In his 102-page ruling, Judge Murtha closely tracks the arguments made by attorneys for Entergy, the owner of Vermont Yankee.  Entergy argued and the judge agreed that while the statute passed by the legislature says that the state’s concerns about Vermont Yankee are based on issues of reliability and economic benefit, the legislators were really concerned with radiological safety and such safety is the sole province of the Nuclear regulatory Commission (NRC), which last year issued a permit for Vermont Yankee to operate for another 20 years.

(The plant’s reactor, which is the same design as the melted reactors at Fukushima, has been running for 40 years, which was the projected lifetime of the reactor when it was built.  Since 2006, it has been running at 120 percent of its design capacity, again with the blessing of the NRC.)

Judge Murtha devoted nearly half his ruling to a detailed legislative history of the past decade.  In it, he pointed to numerous statements on safety by legislators, just as Entergy’s attorneys did at trial.  He concluded that because the issue of safety had been broached, the statute passed by the legislature did not mean what its words said it meant, it was a ruse cooked up by politicians overstepping their boundaries.  Neither the judge nor Entergy’s attorneys (nor the state’s attorneys, for that matter) seem to have counted the number of times legislators mentioned “reliability” or “economics.”  Would it have mattered if someone had?  I’m sure Judge Murtha sees his ruling as qualitative, not quantitative.  He chose to base his decision on the legislative record, rather than the words of the statute.  Some people think that’s a backward way of looking at law, but I’m not an attorney, so I’ll let that pass.

Judge Murtha took pains to note his ruling is not a comment on the merits or defects of nuclear power and said Entergy still needs a certificate of public good from Vermont’s Public Service Board (PSB).  The PSB, however, can only base its decision on reliability and economic benefits.  The board said yesterday it will not take up Vermont Yankee’s docket until after 24 February, after the date by which the state must decide whether to appeal Judge Murtha’s ruling.

As of 21 March, Entergy will no longer have contracts to sell electricity to Vermont utilities at below-market rates, so there will no longer be direct economic benefit to Vermont for hosting Vermont Yankee.  (Vermont, as part of the New England grid, will indirectly benefit but no more than any of the other five New England states.)

Entergy has for years significantly starved Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning fund.  It has long been a point of contention between Entergy and the legislature (one of those things Judge Murtha discounted).  In 2009, Entergy tried to spin off Vermont Yankee and several other decrepit nuclear plants into a stand-alone asset-free company called Enexus, a bad-faith move if ever there was one (also ignored by Judge Murtha).  Entergy contributes thermal pollution to the Connecticut River and radioactive tritium leaks from the reactor, issue affecting not just Vermont, but New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut (and overlooked by Judge Murtha).  Finally, Entergy has a record of making incorrect statements – either through malfeasance or misfeasance – under oath to Vermont regulators.  Judge Murtha declined to address these in his ruling.

Everything in the preceding paragraph is fair game for the Public Service Board and more than reason enough to deny Entergy a new certificate of public good.  Entergy, of course, will choose to sue the state again if a certificate is denied.

This is a tough situation for Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell.  It’s easy (and cheap) enough for me to predict the PSB will deny Entergy a certificate of public good and advise Mr. Sorrell to save his staff time for the inevitable appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court, but he can’t take such predictions into account when deciding on the federal appeal.

At the end of the day, this is Entergy’s strategy: spend Vermont into submission.  Entergy spent more on the trial before Judge Murtha ($8 million) than Mr. Sorrell has in his annual budget.  Simultaneous appeals in two venues look like a sure budget-buster.

Ethan Allen, our founding father, hated a coward.  So is it true of his civic descendants.  Nail the flag to the mast and full speed ahead.  Live by the record, die by the record.  Vermont will prevail if we persevere.

© Mark Floegel, 2012

I’m typing this from a place freshly ravaged by Tropical Storm Irene.  “Tropical” and “Vermont” don’t belong in the same sentence, but there they are.  Helicopters buzz overhead as they leave to drop supplies in stranded communities.  This is the second hundred-year flood we’ve had this in the last four months and yet it is not these events so recently past that prompt my dire prediction.  It’s what two events of the past week bode for the future.

Friday, the State Department ruled that the 1,700 mile long Keystone XL pipeline – which, if allowed to proceed, will carry tar sands crude to refineries in Texas – will have minor environmental impact.  Experts disagree.  James Hansen, the NASA scientist and leading expert in global warming says that should the pipeline be built, there will be no way to reverse catastrophic global warming.  One would think that’s a significant environmental impact, but the oil companies want it and what the oil companies want….

If you haven’t already learned about the tar sands, extracting oil from them requires massive abuse of forests, clean water and energy, so the tar sands as a whole is a global warming machine gone berserk.  If oil is an addiction, the tar sands are the dirty needle we heedlessly plunge into our arm.

Thousands of people – citizens – have protested in front of the White House, hundreds have been arrested.  Barack Obama likely believes environmentalists have no choice but to vote for him next year, thus revealing himself to be another calculating politician, who’d rather retire in glory as a two-term president than actually accomplish anything of value in either of his terms of office.  In the addiction analogy, he’s the clueless enabler.

Yesterday, ExxonMobil and Russia – two of the planet’s evil entities – announced an agreement that will open the Russia arctic to oil exploration by Exxon.  Exxon – with help from us – has already gone a long way toward “opening” the arctic.  Global warming has meant the retreat of polar sea ice to the point that the Ruxxons can drill for more oil, to melt more ice, drill for more oil, etc., etc.

Exxon maneuvers at its peril, as Russia is famous for shafting its partners after it’s gotten what it wants.  Maybe Rex Tillerson will end up in a cell next to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch and oil billionaire.  Might be a pleasant meditation for a holiday weekend.

Researching something else last night, I came across an article describing the dumping of nuclear waste and over a dozen vessel-sized reactors in the western Kara Sea – where Exxon just won the right to explore.  The currents in the Kara carry water from west to east; that is, from the radioactive taint all across the rest of the local ocean.  Can’t beat those Soviet smarts.

If the tar sands are the dirty needle of oil addiction, then Tillerson and Vlad Putin are the thuggish pushers who will take our money, beat us senseless and leave us for dead.

Cold turkey is starting to look good.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

The company held a “conference call” in which a PR suit with a South African accent (always a nice touch) announced Richard Smith, a management suit (with a vaguely southern accent) would make “remarks” but would not answer questions, “because today’s subject matter is now in litigation.” Always on the high road, these people. (How is a one-way transmission a “conference”?)

Last month, ten days after the tsunami that touched off the Fukushima catastrophe, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), issued Vermont Yankee a 20-year extension of its federal operating license, despite knowing Vermont Yankee is of the same flawed design as the reactors at Fukushima and despite the fact that its spent fuel pool (50 feet off the ground) is jammed with highly radioactive waste, far beyond its design capacity.

Everyone expected Entergy to file suit. Mr. Smith said doing so was Entergy’s “least favored approach,” but was the “appropriate and responsible” thing to do. From my experience with Entergy, these people wouldn’t know “appropriate and responsible” if they ran up and bit them in the leg.

Since it bought the plant nine years ago, Entergy has lied (often under oath) to the citizens of Vermont, its managers have cheaped out to the point that some parts of their facility collapsed from lack of maintenance and others caught fire for no apparent reason. The rust bucket has leaked – and continues to leak – radioactive material into Vermont’s pristine groundwater. This lawsuit merely represents the latest example of bad-faith dealing from a company that appears to know no other way of conducting itself.

Tuesday, full-page ads appeared in nine Vermont newspapers featuring an open letter from Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard, again regretting the need for litigation, then proceeding to piss all over the notion that Vermonters might have a say in who conducts uncontrolled nuclear experiments in our state. An Entergy spokesuit said the ads were purchased because Mr. Leonard “wanted to have a conversation about the issue with the people of Vermont.” No questions, please.

I, for one, welcome this lawsuit.

In 2002, when Entergy purchased Vermont Yankee, the company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the state, agreeing that the state’s Public Service Board (PSB) can decide whether or not the plant may continue operation after March 2012.

Monday, Mr. Smith said the company’s lawsuit is premised on the notion that a state cannot prevent a federally-licensed nuclear facility from operating. If that argument is true, then it was true when Entergy signed the Memorandum of Understanding in 2002.

So, number one – I look forward to hearing Entergy attorneys explain that one – that they’re filing this suit out of deep concern for a process that did not seem to enter their minds in for the past decade.

Mr. Smith argues Entergy need no longer honor the 2002 MOU because in 2006, the Vermont legislature directed the PSB to withhold action on a CPG until both bodies in the legislature approve of the action. That was a deal-breaker, Mr. Smith said today.

If that’s true, why didn’t Entergy sue in 2006? Why wait until now? (In 2006, Entergy spokesuits said they supported the legislature’s participation.) And why sue on grounds of federal pre-emption? It seems a breach-of-contract suit is the proper means to seek judicial relief. But I’m not a lawyer, so I welcome this suit, so I can understand the issues better.

I welcome this lawsuit as a kind of spring training for state governments in New York and Massachusetts, because they have serious questions about the operation of Entergy nuclear plants in their states (at Indian Point and Pilgrim, respectively). (Here’s a hint: the NRC has no jurisdiction over taxes. Why don’t states help balance their budgets by taxing the living crap out of spent fuel that nuclear industry refuses to take out of dangerous storage pools and place into safer dry casks? Or tax the crap out of flawed, Fukushima-style reactors?)

Finally, I welcome this lawsuit as a much-needed public forum in which to hold a full and vigorous debate on the desirability of nuclear power in the United States in the post-Fukushima era.

Let’s have at it.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

Fairewind’s principal – nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen – has posted a series of video updates, explaining what is happening inside the crippled reactors and what we can expect next. The news is not encouraging, but there is some small comfort in getting straight answers.

See his updates here.

I know, rationally, the world doesn’t work like this, but in an odd sense, I’m looking forward to the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The irrational part of my brain thinks, “Maybe we’ll wake on September 12th and things will stop being so strange, that this decade of global chaos will end.”

This train of thought started last week, when I realized I was startled about not being startled. I was reading about the workers who were hospitalized after standing in highly irradiated water. They received radiation burns on their legs.

Interesting, but no big deal, right? “Burned by water,” however, just lodged in my head and I found myself muttering it over and over. It slowly surfaced in my brain that what was once absurd is now commonplace.

Consider: we have three wars running simultaneously. (Two and a half, minimum, depending on how picky you wanna get.) There’s no draft; most of us plod along never thinking about it. And plod we do, three years into an economic crisis and no relief in sight. Yesterday, Portugal became the third Eurozone nation to seek a bailout. Yawn. Shrug. Whatever.

Nine years ago in this space, I wondered if perchance I hadn’t developed schizophrenia and could no longer distinguish reality from fantasy. How else, I wondered, could Mark Floegel of 2002 explain his life to Mark Floegel of 1982?

That was when we only had one war. That was before a major American city was washed away and we decided to rebuild it – even though it’s below sea level and even though we haven’t done a thing to stop ocean-raising climate change.

That was before American banks trashed the global economy and everyone understood how the bankers did it and we did nothing about it, except bail out the bankers and let tens of thousands of Americans lose their homes. That was before we dumped two hundred million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and decided to just say it was all OK rather than doing anything about the hazards of offshore drilling. Did you hear the Cubans are opening their portion of the gulf to drilling? They say it’s OK, they won’t make the mistakes we did. Just like our nuclear plants can’t fail the same way Japanese ones do. Except the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (unofficially) says they can. (Officially, they tell us not to worry.)

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, writing in the UK Guardian, sees a common thread in all this: detachment. The people who benefit from – and decide on – the senseless ways in which we run the world, energy executives, bankers, politicians, are detached from the consequences of their decisions.

These oligarchs send out the bureaucrats to explain to us (with that “you’re too stupid to understand” tone) that the risk of anything going wrong is vanishingly small. (They haven’t seen the inventory in the paragraphs above.)

Here’s something to remember: risk is not impact. If there’s a mosquito in your bedroom, it’s annoying, but you’ll stay in bed and try to sleep, knowing you might get bitten. If you know that mosquito will give you a fatal disease, you’ll pull the sheet over your head and run out of the room. The risk of being bitten is the same, but your appreciation of the impact is what determines your behavior.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

Spring snow is not unusual around here, but tonight’s will probably carry radiation. It’s been dry since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Tests taken by the Vermont Health Department have shown radioactive iodine, presumably from Fukushima is showing up in the state. There’s no safe level of radiation, but what we’re getting in Vermont is no cause for panic.

Now that precipitation is on the way, however, it might be a good time to take a holiday from milk. Not easy to contemplate in a diary state, where small farmers have enough to contend with, but milk drinking was the primary route for radioactive material into people’s bodies after Chernobyl in 1986. Radiation was detected in Washington State milk earlier this week.

Again, it’s not life-threatening, but precaution, a concept that escapes federal agencies – whether the issue is genetically-modified food, toxic pollutants, nuclear devices or climate change – is a good thing. “An abundance of caution.” The phrase looks so old fashioned.

Monday past was the 32nd anniversary of the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island; last Thursday was the 22nd anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill. The first anniversary of the BP blowout is three weeks from tomorrow and the 25 anniversary of Chernobyl is four days after that. (It’s a busy time for me at work right now.)

A week ago, we learned General Electric, which designed the reactors at Fukushima (and 23 just like them in the US), pays no taxes, despite profits in the billions of dollars, while shipping jobs overseas.

As I mentioned then, America’s nuclear regulators knew in 1972 that the design of the GE reactor’s cooling system was flawed, but kept their mouths shut for fear it would lead to the end of nuclear energy. Four of the six troubled reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are the flawed GE design and were built AFTER the regulator’s memo was written.

Precaution, as I said, is notably absent from our government’s thoughts, even when lives are on the line. OK, so you’re a regulator who wants to cook the books on behalf of the industry you’re supposed to regulate. Could GE quietly be told to stop selling flawed reactors? Could the purchasers of said flawed reactors be quietly told to beef up the power supply for the cooling systems?

Will anyone ever be called to account for this? Doubt it. If you think your government is honest and acting in your best interest, act accordingly. If you think your government is dishonest and not acting in your best interest, act accordingly.

Those people in the tea party are not entirely off base. They’re right to be angry (and scared). I think they’re angry at some of the right people (and some of the wrong people). I think their prescriptions for change are misguided, deliberately misguided by the people on whom they rely for information.

Seismologists say as a result of the March 11 earthquake, the world is spinning faster, by 1.8 microseconds per day. It feels like we’re spinning faster than that.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

I’m in the latter group. In Vermont, we’ve been trying for years – and we’re close to success – to shut the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor in Vernon, in the southeast corner of the state, where Vermont joins New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

It’s a General Electric boiling water reactor with a Mark I (GE BWR Mk I) containment system, the same design as the reactors falling apart at Fukushima Daiichi. No one’s expecting a 9.0 earthquake or tsunami in southeast Vermont, but we don’t need either.

Entergy, the Louisiana-based conglomerate is mismanaging the plant into the ground. The series of Homer Simpsonesque mishaps would be funny if they didn’t involve serious threats to human health and the environment – collapsed cooling tower, fires, lost fuel rods. For over a year, radioactive material has been leaking into the groundwater from underground pipes that Entergy’s managers swore under oath did not exist.

In 1972, the year Vermont Yankee commenced nuclear fission, an official at the Atomic Energy Commission (forerunner of today’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission) warned the design of the GE BWR Mk I was badly flawed and failure of its cooling system could lead to catastrophe, as we’re seeing in Japan.

Why would General Electric design such a shoddy reactor? Because they were cheaper and easier to build than if they’d designed a decent machine. Good idea guys, let’s cut corners with nuclear devices. Okay, but once the defects were acknowledged we count on our government “watchdogs” to shut the damn things down, for safety’s sake, right? No, can’t do that, as another official noted at the time, because it “could well be the end of nuclear power.”

Last week, as the reactors at Fukushima were blazing out of control, the NRC granted Vermont Yankee a 20-year extension on its license. Since 2006, the NRC has allowed Yankee to operate at 120 percent of its design capacity. Yes, this 40-year-old reactor with the well-know catastrophic design flaws managed by a company so maintenance-negligent that pieces of the facility just fall over.

You think your government is acting in your best interests? No way. The NRC does what the nuclear industry demands – your life and your kids’ lives don’t even enter the thought process. Why should the NRC be any different that the FDA, OHSA or EPA?

Happily, when Entergy bought the plant in 2002, it signed a memorandum of understanding with the state that gave the state’s legislative and executive branches the authority to issue – or withhold – a certificate of public good. In lay terms, Vermont is the only state that can shut down a nuke. The state senate voted overwhelmingly last year to close the dump and our new governor ran on a “shut it down” platform.

Entergy has more or less announced its intention to sue Vermont, even though it signed an agreement giving the state authority over Yankee. (“When we say ‘legally binding,’ we mean for you, not fur us!”) They’ll claim only the NRC can deny a permit to a nuke and a state cannot pre-empt the feds. My prediction: Entergy will win the pre-emption argument, but Vermont will win the case, on grounds that Vermont Yankee has polluted our groundwater and the state has a right to protect its natural resources, which fall outside the NRC’s purview.

If I’m honest (and selfish), I’ll admit Vermont Yankee could melt down and it would have little effect on me. The border that circles us both is political, not ecological. Wind and water currents would carry radiation to the east and south. I live to the north and west. On the other hand, two GE BWR Mk Is – Nine Mile Point One and James Fitzpatrick in Oswego, New York are upwind of my house. Where are you, Andrew Cuomo?

© Mark Floegel, 2011

I’m escorting two Germans – Joerg and Daniel – documenting the effects of BP oil on the gulf as we approach the one-year anniversary. I’m part guide, part fixer, part cultural interpreter.

The results of their investigation are what you’d expect. I’m not going to blow their surprise if I tell you. The oil is still here, everywhere one looks. The effects on the environment are clear for those with eyes to see past three speeds of spin.

Fast spin is from BP and the other oil companies. “The oil is almost gone, thanks to our efforts and Mother Nature’s oil-eating microbes.” There are still work crews around. In the Louisiana bayous yesterday we saw them and counted 10 workers sitting on boats or driving around for every one actually raking up oil-covered vegetation.

Medium spin is from the government and mimics the corporate spin. It spins faster at the federal level and slows closer to truth the more local it gets. These folks just want it to be over, so they can move on to the economy. They’d like tourists to come back and feel safe spending money; they worry about their constituents’ livelihoods.

Slow spin is from the people themselves. They’re clearly ambivalent when they see us. Last year they were so grateful to know we were telling the world of their plight. Now they’re tired and depressed. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not just for returning soldiers here.

Yellow-ribbon magnets are still on cars here, reminding me this region bears much of the burden of our two wars, the ones we’ve mostly forgotten. They also remind me of the unrest in Middle Eastern countries pushed off the news by the disaster in Japan.

The Germans and I spend our days driving around in boats and cars. We start early and end late. We grab a meal at an IHOP or Waffle House (where cultural interpretation comes in). By the time we get to a cheap motel we’re tired but can’t sleep. We open our laptops and download the latest news from the melting reactors. We’re environmentalists and these are the disasters – massive oil spill, huge radiation leak – we warned against for so long. We talk about radiation poisoning and myriad defects of the GE boiling water reactor with the Mark I containment, a design I know too well, since it’s the same reactor type we’ve been fighting to close at home in Vermont.

I hope I appreciate nature as much as the next Greenpeacer, but I didn’t get into this business because I’m a tree-hugger. I do this for people in the small towns and rust belt cities who bear the brunt of the pollution and degradation (ecological and social) that corporate power delivers. We know the same suffering that continues in the gulf is now visited on Japanese people, only worse.

People here are wary of us this year in ways they were not in 2010. They’re tired; they’re panicking about the future. The tourists aren’t coming back. Maybe it’s oil; maybe it’s just the bad economy. They’ve lived for the last year on handouts they never wanted from a corporation that damaged them in a way they never thought possible. They’re depressed and angry.

They realize the attention of the world has now passed them by. That’s OK, they don’t want attention. They just want things to go back to the way they were before but it’s just starting to sink in that The Ways Things Were Before is a land they will never see again. Their depression and anger grow profound.

While we drive the Germans and I compare the wrecked economies of Europe and the US. We wonder what the effects will be from the blow suffered by the third-largest economy, Japan. It couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The economy, wars, oil spills, nuclear meltdown. The machine we’ve built is broken. It was poorly designed and we’ve run it carelessly for too long; it’s coming apart everywhere. The Gulf of Mexico is one place where the welds have ripped open.

I’ve been using my high school German this week. It gives Daniel and Joerg a chance to laugh, to release stress. We’re bearing witness, as our Greenpeace philosophy says we should. Along the passes of Bayou Batiste yesterday, bottlenose dolphins swam so close to the boat I could hear them breathe. Later, we came across a bottlenose corpse on the bank, its eyes gone, its jaw exposed where the flesh had rotted away. We breathed stench of its decay, bearing witness.

Maybe it’s remembering high school German, but high school poetry has been coming back, too: the apocalyptic Yeats of a century ago and the weltschmerzed Wordsworth of a century before that, at the moment we began this industrial revolution. Mr. Wordsworth was right, the world is too much with us – and we’re too much with it.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

The venom I received from the bees last week was not, in the longer view, as effective as I’d hoped it would be. This comports with what Bill Mraz (he’s highly esteemed in the beekeeping community) told me a few weeks ago – bee venom is more potent in some seasons than others and winter is an “other” season.

We came down on USAirways and I was again astounded at how wooden-headed airline policies can be. Our first flight was late and some dozen of us missed the connection because waiting another minute for us would have meant missing an “on-time departure.” The plane got its “on-time departure,” but the passengers didn’t. I guess we don’t count in the statistics. I don’t want to sound too grumpy. At least no guitars were broken.

In other travel-related news, Rolling Stone is reporting Congressional representatives and senators visiting Afghanistan were subjected to “psychological operations” techniques at the order of Lt. General William Caldwell, supposedly to convince the legislators to increase budgets for the Afghanistan war or – more likely – to plump Gen. Caldwell’s career. (Underlings called it “Operation Fourth Star.”)

If true (I’ve no reason to believe it’s not), then Army regulations and perhaps laws were violated. The lieutenant colonel who blew the whistle was – of course – harassed by the Army for trying to do the right thing. Hey, Republican “budget hawks”! Guess which wasteful, stupid enormous part of the budget actually does need cutting?

On the topic of GOP “budget hawks,” (are these great segues or what?), Forbes reports that “fiscally minded” would-be union-busting Governor Scott Walker buried deep in his budget a secret provision to allow the state to turn over management of state heating, cooling and power plants to private contractors on a no-bid basis. Yeah, no-bids are famous for saving money. Collective bargaining, competitive bidding – seems Scott Walker’s against anything with the initials C.B. Too bad, Charlie Brown. And guess which right-wing billionaire brothers from Kansas who underwrote Mr. Walker’s campaign own three companies that stand to benefit from the no-bid contracts? If you guessed David and Charles Koch – you’re right!

Rumors that Gov. Walker has also proposed changing the name of the state to WisKochsin are untrue as of this writing. But stay tuned.

Back up in still-buried-in-snow-and-ice Vermont, I’m going to miss a debate between two pro-nuclear engineers tonight at the University of Vermont. On the face of it, doesn’t sound like much of a debate, but one of the engineers – Arnie Gundersen – is opposed to operating nuclear reactors in an unsafe and irresponsible manner. The other – Howard Shaffer – seems to believe the nuclear industry should be given anything it wants, even if it, as Vermont Yankee’s owner Entergy Louisiana as amply demonstrated, behaves in an incompetent and dishonest manner.

According to some fine reporting by Green Mountain Daily, it seems the pro-stupid-nuclear camp can’t even stage an honest debate, even when the Vermont taxpayers subsidize it. Oh well, Arnie will still win. He has the overwhelming advantage of truth and common sense on his side.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

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