Let’s check in with Vermont Yankee, shall we? From what VDB understands, there was to be some sort of town by town discussion and referendum on the viability of Yankee relicensing post 2010. No doubt that went swimmingly for Louisiana-based Entergy Nuclear, given the Safeness, Cleanness, and Reliableness of nuclear power in general.

Let’s just check the morning papers . . . . Oh, shit, well this doesn’t look good: some 33 towns voted against relicensing! And apparently it was all the fault of this smooth-talking fellow Dan DeWalt, who worked some dark, obscure Newfane magic, and turned the heads of otherwise clean, right-thinking Vermont villagers and townsfolk.

Curse that outlaw to Louisiana and back!

Now, what else could go wrong for Entergy? Oh, right: Yucca Mountain, the nuclear industry’s $8 billion dollar Hail Mary on the waste issue, was summarily in Obama’s first budget.

So say goodbye to that particular bait-and-switch, in which the industry sells a new round of power plants with the promise that all the offending byproducts will be magically whisked away to the deserts of Nevada. Nope, those that have waste will be holding on to it for the foreseeable future.

Which is to say the better part of 10,000 years.

Nope, not a good lookout for Entergy at all, turns out. Or for corporate spokesbot Rob Williams, whose dreams consist these days of only one image, though an image he sees every night of the week, and from every conceivable angle. You the man, Dan DeWalt.