VT Yankee’s sprung another leak, which isn’t really a surprise to me. THIS is the surprise (from a Susan Smallheer piece in the Rutland Herald):
Stephen Wark, a spokesman for the Department of Public Service, said the recent inspection by the NSA team did not inspect the pipe per se, but general criteria such as the “design bases, maintenance, corrective actions and walk down of some areas.”
Hey, I’ve got an idea. When dealing with parolees, instead of looking at their actions, let’s just ask them about their life philosophy.
Maybe when we inspect restaurants, we shouldn’t look at the actual food they store, but the overall structure of their storage areas.
Or, how about… when we inspect airplanes, we don’t look at the planes themselves, but interview a few of the mechanics, look at their instruction manuals and take a quick tour of the hangar.
It’s so much more efficient.
The Douglas DPS is truly an amazing operation.
They display stellar bureaucratic artistry, the illusory appearance of regulation where non exists.
Movement implied ,action insinuated .
Their “oversight” of Entergy Vermont Yankee and FairPoint are two of their award winning best performances .
I hear rumors in some circles it may be Oscar material .
The NSA’s inspection procedures, sadly, are of a piece with the general tone of government regulation in these post-Bush days. Many industries — including the giant food producers — are basically self-regulated. This is one of the many Reagan/Bush failures that we hope Obama will be able to correct: putting teeth back into the regulatory systems. Because we have seen, over and over, what happens when business and industry are left to their own devices.
Like the following gem from the New York Times on May 15 about food safety. It noted that ConAgra, maker of Banquet frozen foods, never figured out the cause of a 2007 salmonella outbreak that sickened 15,000 people, and then reported…
The report then notes that it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a consumer to achieve the kill temperature in a home kitchen. Of course, the stakes are much higher when it comes to nuclear power. But it’s the same basic approach to regulation and oversight: stop in, have a chat, scan some files, and take a walk down the hall. Have a nice day!
Vermont Yankee: The world’s most expensive sieve.
so, probably, are “re-mantling” costs.
The Entergy corporate strategery seems to be – run Yankee (and the other plants) into the ground, or until someone makes them stop.
Then litigate. It will take at least a decade for suits to wind through the courts, the directors and officers will have plenty of other people to blame and attempt to deflect responsibility towards, tons of plausible deniability scenarios, infinite legal and semi-legal ways to avoid responsibility for failure of their oversight. Narrow definitions of fiduciary responsibility will insure that none of the directors ever spend a night in jail or have any financial responsibility for the failure of the plant and/or the clean-up fund. (Indeed, the best capitalist outcome would be – 1) get every last ounce of profitable power out of the plant and 2) pay not one penny more than you can get away with for clean-up and decommissioning. It’s also the best strategery for the shareholders, so the directors and officers can say they were just doing their jobs, properly exercising their fiduciary responsibility.)