Judge Tosses Criminal Charges Against South Carolina Nuclear Executive - But Cas...
source link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/08/05/2043231/judge-tosses-criminal-charges-against-south-carolina-nuclear-executive---but-case-may-continue
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Judge Tosses Criminal Charges Against South Carolina Nuclear Executive
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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
A judge has ordered criminal charges dropped against the final executive accused of lying about problems building two nuclear reactors in South Carolina that were abandoned without generating a watt of power.
The judge tossed the charges Wednesday because ratepayers of the utility that lost billions of dollars on the project were improperly allowed on the grand jury that indicted Westinghouse Electric Co. executive Jeffrey Benjamin. But federal judge Mary Geiger Lewis also ruled that nothing is stopping prosecutors from properly seeking another indictment. "We're not going away," said assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday, who said prosecutors are still reviewing the ruling to decide their next steps...
The project fell apart in 2017 after nearly a decade of work, when executives and regulators determined construction of the reactors was so hopelessly behind schedule they could not get nearly $2 billion of tax breaks needed to help pay for the work. SCANA contracted with Westinghouse to build the reactors. Prosecutors said Benjamin , who was in charge of major projects, knew of delays and cost overruns but lied to regulators, utility executives and others. The lies led to electric rate increases while keeping the price of SCANA's stock from plummeting...
Two former SCANA executives have been sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to their roles in lying to ratepayers, regulators and investors. Former CEO Kevin Marsh received two years while chief operating officer Stephen Byrne was sentenced to 15 months. Former Westinghouse project director Carl Churchman has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents investigating the project's failure and is awaiting sentencing.
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His Constitutional rights were violated, so the judge dismissed the case without prejudice [illinoislegalaid.org], meaning the prosecutors get a do-over. Nothing at all wrong with this, and is how our legal system should work.-
Well, someone dropped the ball here by letting ratepayers onto the grand jury. Seems like that one is a pretty basic fuck-up.
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It could have been the result of a poorly-written jury questionnaire or because some people lied, or failed to disclose properly, to get on the jury.
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I was called for jury duty once where one of the questions was if you had car insurance, and if so, with whom. A group of us got called for a potential civil trial jury, and one of the early questions from the judge was "do you have car insurance"... and almost the entire panel stood up. The judge and lawyers all kind of looked at each other, but made their notes and went on. Then we broke for lunch.
When we came back, both lawyers had packed everything up; the judge told us they'd all agreed that the poten
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You can't retry someone the trial finds innocent; that's double jeopardy (and not the fun kind with Alex Trebek). But that's not what's happening here--the trial was canned before a verdict was ever reached.
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Always the same crap with these scammers and their mindless fanbois: Massively over-promising, under-delivering and lying about problems.
Of course, the charges from the story should have been tossed (whoever vetted that Grand Jury screwed up badly), but that is besides the point.
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Cue up the nuclear is perfect if we'd just get rid of regulations crowd! Sorry fans - this had little to do with those pesky environmentalists or tree huggers.
It's always the next reactor that will be perfectly safe, and nuclear can't fail, only we can fail nuclear. And if anyone has concerns, they go nuts calling them stupid.
I've always said that it is possible to build a really solid and safe nuc reactor power system. Just not by humans.
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And little to do with nuclear. Could happen with any big project, and often does.
Nice strawman, stupid.
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Nice ad hominem, oh fine person.
A certain delicious irony is you claiming I am mentally deficient while claiming I was making a strawman argument. note - I was not arguing with anyone, merely making a silly statement, which triggered the bejabbers out of ya. Thank you.
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I would say it is probably even possible by humans if you select the right people to do it. Of course, it will be even more a complete economic disaster than existing nukes. The only place where nukes could make sense is in space. The nuclear mafia/"industry" are not people that can do it on the ground though. They want maximum profits, maximum subsidies and if anything fails, for the taxpayer to pay for all damage.
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The US Navy does a pretty good job with nuclear power. But they take safety and security seriously.
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Yes. They have good designs, highly motivated and well trained people operating as a closely bonded team, and fewer bean counters to get in the way of such critical devices.
There's a genie in that reactor. A strong and angry energy dense genie. And it wants out! It is a certain mechanical operation, not too complicated as long as we know the rules. All parts must be extremely strong, all radiation hardening is critical. Understanding neutron created problems is important. You have to seal the genie in it
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The reason Naval reactors have never had an accident is because their reactors are purpose designed. Civilian reactors take this existing sub design, scale it up, and make it 10x more complex by adding a bunch of probably unnecessary "safety" systems (in addition to the ones already present that do the actual job already). And no, I don't mean additional backups. I mean making up theoretical problems that nobody has ever seen before and adding a complex system for handling that. Its great at making jobs
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On ships.
Which is a completely different technology.As a car analogy: the difference is as close as between an ICE and EV car...
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Naval reactors are very different from commercial reactors though. They are wildly expensive, even by nuclear standards.
There are good reasons why naval reactor technology has not been adopted by commercial plant designers. Nuclear is already unaffordable, and making the problem even worse isn't going to help.
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Yes, it is odd for such a safe power source to be unable to insure itself, so we had to enact the Price Anderson act to cover any damage over 450 million. Didn't anyone tell them that nuc plants won't have accidents?
Just as a note - this reactor gobbled up 9 billion dollars for a return of nothing. There is another reactor in Georgia that did go online recently. It was 34 Billion dollars, 17 billion dollars over budget. 9 billion here, 17 billion there - after a while it gets to be real money! 8^)
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> Just as a note - this reactor gobbled up 9 billion dollars for a return of nothing.
Well hardly nothing. I mean, you are a nuclear contractor right? Sure I bid 20 billion low, but itâ(TM)s nuclear. Change orders under 100 million get rubber stampedâ¦my marketing and lobbying money has earned me more digits than i have fingers and toes and _____.
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Might work once or twice.
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Not to mess up your fantasy, but there is a $75B nuclear insurance fund paid for by nuclear power providers. This public fund backs nuclear providers as in where money would come from to handle any cleanup from a disaster. But do go on with your anti-nuclear fantasies. I'm sure all those engineers are wrong and solar and wind really are powered by fairy dust.
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The Chinese. They are massively expanding their nuclear fleet quite effectively, and this is why they are the next great power. They can build stuff you can only cry about.
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The two new Chinese reactors were built by...wait for it...Westinghouse, a US company. It really is magic when the NRC isn't involved in a nuclear project. It magically just works on time and on budget. It is almost like people are playing politics with nuclear regulations. I'm sure that has absolutely no negative consequences at all.
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China has its own version of the Westinghouse AP1000 design, the CAP1000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Should be cookie-cutter but I'm not sure the west even allows such a thing.
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"I've always said that it is possible to build a really solid and safe nuc reactor power system. Just not by humans."
The S5W, S6G, S8G, and A4W reactor systems would disagree, I didn't build one of them, but I did operate an S5W engine room and also took care of its water chemistry.
I assure you I am human.
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We use a reactor design made for subs and then rube goldburg the hell out of it. The fact that it is still the safest form of power by watts generated despite this fact shows that it is indeed the safest form of power. Just imagine what we could do if we actually could make the designs we know will work better and safer than what we made in the early 1950s.
Don't confuse your own failings for what the rest of us are capable of. Also, if you actually cared about this issue you would have done some research
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Even if, it seems that without massive subsidies (because that is what the "tax breaks" are) no-one can build a nuclear reactor that is actually financially viable.
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You went off the rails when you started talking about safety. Nuclear reactors are incredibly safe, not only in the historical context but especially in the current context that makes the historical disasters largely irrelevant.
We *can* and we *do* build safe reactors. We just can't do it in a cost or time effective way.
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I agree but in a more expansive way: I see the same trend happening in *many* industries and sectors, over the last 3 or 4 decades as the enshittification marches on and people's pockets continue to get picked. And having been observing politics since Nixon, it always makes me giggle when some partisan dumbfuck tries to blame everything on the other team, or on any particular administration.
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The error seems awfully elementary for the state to make in a case against elites they know have top-shelf lawyers.
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That is an incredibly short sighted view of what it means to be "state" "elite" or "top shelf lawyer". All three of them are fundamentally people (well except maybe the last group). The state can make mistakes. The elites can get some insanely bad lawyers (see Trump), and top shelf lawyers can do some incredibly stupid things, heck even judges are sometimes disrobed for their conduct.
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A "mistake" is forgetting to pick up your laundry, not forgetting the most basic procedures of a highly skilled and competitive career in the middle of a high-visibility case. If the description is accurate, the defense magically found itself in the most convenient possible position, at the most convenient possible time, handed maximum leverage by an inexplicable and totally ludicrous "oversight."
It's hardly news that rich-people trial lawyers prefer to play inside-baseball. Not saying that necessarily
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