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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

#71

Post by pinkmuffinere »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #48

nuclear clean up is a joke. The emissions from chinas coal burning plants is 10000000000000000000000000000000000000 times worse than chucking nuclear waste in the desert at random

> The emissions from chinas coal burning plants is 10000000000000000000000000000000000000 times worse than chucking nuclear waste in the desert at random

I don't think you're wrong per-se, but I think your claim could be simplified to "the impact of the common alternatives are 1000000000000000 times worse than nuclear waste"

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

#72

Post by dnnehgf »

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…

good list.

if you were to send me an article containing a new one of these each day, with citations, i would pay you $1 per day.

but if you were to send me an article containing a new one of these each day, with citations, plus a bunch of econ theory rationalizing it, i would pay you $0.

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

#73

Post by autoexec »

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…

A very small number of people are taking (and often wasting) the majority of the worlds wealth and resources and harming everyone else in the process. We could probably stave off that decline for a lot longer if we did something about the leeches accelerating our collapse.

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

#74

Post by jauntywundrkind »

parineum wrote: post #60
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many orders of magnitude do you need to recognize a distinction? I think it's just silly ridiculous nonsense to say this is "just" orders of magnitude difference. At what point do we accept or not accept what feels like the most irrelevant smokescreen cover excuse?

Maybe there is a 0.0001% resemblance to the past? But trying to chase whether it's 4, 6, or 11 orders of magnitude (based on the billions thrown around I think it's actually more orders of magnitude by a lot) is obfuscating that this is a colossal step change that looks nothing remotely in any way like the past and that we had rules and some checks and balances through bipartisan non-president controlled institutions in the past, through administrator appointments that were somewhat bipartisan.

The bad hasn't even really hit yet. The Supreme Court just made this so much worse, with a president able to fire administrators, to the degree where they lack required concensus the operate at all, but where it's not possible for a congress without dual majority to get people in to office. You need both the president and all Congress to govern, but anyone can de-govern & tear down institutions freely. A Republican Project 2025 wet dream, to destroy the state & never let it regenerate at all. What scum. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/07/supreme-court-do...

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

#75

Post by autoexec »

zdragnar wrote: post #28
mindslight wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GAO is a Congressional agency, it does not fall under the Executive I don't know that it's accurate to say such things any more, due to the unitary executive decree by the supreme council. The GAO is intrinsically motivated by law - both to carry out its purpose, and simply to pay its employees - and the supreme council has decreed that all execution of the law is subject to the whims of the president. If the presi…

They aren't part of the executive branch, period. The president has no control over their pay or performance. Hell, the president doesn't have nearly as much control over the executive branch as you imply, however much he might want it.

> They aren't part of the executive branch, period. The president has no control over their pay or performance.

They are run by the comptroller general who is appointed by the president meaning that the president has total control over who gets paid anything at all. Right now ours is just an "Acting Comptroller General" filling in until the president appoints someone else.

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

#76

Post by Joel_Mckay »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #69
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 ha…

Mostly, it is the same naive lies we have all heard dozens of times before in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHuX-Gbenc

Also, the billions of dollars boondoggle reactor projects that never delivered is a hard sell. "Trust me bro" isn't enough anymore. lol =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc

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

#77

Post by jlarocco »

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

I think storing nuclear waste was decided to be a bad idea a long time ago.

I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I was under the impression that if something is radioactive enough to be a hazard then it's radioactive enough to generate power.

Is that not the case?

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

#78

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #76
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ha…

Mostly, it is the same naive lies we have all heard dozens of times before in the past. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHuX-Gbenc Also, the billions of dollars boondoggle reactor projects that never delivered is a hard sell. "Trust me bro" isn't enough anymore. lol =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc

None of it is lies. The CANDU reactors Canada has been operating for decades can run on spent fuel from legacy reactors and China actually uses them that way. The US hasn't built any of them, or any of the other designs that can do the same thing, in significant part because people keep presenting the circular reasoning that we shouldn't build newer reactors without dealing with nuclear waste when we should be dealing with nuclear waste by building newer reactors.

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

#79

Post by Joel_Mckay »

jlarocco wrote: post #77
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

I think storing nuclear waste was decided to be a bad idea a long time ago. I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I was under the impression that if something is radioactive enough to be a hazard then it's radioactive enough to generate power. Is that not the case?

A brand new Uranium fuel pellet is often safe to hold with gloved hands for a moment.

Spent fuel with complex decay isotopes must be kept under deep cooling pools with criticality control precautions. From a chemistry perspective, complex isotope products like Plutonium are more obscure to evolutionary biology, so it is often much more dangerous even in accidental trace exposures.

I am just a sentient turnip that prefers distributed Solar products. Have a great day =3

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

#80

Post by Joel_Mckay »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #78
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly, it is the same naive lies we have all heard dozens of times before in the past. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHuX-Gbenc Also, the billions of dollars boondoggle reactor projects that never delivered is a hard sell. "Trust me bro" isn't enough anymore. lol =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc

None of it is lies. The CANDU reactors Canada has been operating for decades can run on spent fuel from legacy reactors and China actually uses them that way. The US hasn't built any of them, or any of the other designs that can do the same thing, in significant part because people keep presenting the circular reasoning that we shouldn't build newer reactors without dealing with nuclear waste when we should be dealin…

Indeed, Canada was also indirectly responsible for many Nuclear weapons proliferation issues in North Korea, India, and Pakistan. Selling small research reactors to emerging economies had long-term consequences.

As a side note, the CANDU are famously bad designs known to develop heavy maintenance costs even to remain operational. Yes these can run on garbage fuel, but only because other designs could never tolerate such waste.

It is a teachable moment about legacy designs having unintended benefits as well. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNQu_3VQYAE

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