I was going to get to part II sooner, but there’s been this huge oil spew in the gulf and besides, part II is related to part I – only it may be worse.
At the end of March – three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster – Barack Obama told us he wants to expand offshore oil drilling and said with the new rigs oil spills were almost impossible. We know he was as wrong as he could be. Mr. Obama didn’t mean to lie, it’s just that he relied on the idiots of the oil industry for his talking points. (Is “idiots” too harsh? Think Tony Hayward. No, it’s not too harsh.)
At the same time he’s plumping for more offshore drilling, Mr. Obama wants to build more nuclear plants. Guess where he’s getting his information on nukes? Like the oil industry, the nuclear industry is in charge of Mr. Obama’s talking points and they too are idiots who use the president as a ventriloquist’s dummy to lie to the American people.
When the current generation of nuclear power plants began to reach the end of their lifespans, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began to take them off line. The nuclear industry responded with a lobby campaign, the NRC regulations were altered and now other members of that same generation of nukes – now nearing 40 years old – are being granted 20-year extensions to their operating permits. Sound familiar?
Worse, the Kerry-Lieberman energy bill that is now under Senate consideration would relax standards further and would “streamline” the process for getting new nukes on line. Again, sound familiar, like the rush to get rigs into deep water?
Since the dawn of the nuclear age 60 years ago, this industry has made a mockery of the “free market” its proponents so loudly pretend to support. Nuclear power plants have never been privately insured. No insurance company has ever – and will never – write a policy for a nuke, not at any price. Nuclear waste, which has been piling up for over half a century and will remain radioactively hazardous for the next 250,000 years, is a problem for American taxpayers, not the nuclear industry, because politicians have agreed to take the waste off the industry’s hands. (For comparison, we’ve had written language for 5,000 years.)
Also in the Kerry-Lieberman bill are $54 billion in loan guarantees to build the next generation of nukes, because there is no venture capitalist or investment bank in the world that will invest in a nuclear power plant.
And for good reason. The world’s newest and supposedly advanced nuclear plant, under construction in Finland, is two years away from beginning operations and cost overruns have almost doubled the plant’s costs from $3 billion to $5.7 billion. There’s a reason this happens. It’s because the nuclear industry lies about the cost of building a plant. No one would ever build one if they knew what it would cost, so the industry lies about the cost, wait until everyone is so committed that it’s too late to back out, then starts coming up with “cost overruns.” Ha, ha, ha.
But that could never happen here. That’s Finland, and the nuke is being built by a French company (Areva). What do you expect? Here in the US, we’ll be building state-of-the-art nukes – the AP1000, designed by Westinghouse, not some Frenchman. Except that in February, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen noticed that the design of the AP1000 will encourage corrosion – and there’s no containment vessel to hold back radioactivity once the corrosion takes it course. Like I wrote, idiots.
So federal government (that is, us, against out will) underwrites the construction costs of the new plants, pays to insure them, delivers a captive customer base to the corporation and then takes the waste away for free. What has any of that got to do with “free enterprise.”? Ironically, the same people who call Mr. Obama “socialist,” are the ones pushing him hardest to do exactly this.
Mr. Obama’s proposed new generation of nuclear power somehow manages to combine the worst aspects of the Wall Street crisis and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster: huge taxpayer giveaways to the nuclear corporations and self-regulation by greedheads who have no regard for public safety or the environment.
© Mark Floegel 2010
Obama’s a Fool (Part II)
I was going to get to part II sooner, but there’s been this huge oil spew in the gulf and besides, part II is related to part I – only it may be worse.
At the end of March – three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster – Barack Obama told us he wants to expand offshore oil drilling and said with the new rigs oil spills were almost impossible. We know he was as wrong as he could be. Mr. Obama didn’t mean to lie, it’s just that he relied on the idiots of the oil industry for his talking points. (Is “idiots” too harsh? Think Tony Hayward. No, it’s not too harsh.)
At the same time he’s plumping for more offshore drilling, Mr. Obama wants to build more nuclear plants. Guess where he’s getting his information on nukes? Like the oil industry, the nuclear industry is in charge of Mr. Obama’s talking points and they too are idiots who use the president as a ventriloquist’s dummy to lie to the American people.
When the current generation of nuclear power plants began to reach the end of their lifespans, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began to take them off line. The nuclear industry responded with a lobby campaign, the NRC regulations were altered and now other members of that same generation of nukes – now nearing 40 years old – are being granted 20-year extensions to their operating permits. Sound familiar?
Worse, the Kerry-Lieberman energy bill that is now under Senate consideration would relax standards further and would “streamline” the process for getting new nukes on line. Again, sound familiar, like the rush to get rigs into deep water?
Since the dawn of the nuclear age 60 years ago, this industry has made a mockery of the “free market” its proponents so loudly pretend to support. Nuclear power plants have never been privately insured. No insurance company has ever – and will never – write a policy for a nuke, not at any price. Nuclear waste, which has been piling up for over half a century and will remain radioactively hazardous for the next 250,000 years, is a problem for American taxpayers, not the nuclear industry, because politicians have agreed to take the waste off the industry’s hands. (For comparison, we’ve had written language for 5,000 years.)
Also in the Kerry-Lieberman bill are $54 billion in loan guarantees to build the next generation of nukes, because there is no venture capitalist or investment bank in the world that will invest in a nuclear power plant.
And for good reason. The world’s newest and supposedly advanced nuclear plant, under construction in Finland, is two years away from beginning operations and cost overruns have almost doubled the plant’s costs from $3 billion to $5.7 billion. There’s a reason this happens. It’s because the nuclear industry lies about the cost of building a plant. No one would ever build one if they knew what it would cost, so the industry lies about the cost, wait until everyone is so committed that it’s too late to back out, then starts coming up with “cost overruns.” Ha, ha, ha.
But that could never happen here. That’s Finland, and the nuke is being built by a French company (Areva). What do you expect? Here in the US, we’ll be building state-of-the-art nukes – the AP1000, designed by Westinghouse, not some Frenchman. Except that in February, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen noticed that the design of the AP1000 will encourage corrosion – and there’s no containment vessel to hold back radioactivity once the corrosion takes it course. Like I wrote, idiots.
So federal government (that is, us, against out will) underwrites the construction costs of the new plants, pays to insure them, delivers a captive customer base to the corporation and then takes the waste away for free. What has any of that got to do with “free enterprise.”? Ironically, the same people who call Mr. Obama “socialist,” are the ones pushing him hardest to do exactly this.
Mr. Obama’s proposed new generation of nuclear power somehow manages to combine the worst aspects of the Wall Street crisis and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster: huge taxpayer giveaways to the nuclear corporations and self-regulation by greedheads who have no regard for public safety or the environment.
© Mark Floegel 2010