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90% of Nuclear Regulators Sent Home Due To Shutdown
An anonymous reader writes "More than 90% of nuclear regulators are being sent home due to the Federal Government shutdown, as the agency announced today that it was out of funds. Without Congressional appropriations, the nuclear watchdog closes its doors for what appears to be the first time in U.S. history. CNN reports that while a skeleton crew remains to monitor the nation's 100 nuclear reactors, regulatory efforts to prevent a Fukushima-like incident in the United States have ceased."
The idea that anything bad could happen is just crazy talk. This is the United States!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
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You know what the sad thing is? Even with the government "shutdown" we're apparently managing to spend money so fast that we'll hit the debt ceiling just as soon. You'd think that the cuts would make enough of a dent to push it back a few days, but no.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In order to prevent people from feeling the economic pain of Obamacare it is necessary to inflict economic pain.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
If your nuclear systems become unsafe in under 30 days, are they really safe at all?
Sounds like the NRC should be funded solely by fees paid by the companies they regulate.
We dont have to spend money to hit the debt ceiling, our debt will do it for us, damn interest.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
At least the Springfield Nuclear Plant is in good hands.
Another way to look at this, is that the NRC determined it only needs 10% of it's work force for 'essential' operations. Makes me wonder why we pay for the other 90%.
Also, it's amazing to go through the list of government services and see which shutdown and which remain open. Often the ones remaining open work off of 'user' fees. For example, certain meat packing plants pay for food and safety inspectors being on site. Passport fees will keep most passport operations flowing.
One wonders why that power plan companies don't simply pay the NRC directly, like food inspectors.
This fee system seems like an elegant way to run a business....
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
The meltdown could have been prevented had safeguards been put in place to save the plant from the resulting effects of the earthquake. The NRC has been hard at work in implementing the recommendations to prevent that here, by implementing those safeguards, that is what the article speaks about. It may be fud, but it is accurate fud.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It takes two to tango. Both the congress and president are to blame. Appropriations may originate in the House, but they also have to pass the Senate and either get signed by the President or overriden after a veto by a highly unified body of legislators over at the Capitol.
If the House is holding true to their strategy as used so far this round, they've probably approved this expenditure piecemal and been rejected or not taken up by the Senate. Call it political if you like, but any politician that refuses to do so deserves to to be run out of Washington on a rail.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
You don't understand the cost of the Federal Gov. Last I checked, wages and such cost approximately $88 Billion/year (http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2013/10/01/send-furloughed-federal-workers-home-for-good-wont-save-much-money/) and that's from the discretionary side. Grandma, disability, medicaid, medicare, etc. is 2/3 of the approx. $3.8 trillion budget. So while much of the government (I would argue the effective part) is on furlough, Grandma is not, and boy will she be pissed if the pols put her on furlough. There'll be an army of blue haired retired people tar and feathering members of Congress, I'm stockpiling buckets of tar and old feather pillows for the event.
WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
And the Women!
uhh.. AND THE INFANTS !
My god, WIC is a triple threat!
What's the difference by the way between a child and an infant. I wonder if some of these women aren't making double by labeling their child both a child and an infant.
There should be an investigation!
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Checklist:
1. Is it glowing?
2. Is there a smoking, glowing crater where the plant used to be?
If both are no, the back to napping.
Perhaps an urban legend (I can't find a reference), but didn't operators of nuclear reactors used to sit on one legged chairs, so they couldn't nap at the controls?
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Sadly, we'll pay all the back-pay, so it's really just a free vacation for more federal workers.
The ones who have to stay on their jobs with no pay really get the short end of the stick. Should given them a 33% bonus, and if they do a good job, should fire the workers they made up for.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Grandma is not, and boy will she be pissed if the pols put her on furlough.
They've already cut her effective benefits in half with bureaucratic accounting tricks.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Technically, the Federal Government takes in more than enough to pay the interest and principal payments on the debt every month. I love how everyone pretends that's the first thing to get screwed, when the reality is that there are a lot of other agencies, programmes, and other entities and expenditures that disappear before we "default". All this talk about "default" and "full faith and credit" has been nothing but dishonest propaganda.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The answer to your rhetorical question of "why must the world be so cruel" is that our nation elected 536 preschoolers with suits and grey hair, expecting them to act like adults.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Which I why I suggest we fully fund WIC and defund our foreign wars.
We could start with small things like not buying tanks the military does not want and then move onto bigger things like not buying F-35s.
The fact that you think the Feds operate under such a similar system to we the people tells me you don't follow politics as closely as you seem to think you do. By the logic you are using, we'd have to send the entire government to prison on charges running our full range of felonies. Racketeering, Ponzi schemes, war crimes... the list is far too extensive to cover here.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
You believe no one dies of dehydration then?
The chicken processor should be paying for all these hospital stays.
No, I avoid listening to him. He is not funny.
They are religious fanatics and Tealiban does not have the same ring to it.
Assuming no cross contamination, no uneven heating and basically perfection? Sure.
If meat has to be cooked to the FDA temps to be edible I rather be a vegetarian. At the point it is so dry as to be a chore to eat.
Hopefully these teahadists are not going to go that far. Even that seems too much.
I guess you missed the speech Obama gave yesterday, in which he stated that he would only be willing to negotiate if the Republicans conceded completely and unilaterally? Compromise is a 2-way street, but both sides have put up "one way" signs and refuse to so much as discuss anything, let alone come to an agreement.
Face it - there are no good guys in this fight.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Which I why I suggest we fully fund WIC and defund our foreign wars.
We could start with small things like not buying tanks the military does not want and then move onto bigger things like not buying F-35s.
Here here!
That's what pisses me off about people who rag on social programs: the cost to run them is but a drop in an endless sea compared to what we spend killing foreigners, propping up dinosaur corporations, scratching banker's backs, etc.
But they're the only programs politicians ever really manage to cut. WTF, America?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"The Debt Ceiling can remain ignored for months."
It has been. The actual "Debt Ceiling" was reached back in May. But Lo! and behold! The government found some "extra cash" lying around, and managed to survive until now anyway. Of course you don't hear about this on the news.
"The government takes in enough tax revenue each month to pay the interest on bonds many times over. There is zero possibility of the government 'defaulting' and wiping out their credit rating."
The default scare is just another Big Lie. First, the government HAS defaulted on its debt before. The most recent time I know about was when Nixon nixed the Bretton Woods system in '71, eliminating any last vestige of a gold standard. The dollar (in International Trade) was almost instantly devalued, which for all practical purposes was a default on large portion of the huge foreign debt. In fact, that's why he did it: the U.S. government did not have enough money (including for repaying debt), by virtue of its gold reserves, to cover its exorbitant spending.
Second: not raising the debt ceiling will not automatically lead to a default. The government would simply have to spend less money! Of course, Obama has been showing that he'd rather cut spending on things The People find valuable (or are scared into thinking are essential), than cut spending on things that actually make sense.
believe it is in everybody's plant license that they must be continually regulated.
rolling blackouts, anybody?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This isn't a negotiation. You don't suspend laws by refusing the fund the government. Allowing the Republivans to get their way by throwing a tantrum and bypassing the legislative process would set a terrible precedent, allowing any insane minority group to control what we can do as a people.
You'd have to have your head pretty far up conservative fake news to believe that Obama was somehow responsible for the insane teabaggers holding our country hostage.
That's what pisses me off about people who rag on social programs: the cost to run them is but a drop in an endless sea compared to what we spend killing foreigners, propping up dinosaur corporations, scratching banker's backs, etc.
This is untrue. Per wikipedia the DOD is 19% ($670B) of the US budget, while "social security" is 22% ($768B) and "medicare and medicaid" are 23% ($802B). I will grant that this chart is not at all granular and the issue is surely more complicated than this, but 45% of the US budget on just two social programs are hardly "a drop in the bucket." Personally, I think we have to cut military spending, AND social spending, AND raise revenue (however the hell we manage to do that).
I'm also at a loss as to how some people think that massive expansions in spending on medical care somehow makes things more affordable, but I think I'm at the point where I've accepted that the vast majority of people in this nation (citizen and lawmaker, on both sides of the aisle) simply don't live in the real world.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
"Sadly, we'll pay all the back-pay, so it's really just a free vacation for more federal workers."
Of the ones who are currently working for no pay. Like all the security at the capitol, etc.
No one's made any promise that currently-furloughed workers would get paid.
No one's getting a free vacation.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If the debt ceiling is not raised we will default. That puts it on the table. If a single bill goes unpaid we are defaulting. It doesn't matter if it's a bond or a social security check. The market will treat it the same and it's going to be catastrophic. We run the risk of a collapse of the entire world economy (which is predicated on the stability of the US bond market).
Treasury has no way (without rewriting their entire software that controls the payment system) to sort payments by type. They would have to sort manually and with millions of payments due every single day it would take thousands of people to sort them all and pay only one type.
People that are downplaying default don't know what the fuck they are talking about. You want an example of default, refer to Argentina. They defaulted almost a decade ago and they STILL can't borrow money. Every single thing they import must be paid for with hard currency extracted from products they sell to other nations. Much like Venezuela they have shortages, business can't get parts and a whole host of problems that would make living there hellish. The US has a import/export deficit of several hundred billion dollars a month. That means all that stops, nothing will be imported without a corresponding export of equal value. Do you have any idea how much that would impact the world economy let alone the US economy? It would lead to a recession that would be WORSE than 2008. In fact we probably wouldn't recover from it without a big fucking world war again.
Maybe I'm being paranoid but you are seriously playing down severe risks. If we default (meaning we don't pay a bill when required) we are looking at a severe recession with high double digit unemployment that will make the last few years of 12% unemployment look like a picnic.
Either A pretty good start, or Not enough sand.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Actually, the House has passed a number of budgets. All have been shot down by the Senate or have not been brought to a vote. Even if they had been accepted by the Senate they would be vetoed by Obama.
There hasn't been a real budget passed pretty much since Obama took office. The old budgeting model was to have a budget for each individual agency or, sometimes, groups of agencies. The last few years have seen continuing resolutions; its very name tells you what it is: a resolution to continue last year's spending with no formal budgeting process.
What the House is attempting now is a combination of old fashioned budgeting with the current continuing resolution model - pass an individual continuing resolution for each department. The Senate is rejecting those.
Well, the house voted 407-0 to approve back pay, so it will be either Harry Reid's or Obama's fault if they do not get paid. Simple as that. But no one really believes they won't be paid. They got back pay the last time this happened (see last paragraph). And many times before that. And both Harry Reid and Obama have publically supported the house bill.
You don't suspend laws by refusing the fund the government.
How do you feel about Obama suspending laws by refusing to enforce them? Hmm?
It doesn't matter if it's a bond or a social security check. The market will treat it the same and it's going to be catastrophic.
Wow, you are completely wrong on that one. I'm not even sure why you would think the market would treat that the same. Does the bank treat you the same when you fail to make a mortgage payment as when you fail to pay an electric bill? No, they don't.
It's a difference between, "I'm not going to get paid" and "some other guy is not going to get paid." If the US demonstrates a willingness to make bond payments before social security payments, it could actually increase purchases of US debt.
Maybe I'm being paranoid but you are seriously playing down severe risks. If we default (meaning we don't pay a bill when required) we are looking at a severe recession with high double digit unemployment that will make the last few years of 12% unemployment look like a picnic.
Yeah, you are being paranoid. If the world loses confidence in the US debt, you are right that would happen, but 'failing to pay any bill' is not going to cause that to happen.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The house has passed the exact same sane bills that would be in a clean cr excep separated from a single cr.
How that is not sane is beyond me. Please explain what you think is sane.
he'd rather cut spending on things The People find valuable (or are scared into thinking are essential)
Isn't that how it is supposed to work? If he (and by extension, "the gov't") did what he damn well pleased, isn't that... a dictatorship...actual tyranny?
As for "what makes sense" - you'd get 435+ different answers as to what that is if you asked, I don't know, the House of Representatives.
It's also true that House Republicans negotiated clean bill back in July with the Senate and reneged on it a few weeks ago because "OMG Obamacare!". It's a fact that there are enough votes right now in the House to pass a clean bill if only one was put up for vote.
While I have no love for either party, and I would love to do a clean sweep in all three branches of government, the blame for this crisis lies primarily in the lap of one group. The Republicans (and more specifically, the Tea Party) are throwing a tantrum because they couldn't successfully repeal ACA (despite 40+ votes), and they are holding the government hostage until their demands are met.
In another week, expect a default for the same reason.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I love how everyone that isn't required to run the government for a week is suddenly expendable. Shit, I haven't had a fire in years in my house, dunno why I'm paying for a fire station.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
"Isn't that how it is supposed to work? If he (and by extension, "the gov't") did what he damn well pleased, isn't that... a dictatorship...actual tyranny?"
No. The way it's supposed to work is that the government operates lawfully and Constitutionally.
The Government is breaking the law by not having passed a budget in 4 years or more. As a result of that (by definition) crime, the government has given itself discretion, not backed by any law, as to how it will spend its money.
Obama is further breaking the law by furloughing civilian employees at a Strategic Air Command base, when he just signed the Pay Our Military Act the other day, which was passed UNANIMOUSLY by congress, and which REQUIRES him to pay civilians working at military bases. Does it "make sense" to ignore the law you just signed over a political hissy fit? Isn't THAT "doing whatever you want"?
The fact is that Obama -- as long as he is not OTHERWISE breaking the law, as mentioned just above -- has a lot of discretion over how the government is spent. And there are government employees who have been saying they have been directed to make this shutdown "as painful as possible" for the general public, while he goes golfing and carries on as he pleases. His recent trip to Africa alone would pay to keep the White House tours for school children operating for the next 25 years! Yet he did go to Africa, and he shut down the tours.
No. THAT is not the way government is supposed to work.
You have *no* idea what you're talking about, medically speaking.
Water in an IV would kill the patient -- they use Lactated Ringer's Solution (or something a lot like it), which is a mix of various electrolytes/salts in a concentration that closely mimics blood plasma. If you became dehydrated due to vomiting/diarrhea, then the chances are that you can't keep remotely enough liquid down to make up for the fluid loss, and could wind up in serious danger. If you try rehydrating with plain water, then you'll fuck up your electrolytes to the point that you might as well be dehydrated, as your cardiac, neurological, etc. systems will increasingly malfunction.
Even if someone goes to the emergency room out of fear, doctors *only* admit patients to the hospital if they genuinely need to be there. Dehydration is usually treated in the emergency room or urgent care; if somebody is hospitalized, it's because their body is in more serious trouble than "gee, have a sip of water" dehydration. The reason elderly people & babies end up at the ER or hospitalized more often is because they *die* more easily from damn near everything than healthy children/adults, including dehydration.
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Funny, it worked well enough for the Democrats (specifically Reid) to try in 2007 with the Iraq war.