Of why the private sector shouldn’t be anywhere near anything as important as nuclear power. Because if they’ll cut corners on the financing, they’ll do it on safety, too:
A federal grand jury has indicted two former executives of a company that hoped to build a nuclear power plant in southwestern Idaho.
Donald L. Gillispie, 71, and 40-year-old Jennifer R. Ransom were indicted Thursday on 14 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, filing false tax returns and making false statements to federal agents.
The two, both from Meridian, were executives of the Eagle-based Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. Prosecutors say the pair conspired to manipulate and inflate the price of their company’s stock in an effort to attract investors and gain cash financing for the company, and that they didn’t properly report income to the IRS.
[…] Alternate Energy Holdings had proposed building a $10 billion nuclear power-generating plant in Payette County in 2009. That plan came to a halt in 2010, when the federal Securities and Exchange Commission suspended free trading of the company’s stock. The SEC said the company was promoting itself with a deluge of press releases that presented false information, which forced the federal agency to take action.
All of our energy industry should be nationalized. From production to distribution. From (below) the ground up. This is a national defense issue. It should be treated that way. Would we privatize our military? Some whackadoodles, like the Republicans, might suggest that, but they would be laughed out of the arena.