A new two-hour “Dateline” on Friday will focus on the bank heists by Michael Benanti and Brian Witham, two men who pleaded guilty to or were convicted of their roles in a violent bank extortion and robbery spree in four states and several cities, including Oak Ridge and Knoxville, NBC News said this week.
Oak Ridge Today covered the case, and the Knoxville News Sentinel had extensive coverage.
Here is the official listing and preview link:
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The sign at the main entrance to the Y-12 National Security Complex is pictured above on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that was filed three years ago after Consolidated Nuclear Security LLC began managing and operating the Y-12 National Security Complex and made changes to health care benefits.
The changes in benefits led to protests, mostly by retirees, near Y-12 and the U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office just before they took effect January 1, 2015.
Y-12 retirees Betty Hatmaker and Charlene Edwards, who had been among the protesters, filed the lawsuit that summer. The 31-page civil complaint was filed August 12, 2015, in U.S. District Court in Knoxville. Hatmaker and Edwards sought to make their lawsuit a class action complaint, meaning they could have represented other plaintiffs, possibly including several thousand former Y-12 workers who retired between 1975 and 2015.
A trial had been scheduled for June 25, but the case was dismissed by Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan on May 30.
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The sign at the main entrance to the Y-12 National Security Complex is pictured above on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
With a lawsuit pending, federal officials are considering whether a new or supplemental environmental impact statement is needed for the Y-12 National Security Complex after design plans changed for the Uranium Processing Facility, the largest federal construction project in Tennessee since World War II.
As part of the process, the National Nuclear Security Administration is preparing what is known as a supplement analysis, or SA. A draft of the new SA has been issued, and you can read it on the Y-12 website.
Comments on the draft supplement analysis can be submitted through June 20.
The final new supplement analysis and a record of decision could be issued by July 27, although the schedule is subject to change, according to a joint status report filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville on May 11. The record of decision is expected to say whether a new or supplemental environmental impact statement is required for Y-12.
There was a site-wide environmental impact statement, or EIS, prepared for Y-12 in 2011. About five years later, in 2016, there was a supplement analysis prepared under the National Environmental Policy Act. It was connected to the decision by the NNSA and U.S. Department of Energy to not prepare a new or supplemental environmental impact statement after the NNSA decided on a new multi-building design for the UPF, rather than a single-building design, as part of an effort to keep project costs down, among other considerations. [Read more…]
A rendering of the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex. (Image from May 2017 courtesy of NNSA)
The federal lawsuit that asks for an environmental review of the new multi-building design for the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex has been transferred from Washington, D.C., to Knoxville.
The transfer of the civil complaint had been requested in September by the defendants, U.S. Energy Secretary James Richard “Rick” Perry and Frank G. Klotz, former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The NNSA is an agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that manages nuclear weapons programs and facilities, including Y-12, among other activities.
United States District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who was assigned the case in December, granted the motion to transfer the lawsuit from the District of Columbia to U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, which includes the Knoxville division, on March 23.
The 44-page federal lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on July 20, argues that a new environmental impact statement should be prepared for the new design for the UPF, the largest federal construction project in Tennessee since World War II. The plaintiffs allege that the NNSA’s decision to use several new buildings for the UPF, rather than just one, and continue to use some old buildings at Y-12 for some nuclear weapons work is risky because the old buildings could collapse during a major earthquake, possibly leading to a nuclear accident that could release radiological materials.
Federal officials denied that allegation and others in a 29-page response filed September 29. They’ve called some allegations vague, ambiguous, or speculative, and they have said that safety and technical analyses are under way at Y-12. Some buildings may require seismic upgrades, depending upon evaluation results, and an Extended Life Program is meant to ensure that two buildings—Building 9215 and Building 9204-2E—will safely support future operations, federal officials said. [Read more…]
