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GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
111–120 of 188 posts
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#112Sure, 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
> most off-site containment storage sites over 10 years old have failed to stop containment leaks
There's nothing obvious I could find that I could find that would confirm it. Could you cite something?
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 y…
Some disjointed thoughts of mine on this topic: Some people have to adjust their mortgage in order to pay property taxes. Most people pay property taxes out of their income. What percentage of Americans, especially home-owning Americans, have more wealth in the stock market than in their home? Property tax has the positive effect of encouraging efficient land usage and discouraging speculation and rent seeking. Is th…
>What percentage of Americans, especially home-owning Americans, have more wealth in the stock market than in their home?
I'd guess about half of those over 50 and under 70. It is all locked in IRA, 401k, and pensions where they can't get at it, but that is where most middle class and upper middle class keep their wealth.
Half of those under 50 are on track to have the majority of their wealth be in a retirement fund by the time they are 50 as well.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#114sorry there is absolutely no federal agency that has not been compromised at this point you'd have to prove to me that Russell Vought has not tampered with an agency for any statement emerging to be believed even jobs numbers are not believed by wallstreet anymore and surpreme court has now said only Fed is off limits to protect their own money redo this report in 2029
If you've believed all the government data for the last 10 or 15 years I got a bridge for sale. It's one of those things like, yes, it's WAY more difficult than I think most people realize to arrive at numbers (be it employment, price indexes, etc), but it's also something that demonstrably can be done. It's like "space is hard", yes, but rocket companies still rightfully get flak if they can't perform.
Also, for what it's worth, it's a global phenomenon. China's numbers have always been almost wholly manufactured, but to be fair to them that was intentional. Across the West there's been a slow eroding of quality that they didn't intend necessarily, but has just been the effect of focusing on anything beyond pure merit in hiring and accuracy in measurement. Focus softened at exactly the time COVID made things more difficult, and the focus has only got worse. Ex: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/06/30/treasury-dit... Yeah that's going to work out great.
That said, I think GAO and CBO both do decent jobs at extremely thankless tasks. They both produce research and recommendations that are typically sound but get ignored by Congress 99.99% of the time.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#115Ouch. 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…
> $6.6 billion will end world hunger
My understanding is that the only places that are starving is places like Gaza and South Sudan which are poor and actively under attack. Do you have a source for how we can spend <$10b and solve world hunger?
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 y…
> Apple stock is ~0.4%, a 0.8%/year wealth tax would triple the number of sellers without adding any new buyers
Only if the tax had to be paid in US dollars. But it could just as easily be paid in Apple stock. The government doesn't have to sell the stock. It could keep it (disallow voting shares by law) and spend the dividends.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Is that assuming the tax money is going into the void? I agree it might force roughly 0.8% of shares to be sold in a given year. But as to not adding any new buyers: no one's being forced to buy stock in the same way, but shouldn't someone be getting the money and potentiall…
Although the argument does look fundamentally reasonable, I think its biggest weakness is it doesn't make an attempt to prioritise - yes taxes always make someone better off. So does wealth. A decision has to be made. Which is more valuable? We've got a highly reliable and effective system for working that out (aka the free market economy) and no alternative in 2nd place that doesn't typically lead to mass starvation…
> The people behind wealth taxes generally handwave explaining how their system will be better at allocating than the people who make a living of allocating wealth effectively because it is all just obvious that it doesn't need to be justified. Poor people will get more money if rich people have less, duh, QED.
Even your straw man version of this argument is pretty convincing to me alongside graphs showing the extent to which our inequality is growing. https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/ see the "The Top .01% Don't Pay Their Fair Share as They Hoard More Wealth" graph in particular.
This is more a disagreement of values than facts, I think. Some people see the richest man's net worth go from $100B to >$1T and think he deserves that for starting these companies, and taking any of it from him is class warfare. Others think that rich people's pissing contests and lifestyles would be essentially the same if their wealth capped out at say $100B instead, we're morally obligated to use that money to try to meet Americans' basic needs, and using other's taxpayer dollars to allow him to reach those heights (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that>) is class warfare.
High marginal income taxes (it was 91% in 1963, 70% until 1981, there's your compelling case where they turned out to be right, inequality was not growing then like it is now) or a wealth tax are not the same as Soviet style socialism. They still give an incentive for entrepreneurs, innovators, and hard workers.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Is that assuming the tax money is going into the void? I agree it might force roughly 0.8% of shares to be sold in a given year. But as to not adding any new buyers: no one's being forced to buy stock in the same way, but shouldn't someone be getting the money and potentiall…
Although the argument does look fundamentally reasonable, I think its biggest weakness is it doesn't make an attempt to prioritise - yes taxes always make someone better off. So does wealth. A decision has to be made. Which is more valuable? We've got a highly reliable and effective system for working that out (aka the free market economy) and no alternative in 2nd place that doesn't typically lead to mass starvation…
> We've got a highly reliable and effective system for working that out (aka the free market economy) and no alternative in 2nd place that doesn't typically lead to mass starvation because someone underestimated how much food was needed.
This is an absolutely wild comparison. The choice is not "everything is purely market forces" vs "everything is centrally planned". We have all kinds of implementations across the world that have different systems.
> The people behind wealth taxes generally handwave explaining how their system will be better at allocating than the people who make a living of allocating wealth effectively
They have different targets though surely? The effective part here is that for one group it's getting more into the hands of the less well off, or funding (say) schools, healthcare, etc. The effective part for someone else is making a single person or family richer.
> So far no compelling cases where they've turned out to be right. If they could do a better job, why even allow private wealth at all?
Because utility is not linear. It is entirely reasonable to assume that the very extreme ends of a scale are not likely the most beneficial under almost any measure. If wealth getting concentrated is so good, why not only allow one person to have everything? See how odd that seems?
It is not surprising to me that it's a good idea overall to let people benefit from figuring out how to do things that people want.
It is also not surprising to me that it can be a good idea to take some of that benefit, and use it to do some of the following
* Alleviate suffering * Long term planning/research to benefit all and speed up progress * Core infrastructure that everybody benefits from but is hard to structure with pure market forces
For example, companies benefit from an educated workforce - are they individually going to fund schooling for young kids?
The goal is to try and hit some of those other things while not discouraging people too much from doing the things we want.
> taxes always make someone better off. So does wealth. A decision has to be made.
Sure. So we could ask, say, can we compare educating 500 children for 12 years vs Taylor Swifts net worth going from $2.1B to $2B? How much would she be hurt and how much would other benefit? What would be the impact if she was slightly less wealthy?
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#119This isn't about radioactivity at all. It's about the millions of pounds of mercury used at the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge,[1] resulting in a lot of low-level mercury contamination. [1] https://ehss.energy.gov/ohre/new/findingaids/epidemiologic/o...
It's highly likely that the waste is mixed waste, meaning rad + mercury. Much tougher to treat than just rad or mercury.
Re: GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
#120This 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.
To play devil's advocate, the counter argument is that it's always easy to advocate for more process, and cherry pick examples to support that conclusion. The actual report basically says that the DOE already requires that they "should identify a need without having a particular solution already in mind", so it is really just an argument that people should follow the written guidelines, and add more process to make s…
That's about what I would expect from an organization named Government Accountability Office: hold the government accountable to its written guidelines (or at least report on how well it's doing at meeting them).