Three years behind schedule, 1.7 billion euros over budget and its builders and owners locked in a battle over who’s to blame. Things are looking bad at the construction site of Finland’s OL3 EPR reactor in Olkiluoto. And they’re not getting any better. As reported yesterday by Finnish broadcasting company YLE, problems exposed by Greenpeace last year with the supervision of critical welding and safety procedures at the site have still not been addressed.
Finnish utility TVO, who commissioned French nuclear company Areva to build OL3, have made a third submission to the Finnish nuclear watchdog STUK about the problems. Contractors are still failing to prove that there are competent welding supervisors on all shifts or that managers and workers from different companies speak a common language.
The EPR reactor is supposed to be state-of-the-art third-generation technology but is fast becoming shorthand for nuclear incompetence and cover-up. Areva wants to sell the reactor to countries all over the world and – amazingly, shockingly – these countries seem to be queuing up to be ripped off and treated like idiots.
If that’s what they really want we can do it at a fraction of the cost and faster. Prime Minister Brown, President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Berlusconi, President Patel, Sheikh Khalifa? You are all idiots. Now, that will be 50,000 euros each, please.
– from greenpeace
You can include one more idiot in the list. Indian Prime Minister Dr. Idiot Manmohan Singh.
Actually there are not idiots. Media will cover up everything for them. The real idiots are the public.