THE RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR OPTION

BIXBY:
Dr. Kleft? Is this Dr. Kleft?


KLEFT:
Yes, Jack Kleft.


BIXBY:
Jack. Excellent. Biff Bixby, Deputy Director, Senate Energy Committee. How’s your ass.


KLEFT:
It’s fine.


BIXBY:
Excellent. So I guess you know what this is about?


KLEFT:
Yes, I was expecting your call. You received a copy of my testimony?


BIXBY:
Yuh, about that, Jack. The chairman was swallowing oatmeal while he was reading your stuff and he’s at Walter Reed now. He’s going to be fine, but we need to make a few changes?


KLEFT:
You want to change my research?


BIXBY:
Absolutely not. We just want to change some of the things you say.


KLEFT:
Some of the things?


BIXBY:
Only 10 or 11.


KLEFT:
Such as?


BIXBY:
Well, let’s go back a step. You’re at Stanford, right?


KLEFT:
Yes, Department of Energy Policy.


BIXBY:
Yuh, whatever. So you did your undergraduate there?


KLEFT:
No, Northwestern.


BIXBY:
Get out of here. Get frigging out of here.


KLEFT:
Excuse me?


BIXBY:
Northwestern? That was my frigging school. What class?


KLEFT:
Eighty-six.


BIXBY:
Holy...eighty-six? That was my frigging class. At my frigging school. You are screwing with me. You are totally screwing with me.


KLEFT:
No, I don’t think I am.


BIXBY:
How come I don’t know you?


KLEFT:
It was a big class. What’s wrong with my testimony?


BIXBY:
Where did you rush?


KLEFT:
Rush?


BIXBY:
Where did you pledge? Lamda Delta or the Gammas? I was a Gamma. You must have known us. We were the ones who re-painted the meteorite outside the astro-physics building every time we took a girl’s virginity?


KLEFT:
I wasn’t in one of those.


BIXBY:
Which one were you in?


KLEFT:
I wasn’t in a fraternity.


BIXBY:
What did you do for four years?


KLEFT:
Studied.


BIXBY:
I think you’re screwing with me, but okay. Here’s the thing. Twenty-five years ago, every lame rock band got a bug up their ass about nuclear power. They started scaring everybody about it, and before you knew it, no more nuclear reactors.


KLEFT:
It wasn’t just rock bands. There were some serious issues that....


BIXBY:
Bogus, totally bogus. They got people all paranoid like every reactor was some nuclear time bomb waiting to explode.


KLEFT:
It a reactor were mishandled or an accident happened, that’s exactly what it would be. Three Mile Island could have been a disaster. Thousands of people got radiation disease from Chernobyl.


BIXBY:
If you had gotten laid in college, you wouldn’t have a problem with this. We have a great location for a new plant on Lake Michigan. Sure, there are some people who live nearby. But if there’s an accident, we’ll just give them a ride to the next town.


KLEFT:
You’re going to evacuate the City of Milwaukee? Where are they going to move to?


BIXBY:
I don’t know. Chicago. What’s the difference? These people are making a big deal over nothing.


KLEFT:
Thousands of pounds of nuclear waste isn’t nothing. No one wants it in the area where it’s generated and Nevada refuses to accept everybody else’s.


BIXBY:
You know your problem? You worry too much. We’re working on the nuclear waste thing. We’re going to make it into charcoal briquettes. It’ll be fine.


KLEFT:
You’re going to set fire to....You expect me to support this in my testimony?


BIXBY:
No, no, no. Just say you know people are working on it. And soft-pedal the whole terrorism thing. No way can terrorists take over a nuclear power plant. How could they even get in? The padlock they put on the gate outside is always locked after hours. Always. I saw a picture of one of them once.


KLEFT:
I can’t soft-pedal the possibility of sabotage. And Iran and North Korea used nuclear reactor development as an excuse to acquire uranium and weapons grade plutonium.


BIXBY:
You’re killing us with this. You can’t say that. You absolutely can’t say anything about that.


KLEFT:
I’m a scientist. What do you expect me to say?


BIXBY:
Let’s start again. Did you get that pamphlet I sent you about the Culture of Life?