Posted at 6:48 PM PST
Howdy, Pardners….
It was an opportunity too good to ignore.
Recently, Sarah Palin rubbed her intellectual two sticks together and decided to support President Obama’s plan to build more nuclear reactors here in America. Now, since Ms. Palin is the de facto spokesperson for the teabagger movement (and future Queen of America), I thought this an excellent time to wrestle with the teabaggers by introducing the cognitive dissonance that Ms. Palin’s words have snatched into existence through nothing more than her sheer ignorance.
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If I understand the teabaggers correctly, their general core values run something like this…..
• A smaller, less intrusive Federal government.
• Fewer taxes.
• States rights.
• A Free Market economy.
• Going back to the Constitution and the intent of our founding fathers.
Before we get to the meat of this column, I want to address the entire idea of being able to divine the “intent” of our founding fathers. The very idea of a bunch of semi-literate mouth-breathers attempting to intelligently discuss the intent of a group of brilliant men of the Enlightenment is beyond presumptuous and borders achingly on the brink of being laughably pathetic. So just stop it.
So…. how do the stated goals of the teabaggers mix with nuclear power and Obama’s plan? Of course, I’m assuming here that you have some passing knowledge of Obama’s plan. If you don’t, it might be time to start reading some news that doesn’t involve large-breasted celebrities.
Also, I have to state up front that I spent nearly thirty years working in the nuclear industry, so I have more than a passing knowledge of the subject.
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Obama’s plan is to provide multi-billion dollar loan guarantees to Corporations that want to build nuclear power plants. Yes, the taxpayers are going to co-sign the loan. From a straightforward business point of view, this is madness. The only thing that these “guarantees” will guarantee is that the projects will be mired in cost overruns, mismanagement, corruption, and fraud. If the Corporation know that there are no risks involved in the venture, things will run amok and the taxpayers will be left holding the bag. Haven’t we been here before?
So, what do the Free Market teabaggers have to say about this? The theory of the Free Market is that investment involves risk, and this venture has no risk. It’s guaranteed that they can’t fail, and if they do fail, the taxpayers will foot the bill. But if the venture succeeds, the taxpayers won’t get any of the rewards. This is called “Corporate Welfare”. It’s so endemic to our political process that we don’t even notice it. It is not “Free Market”. In fact, it’s the antithesis of Free Market.
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And when the Corporations get their loan guarantees, and after they fuck things up, where are we going to get the money to pay for the defaulted loans?
Yup. Higher taxes.
Higher taxes to bail out yet another inept Corporation.
Choke on that a little bit, Sarah.
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The elephant in the room here is… “What are we going to do with the spent fuel?”
With one hand, Obama is funneling taxpayer money into the pockets of the Corporations. With the other, he closed down the only reasonable option for spent fuel storage; the Yucca Mountain project.
But let’s just say that Yucca Mountain, or some other reasonable storage site, was open and ready for business. It becomes simple… you load the spent fuel on trucks and haul them to the storage facility, right? Wrong. There are cities, counties, and states that just don’t want this nasty and incredibly dangerous material on their roads or near their cities.
So what do we do, Simple Sarah? Pass Federal laws that require cities, counties, and states to give up their rights to their own roads?
So much for States Rights. And by the way… what do you tell the citizens who happen to live along the shipping route?
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In all industries, but especially in the nuclear industry, there are three antagonists who fight a savage and eternal battle. These antagonists are: Safety, stockholder profits, and the careers and egos of the executives. Most industries abandon the safety part before the train leaves the station.
In the nuclear industry, safety is assured by federal oversight. Specifically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Without the NRC, nuclear utilities would quickly make an obscene dash for the bottom, and it would be only a matter of months before nuclear accidents become regular chatter in the news.
Please don’t EVER think otherwise.
So… once again… we go to our “core” values (sorry, I couldn’t help myself).
More nuclear power plants in America…. More SAFE nuclear power plants in America… are going to require a drastic increase in the size of the federal bureaucracy.
Choking yet, Sarah?
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Concluding, I suppose…..
I have no beef with nuclear power. Operated safely, nuclear power plants can provide clean energy. But it’s damned expensive. Expensive to build. Expensive to operate. Too expensive for sane investors to even think about it without loan guarantees. The propaganda of “electricity too cheap to meter” has been laughed at for a very long time.
But this isn’t about nuclear power. It’s about my teabagger friends and their delusional view of the universe.
Your Queen has spoken, and now it’s time for you to either put up or shut up.
Have a day.
Riley
The Mourning Mail can be seen on YouTube - The Mourning Mail
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