{"id":5009,"date":"2013-08-04T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-04T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5009"},"modified":"2013-08-04T05:18:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-04T09:18:24","slug":"the-korean-nuclear-mafia-power-companies-vendors-and-testers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/the-korean-nuclear-mafia-power-companies-vendors-and-testers.html","title":{"rendered":"The Korean nuclear mafia: power companies, vendors, and testers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\nDocument-forging Doosan<\/a> was just the tip of the Korean nuclear corruption iceberg.\r\n

\r\nIt’s different stateside, right?\r\n\r\n\"San<\/a>\r\nOh, wait:\r\n\r\nU.S. NRC is refusing to supply Congress with safety documents<\/a>\r\nrelated to the closing of San Onofre.\r\nBut Plant Vogtle is much safer, right?\r\nSouthern Company CEO Tom Fanning told us so.\r\nOf course, he also told us Kemper Coal would come in on budget, and now\r\n\r\nSO is writing off $611 million after taxes<\/a>.\r\nBut \r\nthat bad concrete pour, the misplaced reactor vessel, the leaking tritium<\/a>;\r\nthose are all flukes, right?\r\nMeanwhile, solar panels don’t leak tritium, and if you misplace one,\r\nyou only lose money, not risk lives.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBy Choe Sang-Hun in NY Times yesterday,\r\n\r\nScandal in South Korea Over Nuclear Revelations<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Korean<\/a>\r\nWeeks of revelations about the close ties between South Korea’s\r\nnuclear power companies, their suppliers and testing companies have\r\nled the prime minister to liken the industry to a mafia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe scandal started after an anonymous tip in April prompted an\r\nofficial investigation. Prosecutors have indicted some officials at\r\na testing company on charges of faking safety tests on parts for the\r\nplants. Some officials at the state-financed company that designs\r\nnuclear power plants were also indicted on charges of taking bribes\r\nfrom testing company officials in return for accepting those\r\nsubstandard parts.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWorse yet, investigators discovered that the questionable components\r\nare installed in 14 of South Korea’s 23 nuclear power plants. The\r\ncountry has already shuttered three of those reactors temporarily\r\nbecause the questionable parts used there were important, and more\r\nclosings could follow as investigators wade through more than\r\n120,000 test certificates filed over the past decade to see if more\r\nmay have been falsified.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWhat about those\r\n\r\nquestionable Westinghouse components in at least six U.S. reactors<\/a>?\r\n

\r\nDoes this sound familiar?\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“In the past 30 years, our nuclear energy industry has become\r\nan increasingly closed community that emphasized its specialty in\r\ndealing with nuclear materials and yet allowed little oversight and\r\nintervention,” the government’s Ministry of Trade, Industry\r\nand Energy said in a recent report to lawmakers. “It spawned a\r\nlitany of corruption, an opaque system and a business practice\r\nreplete with complacency.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe Georgia legislature’s idea of oversight was\r\n\r\nto pass a law letting Georgia Power charge customers for years for\r\nelectricity they’re not getting from Plant Vogtle, including\r\ncontinuing to charge even if it’s cancelled<\/a>.\r\nGA PSC’s idea of oversight has been to\r\n\r\nrubberstamp those cost overruns<\/a>, resulting in re-affirmed bond ratings.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Plant<\/a>\r\n\r\nGA PSC is holding hearings right now<\/a>\r\nin which it could act like the Public<\/em> Service Commission\r\nand\r\n\r\ncap cost overruns on Plant Vogtle<\/a>, or even end that boondoggle.\r\nEven SO CEO Tom Fanning noted in Friday’s earnings call that\r\n\r\n“The most dominant thing is what\u2019s going to happen with Georgia.”<\/a>\r\nIt’s time for GA PSC to\r\n\r\nstop putting lipstick on that pig<\/a>\r\nand do something about it.\r\nThey just proved\r\n\r\nthey could buck Georgia Power about solar power<\/a>.\r\nNow it’s the big time: deal with the boondoggle!\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAnd it is\r\n\r\nSouthern Company\u2019s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool<\/a>\r\nfor Plant Vogtle that lets Southern Company deploy its “great big huge scale”\r\nequipment with all those crony contractors like Westinghouse.\r\nWhich is the kind of situation that Korea has finally decided to fix.\r\nHow about we fix it here in Georgia before it gets worse?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Document-forging Doosan was just the tip of the Korean nuclear corruption iceberg. It’s different stateside, right? Oh, wait: U.S. NRC is refusing to supply Congress with safety documents related to the closing of San Onofre. But Plant Vogtle is much safer, right? Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning told us so. Of course, he also told […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,17,18,2,104,73,3],"tags":[712,1153,6438,8704,8707,8701,8708,8699,6768,8702,12,6769,8737,220,8731,108,6770,8700],"class_list":["post-5009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-ga-psc","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-nuclear","category-safety","category-transparency","tag-boondoggle","tag-corruption","tag-doosan","tag-economy","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-korea","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-mafia","tag-nuclear","tag-regulatory-capture","tag-safety","tag-southern-company","tag-substandard","tag-transparency"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1iN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5009"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5012,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009\/revisions\/5012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}