The Washington Post today digs up some dirt on companies receiving large chunks of stimulus cash to clean up 18 nuclear sites. Many of them have been responsible for accidents and cost overruns in the past, the paper finds.
The Post uses as a prime example the company Bechtel Jacobs, which is to receive $118 million in stimulus money for nuclear cleanup. Bechtel Jacobs once had to shut down a nuclear cleanup project in Tennessee for months due to safety concerns prompted by a worker's fall through a rotted floor. The delay and "a host of other problems" hiked the estimated cost of the project from $300 million to $781 million, reports the Post.
According to the article, the $6 billion in stimulus money for nuclear cleanup more than doubles the funding in a typical year for a program that the Government Accountability Office has designated "at high risk for fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement."
