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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
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?
Look on the bright side: At least the bankers and defense contractors are doing OK...
No sig today...
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Nuclear power plants have been restricted airspace since 9/11, it has nothing to do with radiation leaks.
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
This is exactly how NASA treated anomalies with the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters. Each time they'd have the engineers look at the problem, then decide it was really probably OK, and that the strict rules in place were overly cautious. Everything went fine, until the flight of STS-51-L.
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.
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.
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?
Come on... "busted seals" Is this what we have come to? Hello, AP?
Are you telling me that those navy guys never get caught with drugs?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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.
"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.
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
Why? I can tell you. Contrary to popular opinion, it is damn sure not of some ill-defined "hippies" preventing it. If you give a profit driven industry the choice between a) keep running at 40 year old reactor, which is completely amortized by now and is basically printing money for free, while the public is liable for any accident or b) invest heavily in a new reactor.... Well, what do you think they'd chose?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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.
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
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.
You'll need a lot more areas if you're going to replace something as concentrated as nuclear power with solutions as diffuse as the ones you suggest.
Example: Try campaigning to get the Kennedys to put up offshore wind power as a lasting legacy to Ted. Far enough out in the Atlantic to be barely visible on the horizon on a clear day - and the wind conditions there are quite good. Engineering, renewable power, liberals, topicality - everything is poised to make this the time to proceed with such a worthy project, yes?. Oh wait..
Or, just run the numbers. Kwh/mi^2 for wind, solar, tidal show that if we carpeted the country with these, using *every* available space, we could gin up a big 15% of our energy budget, max. Wanna commute to work using those numbers? Get out your rickshaw ...
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
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.
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
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
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.