore fails to satisfy the relevant federal law," said Mindy Goldstein, legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear.
"The inclusion of an illegal provision - the Department of Energy's taking title to the irradiated nuclear fuel at an interim site - renders the entire proposal illegal," Goldstein said. "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's complicity in just going along with Holtec's illegal proposal is itself a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, because federal agencies like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are not allowed to exceed the authority that Congress has bestowed on them," Goldstein added.
"Holtec is attempting an end-run around the carefully crafted and well balanced Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the public's several-decade old, best protection against an interim storage facility becoming de facto permanent, at the surface, in this case two and a half times bigger than the national dump-site targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada," said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear.
"U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman from New Mexico, serving as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, put it well, many years ago: opening a consolidated interim storage facility, without an operating permanent repository, risks temporary becoming de facto permanent. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act protects a state like New Mexico from being stuck, against its will, with a mountain of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste, at the surface of its land," Kamps added.
"On behalf of our members and supporters in New Mexico, and across the country along the road, rail, and waterway routes in most states, that would be used to haul the high risk, high-level radioactive waste to New Mexico, we will continue to appeal NRC's illegal actions to the federal courts, if necessary," Kamps added.
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) 270-2209"Too much of the coverage has simply ignored the climate crisis altogether, an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such megafires and a hotter, dryer planet is unequivocal," wrote the founders of Covering Climate Now.
Covering the who, what, when, where, and why is journalism 101. So why are too few media outlets explaining the role that the climate crisis plays in the "why" behind the fires ravaging the Los Angeles region?
That's the central question posed in an opinion piece published in The Guardian and elsewhere on Thursday authored by Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, the founders of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of over 500 news outlets aimed at improving climate coverage, of which Common Dreams is a part.
Hertsgaard and Pope wrote that "too much of the coverage has simply ignored the climate crisis altogether, an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such megafires and a hotter, dryer planet is unequivocal."
They added: "Too many stories have framed the fires as a political spat between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and California elected officials instead of a horrifying preview of what lies ahead if humans don't rapidly phase out fossil fuels. Too often, bad-faith disinformation has been repeated instead of debunked."
Misinformation, in many instances stemming from right-leaning sources, have proliferated since the blazes broke out last week. Trump in a social media post appeared to point the finger at California's statewide water management plans for fire hydrants running dry as firefighters fought the blazes last week. Southern California does have plenty water stored, but the city's infrastructure was not designed to respond to a fire as the large as the ones that broke out, experts toldPBS. Another user on the platform X falsely claimed that California turned away fire trucks from Oregon because of their emission levels, according to KQED.
Hertsgaard and Pope also called for outlets to name names. "Rarely have stories named the ultimate authors of this disaster: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other fossil fuel companies that have made gargantuan amounts of money even as they knowingly lied about their products dangerously overheating the planet," they wrote.
While the fires are still burning, researchers are already drawing the links between climate change and the blazes. In a thread on Bluesky, the climate scientist Daniel Swain explained the concept of climate "hydroclimate whiplash"—which southern California experienced in 2024—and how this can create ideal conditions for fires to spread.
The authors of the opinion piece noted that there have been bright spots when it comes to covering the fires with an eye toward the climate emergency and debunking false and misleading claims about the fires. The duo highlight a Timestory that is titled "The LA fires show the reality of living in a world with 1.5C of warming" and a column written by the Los Angeles Times' Sammy Roth, which began: "Los Angeles is burning. Fossil fuel companies laid the kindling."
Hertsgaard and Pope wrote, "When a house is on fire, by all means let journalism show us the flames."
"But tell us why the house is burning, too," they added.
Sanders responded that the outgoing president was "absolutely right," adding, "This is the defining issue of our time."
The farewell address that U.S. President Joe Biden delivered from the Oval Office late Wednesday featured a warning that's been central to progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders' messaging for decades—and particularly in the wake of the 2024 election.
"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead," Biden said, pointing to the "dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked."
"We see the consequences all across America," the president added.
Biden: "I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. That's the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape" pic.twitter.com/3JFO40udS3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2025
The crisis Biden belatedly identified predated his White House term and would have persisted even if his vice president, Kamala Harris, had defeated billionaire President-elect Donald Trump in November. In his Wednesday address, Biden made no reference to Sanders, who ran for president in 2016 and 2020 on a progressive platform challenging the power of entrenched wealth.
During Biden's four years in power, the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans saw their wealth grow by a staggering $6 trillion, and record federal lobbying by corporate interests—from Big Pharma to Big Tech to Big Oil—continued to derail or undermine even the most tepid reform efforts.
But Trump's victory, aided by more than a quarter of a billion dollars in campaign spending from the world's richest man—who also used his wealth to purchase one of the world's largest social media platforms—laid bare the decisive influence that present-day malefactors of great wealth have on American economic and political life.
"We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an NBC Newsappearance exactly one month before Biden's farewell address. "Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, had so much wealth and so much power. Never before has there been so much concentration of ownership, sector after sector."
"Never before in American history—and we better talk about this—have the people on top had so much political power," the senator added. "In this last election, in both parties, billionaires spent huge amounts of money to elect their candidates."
Bernie Sanders: "We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society. Never before in American history have so few people had so much wealth and so much power."
"In Russia, Putin has an oligarchy. We have an oligarchy here, too." pic.twitter.com/zBjf4O7khv
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 15, 2024
In a social media post early Thursday, Sanders thanked Biden for acknowledging the crisis of oligarchy.
"You were absolutely right," Sanders wrote. "This is the defining issue of our time."
Since his election win, Trump has moved to pack his incoming administration with lobbyists and other corporate cronies who stand to benefit from the president-elect's promised tax cuts and deregulatory blitz. Elon Musk, whose wealth has surged since Trump's reelection, has been tasked with leading an advisory commission designed to slash government spending.
The commission, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, is expected to use office space in the White House complex, spotlighting the extent to which the federal government and outside corporate forces are becoming increasingly intertwined.
At Trump's inauguration, American oligarchy will be on open display: The three richest men on the planet—Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—will be present.
During his speech Wednesday, Biden focused on the growing dominance of a handful of powerful U.S. tech companies and executives, many of whom—including Bezos and Zuckerberg—have pumped money into Trump's inaugural fund and signaled a desire to ally with an incoming president who has said he would let corporations buy their way around federal regulations.
"In his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us... about, and I quote, 'The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,'" Biden said. "Six decades later, I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well."
"The U.S. government is becoming an outright oligarchy, with billionaire business leaders gathering around the billionaire Trump."
The president's comments broadly echoed sentiments expressed by his antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, who said in his own farewell address in December that "plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship" and sounded the alarm over corporate consolidation—something he and other Biden administration officials, including Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, worked to combat over the past four years.
But progressives weren't exactly eager to give Biden credit for using his going-out speech to zero in on a longstanding problem that continued to fester under his leadership, despite the efforts of Kanter, Khan, and others.
The term "oligarchy" was entirely absent from Biden's most prominent speeches over the past four years, including his much-touted remarks on the imperiled state of American democracy.
"One last, tired bid for relevance, as if the U.S. drift into oligarchy is some novel, profound observation he just made—not something he's ignored his whole meandering term's worth of mumbling about democracy or, indeed, the thing that explains his entire career and presidency," Jacobin's Branko Marcetic wrote in response to Biden's farewell speech.
David Moore, co-founder of the investigative outlet Sludge, noted that "when his presidential campaign was flagging in 2019, he embraced a super PAC led by fundraisers from private equity"—benefiting from the political power of corporate interests he decried at the tail-end of his White House term.
Nevertheless, as progressive commentator and radio host Thom Hartmann put it Wednesday, "Biden is right, we are facing a crisis of oligarchy."
In a column published just ahead of Biden's speech, Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan Robinson rejected the emerging narrative on the right that the Trump administration and its corporate allies are merely attempting to bring about "the liberation of the country from the shackles of woke oppression."
"The more important thing to pay attention to is the way that the U.S. government is becoming an outright oligarchy, with billionaire business leaders gathering around the billionaire Trump," Robinson wrote. "Linda McMahon will work to privatize the public school system. Vivek Ramaswamy will make sure his fellow fraudsters don't end up in prison. And you, the non-billionaire, will end up being screwed by those who present themselves as the champions of the people."
"Despite the jubilation of the population in Gaza as well as that of the families of hostages held by Hamas, there have already been signs that Netanyahu has no interest in a lasting cease-fire."
Israeli attacks have reportedly killed more than 70 people in the Gaza Strip in the hours since a multiphase cease-fire agreement was announced Wednesday, a deal that sparked cautious hope for an end to a 15-month U.S.-backed assault that has decimated the Palestinian enclave and created one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in modern history.
Israel's cabinet was expected to meet Thursday to approve the cease-fire and hostage-release deal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement accusing Hamas of reneging "on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions."
"The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement," said Netanyahu, who is facing backlash from far-right groups and lawmakers over the deal.
Hamas rejected Netanyahu's claim that it is backing off the agreed-upon deal, with senior officials reiterating the group's commitment to the cease-fire in response to the Israeli prime minister.
"There is no basis for Netanyahu's allegations that the movement has backed down from the terms of the cease-fire agreement," said one Hamas official.
At a Wednesday press conference announcing the deal, Qatar's prime minister expressed hope that "the coming days will not see any military operations," with the cease-fire supposed to take effect on Sunday.
But those hopes were quickly dashed as Israeli forces continued their bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 73 people—including 20 children—and injuring hundreds more in attacks across the territory following news of the deal, which was a product of months of negotiations.
Al Jazeera reported that one of the Israeli attacks hit a school housing displaced people in Gaza City.
The deal's announcement, while welcomed by humanitarian groups and Palestinians displaced by Israeli bombing, was met with some trepidation given Netanyahu's insistence last month that Israeli forces "will return to fighting" once hostages are freed.
"There is no point in pretending otherwise," the prime minister said, "because returning to fighting is needed in order to complete the goals of the war."
Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote Wednesday that "despite the jubilation of the population in Gaza as well as that of the families of hostages held by Hamas, there have already been signs that Netanyahu has no interest in a lasting cease-fire."
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), warned Wednesday that "there are many ways" the deal could fall apart.
"Netanyahu has reportedly assured his right-wing ministers that he will resume the war after phase I 'until Hamas' defeat,'" Duss noted. "If, as another Israeli report claims, [U.S. President-elect Donald] Trump has secretly offered support for more settlements in the West Bank in exchange for Netanyahu backing the Gaza cease-fire, a return to large-scale violence against West Bank Palestinians (as opposed to the smaller-scale violence that they endure every day) is simply a question of when, not if."
"So long as the Palestinian people live under occupation, and the Israeli government steadily consolidates that occupation as a single undemocratic state, neither Israelis nor Palestinians will ever know the security and peace that both peoples desire and deserve," Duss added. "The path toward both will require a level of vision and courage that is currently in very short supply."