Tags
fukushima, nuclear, palast, shaw, southern, stone weber, toshiba, vogtle, westinghouse
The US just approved its first nuclear reactor since 1978, to be built in Vogtle, Georgia. There are many reasons to be concerned about nuclear power, especially as a taxpayer funding it and insuring it ($8.3B for this project), but this specific project that was given the green light includes some shady players.
The new reactors will be built at Southern Company’s existing nuclear power plant in Vogtle. Southern has a long sordid history with bribing politicians, skirting all kinds of US and British laws to get into the British energy market, and illegally charging its customers for spare parts and coal that either didn’t exist or were never used:
Our racketeering and fraud complaint alleged that Southern overcharged its millions of electricity customers tens of millions of dollars for using spare parts it never used. Technically, the company had violated the accounting regulations set out by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under federal law.
Southern Company’s view was no problem: The industry simply had Congress repeal the law and end the regulations. (p. 264 from Vulture’s Picnic by Greg Palast)
OK, the operator has had some problems with the law in the past, what’s the connection to Fukushima?
First is Westinghouse, or to be more precise, Westinghouse-Toshiba. ‘Westinghouse’ will be building the actual reactors in Georgia and Toshiba happened to be the company that built not only one of the failed Fukushima reactors, but the diesel emergency generators that failed to work, two before the tsunami even hit and at least another that failed because it was built to let water in (p. 296 V’sP). These diesel generators were known to be faulty for years, but the testing of the generators were fabricated by a company called Stone & Webster (p. 290 V’sP). Which brings us to the second connection…
Stone & Webster is now owned by Shaw, which is the other company building the new reactors with Westinghouse-Toshiba. Stone & Webster was also found guilty of racketeering, by the way, for upping their bill to the US taxpayer on a New York nuclear plant by almost $3B in the ’80s. Shaw is not any nicer and has gotten huge contracts to pretend to clean up after both Hurricane Katrina and Fukushima.
Southern, Westinghouse-Toshiba, Stone & Weber-Shaw. Bribing, racketeering, overcharging, safety cover-ups. Why are these the companies given an $8.3B government loan again?
