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AP Investigation Concludes US Nuke Regulators Weakening Safety Rules
Raenex writes "An investigation by the Associated Press has found a pattern of safety regulations being relaxed in order to keep aging nuclear power plants running. According to their investigation, when reactor parts fail or systems fall out of compliance with the rules, studies are conducted by the industry and government. The studies conclude that existing standards are 'unnecessarily conservative.' Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance. From the article: 'Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards. Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes — all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP's yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.'"
It's not just nuke plants. U.S. infrastructure in general has been sinking into the shitter since the 70's. My own city's sewer system and coal-fire power plant are both in need of almost complete replacement. And don't even get me started on the bridges.
Of course, the deterioration of some pieces of infrastructure are a little more dangerous than others.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Some people are concerned about waste (which is a good thing to be concerned about) and some are concerned about accidents.
I am concerned about regulatory capture, which is the consistent theme of government regulation. This is just one example of many. Yes, it will lead to accidents in the future. But I think examining the root cause is useful.
Almost any kind of government regulation is eventually going to result in the regulatory body being co-opted by those doing the regulation. This will happen largely invisibly, and most of the time will only be readily apparent when disaster strikes. And then, the problem will be blamed on a few corrupt individuals and it will be 'fixed'.
It, of couse, was systemic, and not the result of a few corrupt individuals. And all that will be fixed is perception while the problem continues to persist. We see this in the oil industry, the telecommunications industry, and now we're seeing that the same is true of the nuclear industry.
Of course, this was a problem in Japan too. It's quite obvious that the company running the Fukishima reactors consistently understated the severity of the issue while it was happening, and I expect that a detailed investigation will show that the plants should probably never have been operating in the first place.
Regulatory capture. It's inevitable.
This is my biggest worry. I'm not at all sure how the problem can be fixed either.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'd guess NYC but you're describing every other major city just as well.
I do not have a sig. You are hallucinating.
Profits > Safety
Safety > Freedom
Ergo...
Profits > Freedom
Clearly this is what the founders intended
What the hell do you expect when the regulatory bodies are hostile to licensing new plants, which would use newer, safer designs and technologies, and when they do deign to license one they smother it in enough red tape to quadruple the cost?
Reading: zero.
This is the result of the "invisible hand" in regards to projects so overwhelmingly expensive that they're too big to fail for the stakeholders.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Look on the bright side: At least the bankers and defense contractors are doing OK...
No sig today...
Come on...
"busted seals"
Is this what we have come to? Hello, AP?
This is the norm through the "developed" world. I guess it is referred to as developed since anything new is not going to be built anymore. We just sit on the labor of our parents and grandparents, reaping rewards and then bitch that stuff breaks.
It is time to start building new things and planning for the future. New reactors. New, fast rail. Better planned cities. Cities that are less noisy and more friendly to actual human than a car (eg. see Paris or New York vs. Chicago or Los Angeles).
your premise, that capture is inevitable, is false in my opinion. If regulating bodies are/were properly funded this would not be the case. The problem is to fund them properly, the governement would have to pay the regulators more than they would get in the industry itself. That is how you prevent losee of people to the industry and thus create minimal conflict of interest.
Actually by doing this you reverse the flow, making being the regulator the end goal, so that the best in the field are regulators.
The problem of course is the cost is really high for this. Especially in areas such as finance.
Of course, the deterioration of some pieces of infrastructure are a little more dangerous than others.
And this, not waste disposal, not nuclear proliferation, not anything else, will be the functional death of nuclear power.
FTFA:
Commercial nuclear reactors in the United States were designed and licensed for 40 years. When the first ones were being built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before those licenses expired.
But that never happened. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, massive cost overruns, crushing debt and high interest rates ended new construction proposals for several decades.
Instead, 66 of the 104 operating units have been relicensed for 20 more years, mostly with scant public attention. Renewal applications are under review for 16 other reactors.
No engineer in their right mind would have suggested keeping generation 1 nuclear plants running 'forever'. Perhaps they could be run for long times with strict attention to detail and risk and significant monetary expense, but that's not happening. This is not going to end well. Not at all.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Folks, this is why we need to find a way to pay for true investigative journalism. This sort of thing is NOT going to be uncovered by crowdsourced reports or bloggers with (other, non-journalist) day jobs and bills to pay. Wikileaks relys on insiders having a motive for revealing information; there are merits to that method but it doesn't cover all cases.
Those of you complaining about how journalism is crap, this is an example of non-crap journalism.
I don't know a great way of funding journalism like this. The Associated Press is funded by member newspapers who use their stories in the local papers. No one is paying for the local papers because of Google News and the like, so if those papers go under, AP's funding is probably in some jeopardy over the next 5-10 years. I would be fine with paying the AP directly somehow, but I still don't see a means of making that work.
Sometimes, this is what engineering is about. When faced with a difficult problem, sometimes the design solution is rewrite the problem. It's a fact of life. Conservatism is the easy side to fall on when you write requirements. The time and effort it would take to write just-conservative enough requirements doesn't justify the cost of doing so. With equipment built and in-place, it is now worth the time to find out what you really need.
And yes, I realized there is a flip-side to going to far with this. But that's why we pay engineers - to make tough decisions when money, equipment, and lives are on the line. -- www.awkwardengineer.com
your premise, that capture is inevitable, is false in my opinion. If regulating bodies are/were properly funded this would not be the case. The problem is to fund them properly, the governement would have to pay the regulators more than they would get in the industry itself. That is how you prevent losee of people to the industry and thus create minimal conflict of interest.
Actually by doing this you reverse the flow, making being the regulator the end goal, so that the best in the field are regulators.
The problem of course is the cost is really high for this. Especially in areas such as finance.
Regulatory capture is not so much about a revolving door between industry and regulator as about how companies use regulation for their benefit and to keep out competition. While paying regulators more would help lessen the revolving door it would not do much about the underlying reasons behind regulatory capture. You'd just have better regulators to capture.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Look on the bright side: At least the bankers and defense contractors are doing OK...
Yeah, and they provide "jobs", you ungrateful peons, so shut your pie holes, or we're going to send another two million of them to China.
The biggest issue is ultimately the short sighted consumer (read: voter) who wants everything and as cheaply as possible...
If there were a real market for clean safe energy that cost twice the amount of regular juice someone would supply the demand. Same thing with sweat shops producing our clothing, electronics, everything. Humans aren't ultimately that smart.
Yes, I'm cynical. But also an idealist. Maybe one day we'll learn?
.: Max Romantschuk
Important safety tip: Don't cross the streams!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Regulatory agencies once had teeth for the purpose of enforcing their regulations. We have been seeing this with other agencies such as the FCC which ruled that activities which violate net neutrality are prohibited. Not long after that, we see other government rule that the FCC has no authority over the internet.
And since nuclear power is in the forefront of the news for now, people are noticing the same happens in nuclear power. Big business doesn't want to reinvest its profits back into the company and wants to take them home with them instead. They complain to regulators saying "we can't afford this!" Most regulators are powerless to do anything but rule based on the policies and standards they have to work with. So they "appeal" the matter with senators and congressmen who make phone calls to other peoples' bosses who, in turn, arrange to have policy match the current situation forgetting that these regulations and requirements are designed to prevent horrible disasters.
I think the people who are willing to put the public at risk should also be required to live among that same public so they and their families can suffer the same disasters as the rest of us.
http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/06/17/rumors-and-the-rising-river/
-Bill
Isn't that the real story here? A journalist actually investigated a story and uncovered something interesting.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
agreed. It's a systematic refusal to proactively spend money on repairs, and to only reactively spend money when you get caught after a problem.
Did anybody seriously didn't see this coming? Since there been no construction of nuclear plants to replace them nor will there be in the near future. Add in the fact that there is no plan to deal with these plants when they reach their end of life and you get the current situation. Nuclear plants are expensive to dismantle and the sudden drop in power capacity would have a large impact without something to replace it. No matter what plan be in place, it would cast alot of money in comparison to trying to extend the nuclear plants life (though may increase risks the more this is done).
Quite simply, no politician would have the balls to do anything other then what they are doing now. For doing so would be a large risk for them for the public good, while the opposite has little backlash.
Either everyone is cutting costs or seeing how much slack they can get away with.
Fukushima was a wake-up call - seems we stupid simians need one every 20 or so years, to remind us we can poison our own air, water and food supply if we don't take it seriously.
There's also a good chance the American Way of trying to maximize profit has encouraged everyone to cut corners, where much of it was just common practice of American public and private sector before. The difference between public is cutting spending, where private wants to keep the money for that big check for the CEO and to look all pretty to Wall Street.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm not clear on this "good/bad" thing. Are we talking cats and dogs living together bad, or complete particle reversal bad?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I hate to come down on the side of Big Industry, but this is exactly how things should go. First of all, of course compliance problems spur studies on whether the standards are too conservative. If there's no difficulty in complying with the standards, why bother to do a study? Secondly, of course standards are going to be loosened over time. When you make the first nuclear reactor, you want to have incredible safeguards, even where they seem conservative, just in case. Then, once you've got fifty years of nuclear power under your belt and you have a more informed idea of what's important and what's not, you revise the standards.
That's not to say that nothing smells fishy here, of course. If these "studies" were performed in a biased and unscientific manner, and/or without enough transparency to determine how much bias affected the outcome, then that in itself is the problem. And when a single standards-loosening turns out to have been unwise, that should properly throw doubt on the conclusions of many related safety studies. But the framing of this story seems to be "science can prove anything". No, just bad science... and the solution is not to stop doing science.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
There are currently two nuclear plants impacted by the Missouri flooding - Fort Calhoon and Cooper Nuclear Plant. I live in Omaha - ~40 miles from FC and ~50 from CNP.
FC had been in shutdown mode for refueling and is supposed not at any risk from the water surrounding it's sandbags on all sides. That said just over a week ago they had a fire lasting 40 minutes and loss of power to the spent fuel cooling pools.
CNP in Brownville, NE is at full capacity despite rising waters and the possibility Gavins Point Dam might increase it's water flow further. Protocol demands a shutdown if the river reaches 902 feet above sea level, and the current level for the Missouri is officially 900.56 at CNP. No hurry or anything.
I've got an idea: instead of fudging the regulations in order to keep old reactors running on ancient technology, why don't we build new nuclear reactors like we haven't done decades! What a concept!
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Regulatory capture. It's inevitable.
Not sure if it's inevitable, but it's definitely a concern. It's especially a concern when at least one goal of the regulatory agency is to not inflict too much harm on the industry it is regulating. You know, kinda like in the US, where regulatory agencies are regularly pilloried for standing in the way of a business doing its business.
This is my biggest worry. I'm not at all sure how the problem can be fixed either.
Step 1: Make a decision on whether it is important for you to control the dumping of externalities onto the public, or whether you want corporate success.
Step 2: Remove one of the conflicting goals from the agency's charter.
There, done. If you decide that controlling externalities is your main goal, you avoid regulatory capture because the agency is supposed to be antagonistic. If the agency and the industry get too chummy, fire the bureaucrats, get new ones, install antagonistic metrics of what successful regulation looks like, and go home. If you decide that corporate success is your main goal, defund the agency, and you won't have to worry about regulatory capture, because there won't be any regulation to capture.
Just in case you missed the obvious point, here is the short version: regulatory capture may be bad, but it has solutions. The solutions merely require having the stomach to live with the consequences. The real problem is that no one likes the consequences. Politicians don't like solution A, because it will make them look bad in front of the conservatives. They also don't like solution B, because voters ultimately don't like being told to go live in a toxic dump. So they waddle around in the middle, and we end up with agencies open to regulatory capture.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
this what you get for voteing in MR burns safety takes a back seat to profits and kick backs.
...except when its actually useful to do so!
Sounds like how regulations are made to me!
Step 1: Make a decision on whether it is important for you to control the dumping of externalities onto the public, or whether you want corporate success.
I think active regulation is a short-term way to handle this. The goal in all regulation should be the creation of an objectively applied set of rules that force the externalities back in.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
But if being a regulator paid better than the industry did, why would someone risk losing such a great paying job by taking bribes? The reason regulators get bought off now is because, worst case scenario, they lose their job and accept a higher paying job at the company that bought them.
It is not inevitable. You find those regulators who were willing to bend the rules and you jail them. For long times. You end the revolving door between regulators and those they regulate and you pierce the corporate veil in any case of regulation violation. If the engineers said the piping was bad but the managers did not replace it to get bigger bonuses, then those managers can rot in a cell.
Fuck off, liar. There's no way the US government could institute a news blackout in this day and age. Trying to would just get the media there faster.
a Devil... You get some, then you can't get enough soon enough. If you shut a nuke down, you have to somehow make up for the electricity it was producing. Given enough outdated nukes, it becomes a challenge to shut them down. At some point, it will be too late, and you'd have to shut lots of them down at once, but you won't have resources or time to make up for the loss in energy production. Maybe that point has already been reached and passed.
Every harsh word you utter has the right address. It only sounds harsh because the one on the envelope is the wrong one.
There's a saying that a bank that is perceived as unstable, becomes unstable. It's about self-fulfillment, where people think they know, but really don't, leading to actions that actually makes those actions true.
Here, it's worse. It's a bloody combination of certain people don't want nuclear power, combined with corporate greed. The fist prevents nuke plants from being replaced with another so these plants are falling apart. When these plants do fail, they point to the failure of nuclear power.
And plants at the end of their lifespan, instead of being shut down, are deem needed, so companies are loathe to do upgrades, since the plant has a limited, unknown lifespan and any upgrade is a financial risk. See, a complete replaced plant is engineered for a certain lifespan. The old plants, kept running, need upgrades, but they don't know how long before they really do need to shut the plant down, and that's begging for an unplanned shutdown--caused by a nuclear accident.
Then, the finances of the industry, the profit, rears it's ugly head. Instead of pouring money into upgrades, it's cheaper to persuade, pay off, or lead regulators into relaxing problematic regulations. Absurd and irresponsible. No wonder there are accidents waiting to happen.
The regulatory agency is THE line of defense against corporate greed to make sure things are done right. No new plants or no replacement plants just puts them in the middle and a damn big target to be influenced by factors that lead to leaks and accidents. Freaking absurd. Our power need were solved 70 years ago with nuclear power, breeders, and thorium reactors, and we're still burning wood, coal, gas, diesel, kerosene, and the like, as our main fuels.
A gallon of gasoline weighs something like 6 pounds. On roughly 60 pounds of gasoline, a Prius might travel some 500 miles. A Soviet icebreaker (heavy metal big ass ship) traveled 22,000 miles (not sure if nautical but doesn't really matter for this point) and used less than 60 pounds of fissionable material/waste.
That gallon of gasoline might run your home for maybe a few days if you are conservative. The energy requirements for your entire life could run on a softball size amount of uranium. Look at the size/volume of a gallon versus the size of a softball.
And we're surprised the stuff is dangerous. Yeah, it is. It's also quite a potent amount of energy we're talking about. What the hell are we doing.
It's really too bad we are relaxing regulations to keep Older nuke plants around instead of relaxing regulations to make it easier to build new much safer ones. Our national strategy for nuclear safety is completly ass-backwards.
Who'd have expected such prescience from The Onion?
agreed. It's a systematic refusal to proactively spend money on repairs, and to only reactively spend money when you get caught after a problem.
That's why they are called reactors and not proactors. :)
Every harsh word you utter has the right address. It only sounds harsh because the one on the envelope is the wrong one.
Of course, just like finding an excuse why to invade a country that just so happens to have all the oil you need, you can find reasons why decisions were a little too severe in restricting nuclear power plant security....I mean who cares about how corroded a nut has to be before being replaced, it is not like having a few of them pop could mean a reactor leaks.....then again...I wonder if this reactor was sitting in the white house backyard, how much of those "strict" decisions would have been changed...and how many would have gone the other way for not being "strict" enough!!!
Nuclear power plants have been restricted airspace since 9/11, it has nothing to do with radiation leaks.
But if being a regulator paid better than the industry did, why would someone risk losing such a great paying job by taking bribes? The reason regulators get bought off now is because, worst case scenario, they lose their job and accept a higher paying job at the company that bought them.
Regulatory capture has nothing to do with taking bribes or other illegal activity. It's about using regulatory power to the company's advantage.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Jobs devoted to putting worthless craters in the sand and obliterating infrastructure. How about we stop spending money on destroying sh*t and spend it on building stuff? Roosevelt accomplished some pretty great things by going that direction. Too bad we're still relying on the very same old and now decayed infrastructure he built...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Just privatize the regulating bodies, silly!
There are plans to outsource the rampant killing of brown people in a desert 15,000 miles away? Oh man, why didn't you say so! They have to be able to outsource that cheaper than what we are currently paying. That's GREAT news. I can't wait to tell my wife. Seriously. This is going to be good.
Make it easier to deploy new facilities. It is virtually impossible to build a new, safer, plant due to NIMBY'ism and non-grandfathered regulations.
no one said that running generation 1 reactors past their life span is safe or wanted. Nuclear has inherit dangers no matter how advanced they are. It's still better than coal which causes 100x more deaths a year than Nuclear does.
To nuke yourself Homer something something.
Now that is funny. I am trying to imagine the defense contractors moving their manufacturing capabilities to China. Where the employees would be making weapons with a gun in their back...
I think the point might be that it would just cost more money in the end.
On the other hand, you would have an arms race - the companies would begin to pay more to outpace the regulatory body and the body would have to come up with more money as the whole thing spiraled...not sure it is a feasible solution...
There's also a question of who would be unable to afford the cost first - government or industry?
I can see you're not familiar with the Japanese culture :-)
Let's say that there, regulatory capture is not just inevitable, it's part of the system. They even have a name for it: "amakudari", translates to "Descent from Heaven" ...
You can adress the 'known unknowns' with a high Factor of Safety and when more research and experience bears it out, those FOSs can be justifyably lowered.
It is the 'unknown unknowns' that can jump up and bite you - especially if the lazy and greedy are allowed to extend the service life far beyond what any competent and moral Engineer would ever agree to; aka, 'test to failure'.
Nuclear is perfectly safe in the same way that drain cleaner is perfectly safe. Follow the directions and keep it out of reach of children. You probably don't want to store it in your fridge in a koolaid jug.
These old plants were meant to be retired and replaced with newer ones. If we had been building new nuclear plants, these aging and decaying plants could have been put offline and shut down safely decades ago.
Yes, it can take many forms, for example if big company X and big company Y are both losing market share to small companies A though W they both lobby to support a measure requiring that every company in the field should have to file a fuckton of paperwork but they make sure it's a fixed cost per company in the field.
say 100K.
(but it's for the sake of accountability or safety or some other nice sounding thing, doesn't really matter if it's not useful at all)
for the big companies it makes little difference since they're making millions and millions but suddenly all the small guys who were only making 50K each get pushed out of the market.
X and Y absorb the market share of A through W . They more than make back the cost of that extra 100K. They then raise their prices even more since they're no longer having the problems with competition.
Well, of course, government is bad and can't do anything right, compared to modern market driven corporations. If they'd just get the gov't out of the regulation business all together, the market would eventually correct things, as people who weren't happy with the way one corporation ran things would take their business, assuming they've survived, to another corporation. And if the first corporation didn't like it, they could then raise a private army and attack the other corporation who could also raise an army. And then there'd be jobs for everyone!
I read somewhere that one of the first signs of a civilization deterioration is the inability/unwillingness to repair infrastructure.
While looking for a reference online, I found this, and it's eerily accurate.
USA is not cramped like Japan, there's plenty of space and a 100km wide forbiden zone wouldn't be much of a bother.
So, basically, you are suggesting that you put the tax payer on the hook for how much the companies are willing to hire regulators away from the regulatory agency. The problem is that even without regulatory capture, people with experience enforcing the regulations are valuable for the companies being regulated. The fact of the matter is that most government regulations are subject to interpretation. The best way for a company to ensure that it is in compliance with the regulations is to hire someone who was trained by the agency that enforces the regulations and spent several years enforcing those regulations. That someone understands how the agency interprets the regulations (which means that it is in the company's economic interest to offer regulators more than they are making for the government). On the other side, the best way for a regulatory agency to get people who understand how an industry works and where companies hide regulatory violations is to hire people who have worked in the industry. The problem is this results in a revolving door between the regulated industry and the regulating agency.
Even without the revolving door between industry and regulators, there is still significant interaction between industry and regulators and there needs to be. Regulated industry needs to understand how the regulatory agency interprets the rules it is enforcing in order to comply with those rules and the regulatory agency has to understand how the industry operates in order to create regulations that do not result in more danger than the danger they are designed to mitigate.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I read somewhere that one of the first signs of a civilization deterioration is the inability/unwillingness to repair infrastructure.
While looking for a reference online, I found this, and it's eerily accurate.
What's fascinating is seeing how much infrastructure was build in the US from the 1950's to the 1960's and how little has been done since. Further, it takes a major effort to repair and maintain what was built - bit of a burden on the resources of the people, isn't it? In the midwest, did we really need a road every mile??
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Thing is the Federal Reserve has already in effect created USD9 trillion or more ( http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=federal+reserve+trillion ).
For perspective the US Interstate highway cost about 425 billion dollars (in "2006" dollars) to build.
So as an outsider (non US citizen, not in the USA) I wonder why not print another trillion or so to fix and build some stuff before China and the rest of the countries wise up? Would it really screw the USA much more? At least the US people would have something more tangible at the end of the day.
That's a problem with your local city, I.E. don't confuse local problems with global problems. My own city has no power plants, but has just finished a decade long upgrade of it's water and sewer systems. (And I know of many other cities that are working on their infrastructure as well.)
Can we just shut the f___ up about bridges? Ever since the 1970's the Chicken Little's have been screaming about the bridges and how they're all going to fall down any day now. Yet, the sky persists in not falling. Yes, bridges have fallen - but it's literally a one-in-ten-million event. So what? (And no, you can't trust the various reports. They depend on self reporting, and the locals flat out lie to raise their position on the lists so the get to the head of the line for pork.)
It does take resources to maintain things, but isn't it cheaper in the long run that to replace it? And while I do agree with you on the road department, it's not only that, but also with key buildings like the power generators in the article. It makes me wonder if they ever, ever constructed a train system in the US, if they would be able to maintain it.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Nuclear "Regulators" Are Captured By the Nuclear Industry
Indeed, governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear power industry.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/every-nuclear-regulator-is-captured-by.html
The original article does a hack job on the basic premise. It says that expert after expert cited "sharpening the pencil" as the justification for relaxing standards. The AP author wields a very broad brush and characterizes all of that as "fudging the answers"
The implication is that the tens of thousands of people world wide employed in engineering analysis to sharpen the pencil of nuclear plant analysis are all liars and frauds. Then throw into the pot all the regulators from all the companies who conspire. Of course the AP author cites no sources nor gives any basis for his allegation of fudging. Nevertheless, many gullible readers will praise him as a fearless investigative journalist.
I'll confess. I was once one of the engineers employed to do the analysis to help sharpen the pencils. Believe me, if all they wanted was fudged answers, I could have sent them a fudged report then gone out sailing instead of sweating to get it right. Of course people strain extra hard to prove the desirable result if possible. But in 30 years with four companies in three countries, I never ever saw any instance of fudging.
Is there any other field in which one can get away with generally branding engineering analysis and scientific research as fudging? Oh wait, how about climate research? Are Slashdot readers ready to believe an unsubstantiated accusation that all that work is fudged?
The shuttle disaster, fixing everything - bringing everybody back to life, and in fact giving us a much stronger foothold in space than we could ever have had if the Challenger hadn't exploded.
Right?
So the invisible hand of free market dogma will fix this just as well, after we have any kind of major problem with a nuclear plant. The fact that it hasn't just means we haven't had any problems so far!
Right?
Besides we shouldn't be messing with atoms and such when we have unlimited sources of oil. The invisible hand has shown us the way there, too. Just find scientists willing to say that oil is unlimited and burning it has no effect on the atmosphere and all will be well.
Right?
How about we stop spending money on destroying sh*t and spend it on building stuff?
What are you, some kind of commie?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Can we just shut the f___ up about bridges? Ever since the 1970's the Chicken Little's have been screaming about the bridges and how they're all going to fall down any day now. Yet, the sky persists in not falling. Yes, bridges have fallen - but it's literally a one-in-ten-million event. So what? (And no, you can't trust the various reports. They depend on self reporting, and the locals flat out lie to raise their position on the lists so the get to the head of the line for pork.)
Well, not to get your dander up, but in my city, the major bridges get major upkeep every few years. Repave the road deck, check the supports, etc. And then about once a decade or so they do a *really* major overhaul. Then again, those bridges do get a few million cars driving over them every year, so they might be an exception, but that maintenance schedule suggests they really should be looked after regularly.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
This implies that simply because the regulator makes more than he could if he worked within the industry, then he could not be bribed.
Why not? Tons of unethical people make it to the top, only to decide that they want even more money.
The worst case scenario should be that they go to jail. As does the briber (those responsible, and not the entire company as one rotten apple does not necessarily have to poison the tree).
As for the solution to the problem? Start sticking to requirements and guidelines. Exceptions must be made publicly on the regulatory body's website (for anyone that cares) and a press release must be sent. If what you're doing sounds too scary for that to be desirable (I doubt the public hearing that "acceptable leakage was too conservative" is too appealing), then you probably shouldn't be greasing the wheel. On the other hand, if it truly is too strict of a requirement or guideline, then it should be changed _with_ the public outrage.
Apparently the no-fly zone was extended because of the leaks. I saw an nice picture of the plant yesterday with Missouri flood waters up to their armpits. Anyway, the info I saw was from the IAEA or similar international nuclear regulatory body.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Regulations are just the big government trying to force itself on the market and get in the way of ordinary everyday citizens attaining radioactive super powers. Thomas Jefferson would believe it is every American's God given right to be exposed to potentially harmful levels of radiation, heavy metals, pesticides spliced into crops and chemical waste in order to form a more perfect union.
If that were the definition, but it's not...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
"No engineer in their right mind would have suggested keeping generation 1 nuclear plants running 'forever'."
No engineer in their right mind would have forgotten that dirty hacks are forever perennial.
You really haven't been paying attention. In MN we had a bridge fall down. Then after a bunch of running around, several more bridges were closed before they could also fall down.
More recently, we had a huge number [40+] of 'pavement failures' during two days of rush hour. And this is in a state that actually puts some money into basic infrastructure.
your premise, that capture is inevitable, is false in my opinion.
Even if it was true, the premise that regulatory capture happens invisibly is demonstrably false.
Regulators generate endless reports, notices, commentary periods, requests for information, etc etc etc
Everything there is to know about regulatory capture in [industry] will laid out step by step in public documents.
You avoid regulatory capture three ways:
1a. Sufficient funding for regulators to hire inspectors who can have a meaningful presence in the industry being regulated
1b. Sufficient funding for lawyers so that the regulator isn't outgunned and outstaffed by the industry it is regulating
2. Massive penalties and the ability to enforce them *quickly, in order to make following regulations cheaper than paying ongoing fines
3. Strong political support from the Executive Branch so that Agency heads cannot be pressured by Congressmen or Senators
None of these ideas are new, it's just that without #3, you don't get 1 or 2
*A favored tactic in many industries is to throw lawyers and appeals (see 1b.) at any & all regulatory findings, effectively delaying enforcement actions for years at a time.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The reason is the same reason the "Stimulus" mostly went to banks. If that money actually went into real construction and infrastructure projects, it would have been more inflationary than it was.
The reason just printing up a Trillion dollars in new debt and spreading it around did not spark the recovery the politico's sold it to the public with, is the very same reason it did not trigger the total collapse of the dollar the gold bugs thought it would. It by and large ended up filling holes in balance sheets at financials, not circulating, not increasing the velocity of money. I think most of the people in CONgress knew that would happen. That is not to say it might have prevented calamity; I can't say; but it certainly was not represented accurately to the public.
If people purchased actual goods to build with and paid actual laborers to do building, that money would be flying around the economy so fast and in such great quantity people would never be able to spend it fast enough before it loses to much value. You'd make they very dollars you fund the projects with worth to little to pay for them before you complete them.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
properly running capitalism has the consumers as a whole keeping themselves informed and voting with their wallets
the problem we have here is that the consumers as a whole are lazy and simply don't care until it lands in their front lawns.
i don't care what company you choose for an example, if said company's consumers simply refused to buy, revenue goes to zero, and the company doesn't survive. that is the ultimate trump card the consumers as a whole have forgotten about, or don't care to make the effort to use it.
in this case we are looking at power production. it really is possible to go off-grid, and can be done in small steps... and around 200 years ago people survived without electricity at all.
is it easy? no. we have become very comfortable with having the conveniences electricity allows us, like air conditioning, switch controlled lights, refrigerators, computers, etc... that doesn't make it impossible or even infeasible. alarm clocks and running water existed long before electricity was harnessed.
it is also difficult to reign in the corporate world because the majority of the consumer market believes these are things that we can't possibly do without so we have no choice but to put up with whatever the supplier of these "critical" products does for so long that forcing the market back into balance will be a herculean effort that will destroy many companies before the corporate world accepts the consumers as a whole really have decided to hold them accountable again.
some of it is a function of scale. when dealing with the guy next door who runs the local repair shop, if he's overcharging, people will skip repairs or do it themselves and the overcharger will have to lower prices to get business again or close up shop very quickly. when dealing with a huge corporation, to get the same effect, you have to convince thousands or millions or more to band together instead of tens or hundreds, and they have to band together for much longer to start to put a strain on the corporations reserves. counter measures to this are special sales and deals to spur people to buy sooner rather than later, with the financial warchest already built and ready to break up the "resistance" and get sales going again. on this scale, people easily loose their resolve. the statement of "what can so few do against this?" is the surrender the large corporations have come to count on. 2 or 3 organizers against 1 overcharger feels very easy... 2 or 3 organizers against a corporation of thousands *seems* insurmountable
it *seems* insurmountable, but it isn't. for proof of that, look at how the labor unions started. a few organizers standing up to the automotive corporate giants.
Sometimes it's cheaper not to build it in the first place.
Bit every engineer employed a by quarterly-profit driven corporations most certainly would. That's what they get bonuses for, after all.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"The problem is to fund them properly, the governement would have to pay the regulators more than they would get in the industry itself."
That does not prevent industry insiders from becoming the regulators.
That's what capture means: the industry captures its own regulation, either directly or via lobbying.
So now they are the experts? I wish we could have some real science behind this kind of investigation. That could actually provide great advances in nuclear safety.
Its just not the regulator pays and 'revolving door', it all about risk involved and profits..
When you make things like safety rules a MUST follow practise, you should always start with the stick.
Ie, 1st offence - last years TOTAL profits GONE
2nd offence, 1/2 of cash funds GONE..
See? Its easy to make industry care. Ofc, add bonus that 5% of the bill company pays goes to investigator who found the fault/share it with problem reporter and all problems will be fixed overnight.
Companies are getting off too easy if they can get caught doing it multiple times.
I can publicly transit to anywhere in Chicago w/o any guff. Hell I don't even have my car in the city I leave it in the burbs.
But if being a regulator paid better than the industry did, why would someone risk losing such a great paying job by taking bribes? The reason regulators get bought off now is because, worst case scenario, they lose their job and accept a higher paying job at the company that bought them.
So basically, you're saying people won't take bribes if you pay them enough not to.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
4. An actual desire among politicians to avoid regulatory capture.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
They aren't 'taking bribes'. They're helping out their friends with perfectly reasonable requests because the stupid government regulations are just a bit too burdensome.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm not saying there should be a free market solution. I'm saying there should be a different solution because the one we have fails on many levels.
Personally, I'm in favor of finding ways to tweak rules so that market forces force the correct outcome without continual human intervention and using jailtime for CEOs for more obvious cases.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That won't help either. The regulators are in the government, and if they just 'bend' the rules rather than break them, the law will favor them. Several employees in NASA's middle management should probably have gone to jail for willful criminal negligence because of the shuttle explosion. But that never happened because bureaucrats protect their own.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
New reactors. New, fast rail. Better planned cities. Cities that are less noisy and more friendly to actual human than a car (eg. see Paris or New York vs. Chicago or Los Angeles).
You want to spend money? And you want to improve people's lives too? You, sir, are Unamerican!
Reminds me of the Feynman minority report on Challenger where he pointed out that with each success, NASA Management would set the bar lower using the logic if it didn't fail, it won't fail. Scary - Challenger only killed it's crew, weakening these rules could cause much more harm.
Absolutely. And the direct result of that type of regulation is that corporations will be less profitable. In the current political climate in the US, advocating for corporations to be less profitable is (almost) political suicide. Hence the toothless regulatory agencies whose goals and success metrics are easily coopted by the industry lobbyists.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Reading comprehension, get some you ignorant moron. When you do, go back and read what I wrote and you'll notice I did note that bridges had fallen.
In advance, if this rambling rant offends anyone, please know that it attacks no person, political party/view, religion, creed, color, gender, or body type. In fact, the only thing it attacks is lower primate behavior (to which we are all subject), and those who worship it.
This conversation is moot. There used to be perfectly good regulators in government, because regulation was seen by virtually everyone as good and necessary (if mundane). At the same time, we held heroes to be men and women who sacrificed for the greater good and our leaders were there to serve the people. A wise man once said "Ask not what your country could do for you, but what you could do for your country.” We celebrated our checks and balances in both government, and business, because we knew it was part of our greatness. We had the wisdom to inspire that which is best in people while at the same time attempting to keep that which is worst on a short leash. This is part of what provided our greatness throughout the first half of the 20th century.
We'd learned from the great depression that commerce is like a child. It has only one goal. It wants what it wants, now, without consideration for consequence or long term detriment. Like a child, for business to function, a strong parent needs to exist, to ensure that the child’s diet is healthy, that its environment is healthy and that it grows in a sustainable way with integrity and wisdom. The depression was a monumental disaster, but we learned the high cost of short term gain, and unbridled greed.
Then it all changed. Of course some might say the seeds were sown in the 60s when we began shooting our best and brightest in the head, but the actual process began in 1980. Rich and powerful men spent billions of dollars on think tanks, looking into the future and at how they might manipulate that future in the direction they saw best suited them. So in 1980 we began gutting checks and balances for both government and business in a serious way. We made business a religion, made it the one true source of all that is good. We made the restriction or control of business by government bad. In fact we started chanting the mantra, less government is better, less government is freedom, less government is American. We began the wholesale dismantling of all the systems and services that managed, regulated, and/or maintained infrastructure, all the while pushing all that wealth and energy into the hands of the men who paid for the future. We elected empty headed puppets, who rubber stamped laws into effect that would make their plans of those wealthy men the law of the land. We would watch politics degenerate into a mindless race to the bottom, made so expensive that only the most effective whores could win any race of significance. Our government was sold and bought, ultimately placing the people to be supervised in the positions of supervising themselves. Beware chickens, its foxes everywhere you look.
Most important, look at the banking industry. Bringing our nation to the verge of financial collapse, and not a single person held to account, not a single significant new law or change in the way banks do business, ensuring that the worst of what we’ve seen from Wallstreet is yet to come. Our society is so ADD, we forget that George W. Bush Sr. in the late 70s called this “Voodoo Economics” and that wise people had accurately predicted virtually all of the disasters we now face in the early 80s. And still we worship at the altar of the NYSE.
It would take an informed electorate, with the will, and moral fortitude necessary to take back the reins of
The maintenance schedule you quoted says, in mile high flaming letters (all caps), that they are being looked after regularly.
Not really, from everything I can find they're pretty close to average for most bridges. The problem is that a very small number of problematical bridges has been for decades consistently inflated into "OHMYGAWD ALL THE BRIDGES ARE FALLING OH THE HUMANITY". 100% of the infrastructure cannot be at 100% condition 100% of the time - it's physically and financially impractical do to so, and only provides minuscule marginal gains
Well, we've done pretty well at maintaining freight lines, for the most part. The big problem is that the passenger rail services haven't brought in enough income to warrant having separate rails, so they are forced to depend on freight lines. This brings with it all the delays that inherently accompany the use of freight rails due to track maintenance, other trains using the tracks, etc.
And, of course, freight doesn't require comfort, so those tracks are maintained to a lower degree of consistency than passenger rails should be. Also, freight cars can be significantly heavier than passenger cars, and thus cause a lot more compaction of the material underneath. This means that the rails are a much rougher ride than would be acceptable for high speed rail.
So the answer is probably yes, but only if those tracks are used exclusively for high speed passenger rail, and only if they are constructed properly to begin with. It would also help if passenger rail cars didn't weigh about 2.5 times as much per passenger as a small automobile.... (Think carbon fiber and aluminum instead of steel.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Hammer. Nail. Head. 'Nuff Said.
This is an age old question... chicken and egg... junkie and dope dealer. Its time to reinvent the game from the ground up. For too long we've been living in this bizarre fantasy that capitalism will always make the right choice, forgetting all the while, that any human enterprise is limited in function and facility to the human beings of which it consists. Worse, that a system designed to inspire the worst in people is certain to bring that out in them (eg. greed, war, gangstas, etc.)
Until we declare business a religion and separate it from state for that very reason, we will continue to see government subsumed by business practice. Until we revoke the corporations advantage of having the rights of a person without the restrictions or accountability of being a person, we will see continued abuse against the world in the name of the corporate religion.
It is time for a more balanced pursuit of human endeavor, and it time to begin taking the personal profit motive out of everything we do. I've spoken with futurists who dream of a future where machines do all the work and human beings derive the benefit. Sadly, as more and more work is automated in our society, what simply happens is more and more people are left without work, and the benefit is concentrated into the hands of a vanishing few.
You will never solve the problem treating the symptoms. You must get to the root of the issue, and address it at its most fundamental level, and once done, then entire field of play shifts. When there is no value in cutting corners, people will cut corners less. When we provide value for not cutting corners and penalize cutting corners, then not cutting corners will be as obvious as gravity. Nobody screws with gravity (at least not more than once... without serious psychosis being involved.)
Too true. I was shocked to read, this decade, the US had three cities which has power reliability less than most third world countries. In fact, those same three had less power availability than Iraq did when they had those constant rolling blackouts and power outages, immediately following the "termination of military action."
The infrastructure is completely rotting in the US. Worse, WE HAVE ALL PAID FOR IT TO BE MAINTAINED AND REPLACED. This is part of our taxes and utilities fees. Which means ALL Americans are paying for services for which we are not receiving. This is actual fraud. But, the various utilities, etc., receive periodic increases to pay for these renovations and maintenance for which they do not actually do. Worse, they are already lobbying Congress to pay them, in large lump sums, to do the job they've already been paid to do. Right now, estimates are well over a trillion dollars.
If Congress wasn't so corrupt, they would immediately mandate compliance within ten years and every CEO, at the time of enactment, who failed to comply, will be charged with fraud and the company's assets seized and given to the local community as a co-op. So on and so on. At some point, either someone is going to be left holding the bag, in prison, or the things we've all already paid for will actually be followed up on.
Of course, since Congress is so corrupt, especially with legalized bribery supported by USC, it won't happen without Congress mandating a double dip for these criminals, at which time everyone will receive nice bonuses for theft and fraud - likely including the Congressmen themselves. Sad to thing, none of this is hyperbole even though it sounds completely rediculas. Grrr.
There are only two possible outcomes of an investigation into a request for a waiver:
1. the waiver would cause the risk the regulation was meant to prevent and is denied, and,
2. the regulation is unnecessarily restrictive and the waiver is granted.
In both cases direct eyes-on-the-problem expertise is used to determine the facts, instead of relying on the broad and numb application of a regulation.
So saying they're granting waivers isn't news. They're going to grant waivers.
The question is whether they're ignoring relevant facts that should be causing them not to grant waivers.
... is that these days it's too hard to tell it from the ACTUAL stuff Tea Party types are saying. Parent is only a little more over the top than what you'll hear from the likes of Michele ("the EPA destroys jobs!!!1!1") Bachman.
In a sane regulatory system, this could be a perfectly respectable modus operandi. In the first analysis, it's not cost effective to quantify the safety risk of thousands of small failures that haven't even happened yet, and might never happen.
When real issues do show up, you can go back and flesh out the safety model in greater detail, investing relatively large funds to characterize specific degradations. You would hope that the initial safety envelope, which is a broad blanket by nature, would have been fairly conservative.
You would also expect that the outcome would often be that we can tolerate degradation X, but only if other parameters U, V, and Z are monitored more vigilantly and held within narrower ranges. Eventually the exponential growth of small compliance should reach the point where the facility is non-economic, and it gets shut down on the preponderance of vigilance rather than any specific dramatic failure mode or burst pipe.
We're all here rushing to judgment on the assumption that the escalating burden is DC dinner accounts rather than ballooning safety inspection check-lists. Fair enough. Sad though that the political expectations are so low that everyone dons their sunglasses before taking even one objective glance.
The best government corporate money can buy.
I know this is heresy, but maybe, just maybe, FDR shouldn't have built those things. Maybe private enterprise doesn't build things, not just because of short term interests, but because of the costs of maintaining things in the long run.
The government can buy everyone a car. You'll just get a magical free car out there in your driveway. Catch is, you can never transfer ownership to anyone else. You have to buy the insurance, the fuel, do the maintenance, etc. Suddenly, that free gift is looking pretty expensive, knowing that you'll have to pay maybe $5,000 a year to use it. Ok, so maybe you won' t use it, you'll just maintain it to save money so it holds its value. But you've got a family of four and all of you got a free car, so now you're stuck paying $12-20k a year to maintain and use them (your 4 and 6 year old can't drive, so it's pointless to pay the full $5k on them).
At the end of the year, you also get a bill for the amortized cost of the car over 50 years, so now you're paying an extra $4k/year. 40 years from now, your 4 and 6 year old will still be paying off a car that was already rusty before they could drive it, even if they never asked for it in the first place.
Meanwhile, the four of you see constant improvements and new technology come out, but you can't afford to upgrade because you already have your existing vehicles that you're still paying off and paying to maintain, regardless of their usefulness since you can't afford to pay an additional $20k penalty to take them to the junk yard. Maybe you stop spending the money to maintain them, knowing that you'll eventually have to scrap them anyway, in the hopes that it'll free up money to pay for your mortgage and groceries since you've fallen on hard times. You find yourself falling further and further behind because you're locked in to decades old technology while everyone else around the world gets the latest greatest stuff.
Decades later, maybe you can say that your life benefited greatly from your "free gift" or maybe you can say it was an albatross around your neck. Some of the things government spends money on actually has a well reasoned long time benefit, but lots of it doesn't and just ends up as another weight around the neck of the people. We may have a lot of infrastructure thanks to FDR and Ike (highway), but most of it is crumbling since we couldn't afford to maintain it in the first place and, even knowing we couldn't afford it, we wanted to spend the money designated for maintenance on other projects anyway, constantly shifting the burdens to the next generations while using their money to buy today's voters. Thomas Jefferson warned that it was unfair for any government project to require the money of people 20 years later precisely because it would lead to one generation stealing from the next to benefit themselves without the care of the desires of the future generations.
Instead of building stuff just for the sake of building stuff, how about we carefully consider what we really need government to build, repair and tear down and provide for the future upkeep of that infrastructure up front? Nah, that hurts us too much, we'll screw over our grandkids so we don't have to actually pay for what we want. What could possibly go wrong?
Stop Koolaid Politics
I'm sorry. I'm a worker at a nuclear plant that just recently had its license renewed by the NRC. 1) The renewing process is not a snap-of-the-fingers process. The sheer amount of paperwork that had to be collected and verified, calculations re-performed, plans made to correct potential problems, and general convincing that the plant could operate another 20 years took several years to complete. And we still have to put those plans into effect. 2) The public gets plenty of notice. The problem is that most of the public doesn't care to show up, other than those who will never support nuclear power. 3) The NRC has almost shut down my plant several times because of anything they perceive as a potential problem. This has ranged from wanting to be sure equipment would function properly if the temperature outside got above 90 degrees. As this is Wisconsin, it always does in summer. So, in this instance, the NRC has made us need to prove we can meet our requirements, not loosened the requirement. 4) More problems occur at plants because of the owners, not lack of NRC oversight. The Davis-Besse event mentioned in the report fails to mention that the NRC had already told the company that it had concerns that needed to be addressed, and the company blew it off until the NRC discovered the problem getting worse. 5) All this makes me concerned that the report researchers went into the project with the mindset that the NRC was not performing its function and ensuring safe operation of our plants. The report seems pretty biased, without trying to speak to the hundreds of instances where the NRC forced plants to become more conservative. My company just recently had to spend millions of dollars upgrading its electrical switchyard equipment based on future grid use projection and the possibility the plant could lose its power source from outside. So for a report to claim that the NRC is relaxing restrictions is misleading.
Extended "because of the leaks" which they are hiding and the NRC denies but somehow we let foreigners slip into our nuclear facility and publish the data on the International Atomic Energy Agency site (or similar international nuclear regulatory committee??) but you conveniently cant find or remember any of the links? Why don't you check out: Cryptome. Course maybe they're part of the nation-wide conspiracy to and are just doctoring up photos of the plant safely behind the aquadam. After all, you read something somewhere on the internet that you can't remember.
So, let cities die? Relocate all the people and find them work? I don't think you've thought this through if you think your plan will save money.
Blar.
Googling on the terms "nebraska nuclear power plant" returns a number of results that both support and contradict my assertions. The fact is that there was an hours-long failure of getting cooling water to overloaded spent fuel ponds, amongst other problems. Some of the pictures are not encouraging, and the Missouri is still rising.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
I understand where you are coming from and I'm certain there are plenty of items that shouldn't have been built. That said, most of the infrastructure out there was/is essential to economic development of the country. The Interstate and US highway, as well as the national electric grid are chief among them. We also could very well have afforded to maintain them but for short sighted leaders that misappropriated funds to play cold-war politics. Even now the cost of putting things right, especially when viewed with an eye towards the side-effects of job creation isn't that egregious. All it would take would be to put a halt to the multi-trillion dollar spending the over-grown children in charge of the DoD spend blowing craters in the sand, along with all the other playground pissing contests they claim are vital to the defense of US sovereignty.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Bullshit, you tried to say it was a rare event, and when corrected weasel out with abusive blah blah. Try comprehending your own writing.
I love how proponents of big government always have to exaggerate to the worst case scenario. I'm saying get rid of the dead weight, tear down the stuff that isn't necessary and just caauses ongoing maintenance headaches.. Don't build just because you can (or want to pretend you can) afford it today, build what you can sustain. The government builds gobs of useless infrastucture in the name of bringing home the bacon (the Bridge to Nowhere is a good example even though public outcry stopped it) and/ir creating a named monument to themselves (there are thousands of buildings named after sitting Congresscritters that didn't pay a dime of their personal money to erect them). Quit using federal dollars to build local-only stuff and let the local taxpayers decide whether or not it is worth their money to build their project (it's way easier to spend someoen else's money). Enough with the grants that keep tearing up the same stretch of road/highway in the name of some non-existent improvment usually just for the sake of showing that you're "working for the people." One federal road in my town has been redone twice in the last ten years even though it didn't need it and a neighboring town has been redone three times, meanwhile, the local interstate has pot holes that you could lose a dump truck in. My school district of about 2000 kids spent over $100 million expanding buildings in the last 20 years, claiming that future classes would be too large for the existing campus and, as it turns out, they only had one class marginally larger than any others in the last three decades and now they're shutting down a building all because they couldn't inconvenience the teachers by utilizing one of the dozens of empty classrooms "belonging to" another teacher.
There's an absolute ton of money that government has wasted on unecessary infrastructure that we're forced to maintain... and we're so busy spending money on maintaining stuff that never should have been built in the first place that we can't afford to maintain and replace the things we do need. And yes, I suppose you're right, cities are totally non-sustainable and they require a ton of infrastructure and maintenance just to support their dense populations, which in turn causes all the population and ecological problems advocates of a sustainable world complain about. Then on top of that, cities must supply more infrastructure for bread and circuses to keep the population from spending even more time attacking each other (bilion dollar stadiums, trying to force urban renewal and gentrification, etc).
Stop Koolaid Politics
Am I the only one who thinks this is a concerted effort against nuke plants? I mean if king coal wants to rule again, don't you think it is wise to take out these pesky newcomers like nuclear plants etc. What better way to make it happen if not by making inspections easier and easier so that once an accident happens, people will shun nuclear power and king coal rules.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Very little of the money from the Stimulus bill went to banks. Much of it was and is being spent on infrastructure. Most of the bank bailouts occurred in 2008 under GWB.
It might have something to do with legislators taking bri^H^H^H er campaign contributions though.
This is the norm through the "developed" world.
Japan is always building new infrastructure, such as a brand new maglev bullet train track. In the last decade there was the new Tsukuba Express line too. In the same time period China has build more underground tunnels and track than every other metro system in the world combined ever, although I suppose you can debate if China counts in this argument.
Germany is now building vast new power generation infrastructure to replace nuclear, and presumably Italy will have to do likewise. Japan will get in on that act too sooner or later. France built the Millau Bridge, and if you want to go back that far the Channel Tunnel along with the UK. Actually on the UK side we build a new high speed rail link in the last decade too.
The thing that connects all these things is that the governments of each country decided to support them. Expensive, risky projects are unattractive to investors but with government backing they are lining up to throw their money in. It does cost the tax payer but in our capitalist systems that is basically the price of infrastructure and large scale engineering.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/06/17/rumors-and-the-rising-river/
Here is some more supporting information from the Union of Concerned scientists.
List of reactors by percent of decade on NRC watch list, Fort Calhoun Reactor data
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The issue at hand here is damage to the reactor itself from the floodwater which means it would take longer to bring it back online.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
p
the problem we have here is that the consumers as a whole are lazy and simply don't care until it lands in their front lawns.
The problem we have here is that the consumers as a whole are deliberately misinformed and kept in the dark so that they don't understand what is going on until it lands in their front lawns.
Fixed it for you.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251248&cid=36509086
the consumers as a whole are deliberately mislead by corporations. this will always be the case to some level, that is why the consumers as a whole have a responsibility to confirm the sources and dig deeper on their own rather than blindly accept what they are told. this article is evidence that the information is out there, but buried. that we are here having this discussion is evidence that some are willing to dig for it. that there are currently fewer than 200 comments in two days is evidence the *majority* of the consumer market are blind, deaf sheep lazily waiting to be sheared
So no coverage of Ft. Calhoun which has dry cask storage in several feet of flood water from the Missouri River.
Dry Cask now wet? How good is that for radiation leaks? And a fire June 7th that knocked out cooling pumps for the fuel pool. And the reactor building is
totally surrounded by flood water only held back by a "water berm".
And 60 miles downstream Cooper nuke is running full power just a few feet short of being flooded. Roll those dice baby.