The NYT Rides the Unicorn Into Dreamland

Junk like this is why progressive bloggers use tags like 'our failed media experiment'.

With the United States poised to expand nuclear power after decades of stagnation, it will be important to reassess safety standards. Some 30 American reactors have designs similar to the crippled reactors in Japan. Various reactors in this country are situated near geologic faults, in coastal areas reachable by tsunamis or in areas potentially vulnerable to flooding. Regulators will need to evaluate how well operators would cope if they lost both primary power and backup diesel generators for an extended period.

This page has endorsed nuclear power as one tool to head off global warming. We suspect that, when all the evidence is in from Japan, it will remain a valuable tool. But the public needs to know that it is a safe one.

In striving to appear grown up, serious and balanced it manages to come across like a dispatch from someone on a unicorn leading a column of marching leprechauns across Rainbow Bridge.

Or someone that just woke up from a 30 year nap and missed the deregulatory frenzy and ongoing corporate takeover of our democracy.

What kind of deluded clown still advocates for nuclear power in the shadow of Japan, the gulf oil spill and the bank/mortgage apocalypse? Maybe in Wonderland it makes sense to believe regulators have authority, regulations have teeth and sober, thorough self reflection in the wake of tragedy will be the order of the day.

The reality of modern America is that big corporate players obey no rules, allow no accountability and expect that however catastrophically they fuck up the 'little people' will be stuck with the tab. The liability insurance of all nuclear providers in the US is 12 billion dollars. Real insurance companies won't touch them so they had to make up their own, which should make everyone feel great.

Look Forward, Not Back is a great motto for the powerful. It allows them sleep soundly after responding to each new catastrophe with a shrug and a muttered "who could ever have predicted?"


So, yeah, NYT...let's pretend there will be meaningful regulatory constraints placed on this new wave of nuclear expansion, and let's pretend that big corporate players care a fig for anything except next quarter's bottom line. Stacked atop all the other fantasies that are required reading in the US curriculum these days it barely registers.