Appeals court overturns convictions and vacates sentences of Oak Ridge 3

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision in favor of the Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed (pictured) who were convicted in 2013 of sabotage for their July 28, 2012 Transform Now Plowshares protest of nuclear weapons production at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

“The purpose of the action of Michael, Megan and Greg was to call attention to the ongoing production of thermonuclear weapons components at the bomb plant in Oak Ridge and, more specifically, to oppose plans to build a new, multi-billion dollar bomb plant—the Uranium Processing Facility—at Y12,” said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. “They were nonviolent protestors in the tradition of Gandhi, not saboteurs. We are pleased the Sixth Circuit appreciated the difference.”

The court ruled 2-1 in a decision handed down on May 8, 2015, that the government failed to prove the Transform Now Plowshares activists intended to “injure the national defense,” a requirement for conviction under the sabotage act.  Disposing of the government’ arguments one by one, the court finally states simply: “The defendants’ convictions under §2155(a) must be reversed.”

Michael Walli is currently serving his sentence at McKean federal prison in Bradford, PA; Greg Boertje-Obed is in Leavenworth, KS; Megan Rice is in federal prison in Brooklyn, NY. Her release date is currently in mid-November, 2015. More.

"Environmentalists Threaten Palisades, NRC With Lawsuit"

Photo taken in May 2013 during a protest organized by Beyond Nuclear at the front entrance of Palisades, which had just leaked 82.1 gallons of radioactive water into Lake Michigan. Marion Anderson of South Haven, a member of MSEF-Shoreline Chapter, created the placard.As reported by Rebecca Thiele at WMUK (NPR at Western Michigan University), an environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, is intervening against regulatory rollbacks at Entergy Nuclear's Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in southwest Michigan.

Thiele interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps (a native of Kalamazoo -- just 35 miles downwind of Palisades -- who serves on the board of directors of Don't Waste MI), as well as the coalition's attorney, Terry Lodge. At the top of the story, Bette Pierman of Benton Harbor, chairwoman of Michigan Safe Energy Future (MSEF)--Shoreline Chapter, is heard presenting during a panel discussion. The interviews took place at a fund- and awareness-raising event held at the Old Dog Tavern on April 19th in downtown Kalamazoo. Music performed by the "Duffield-Caron Project, with Friends" can be heard in the background of the interviews.

The intervention focuses on the risk of pressurized thermal shock (PTS). Palisades has the worst neutron radiation embrittled reactor pressure vessel (RPV) of any nuclear power plant in the U.S. Like a hot glass under cold water (and a ton of pressure per square inch!), PTS could fracture Palisades' RPV, causing a loss of coolant accident, core meltdown, and catastrophic radioactivity release.

Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education, and the expert witness for Beyond Nuclear and the coaltion at Palisades, has produced a humorous short video about this serious subject, entitled "Nuclear Crack Down?"

"Bill decried as Exelon bailout"

As reported by Jeffrey Tomich in Midwest Energy News, the Illinois Attorney General's office has blasted a bill that would bailout Exelon Nuclear at huge taxpayer expense as disruptive to the free market in electricity.

IL AG's office spokeswoman Cara Hendrickson was quoted as testifying to a State of IL legislative panel: “What this bill does is disrupt that market. It puts a thumb on the scales. Basically, it’s ‘Heads up, Exelon wins. Tails up, Exelon wins.’ That’s not a free market. It’s a bailout.”

She was joined in opposing Exelon Nuclear lobbyists' bail out bill by the likes of AARP and businesses that would be ruined by increased electricity bills. Exelon seeks $300 million per year in subsidies from IL ratepayers, in order to prop up five reactors at three nuclear power plants.

However, Entergy has stubbornly refused to open its books, to prove that it's allegedly uncompetitive nukes are even in trouble.

"Did Tesla just kill nuclear power?"

Arnie Gundersen speaking to an audience at Illinois Sierra Club, April 30, 2015 (photo credit: NEIS).As conveyed in a Nuclear Energy Information Service media release, and a Forbes blog by Jeff McMahon, the question posed by Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education comes as Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and SolarCity fame unveiled very cost competitive household-, small business-, and utility-scale battery systems that promise to outcompete nuclear power, and lead to the expansion of renewable sources of electricity like wind power and solar photovoltaics.

Gundersen, who serves as Beyond Nuclear's expert witness in several old and new reactor proceedings, debated Argonne National Lab's chief of nuclear engineering at an event held at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

Gundersen rebuffed challenges about renewables' intermittency by stating “We all know that the wind doesn’t blow consistently and the sun doesn’t shine every day,” he said, “but the nuclear industry would have you believe that humankind is smart enough to develop techniques to store nuclear waste for a quarter of a million years, but at the same time human kind is so dumb we can’t figure out a way to store solar electricity overnight. To me that doesn’t make sense.”