[VO]:Re: SciAM Sept.

[RC Macaulay]

Howdy Jones,   Mention Nuke power plants . The South Texas Nuclear Power Plant near Bay City Texas, some 100 miles due south of me has a problem. A bunch of spoilsports sneaked into town and begin examining medical records over the past 20 years and learned there has been a marked increase in illnesses associated with radiation. Not to worry because the plant owners are going to ADD two more reactors to the plant. Seems this plant was originally a joint venture with Houston Lighting and Power, city of Austin etc al. Brown and Root construction( now Halliburton) had the contract for about 2 bil bucks, trouble started immediately and finally Bechtol took over the contract and completed the job for around 8 bil, give or take a few.  HP&P started crying they were stranded with a money losing nuke plant so the State of Texas sold bonds and gave them the money( 15 bil give or take a few) with the public paying off the bonds (by charging  higher rates).   Since in Texas, it considered to be very poor sportsmanship to ever give a sucker an even break, After triple flipping the ownership of the plant across three different owners, each using the same brand of tears and crying towel, the plant finally wound up being owned by Mr. Nobody ( in other words we really aren't sure exactly who the owners are for lianility purposes).   Uhmmm! Lets see if I have this straight in my mind.... Bush was Governor at the time and..... oh no.. there is no connection,, couldn't be.  P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain had it pegged.   Richard