Reba McEntire - The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia
Like the Swedish warship the Vasa, the purported nuclear power renaissance asserted by the heavily subsidized atomic power industry attempted to construct a new nuclear power armada of 31-proposed so-called “advanced” atomic reactors. This purported nuclear power renaissance has capsized at the pier without firing a shot of electricity to any community while ratcheting up billions of dollars in consumer costs and taxpayer subsidies all over the United States (U.S.).
After significant financial losses to real people and local communities, while assuring years of profits for the atomic power vendors and nuclear plant owners and stockholders, fully 29 of the proposed 31 illusory new reactors have been either indefinitely postponed or totally cancelled after a great waste of money in what could have been a true investment in America’s energy infrastructure and renewable power sources.
These days the only two remaining proposed reactors under construction are for Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant site. The construction schedule for these reactors has more than doubled as their construction time approaches 10-years, and its anticipated construction costs are near $25 Billion, which is considerably more that the originally proposed $10 Billion price-tag. In a true capitalistic system, these nuclear power reactors would have been canceled some time ago, but the pronuclear
good ole boy Georgia Public Service Commissioners
have kept these two outmoded and unsafe AP1000 nuke reactors on forced consumer life support. Consumers in Georgia are already paying an extra
$120 per year to finance this fiasco.
Let’s give one more final look at the Swedish warship the Vasa:
The sinking of the Vasa was a major disaster for Sweden. The country was at war with Poland and the ship was needed for the war effort. No expense had been spared. The Vasa was the most expensive project ever undertaken by Sweden and it was a total loss. The ship’s captain survived the sinking and was immediately thrown into jail. On August 11th, the day after the disaster, a preliminary board of inquiry was convened. Incompetence of the captain and crew was ruled out and the captain was set free. A formal hearing was conducted in September of 1628. No exact reason for the sinking was determined and no one was blamed.
It’s a financial horror that America had not learned the Vasa’s 300-year-old lesson! Well before the nuke power industry’s 31-fantasy nukes were even proposed, the worldwide electric energy market was in the midst of enormous technological change.
- Renewable energy technology is easy to harness, energy storage is available, and consumer appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers are now more energy efficient.
- Across the world, growth in sustainable and environmentally friendly energy technology has been stymied by spending on atomic power plant construction mismanagement, schedule delays, engineering problems, and crippling cost increases.
- The gust of wind that finally capsized the mythical nuclear renaissancewas its top-heavy cost structure and absolute refusal to embrace new consumer and ratepayer friendly advances in generating electricity.
A change in generating electricity from the 20th century business plan of major corporations owning giant CONG (Coal, Oil, Nuclear, and Gas) power plants that benefitted the corporate status quo to the renewable and sustainable customer friendly distributed power grid was long-foreseen by energy experts and energy investment financial advisors, but denied by electric and utility regulators whose investments and stock options kept them focused on personal enrichment. Now, prevailing corporate utility and energy production owners continue to pilfer the pockets of unprotected consumers and small business owners for the astronomical costs of dozens of incomplete reactors. These potbellied corporate enterprises now claim that such exorbitant costs were “prudent” and an unforeseeable “perfect storm”.
The truth of the matter is that the gust of wind that
caused the self-proclaimed nuclear renaissance to capsize was just like the one that capsized the Vasa: the problems at Vogtle and the other defunct atomic power reactors are due to top-heavy structures created by management hubris and overreach
to earn huge personal salaries (over $4.3 Million for Paul Bowers, the CEO of Georgia Power) with perks like private jets and country-club memberships, while you and I are challenged to pay our bills and support our families in this new more unfriendly to former middle-class American breadwinner.
Unlike the ornate Vasa museum piece, Vogtle’s management and its cohorts are truly hunks of concrete and rusting steel that beg the question: “When will they ever learn?”
Here are the taglines from Georgia Power’s About Us page:
"Value. It's a promise."
-Tell that to Georgia’s ratepayers who will be billed for this ongoing waste of their money.
"Reliability. Flip the switch and the light turns on."
-Tell that to the Atlanta Airport and all the holiday travelers who were stranded with no electricity for more than 10-hours. Is this the company you want operating an unsafe and untried design on a new atomic power reactor?
"Service. A little Southern hospitality from Georgia Power."
-Not the kind of Southern Hospitality my family and friends down South deliver!
"Stewardship. Taking care of the state we call home."
-Home is where one’s heart is, not a cash-cow. Time for the people of Georgia to elect regulators that respect consumers’ needs to economically heat and electrify their homes.
South Carolina electric utilities have scrapped finishing construction for two half-built Westinghouse reactors admitting that nuclear power is “prohibitively expensive.” The abandonment of the V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in Jenkinsville, SC comes with an estimated $11 billion in sunk costs and still projected six years from completion. The cancellation adds to the growing number of tombstones for once championed “milestones” in an atomic power revival. The inability to control the “cost-of-completion” and “time-to-completion” is the fundamental economic failure behind this recent collapse of the nuclear industry. In fact, these same reasons were featured in a 1985 Forbes magazine cover story “Nuclear Follies” describing the development of commercial atomic power as “the largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history where only the blind and the biased can say the money was well spent.”
