GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by sorosnet » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 3:16 AM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44

Jtsummers wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

[dead]

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

#62

Post by tencentshill » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 3:23 AM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #42

bobmcnamara wrote: post #37

Earlier 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.

Solar energy is abundant in the places desalination is most needed. The market will balance out once that becomes apparent to constituents. They will vote to fund solar, politics are only a temporary impediment.

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

#63

Post by Joel_Mckay » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 3:40 AM UTC

butvacuum wrote: post #46

bobmcnamara wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've already leached too much uranium into the groundwater for many to drink just from the mining alone.

and we've collected enough arsenic from a single mine to kill every human on the planet 300 times over in one spot- what's your point? That because we screwed up one spot we should give up? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Mine

Not sure why people buried your post, but many water-soluble metal salts are pretty toxic to animals and people.

In areas with natural Arsenic accumulation (or Acid rain run off), farmers will sometimes place rusting iron equipment in the water ways to reduce metals accumulating in the topsoil.

With low rainfall the evaporated well-water problem can certainly be a serious concern. =3

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

#64

Post by Joel_Mckay » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 3:44 AM UTC

parineum wrote: post #56

iamnothere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evide…

Seems more plausible given current trends. lol =3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

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

#65

Post by iamnothere » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

parineum wrote: post #56

iamnothere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evide…

We’ll see what that looks like in the face of demographic decline and increasingly expensive oil.

It’s possible that some kind of technological miracle rescues us, but it seems more likely to me that we follow the pattern of catabolic collapse seen in the Bronze Age, Easter Island, and Europe in the Dark Ages. Civilization may rebound, sure, but humans have a history of overextension followed by decline (as do all animals).

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

#66

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 4:11 AM UTC

arjie wrote: post #54

actionfromafar wrote: post #3

Ouch. 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…

> A wealth tax will yield revenue for the next thirty years at 30 times what it will yield this year.

Isn't this the opposite of how a wealth tax works? The annual turnover for e.g. Apple stock is ~0.4%, so a 0.8%/year wealth tax would triple the number of sellers without adding any new buyers. The negative effect on the price is outsized because most people hold long-term rather than buying or selling in any given year, but now people have to liquidate some every year in order to pay the government because you're taxing unrealized gains. And then because "wealth" is calculated as share price times number of shares, when the share price goes down, everyone's "wealth" goes down and with it next year's revenue from a wealth tax.

There would be some limits on that in terms of the compounding negative effect on the share price because (among other things) if the price went down then foreign investors would find it more attractive to buy in and then they're not subject to the tax and don't have to sell every year to pay it, but causing more of the market to be owned by foreign rather than domestic taxpayers over time is also not a thing which leads to stable domestic tax revenue.

> $6.6 billion will end world hunger but $100 billion is better spent on a train between Bakersfield and Fresno.

The current UN estimate is more like $100 billion a year to end world hunger, whereas the initial build of a rail line is a one-time cost.

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

#67

Post by Joel_Mckay » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 4:17 AM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #65

parineum wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 evide…

We’ll see what that looks like in the face of demographic decline and increasingly expensive oil. It’s possible that some kind of technological miracle rescues us, but it seems more likely to me that we follow the pattern of catabolic collapse seen in the Bronze Age, Easter Island, and Europe in the Dark Ages. Civilization may rebound, sure, but humans have a history of overextension followed by decline (as do all an…

If pituitary driven impulse models are representative, than current trends of exploiting generations is provably unsustainable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c

I wouldn't worry about it, and have a wonderful day. =3

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

#68

Post by mindslight » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 4:18 AM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #30

mindslight wrote: post #29

Earlier 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?

> What exactly makes the GAO not "part of the executive branch" ? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/702 >> (a)The Government Accountability Office is an instrumentality of the United States Government independent of the executive departments. The law establishing it also establishes it as independent.

Sure, that is what is written down. But as a necessary part of its operation, there is a whole lot of executive power being exercised as well, which the unitary executive theory says would fall under the authority of the president.

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

#69

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 4:25 AM UTC

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #31

Sure, 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

> Sure, but has anyone ever built a container that lasts 30k years, and remains watertight?

Why are people still proposing this antiquated 20th century storage technology instead of just building the newer reactor types that not only don't have this problem but are the best way to get rid of the long-lived isotopes we already have from 20th century reactor designs?

The answer to what you do with isotopes with long half lives is that you put them in a reactor that turns them into isotopes with shorter half lives.

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

#70

Post by autoexec » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #42

bobmcnamara wrote: post #37

Earlier 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.

> At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy.

We'll also need somewhere to put all that salt. It'd be best to stop the largest wastes of the clean water that we have. We have plenty of water for people and food. We just have to stop the wasteful practices of industry and force them to be more efficient and responsible even though it will eat into their profits.