The NRC’s merry band of pranksters have been working overtime approving one nuclear enrichment plant after another. This past week, they announced that the new Areva plant in Idaho has passed a safety review, moving that project right along.

Areva is a French company with a long history of shoddy work and safety problems all over the world. Just the other day, government inspectors in Finland were refused entrance to the work site where an Areva nuclear plant is under construction.

There have been numerous complaints of labor and safety violations at the site.

That particular project is also running well behind schedule, and running up a huge cost overrun. Is anyone surprised?

At about the same time that the NRC was helping out their friends at Areva, geologists announced that an active earthquake fault runs a few miles away from where the plant will be located. In fact, Idaho is criss-crossed with earthquake faults.

I wonder if anyone told the NRC … not that it would make any difference.