If Brendan Behan Could See Us Now

Dear God,

You know how they say that no there's no such thing as bad publicity? Well, then I'm in the midst of a PR dude's dream. Entergy news is everywhere!

Remember how Vermont Yankee wanted other states to be able to export waste to Texas, a move that would possibly decrease its decommissioning costs for VY? Well, we've been in the news in two ways over that one:

First,

• Panel Approves Importing More Nuclear Waste to Texas. "Texas can import low-level radioactive waste from 36 other states, a commission run jointly by Texas and Vermont decided Tuesday in West Texas. The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission vote was a decisive victory for Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, a company whose majority owner is billionaire Harold Simmons, which has shaken off a series of permitting and court challenges by environmental activists...."
  

And now,

• Judge Halts Radioactive Dump Plan for Now. "A Texas judge ordered a temporary halt Thursday to a proposal that could allow three dozen states to dump their radioactive waste in far West Texas, a ruling that sided with environmentalists and caught the state attorney general's office off guard...."
  

And there's the new tritium leak:

• Officials Investigate Possible New Leak at Vermont Yankee. "Both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Vermont Department of Health have indicated there may be a new leak of tritiated water at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon...."
  
  
• Tritium Found at Nuclear Power Plant. "Radioactive tritium has been found in a water sample from a monitoring well at the Entergy Corp.-owned 620 MW Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, just a year after another related incident....."
  
  
• Entergy Again Finds Tritium at Vermont Yankee. "Radioactive tritium has been found in a water sample from a monitoring well at Entergy Corp's (ETR.N) Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, the company said on Friday, a year after the isotope was identifed in a leak at the facility. 'This week Vermont Yankee received positive indications for tritium in a previously unaffected monitoring well located about 150 feet to the north of the area affected by the leak that was identified in January 2010,' plant spokesman Larry Smith said in an email...."
  
  
• Vermont Regulators Hear about Nuclear Leaks "A high-ranking engineer for the company that owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant said Tuesday that leaks of radioactive water from two pipes didn't prompt plant personnel to inspect other pipes at the Vernon reactor to see whether they might show similar problems...."
  
  
• Lawyers, Consultants Wrangle Over 'Root Cause' of Yankee Leaks, "The Vermont Public Service Board opened four days of technical hearings Tuesday on petitions from environmental groups seeking to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and revoke its state operating permit in the wake of revelations that the facility was leaking radioactive water into the environment.... The “root cause” of the leaks was the most contentious issue...."
  

Now it seems there are reliability and possibly safety issues at an Entergy plant in Michigan:

• Entergy Nuclear Plant in Michigan Shuts Down from Full Power. "Entergy Corp. says its nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan was automatically shut down from full power over the weekend and a faulty cable that supplies a transformer was found...."
  

And finally there's the value of our corporation:

• Entergy Stocks Reach 52-week Low "The prices of Entergy Corp. (ETR) shares have declined to close to the 52-week low of $70.83, which is 17.4% off the 52-week high of $84.07. Entergy Corp. is owned by 11 Gurus we are tracking. Among them, 2 have added to their positions during the past quarter. 7 reduced their positions...."
  

The idea that there's no such thing as bad publicity is often attributed to Phineas T. Barnum. But you know, God? The Irish dramatist Brendan Behan had his own version of the saying. "There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." Sure and I'm starting to feel a bit of the old sod in my blood. And this is all starting to feel like bad publicity to me.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

You Never Give Me Your Money

Dear God,

I'm sure you heard about the latest tritium leak. We're not really speaking about it publicly yet, so just let me refer you to my oft-repeated advice:

TEN HANDY EVACUATION SAFETY AND SANITY TIPS

1. To beat the traffic, evacuate the day before an emergency.

2. Radiation exposure is especially harmful to children. Build up your children's immunity by programmatically giving them x-rays beginning shortly after birth.

3. Dress your child in a haz-mat suit for Halloween, just in case that's a bad day for us.

4. Always pack your child's lunch box with holy water.

5. Ask your doctor whether cancer is always as serious as you've been led to believe.

6. Remember that, even if your children are in a school in Guilford, Vernon or Brattleboro, no force in creation can stop a good parent like you from cowboying your way through police lines to get to them once they have been cordoned away from you and proclaimed a public health risk to others.

7. Appreciate the way that evacuation puts your life problems in perspective.

8. Try not to read too much into the little details like how in heaven's name you will ever rebuild your life even if you and everyone you love survive.

9. If you actually work at the Vermont Yankee plant, every day ask yourself, "Hmmm, does this coffee taste a little too potassium iodide-y?" Lousy coffee is a morale buster. During an evacuation, a bright outlook will go a long way.

10. Remember that heart disease is actually our nation's number one killer.

Like I said, we're not yet really giving out information about this. But what we are speaking freely about, at least at the plant, is some good news. We are so glad to finally be able to download Beatles songs from the iTunes store!

It's so cool. You know, one of the things that people don't really appreciate about Vermont Yankee is how much fun we have around here forgiving each other for our blunders and mistakes. It's really a "peace, man" and "no worries" kind of place. Another very cool fact about us: Our employees are happy, picturesque people with good singing voices.



And that's something the ad agency really likes. I know I showed you the website we spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on, the one showing people how downright Caucasian we are and how nice one of us in particular looks in a red bathing suit. Well, did you also know that we sing George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" at lunchtime in the employee cafeteria, and that when we do we all join in on folk guitars? The "Alleluia"s and "Hare Krishna"s bring tears to our eyes. And did you know that if you don't tear up spontaneously that you can pull your nose hairs when no one is looking and get it to happen?

We talk about the Beatles a lot at Vermont Yankee because, like us, they were technical innovators. Just think of "Abbey Road." Hey, most of the world was way behind the times, playing 8-track cassettes and building nuclear power plants! But they were assuredly bringing Moog synthesizers into the studio and playing chords backwards.

You might also remember that the climax of that album is a 16-minute medley. Hey! Remember "Sun King?" And "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window"--written (did you know?) after a fan came into Paul's house through the bathroom window? And who could forget "You Never Give Me Your Money?"

Well, we haven't forgotten "You Never Give Me Your Money"--not at Vermont Yankee. We started singing it to the state in 2007 when we tried to pocket a quarter of a BILLION dollars from the Decommissioning Fund. (NOTE: Pages 8-12 are particularly fun when sung in chorus.) Specifically, what we did was attempt "to draw down the Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund by applying the cost of the Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) to Vermont Yankee’s Decommissioning Fund." NRC statute prohibits this, and eventually Entergy retracted its effort to "strip the fund of these unauthorized costs." Apparently, no other plant in the U.S. has had the cojones to try to use their Decommissioning Fund this way.

So, yes! We're innovators! But, also yes, now we've been found out, and the report has been made public, and all while we're grappling with another ill-timed tritium leak. Frankly, I fear that, boy, we're going to "Carry That Weight" of our incompetence and tomfoolery right into the next legislative vote on our Certificate of Public Good.

I'm frantic about this, God, pulling out my nose hairs and everything.

You got any PR miracles up your sleeve? Any technical ones? Unfortunately, Paul is dead, and he can't help. I know many people say it's George and John who are dead, but I've listened to all of those songs backwards and forwards.

Hare Krishna, My Sweet Lord,

Fake-Rob

Dental Warfare

Dear God,

Gosh. I got an email today, and the subject line was "Bomb Strontium in Baby Teeth." It linked to a article here.

By and large, I'm a cautious guy, but this idea is one I support. I mean, who wants Strontium in baby teeth? That stuff's dangerous as hell! I say bomb those baby teeth to smithereens. Bigger, healthier ones will grow in anyway. And then the back molars will come in. Bomb them, too. They hurt.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

The Little Yanks are Back!

Dear God,

Two things:

• First, Ukraine plans to open Chernobyl area to tourists in 2011. It turns out that nuclear disaster is a brand that sells, just like "made in Vermont."
  
  
• Second, remember those cute control room mutants, The Little Yanks? They couldn't run and play like other kids, and they said a bad word: Strontium-90, which itself is a mutant. (Unlike most bad words, it has more than four letters.) I first prayed about them on May 26, 2010. Well, theyyyyyyyyyre back! Trouble is, the first time we met them, they were kind of funny, confusing "sh#t," for example, with radioactive isotopes. This time, there's not much humor, except for a few laugh lines about the NRC being trustworthy. And, hey, did you know? Uranium is natural! And the outcome of Vermont refusing to give Vermont Yankee a certificate of public good for an extra 20 years of operation "will be decided in the Federal courts!" Here's a little movie, courtesy of YouTube user RobertHargraves, who was kind enough to include an "embed" link on his YouTube page.
  

Gotta go, Lord. It's my turn to take the control room mutant kids outside so I can forcibly stretch their little legs and arms. And necks.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

It's a Sing-Along!

Dear God,

J. Wayne Leonard is dumping his shares of Entergy! And it may have affected the overall value of the company. According to the website GuruFocus.com, "Chairman and CEO J Wayne Leonard sold 227,954 shares of ETR stock on 08/10/2010 at the average price of 79.11. J Wayne Leonard owns at least 360,683 shares after this. The price of the stock has decreased by 8.49% since. Other insiders have also decreased their positions in the company."

"The rat is fleeing a sinking ship" can't even begin to describe the epithets being hurled today at poor J. Wayne--"poor," of course, being a relative term considering that in October of 2008 Fortune Magazine estimated his five-year income at $45.84 million. And now, just imagine the windfall on the stock sale! Whew! (It's about $17 million, if you do the math.)

And you've seen my pictures of J. Wayne Leonard's house haven't you? I think he'll build another wing or something now, don't you?

People may call J. Wayne a "rat," but "rat" does not begin to describe him. Why, he's stuck by this old, leaking plant for so long, he should get a medal! People have cast aspersions on his spending style, his elitism, his oversight, his manners, his hiring practices, his honesty, and the fact that he's pillaged the state of Vermont without, apparently, ever once spending a personal dollar here. He's been lambasted for saying that nuclear power is not a good business risk for the 21st century, and saying that even while trying to get the state of Vermont to take a risk on nuclear power. But step back, Lord. It's not as though all those aspects of him are bad things. Truly, they just define the modern man, the man of the future, the captain of industry about town extraordinaire.

Why, I think it's fair to go so far as to say that J. Wayne Leonard is, if you will, the very model of a modern metrosexual.

Hit it, dudes! And everyone sing along!



Did you see Linda Rondstadt in that video clip? Hey, any father of Linda Rondstadt's is a friend of mine.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

PS: Unfortunately, we can't blame the tumble in Entergy stock on Governor Elect Peter Shumlin. You see, J. Wayne's sell-off pre-dated Pete's demand of Michael Colomb, Site Vice President at Vermont Yankee, that "Entergy return its extraction wells to service and ... increase the number of wells to prevent tritiated water from entering Vermont’s precious and irreplaceable aquifers." In his letter to Colomb, Pete said that, "It appears that ENVY made the decision to arbitrarily terminate the process of extracting tritiated ground water from the Vermont Yankee site as soon as 300,000-gallons of water had been removed. The tritium concentration level of the remaining on site tritiated water after the 300,000-gallon cutoff was never provided to justify that decision." Pete also pointed out that, "The following day [after stopping extraction], Entergy detected 500,000 pCi/l of tritium near [one] well and at bedrock, ... a further indication that the aquifer may be in serious jeopardy of contamination from tritium and other radioactive isotopes." Frankly, I fail to understand Pete's concern about all of this. You remember, Lord (don't you?), that Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour has already declared our tritium cleanup to be complete.

Have You Heard the Good News?

Dear God,


Yes, Lord, in the very week that we prematurely announced our tritium cleanup to be complete,we've announced that we've found more tritium, and this time we've found it in at least one well that used to be used for drinking water.

But, in the words of the prophet Douglas Adams, "DON'T PANIC!" This week's discovery is good news--or so my colleague Larry Smith has suggested.

I won't even pretend to explain why it's good news, because in order to explain that I would have to understand Larry's logic, which, frankly, I don't. But I do know this: No one reads the Saturday papers. And that is good news.

Yet, despite Larry's proclamation of elation, I'm sensing a general uneasiness here at Vermont Yankee. We all know that, by Monday, anti-nuke activists will be leaping from nooks and crannies and jumping to wherever it is that news cameras will point.

If I may be so bold as to express a wish in the form of an exasperative prayer, I beseech you, Lord, to arrange for said nuclear activists to drink the damn "good news" water, and to drink it tonight, Friday. Mind you, I fully support Larry in his assertion that 500 thousand pico curies per liter presents "no threat to public health." And, granted, even if it's going to kill the activists, they'll still be around on Monday. Radiation poisoning doesn't always work as quickly as one would like. Still, to watch the activists drink that water would be an "unusual event" for which I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks for understanding, Lord.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour Declares Tritium Cleanup Complete

Dear God,

Just weeks after his most recent meeting with Hamid Karzai, president of one or another of those "stan" countries, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, one of the most successful imitators of senior commanders in the Taliban movement, has declared the cleanup of tritium at Vermont Yankee complete.

"You have trusted me," Mullah Mansour declared. "Now you can pay me."

The NATO plane that brought Mullah Mansour to Vernon has now helped him flee back to the hills, carrying him along with weighty bundles of Entergy shareholder cash, and leaving David O'Brien of the Department of Public Service sad that long-promised peace talks with the New England Coalition never quite happened. However, J. Wayne Leonard, CEO of Entergy, expressed his gratitude that contaminated groundwater, now removed from Vernon, would be shipped to Tennessee, where public education has been in crisis for so long that the citizenry is unusually easy to push around. Stepping away from an indoor pool party at his mansion, Mr. Leonard watched with loving eyes as Mullah Mansour's plane passed over Louisiana. "Who was that masked man?" he wondered fondly.

In the meanwhile, Arnie Gundersen tried frantically to explain to the media that the tritium problem was not, in fact solved. The extraction wells were still pumping contaminated water when they were shut down. They were not shut down because the tritium issue was "over," but rather because Entergy did not want to pay to winterize the wells. Had they paid for the wells, Gundersen explained, they could not have afforded to pay Mullah Monsour.

Only moments after Gundersen started his b*tching and moaning, a grainy, ill-shot video was received by news stations across America. An unidentified but very tall actor attached to a styrofoam dialysis machine clearly said, "We will never tire of the tritium fight. J. Wayne is great. So is God."

Amen,

Fake-Rob