[Fwd: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Power Plant]
cor
as one of five worst nuclear plants in the United States and predicted
that its emergency cooling system "is virtually certain to fail."
10 to 1 that Entergy is a big political contributor...
lets google...
__________________________
http://www.latefinal.com/archives/000899.html
...
Did then-Gov. Howard Dean's administration approve a $180 million
sweetheart deal to the boys at Entergy, at the same time
utility executives were pumping campaign contributions into
his then-fledgling campaign for president?
_______________________________
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5203
...
environmental and anti-nuclear movements
spent a total of $4.7 million in lobbying Congress in 1998.
the last year for which figures are available. During
that same year, the lobbying expenditures of industrial
groups combined were $11.2 billion.
______________________________________
http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/1997/50.shtml
Dec 18, 1997
...
Larry Klayman, Chairman and General Counsel of Judicial Watch,
the group that sued the Clinton Commerce Department over its
illegal sale of seats on foreign trade missions in exchange
for political contributions to the Clinton-Gore Campaign and
the Democratic National Committee, and which deposed John Huang,
sparking the current scandal, today issued the following
statement:
"USA Today has just revealed that Entergy Corporation, a
large Arkansas and Louisiana based energy company, which
participated on several Commerce Department trade missions,
and was a joint venture partner with John Huang's Lippo Group
and the Communist Chinese government during a trade mission
to China in 1994, is also a large Republican donor. In an
article today, Jill Lawrence reports that Entergy got special
favors from Haley Barbour in exchange for large campaign
contributions.
...
The revelation by USA Today that Entergy, which is at the
core of the scandal, got favors from Republicans in exchange
for campaign contributions, provides one small example why
Senator Thompson shut down his hearings, claiming disingenuously
that he was 'out of witnesses.'
Certainly, Mr. Lupberger, the CEO of Entergy who gave to
Republicans and benefitted from the Clinton trade missions,
is available to testify, as just one example."
...
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http://www.utwatch.org/corporations/exxon.html
Public Universities for private profiteers.
__________________
http://www.tpj.org/pioneers/karen_johnson.html
...
Other recent clients include the City of Austin,
the Texas State Teachers Association, Entergy gas
company and Infrastructure Solutions, Inc. She is
on the board of Bush’s Governor’s Business Council
and she listed her occupation as being a Bush campaign
field representative a month after she became a
president of United Way of Texas in February 2000.
...
_________________
http://dukeemployees.com/deregulationdecember62001.shtml
Deregulation - December, 2001
...
Other energy traders whose earnings have been boosted
in recent years by mark-to-market gains include
American Electric Power, Duke Energy, El Paso, Entergy,
Mirant, Pinnacle West Capital and Williams Cos.
____________________
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21817
Storm clouds brewing over Bush presidency
...
Following G.W.'s election to the presidency, Allbaugh
was named the director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. Interestingly, as reported by Judy
Sarosohn in the Oct. 19, 2000, Washington Post, M.
Diane Allbaugh, Joe Allbaugh's wife, registered with the
U.S. Senate in September 2000 as a lobbyist on behalf
of Entergy -- the same firm linked to indicted Chinese
businessman James Riady and convicted felon John
Huang. Entergy is not only also a big Clinton-Democrat
supporter, but attempted to enter into a joint venture
with the Lippo Group, Huang's and Riady's business
enterprise. Huang and Riady are believed to be
Communist Chinese agents, as the Lippo Group has
known ties to Communist Chinese intelligence, as
discovered by the Thompson Committee in 1997.
...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Power Plant
Date: 18 Jan 2004 11:50:37 -0600
From: rich@ (Rich Winkel)
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair01172004.html
Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Power Plant
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
These are desperate days for Entergy, the big Arkansas-based power
conglomerate that owns the frail Indian Point nuclear plant, located
on the east bank of the Hudson River outside Buchanan, New York-just
22 miles from Manhattan.
First, a scathing report by a nuclear engineer fingered Indian Point
as one of five worst nuclear plants in the United States and predicted
that its emergency cooling system "is virtually certain to fail."
This damning disclosure was hotly followed by the release of a study
conducted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission which ominously concluded that the chances
of a reactor meltdown increase by nearly a factor of 100 at Indian
Point because the plant's drainage pits (also known as containment
sumps) are "almost certain" to be blocked with debris during an
accident.
"The NRC has known about the containment sump problem at Indian
Point since September 1996, but currently plans to fix it only by
March 2007," says David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with
the Union of Concerned Scientists who. "The NRC cannot take more
than a decade to fix a safety problem that places millions of
Americans at undue risk."
Entergy and the NRC both downplayed the meltdown scenario and
defended the leisurely pace of the planned repairs, which won't
start until 2007. Entergy says that there's no rush to fix the
problems with the emergency system because a breakdown isn't likely
in the first place.
But that's flirting with almost certain disaster. Entergy and the
NRC are staking the lives of millions on odds of a single water
pipe not breaking under pressure. The problem is that these very
kinds of pipes have corroded and been breached at other nuclear
plants featuring similar pressurized water design. At the Davis-Bessie
plant near Toledo, Ohio, a vessel head on one of the cooling water
pipes had been nearly corroded away by acid and was dangerously
close to rupturing.
The cooling water in these pipes is kept at a pressure of 2,200
pounds per square inch. If a pipe breaks, the 500-degree water would
blow off as steam, tearing off plant insulation and coatings. The
escaped water will pour into the plant's basement, where sump pumps
are meant to draw the water back into the reactor core. But the Los
Alamos tests showed that the cooling water would collect debris
along the way that will clog up the mesh screens on the pipes leading
back into the reactor. If this happens, the cooling of the reactor
fuel would stop, the radioactive core would start to melt and the
plant will belch a radioactive plume that will threaten millions
downwind.
All this would happen very fast. The Indian Point 2 reactor would
exhaust all of its cooling water in less than 23 minutes, while the
number 3 reactor would consume all of its water in only 14 minutes.
Try getting a nuclear plumber that quickly.
Yes, it sounds trite, but that's essentially what Entergy proposes
as its quick fix to the meltdown scenario. Jim Steets, Entergy's
spokesman on Indian Point matters, told the New York Times last
month that the company was training its workers to scour the plant
for flaking paint and potential debris and that if an accident
occurred they would pump the water into the core more slowly, a
plan that would buy plant managers and executives a few more minutes
to flee the scene.
Where people would go and how they would get there in the event of
a nuclear meltdown or other radioactive release at Indian Point is
unclear. In September 2002, New York Governor George Pataki
commissioned a report on Indian Point's evacuation plan. He picked
James Lee Witt, the former Rose Law Firm attorney who served as
head of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to oversee the
investigation. At the time, Pataki said that he would support closure
of the plant if Witt's report revealed that communities near the
plant could not be safely evacuated.
Witt submitted his report on January 10, 2003. While somewhat timid
and cautious, Witt concluded that Entergy's off-site evacuation
plans for Indian Point were woefully inadequate.
Witt wrote: "It is our conclusion that the current radiological
response system and capabilities are not adequate to overcome their
combined weight and protect the people from an unacceptable dose
of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point, especially
if the release is faster or larger than the design basis release."
In the end, Witt concluded that it was not possible to fix the
evacuation plan, given the problems at the plant, the density of
the nearby communities and looming security threats.
This sobering scenario was followed by news that a review of the
company's security record revealed that Entergy, in cahoots with
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, faked a test designed to determine
whether the plant is vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
In an August letter, the NRC assured members of Congress that Entergy
had developed a "strong defensive strategy and capability" for the
plant and passed with flying colors a so-called "force-on-force"
test, a mock assault.
In turns out, however, that the NRC gave Entergy officials months
of advance warning about the test and then, as the Indian Point
team cribbed for the exam, dumbed down the assault to ensure that
they would pass.
Most assessments by the CIA and other intelligence agencies suggest
that an assault on a nuclear plant would require a squad-sized force
of between 12 and 14 attackers, who would assault the plant by
night, armed with explosives, machine guns with armor-penetrating
bullets, and rocket-propelled grenades.
This isn't the attack that was repelled by the Entergy security
team. Instead, Entergy's men battled off a squad of 4 mock terrorists,
armed only with hunting rifles, who assaulted the plant in broad
daylight. Moreover, the attacking squad weren't former Delta Force
operatives trained in terrorist tactics, but security officers from
a nearby nuclear plant who assault the plant from only one point
after crossing open fields in plain view of Indian Point's security
guards.
Just to make sure that there were no surprises, the Entergy security
team, which consisted largely of guards hired only for the test,
was warned that a mock attack would take place sometime within the
next hour. Even under these rigged conditions, Entergy barely passed
the security test.
Environmentalists and anti-nuke activists living near the plant
hoped this would be the final straw for the aging reactor. They
marshaled their evidence of safety violations, inept evacuation
plans and lax security and headed off to offices of the most powerful
Democrat in America, Hillary Clinton.
But Hillary has remained about reserved as Pataki on Indian Point,
issuing robotic requests for more studies but refusing to call for
the plant's closure. Not that her words mean much. Last month, she
pledged to filibuster the nomination of Utah governor Mike Leavitt
for director of the EPA. She ended up voting to confirm his nomination.
Of course, Hillary's ties to Entergy are almost primal. The Little
Rock-based Entergy Corporation, which once employed John Huang, the
infamous conduit to the Lippo Group, was one of Bill Clinton's main
political sponsors, shoveling more than $100,000 into his political
coffers from 1992 to 1996.
The more plaintive the cries for Indian Point's closure, the more
money Entergy spreads around to politicians with reputation for
flexibility in these matters. Already this year, Entergy's New York
Political Action Committee-ENPAC New York-has doled out more than
$25,000 to New York politicians alone. Everyone got into the act
from Pataki and Clinton to Democratic congressman Eliot Engel to
lowlier footsoldiers for the nuclear plant, including two state
assemblymen, commissioners from Westchester and Orange counties,
Bronx Borough president Adolfo Carrion and state comptroller Alan
Hevesi, whose election campaign was endorsed by the Sierra Club.
Political money isn't the only tool in Entergy's bag of tricks. In
late October, community activists in the Bronx reported that
emissaries from Entergy were canvassing black and Hispanic neighborhoods
in New York City and Westchester County with an ominous warning:
if Indian Point closes, air quality in urban areas will deteriorate
and more blacks and Hispanics will develop respiratory illnesses.
The Entergy reps told people that new coal-fired power plants would
be built in their neighborhoods and urged them to sign a petition.
"In recent years, nearly all proposals for new power plants in New
York state have been in or adjacent to areas with high concentrations
of people of African descent and Latinos," a memo handed out at the
door warns. There is, naturally, much truth to this claim. and
Entergy is in a unique position to know. since throughout the
southeast it has targeted its power plants in black neighborhoods,
where it has heralded them as bringing economic engines for
impoverished communities.
The canvassers also carried cellphones as they went from door to
door. They hit the speed dial number of a local legislator, handed
the phone to the resident and then prompted them on how to express
their concerns about the possible closure of Indian Point.
The petition drive, which discreetly by-passed the 13 predominately
white districts in Westchester County, was run by a group calling
itself by the lofty-sounding name: the Campaign for Affordable
Energy, Environmental & Economic Justice. The group was supposedly
based in Manhattan. In fact, it was created and wholly funded by
Entergy.
"This is a sham front group fabricated by the nuclear industry to
scare black and low income people," says Susan Tolchin, a staffer
for Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, who supports closing
the Indian Point plant. "It's an outrageous and disgusting attempt
to exploit the minority community for corporate greed."
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked
Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature.