FRANKENSTEIN'S CONTROL ROOM

By this time it cost 4 times more to test a product than the product itself, and the Midwestern company which gave me this information got out of the nuclear business. But their valves are still operating in nuclear plants, so in America's free economy I cannot reveal its name and expose it to the NRC's ire. (I reported on this problem before, when a large mail-order company would not let me reveal their name after telling me "We used to test our products for the consumer; now we test it for the government.")

An engineer of this valve company recalled how he designed a simple junction for a manometer to measure the pressure difference on opposite sides of a large valve. Its own valve was the type used for automobile or bicycle tires. But that is made of brass, an alloy not approved by the NRC. So instead of about $2, the gadget would have cost $125. The NRCcrats freely admitted this had nothing to do with safety; their business is not safety, but regulation.

Do you recall how the press and politicians wailed about the cluttered instrumentation of the TMI control room? It was not designed by engineers. In the August 1980 issue of Reason Adam Reed reports:

The designers learned that their plants depended on a host of licenses and permits by political officials at state and local level. These bureaucrats knew nothing about nuclear power or good control room layout, but were impressed by large and complex-looking layouts prepared by a commercial artist who loved old Frankenstein movies..."

Now look at that map again. Subtracting the cost forced by the Potomac Parasites, do you really believe nuclear power is more expensive? And when you subtract the costs inflicted by the antinukes' legalistic delay tactics, you get the true cost of nuclear power. If that does not beat anything else in sight, then let it go under.