Householder convicted for conspiracy that resulted in a bailout for two "struggling" nuclear plants
A $60 Million Bribe. A $1.3 Billion Bailout. A 20-Year Prison Sentence.
NY Times | June 29, 2023
...The former speaker, Larry L. Householder, was convicted in March of racketeering and bribery for accepting some $60 million from a major utility holding company, FirstEnergy Corporation, in exchange for arranging a $1.3 billion bailout for two troubled nuclear power plants the company operates.
...Over several days of socializing at high-end restaurants, prosecutors said, they discussed a deal: Mr. Householder needed money to regain the speaker’s post when its occupant left office in 2018. The company needed a legislative solution to its nuclear power woes.
What began with a handshake became a multimillion-dollar political operation, with the money laundered through nonprofit groups allowed by the tax code to conceal donors’ names.
...FirstEnergy had sought state subsidies for two nuclear power plants on the shore of Lake Erie for years when Mr. Householder returned to the State House in 2016. The company claimed that renewable energy and cheaper fuels had made both plants unprofitable...more
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/ohio-speaker-bribery.html
Again:
The company claimed that renewable energy and cheaper fuels had made both plants unprofitable
A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon...
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's very clear from the German policies, funding Putin by buying fossil fuels from him to phase out nuclear energy while climate change is rising that antinukes clearly don't give a rat's ass about climate change.
As for the question I'm asking, it is always the case that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes and straight up honest antinukes never answer questions like this. One strategy they have is to change the subject, and there others, but they don't answer.
I'm a scientist and I rely on numbers. There is no evidence that the expenditure of trillions of dollars on solar and wind has slowed climate change. On the contrary, there is evidence, easily discerned by processing the data pages containing numbers on the data pages at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory that this expenditure has accelerated climate change.
Using these numbers and simple calculus that should be clear to a good high school senior, I derived a quadratic model for the rate of increase with which antinuke solar and wind fantasies have left us:
A Commentary on Failure, Delusion and Faith: Danish Data on Big Wind Turbines and Their Lifetimes.
As of this writing, I have been a member of DU for 19 years and 240 days, which works out in decimal years to 19.658 years. This means the second derivative, the rate of change of the rate of change is 0.04 ppm/yr^2 for my tenure here. (A disturbing fact is that the second derivative for seven years of similar data running from April of 1993 to April of 2000 showed a second derivative of 0.03 ppm/yr^2; the third derivative is also positive, but I'll ignore that for now.) If these trends continue, this suggests that “by 2050,” 28 years from now, using the language that bourgeois assholes in organizations like Greenpeace use to suggest the outbreak of a “renewable energy” nirvana, the rate of change, the first derivative, will be on the order of 3.6 ppm/year. Using very simple calculus, integrating the observed second derivative twice, using the boundary conditions – the current data - to determine the integration constants, one obtains a quadratic equation (0.04)t^2+(2.45)t+ 419.71 = c where t is the number of years after 2022 and c is the concentration at the year in question.
If one looks at the data collected at the Mauna Loa displayed graphically, one can see that the curve is not exactly linear, but has a quadratic aspect somewhat hidden by the small coefficient (0.04) of the squared term:
This admittedly crude "model" roughly suggests that the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste, carbon dioxide concentrations, given the trend, will be around 520 ppm “by 2050,” in 28 years, passing, by solving the resultant quadratic equation, somewhere around 500 ppm around 2046, just 24 years from now.
I’ll be dead then, but while I’m living the realization of what we are doing to future humanity fills me with existential horror.
I produced this post in response to another in the interminable series of "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who show up here.
It's really hard to tell them apart.
There is no evidence, none, that wind and solar are alternatives to fossil fuels. As the German embrace of coal shows, wind, solar, and fossil fuels are inextricably entwined.
All the chanting in the world can change these facts.
Facts matter.
You write:
"There is no evidence, none, that wind and solar are alternatives to fossil fuels. As the German embrace of coal shows, wind, solar, and fossil fuels are inextricably entwined."
Textbook gaslighting. Nonsense statements and circular logic to try to convince another THEY don't understand the topic.
Do you really expect anyone to question their understanding of the definition of the word "alternative"???
Anyway, you ask: " I'm simply asking for an answer to the question, does radiation kill 19,000 people per day?"
I don't believe nuclear power has been anywhere near successful enough to do that.
It has only reached about a 10% share of global energy generation in it's 70 years of trying.
But in the wrong circumstances, it certainly could.
Take for instance, a world where only nuclear power is used, no storage, no other form of energy generation.
You know, your dream world!
Use "numbers" to calculate the amount of radioactive waste that would accumulate and how that would have to be handled "safely" (by the way, all nuclear and nuclear waste accidents that HAVE killed peole were touted as being "safe"
.
Now consider that the global population would have to do WITHOUT any kind of portable power (unless we build cars big enough to install nukes in the trunk), no emergency vehicles of any kind, no power equipment of any kind without a wire and plug, no distribution of food (or ANYTHING else), basically no society as we know it.
And then consider all the other implications of a nuke only world.
I'd say 19,000 a day would be a very small number of deaths.
We need to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels as quickly as possible to cut back on your 19,000 a day deaths (which are only to going to grow with climate chaos).
We need every available source of non-CO2 emitting energy generation to do that, quickly.
Attempting to dissuade people from displacing CO2 emitting energy by building out any and all alternatives to fossil fuels is complicity in those deaths.
...radiation used in the successful marketing by deadly antinukes, I note that this marketing, which kills 19,000 people a day from air pollution - the failure of clean nuclear energy to save lives is the result of willful destruction of nuclear infrastructure - I have clearly and ambiguously referred to load leveling with reference to the primary scientific literature in this space.
I'm certainly not one of the airheads who show up here to attack nuclear energy and then complain that their destructive rhetoric has been successful.
The fucking air heads complaining about so called "nuclear waste," have never shown, and cannot show that the storage of used nuclear fuel for 70 years has killed as many people as will die from air pollution in the next six hours.
Climate change and air pollution are fossil fuel waste. The difference between fossil fuel waste is what uneducated idiots call valuable used nuclear fuel, so called "nuclear waste," is that fossil fuel waste kills people and so called "nuclear waste" has a spectacular record of not killing anyone.
I challenge yet another of the dumb antinukes here to show that the storage of used nuclear fuel in the United States has killed anyone in this century in this country.
I know what I'll get in response to this question: Evasions, nonsense, and no response.
The woman pictured in this post is a Ph.D engineering student: [link:Brilliant Young Woman Poses Reclined On a Dry Cask of Used Nuclear Fuel.|Brilliant Young Woman Poses Reclined On a Dry Cask of Used Nuclear Fuel.]
I have shown, again with appeal to the primary scientific literature, that complete actinide recycling - the last best hope for defeating the deaths resulting from ignorance, will, after around 300 years, actually reduce the radioactivity of the planet.
The reference (which is in German) with its graphic, is found about midway down in this post written to another "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke who whined about the collapse of a tunnel at the Hanford reservation.
828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels
The caption:
The post is full of references to the primary scientific literature, about 25 or 30 references, and touches on all the stuff that about which antinukes neither know about or care about, chemistry, physics, physiology, geology etc.
Now we have yet another in the series of "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who engages in mindless soothsaying claiming that used nuclear fuel will kill someone someday without a shred of evidence that it ever has or ever will, while ignoring deaths yesterday, today, tomorrow, last year, next year the next fucking half hour from fossil fuels. This is very, very, very selective attention, purely absurd, devoid of any trace of evidence of ethical or scientific training.
Now, let me ask one more time, fully expecting evasions and denial, "Does radiation kill 19,000 people per day as fossil fuels does?"
The related question that all "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who complain about so called "nuclear waste" but don't give a shit about fossil fuel waste. "Has the storage of used nuclear fuel, which uneducated people call "nuclear waste" killed in the 70 year history of commercial nuclear power as many people as will die from air pollution in the next six hours, about 4500 people?"
As for "gaslighting," I would like to suggest that we are hearing about "gaslighting" from someone who comes here announcing "I'm not an antinuke" and yet drags out every stupid make believe scare story about nuclear energy nonetheless and absolutely refuses attention to the costs of successfully demonizing nuclear energy with the same rote 50 year old bullshit, thus killing human beings and leaving the planet in flames.
It's very transparent, and one can't say that it's "vaguely" Trumpian. It's obviously Trumpian.
Once again. The assertion is that radiation from nuclear power plants is dangerous. Compared to what? Does radiation from nuclear power plants kill 19,000 people a day every day or does it not?
Any answer appropriately numerical will require supporting references. Otherwise it's just more handwaving sloganeering bullshit that kills people and increases the effects of climate change.
I eagerly await an answer as opposed to subject changing, slogans and whining.
Since there is very little difference, year to year, decade to decade, from the regular series of "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes here, I know there won't be an answer to the question, because one does not exist.
Last edited Sat Jul 1, 2023, 12:10 AM - Edit history (1)
...just unreferenced unsupported assumptions from people coming here to announce they're not antinukes, but attack nuclear energy anyway.
I know the sort. The kind who announce in Trumpian double speak that they're honest and other people are liars.
I don't engage in quite so much soothsaying as the asses who've predicting a wind and solar hydrogen battery nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come while the planet is burning, but I can certainly predict the responses of "I'm not an an antinuke" antinukes to my question, as always, evasion, denial, handwaving and lying.
The nuclear industry has consistently produced around 28-30 Exajoules of energy for more than 30 years using technology developed in the 1960's and 1970's before handwaving ignoramuses won their battle to kill people.
The solar and wind industry with 50 years of wild cheering and trillions of dollars has yet to produce 15, the last reported amount being 12 Exajoules, 5 for solar, 7 for wind on a planet consuming 624 EJ.
Source: 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook Table A 1a, page 435
(Those are, um, "numbers," which don't lie.)
And now, we have, and not from an honest to god antinuke, but from an "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke a statement that nuclear energy is trivial.
And yet, and yet and yet, we're supposed to bet the future of humanity on solar and wind because people can't read and they can't think, and simply exercise cult chanting in the face of tragedy.
Ignorance kills people, in the case of the fossil fuels about which antinukes have no complaints, and couldn't care less about 19,000 people a day, again a number.
I assure all antinukes that the serious nuclear engineering community doesn't give a fuck about their ignorance, anymore than vaccine developers should give a shit about antivaxxers, even though antivaxxers have been far less successful than antinukes at killing human beings, ecosystems, and the planet at large.
The serious nuclear engineering community works rather than whines. Unlike their critics, they're educated.
Have a nice holiday weekend.