Month: February 2010

That was a fringe meeting not a tea party

by

No, they did not serve tea; they did not serve cucumber sandwiches or buns or scones. No tea was dumped into the Channel. There were no hand-made cool signs, as an American correspondent put it; there were no signs or placards at all. In fact, it was, as the slightly amateurish pictures show, an extremely well attended fringe meeting with an enthusiastic audience, most of whom had come running from other meetings, main or fringe, that a party conference provides. Most of them were going on to other meetings or dinners.

As it happens, I am a veteran of packed fringe meetings. There were the early European Foundation meetings, at one of which every fire regulation was broken and the Head of the Commission’s London office, having unwisely left the room, could not be allowed back in as there was quite literally not a square inch of space. “Health and safety” we told him with big grins on our faces and delegates who also could not get in laughed. The Conservatives have always seen themselves as somewhat rebellious as far as the EU is concerned – they laugh at the discomfiture of officials.

Then there were all the Save Britain’s Fish meetings at both Labour and Conservative conferences where the full horror of the Common Fisheries Policy was carefully analyzed and dissected to packed rooms. And what good came of it all? We still have the CFP with successive governments whining about the reform that they are working on. The only sensible policy the Conservatives ever had, was discarded by the Boy-King as soon as he became the leader.

Today’s event proved something unexpected, however. It seems my history teachers who were told to slant everything towards a Marxist interpretation were actually right: the British establishment does have an uncanny ability to mould and remould itself, to include anybody who might challenge them and to co-opt potential oppositions. We have seen this with the blogosphere, that has been converted into the clogosphere plus a few supporting players with those of us who do not want to be inside the tent ever diminishing in importance. Now we see it with a potential tea party movement. Before it could even start, it was pre-empted by a fringe meeting at a Conservative Party conference, addressed by a Conservative politician and presided over by another Conservative politician, Roger Helmer MEP.

The rest is posted on Your Freedom and Ours with a couple of pictures I took.

Humming and ha-ing

by

There will be another, more serious attempt to launch a British tea party movement in Brighton today. Not only, being British, tea will be served (and cucumber sandwiches, I hope) but the whole event is promising to be rather tame and controlled unlike that anarchic, grass-roots colonial movement.

The tea party is being imported into Brighton by The Freedom Association, a national organization, first set up by the McWhirter twins back in the seventies to fight trade union power. It is a fringe event at the Conservatives’ Spring Conference and will be addressed by the ubiquitous Daniel Hannan MEP. Almost certainly, most of the attendees will be Conservatives who are in Brighton for the conference.

All of which makes me hum and ha but I shall go anyway. There has to be somebody there who has not been co-opted by the political establishment. More on this on Your Freedom and Ours.

The Nuclear “Renaissance”… at -1 (Maybe)

by

There has been much talk of a “renaissance” of nuclear power in the United States. While I personally am a big fan of nuclear power, in my posts I attempt to cull the reality from the hype. One key concept is that even if a few plants get built, they are not likely to significantly dent the capacity loss from plants being pulled from service out of our current fleet of 104 units.

Vermont Yankee

Recently the state of Vermont decided not to allow the renewal of the license for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. This decision was made by the Vermont Senate not the NRC itself (the NRC has allowed all licenses to be extended that have been requested so far, I believe). The NRC originally licensed reactors for 40 years and can provide a 20 year extension; Vermont Yankee went live in 1972 and thus it will not be in use past 2012 unless the license is extended. Per this article, Entergy intends to fight the state decision:

Late Wednesday, the Vermont Senate blocked the company’s application for a 20-year operating license extension for its Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. Entergy said in a statement that the effort to win the renewal, “is far from over.” The power company said it’ll work to prove its case to the Vermont legislature, state officials and the Vermont public. Entergy may be forced to shut down the plant in 2012.

Of course this begs the question as to how Vermont will now get its power; this plant provided 35% of all power (according to the Wikipedia link above) for Vermont in 2006 and certainly losing a fully paid for, base load nuclear station is going to require a lot of expensive replacement power from other sources. Since Vermont is on the east coast and there is a heavy transmission grid there other power sources should be available, but this likely will have a rate impact on the citizens of Vermont when they begin paying a higher price for out of state power.

Entergy and Spinning off Nuclear Assets

The plant is owned by Entergy. Entergy is run by Wayne Leonard, one of the smartest guys in the electrical utility industry, who purchased this plant back in 2002 (here is a link to the original purchase announcement, before it officially closed, back in 2001). It isn’t a “done deal” yet that the plant won’t get re-licensed, but if so, it would be expected that this would be a financial negative for Entergy because they likely assumed that the plant would have been re-licensed (because they are routinely approved by the NRC) when they purchased this asset back in 2002. Entergy is also thinking of spinning off their nuclear plants to shareholders; this is smart because the value of the nuclear assets are impaired by the fact that they are owned by distribution companies; as a stand-alone asset, they can charge whatever the market will bear and the distribution company will have to pay up or go without; when they are part of an integrated utility you can only raise rates so much without causing yourself problems since you own both sides of the value chain.

The state of New York woke up and realized the problems that independent nuclear plants would cause. Per this article:

New York’s utility regulator said on Thursday its staff found Entergy Corp’s (ETR.N) plan to spin off six nuclear power units, including three reactors in New York, to a new company, Enexus Energy Corp, was not in the public interest. The New York State Public Service Commission said in a release it was considering other options, including changes to the transaction to improve the financial stability of the three New York reactors and provide benefits to ratepayers. The staff concluded that the level of debt needed to finance the Enexus spinoff “is excessive when the business risks of this new merchant nuclear plant enterprise are considered,” the agency said.

Conclusion:

The re-licensing of Vermont Yankee isn’t a done deal yet. It is likely that Entergy will continue to negotiate with the state of Vermont and they want some sort of additional clean up or concessions to allow the sale to go forward, or a guarantee of some sort of rate reductions below what could be charged as “market” rates. Like the state of New York, the states have to move while they still have some leverage (when the plant owners are changing the license or getting re-licensed by the NRC, which may or may not require state approval) because the Federal Government is pretty much approving everything right now without significant conditions.

Given that the states don’t actually believe that significant new capacity will be coming on line anytime soon, and that renewables haven’t made any sort of significant supply contributions to date, letting these nuclear plants charge whatever the market will bear will have ruinous impacts on utility customers because there is no viable competition on the horizon in terms of significant new plants. There has never been a better time to own a paid-off nuclear plant than right now.

Cross posted at LITGM

Sleeping with the Enemy

by

The Age of Longing by Arthur Koestler

—-

Why has the western world shown such loss of will in defending itself from radical Islamic terrorism? Why, indeed, do substantial numbers of people–particularly those who view themselves as intellectuals–endlessly make excuses for dictatorships and terrorist movements whose values are completely at odds with their own stated values–and even romanticize these goons? I think some clues can be found in a forgotten novel by Arthur Koestler.

The Age of Longing (published in 1950) is set in Paris, “sometime in the 1950s,” in a world in which France–indeed all of western Europe–is facing the very real possibility of a Soviet invasion. Hydie Anderson, the protagonist, is a young American woman living in Paris with her father, a military attache. Hydie was a devout Catholic during her teens, but has lost her faith. She was briefly married, and has had several relationships with men, but in none of them has she found either physical or emotional satisfaction…she describes her life with a phrase from T S Eliot: “frigid purgatorial fires,” and she longs for a sense of connection:

Hydie sipped at her glass. Here was another man living in his own portable glass cage. Most people she knew did. Each one inside a kind of invisible telephone box. They did not talk to you directly but through a wire. Their voices came through distorted and mostly they talked to the wrong number, even when they lay in bed with you. And yet her craving to smash the glass between the cages had come back again. If cafes were the home of those who had lost their country, bed was the sanctuary of those who had lost their faith.

Read more

Throwing the Falklands Under the Bus

by

Anyone else see this? The Obama administration declared neutrality on the issue of the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands!

Go ahead and click on that last link. The author of the op-ed, James Corum, seems to think that the Obama administration is lacking a coherent foreign policy. Adding to the chaos is a clueless President, and a Sec. of State that does not have the intellectual resources necessary to do the job.

I think Mr. Corum is wrong on all counts, but I can certainly see why he would form such opinions.

This essay by Walter Russell Mead makes the case that Obama is pursuing a Jeffersonian foreign policy. This is where the US would limit alliances and foreign entanglements, and dismantle our military as much as possible.

Read more