RUSH: Here’s from Reuters: “Japan Nuclear Woes Cast Shadow Over US Energy Policy.” They do? What is US energy policy?
US energy policy is to shut down production. Here’s something fascinating. You know, folks, things do have a tendency to work out in strange ways. Would it be a safe bet that since wind and solar really aren’t capable of producing anything, they’re just (sigh) dreams of the environmentalist wackos, that if you’re gonna look at this and say, “No more nuclear, stop every nuclear development in its tracks,” which we will. That’s gonna be the focus here. Well, then what, by process of elimination, is going to have to be ramped up? (interruption) Right! Fossil fuels. The regime’s screwed. The environmentalist wackos are screwed.
We’re gonna have to intensify our development production, use of fossil fuels ’cause they’re gonna shut down nuke now. Of course, again, that pits Jeffrey Immelt and GE against Obama, and they are bedmates. (interruption) Well, they could demand rationing, blackouts, as a means of dealing with it. With this regime, you never know. They could see this as a crisis too good to go to waste. You don’t know. That’s why, folks, this story is not going to be contained in Japan.
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Look, Reuters headline: “Japan Nuclear Woes Cast Shadow Over US Energy Policy.” Right here, Reuters is using Japan to stop the US nuclear energy plans. That’s exactly what this is. Let me ask you this, put it this way. What lesson will Obama learn from the Japanese crisis? In fact, does he even need to learn a lesson? Will this not give him — I don’t want to use the word “comfort.” But something like this happens, and as the left, media, whoever they are, everything’s agenda oriented, does this not fall right into the lap of people who are anti-nuclear power anywhere? And as such, aren’t those people sort of doing a little dance, See, I Told You So, nah-nah-nah-nah? Reuters is. What will Obama’s lesson be? He’ll learn the same lesson he learned from the BP leak in the Gulf. He used that as an excuse to ban new drilling in the Gulf of practically everything else.
Now he’s lying about the fact that he’s increased domestic energy production. Dana Perino even called him out on that. We got the tape coming up on one of the Sunday shows yesterday. She did it very artfully. It’s amazing how the White House just lets this president lie, or how this White House provides this president with such obviously false information, something like that. She did it in a very artful way, called him a liar in a very, very artful way. But what’s the lesson from BP? Shut down oil drilling. He used that as an excuse to ban new drilling in the Gulf and practically everywhere else and now he’s gonna use Japan’s earthquake as an excuse to arbitrarily impose a moratorium on nuclear power in the name of safety. Reuters has it right here. They’re very excited about it. “Anxiety over Japan’s quake-crippled nuclear reactors has triggered calls from lawmakers and activists for review of US energy policy –” Activists shmactivists. Anyway, the die is cast.
RUSH: This is Mac, St. Petersburg, Florida. I’m glad you waited, sir. You’re up next, and hello.
CALLER: Dittos from St. Petersburg, the home of the St. Petersburg Times, Pravda by the bay.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: Rush, I’m a retired engineer. I’ve got 30 years in commercial and naval nuclear power. I had the interesting experience of being a Babcock & Wilcox employee as part of the recovery team at Three Mile Island six months after the accident. I was a minor player but had access to all the technical information, and it’s gone unreported in the mainstream media, but you can find it in the technical literature. At Three Mile Island the reactor core was in fact uncovered, and it did in fact melt down. Now, when I talk about the reactor core, what I’m talking about is the fuel rods, although that’s technically inaccurate. The fuel assembly is a bundle of half-inch tubes, and the structural material that support those fuel assemblies actually melted down into a homogeneous mass in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel.
Now, in the classic China Syndrome scenario, this molten mass, glob, if you will, would melt its way through the 8- to 12-inch boilerplate that the pressure vessel is fabricated from and then it will melt its way through the 10- to 30-foot concrete base mat underneath the pressure vessel where it finally gets into the dirt and ultimately hits the groundwater and creates a giant steam explosion that would throw all this stuff all over the place. Well, of course that didn’t happen at TMI, as we all know now because the pressure vessel maintained its structural integrity and it’s very, very likely that the pressure vessels in the Japanese plants that were made at about the same time using the same fabrication techniques will also survive.
RUSH: We’ll see. All I have to go on there is, you look at Three Mile Island and, you know, it worked. The containment systems worked at Three Mile Island, and yet the panic that resulted from this was incongruent with the result. You know, I could even say if I wanted to really start stirring things around here, nuclear power plants and nuclear energy generally are thoroughly regulated by government. So why isn’t this said to be a failure of government when these things go wrong? How come the regulatory agencies always escape any kind of blame? How come the liberal bureaucracies always escape any blame when there’s any kind of panic or problem? These nuclear boys are just out there on their own, they are not renegades, they’re not cowboys.
Everything they do is regulated beyond reason, and yet when you have an accident, somehow the regulators end up as spectators, demanding to know what happened. Same thing with Katrina. Same thing with mortgages. The very people that gave us the regulations that led to the subprime mortgage all of a sudden act shocked and surprised and outraged when it happens. And they get to conduct the hearings, which means they get to point fingers of blame at anybody but them. Which, what happened during Katrina, it’s what’s gonna happen here with this nuclear business. This is a very serious event, and it requires very serious news reporting, and we’re just not getting it in any way, shape, manner, or form.
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