Aaahh, the expansive green lawns, the sturdy brick buildings with columned porticoes, the long tradition of the ivy league. Dartmouth College, genteel, liberal arts, sports, a high-class education. This is, after all, a college with its own foundation, the Tucker Foundation, dedicated to instilling “moral leadership” in its students.

That foundation seems to have had trouble executing its mission, except for a double handful of students who had the courage to speak out against the racism, sexism, incidence of rape, and gay bashing on campus last spring. Those who spoke out experienced something more like one continuous hell-week, with threats of bodily harm.

The comments offered streams of profanity-laced insults about the protesters’ ostensible sexual orientations and appearance, and included calls for physical violence against them involving razor blades and other weapons.

“Why do we even admit minorities if they’re just going to whine?” one commenter asked. “Wish I had a shotgun. Would have blown those [expletive] hippies away,” wrote another.

And now, the Tucker Foundation has chosen to hire as its new dean James Tengatenga, Anglican Bishop of Southern Malawi. (The previous dean announced his retirement a year ago and has stayed on until his replacement arrives.)

It just so happens that Bishop Tengatenga was among the most outspoken African bishops condemning the New Hampshire diocese’s election of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

“I come from an angry people. I come from a very frustrated church, a church that feels it has been betrayed by its brothers and sisters,” [Tengatenga] said, referring to the dispute with the Americans.

He has said that his church condemns homosexuality. He rejects same-sex marriage. He has publicly supported anti-gay legislation in his own country. So much for moral leadership in civil equality – any gay, lesbian, queer, or transgender student at Dartmouth had better look somewhere else for “moral leadership,” or even simple acceptance.

[The Rev. James Liberatore, who hosted Tengatenga in Texas during his seminary years] added that Tengatenga’s traditional values make him a good fit for a service position at the College.

Given that one of the new dean’s duties is assisting with fundraising, I’m sure his views on the exclusion of gays and lesbians will go over well with Dartmouth’s ruling-class funders.

[…] Tengatenga will also serve as the College’s moral spokesperson.

Perfect.

Well, it looks like Vermont has dodged an environmental bullet… because it’s been fired in another direction. TransCanada has announced plans for a massive new pipeline to carry Albertan tar sands oil to Saint John, New Brunswick.

The energy company (which also, thanks to Jim Douglas, owns the hydroelectric dams on the Connecticut River) is seeking a new route, given political uncertainty over the Keystone XL project in the central United States and a proposed pipeline to the British Columbian coast.  And its possible use of an existing pipeline between Portland and Montreal, which has raised some environmental hackles in New England.

The $12 billion Energy East Pipeline would have a capacity of 1.1 million barrels per day. Some of that tar-sands crude would be processed at refineries in eastern Canada; the rest would be exported from a new deepwater oil terminal on the Atlantic. And there seems to be a lot of pent-up demand:

Customers have already pledged to use at least 900,000 bpd of the line’s capacity, suggesting that producers and refiners will pay for an export route, while regulatory hurdles delay pipelines in Western Canada and to the United States.

“It looks like they got far more interest than they were initially expecting,” said analyst Sandy Fielden of consulting firm RBN Energy in Austin, Texas.

Yeah, well, if there’s oil to be had, the market will find a way to get it. But at least it won’t flow through Vermont, right? We don’t seem all that concerned about the environmental damage that Hydro Quebec causes north of the border as we calmly consume HQ power — and even think of it as “clean energy.” So I expect we’ll breathe a sigh of relief about the Portland-Maine pipeline, and not give much thought to Energy East. Out of sight, out of mind.  

The TransCanada project will take several years to build, and must clear a variety of regulatory hurdles. And Canadian environmental groups are promising a fight. But as long as (longtime Albertan and former oil company employee) Stephen Harper rules the roost, TransCanada is likely to find receptive ears — at least at the federal level.

And unlike western Canada, where environmental concerns often trump economic arguments, the Atlantic provinces have had weak economies for a long time. So although the idea of a deepwater port for tar sands oil in the unique ecosystem of the Bay of Fundy gives me the fantods, eastern Canadians are unlikely to look askance at a huge and lucrative development project.

In any case, the oil’s gotta flow. Even now, in the absence of pipelines to the sea, huge quantities of tar sands oil are moving by rail. A distant relative works for a railroad in the Pacific Northwest, and he’s said that they can’t keep the trains moving fast enough to carry all that oil to port. Which, after the recent disaster in Lac Megantic, should give us all the fantods.  

My point, and I do have one, is that as long as there’s demand for oil, they’re going to produce it in Alberta and find a way to ship it out. Which is why I’m such a strong advocate for real renewables. We can fight Keystone, and Canadians can try to fight the other potential routes, but the only real way to stop this crazy business is to establish renewable energy — solar, wind, hydro, biomass, whatever — as a viable and substantial source of power.  

It is not hard to lose sight of the fact that data leaker Edward Snowden actually worked for Booz Allen, a private contracted company, not in fact for the National Security Agency. Snowden, as everyone knows, walked away from his Booz Allen job with more than a few top secret documents. Since then a “Where’s Waldo Snowden” theme has been the big story angle here. Constitutional questions and the wisdom of subcontracting out defense and intelligence-gathering tasks to for-profit companies are issues only starting to be looked at. Meaningful change, such as resulted from the Senate Church Committee hearings, seems a long-shot.

But what have the consequences been for Booz Allen and their Gulf oil spill-sized security leaks? Well, now months after the news broke, the NSA and Booz Allen still haven’t accurately accessed exactly what data was taken or how much. They assume it was a lot of information or perhaps even everything. Early on one insider revealed to the Washington Post the estimated size of the loss:

“They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has,” [referring to the NSA, where Snowden worked as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton]

The company’s effort to get some distance from Snowden is underway and may be paying off in the short term. In recent remarks Booz Allen CEO Ralph W. Shrader tries to walk away from it all.

“… He [Snowden] was not a Booz Allen person and he did not share our values.” Shrader continued. “We cannot and will not let him [Snowden] define us.”

Well of course not. Why should the fact that a low level employee walked away with “almost everything the place does” be a defining event. BA stock and profits are up!

At least for now the market has not punished the company or harmed the bottom line. Unbelievably in the latest fiscal quarter Booz Allen reports that the stock is up. (Booz Allen is majority-owned by private equity firm Carlyle Group.) Profits are headed up too, according to earnings reports, by 13.5 percent to $70.3 million for the three months ending in June. Good growth was attributed to “better cost management.”

Company officials basking in the warm glow of profits and a rising stock price report confidently that the massive security breech will not affect the company’s ability to land new government contracts. (Ninety-nine percent of the company’s revenue is from government contracts.) In his comments CEO Shrader speaks with emotion (or perhaps choking back tears or more likely stifling laughter) when relating the expressions of support Booz Allen is getting from government clients

[…] he has “been touched by the words of support from those in the business community and especially from our clients, showing that our long-term clients know the kind of company we are.” 

I can only imagine what the three top NSA officials (Booz Allen’s long-term clients and perhaps future board members and CEO’s) getting grilled while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday thought about Shrader. The company was well out of the glare of bright lights.

Somehow no one seems to want to blame it on the Booz.

The word comes from Arkansas that the Arkansas State Attorney General is refusing to let districts arm teachers.  The AG’s ruling is based on his interpretation that:

“…the code in my opinion does not authorize either licensing a school district as a guard company or classifying it as a private business authorized to employ its own teachers as armed guards,” McDaniel wrote.

Participants in Clarksville’s program are given a one-time $1,100 stipend to purchase a handgun and holster. Hopkins said the district is paying about $50,000 for ammunition and for training by Nighthawk Custom Training Academy, a private training facility in northwest Arkansas.

These are troubled times in the nuclear club.

While Entergy has confirmed that it will, indeed, cut thirty jobs at Vermont Yankee by year-end, a 4% reduction from current staffing levels;  Duke Energy has thrown in the towel altogether on two of its Florida nuclear facilities.

Duke announced its intention to close its Crystal River facility last February, following “botched” repairs to the containment vessel and escalating costs to undo the damage.  It hopes ultimately to stick it to the ratepayers rather than shoulder the full burden of its $1.65 billion investment in Crystal River.

The plant, which began operating in 1977 was close to its “sell-by” date, but like Entergy with VY, Duke thought they could squeeze another couple of decades of profit from Crystal River.  They were sadly mistaken and apparently ill-prepared to suck it up.

Now Duke says it will not replace the Crystal River facility, and it is scuttling plans for a new Florida nuke in Levy County; one for which Florida ratepayers have already made considerable investment.

Under a controversial Florida law, consumers have been paying for Levy in advance of construction. Legislators promised the “advance fee” would get nuclear projects built both faster and cheaper.

Except that, in the case of Levy County, it has done neither.

The bottom line: Duke customers may end up paying roughly $3 billion for Crystal River and Levy.

So, instead of the Nuclear Christmas they were promised by Duke and its unfortunately named predecessor, “Progress Energy;” Floridians are finding a shipload of coal in their stockings.

State representative Mike Fasano is crying foul:

“Shame on Duke Energy, Progress Energy for taking the public on this ride knowing that they were never going to build the nuclear plants,” Fasano said. “Shame on them.”

He wants the Legislature to conduct a full investigation into Duke’s nuclear follies; but the spectacular fail comes as no surprise to two Vermont experts who, early on, warned  that the Levy County project would come to no good end.

Mark Cooper, a senior research fellow for Economic Analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School and Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates were among those who cautioned against the wisdom of investment in new nukes.

Gundersen says that despite the public investment so far, Duke is doing the right thing in pulling the plug on Levy County’s new nuke; and it would certainly seem so, since new nuke projects seem to be folding all over the place, and the market is finally getting the message that the economics are just not there to support nuclear.

Better late than never, I suppose.  I wonder if Florida ratepayers would agree?

………………………….

This Fairewinds video particularly spoke to me because I have passed Pickering, Ontario many times, driving on the 401 to Toronto.  Just twenty short miles from a city of 4-million people, the Pickering  recently hosted Arnie Gundersen as he addressed Canadian nuclear regulators on the vulnerabilities of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.  It is stunning to hear Canadian  regulators acknowledge that the containment systems at Pickering are “nowhere near as strong as the ones at Fukushima.”

(Note: a couple of hours after I posted this diary, it was reported that Elizabeth Murray, the reporter who wrote this story, had been laid off as part of a companywide cutback at Gannett. She’d just been hired a month ago. Harsh!

My diary still stands; my complaint is with the Freeploid’s editorial choices, not the reporter’s work.)

It’s pretty obvious that someone in the Burlington Free Press hierarchy has a very Catholic bug in his/her bonnet. As I’ve chronicled in the past, our Freeploid went (forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin) absolutely balls to the wall with its coverage of Pope Benedict’s retirement and, later, with its even more comprehensive coverage of his successor’s election.

Well, the Freeploid — or is it the Burlington Catholic Reporter — has done it again, with its front page devoted to Vermonters’ reactions to Pope Francis’ comments about gay people. No actual Vermont news, then, I take it?

The headline is pretty much all you have to read:

Wow. What a shocker. “Mixed views,” huh? Never saw that coming.

The story begins at a small midweek Mass at the Cathedral of the Buggered Altar Boy — er, I mean, The Immaculate Conception. Handy spot to gather comments from devout Catholics, for sure. And one member of the flock, Caroline Rood, supplied the reporter with a fervent endorsement of Pope Frank. (And posed for a very touching front-page picture of herself at prayer.)

(At least I assume she posed; the alternative is that the reporter was actually taking pictures during the Mass, which would be impolite and irreverent. And we can’t have that.)

There followed a recap of the Pope’s astoundingly non-Medieval “Who am I to judge?” statement, and then Vermont Bishop Salvatore Matano throwing a bathtub’s worth of cold water on the whole thing:

“As priests, we are expected to fulfill the virtue of chastity… Young persons are called to realize the intimacy reserved to those who are married is not a prerogative to be assumed by others in extramarital relationships.”

In other words, NO SEX FOR YOU, HORRIBLE GAY PERSON.

And only after all of that — the celebration of Mass, the comments of a devout Cathollic, the recap of Francis’ statement, and Bishop Matano’s ruler-smack across the knuckles — do we finally hear from a non-Catholic.

In the twelfth paragraph of the story.

After the jump: a celebrant’s intolerance.

There we find Kim Fountain of the RU12? Community Center, who expressed doubt that the Church was going to actually change any time soon. Again, not exactly Pulitzer Prize stuff here.

After that, we return to Caroline Rood, our earnest Catholic, who turns out to have shared some amazingly regressive (and inaccurate) views on homosexuality:

Rood said she honors the fact that homosexuality exists, but she thinks much of it is an experiment, and people should not act on a same-sex preference – especially gay priests, who have taken a vow of celibacy.

“I think personally that the entire gay/homosexual movement is very trendy, and I think it has attracted an enormous amount of people who are not at all gay,” Rood said.

Bwahahahahaha. Yeah, sure. I’ve been straight all my life, but this morning I read a lifestyle article on The Gay Wedding Boom and now I can’t wait to suck a cock.

Somehow the Freeploid decided to bury Rood’s ignorant bigotry deep in the article, while it happily trumpeted her faith on the front page.

By itself, this article wouldn’t be worth commenting on. But it’s part of a trend: the Freeploid providing acres of skewed coverage of Catholicism by resorting to the old cliche “Vermonters React To…”

Somehow, though, we don’t see big front-page stories on Vermonters reacting to the Syrian Civil War or the Middle East peace talks or Anthony Weiner’s wiener or anything else under the sun. The Freeploid seems to reserve this ploy for only one particular institution.

I ask again, why does the Burlington Free Press — the biggest, if not the best, newspaper in an extremely liberal and secular state — devote so much attention to the Roman Catholic Church?  

Hey, remember John MacGovern? Hopeless Republican challenger to Bernie Sanders in 2012?

Well, he hasn’t gone away. He’s still out there, desperately trying to raise money to pay off his lingering campaign debt.

And he’s failing.

So far this year, MacGovern has actually lost ground on his quest — managing to spend more than he raised between January and June, according to his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission.

More on that in a moment. But first, his latest plea for money, as forwarded to me by someone on his e-mail list:

Battling Big-Government Liberals

The Obama Administration is perhaps the most corrupt administration in recent history — they have more scandals than any President in recent history.  And the scandals are more serious than before.

As Americans we are facing an unprecedented expansion of government and an intrusion into our private lives like never before.  George Orwell couldn’t have imagined what Obama has already done.

We need to hold the Washington establishment and Obama accountable.

Help me send them a message, that we oppose their intrusive big government agenda and won’t take it any more.

I am preparing to take the fight to Washington, but I still have some campaign debt I need to pay down from when I challenged Bernie Sanders.  Will you help so I can continue the fight against big government establishment liberals?  Every contribution counts as we get ready to wage our next battle for freedom, and liberty!

Notice that the real aim of his message is buried way down near the end: “I still have some campaign debt.” That’s right, friends, your money won’t go to the next fight against the dastardly liberals — it’ll defray the cost of last year’s losing battle.

Well, actually, it won’t even do that. It’ll merely help pay the cost of keeping the comatose “MacGovern for Senate” enterprise on life support.

The dismal numbers, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission: MacGovern started 2013 with $35,650 in debts. (And cash on hand totaling $2,542.) From January through June, the once and (in his dreams) future candidate raised $11,324 — and in the process, managed to spend $13,454.

Yep, somehow he managed to increase his debt by more than $2,000. Not while campaigning for office; while trying to pay down his debt.

I don’t know what’s sadder: this embarrassing postscript to a hapless campaign, or the fact that some poor schnooks are falling for his sales pitch.

After the jump: a Miss Daisy cameo, and a mysterious link to a far-right Kansan.

To finish this post, a few miscellaneous notes from the fine print of MacGovern’s campaign filings.

Notable among his scant roster of contributors this year: MacGoo received $1,000 apiece from Joyce Rumsfeld (that’s right, Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld) and the Patron Saint of Lost Conservative Causes herself, Lenore Broughton!

MacGovern’s most frequent expenditure is — surprise, surprise — repaying himself for campaign-related expenses. During the first six months of this year, MacGovern’s campaign paid John MacGovern a total of $9,680.

That’s right, 83% of the money raised by “MacGovern for Senate” in 2013 has gone straight into John MacGovern’s pocket. Nice work if you can get it.

Somehow, though, the campaign still owes John MacGovern roughly $8,400, because MacGovern has continued to rack up expenses almost as fast as his campaign can reimburse him. Even though he’s not, y’know, actually campaigning any more.  

John MacGovern is one of his campaign’s four major debtors. The other three include $3,663 to JC Image, a Vermont company that manufactures logo wear and campaign materials; $4,500 to Paul Dame, who ran for State Representative in 2012 and lost badly to two Democrats in his Essex Junction district; and the big kahuna, $15,000 to the Magellan Group of Hays, Kansas.

That last item is a real headscratcher. As is the Magellan Group itself, as a matter of fact.

The Magellan Group is a shadowy outfit. Google it, and you’ll get little or nothing relevant. (There are other Magellan Groups, such as a California real estate firm, but nothing much on the Kansas entity.) According to a four-year-old post on “Right Kansas,” a currently dormant conservative blog, the Magellan Group operates out of the home of Marilyn Wasinger, the aunt of Rob Wasinger. That home was listed by Rob Wasinger as his residence for voting purposes. The Magellan Group was founded in August of 2008.

Who is Rob Wasinger? Well, he used to be the top aide to then-Senator (now Governor) Sam Brownback. And during the year 2008, while he was earning salaries as Brownback’s top aide AND manager of Brownback’s spectacularly unsuccessful Presidential campaign, Wasinger also “earned” $92,000 from the Magellan Group.

But wait, there’s more.

In 2010, Rob Wasinger ran for Congress in Kansas, and lost. He is currently chief of staff for Congressman Kerry Bentivolio (R-Michigan). Bentivolio may ring a bell for those with eidetic memories for obscure Tea Partiers. He’s the reindeer farmer from the Detroit suburbs who backed into a Congressional seat when incumbent Thaddeus “Guitar Hero” McCotter bungled the routine petition process for ballot access, thus deep-sixing his candidacy just before the Republican primary.

And leaving the rightfully obscure Bentivolio as the only Republican candidate on the ballot. And since the district is solidly Republican, Bentivolio was elected in November in spite of his, ahem, colorful background:

Bentivolio, a former teacher, raises reindeer on a farm in Milford, moonlighting at events as Santa Claus with real reindeer – and he once said in a court deposition that he didn’t know who he really was: himself or Santa Claus. His brother Phillip Bentivolio gave an interview where he called him “mentally unbalanced” and predicted he’ll eventually spend time in prison.

Okay, so that’s the guy Rob Wasinger is now working for. Having, in the past, worked for far-right Christianist nutbar Sam Brownback. And having, somehow, “earned” $92,000 from the Magellan Group while also working for Brownback in two separate capacities.

Now riddle me this, Batman: Why in hell does the John MacGovern campaign owe the Magellan Group $15,000?

Of course, one might equally well ask why in hell the John MacGovern campaign exists at all.  

The departure of Andy Bromage as news editor of Seven Days, everybody’s favorite “alternative” newspaper, creates a decisive moment for the future of the paper. At least I think so. And I shall explain…

When Bromage was shifted from “Fair Game” columnist to news editor, and Paul Heintz ensconced in the Peter Freyne Memorial Chair, I saw the potential for the paper to become a real force in Vermont political journalism, possibly on the same level as VTDigger. But that potential has only been sporadically realized. For every hard-hitting story on a subject no one else has touched (see Ken Picard’s recent piece on Vermont’s terrible wastewater treatment and reporting system), there’s been even more irrelevant, tangential stuff and (often ill-considered) attempts at being edgy or different (Heintz’ notorious piece on huntin’ with the Guv).  

During the most recent legislative session, Seven Days too often forswore coverage of issues under the Golden Dome — or presented them solely in horse-race form, rather than exploring the real merits of the issue. The paper’s political coverage often strayed to our D.C. delegation, something better done when the legislature is in adjournment.

The edginess, which used to have a real bite during the days of Peter Freyne and Shay Totten, is usually confined to the occasional expletive or Heintz’ habit of recycling Freyne’s old nicknames, like Ho-Ho and Ol’ Bernardo. He can deploy Freynisms, but has he ever created a nickname of his own for a current politico? I can’t recall any.

And there have been complete misfires, such as the “series” called “Kill This Bill,” which was itself killed after one unfortunate installment in which Bromage bemoaned the Legislature’s wasting its time on ceremonial bills to create the Official State Something-or-Other.

Yeah, real groundbreaking stuff.

Not to say that Seven Days is a journalistic dry hole. They often produce really admirable journalism. But that only makes the fluff and ersatz edginess even more annoying.

And, with talented reporters like Heintz, Bromage, Picard, and Kathryn Flagg, I’d expect them to consistently produce top-quality stuff.

But too often they don’t. They fail to fulfill their potential.

What’s wrong over there? I’m purely an outsider; I trade barbs, usually good-natured, with Heintz, and I had a beer with Bromage once. Never met the co-owners. But from my perspective as a reader, it looks like an institution in the grips of a midlife crisis. The paper isn’t sure what it wants to be.

Or should I say, its owners aren’t sure what they want it to be. Not that I know them… but it’s their paper, and their vision. Or lack thereof.

Seven Days is an established institution. From the look of the ad-stuffed paper edition and the healthy roster of reporters, I infer that it’s a financial success. It’s been around long enough to have a place in Vermont’s power structure. And, perhaps, to fear the loss of its place should it offend the wrong people too often.

So maybe they pull back the reins on political coverage, or try to create “balance,” ugh. The result is inconsistency, false edginess, and a blandness that can be roughly measured by one noteworthy fact: Every week on page 3, the paper lists the five most-read articles on its website. When Freyne or Totten wrote the political column, it was a fixture in the top 5 — and often the #1 most-read story. Under Bromage and Heintz, it rarely appears in that list. I’m not blaming the writers; I suspect it’s editorial direction that’s blandified the column.

And I daresay, if Peter Freyne were alive today and looking for a job, there’s no way in Hell that Seven Days would hire him.

After all, remember the last writer who really tried to be edgy and different? Lauren Ober? She (cough) “left” the paper after an ill-tempered blogpost about one of Vermont’s sacred cows — Phish — generated a lot of blowback.

I’m not defending Ober’s post, which was overly juvenile in tone (but not without some insight). But I am saying this: Lauren Ober was an edgy writer — and a young one, who was still growing into her considerable innate talent. Her superiors knew she was an edgy writer, and presumably they wanted her to be that way. They knew she was a work in progress in need of some development to reach her potential. But when she got in trouble with the Phish phans, her bosses pretty much pulled the rug out from under her, appending this disclaimer to Ober’s apology blogpost:

Opinions expressed on our staff blog do not necessarily reflect the views of editors or staff at Seven Days. Many of us are longtime Phish fans, and all of us appreciate what the band, and its fans, are doing for our state.

In journalism, if a reporter screws up, it’s standard practice for the editor and publisher to lend public support — even if they’re privately tearing the reporter a new one. You just don’t leave a reporter out to hang. Especially since nothing a reporter writes will see the light of day without an editor (or three) reviewing the copy. If a reporter goes too far, it is with the direct or implicit assent of his/her superiors. The Ober incident revealed a management that was more concerned with its image than with its integrity.  

The same revelation can be seen in Seven Days’ frequent blandness, its inconsistency, and its faux edginess.

Look, I’m a fan of Seven Days. I read every issue, and I visit its website several times a week. I want it to be the real force for the public good that I know it can be. I criticize because I see the potential for Seven Days to be so much more.

And so, as the paper searches for Bromage’s replacement, my plea: Find somebody good and strong. Someone with a commitment to alternative journalism in the finest sense: journalism that is truly without fear or favor, that takes no prisoners, that isn’t afraid to make judgments or even have a point of view.

Find that person, hire them, and then get our of their way.  

Frankly I was worried sick. Entergy spokes flack Rob Williams’ capacity for generating logic-twisting Vermont Yankee press statements had seemed in decline of late. Was Williams about to shut down, perhaps be placed in SafeStor? Or would he simply be decommissioned?  

Well happily none of that has come to pass, as it seems that longtime Entergy Nuclear VY spokesflack Rob got back on game. Last week it was reported that four radiation monitors at the aging Vermont Yankee plant failed on two separate occasions in June to give “correct” readings. Four monitors had shown high levels of radiation in the primary containment isolation system. These monitors control the automatic ventilation systems of the reactor building. The NRC said of the incidents:

“Failure of the radiation monitoring equipment is a serious issue, and could have under other circumstances led to significant harm if the failed equipment had not detected a radiation release at the plant,” [added emphasis]

Understandably Vermont Governor Shumlin wants more information about the failure of the safety monitors. But Rob Williams wants to spin this clear: there is no “failure” at Vermont Yankee, Williams maintains:

[the four monitors were] “showing spurious signals, but they were still able to perform their safety function.”

And he adds this:

“To be perfectly clear, the monitors did not fail. They did not fail; they were generating false signals.”

Well, there you have it from the spokesflack artist himself: The radiation monitors did not fail; they were just generating false signals. Go ahead, say that with a straight face, I dare you! You see the gas gauge read FULL but the tank was Empty. The gauge hadn’t failed – and Williams would insist it is still performing its function. The device just happens to be, you know, wrong!

And as we all know, Rob Williams can never “fail” but he has been known to generate false signals.

Vermont Yankee apologist John McClaughry is taking a new tack in his latest blogpost, that showed up as an editorial in the Messenger and willI no doubt make the rounds of local papers in the coming weeks.

Since overwhelming evidence is mounting against the wisdom of continuing operation of VY, Mr. McClaughry is stumping for an alternative nuclear model, the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, which he presumably sees slipping seamlessly into the void created when Entergy throws in the towel.  

(Which might be sooner than you think, given the failure rate of VY systems.  This incident occurred twice in the last month, suggesting that they have no idea what is causing the problem.)

Reaching back to the very inception of nuclear power, McClaughry blames Admiral Hyman Rickover for getting the whole thing wrong in the first place; and presumably, for every false step, from Three Mile Island to Fukushima, that’s happened since.

It seems that Admiral Rickover was in too damn much of a hurry to power his fleet, pushing through adoption of an inferior model for nuclear generation that evolved into what is now the industry standard…and which, up until now at least, Mr. McClaughry seemed to think could go on forever.

Why else would he so energetically lobby to have VY’s license extended another twenty years?

But no; his affections have shifted to the LFTR , which he now insists truly is the answer; and he does make an enticing case:

Without going too far into technical details, the LFTR would almost certainly produce electricity cheaper than coal, because of lower capital and fuel costs; use a fuel that is in almost inexhaustible supply, both in the U.S. and elsewhere; operate continuously, in baseload or peaking mode, for up to 30 years; be factory-built and deployed in compact 100-megawatt modules close to the end use of the power; contribute nothing to air or water pollution and need no water for operation; safely consume long-lived transuranic waste products from current nuclear fission reactors; produce high-temperature process heat that can make hydrogen fuel for vehicles; and be walkaway safe.

…except that this rosy estimation, which conveniently avoids “going into too much technical detail” is just so much shinola since no working prototype actually exists with which to test it!

And it’s never that simple.

First of all, in discussions of the cost efficiency of LFTR I see no mention of dropping Price-Anderson, which currently gives nuclear power generation the distinct edge over other alternatives by zeroing out the tremendous economic disadvantage nuclear would have in terms of liability if the industry was required to carry all-risk insurance against the potential cost of a worst case scenario.

I also see no mention of a lessening in the generous government subsidies for plant start-ups that nuclear has always enjoyed as the favored alternative to coal.

And that is just the skin of the poison apple.

LFTR technology still carries with it the twin issues of threats from terrorist activity, and what to do with the deadly byproducts.  While those byproducts might arguably be somewhat less in volume and shorter in half-life; they still hold deadly potential for a very, very long time; and we have never even begun to deal with the nuclear waste we already have on hand.

Because of the manner in which LFTR’s smaller modules would be deployed to many, many more local situations, the risk from terrorist strikes and interceptions would be exponentially greater than what we now have. One of the key issues associated with LFTR technology is its potential to significantly grow proliferation.

But all of this is a little beside the point of the real reason why Mr. McClaughry’s arguments fail.  They fail because, in Mr. McClaughry’s universe, private hands with corporate bottom lines still hold all the nuclear energy cards; and that inevitably means that they will be mismanaged to the advantage of shareholders and ultimately to the disadvantage and risk of the public good.  

If power generation must be held in private hands, we have no business authorizing ANY form of nuclear generation.

Blaming Admiral Rickover misses one important point.  Except for two disaserous losses in the 1960’s, there is no evidence that the US navy has ever had a nuclear accident on any of its extensive nuclear fleet.

Unlike civilian power generation, which is always trying to squeeze more profit out of any operation, the navy’s nuclear-powered craft function under the strictest discipline and the highest standards or care, with little thought to the “bottom line.”

Unfortunately for Mr. McClaughry and others who are determined to find a golden goose in nuclear, those are the only circumstances under which the tremendous destructive power of nuclear energy can be safely harnessed.

And very much to that point is Fairewinds Associates’ latest video release, which unveils a new timeline tool for documenting the “incident” life of reactors in order to more accurately predict the point at which catastrophic failure is likely to occur.  This tool is meant to be a defensive citizen resource, but could be used even by the utilitites, were they willing to concede that ultimate failure can and will inevitably occur if reactors are not withdrawn from service when certain characteristic incident patterns begin to play-out.

The example used in the video is San Onofre; which, had it not been for the tireless efforts of Friends of the Earth and Fairewinds to bring greater scrutiny to the failing plant, might still be in operation and headed for certain disaster: