OK, so your link repeats my claim - 53,000,000 gallons of waste that needs to be cleaned up. 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater.
I'm not denying that they would love to send some of the transportable waste to Yucca. It would save them some money and time. But given the scale of the problem, the sending-to-Yucca part is barely worth the mention. The article you linked even says this:
"On one hand, this [closing Yucca] was a disaster for Hanford -- yet another obstacle placed in front of cleanup. On the other hand, bureaucratic holds and legal battles (protracted as they may be), feel small compared to the scope of a problem that only begins with 50 million gallons of nuclear and chemical waste."
The rationale was that you had to have enough surviving warheads to counterattack. So, if the Soviets managed to knock out every bomber and every missile silo in a massive nuclear attack, at least enough of our missile subs should have survived to wipe out the Soviet Union. If an initial attack had a fighting chance of getting rid of most of your opponent's missiles, then MAD goes out the window. It used to be measured in tens of thousands, so we've actually made a lot of progress.
How do you propose moving millions of gallons of nuclear waste to Yucca mountain? The primary problem at Hanford is cleanup, not storage. When it's all sitting in secure containers, ready to move to a storage facility... then we'll talk about Yucca mountain. Hundreds of other (commercial, private, though heavily regulated) facilities manage to store their nuclear waste without contaminating groundwater. The government does owe private industry a storage facility, but it sure would be nice for them to demonstrate that they can operate one.
The GOP screwed him, but that is to be expected. What I think he did not expect was the heads of the Energy Department labs pushing against him. In the end, he had to concede to modernization - which I don't think he wanted but it kept the labs open longer. I hate government waste, but I have to admit that it probably makes sense to employ the nuclear weapons experts.
There are already 3 agencies jointly overseeing the site, including one that is a state agency. Are you suggesting another would solve the problems there?
Unbelievably, the responses so far are that the government wasn't being overseen by enough other government. Of course, then you need government to oversee the government that oversees the government.
Yucca mountain could not handle the millions of gallons of waste at Hanford, even if you could find a a way to transport it safely. The largest-scale part of the problem is the roughly 10x20 mile patch of contaminated groundwater, for which Yucca would do nothing.
But step back from numbers for a moment and just use some reasoning... if they can pick it up and bring it to Yucca, then it's not an expensive cleanup issue, is it? Sure, it's no fun to build on-site storage - but it certainly doesn't have much to with cleanup.
I'd say you need to do both. Reduce the number, but also keep updating the tech for the remainder that you do keep around.
Interestingly, the Obama administration seems to be seeking a non-treaty path with Russia to warhead reduction. They seem to be doing this because of all the trouble they had getting the last START treaty through congress.
No it isn't, with even a cursory look into the situation. Yucca mountain was for spent fuel rods from commercial plants. This disaster area is the leftover crap from reprocessing fuel to extract the Plutonium. Yucca mountain was primarily for commercial reactors - this was a government-run site.
As to funding, they are actively cleaning up the site.
Oversight is another mystery - the cleanup is being done by a collaboration between the Department of Energy, the EPA, and Washington State. You have 3 distinct agencies from both state and federal governments "overseeing" the project.
Yeah, I've been reading up on the state-of-the-art today thanks to your post. The import duties are a factor, but it seems our installation is where things go really wrong. Those Chinese panels are still under a buck a watt, even with the import duty... but the installation is absurd.
I read a lot of theories on the reasons behind this, and I suspect that it is our balkanized regulations. Every city, county, and state - perhaps even home owners association - is going to have different rules regarding solar panels. The paperwork alone is probably worth a couple of cents per watt!
Anyway, the fact that we have gotten to the point where the price of solar panels is almost in the noise is just staggering to me. It's almost as cheap as asphalt roofing! And since the lifetime is similar, it makes me wonder if an all-in-one product doesn't make sense. I would gladly pay $15,000 for a solar-shingled roof than $10,000 for asphalt shingles plus another $10,000 for solar panels.
Percentage of wages supported my point of "didn't need to sacrifice my first born". I mean, everybody knows buying a tire factory in India is the way of tomorrow in term of ROI (wink) but who can afford it?
Ahhh, but you CAN still invest your money in an Indian tire factory via equities and bonds. That's why ROI for the panels is so important. If I'm tying up my capital for 15 years, I want to be sure it all works out! I have the money for an install, but right now it is sitting in equities earning over 10%... now, I don't expect to get that kind of return consistently, but I need to know what I'm up against.
I used 15,000 kW-h last year. My area seems to get about 3.5 hours of sun on average. That gives me a panel size of around 15.7 kW. At $1/watt, that puts me at $15,700. Fed subsidy gets it down to around $10,000 plus install. Last year I spent $2392 on electric. Not too bad - 4 years return for the cost of panels.
Realistically, though, most online calculators tell me that total cost after installation and tax rebates is more like $20,000... so my payback is more like 8 years.
But hell, if costs keep coming down, maybe I'll be up for it the next time I need a new roof.
I'm not the one who mentioned your wage!:) Thanks for the more concrete numbers... ROI is far more useful than percent of your wage.
That's an amazing drop in price. Just 3 years ago ROI was around 15-20 years in my area (PA) unless you were lucky enough to get the big government incentives.
Wow, that IS a lot cheaper. Just 3 years ago, my co-worker installed a system that was 1/3 paid for by the state and 1/3 paid for by the feds. His payoff period is about 6 years or so. He has an all-electric house, so his use case was ideal. Did you also get a heavy subsidy, or have the panel prices really crashed so much?
Nice trick there, telling us the cost based on your "wage" - which to us is an arbitrary number. How many monthly electricity payments did it cost you? How long before it pays for itself?
I guess I'd expect it to work like most unix client-server arrangements. You'd have a client, running as the current user, request the job from the print server. It would process the results and handle the writing of the resulting PDF to the directory of the current user's choice. Instead you have the server writing the file, which is... not usual. This was done because it was easier to hack the existing print infrastructure than to add a new PDF output facility. A reasonable decision, but definitely a hack.
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OK, so your link repeats my claim - 53,000,000 gallons of waste that needs to be cleaned up. 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater.
I'm not denying that they would love to send some of the transportable waste to Yucca. It would save them some money and time. But given the scale of the problem, the sending-to-Yucca part is barely worth the mention. The article you linked even says this:
That pretty much echos my sentiments.
The rationale was that you had to have enough surviving warheads to counterattack. So, if the Soviets managed to knock out every bomber and every missile silo in a massive nuclear attack, at least enough of our missile subs should have survived to wipe out the Soviet Union. If an initial attack had a fighting chance of getting rid of most of your opponent's missiles, then MAD goes out the window. It used to be measured in tens of thousands, so we've actually made a lot of progress.
How do you propose moving millions of gallons of nuclear waste to Yucca mountain? The primary problem at Hanford is cleanup, not storage. When it's all sitting in secure containers, ready to move to a storage facility... then we'll talk about Yucca mountain. Hundreds of other (commercial, private, though heavily regulated) facilities manage to store their nuclear waste without contaminating groundwater. The government does owe private industry a storage facility, but it sure would be nice for them to demonstrate that they can operate one.
The GOP screwed him, but that is to be expected. What I think he did not expect was the heads of the Energy Department labs pushing against him. In the end, he had to concede to modernization - which I don't think he wanted but it kept the labs open longer. I hate government waste, but I have to admit that it probably makes sense to employ the nuclear weapons experts.
There are already 3 agencies jointly overseeing the site, including one that is a state agency. Are you suggesting another would solve the problems there?
Unbelievably, the responses so far are that the government wasn't being overseen by enough other government. Of course, then you need government to oversee the government that oversees the government.
Yucca mountain could not handle the millions of gallons of waste at Hanford, even if you could find a a way to transport it safely. The largest-scale part of the problem is the roughly 10x20 mile patch of contaminated groundwater, for which Yucca would do nothing.
But step back from numbers for a moment and just use some reasoning... if they can pick it up and bring it to Yucca, then it's not an expensive cleanup issue, is it? Sure, it's no fun to build on-site storage - but it certainly doesn't have much to with cleanup.
No they don't. If you read the article you linked, you will see they are talking about spent nuclear fuel - same as me.
But the government was in charge, so they could have called in such advisers if they cared.
Wait, doesn't the government do the regulating? When the government is running the show, who the heck is the regulator?
I'd say you need to do both. Reduce the number, but also keep updating the tech for the remainder that you do keep around.
Interestingly, the Obama administration seems to be seeking a non-treaty path with Russia to warhead reduction. They seem to be doing this because of all the trouble they had getting the last START treaty through congress.
No it isn't, with even a cursory look into the situation. Yucca mountain was for spent fuel rods from commercial plants. This disaster area is the leftover crap from reprocessing fuel to extract the Plutonium. Yucca mountain was primarily for commercial reactors - this was a government-run site.
Regulations? This was a government-run site!
As to funding, they are actively cleaning up the site.
Oversight is another mystery - the cleanup is being done by a collaboration between the Department of Energy, the EPA, and Washington State. You have 3 distinct agencies from both state and federal governments "overseeing" the project.
Yeah, I've been reading up on the state-of-the-art today thanks to your post. The import duties are a factor, but it seems our installation is where things go really wrong. Those Chinese panels are still under a buck a watt, even with the import duty... but the installation is absurd.
I read a lot of theories on the reasons behind this, and I suspect that it is our balkanized regulations. Every city, county, and state - perhaps even home owners association - is going to have different rules regarding solar panels. The paperwork alone is probably worth a couple of cents per watt!
Anyway, the fact that we have gotten to the point where the price of solar panels is almost in the noise is just staggering to me. It's almost as cheap as asphalt roofing! And since the lifetime is similar, it makes me wonder if an all-in-one product doesn't make sense. I would gladly pay $15,000 for a solar-shingled roof than $10,000 for asphalt shingles plus another $10,000 for solar panels.
No, right now I'm fine with risk. Talk to me as I get closer to retirement :)
Wow, will those panels really last 20-30 years on a roof? I'm picturing myself spending a lot of time up on the roof soldering replacement panels in!
(And I AM risk averse when it comes to heights!)
Percentage of wages supported my point of "didn't need to sacrifice my first born". I mean, everybody knows buying a tire factory in India is the way of tomorrow in term of ROI (wink) but who can afford it?
Ahhh, but you CAN still invest your money in an Indian tire factory via equities and bonds. That's why ROI for the panels is so important. If I'm tying up my capital for 15 years, I want to be sure it all works out! I have the money for an install, but right now it is sitting in equities earning over 10%... now, I don't expect to get that kind of return consistently, but I need to know what I'm up against.
I used 15,000 kW-h last year. My area seems to get about 3.5 hours of sun on average. That gives me a panel size of around 15.7 kW. At $1/watt, that puts me at $15,700. Fed subsidy gets it down to around $10,000 plus install. Last year I spent $2392 on electric. Not too bad - 4 years return for the cost of panels.
Realistically, though, most online calculators tell me that total cost after installation and tax rebates is more like $20,000... so my payback is more like 8 years.
But hell, if costs keep coming down, maybe I'll be up for it the next time I need a new roof.
I'm not the one who mentioned your wage! :) Thanks for the more concrete numbers... ROI is far more useful than percent of your wage.
That's an amazing drop in price. Just 3 years ago ROI was around 15-20 years in my area (PA) unless you were lucky enough to get the big government incentives.
What's your payback period? That is, how much do you estimate it lowered your electric bill by such that you can recover your $7500?
Wow, that IS a lot cheaper. Just 3 years ago, my co-worker installed a system that was 1/3 paid for by the state and 1/3 paid for by the feds. His payoff period is about 6 years or so. He has an all-electric house, so his use case was ideal. Did you also get a heavy subsidy, or have the panel prices really crashed so much?
Nice trick there, telling us the cost based on your "wage" - which to us is an arbitrary number. How many monthly electricity payments did it cost you? How long before it pays for itself?
I don't think you understand... I'm not saying they shouldn't be able to sue you for breach of contract for unlocking the phone. That would be fine.
What they currently have is special government protection under the DMCA.
They don't today - you have to sue.
What I want is the government out of the business of protecting private contracts. Where do I sign up for free government lawyers?
I guess I'd expect it to work like most unix client-server arrangements. You'd have a client, running as the current user, request the job from the print server. It would process the results and handle the writing of the resulting PDF to the directory of the current user's choice. Instead you have the server writing the file, which is... not usual. This was done because it was easier to hack the existing print infrastructure than to add a new PDF output facility. A reasonable decision, but definitely a hack.