Entergy Lawyers Up, "Disappears" Chief Engineer from website

[bananas]

http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/diary/5781/safety-first-entergy-lawyers-up

Safety First, Entergy Lawyers Up
by: BP
Sat Jan 23, 2010 at 08:49:29 AM EST

According to the Rutland Herald,

Entergy has lawyered up. Entergy Nuclear has hired a Washington, D.C., law firm to assist the company in its internal investigation over whether company officials lied to state regulators last year over the existence of radioactivity in buried pipes, which appear to be the source of increasing levels and types of radioactivity leaking at the Vernon reactor.

This lawyering up comes after weeks of appearances and disappearances surrounding the aging plant.Underground pipes said by officials not to exist, proceeded to make their existence painfully evident to everyone.

In a twist on this disappearing/reappearing process, Baruth’s Vermont Daily Brief points out that Vermont Yankee’s Chief engineer David McElwee has vanished from the iamvy.com feel-good webpage where he once appeared. McElwee said of the underground piping "We have none. Since this is not an item active in the review of ... recommendations, we consider this issue closed,"

Also performing a reappearance is Governor Douglas’ support for Yankee. After a week of criticizing the power plant operators, the Douglas team is back on point in their support for re-licensing.

http://vermontdailybriefing.com/?p=1406

January 22nd, 2010
So Busted: VY Disappears Dave McElwee
by Philip Baruth

Now this is beautiful. You might remember a week or two back VDB mocked Entergy’s slick new website, IAmVY.com, as a blatant attempt to hide behind a few of their more telegenic workers. But in the interim, of course, Entergy has had to admit to more than a few lapses in both safety and honesty, with Entergy VP Jay Thayer himself admitting that the company had misled investigators on tritium piping.



It turns out that another company employee who misled investigators was a Chief Engineer by the name of David McElwee, who just happened to be one of the folks profiled on IAmVY.com. Well, guess what’s changed at the website since the revelations about leaked radioactivity?

Dave’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared.

<snip>

And that’s not all. When it launched IAmVY.com, Entergy also decided to make a heartwarming human interest story out of the fact that Dave’s daughter, Beth, had come to work at the plant too. So her original profile played up that connection: “Beth’s dad, Dave McElwee, is a 28-year Vermont Yankee veteran . . . . And she couldn’t be happier working side by side with her dad.”

But if you’ve disappeared Dave, you can’t very well warm viewers’ hearts with him when you’re profiling Beth. So the connection between father and daughter has also gone down the memory hole, as no longer operative or desirable from a corporate standpoint.



<snip>

[madokie]

1. The nuclear industry as a whole have been misleading us from day one

somewhere someone at some point had to make a conscience decision to mislead us about the safety of their plants. That to me is or was criminal.

[kristopher]

2. Hey, wait a minute...

Are you insinuating that the Republican led nuclear industry lies to the public?

"President Bush reiterated McCain's call for a lift in the ban on oil drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf in remarks Wednesday. McCain said such drilling would have to meet "sensible standards of environmental protection," and states would decide whether to permit drilling on their shores.

McCain called nuclear energy "clean, safe and efficient" and said he supports the construction of 45 new reactors by 2030. The nation currently has 104 nuclear reactors, but has not built a new one in more than 30 years, since before the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

He acknowledged that such an endeavor would face many hurdles.

"We will need to recover all the knowledge and skills that have been lost over three stagnant decades in a highly technical field," McCain said. "We will need to solve the complex problems of moving and storing materials that will always need safeguarding."

McCain said he would commit $2 billion per year to clean-coal research and development, so the country could further access its "oldest and most abundant" resource.

As for alternative energy, McCain said government should act as "an ally but not an arbiter" and let the market decide which energy sources should succeed.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/18/news/economy/mccain_speech/index.htm

[PHIMG]

3. Where is the NNuclear(sic) cheerleader?

He's absent, why?

What can leak from a solar plant? NOTHING!

What can leak from a wind plant? NOTHING! (Maybe some lubricants?)



Modern energy: no fuel, no waste, no emissions, no risk.


Anything else is a fail.

Put the nation's best engineers together to figure out how to economically scale utility grade solar and wind and also massively subsidize decentralized power gen. DO BOTH, DO THEM NOW.

Sunset coal powerplants in 15 years - put a gun to the energy companies head - force them create a market for the alternatives neccesary to save thier business. Give them low interest lows from the fed if they need them.

Just get 'er done.