Flies Fly In, Flies Fly Out

Dear God,

I'm thinking maybe it's time for Entergy to pony up for a full, paying subscription for me with the Wall Street Journal Online.

Look what I found there today (posted, actually on November 3):

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (Dow Jones)--Entergy Corp. (ETR) remains committed to spinning off five of its nuclear power plants into a stand-alone company, but the company's chief executive suggested a possible alternative Tuesday if it can't win regulatory approval in New York.

Entergy Chairman and Chief Executive J. Wayne Leonard said the company could spin off its utility businesses into a stand-alone company to accomplish the same goal of separating its regulated utility businesses concentrated in the Southeast from its nuclear plants that sell ....

And that's all I know! Because to read the rest of the article, I need a paying subscription, but Entergy is so miserly about paying for anything here at Vermont Yankee, that I don't have one!

Anyway, it looks like, if Entergy can't spin Enexus off, it might spin off everything else into some phenomenally wealthy, as-yet-unnamed entity and leave the five merchant plants to a newly impoverished Entergy. I call that creative thinking! Hey, that's why we pay him the big bucks!

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! (Echo, echo, echo.)

Pete Shumlin, close your mouth before the flies fly in. You shoulda seen this comin'!

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Happy Birthday to Me!

Dear God,

Hey! Nobody called to say "Happy Birthday!" to me. I've been offering up my prayers here on Are You There, God? It's Me, Fake-Rob Williams for two years plus five days now—ever since October 26, 2007.

Actually, I expected more from my co-workers. And, to be honest, they sorta kinda remembered my birthday. They spent the last few weeks drawing up lots and lots of lists about how they were going to celebrate my birthday. They identified experts to help them celebrate my birthday. They chose silly hats and assigned budgets for candles, cake, and ice cream. They devised methodologies and goals and benchmarks. They made a lot of photocopies of everything they wrote down. They even officially chose which song to sing. (As if they weren't going to sing "Happy Birthday to You" all a long. But, hey, it's important to be methodical and write all this stuff down, so they wrote it down, and got credit from the Department of Public Service for doing so.) There were, like, 80 things they promised to do!

But then my birthday whizzed by and I didn't hear a thing from anybody about it. And there was nothing … NOTHING … that I or the DPS or the state of Vermont could do about it.

Lists and promises don't count for much, I guess.

Lord, speaking of lists and promises that don't count for much, did you hear that a legislative report on our progress addressing the 80 areas of concern identified in last fall's independent assessment of Vermont Yankee's future reliability has sharply faulted us for a lack of progress?

What could those legislators possibly be talking about? Just like with my birthday plans, we're being methodical. We're making lists, identifying experts, choosing dunce hats, assigning budgets for candles, cake, and ice cream, and devising methodologies, goals, and benchmarks. Our Xerox machine is going, like, 24 hours a day! The Rutland Herald even quoted Stephen Wark of the DPS as saying that "It appears that Vermont Yankee is on track to have a plan on how to resolve the problems by the end of this year." (By which, to parse the truth out of that sentence, he means that we are on track to have a plan by the end of this year, and that plan will likely get us our certificate of public good, and then we will set out to resolve the identified problems by 2012, but if we don't solve any or all of them there won't be a hell of a lot anyone can do about it.)

So I guess this is a trust issue. The DPS must give us the certificate of public good based on our many diverse lists, and not on any actual accomplishments. Then the people of Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts must hope that we'll actually do what our lists have indicated we will do. And, yes, we haven't always lived up to our promises. For example, we haven't fully funded the decommissioning fund. We also didn't make sure that the uprate didn't increase radiation exposure to the public. And until we got caught not measuring radiation emitted by the dry casks, we never measured that radiation.

But, really, Lord, we are making progress, and on more than one front. Did you see in the Reformer that we're claiming that the decommissioning fund is now only $40 million short? If we're right about that preposterously low-ball estimate, the state of Vermont has nothing to worry about. That's poker money for Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard! I'm sure he'd ante up in a pinch.

And what if we never get around to adequately addressing the 80 areas of concern identified in last fall's independent assessment of Vermont Yankee's future reliability? Why, we even have a plan for that! We'll finally have my birthday party! We'll buy the people of Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts dunce hats and a huge sheet cake!

And I'll eat cake with them.

Amen,

Fake-Rob
.

In France They Kiss On Main Street

Dear Lord,

Today and tomorrow we may witness the untimely death of the myth that France tidily recycles its nuclear waste. Apparently, Electricité de France, the world's largest producer of nuclear power, is in the unfortunate position of having to deny reports in the French newspaper Liberation that it is using open-air containers in a town in Siberia to dump its radioactive waste. According to Liberation, the town is closed to journalists. Liberation also said that only 10-20% of the waste stored in this town is recycled and sent back to EDF for use in power plants.

Bad news for the nuclear industry, eh? That's the way it's been around here lately. For example:

• Just when I was rejoicing that we (Entergy Vermont Yankee ) were getting rid of Wackenhut Security Services so that our security forces wouldn't be operating in southern Vermont under the taint of charges of rape, murder, and the like, four old ladies walked with their lawn chairs through two of our security gates and sat there, obtusely and picture-perfectly, until arrested. Our guards did try to close exit gate and trap them, in the hopes of maybe wrestling them to the ground, but they didn't know how to do that.
  
  
• Just when things started looking good for Enexus (the Department of Public Service approved the spinoff plan), things also started looking bad. Greenpeace pointed out that Enexus benefits Entergy shareholders at the expense of Vermonters. It's a charge that's hard to deny given that Money.cnn.com has started going all goo-goo eyed over how great it is going to be for Entergy to be out of that shaky, awful, unpredictable, who-wants-this-crap-anyway, don't-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-butt nuclear power business. Which might set the Vermont legislature to wondering just what the economic benefit to this area is of handing VY a license to polarize thie community for another 20 years and divert resources away from a green revolution.
  
  
• Even if Electricité de France is able to refute the Liberation story, recycling nuclear fuel is beginning to look terribly dangerous. In Europe, where recycling is de rigeur, they're apparently contracting the mafia to blow up radioactive waste on boats and sink it in the ocean. And so it's probably making Vermonters increasingly nervous that, even if Vermont Yankee doesn't get a license extension, spent nuclear fuel will remain at Vermont Yankee for 100 years or more, where it will be vulnerable to attack by plane. (I'm assuming that's a bad thing because, at Connecticut Yankee, each of their casks contains a Cesium and Strontium inventory equal to 10 Hiroshima bombs.)
  
  
• Don't even get me started on the report featured this morning in the Reformer predicting that shutting down Vermont Yankee would result in a job increase in the area.
  

So, Lord, it's been a hard week or so for me, though I do try to maintain my God-given sense of humor.

Lawyer: I have some good news and some bad news.
Client: Well, give me the bad news first.
Lawyer: The bad news is that the DNA tests showed that it was your blood they found all over the crime scene
Client: Oh no! I'm ruined! What's the good news?
Lawyer: Your doctor saw the test results. Your cholesterol is down.

We do have good news. It is this:

• Governor Jim Douglas doesn't care a hoot about whether Vermonters get a good price for energy from Entergy.
  

Life is still beautiful. Kiss me!

Amen,

Fake-Rob

Mafia Applies to NRC for 20-Year Renewal of License to Sink Boats Containing Radioactive Waste

Dear, God!

Remember that I prayed about the Mafia maybe "disappearing" ships containing nuclear waste? Well, that idea has legs! Or, anyway, it has fins.

Apparently, radioactive waste disposal is a lucrative business. An informant for the Calabrian Mafia says that he has deliberately blown up three ships containing toxic waste—and that 30 such vessels have been scuttled by the Mafia. The sunken ship that is currently being searched for toxic materials is said to have 120 barrels of radioactive waste on board.

Most interesting: The Calabrian city prosector told reporters, "For the moment, we do not know the origin of the waste, but it is probably from abroad." That does not implicate Vermont Yankee directly. After all, we found the 3 fuel rods we lost in 2004. And we account for all of our waste and, in fact, store it right here, legally, next to the Connecticut River, in an earthquake zone, right above the flood plain, and unprotected by attack from an airplane. We don't need no stinking Mafia.

That said, the AFP reports that, according to the vice president of the environmental group Legambiente, the Mafia has sunk ships with radioactive material for the last 20 years.

Which means their licensing period is up, and if they want to continue to dispose of waste from the United States, they'll have to apply for renewal of the NRC's coveted License to Irresponsibly Dispose of Products That Could Ruin the World. But I hear they have connections everywhere, so approval should be no problem.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

When "Disappear" Is a Verb

Dear God,

Ahem. Well, this new twist on the nuclear waste issue may not go well for Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee. Anyway, it seems that there is a high index of suspicion that the Mafia may have blown up one or more ships with nuclear waste that someone wanted to "disappear." What you see here is the image of a toxic barrel on a suspected Mafia shipwreck. It was taken by an underwater robot camera.

Italy, though! Not America! Phew.

Still, I'm going to lunch. And then dinner. I may just disappear for a while.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

And the Answer Is ....

Dear God,

The answer is "Wackenhut." In addition to creating security lapses at the embassy and urinating on each other and dancing around in G-strings in a Muslim country, Wackenhut guards let a truck carrying a pipe bomb onto the grounds of America's largest nuclear power plant, lost track of several guns, fell asleep en masse while on duty at Peach Bottom (and disciplined the one guard who reported them to the NRC). Another guard fell asleep at Three Mile Island. In 2007 four Wackenhut guards were convicted of the rape and murder of a college student working at a motel near their work site. In 2008 Vermont Yankee was cited by the NRC for unspecified security violations that would have fallen under Wackenhut's aegis. Wackenhut guards have been implicated in rape and torture in several states, where they work in prisons.

Rumor has it that VY is terminating their association with Wackenhut. Which would only be a good thing.


Amen,

Fake-Rob

I've Got a Secret

Dear God,

The Brattleboro Reformer finally ran an article that I've long worried they'd run. It was about J. Wayne Leonard's compensation as CEO of Entergy. The article kicked up a stir, but it did not touch on some of the finer points of his compensation package, which is good. For example, it did not say that roughly 9.7% of the Katrina disaster relief funds that Entergy applied for and received went into J. Wayne Leonard's very own, private pocket, a nuance that I prayed about in March in The Wonderful World of Leonard and a whole year before that in No J. Wayne Leonard News Today. Thank you, Lord, for imbuing the Reformer with discretion.

And, golly, Lord! Thank you also for the fact that no one in our local media has yet made the connection between Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee and "a pattern of blatant and longstanding violations” at the American Embassy in Kabul. Oh, Lord, I just love secrets, don't you? I especially like them when they involve phrases like a "Lord of the Flies environment,” and "climate of fear and coercion!" It gets me so excited that, on days like today when I've got a secret that no one has guessed, I have to wear Huggie Pull-Ups® to work, and then wrap the arms of my suit jacket around my waist and dangle the torso of my jacket over my butt, all so people don't wonder know I'm wearing big-boy diapers.

I've got a secret, I've got a secret, I've got a secret. Oops. Heh. Gotta go.

Amen,

Fake-Rob