General Electric and the nuclear crisis

[SHRED]

Hummmm...G.E....where have I heard about them recently?
:sarcasm:

Safety on the Cheap
TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2011

Can we please agree that in the real world corporations exist for one purpose, and one purpose only — to make as much money as possible, which means cutting costs as much as possible?

The New York Times reports that G.E. marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors, used in TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.

Yet American safety officials have long thought the smaller design more vulnerable to explosion and rupture in emergencies than competing designs. (By the way, the same design is used in 23 American nuclear reactors at 16 plants.)

In the mid-1980s, Harold Denton, then an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Mark 1 reactors had a 90 percent probability of bursting should the fuel rods overheat and melt in an accident. A follow-up report from a study group convened by the Commission concluded that “Mark 1 failure within the first few hours following core melt would appear rather likely.”

MORE:
http://robertreich.org/post/3885073837

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[kristopher]

1. Good information that informs events a great deal.

Thanks. K&R

[leveymg]

2. GE is too cheap to even build containment domes. Higher profit per fatality.

When the GE CEO and its Board of Directors volunteer to go inside the stricken plant to turn off valves and spray water, then I will embrace "safe" nuclear power.

[malaise]

3. Ditto

I recommend Pat Buchanan and Jack Welsh

[Rage for Order]

4. They build what their customers, i.e. the Japanese, pay them to build

If the Japanese had asked for (and paid for) safer structures I'm sure GE would have been happy to oblige.

[BeFree]

6. well

A lot of Japanese, and Americans, too, asked over and over again for safer nukes.

But these were just dirty hippies who were ignored over and over again.

Now, who's winning?

[Igel]

7. I ask for safer car on the road.

Not that I intend to buy any.

But unable to force the manufacturers to do what I ask for through coercion, by wielding government power (including federal marshalls and the prison system), that only leaves market forces.

If I want a safer car that can all but guarantee my non-injury if I hit a wall at 40 mph or if I get hit by some pickup doing 80 mph, in other words, if I want a car that gets 10 mph and costs $80,000 for the economy model, I can't muster enough dough to make it happen. I need hundreds of thousands of other people willing to fork over $50,000 more per car.

My wheedling just isn't as important to others as I think I am, I'm not rich enough to entice people through offers of cash, and I don't have the power to compel people to be as moral as I think they should be.

"Winning"?

[peacetalksforall]

5. GE's greed leaves wide swaths of peril. But, you can count on Jack Welsh to

keep on smiling and their stockholders to remain faithful. There are always new weapons to build and sell.