Tangential: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/07/nuclear-regulatory-c...
GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
51–60 of 188 posts
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#52Sure, but has anyone ever built a container that lasts 30k years, and remains watertight? Thus far, most off-site containment storage sites over 10 years old have failed to stop containment leaks, Radon gas diffusion, or hot-material fires. Fission reactors are a 1950's loss-leader technology, and only make sense for already uninhabitable areas like space. =3
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The living, and sometimes those dying from lung cancer. =3
edit: Please don't down peoples karma for being crass. If it was a honest question they deserve an honest answer.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've already leached too much uranium into the groundwater for many to drink just from the mining alone.
We’ve also already depleted many aquifers past the point of recovery. We have too many people to hydrate, too many crops to water in order to feed them, and not enough water. At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy. Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.
We're also not even attempting to be smart about our water usage, particularly when it comes to agriculture. Growing crops in a desert that require significant amounts of water to grow is already pretty bad, then exporting the bulk of those crops overseas adds insult to injury.
Of course, all that is made possible by our pants-on-head stupid water rights laws.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#54Ouch. Two billion dollars. That could have been put into much better use, imagine being able to fund the Iran war for one more day.
It's funny how this kind of pricing works. A bag of weed captured is estimated at a thousand dollars. Ten movies pirated at twice that. We fire a JASSM in combat and it costs a lot of money. We fire it in training and it costs nothing. There is no financial impact estimated to require all elevators be big enough to turn a full length gurney around. A wealth tax will yield revenue for the next thirty years at 30 times what it will yield this year. $6.6 billion will end world hunger but $100 billion is better spent on a train between Bakersfield and Fresno.
I bought my car for $32k. To replace it would be $50k. I crash it, am I out $32k or $50k? Or some other number? Numerically, it could be anything.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've already leached too much uranium into the groundwater for many to drink just from the mining alone.
Wait till you find out how much uranium there is in coal ash and how many tons a year are put in the air or dumped into ground water. Both the ash and uranium tailings are in the 50ppm range, but we make 100Mt per year of one of them and basically no uranium tailings in the US. Globally, the ratio is over 1Gt of coal ash and 10-20Mt of uranium tailings. One is currently a problem, the other isn't.
Let's also not forget how much fresh water has been ruined with fracking
"Nuclear fission: the worst energy source, except for almost all the other ones"
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've already leached too much uranium into the groundwater for many to drink just from the mining alone.
We’ve also already depleted many aquifers past the point of recovery. We have too many people to hydrate, too many crops to water in order to feed them, and not enough water. At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy. Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.
> Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.
I suspect what we'll actually do is what we always do. Innovate our way into a higher standard of living while simultaneously elevating the poorest people out of poverty and finding novel ways to feed, clothe and house our population.
It's funny how persistent malthusians are in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've just blindly asserted a whole bunch of things without laying out any sort of supporting arguments. What exactly makes the GAO not "part of the executive branch" ? My understanding is that "branches" are merely a framework used for describing government, not a prescriptive org chart. And how do the GAO's employees get paid, if not by a system that is now under the control of the autocratic Executive?
The branches are explicitly defined in the Constitution.
What we consider an the branches are defined in the Constitution, but my point is they are not simply defined as the top-level in a hierarchy of organizations, but rather behaviorally based on what function is being performed.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> GAO is a Congressional agency, it does not fall under the Executive Ah ah ah, you're describing how things were before Trump v. Slaughter, when the Supreme Court justices ruled that Republican Presidents are allowed to fire the heads of non-executive agencies so long as they are not the Federal Reserve.
You must have missed the Chevron doctrine case where the supreme court took much of the ability for Congress to give away their power to the executive in the guise of creating agencies.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 wou…
The presumption of regularity here is a joke. This administration has grifted swindled no-bid awarded and bought out anything they please with reckless abandon, Vought is actively Project 2025 shutting done any and everything not run by the most fanatical political operatives. It's impossible to pretend like any agencies are functioning in any way as normal, are using objective scientific expert based assessments to…
I don't necessarily think you're wrong but I do think it's a non sequitur. The broader geopolitical and economic situation surrounding the advent of AI and datacenters has approximately nothing to do with the way the most recent US election went.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair this was all happening before, just 10x less. And the current minority party was often willing to ignore it when it was their people doing it. So yes it's bad on a generational scale and we might never recover from it, but we also have to admit that we are reaping the fruit of a bipartisan-sown seed.
The previous party left opposition party people in power many times. Which, like, is how the US has worked for a century and a half. It was not a spoils system, in 98% of cases. This is pure spoils. In a way America has never remotely seen ever before. Utter rankest most foul spoils, nothing but pure politics, with essentially no moderators.
The point is that this method of grift isn't new or partisan. The magnitude is what is new.
Government contracts have been awarded to people with connections since forever. It's absolutely nothing new. There's just no fog leaf now, Trump skips the part where he's pretending it was a fair bidding process.