If you assumed that, with the triple meltdown at Fukushima still unresolved, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency would climb out of the pocket of industry and soberly embrace its role as a safety regulator, you were sadly mistaken.

On August 26, the NRC endorsed the safety of long-term onsite storage of nuclear waste, either in dry casks, or in spent fuel pools, which were originally designed to store very limited amounts of  fuel over just a few years, until they could safely be committed to dry cask storage or a permanent repository.  This decision says that it is safe to leave spent fuel in these pools for sixty, a hundred, even 120 years! In so doing, it opens the door to licensing of even more waste generating reactors.

Opponents of the endorsement have raised an outcry because one of the commissioners, William D. Magwood,  who was in on the vote is leaving the Agency on August 31, and has already accepted a highly paid position working for an agency which promotes the industry he has been regulating.

Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency. Under its charter, the NEA actively promotes the use of nuclear energy and the economic interests of its member governments, including governments that own or sponsor U.S. nuclear licensees and applicants.

The vote was originally scheduled to take place in October, after he had made the move and a new Commissioner had taken his place; but it appears as if the date was moved up in order to take advantage of at least one very captive vote.

To understand how outrageous this vote is, it is only necessary to look at events which compromised the spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi.

The real thermal threat of pool storage might last less than a decade, but that is by no means the only manner in which an extremely over-crowded spent fuel pool represents heightened menace to surrounding communities.  

The sheer volume and weight of tons of highly radioactive material stored in this way presents a growing possibility of structural failure and collapse as the years pass by.  

Weather and seismic events; accident or fire, mischief or terrorism; simple human error: there are so many ways in which the limited shielding provided by a spent fuel pool might be breached over the decades that  fuel assemblies would be allowed to languish in the pools of long abandoned facilities.

The truly disgusting reality is that this decision by the NRC was a purely pragmatic one.  If the NRC would not have come down in favor of indefinite onsite storage, including spent fuel storage, it would have been the end of the nuclear industry because there simply is no alternative.

After over forty years of fevered discussion and false starts,  we are no nearer to finding an acceptable place to safely sequester the tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel that already sits at reactor sites across America, let alone any that will be generated in the future.

So, putting on their actuarial caps and weighing the small possibility that something truly catastrophic will happen to one or more of the spent fuel pools (potentially killing thousands) against the loss of their total raison d’etre, the NRC has simply declared the problem non-existent.

End of story.

According to the NRC, there were key assumptions used to justify the GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Study.)

They included, but are not limited to: Institutional controls, including the continued regulation of spent fuel, will continue; spent fuel canisters and casks would be replaced approximately once every 100 years; a dry transfer system will be built at each location for fuel repacking; and all spent fuel will be transferred from spent fuel pools to dry storage no more than 60 years after operations cease.

Except that there are no protocols in place to how the fuel will be “repacked;” and there is no guarantee that nothing will happen to disrupt the “institutional controls” and “continued regulation of spent fuel” over the long term.  Those are pretty big assumptions.

Even in the short term, we can’t really do much to ensure that Limited Liability companies like Vermont Yankee discharge even their basic obligations, should nuclear fortunes founder significantly and they choose to simply bail and go bankrupt.

His work to make America safe for the nuclear industry done,  Mr. Magwood will move on to his new job at the NEA.  His friends back at the NRC will make sure that nothing stands in the way of nuclear industry “progress.” Not even the cold, hard and unforgiving truth.

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As most of my readers already know, I am pleased to have recently joined the Fairewinds Energy Education Team.  This blogpost, however, represents my own personal opinion and is not intended to reflect the views of Fairewinds, nor that of any of the team at Fairewinds.  I work for Fairewinds strictly as a wordsmith, and make no claims to nuclear expertise.

In a move that one would readily expect from Gentleman Jim Douglas, but not from the standard bearer of the Democratic party in Vermont, Peter Shumlin has sent a letter to the FCC endorsing the mega media takeover by Comcast of Time Warner.

This, the day after a Comcast outage lasting several hours left many Vermont households with neither internet nor telephone service.

Even moderate Democrat Howard Dean’s Democracy for America has joined the Consumer’s Union and Burlington’s CCTV Center for Media & Democracy in challenging the acquisition.

This giant gulp will leave Comcast in control of 16 out of 20 top cable television markets in America, and 35-percent of all high-speed internet service in the country.

In the bad old days before corporate law got a Republican makeover, that would have been regarded as potentially a “monopoly” position; something most definitely frowned upon by the feds.

In a small market like Vermont it very definitely would represent a defacto monopoly, because the swap formula by which Comcast plans to avoid running afoul of federal anti-trust rules appears to involve moving Vermont’s Charter subscribers over to Comcast.

Thus endeth competition from the # 2 player in the Vermont market.

Why would our Democratic governor think that is a good thing? Paul Heinz of Seven Days put that question to Shumlin spokesman Sue Allen who said the following:

…Shumlin’s letter to the FCC was focused on Comcast’s “regulatory commitments in Vermont when it acquired Adelphia and its work (as one of many private providers) in bringing more choice and broadband access to Vermonters.”

However this argument seems a little weak given that basic Charter subscribers now have access to channels that are unavailable to basic Comcast subscribers, and vice-versa.

Even though their markets don’t cross in Vermont, I know of at least one Charter subscriber who will not be pleased to lose some arts programming she now enjoys with a basic cable subscription. She will most certainly regard the “choice” of only Comcast as a pretty raw deal.

Remember when Bernie Sanders tried to move heaven and earth to get cable providers like Comcast to allow subscribers to pick and choose the channels they were actually interested in using rather than being forced into expensive “bundles” that included channels of absolutely no interest to them?

Why couldn’t Shumlin have at least held out for some sort of compromise like that which would have actually benefitted Vermonters?

The larger issue is that such concentration of media power in one giant entity represents the potential for unprecedented access to the public ear and eye from a single viewpoint.  That seems the very definition of a threat to our democracy.

Heinz reasonably raises the question of whether Comcast’s $475,000. “gift” to the Democratic Governors’ Association (of which Shumlin is the current chair) might have had something to do with the Governor’s willingness to endorse the consolidation.

The DGA apparently isn’t responding to requests for comments, but you can bet this won’t be the last time that Governor Shumlin will be expected to respond to questions about his corporatist sympathies

Vermont Auditor Doug Hoffer has just announced plans to conduct an audit of  “corrective actions” to improve functioning of the Vermont Health Exchange.  The audit is to begin in mid-to late September.

“The preliminary objective of this audit is to evaluate whether the State has plans to correct reported shortcomings in Vermont Health Connect (VHC) and the extent to which it monitors these plans.  During the course of the audit this objective may change based on the information gathered during the planning phase.”

In his letter to Dr. Harry Chen, Acting Secretary, Vermont Agency of Health &Human Services, Auditor Hoffer explains that his office is aware that the DHHS Office of Inspector General is currently doing fieldwork of its own and has chosen a delayed start date in order to avoid complicating VHC’s efforts with an additional ongoing audit.

Results of the Auditor’s own fieldwork will be reported to the Governor,”other statutorily mandated addresses and the public.”

The Governor should welcome involvement by the Auditor, whose reputation for independence and care can only enhance the credibility of VHC and its commitment to transparency and accountability.  It is this kind of proactive effort that will ultimately overcome VHC’s “growing pains.”

Warts and all, this is what good government looks like.

BP’s take on the Windham County race set me to thinking.

When the late Senator Jim Jeffords made his famous statement, that he hadn’t left the Republican Party but it had left him, he foretold the GOP’s future in Vermont.

Today’s Vermont GOP is a fractured and ineffectual mess.

It happened rather quickly; and it happened, for the most part, because nationally, the “Grand Old Party” had just grown too extreme to find support here, orphaning Vermont Republicans to explain their parentage as best they could.  

Longtime Vermont Republican figures soldier on in a joyless vacuum.  Money from the national party, so necessary to buying a credible place on the ballot, comes with a secret handshake and the long shadow of talking points that would make Ronald Reagan blush.

Both reasonable men, Phil Scott and Randy Brock represent two aspects of the same disfunction:    

Scott has found a “safe” place by being everyone’s friend and a little vague on where he stands on everything else.

Left rudderless by an appalling national party, Randy Brock seems to have lost the will to live, politically speaking.

Meanwhile, every political hopeful who lies somewhere to the left of Michele Bachman, is trying to cram him or herself into the (winning) Democratic blazer and make it fit.  It’s a Blue Dog bonanza!

Can you blame them for seeking an identity makeover?

When even the word “conservative” can’t be said with a straight face, and demographics seem poised to send your party straight over the cliff, Darwin-style, what alternative is there?

The problem is that this artificial swelling of the Democratic ranks resets the parameters of “moderation” within the party a little to the right.  In so doing, Democratic commitment to tough issues like social justice, single payer healthcare and environmental stewardship become diluted.

And yes; there is some truth to the argument that defection to the Progressive Party just reinforces that diluted state.

Guilty as charged.

if you thought the 2014 gubernatorial campaign was going to be a bit of a snooze, you might want to hang on to your Snuggy.

The Republican roster may be poised for cannibalism; and there is a hint of open rebellion in the works even for the incumbent’s party.

We are Vermonters, after all, not Canadians: and we never want to look altogether too dull.

Tomorrow, VPR is scheduled to present a  gubernatorial debate featuring the three Republican primary candidates.  As of this afternoon, VPR promos were still suggesting that Scott Milne will participate, despite the fact that two days ago, Milne announced that he would pass up on an opportunity to engage his primary opponents, about whom he said:

“They are going to be working against the Republican Party and the nominee after the primary so it didn’t make sense to go.”

Will he or won’t he? That seems to be the question.

But meanwhile, back at the ranch, Milne is reportedly hosting his own private telephone forum this evening. We have learned that he intends to robo-call 30,000 Vermonters to invite their participation.

Speculation among the GMD faithful has been high as to whom, exactly, might comprise the selected 30-thou.  ‘Might be hard to find 30,000 phone-ready Republicans in Vermont, so we guess he’s got a goodly portion of blue-dog Dems in the mix as well.

We wouldn’t be at all surprised if he didn’t even fancy his chances with Progressives, given how dissatisfied they have been with much of Governor Shumlin’s performance.  Of course that is a fantasy for the truly delusional.

If you find yourself among the lucky 30,000 and are not inclined simply to hang-up, we’d love to hear from you. You can be our fly on the wall and tell us what all transpired.

There is, however, a related twist-upon-a-twist that really could get interesting.

Some Democrats, persistently disappointed by Shumlin, are reportedly planning to write-in Doug Racine for governor on their primary ballots, as a protest vote.

The primary is a safe opportunity to register that protest with the Governor, loudly and clearly; and many are still angry with the manner in which Racine was pushed out the door.

Unlike Milne’s possible fantasy, Racine as a write-in has a good chance of picking up serious votes.

It will be interesting to see whether or not the Governor gets the message.

There really are far more important things to grouse about in the world today, but this got my goat and wouldn’t set it free.

Today’s Messenger held an editorial that I take very personally.  

Not for the first time, Emerson Lynn trotted out those old Republican talking points:  that Vermont’s environmental community doesn’t want any growth whatsoever to occur, and that the only purpose of Act 250 permit appeals is to delay projects.

My response:

In your editorial of August 20, you have mistakenly put words in the mouth of Vermont’s environmental groups:  “They’d prefer no growth to any growth.”

I can think of only one environmental organization in Vermont that holds a “no growth” position, “Vermonters for a Sustainable Population”, which contends that Vermont has already exceeded its capacity for long-term sustainability.

The remainder of Vermont’s large environmental organizations believe that we should only permit growth that follows the rules established under laws, backed by math and science, which seek to ensure that development occurs where it may benefit the community without negatively affecting either the environment or the local economy.

While developers might sometimes disagree, I think most people would say that is an eminently sensible goal.  

Vermont’s historically conservative attitude toward development has been vindicated by the fact that, in the last recession, the state’s housing market wasn’t pulled into the same vortex of ruin that plagued other states with laxer rules.

You suggest that appellants’ only motive is to delay the inevitable.  That may be true of some business-on-business appeals, but it simply is not true of appeals that arise from the action of environmental groups.

The vast majority of Vermont’s environmental groups are not interested in stopping growth; and they do not have the resources to pursue appeal as a frivolous delay tactic. They bring arguments to the Environmental Court only when they feel that the District Commissioners have failed to uphold provisions of Act 250.  

Act 250 review involves ten different criteria, some of which are highly technical.  District commissioners are seldom appointed for their scientific knowledge.  If they have any related professional background at all, it will be in just one area of the ten. I have read District Commission decisions that seemed completely at odds with the lengthy record of facts and findings, as if they were pre-drawn conclusions.

Commissioners are political appointees; which usually means they have friends in high places.  If those friends have more sympathy for developers than for the environment, it is likely that the Commission’s decisions will reflect that bias.

You are quite right that nearly all Act 250 applications are approved.  It is also a fact that appeals are rarely successful, but that does not invalidate the need.  Developers have much deeper pockets than environmental groups, and only the terminally naive do not believe that money makes the difference.

It was hoped that by making the initial phase of Act 250 more accessible and responsive to concerned citizens, the need for appeals would be reduced; but an important component in the fairness of the process is the criteria for selection of commissioners.

If the composition of those commissions continues to reflect a business rather than scientific bias, be prepared for more appeals.

It’s easy to stand up for your principles when you’re in the company of likeminded folks; but the man or woman who does so in open opposition to his or her friends is a courageous rarity.

If that man also happens to be a U.S. Senator and his “friends” are the Republican party establishment who feel entitled to his loyalty, his courage becomes positively heroic.

Fiscally conservative as befit an old-time Republican but an authentic progressive when it counted to be one, Senator James Jeffords was that kind of hero; and for some of us, his example provided a seminal influence in shaping our own personal activism.

Nanuq shares her memory of the moment when tiny Vermont moved the entire U.S. Senate:

I have a clear memory of the week Jim Jeffords announced he was leaving the Republican Party, but not much else.

There was a lot of buzz; he was coming home to Vermont to make an announcement. My civilly united partner and I were in Madison, WI, staying with friends before attending a feminist science fiction convention over Memorial Day weekend. I kept checking the friends’ computer to see what was happening back in Vermont, and guessing that he was going to stay in the GOP. Then the announcement came. I tore up the stairs from the basement computer room yelling, “He did it! He did it! He’s left the Republican Party! The Senate goes to the Democrats!”

And at the convention, when I stood up and said, “I’m from Vermont …” the rest of the speculative fiction aficionados (the convention attendance closed at 1,000) applauded at length. Between Civil Unions the previous year, and Jim Jeffords’ actions, the politics of Vermont were warmly appreciated by the overwhelmingly liberal and open-minded science fiction authors, essayists, critics, and fans who came to Madison from all across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and beyond.

And Jim Jeffords’ willingness to stand up for his principles in the face of extreme pressure from members of his party got my respect.

That was also the year I became active in local party politics, having for many years disdained mainstream political parties as hopelessly corrupt and well beyond any attempt to fix. Between the stolen presidential election of 2000 and Jim Jeffords’ courageous stand, it just seemed like we needed to start somewhere to make things different.

Our Publisher Emeritus, John Odum was on hand for the press conference, and generously shared this video clip with us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

My son was in eighth grade when Jeffords made his historic move to independence, in so doing, briefly shifting the axis of power.  The timing was significant because Jesse was at an age of political awakening and we were headed to Washington DC for the school band’s big trip.

Among the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Capital building arranged for us by Senator Jefford’s office.  The public could still enjoy the full experience of accessing the building from the towering front stairway, but most had to wait in long lines for admission.  One of Senator Jeffords’ aides met us on the staircase and whisk us quickly into the building for a guided tour.  He was positively merry, apologizing with a twinkle in his eye for the Senator’s unavailability to meet us personally.  “As you can imagine,” he quipped, “we have been very busy lately!”

The Senator continued to be “very busy” doing the work of the people for the remainder of his Senate career; and when he retired due to failing health, his seat most appropriately passed to another great Vermont independent, Bernie Sanders.

Rest in peace, Senator Jeffords; you did Vermont proud.

When I sat in on Monday night’s St. Albans City Council meeting, little did I know that a minor item buried in the agenda would prove to have significance well beyond the affairs of our little town.

That agenda item concerned approval of a $12,000. JAG (Justice Assistance) grant.  The JAG program, administered through the Department of Justice, is intended to provide direct funding to communities so that they can address any one of many issues that fall under the DOJ purview.

The JAG Program, administered by BJA and authorized under Public Law 109-162 (see page 136), is the leading source of federal justice funding to state and local jurisdictions. The JAG Program provides states, tribes, and local governments with critical funding necessary to support a range of program areas including law enforcement, prosecution, indigent defense, courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, drug treatment and enforcement, planning, evaluation, technology improvement, and crime victim and witness initiatives.

The Council’s approval seemed to be just a formality, but a public reading was required and I came to abrupt attention at the words “tear gas and pepper spray!”

St. Albans intends to spend it’s $12,000., at least in part, on riot response gear!

One Council member actually inquired if the tear gas and pepper spray delivery weapons we already have are no longer usable!  I don’t know whether he was kidding, but I suspect not.

The unsurprising answer is that the City police do not have such weaponry.

No one even questioned why a town with barely 5,000 residents and no major institutions needed riot gear.  If we are to believe the laments, the population is rapidly aging and business is slow even at the Walmart.  Who is going to turn out to riot in the streets? A bunch of disgruntled senior citizens??

When the opportunity for public comment was presented I said that I thought there must be better ways to use the money; that this was just a boondoggle for defense contractors; and that  purchasing such equipment sends the wrong message about our City.   I wanted to add the obvious: “If our police acquire this equipment; sooner or later, they’ll use it,” but decided not to.

The Council members listened in bored silence, then voted to accept the expenditure.

The next morning, all hell broke loose in Ferguson Missouri, as angry protests segued into looting.  

The police, already implicated in the crime that unleashed what began as peaceful protests, reacted as if they were at war, breaking out their very own DOJ toys to escalate the situation to a whole new level of danger.

Now everyone is wondering what the hell has happened to local American police forces?  Overreaction seems to be the order of the day, and it is difficult not to go back to that same old suspicion:  “If they have it, they will use it.”

We saw that play out vividly in the adoption of Tasers.  

Most of us were quite shocked when the first local police departments opted to acquire those cruel and unusual playthings; but it was just a matter of time before we’d grown accustomed to reading the news of another mentally disabled person or minor child stunned into submission.

Toys for the boys.  “If they have it, they will use it.”  And they have it:  tear gas, pepper spray, riot gear, rubber bullets, armored cars, heavy artillery.

Defense industry lobbyists have gotten themselves a sweet little boondoggle in the JAG program.  

Business is slow? No problem, fear of terrorism can always be parlayed into a full scale war with all the trimmin’s!

War winding down? No problem!  Just make the Barney Fife’s an offer they can’t refuse.

Before long, we end up with a policing culture that resembles that of a third world dictatorship, and the panic and confusion only serves to bolster personal arms sales.

As someone observed quite a while back, when the U.S. begins to resemble a police state, the “terrorists,” whomever they may currently be, will have already won.

Looks like we’re almost there.

Following the hard-fought Democratic primary, newly elected Governor Peter Shumlin shrewdly defused (and diffused?) his key Democratic rivals by offering them cabinet posts overseeing the most challenging departments of state government.  

To Deb Markowitz, he offered the Agency of Natural Resources; and to his most successful rival, who came within a hair of winning, he offered the Gorgon of them all, Health and Human Services.

How could Doug Racine have possibly resisted the temptation to take the reigns of the agency that, at least in theory, could bring all of his priorities to fruition?  

Of course his stewardship was doomed to failure from the start; and that was the genius of Shumlin’s appointment.

Not only did Racine step into this complex suite of agencies at the very moment when austerity measures closed the tap on its already limited resources; but as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Racine was in line to be the principle scapegoat for all the blame that would inevitably accompany the rollout of Shummy Care.

It was always in the cards, even before Hurricane Irene made matters worse.  Doug Racine was to be permanently neutralized as a rival for Shumlin’s future ambitions.

It was always in the cards. The only question was when it would all blow up and how far the shrapnel would travel.

I keep reading that Racine has barely been heard from since taking on Health and Human Services.  Could that have had something to do with the old adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?”  

I suspect there are volumes of meaning in that silence; but Racine is a good Democrat and a generally nice guy, so we won’t hear it from him.

His “boss” wouldn’t hear of a tax increase on the wealthy to enable HHS to do a proper job of dealing with the growing pool of need in Vermont; but Racine had accepted the thankless job of helmsman on the Titanic, and it was his job to make the best of things until it was time to go down with the ship.

Do I detect a hint of sulphur in the air?  

Cue orchestra. (Curtain.)

If you were among the many Vermonters who lobbied their legislators in the name of a patient’s right to choose, sometimes referred to as “death with dignity,” you probably think that the campaign is over and the battle won.

With the passage of Act 39, “An act relating to patient choice and control at the end of life,” that right of choice became law; but because no mechanism was in place through which to make exercise of that right available to all patients in need, for many of the terminally ill, it is still largely a symbolic victory.

The State of Vermont provides some online guidance regarding the implications of the new law, including all of the documents necessary to satisfy its requirements; but for finding a physician who is willing to assist the terminally ill in exercising their choice under the law, patients are on their own.

There is  a lot of work left to be done to make this choice truly a functional reality for all Vermonters.

Patient Choices Vermont is working with Compassion & Choices and reaching out to those of us who

joined in the effort to change the law.   Our help is needed once again to individually speak with our primary care providers  in order to identify physicians who are willing to help patients who are seeking relief under the law.  

The most urgent need is to locate physicians who are willing to provide assistance to those who are not their own patients.  As physicians cannot be compelled to provide an end of life prescription to one of their patients, there is a genuine need to find relief for them elsewhere.

According to Linda Waite Simpson,  State Director of Compassion and Choices,

The law is working well. Many terminally ill Vermonters gain security and peace of mind through knowing they have more end-of-life choice and control. Some will pursue a prescription for the medication authorized by this law and a small number will fully utilize it.

In the end, very few terminal patients choose to take the life-ending dose even when they have it in hand; but the knowledge that they may exercise that choice, should the suffering become truly unbearable, provides a reassuring sense of control and peace of truly palliative value.

Simpson and her colleagues are meeting with supporters throughout the state and asking for their help to spread the word about what the law means to patients, what help is available, and what help is still needed so that every Vermonter can be secure in their right to choice at the end of life.