Contractors used substandard materials
By James Rosen
jrosen@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — Contractors at the Savannah River Site — one of the country’s major nuclear-weapons complexes — repeatedly procured dangerous construction materials and components that failed to meet federal safety standards, according to a recently completed internal government probe.

One of the substandard materials revealed at the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border “could have resulted in a spill of up to 15,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste,” the inspector general of the U.S. Energy Department found.

The five-month investigation also disclosed the purchase of 9,500 tons of substandard reinforcing steel at the SRS site near Aiken.

The faulty steel was discovered after a piece of it broke during construction of a facility that will convert spent weapons plutonium and uranium into mixed-oxide — or MOX — fuel for civilian reactors.

Replacement of 14 tons of the substandard “rebar” — the reinforcing steel — that had already been installed cost $680,000 and caused new delays in completing the $4.8 billion MOX facility, the investigation disclosed.

Among other questionable components identified in the probe were piping, steel plates, an unusable $12 million “glovebox” (used to handle contaminated materials), furnace module doors and robots used to eliminate human exposure to radiological and chemical materials.

In an April 23 memo to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said contractors and subcontractors that build, supply and install equipment at SRS facilities ignored safety regulations developed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“We identified multiple instances in which critical components did not meet required quality and safety standards,” Friedman wrote to Chu.

The Savannah River Site produced tritium, plutonium-239 and other materials used to make nuclear weapons from 1954 to 1991, when the United States stopped making atomic bombs with the end of the Cold War.

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By Sara Tansey
Jenkinsville, SC

For months, community members in Jenkinsville, SC, have been meeting, organizing, and growing more vocal about their frustrations with the local utility that wants to build two more reactors in a community that already hosts one unit. So when I spoke with community members who were itching to move beyond just organizing to Nuclear Regulatory Commission deadlines, we set a date two Tuesdays from that Sunday. At the time, I didn’t realize that was the Tuesday of my 21st birthday. When it hit me, I knew it was going to be perfect.

So last night, we met at the local park, proudly owned and operated by the same utility that owns and operates the nuclear facility in Jenkinsville. It boasts a “scenic view,” and it sure is a view. Down by the water’s edge are covered picnic tables, a bit of beach for the locals to enjoy, a fishing dock and right across the water sits VC Summer. Beautiful!

We gathered around one of the picnic tables, enjoyed the summer weather and a cooling breeze off of the lake. And as we — community leaders, youth activists and other no-nuke activists — plotted how to stop two more reactors from being built in this community, we pulled strength and determination from the vision of devastation that lay across the water.

A vision of economic and human health devastation. SCE&G has stated in their own environmental report that less than 10 percent of new jobs will go to residents of the county, let alone the surrounding community, and that they do not expect any economic stimulation for the Jenkinsville area as a result of expansion.

Furthermore, cancer rates have increased since the introduction of the first reactor, and many local residents live off of the land. They have home gardens, fish from the lake and rivers and hunt local game to feed their families.

So sharing that community and mutual passion, creating next steps and a plan we all worked on together, knowing that we were organizing to do something to humble that boastful and unsuspecting utility that built a park and thought their contributions to the community ended there, was the best 21st birthday gift I could have asked for. Knowing that each one of us sitting around that picnic table was determined with our lives to stop this proposed expansion gave me goosebumps that I blamed on the water’s winds and that, in this southern heat today, I cannot excuse away.

To learn more about the community organizing efforts in Jenkinsville, email Sara Tansey at Sara@climateaction.net and stay tuned!

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April 28 is Equal Pay Day, and workers across the country will commemorate the day by reaffirming their determination to make sure women are paid equally as men for the same work. Equal Pay Day symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year.

Equal Pay Day 2009 comes at an exciting time for those who support equal pay for women. President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law on Jan. 29 and established a White House Council on Women and Girls in March. Yet more than 45 years after the Equal Pay Act was signed, women in the United States still earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns — even with similar education, skills and experience. And African American and Hispanic women earn even less.

Members of the Coalition of Labor Union Women will commemorate Equal Pay Day with rallies around the country in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Employee Free Choice Act.  CLUW is urging all workers to wear red on Equal Pay Day to symbolize how far women and minorities are “in the red” with their pay!

While the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act ensures workers can seek restitution for unequal pay, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which still needs Senate approval, would update the Equal Pay Act by creating stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay and strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. It also would close a significant loophole in the Equal Pay Act to allow for full compensation for sex-based wage discrimination. 

Says CLUW President Marsha Zakowski: Two bills in Congress would dramatically change the economic lives of women.  Union women earn, on the average, 32 percent more than unorganized women. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow women and men workers to form unions at their work places without fear of employer intimidation and unlawful firings. The Paycheck Fairness Act would correct wage discrimination.

You can act now to help women workers gain equal pay. Urge your state’s representatives and senators to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act by calling the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.

A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that for the years 2004-2007, union women were much more likely to have health insurance (75.4 percent) and a pension (75.8 percent) than women workers who were not in unions (50.9 percent for health insurance, 43 percent for pensions).

Equal Pay Day originated in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. (Tuesday is the day on which women’s wages catch up to men’s wages from the previous week.)

By Clayton Seufert, Charleston

Moments before the gavel fell on the South Carolina Democratic Convention on Saturday, the Democratic Party faithful decided to send a loud message; that their party supports collective bargaining and expects Democratic elected officials to do the same.

As the convention leaders moved to complete their scheduled business, and took up a planned addition to the platform stating the party’s support of the federal Employee Free Choice Act, the convention members decided they had a little more to say. 

Progressive Caucus leader Brett Bursey addressed the Chair and read a motion to amend the planned resolution to not only include the party’s support of the pending legislation, but added that the party “opposes all state legislative efforts to obstruct the Act, or to impose further burdens on the democratic rights of working people to organize.”  These changes, clearly aimed at bills currently being discussed in the General Assembly, designed to urge defeat or attempt to circumvent the Employees Free Choice Act if passed.

One such bill, H. 3305, aims to take away from workers the choice the Act gives them between majority sign-up and an election by changing the SC Constitution.  H. 3305 was initiated by Republican legislators, but given some support by a limited number on the Democratic side of the aisle. 

The decision of those Democratic legislators didn’t seem to sit well with the convention delegates — as the motion to add the stronger language against state laws subverting “workers rights” was seconded by nearly all present, had zero discussion against and passed with “none opposed.”

Celebrate May Day

And Help Support the SC Progressive Network!

May 1  •  5:30-9pm

Modjeska Simkins House, 2025 Marion St., downtown Columbia

$5 donation at the door

$25 buys you admission, Network membership and 3 drink tickets

(Wow! What a great deal!)

• Door prizes, costume contest, games and general tomfoolery 

• Dress as your favorite revolutionary hero

• Dance around the May Pole

• Nationally renowned poet and performer Stacie Boschma

• Revolutionary Dance Hall with DJ Pandora N’A Box

• Affordable cash bar, free hors d’oeuvres

Proceeds benefit the SC Progressive Network!

For details, call 803-808-3384 or email network@scpronet.com or jpdawkins@gmail.com.

Help us fight to get the Federal hate crime laws passed. Tell your legislator to act!

Last week I sent a letter and a copy of the actual voice mail left the night of Sean’s murder to our SC representatives in the House and Senate, as well as to President Obama and First Lady Obama to ask for their help to get this legislation passed.

Thank you,
Elke Kennedy
Sean’s Last Wish

Elke’s son, Sean Kennedy, was murdered last year in Greenville. He is featured in the video. Take action by clicking here.