What's Getting Cut From Science Part of the Federal Budget

Kristina at Science News writes "As part of the announcement of its proposed fiscal year 2010 budget, the Obama administration released a summary (called 'Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2010') that includes which science-related programs are getting cut. Two big programs are the nuclear waste storage project at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and a second prototype airborne laser missile-defense weapon." Update: 05/07 23:03 GMT by T : On the other hand, reader Dusty writes, "The NASA budget for 2010 has been announced, up 5% on 2009. Human space flight plans to be reviewed."

Comments

Yucca Mountain

[LordKazan]

They found a fault runs right under Yucca Mountain anyway.. isn't exactly a good site for storage anymore anyway.

"n September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath a storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels. The discovery required several structures to be moved several hundred feet further to the east, and drew criticism from Robert R. Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, who argues that Yucca administrators should have known about the fault line's location years prior, and called the movement of the structures "just-in-time engineering."[8][9]

In June 2008, a major nuclear equipment supplier, Holtec International, criticized the Department of Energy's safety plan for handling containers of radioactive waste before they are buried at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. The concern is that, in an earthquake, the unanchored casks of nuclear waste material awaiting burial at Yucca Mountain could be sent into a "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_mountain#Earthquakes

Re:A good thing

[Daniel Dvorkin]

STFU, you dumbass liberal wacko. It is those guns, bombers and soon particle weapons that allow you to be able to freely post things on sites like this. Every one LESS of those things is one more step towards a fascist, socialist slave future for all of us.

[snicker]

GPP was a take-off on a well-known quote:

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Who said that? Well, that would be that well-known dumbass liberal socialist fascist wacko, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Re:A good thing

[dimeglio]

I was paraphrasing this guy:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
        Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Re:I highly disagree with General Eisenhower

[Planesdragon]

According to IRS statistics, the bottom 40% of Americans have no income tax liability. They pay no federal taxes. Zip, zero, nada. Yet the warships, guns, missiles, etc, are paid for with federal tax dollars.

*ahem*.

Except for all of the following:

1: Social Security Tax they pay.
1a: the SS tax their EMPLOYER pays on their behalf.
2: Transaction Fees
3: The FICA they pay out of EITC
4: The taxes that their EMPLOYER pays on the wealth this employee generates in excess of his wages.

So, yeah, aside from all those, the working poor pay no taxes.

Re:I highly disagree with General Eisenhower

[internic]

According to IRS statistics, the bottom 40% of Americans have no income tax liability. They pay no federal taxes. Zip, zero, nada.

Citation please? The thing is, that as a graduate student I fall into that bottom 40% in income, and I most certainly do pay federal (and state) taxes. Other graduate students I've talked to on the issue pay taxes as well. Given the size of the standard deduction, I can't see how anyone without dependents who made much more than $10,000/yr could avoid paying some taxes (except in select cases, like running a home business in the red).