The president's offshore drilling announcement a couple of months ago was horribly timed. Obviously.
Meanwhile, back in February, he announced a government loan program to finance the construction of new nuclear power plants, effectively tripling federal funding for nuclear power. $55 billion total.
Currently "there are at least 27 nuclear power plants" in the United States that are leaking tritium, a radioactive isotope. Two of those power plants are Vermont's Yankee power plant and South Jersey's Oyster Creek power plant, which is leaking radiation into an underground aquifer.
Oyster Creek officials said they discovered the tritium contamination one week after the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed the plant's operating license for 20 years, or until April 2029.
I wonder if the guys at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are drinking buddies with the guys at MMS.
And today, there was a brand new leak at the Yankee power plant!
The valve was in the main reactor building, outside the primary reactor containment. It was found Tuesday morning to be leaking 1.6 gallons of radioactive water per minute, 60 percent more than the allowable limit of 1 gallon per minute, plant officials said. The water was being collected in a drain system and did not get into the outside environment.
They stopped the leak before initiating an emergency shut down. Fortunately.
Maybe the president could avoid another bit of "oh shit" timing if he would spend this loan money fixing the old leaky power plants before we dig into building new ones.