I read a recent article that reported that an Indiana state senator had introduced a bill to encourage utilities to develop sources of nuclear energy, and I thought, “Yee-ha: here come the locusts.” I flashed back to the early 80s, and my own “year of living nuclear.”
I was a full time adult college student and “stay-at-home dad” when my neighbor, a professional employment recruiter for whom I had designed a business card, asked me if I wanted a job. “Uh, no,” I said, “I’m a student.” He told me that he had received a request from a client for an artist and I was the only one he knew. He quoted a few numbers that the bride, the kid and I discussed, and I put on a hard hat and went to work for an electrical subcontractor at the Marble Hill nuclear power plant.
Public Service Indiana was the contractor for the plant; I was a “graphics illustrator” for the subcontractor. My duties were to be the production of a map of the progress of the company’s installation of “hangers” and laying of electrical cable. I set up an artists’ space with everything I wanted, but I shared an oversized cubicle with Fred, the recruiter.
Fred’s job was to find nuclear electrical personnel. Nuke plant workers are a specialized and migratory lot, and when one finds a job, others are notified of openings. Fred was looking for Quality Control Inspectors. Booted and hard-hatted workers with jangling tool belts would clomp past my office to his, and give Fred the name of a buddy back in Louisiana. Fred would call the buddy and try to determine if his (most of them were men) experience included working at a nuke plant and at what level. (The levels, to my limited knowledge, were QC I and QC II.) The end of the conversation that I could hear made for hilarious theater. The query would begin with “Have you ever worked at a nuclear power plant?” and devolve to, “Have you ever lived in a state that had a nuke plant within 150 miles? Good! I think we might have something for you.” (There may be some slight exaggeration, here.)
I was one of the nuclear locusts that swarmed over the Marble Hill site, gobbling up Public Service Indiana’s largesse (which, for my electrical contractor, was “cost plus” a stomp-load), earning stupendous amounts of money. But that pesky job-robbing government entity, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, kept finding fault with the craftsmanship of the plant, the project fell behind the established deadlines and we locusts picked clean the massive fields of PSI money; after an investment of $2.5 billion dollars, the project failed. And on that failure we will now try to build another plant. I heard the stirring of locusts’ wings, and then – the bill was pulled. Seems that “no utility or large energy user” was interested in building a plant.
I cannot imagine why. The bill, as originally proposed, would have given financial incentives to the builder, with the best one being that the utility could charge customers today for future services.
I’ll not enter the debate about the development of a source of energy that produces byproducts too dangerous to live near (unless you live in Nevada) but I have to agree with the senator: that was a sweet deal. The state gives you incentives, and you can charge your customers for the costs of building the plant. It is a win-win for the utility. And we consumers may (or may not) get a “cheap to operate” source of energy.
Cue the locusts.