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GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

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Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#11

Post by dakolli »

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #7
dakolli wrote: post #6

A bunch of these nuclear power startups have started reached criticality over the last week. Aalo and Valar (thiel) and now GAO is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal.. Makes sense. Weird how we only get green energy when it's necessary for the technocratic class to power their data centers (and when they are small enough to be flown on location for the military, so the military can destroy a n…

Isn’t it a fairly natural (and useful) capitalist outcome that as prices rise incentives to increase supply increase? What’s technocratic about responding to a demand change?

because they have infiltrated the government to reduce the cost of safety, and increase the possibility of environmental harm to pad their margins... faster shit code, AI cat videos and so they can add 100ft to the length of their next boat?

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#12

Post by [deleted] »

Jtsummers wrote: post #9
dakolli wrote: post #6

A bunch of these nuclear power startups have started reached criticality over the last week. Aalo and Valar (thiel) and now GAO is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal.. Makes sense. Weird how we only get green energy when it's necessary for the technocratic class to power their data centers (and when they are small enough to be flown on location for the military, so the military can destroy a n…

> now "doge" (GAO) GAO is not DOGE. For those who don't know the difference between the two, confusing them is about like confusing the President with the Senate. GAO is a Congressional agency, it does not fall under the Executive. Its purpose is in its name, and it does a pretty good job of it. It also cannot, on its own (unlike how DOGE was empowered) effect any change. They can only conduct studies and make recomm…

[deleted]

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#13

Post by zer00eyz »

dakolli wrote: post #6

A bunch of these nuclear power startups have started reached criticality over the last week. Aalo and Valar (thiel) and now GAO is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal.. Makes sense. Weird how we only get green energy when it's necessary for the technocratic class to power their data centers (and when they are small enough to be flown on location for the military, so the military can destroy a n…

> is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal

And here lies the problem that ever one wants to burry their head in the sand about.

Can one, in theory, make safe nuclear reactors. You bet you can.

The thing is that you cant leave a bunch of "we will deal with that later" problems laying around. In the case of the US thats spent fuel rods. Should one worry about these, no, but you also don't want them as the slats on your kids mattress frame. They are fine where they are.

The French, because of fuel constraints, built fuel reprocessing into their nuclear "system" (and it is that, a whole system). We just leave spent fuel sitting around as a "later problem", because for us, its just much cheaper to mine and refine more uranium than it is to clean up the "spent" fuel we have.

The moment that you need to build in reprocessing (and solve that pesky later problem) the economics of nuclear stop making sense.

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#14

Post by payphonefiend »

Jtsummers wrote: post #9
dakolli wrote: post #6

A bunch of these nuclear power startups have started reached criticality over the last week. Aalo and Valar (thiel) and now GAO is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal.. Makes sense. Weird how we only get green energy when it's necessary for the technocratic class to power their data centers (and when they are small enough to be flown on location for the military, so the military can destroy a n…

> now "doge" (GAO) GAO is not DOGE. For those who don't know the difference between the two, confusing them is about like confusing the President with the Senate. GAO is a Congressional agency, it does not fall under the Executive. Its purpose is in its name, and it does a pretty good job of it. It also cannot, on its own (unlike how DOGE was empowered) effect any change. They can only conduct studies and make recomm…

A sane and well put together comment. Thank you. This should be the standard for discussion here.

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#16

Post by fc417fc802 »

dakolli wrote: post #11
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it a fairly natural (and useful) capitalist outcome that as prices rise incentives to increase supply increase? What’s technocratic about responding to a demand change?

because they have infiltrated the government to reduce the cost of safety, and increase the possibility of environmental harm to pad their margins... faster shit code, AI cat videos and so they can add 100ft to the length of their next boat?

> infiltrated the government

That's an awfully emotionally charged way to phrase "lobbied in the same way that everyone else does". When a matter of geopolitical interest that's consuming a significant fraction of the national economy is being impeded by the current regulations it seems entirely expected that the government would start making changes. If anything refusing to make changes under those circumstances would be truly bizarre.

Sure at present they also have a substantially more sympathetic admin than usual but that's the current climate that everyone is working in.

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#17

Post by Terr_ »

Jtsummers wrote: post #9
dakolli wrote: post #6

A bunch of these nuclear power startups have started reached criticality over the last week. Aalo and Valar (thiel) and now GAO is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal.. Makes sense. Weird how we only get green energy when it's necessary for the technocratic class to power their data centers (and when they are small enough to be flown on location for the military, so the military can destroy a n…

> now "doge" (GAO) GAO is not DOGE. For those who don't know the difference between the two, confusing them is about like confusing the President with the Senate. GAO is a Congressional agency, it does not fall under the Executive. Its purpose is in its name, and it does a pretty good job of it. It also cannot, on its own (unlike how DOGE was empowered) effect any change. They can only conduct studies and make recomm…

I suspect parent-poster simply intended to write OMB [0] instead. Perhaps because both initialisms [1] refer to government groups that sometimes publish important reports about budgets.

[0] https://prospect.org/2026/02/05/doge-russell-vought-elon-mus...

[1] Pedantically: Not acronyms, which are spoken like a full word. Ex: FIFA is usually an acronym "feefah", not an initialism "Eff-Eye-Eff-Aye".

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#18

Post by fc417fc802 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #13
dakolli wrote: post #6

A bunch of these nuclear power startups have started reached criticality over the last week. Aalo and Valar (thiel) and now GAO is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal.. Makes sense. Weird how we only get green energy when it's necessary for the technocratic class to power their data centers (and when they are small enough to be flown on location for the military, so the military can destroy a n…

> is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal And here lies the problem that ever one wants to burry their head in the sand about. Can one, in theory, make safe nuclear reactors. You bet you can. The thing is that you cant leave a bunch of "we will deal with that later" problems laying around. In the case of the US thats spent fuel rods. Should one worry about these, no, but you also don't want them…

Whether or not waste is reprocessed there will be high level waste that needs to be disposed of. It's merely a matter of volume produced per unit of energy. Either approach is entirely reasonable.

The inability of the US to formally approve a permanent disposal site is purely political. Still, at this point enough other countries have managed to do so that we might eventually be able to pay to export our waste to one of them instead of solving our own dysfunction.

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#19

Post by LoganDark »

anonym29 wrote: post #5
falcor84 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both?

I can think of about 39 trillion reasons... https://www.usdebtclock.org/

How do I get rid of the weird popup that wants me to download a pdf?

Edit: there's a button in the top-right that says "Secret Window"

Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup

#20

Post by jjk166 »

This is an excellent example of how to communicate investigation findings. The summary is clear and succinct, there are illustrative examples readily understood by a layman, the recommendations are actionable and unambiguous, and the potential impact is quantified without promising some stupidly precise estimate. I've got some customers whose quality auditors could learn a lot from this.
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