[NukeNet] Forbe's strikes again!

[Roger Herried]

The below ditty is a response to the recent Forbe's Magazine article  
"Hooked on subsidies"

 
For all the younger folk out there, here's the quote from Forbes 
Magazine that was nailed to the nuclear vampire's coffin:

_"The failure of the nuclear power program ranks as the largest 
managerial disaster in business history..." _

I thought it was Feb 1984, when it came out but the Forbes report laid 
out the dramatic damages to the U.S. economy from an industry that 
couldn't build a reactor without running up huge cost overruns.  Forbes 
placed it right next to the Vietnam war in terms of costs. The WHOOPS 
fiasco in Washington, Diablo Canyon or LILCo's Shoreham reactors 
represented huge economic impacts on each of these regions.  The two 
Diablo Canyon reactors which were to have cost a bit more than $350 
million when started ended up at $5.8 billion in construction costs and 
an additional $7 billion in financing costs. The only thing that saved 
it from dying after the 1981 mirror image seismic support disaster was 
Ronald Reagan loaning nearly $2.5 billion from the EPA to finish the 
reactors.  PG&E spent over $100 million in legal fees to win over the 
largest rate increase in California history, resulting in a 50% rate 
increase between 1988 and 1994, leading to a huge rate struggle with the 
state's commercial and industrial retail market. This rate rebellion in 
turn led to Cal governor Pete Wilson pushing through his deregulation 
agenda fiasco.

The only thing I really didn't like about the report is the claim that 
the anti-nuclear movement had little to do with stopping the industry. 
In California, PG&E had been promoting their plan to build over 60 
reactors in central and northern California. Including large complex at 
Bodega Bay, north of SF and 1,000 ft from the epicenter of the 1906 
earthquake where ground shifts up to 30 feet occurred.  That became one 
of the first anti-nuclear campaigns in U.S. history from 1958-64, and 
was finally stopped, to be replaced with the Diablo Canyon project.  
Another planned facility that was stopped by citizen opposition in the 
late 70's and early 80's was a reactor complex north of Santa Cruz at a 
town called Davenport.  What is so historically relevant to the complex 
as it would have been a couple of miles from the epicenter of the 1989 
earthquake that caused over $10 billion in damages to the bay area. 

In 1975-6, over 5,000 activists from across the state put a statewide 
call for the closure of all reactors in California on the ballot 
(proposition 15) It lost but, in the process PG&E and allies pushed 
through a weaker law that promised that no new reactors would be built 
until a solution for spent fuel was found.  The 1975 law has become the 
major stumbling block today in the recent push to build new reactors in 
California. PG&E took the law to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to 
throw it out, but failed. The group led the campaign was called 
Californians for Nuclear Safeguards. If you want to read a couple page 
history of nuclear power in California you can go here! 
<http://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/CALIF.HTM>
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