Word: reactor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Congress gave Clinch River the go-ahead despite mounting evidence that the reactor is an unnecessary and colossally mismanaged boondoggle-and potentially dangerous as well. Four days before the House vote, an Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee staff issued an excoriating report on the project subtitled "A Cost and Technical Fiasco." The report cited well-known problems, like Clinch River's increase in cost from $669 million in 1973 to at least $3.2 billion, and raised again questions about the adequacy of the reactor's safety mechanisms...
...most damning revelations were in the report's catalogue of financial abuse. Many contracts for the manufacture of reactor components were slackly written, lacking even technical specifications. Said Investigator A. Ernest Fitzgerald of one contractor's agreements: "I think it was very decent of Westinghouse to do any work, because it is not clear they have to do anything at all under these contracts." A steam generator priced at $5 million in 1975 actually cost the Government $71 million. The report found evidence of both bribery and fraud by some contractors. A consortium of 753 private utilities agreed...
...latest dispute between the U.S. and its prickly ally in the Middle East. All week long, the Administration had been gearing up toward a formal announcement that the shipment of advanced F-16s to Israel, which had been embargoed after the attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor last month, would be resumed. In fact, some of the F-16s had been flown to Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire for the trip to the Middle East. But then on Friday word reached the White House of the shocking Israeli bombing of Beirut that killed at least...
Whether or not Begin had deliberately intended to embarrass the Administration, Reagan and his advisers were clearly not prepared for the Beirut raid. Israeli officials predictably objected when the U.S. delayed delivery of the F-16s* following the attack on the Iraqi reactor. Yet Begin and his Cabinet apparently assumed that the delay was only symbolic and saw no need to pay attention to U.S. concerns about Israeli military actions. They were more interested in demonstrating that there were no strings attached to their use of the F-16s. Indeed, late last week Israel condemned as "unfair" the latest delay...
...reasons: the Administration did not want to pick a fight with the influential Israeli lobby in Congress while it is trying to pass its economic program. In addition, many of Reagan's foreign policy advisers felt that despite the formal protests from the Arab world after the Iraqi reactor had been destroyed, many moderate leaders in the area were secretly pleased by what Israel had done. This comforting illusion also exploded last week: King Khalid announced that Saudi Arabia would pay for reconstruction of the Iraqi reactor (original cost estimate: $260 million...