This week, Reuters reported on the growing credibility gap among Japanese with regard to the ethical reliability of their nuclear industry as a whole, even as the Fukushima disaster remains unresolved.
With Tokyo Electric already discredited, the industry has been further tarnished by revelations that Kyushu Electric Power Co. attempted to manipulate a public forum on nuclear safety by instructing its workers to pose as ordinary citizens and send e-mails in support of restarting nuclear power plants in the south.
“There is growing suspicion that power companies are playing fast and loose with data to support their cause and will go so far as to orchestrate public support,” said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University’s Japan campus.
To their credit, the Japanese public actually seem surprised and outraged by this effrontery! Over here, we’ve just come to expect such unethical behavior as a matter of course.
There’s little comfort for Vermonters in Attorney General William Sorrell’s conclusion that Entergy and Vermont Yankee’s misrepresentations do not exactly rise to the level of criminal behavior. As the Free Press observed today, incompetence in the administration of a nuclear facility is hardly more desirable than downright dishonesty.
“We found more incompetence than malevolence,” Attorney General William Sorrell said this week in announcing the results of the investigation. “A corporation of this size and this importance — I don’t mean to disparage cops — but this was like Keystone Kops.”
In a sane world, where concerns for public safety would trump all corporate claims, this finding would be…should be… the final nail in the coffin for Vermont Yankee.
But, no…if the Attorney General thinks he can’t make a criminal case out of the whoppers perpetrated by Entergy and VY, we just go on as if nothing ever happened; and the NRC doesn’t even care that the operators have been publicly exposed (at the very least) as colossal incompetents.
Isn’t this sort of the corporate equivalent of claiming innocence by reason of insanity?
Surely it is avoiding what would’ve been a monumental loss had they really brought charges, but having your business declared grossly incompetent – as everyone has been saying for a while now – seems to leave them in the same place they were before AG Sorrell’s press conference.
IMO, maybe a more fitting analogy is a lazy shopowner, who, despite his son’s repeated dangerous mistakes running the business, and his unwillingness to fess up to them, continues to allow the kid to oversee important operations. Even though it is obvious he’s in for more of the same and doesn’t want to go through that, he keeps employing him because he doesn’t want to go through the messy process of firing his son, hiring someone new for the position, and helping them get started.
tl;dr: can’t expect different results with the same people – especially when those people are found “incompetent” by the AG
…these fuckos can do what they do. Energy Terrorism. Not covered by the Patriot Laws. Threats to the public safety?–Hey, dudes, get a life. bin Laden missed his calling.
show that this was no win for Entergy Louisiana by any means. Free Press notes that since their first call for VY shutdown, nothing Entergy has done changes this position.
Reformer has a double-edged sword kind of take which mocks Entergy’s present action – the injunction in which Judge Murtha must perform the impossible, determine what was on the minds of lawmakers when crafting legislation:
http://www.reformer.com/reform…
Free Press:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress…
Bill Sorrell is far too comfortable as life time Attorney General and far too comfortable with power. The Keystone Kops running a nuclear facility IS a crime.
Whether the AG is an activist or not makes all the difference. Sorrell is too complacent and familiar with all the players and not likely to rock any boats. I’ll bet he’s on DOJ’s side in settling with the banks on the mortgage crimes rather than really investigating. We need new blood that will go after the powerful criminals who think they own our world. Charlotte Dennett would fit that bill.