There Ain't No Sanity Claus

Dear God,

Friday we made the state of Vermont a gentleman's offer. We will raise the price of electricity from 4.2 cents per kilowatt-hour to 6.1 cents. Over the next 20-year period we will raise that price annually by a specified index. That price is well below what consultants on our payroll have projected as the future of energy prices. That price is also above the current price of power. We will discontinue sharing revenue with Vermont utilities. Over the past forty years, revenue sharing has allowed the utilities to provide very inexpensive power to Vermont homes and businesses, but to everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn. The price we have offered will only apply to 115 megawatts per year. The offer we've made makes no mention of the nearly half a billion dollar shortfall in the decommissioning fund. And the offer we've made wasn't even made by us. It was made by Enexus, the finances and structure of which are "mired in gobbledygook."

We ask only that the state of Vermont approve the spinoff of Vermont Yankee into Enexus, and that it offer Enexus a 20-year license renewal for Vermont Yankee, thereby allowing the health, safety, environmental, and financial shenanigans will continue.

To sweeten the deal, we will even remove the horse's head from Pete Shumlin's bed.



You tell me, God. How do you think the legislators will respond?

These Are a Few of My Awful-est Things

Dear God,

Tee-hee. I ate A LOT of turkey on Thursday, and the tryptophan has yet to wear off. So I've had some difficulties writing coherently about some of the recent goings-on in the nuclear industry.

And so, as I often have when pressed with the need to feed the public's appetite for reliable facts that they can assess, I will instead present you and, of course, the public with a distraction. Here's this week's amusement. Let's call it ...

THE COMING-ON-CHRISTMAS 2009 "AWFUL-EST THINGS" NEWS QUIZ!
a/k/a Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens

1. On November 27, 2009, what awful thing happened in the pants of a security officer at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio?

(A) Someone put a banana in them.

(B) His Huggies® leaked. (Hey, it happened to me once.)

(C) On November 27, 2009, at approximately 0734 hours, an accidental discharge of a security officer's sidearm occurred at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station (DBNPS) resulting in a leg injury to the officer. The accidental discharge occurred in the Primary Access Facility. The onsite DBNPS first aid team and the Caroll Township Emergency Medical Services responded to the Primary Access Facility. The injured officer was in stable condition and transported off site [at 0800] to St. Vincent Hospital [in Toledo, OH].

"Both the Ottawa County Sheriffs Office and the Caroll Township Police Department responded to the DBNPS site to obtain information.

"The Ottawa County Emergency Management Agency (EMA), the Lucas County EMA, and the Ohio EMA were notified of this incident. The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified.

"Plant operation was not affected by this incident. [The plant has received calls from the media however,] no press release is planned at this time."

2. What awful thing happened in—oh, say—India recently?

(A) Tritium, a heavy radioactive substance, was found in the drinking water of a nuclear reactor building in Kamataka. Sixty-five workers drank the water. The incident only came to light when their urine samples were tested.

(B) Union Carbide offered to build another pesticide plant.

3. What awful thing happened in Canada this week?

(A) General Electric attempted to shield its finances from the risks of accident at nuclear plants. The Globe and Mail says:

"One of the world's largest nuclear plant suppliers has ordered its Canadian division to hermetically seal itself off from its U.S. parent, going so far as to forbid engineers at the U.S. wing from having anything to do with Canadian reactors.

"The move by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy is spurred by concerns about liability – if an accident at a Canadian plant spreads damage across the border, Americans might be able to sue the parent company. The result is a Canadian company cut off from the technical advances of its parent, a leading player in the industry.

"The company also won't allow any equipment built or designed by the U.S. parent to be used in Canadian reactors for the same reason."

(B) Entergy attempted to shield its finances from the risks of accident at nuclear plants. (Technically, this didn't happen in Canada. But Vermont is close enough to Canada to meet NRC specs.)

4. What awful thing happened in Vermont this month?

(A) All of the Democrats running for governor said they would like to see Vermont Yankee shut down when its license expires in 2012.

(B) There's nothing that can top that.

Answers: Follow the links to get 'em.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Everybody Take Five, and Then We'll Shoot the Tsunami Scene.

Dear God,

Pardon me if I yawn. Senate President Peter Shumlin said he'll vote against a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee. As if he ever would have voted for it, even now that we've added him to our Christmas dance party invitation list.

In other news, the disaster movie "2012" (the whole world goes this time) broke box office records this weekend.



It opened at No. 1 domestically with $65 million and pulled in $225 million worldwide. The people of Vermont are lining up at the Kipling Cinema! Why, then, are the people of Vermont reluctant to re-license Vermont Yankee? We have a disaster movie waiting to happen here! Even in the midst of a recession, we could all get work as extras!

And then, in really other news, Carrie Prejean lost about a million dollars in her settlement negotiations with Miss California USA after her undisclosed sex tape fell into the pageant's hands. Well, I have an obscene tape here that stands to lose us a whole lot more than a million.



Just ask Pete Shumlin.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Flies Fly In, Flies Fly Out

Dear God,

I'm thinking maybe it's time for Entergy to pony up for a full, paying subscription for me with the Wall Street Journal Online.

Look what I found there today (posted, actually on November 3):

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (Dow Jones)--Entergy Corp. (ETR) remains committed to spinning off five of its nuclear power plants into a stand-alone company, but the company's chief executive suggested a possible alternative Tuesday if it can't win regulatory approval in New York.

Entergy Chairman and Chief Executive J. Wayne Leonard said the company could spin off its utility businesses into a stand-alone company to accomplish the same goal of separating its regulated utility businesses concentrated in the Southeast from its nuclear plants that sell ....

And that's all I know! Because to read the rest of the article, I need a paying subscription, but Entergy is so miserly about paying for anything here at Vermont Yankee, that I don't have one!

Anyway, it looks like, if Entergy can't spin Enexus off, it might spin off everything else into some phenomenally wealthy, as-yet-unnamed entity and leave the five merchant plants to a newly impoverished Entergy. I call that creative thinking! Hey, that's why we pay him the big bucks!

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! (Echo, echo, echo.)

Pete Shumlin, close your mouth before the flies fly in. You shoulda seen this comin'!

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Happy Birthday to Me!

Dear God,

Hey! Nobody called to say "Happy Birthday!" to me. I've been offering up my prayers here on Are You There, God? It's Me, Fake-Rob Williams for two years plus five days now—ever since October 26, 2007.

Actually, I expected more from my co-workers. And, to be honest, they sorta kinda remembered my birthday. They spent the last few weeks drawing up lots and lots of lists about how they were going to celebrate my birthday. They identified experts to help them celebrate my birthday. They chose silly hats and assigned budgets for candles, cake, and ice cream. They devised methodologies and goals and benchmarks. They made a lot of photocopies of everything they wrote down. They even officially chose which song to sing. (As if they weren't going to sing "Happy Birthday to You" all a long. But, hey, it's important to be methodical and write all this stuff down, so they wrote it down, and got credit from the Department of Public Service for doing so.) There were, like, 80 things they promised to do!

But then my birthday whizzed by and I didn't hear a thing from anybody about it. And there was nothing … NOTHING … that I or the DPS or the state of Vermont could do about it.

Lists and promises don't count for much, I guess.

Lord, speaking of lists and promises that don't count for much, did you hear that a legislative report on our progress addressing the 80 areas of concern identified in last fall's independent assessment of Vermont Yankee's future reliability has sharply faulted us for a lack of progress?

What could those legislators possibly be talking about? Just like with my birthday plans, we're being methodical. We're making lists, identifying experts, choosing dunce hats, assigning budgets for candles, cake, and ice cream, and devising methodologies, goals, and benchmarks. Our Xerox machine is going, like, 24 hours a day! The Rutland Herald even quoted Stephen Wark of the DPS as saying that "It appears that Vermont Yankee is on track to have a plan on how to resolve the problems by the end of this year." (By which, to parse the truth out of that sentence, he means that we are on track to have a plan by the end of this year, and that plan will likely get us our certificate of public good, and then we will set out to resolve the identified problems by 2012, but if we don't solve any or all of them there won't be a hell of a lot anyone can do about it.)

So I guess this is a trust issue. The DPS must give us the certificate of public good based on our many diverse lists, and not on any actual accomplishments. Then the people of Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts must hope that we'll actually do what our lists have indicated we will do. And, yes, we haven't always lived up to our promises. For example, we haven't fully funded the decommissioning fund. We also didn't make sure that the uprate didn't increase radiation exposure to the public. And until we got caught not measuring radiation emitted by the dry casks, we never measured that radiation.

But, really, Lord, we are making progress, and on more than one front. Did you see in the Reformer that we're claiming that the decommissioning fund is now only $40 million short? If we're right about that preposterously low-ball estimate, the state of Vermont has nothing to worry about. That's poker money for Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard! I'm sure he'd ante up in a pinch.

And what if we never get around to adequately addressing the 80 areas of concern identified in last fall's independent assessment of Vermont Yankee's future reliability? Why, we even have a plan for that! We'll finally have my birthday party! We'll buy the people of Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts dunce hats and a huge sheet cake!

And I'll eat cake with them.

Amen,

Fake-Rob
.

In France They Kiss On Main Street

Dear Lord,

Today and tomorrow we may witness the untimely death of the myth that France tidily recycles its nuclear waste. Apparently, Electricité de France, the world's largest producer of nuclear power, is in the unfortunate position of having to deny reports in the French newspaper Liberation that it is using open-air containers in a town in Siberia to dump its radioactive waste. According to Liberation, the town is closed to journalists. Liberation also said that only 10-20% of the waste stored in this town is recycled and sent back to EDF for use in power plants.

Bad news for the nuclear industry, eh? That's the way it's been around here lately. For example:

• Just when I was rejoicing that we (Entergy Vermont Yankee ) were getting rid of Wackenhut Security Services so that our security forces wouldn't be operating in southern Vermont under the taint of charges of rape, murder, and the like, four old ladies walked with their lawn chairs through two of our security gates and sat there, obtusely and picture-perfectly, until arrested. Our guards did try to close exit gate and trap them, in the hopes of maybe wrestling them to the ground, but they didn't know how to do that.
  
  
• Just when things started looking good for Enexus (the Department of Public Service approved the spinoff plan), things also started looking bad. Greenpeace pointed out that Enexus benefits Entergy shareholders at the expense of Vermonters. It's a charge that's hard to deny given that Money.cnn.com has started going all goo-goo eyed over how great it is going to be for Entergy to be out of that shaky, awful, unpredictable, who-wants-this-crap-anyway, don't-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-butt nuclear power business. Which might set the Vermont legislature to wondering just what the economic benefit to this area is of handing VY a license to polarize thie community for another 20 years and divert resources away from a green revolution.
  
  
• Even if Electricité de France is able to refute the Liberation story, recycling nuclear fuel is beginning to look terribly dangerous. In Europe, where recycling is de rigeur, they're apparently contracting the mafia to blow up radioactive waste on boats and sink it in the ocean. And so it's probably making Vermonters increasingly nervous that, even if Vermont Yankee doesn't get a license extension, spent nuclear fuel will remain at Vermont Yankee for 100 years or more, where it will be vulnerable to attack by plane. (I'm assuming that's a bad thing because, at Connecticut Yankee, each of their casks contains a Cesium and Strontium inventory equal to 10 Hiroshima bombs.)
  
  
• Don't even get me started on the report featured this morning in the Reformer predicting that shutting down Vermont Yankee would result in a job increase in the area.
  

So, Lord, it's been a hard week or so for me, though I do try to maintain my God-given sense of humor.

Lawyer: I have some good news and some bad news.
Client: Well, give me the bad news first.
Lawyer: The bad news is that the DNA tests showed that it was your blood they found all over the crime scene
Client: Oh no! I'm ruined! What's the good news?
Lawyer: Your doctor saw the test results. Your cholesterol is down.

We do have good news. It is this:

• Governor Jim Douglas doesn't care a hoot about whether Vermonters get a good price for energy from Entergy.
  

Life is still beautiful. Kiss me!

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Mafia Applies to NRC for 20-Year Renewal of License to Sink Boats Containing Radioactive Waste

Dear, God!

Remember that I prayed about the Mafia maybe "disappearing" ships containing nuclear waste? Well, that idea has legs! Or, anyway, it has fins.

Apparently, radioactive waste disposal is a lucrative business. An informant for the Calabrian Mafia says that he has deliberately blown up three ships containing toxic waste—and that 30 such vessels have been scuttled by the Mafia. The sunken ship that is currently being searched for toxic materials is said to have 120 barrels of radioactive waste on board.

Most interesting: The Calabrian city prosector told reporters, "For the moment, we do not know the origin of the waste, but it is probably from abroad." That does not implicate Vermont Yankee directly. After all, we found the 3 fuel rods we lost in 2004. And we account for all of our waste and, in fact, store it right here, legally, next to the Connecticut River, in an earthquake zone, right above the flood plain, and unprotected by attack from an airplane. We don't need no stinking Mafia.

That said, the AFP reports that, according to the vice president of the environmental group Legambiente, the Mafia has sunk ships with radioactive material for the last 20 years.

Which means their licensing period is up, and if they want to continue to dispose of waste from the United States, they'll have to apply for renewal of the NRC's coveted License to Irresponsibly Dispose of Products That Could Ruin the World. But I hear they have connections everywhere, so approval should be no problem.

Amen,

Fake-Rob