Cowboydoc,
I agree with you that it is a shame that the unfinished nuclear power plants were not 'mothballed' in a way to allow the construction to be restarted later. Seabrook unit 2 in New Hampshire is another example of an abandoned plant, which will never run. At the time construction stopped the preservation process would have cost tens of millions of dollars the utility didn't have. There was a good chance that the utility would run out of money before finishing unit 1. The anti-nuclear groups were doing their best to increase cost and delay startup through the courts.
If I remember correctly the WPPS situation was similar (but on a larger scale).
There were many changes in the licensing standards by the NRC through various rulemaking actions and through requirements imposed by the courts but I do not remember any explicit changes from Congress. Congress could have and should have blocked the obstruction of nuclear power through the courts. Most members of congress avoided making the potentially controversial decisions on nuclear power, leaving them to the administrative agencies and the courts.
If Congress had acted, it could not be a fast process. The administrative agencies (now the NRC then the AEC) would have to write regulations based on the new law. The law and the regulations would than be challenged through the courts. Eventually the investment decisions of the Electric Power industry would be altered. Government is not able to change direction suddenly.
The Three Mile Island accident happened and the public became overwhelmingly anti-nuclear-power. At that point it was all over. It was career suicide for an electric industry executive to propose a new Nuclear project. No nuclear power plant project has been started since Three Mile Island and it was a major fight to license each of the plants under construction at the time.
(I saw some calculations: there were well over 100 deaths as a result of Three Mile Island – the people were hit at railroad crossings by trains carrying coal to generate electricity which would have been generated by three Mile Island had the accident not happened. We are not always rational comparing risks. The Nuclear plant scares people far more than trains on an on grade crossing.)
The change in public attitude was dramatic, in the mid to late 1970’s there was little opposition to the Commonwealth Edison (Illinois) Nuclear building program. I had a summer job at the construction site for the Lasalle County station the summer of 1977. I didn’t see a single anti-nuclear demonstrator or read any calls to abandon the plant in any major Chicago media. Before Three Mile Island (March 1979) there was a demonstration at the Seabrook site every weekend and a few demonstrators on site every day. The Boston media covered the demonstrations and repeated calls to abandon the plant After Three Mile Island the Boston media became even more hostile to the project. (I remember one Boston Globe series of articles urging that the plant be converted to solar. The fact that the conversion was impossible didn’t stop the Globe from parroting the conversion plan.) The last Nuclear power plant under construction, the TVA Watts Bar plant, went into operation in September 1995, after 23 years of construction (and construction delays). The delays had pushed the construction cost to 7 Billion dollars.
One problem, which contributed to the problems with nuclear power plant construction, was (and is) that our legal system allowed the lawsuits, as well as the challenges in administrative hearings, to continue endlessly with many cases changing the requirements for licensing the plant. While in theory Congress could have reigned in the ability of the courts and lawsuits to bollix up the process, but Congress has shown no desire to fix the problem and limit any lawsuits. So we have the courts as our highest legislative and executive body. Over the last years we have had a Federal Judge set the city tax rates and run a school district in one city (setting the tax rate by issuing court orders ordering the legislature to set property taxes to the levels he selected). Judges running school districts has been common. A state Supreme Court rewrite state election law after the election and then a few weeks later rewrote the election law again in a way inconsistent with the previous ruling. Many lawsuits have been filed asking the courts to rewrite the firearms laws in ways that the legislatures have refused to act. Class action suits have become little better than a legal form of extortion practiced by lawyers, courts routinely approve class action settlements which give millions of dollars cash to the class lawyers and an (almost worthless) discount coupon to the (supposed) plaintiffs. For some of these abuses see
http:// [url]http://overlawyered.com/ [/url]
On the corporate profits of the oil companies my point was that the 4% level was below the industrial average and was not sustainable for any length of time. Now profits are up, slightly above average now and will eventually head back down.
You are comparing the retail prices not the oil company margins. The oil company markup on a gallon of gas is smaller than the taxes collected by the State and Federal governments. ( 8% margin on sales of $3 per gallon gas is only $.24 per gallon. Taxes are over $.50 per gallon. )
By describing the increase in Exxon profits as 100% increase you are making a true statement while making a misleading statement. Going from a bad year with slightly above half the expected profit levels for an industrial company to a year with normal profit levels is not in any way shape or form ‘criminal’. (There was a year when I was laid off and took months to find a new job. My income that year was ¼ the income I had the previous year. The next year I got a new position paying 10% more than my previous salary. By your math I received an ‘unconscionable’ raise of 440%.)
Wall Street doesn’t see large profits in Exxon Mobil. If it did we would see a big increase in the stock price. The stock closed at $90 Friday up from a low in March but still below prices ($95) in October and November 2000. This is with the stock market overall at an eight-month high and news released last week that Exxon will lead a major Natural Gas development in Saudi Arabia. Even without ‘criminal’ profits we could expect Exxon to be at an eight month high like the overall market.
Either Wall Street (meaning the millions of individuals who make buy/sell decisions in the stock market) is right or your are right and we should all run out and get a second mortgage to buy Exxon stock, if it is making huge profits the stock must go up sharply. (Frankly I will go with Wall Street here.)
Ed
