The McCain Plan:
Homer Simpson without the Donut
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
By Greg Palast
[Wednesday, August 5, 2008. North Shore, Long Island]
I’m guessing it was excessive exposure to either radiation or George Bush, but Senator John McCain’s comments from inside a nuclear power plant in Michigan are so cracked-brained that I fear some loose gamma rays are doing to McCain’s gray matter what they did to Homer Simpson’s.
On Tuesday, the presumptive Republican candidate descended into the colon of a nuke to declare we need to build 45 new nuclear plants - that this is the way out of our energy crisis. Nuclear power, declared the senator, is a “safe, efficient [and] inexpensive” alternative to oil.
Really? We can argue all day about whether nuclear plants are safe (they aren’t –period). But there can be no argument whatsoever that these giant radioactive tea-kettles are breathtakingly expensive.
Nuclear plants are cheap until you actually try to build one. Not one of the last 49 nuclear plants cost less than $2 billion apiece. I’m looking down the road at the remainders of the Shoreham nuclear plant which took nearly 20 years to build at a cost of $8 billion – or close to $7,000 per customer it was supposed to supply. When I say “supposed to,” it was closed for safety reasons after operating just one single day.
We’re told that the new generation of plants will be different. Just like an alcoholic child-beater, the nuclear plant builders promise us that, “This time it will be different.” Sure. And McCain believes them.
I don’t. Maybe that’s because I headed the government racketeering investigation of the Shoreham nuclear plant’s builders. Stone & Webster Engineering and its partner paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle the civil racketeering claim over the evidence we found of fraud and perjury. Now Stone & Webster (a division of Shaw Group Inc.) will cash in big-time under Plan McCain.
The other big builder which will hit the jackpot under the McCain scheme is KBR, the one-time subsidiary of Halliburton, whose best known project is the rebuilding of Iraq. (Halliburton dumped KBR last year. Can’t blame them.) KBR has built many nukes –not one within a mile of its promised cost.
But that doesn’t bother McCain. So who is McCain getting his energy advice from? I’m looking at a photo of the perplexed senator inside the control room, looking like Homer without a donut, getting a lecture on the wonders of nuclear energy from a power company CEO, one Tony Early. Early is the former President of LILCO, the very corporation the Feds and State of New York charged with civil racketeering. (We did not name Early as a co-conspirator. When the government got him on the witness stand, it was clear the guy was too clueless to recognize he was in the midst of a billion-dollar swindle. McCain’s got quite some team.)
Now, you Obamaniacs might not want to read this next paragraph:
While McCain is pushing nuclear power, a Senator from Illinois who shall remain nameless (skinny, just gave up smokes), was already embracing radiation as the solution to pollution. This Senator voted for George Bush’s energy bill, a law which contained massive giveaways to nuclear energy, legislation which diss’es and dismisses conservation. Indeed, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate has been derided as the “Senator from Commonwealth Edison,” the Chicago division of Exelon Corp., the nation’s largest operator of nuclear plants – and whose executives were the money backbone to his early presidential campaign.
So, we’ve got both candidates hawking the nuclear snake oil. But there is one difference between them. A big big BIG difference.
McCain’s ready to spend a hundred billion dollars on nuclear power, no questions asked. But Barack Obama puts a crucial condition on his approval for building new nukes: an affordable method of disposing the new plants’ radioactive waste.
That’s not small stuff. While The New York Times reporters following McCain repeated his line about “inexpensive” nuclear power without question, a buried wire story on the same day noted that the Energy Department is putting the unfunded bill for disposing nuclear plant waste at $96.2 billion – nearly a billion dollars per plant operating today. And no one even knows exactly how to do it, or where. Obama has the audacity to ask about the nuclear waste’s cost. “Can we deal with the expense?” he said on Meet the Press.
McCain’s plan to spend endless billions on nuclear plants without a waste disposal system in place is like building a massive hotel without toilets. D'oh! I suppose you can always tell the guests to poop in buckets until someone comes up with a plan for plumbing. But the stuff piles up. And unlike the fecal droppings of tourists, nuclear waste will stay hot and dangerous for a thousand generations.
So there you have our election in a nutshell. We have two candidates who rise above their parties - only to agree on a ludicrous pro-nukes energy plan.
But at least Senator Obama, when confronted with an economic question, doesn’t have to take off his shoes to add up the facts.
***********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.
Sign up for updates on Palast’s investigation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into the threat to the integrity of the 2008 election at www.GregPalast.com - as well as Myspace.com, Facebook.com and now Twitter. Or subscribe to Palast's RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast-articles and the audio podcast RSS feed at http://www.gregpalast.com/section/podcasts/feed. And watch Palast's investigative reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! on our YouTube channel. Check out Palast on the Joey Reynolds Show discussing the Theft of '08.
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"We can argue all day about whether nuclear plants are safe (they aren’t –period)."
[...] post info By theseditionist Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Election2008, O, President McCain Link. [...]
Maybe we should contract out nuclear plants to Europe? They seem to be successful at it although I do not know how profitable they are.
> But at least Senator Obama, when confronted with an economic question, doesn’t have to take off his shoes to add up the facts.
I'm not sure that's how McCain works. I think he is more likely to use the Bush method of computation: counting the polyps in his colon.
Dear Greg,
Loved "McCain: Homer Simpson without a donut".
I want to point out that nuclear waste is in every
ones DNA since 1945. And you can't pretend or
sprinkle Fairy Dust on it, and make it go away!
Like global warming, nuclear waste is being used as
an excuse! The Roy Process is REAL science!
It is essentially backwards engineering of what
a nuclear plant produces, plutonium 239 for atom
bombs...and heat...it is the heat that boils water,
that makes steam and then electricity.
We eat, drink and breath radioactve fallout everyday!
It is still up there in the atmosphere from the 50's
and 60's atom bomb testing !
Nuclear power is a way to extort trillions of your
tax dollars, create political BIG STICKS, and
your own doomsday! So smile and pay through
the nose, its only your life!
Regards,
---------------------
Chernobyl 20th Anniversary Pictures
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
WARNING! Contains Graphic Pictures! Not For the Faint of Heart!
----------------------------------------------
The church bells in the Ukraine are ringing in remembrance of Chernobyl..
Every member of Congress should watch the following film before
authorizing another nuclear power plant. Click play after the first few pictures.
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay%5Fchernobyl/?GT1=8019
I think even the ex-head of Greenpeace came out in favour of nuke stations. Coal fired power stations actually pump out vastly more ambient radiation than nuke stations! Considering the alternatives, it might be the best mix-choice out of a rotten bag. Ah, well..
As always, a great informative article. Thanks.
"Not one of the last 49 nuclear plants cost less than $2 billion apiece."
It seems reasonable to ask how much of this cost (not to mention the delay) is litigation expense, imposed on the industry by its opponents. While we are at it, we should probably ask the same question about the cost of waste disposal.
Check out jason leopolds story on the mccain/cheney plan on nukes too. He goes deep.
http://www.pubrecord.org
We know how much mccain is getting from the oil companies...how much is he getting from nuclear??
http://www.mccainslobbyists.com
There are a whole lot cheaper and safer ways to boil water... D'Oh!
[...] Greg Palast » The McCain Plan: Homer Simpson without the Donut I’m guessing it was excessive exposure to either radiation or George Bush, but Senator John McCain’s comments from inside a nuclear power plant in Michigan are so cracked-brained that I fear some loose gamma rays are doing to McCain’s gray matter what they did to Homer Simpson’s. [...]
On the 63rd anniversary of the atom bombs dropped on Japan.
---------------
"More worrisome is Dr. Abram Petkau’s observation that
it takes only 700 millirads of protracted radiation (from
external or internal sources) to lyse (break) the cell membrane.
By protracted, I mean over a period of time, instead of all
at once. In the absence of antioxidant enzyme protection,
such as superoxide dismutase and catalase, a mere 10-20
millirads were required to destroy the cell membrane.
P.S., we’re all deficient in antioxidant enzymes because
there’s much more radiation-induced free radical damage
than nature intended, thanks to the nuclear industry. "
--------------------------------------
United States: 215 atmospheric tests
+ 815 underground tests = 1,030
USSR: 219 atmospheric tests
+ 496 underground tests = 715
UK: 21 atmospheric tests
+ 24 underground tests = 45
France: 50 atmospheric tests
+ 160 underground tests = 210
China: 23 atmospheric tests
+ 22 underground tests = 45
The grand total of global atmospheric tests = 528
Source: Page 52, "Atomic Audit
, the Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear
Weapons Since 1940," Stephen Schwartz ,
Editor, Brookings Institution Press,
Washington D.C., 1998.
Plus - India, Pakistan, North Korea
carried out atom bomb tests.
----------------------------------
Global nuclear cover-up part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiPUEJd1JPg&feature=related
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRq5iY6C1dM&feature=related
-----------------------------------------------
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Leuren Moret -
http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/members/lmoret.htm
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Please tell me barack is not going to pick a rep. conservative running mate?! My head is going to explode in November.
It seems that the visit from John McCain to the "Basilica de Guadalupe" in Mexico City don't help McCain to be released from evil thoughts!
Hope he was joking when he declare "to declare we need to build 45 new nuclear plants"...
Hello Mr. Palast.
You are one of my favorite muckrakers, maybe even my favorite. And we need lots more muckrakers.
However, I am perplexed at your categoric lambasting of nuclear power. In principle, it has much to offer in affordability, realistic availability, and lack of pollution and greenhouse gas planet warming. I won't go into the details of why I think there is merit, as you seem to have your mind made up.
Especially when I review the French experience with nuclear power generation, coupled with their enviable air quality and superb public transport system made possible by nuclear power, and minuscule nuclear waste problems, are you not damning this potential power source out of hand?
KBR, Halliburton and other manifestations of fascist America should be corrected in and of themselves, rather than using their evils as a reason to block development of nuclear power.
What viable alternative do we have? I confess to some fatigue at those who damn our current mess (and I do agree that it is a horrific mess) while failing to put forth a rational alternative. Nuclear, to my view over the past 30 years, appears to be a very viable part of the alternative.
Regards,
Actually, nuclear power isn't as bad as you say on the safety front. The nuclear plants in America aren't very good, but they were all built decades ago, and all building got real slow after Chernobyl. Americans fear them, so nobody's been to excited to try and build one. But in Europe there are a lot of countries with active and safe fission based power plants.
They've been completely redesigned in the last 20 years. Think of most US nuclear plants as Version 1.0... The most current, state of the art nuclear plant would qualify to be called Version 8.0. Lots of technical leaps have been made. I wouldn't be any more scared of a new nuclear plant being built in my backyard than I would of a coal burning plant. I'd actually probably be more scared of the coal.
Not that this addresses the cost, of course...
The really wonderfully ironic thing about McCain's speech was that he gave it at Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant near Monroe, Michigan. This is the same exact power plant had a meltdown in 1966. The entire city of Detroit was nearly evacuated. Who knows the devastation that would have occured to the immediately adjacent Great Lakes.
And John McCain stood on that same ground touting the safety of nuclear energy.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
Just remember, Obama is also a supporter of nuclear energy.
It doesn't come as a surprise then that Exelon, an energy company that uses nuclear reactors, is one of Obama’s biggest contributors. (Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns for the US Senate and for president.)
You have to look past the duopoly to find anti-nuclear candidates.