40 ways Ohio now proposes nuclear suicide

A bought, gerrymandered Ohio legislature has just handed a much hated $150 million/year public bailout to two dinosaur nuke reactors primed to explode.

It also bails out two filthy 50-year-old coal burners and guts programs for increased efficiency.

But a possible repeal referendum could reverse all that—and have a serious impact on the Trumpsters who pushed it—in the 2020 election.

Here are some basics:

• The 42-year-old Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo and 33-year-old Perry, east of Cleveland, are both dangerously crumbling.
• Neither can compete with wind, solar, gas or increased efficiency.
• Both would shut immediately in a free market environment.
• Like all nuke reactors, both emit substantial quantities of heat, radiation and carbon.
• Both threaten the entire north coast and Great Lakes region with a radioactive apocalypse.
• Neither can get private disaster insurance.
• Their owner, FirstEnergy (FE) of Akron, is bankrupt.
• The utility stands to gain some $150,000,000/year at the expense of ALL Ohio electric consumers, not just those in its territory.
• FE’s top seven execs are paid roughly $25,000,000/year; CEO Chuck Jones gets $9,500,000.
• In 2003, FE blacked out 50,000,000 people.
• Davis-Besse’s infamous 2002 “hole-in-the-head” came when boric acid ate nearly all the way through the reactor pressure vessel.
• In 1986 (as the Challenger blew up), Perry became the first US reactor to be damaged by an earthquake; a 4.0 shock recently hit less than 25 miles away.
• A state-mandated 1986-7 study showed northern Ohio cannot be evacuated from a meltdown…and certainly not amidst an earthquake.
• Ohio’s North Coast is flat, blown by constant lake-based winds, crisscrossed with transmission lines and good turbine sites near the cities to be served.
• Local farmers are desperate for the income the turbines would provide.
• Some $4.2 billion in private capital is poised to pour into the region for wind farms creating thousands of jobs and lowering electric rates.
• Turbines in Lake Erie, plus land-based wind and solar farms, enhanced by batteries and efficiency, can provide all Ohio’s electricity far cheaper than from nukes and/or fossil fuels, creating far more jobs.
• But in 2014, with zero basis in health or environmental protection, FE’s bought legislators put in the Ohio Code a setback clause that has killed wind development in the state.
• Ohio now has far less installed wind capacity than neighboring Indiana, Michigan, New York or Pennsylvania, which have comparable wind resources but no such set-back clause.
• Ohio is a national leader in manufacturing wind turbine components, virtually none of which are deployed in Ohio.
• Perry & DB have been repeatedly bailed out dating back at least to 1999, when FE scammed a $9 billion “stranded cost” give-away.
• It was called a “stranded cost” bailout because FE complained even then the reactors could not compete in an open market.
• This latest bailout was directly pushed by Trump, at least one of whose co-conspirators personally lobbied key legislators for it.
• Ohio is roughly 50/50 Republican/Democrat, but the GOP has heavily gerrymandered majorities in both houses of the legislature.
• In 2018, FE targeted a dozen GOP legislative primaries, buying at least 11 bailout votes.
• This latest bailout bill could not have passed without votes from key corporate Democrats.
• A strong statewide grassroots movement arose to oppose the bailout.
• An overwhelming majority of testifiers before the Legislature were opposed.
• A strong majority of the state’s newspapers was also opposed.
• All were ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike.
• Efforts are now underway to put a referendum on the fall 2020 ballot.
• If filed within 90 days, the bailout will be put on hold until the vote.
• Polls show a strong majority of Ohioans oppose the bailout.
• If the bailout is on the 2020 ballot, it could encourage a strong opposition turnout that could hurt Trump and help tip the election in a key swing state.
• But Trump, FE and the nuke industry will spend unlimited millions to defeat it.
• It’s been widely known since at least 2004 that Ohio’s registration rolls and voting procedures are heavily rigged to favor the GOP and its corporate owners.
• The longer Perry and Davis-Besse operate the higher the odds they’ll obliterate Toledo, Cleveland and the entire Great Lakes region.
• Neither has private disaster insurance.
• FE can’t handle its radioactive wastes, evacuate the region when disaster strikes or credibly maintain the reactors in their current (deteriorating) state.

Should the referendum get on the ballot, it could help take down Trump and save the region from an apocalyptic catastrophe, as well as economic ruin.  Should it fail, the odds on a major nuclear catastrophe along the shores of Lake Erie are too high to contemplate.

The stakes could not be higher.

Harvey Wasserman is co-author of KILLING OUR OWN:  THE DISASTER OF AMERICA’S EXPERIENCE WITH ATOMIC RADIATION (free on line) and SOLARTOPIA!  OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH at www.solartopia.org.