I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.
I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.
But what will Obama plead? The administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas - by TEPCO and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough. Here are the facts about TEPCO and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:
The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.
Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from al-Qaeda.
The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from "failed" to "passed."
1 comment:
"And they all lived in fear"
Is this the title that should be on this post? Nuclear energy is very safe. There has only been a few major accidents and even the worst, Chernobyl. only had 10 deaths. They had 1000 cases of leukemia, with 998 being cured.
The left doesn't want you to know how safe nuclear energy is. It is not a nuclear bomb! It is used in many of our warships (I was on one) and has been safe for a long time.
The left wants us all to use batteries and windmills which is idiotic considering our energy needs.
The plants in Japan was forty years old and it suffered a 9.0 earthquake, followed by a huge tsunami.
Nuclear energy is very safe, it produces no carbon emmisions, and will be providing us energy for lifetimes to come. Do we need to keep looking at ways to make it better and safer? Yes, but we do this with all things we do.
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