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James A Fitzpatrick
Nuclear Power Plant |
Amici,
With heavy heart I report that Entergy Nuclear has decided to add the James Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant in NY State to the other two nuclear power plants, Pilgrim in Massachusetts and Vermont Yankee in Vermont, that it is permanently shutting down. Ostensibly the reason for shutdown is lack economic competitiveness against natural gas fired electrical generation. This is compounded by the overwhelming political and environmental opposition to nuclear energy that exists in the northeast corner (and left coast) of the United States.
I do not have much commentary to offer the reader. For four decades I have worked in naval and commercial nuclear power variously as submarine reactor operator, I&C technician and instructor, I&C systems engineer, etc. I was at Fitzpatrick for seven years first as an engineering training instructor, then as a digital design engineer and finally as a plant process computer specialist. During this period of time I have seen the country descend from the height of morality and nobility that existed during the Republic of the Reagan Administration to the depth of idolatry, sexual depravity and infanticide of the unborn that exists now during the National Corporate Socialism of the current Obama Administration. I am tired and discouraged. But I must remind myself that despair is a sin, and to keep my hope in God. I am reminded of an ancient saying by Marcus Aurelius in Book IV, Paragraph 10 of his Meditationes written between AD 161 and 180:
“Quidquid accidit, iuste accidit, idque, si diligenter animadverteris, reperies…”
Literally translated, it means:
“Whatever happens, happens justly, and you will discover this if you diligently observe…”
Nevertheless, I find what is happening to be beyond fathomable. Natural gas prices will rebound as supply is inevitably depleted, resulting in exorbitant rise in electric prices. Furthermore, anti-nuclear sentiment is based on the twin politics of fear of one's mortality and the pagan worship of goddess Gaia. But these things together are succeeding in removing three nuclear power plants producing a total of about 2000 MWe of safe, clean electrical power from the electric grid, to be replaced by polluting and explosive natural gas supplied from corporations who lie in bed with the Democrat politicians of Washington, DC. Now we will choke on the refuse of the excrement of the burning of fossil fuels. This is of great irony for the following reasons:
(1) Environmentalists (who are invariably liberal progressive Democrats) oppose anthropogenic global warming from the green house gas emissions of the burning of fossil fuels, but equally oppose the only thing that can provide stable, base-load replacement power - nuclear.
(2) The Democrats say they favor keeping jobs and NY Governor Cuomo is even on record opposing Fitzpatrick's closure; yet he and his party equally oppose the greater provider of jobs in downstate NY - the more than twice as large Indian Point Energy Center - on the basis of population evacuation; one guesses that if an accident happens upstate, then the population of Syracuse does not need to be evacuated, but if an accident happens downstate, then NYC does need to be evacuated. Never mind the fact that the toxic industries and the Knesico Dam in Westchester County, NY both necessitate evacuation plans in and of themselves, regardless of Indian Point. Similar concerns exist upstate regardless of Ginna, Nine Mile 1 and 2, and Fitzpatrick.
The truth needs to be known. The Republican southeast is building new nuclear power plants: Vogtle Units 3 and 4, and Virgil C Summer Units 2 and 3 are all Westinghouse AP-1000 pressurized water reactors. Meanwhile, the Democrat northeast is shutting down Fitzpatrick, Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim, and is aching to shutdown Indian Point Units 2 and 3. And the left coast (otherwise known as California and its northern neighbors, Oregon and Washington State) has shutdown San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Units 2 and 3 (more than 2000 MWe of safe clean electricity forever removed from the electric grid, only to be replaced by what the Democrats say they oppose: pollution from natural gas burning).
I mention these things to reinforce on the reader that a vote for Democrat as President in November of 2016 will be the death knell for commercial nuclear power in this nation, especially if Socialist Bernie Sanders (who was instrumental in the shutdown of Vermont Yankee in his home state) is elected. The criminal Hillary Clinton who allowed our men to be murdered in Benghazi, Libya is no better; Livia Drusila Iulia Augusta Caesar would be green with envy. Clinton's advocacy of so-called renewable energy (wind and solar power which have capacity factors of less than 30%) necessitates polluting and explosive natural gas spinning reserve at all times. The saying goes like this: green power, black death (with apologies to the wife of Augustus Caesar).
All of the preening that Democrat Governor Cuomo and Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer do about loss of jobs with a shutdown of Fitzpatrick is posturing for the voters upstate, because in downstate both are trying to remove Indian Point from the grid. Every step of the way it has been a Democrat politician along with a natural gas corporate executive who has benefited from shutting down a nuclear power plant. The politicians in question include Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey who benefits from the Pilgrim shutdown, California Governor Jerry Brown who benefits from the SONGS shutdown, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who benefits from the VY shutdown, and Governor Andy Cuomo who would benefit from an IPEC shutdown. He follows in the footsteps of his father, Governor Mario Cuomo, who successfully stopped the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
And the corporate recipients of benefit are all those natural gas suppliers who provide their hazardous methane to gas turbine power plants. Yet the Democrats want to give the politicians who arranged this situation more power ostensibly because they do not trust corporate executives, but they do trust the politicians. Oh the irony! Both politician and corporate executive are avaricious, greedy and power hungry men. Their positions do not matter; their concupiscence as men unrestrained by morality does matter. They are Democrats! Therefore, the reader must educate and inform himself, and then vote based on that informed conscience.
