Johnny "Fair Play" panders at NH Nuke plant
Wed Jul 23, 2008 at 07:43:17 AM PDT
SEABROOK — John McCain vowed to open a second reactor at Seabrook Station Nuclear Plant, despite no plan from the plant's operator or from officials in the Granite State.
McCain based his support on a report in the state's largest newspaper, that he hadn't bothered to consult, so he was speaking in his usually-uniformed custom and pandering to audiences telling them exactly what they want to hear.
McCain: Seabrook's second reactor 'may have some viability'
Dan Atkinson, writing for the Newburyport Daily News said the McCain said that Seabrook Station's second reactor might fit with his proposal to add 45 nuclear power plants over the next two decades.
While he admitted not having studied Seabrook, McCain said there may be reason to look into whether the long-shuttered second reactor could be revived.
"I've been told, and I'm not an expert on it, but I've been told that that may have some viability," McCain said in a Union-Leader story posted online yesterday. "But I'd like to look at it some more."
What is Johnny Fair Play an expert at anyway? Is it adultery? Crashing jets? Cozying up to lobbyists? Being a warmonger? Please tell us Johnnie, we really are waiting...until hell freezes over.
Atkinson said he idea reviving the nuclear power plant's second reactor, an option McCain said yesterday he would like to know more about, is not currently being looked at by the plant's parent company, Florida Power and Light Energy.
"We get asked the question frequently," a spokesman for the plant, Al Griffith said yesterday afternoon. "And we have no plans to rebuild unit 2."
In an interview with the Manchester Union-Leader before a campaign stop in Rochester, N.H., yesterday,
McCain made his remarks at the offices of the conservative Manchester Union- Leader before speaking at a canned Town Hall event in nearby Rochester.
According to the Union-Leader report, McCain said he would make the United States more energy independent through conservation and renewable energy sources, while also pushing for more oil drilling and nuclear power, wrote Atkinson.
McCain said in the report he didn't have enough information "to know exactly what that viability is" for Seabrook. But in advocating for nuclear power, he also noted that it only takes five years to build a nuclear plant in France. "Why should it take 10 or more years in the United States of America," he told the Manchester newspaper. McCain said that adding 45 nuclear power plants by 2030 "will create 700,000 jobs."
Naturally, a McCain administration would have even less regulation at nuclear plants, especially in the area of homeland security. Currently DHS rules allow nuclear plants to set their own security plans. Seabrook has been breeched a number of times in recent years and critics believe the security at the plant is a joke and incapable of halting a terrorist attack.
When first proposed, Seabrook Station planned to have two reactors. However, economics and widespread oppositiion to the site scaled those plans back. According to the Daily News, the station sparked one of the largest anti-nuclear movements in American history. It culminated in one of the most well-known nonviolent protests in American history on April 30, 1977, when 1,414 people were arrested for trespassing at the site. The National Guard and police from around New England were called in to assist.
By 1990, when the plant was finally able to get its commercial license, it had been scaled back to one reactor, said Griffin.
Griffith said when construction on the second reactor stopped, it was only about one-third completed, and as such "it sat there a long time." The station's majority owner, Florida Power and Light Energy, required the unit be dismantled in 2002, Griffith said, and it was converted into storage space.
Griffith said he did not know what kind of technical and engineering requirements the site would need to go online, but that FPL had no current plans to revive the reactor.
FYI: I live two towns away from Seabrook in Amesbury, Mass. Every year, the nuclear plant sends each family a lovely calendar with old-timey feel good pictures that are meant to mollify our fears even though the calendar itself is a review of evacuation procedures should an accident occur or Seabrook Station is attacked.
The fact that sea breezes coming in off the shore could easily blow radioactive fallout from the plant directly over my home is always looming in the back of my head. So I have that going for me...which is not nice.
Permalink | 4 comments