Nuclear Greed

“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed.” (Lao-Tzu, 604 BC - 531 BC, from The Way of Lao-Tzu)

Ohio nuclear plant to pay up for leak

Penalties will total $28 million. Workers had tried to cover up the extensive damage.

By M.R. Kropko

Associated Press

CLEVELAND - The owner of an Ohio nuclear plant yesterday agreed to pay a record $28 million in fines, restitution and community service over the cover-up of an acid leak that nearly ate through the reactor vessel's 6-inch-thick steel cap.

FirstEnergy Corp. acknowledged that workers at its Davis-Besse plant concealed the damage - the most extensive corrosion ever reported at a commercial U.S. nuclear reactor.

The utility and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded that the boric-acid hole had been growing for at least four years and that Davis-Besse's managers had ignored and withheld the evidence because they were more interested in profits than safety at the plant, along Lake Erie about 30 miles east of Toledo.

On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted two former Davis-Besse employees and a contractor on charges of hiding the damage from regulators.

I would like to ask the free market conservatives out there who oppose strict government regulation of the energy industry what they would do in such a case. After all, were it not for the regulatory agency that routinely inspects and enforces safety codes, this particular problem could have reached catastrophic proportions before coming to light. The owners themselves, left to their own designs, would have never fixed the leak were it not for fear of potential shutdown and prosecution.

Had this particular event been an isolated accident, I wouldn’t be ranting about it. Accidents do happen, though we can proactively reduce the risk by taking proper measures. The real story here is the planned and deliberate conspiracy to cover-up the problem. Needless to say, FirstEnergy kept it well hidden from the public view. It’s not as if anyone from the ‘public’ ever gets a view from the inside of the reactor anyhow. To keep it hidden, however, from the government safety inspectors, who represent the public interest, and to do so based upon profit motive, is just pure and unadulterated evil. It shows that they have no regard for us at all.

I fully support the use of nuclear power for the peaceful and efficient production of energy. It is safe when run properly, but it becomes unsafe quickly when avarice overpowers the needs of public safety. This same principle applies to all industries. A highly regulated energy policy is what we must have to protect the people from the deliberate neglect of safety standards and the environmental hazards created by the burning desire of a few to put a few more schillings in the bank.

I also support the full nationalization of the energy industry. This notion that competition keeps consumer prices down is sheer nonsense. There is no competition! If we nationalize, then we can finally eliminate the obsessive-compulsive desires for huge profits, and what profits do accrue will be returned to the people in the form of social programs or other necessary government functions. The billions and billions of energy profit-dollars currently flowing into the off-shore accounts of a select few robber barons can then flow back to the people who pay from their hard-earned wages for that service.

These corporations don’t care about us at all. It is time we stopped caring about them, too. Let’s call for nationalization. Their greed is making us all poorer while endangering our lives without remorse.