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How the Biggest, Most Expensive Oil Spill In History Changed Almost Nothing
merbs writes: Tthe biggest oil spill in US history, despite incurring the largest environmental fine on the books—$18.7 billion, handed down this month—has done almost nothing to change the nation's relationship to oil. Five years after the spill, and, by BP's count, $54 billion in projected total expenses, there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation of the United States' still-expanding offshore oil operations. Public opinion of deepwater drilling barely budged during the ordeal; today, a majority of Americans favor doing even more of it.
PS: Fracking is being given a totally free pass too!
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We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything.
Yeah, and it only changed how the government did anything by making things worse. Now we're subjected to illegal searches, detainment, etc. by an incompetent bureaucracy that has stopped exactly 0 terrorist plots and misses over 95% of banned items in its screenings. Hopefully these aren't the kinds of changes you'd like to see with the oil industry as well.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Maybe he should have said almost clean. Generation IV nuclear reactors don't solve the waste problem but they dig into. They produce much less waste and can use waste from older reactors. The waste that is produced has a greatly reduced half-life as compared to current reactor waste. The big bonus is they have a really hard time melting down since they don't need a continuous water supply to cool. It's what we should have been investing in until renewables are advanced enough to take over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
The reactors you're currently familiar with were _designed_ to have the 'radioactive waste' problem - it's what makes them useful for manufacturing atom bombs. Thorium reactors don't have that problem.
Thorium reactors have been around nearly as long as Uranium reactors. One operated for 20 years in the USA from the 1950s to the 1970s. The only reason they were never fully developed was political, not technical (they needed those bombs!):
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
FWIW, we could have got them working and be running the county on unlimited, safe energy for much less than (eg.) the cost of the F35 program. If there was any political willpower.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...
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