Newton Says...

Dear God,

What goes down must come up. And then go down. Whatevsies.

Just a blink of an eye ago our stock price dropped. Today, despite the fact that trading volume for Entergy was slightly lower than normal, there was an unusual volume (about six times normal) of call contracts traded. That and we had an unusually low put/call ratio. Which, according to Market Intellisearch, indicates that "[Entergy] stock is expected to make a move."

In what direction I can't say, because I don't know what CEO J. Wayne Leonard has planned. Maybe this has something to do with Vermont lawmakers calling for phenomenally expensive repairs at Vermont Yankee.

But maybe it has to do with doubts about the long-term viability of cooling our plant with Connecticut River water. Did you see the New York Times article noting that the planet is drying up faster than the global warming folks had predicted, and that water scarcity recently forced the temporary closing of nuclear power plants in Australia, France, Germany, Romania and Spain?

There's no indication in today's weird put and call numbers about what's up or why. All I know for sure is that CEO J. Wayne Leonard has already admitted that nuclear power is not a good business risk for the 21st century.

But there is good news in all of this. Finally I have a bit of intelligence about Entergy that Arnie Gundersen didn't beat me to. Take that, Arnie! And your little dog, too!

Amen,

Fake-Rob

The Devil Is in the Details

Dear God,


Please consider two related news items:

• Apparently BP thought its oil spill could be 100 times larger than it told Congress.
  
  
• Five of the world's seven sea turtle species are threatened by the BP oil spill.
  

I like these two news items because, when considered together, they reveal how easily the public can be misled by details. Let's do some math together so I can show you what I mean. If the oil spill were really 100 times larger than BP told Congress, wouldn't that mean that 500 of the world's 7 turtle species would be threatened by the oil spill? Well, no, 'cause that's impossible! Such a statement doesn't even make sense! But the average Joe might not appreciate that right away. Reading those two headlines, Average Joe might get outrageously mad at BP, unnecessarily.

My point, you see, is that paying undue attention to details in headlines can exponentially increase confusion.

Playing down the details is therefore a large part of what I do at Entergy Vermont Yankee. It's a large part of what our engineers do, too. For example, according to a "report" by our lawyers, Dave McElwee tried hard to protect Arnie Gundersen from certain details about underground piping. And now he's catching heat for that! But think about it carefully, God. Persistently, insistently, and always acting in official capacity on behalf of the state legislature's Joint Fiscal Committee, Arnie had been asking, "Is there underground piping that carries radioactivity at VY?" Eventually Dave answered in the negative. Why? Not because he wanted to mislead, but because the details of the correct answer (affirmative) would only have confused Arnie--about whether he had the right to ask that specific question. Arnie believed that he did. Dave, apparently, fervently hoped that Arnie did not.

If Dave had intentionally given the wrong answer 100 times more frequently to Arnie than he did, would he have been 100 times more guilty of intentionally misleading Arnie? Let's do the math.

• Dave obfuscated the truth. Mathematically speaking, though, the sincerity of Dave's hope that Arnie wasn't entitled to ask about the truth rendered "0" the measure to which Dave was guilty of intentionally misleading.
  
  
• What's 100 times 0? 0.
  
  
• Is 0 > 0? Of course not. Not ever.
  
  
• Ipso facto, even if Dave had intentionally given the wrong answer 100 times more frequently than he did, he would not have been guilty of intentionally misleading.
  

But don't take my word for it, God. Read any math text book for the axiom about multiplying numbers by 0. And read the Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP "Report of Investigation: Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee", pages 105-113, for an incredible blow-by-blow description of how:

• Arnie doggedly and repeatedly asked a simple question about piping.
  
  
• Officials at Vermont Yankee were aghast at having to provide Arnie, an official representative of the state of Vermont, with information.
  
  
• There was at least one official of the state of Vermont with whom officials at Vermont Yankee felt considerably more comfortable. It was Bill Irwin, Vermont's top radiological officer. He seemed so damn sympathetic to Vermont Yankee's desire to keep Arnie out of the information loop. Bill even wrote in an email to Dave that, "The comments of Mr. Gundersen [about the possibility of the existence of underground piping] are hyperbole and, in my opinion, bordering [sic] on irresponsibility."
  
  
• Bill may actually have considered himself very much part of the VY "team." He marked a nearly identical email he sent to Uldis Vanags, the state's nuclear engineer, as "For Internal Use Only!!!!". Still, he seems to have copied the email to Dave. Dave circulated the email to a large handful of VY executives. You gotta love those four exclamation points, God. Without the emphasis they add to the words "internal" and "only" I never would have appreciated how closely the interests of Vermont Yankee and the Douglas administration are intertwined.
  
  
• Apparently a whole lot of conversations happened at VY among top engineers and executives about underground piping. Upon questioning, however, none of the engineers and executives could remember very many details of those conversations. This is probably a good thing because, as I've noted above, details can confuse.
  

The "report" of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP is priceless, Lord, especially that 8-page section, 105-113. Those pages make it as undeniable as the seven mysteries of the Church that McElwee didn't intentionally mislead. Rather, he intentionally conveyed information that wasn't the truth and represented it as the full truth.

If this all seems like splitting hairs, Lord, maybe some more math will help you keep your perspective. The associative law of mathematics states that in repeated multiplication or addition, grouping does not matter. The associative law of how business is done in Vermont evidently states that repeated groupings between state employees and corporate employees does not matter.

Speaking of which, Lord, Bill Irwin asked me to tell you "Hey!"

Amen,

Fake-Rob

There Goes the Neighborhool

Dear God,

BP has agreed to suspend paying a dividend and to set up a $20 billion fund for oil spill claims.

It's like the levy breaking on Lake Pontchartrain. Woosh. Things will never again be quite the same.

If BP can fold to pressure in this way, how will FirstEnergy fare? In Toledo, its Davis-Besse nuclear power plant (which once almost blew its lid) has sprouted cracks and flaws in as many as 16 critical parts. Will FirstEnergy post enough money to compensate Toledo and even Cleveland for the loss of all business and, indeed, people if something awful were to happen?

God, I hope not.

Because if they do, what will happen to us? Shay Totten has called us out for our Leak of the Week club. He has also pointed out that we tend to wait until late on a Friday to announce the flavor of our latest leak. This revelation may lead to an unnerving increase in the purchase of Saturday papers … or to a demand that Vermont Yankee pony up for the shortfall in its decommissioning fund.

Add our recent scram, and our admission that Strontium-90 was in the soil all along. This has been the kind of month that leads a PR guy to drink. It's also led our company's CEO to say that the nuclear businesses is not a good business risk.

There goes the neighborhood. FOR SALE notices will be going up first thing you know. Rats will start leaving this sinking ship. Signs of change are everywhere. Our IAmVY.com site is gone. And remember Curt Hébert's video recital of Rudyard Kipling's "IF"?

Gone.

Someone took it down from YouTube. Someone even took Curt Hébert "down," and he was supposed to fix everything for Entergy up here after, you know, they took down Jay Thayer.

Lord, Lord, Lord have mercy, for (apparently) we know not what we do.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Hallelujah!

Dear Lord,

I don't know how you do it! I just want to let you know that not only do I adore and worship you, I admire your PR abilities.

The fish in the Connecticut River are poisoned with Strontium-90. The Associated Press today ran a story about yesterday's unplanned outage. Lord knows what they'll run tomorrow, because today we got caught harboring sinkholes near where the leaks of radioactive isotopes occurred. We've had to abandon our plans for Enexus, and we're fighting for our lives with the Vermont legislature. But look at this: No one cares anymore!

Click the graph to enlarge it.


Click the graph to enlarge it.
According to Google's Insights for Search feature, interest in Vermont Yankee peaked in the third quarter of 2009 when these were the news stories:

• State Board to Consider Vermont Yankee Shutdown
  
  
• Top Vermont Yankee Official 'Relieved of Duties'
  
  
• Tritium Search at Vermont Yankee Turns Up Reading 90 Times Higher than Previous Record
  

But this week, no one seems to care about us. Interest in Vermont Yankee is tanking! And as we say in the PR business…. Actually, I don't remember what we say in the PR business.

But thank you, Lord. This apathy is truly miraculous. And don't you just love Google?

See my Google movie!



Amen,

Fake-Rob

Meet the Little Yanks!

Dear God,

Who says we're not taking the discovery of Strontium-90 in fish in the Connecticut River seriously? Even the youngest among us are concerned. Gosh, those mutants are cute and sensitive, and with just the right amount of environmental concern, to boot. Though they do worry too much.




Amen,

Fake-Rob

Who Would Elvis Costello Side With?

Dear God,

Oh, I just don't know where to begin.

1. The lab analyzing the damage of the oil spill has a huge contract with BP.
   
   
2. People are saying that the NRC, long accused of being a lapdog to the nuclear power industry, let Entergy Vermont Yankee off too easily when they found no violations regarding our epic tritium leak.
   

Now, really. The fuss people are making about these things! It's reminds me of the hoo-hah about the independent investigation that concluded that Entergy Vermont Yankee did not intentionally mislead investigators and state regulators concerning buried piping. The investigation turned out to have been conducted by our own lawyers, a discovery that raised questions about independence. Well, who do people expect us to hire to check us out quickly if not a firm that knows us well?

And who do BP critics expect them to hire to get their tests done if not a crew who comes to their Christmas parties?

And c'mon, God. Can't you help people see that unprecedented disasters are rare by definition, and therefore not often quickly followed by similar disasters? Everyone should relax and let the entire nuclear industry do its job of providing power that is too cheap to meter honestly. We're not going to have another tritium leak, and neither is anyone in the industry now that awareness has been heightened. And the oil industry is unlikely to have another catastrophic oil leak.

It's not like we're driving hit and run. We learn from our accidents. They happen.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Safe, Clean, and Reliable

Dear God,

"Now is the time for clean energy, Mr. President." Robert Redford just said that, and he said it, like, in response to a photo of some baby sea turtle or something smothered in oil down in Louisiana. It's all these disgusting photos on the Huffington Post that have famous actors singing the praises of wind, solar, and biomass power.

But what about clean nuclear power? If we had a nuclear accident the scale of the BP oil disaster, our wildlife photos wouldn't be nearly as heartbreaking as these photos coming up from the Gulf Coast. There's nothing muddy about cases of radiation overdose. Look here at what Wikipedia says:

A few symptom-free days may pass between the appearance of the initial symptoms and the onset of symptoms of more severe illness associated with higher doses of radiation. Nausea and vomiting generally occur within 24–48 hours after exposure to mild (1–2 Gy) doses of radiation. Headache, fatigue, and weakness are also seen with mild exposure. Moderate (2–3.5 Gy of radiation) exposure is associated with nausea and vomiting beginning within 12–24 hours after exposure. In addition to the symptoms of mild exposure, fever, hair loss, infections, bloody vomit and stools, and poor wound healing are seen with moderate exposure. Nausea and vomiting occur in less than 1 hour after exposure to severe (3.5–5.5 Gy) doses of radiation, followed by diarrhea and high fever in addition to the symptoms of lower levels of exposure. Very severe (5.5–8 Gy of radiation) exposure is followed by the onset of nausea and vomiting in less than 30 minutes followed by the appearance of dizziness, disorientation, and low blood pressure in addition to the symptoms of lower levels of exposure. Severe exposure is fatal about 50% of the time.

So, wow! Up to 50% of our wildlife could survive an event. But that turtle fouled by BP? He could easily be a goner. And, with radiation sickness the deaths are clean, if you can stand a little vomit and diarrhea. If you can't, no worries. Photographers don't win Cute But Sad Picture awards for snaps of puking porcupines, so they won't take the shots in the first place. They couldn't come within a 100 miles of a photo opportunity, anyway, without risking their lives.

So the good news is that there will never be pictures from Vermont to match those we're currently seeing from the Gulf Coast. The bad news is that there's been a lot of talk in Vermont lately about how the cozy relationship between federal regulators and the oil industry created just the right environment for something disastrous like the BP oil spill to happen. The implication is that we have similar regulatory shenanigans going on up here between the NRC and Entergy Vermont Yankee. Well, I say, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

For example, you! Mr. Robert Redford! Your good looks and suave manner have made you a rich man, and have probably gotten you into more than a few beds. Do you really expect us to believe that you've never been in bed with a federal regulator? Given how easy that is to do, I doubt it highly, sir.

God, right now I'm seeing this BP oil spill as a potential plus for nuclear power, given that our post-disaster photos would be so much cleaner than those from BP, and given that the call for clean energy is arising in the land. Every cloud has a silver lining, God. Every last cloud.

Thank you for clouds, Lord. Oh, and thanks for all that silver, too.

Amen,

Fake-Rob