Something like that is done for firearms. It is illegal to sell firearms by mail so what retailers will do is sell a kit that has all the parts of a firearm except the part that is legally the firearm. Problem with your example is that the critical part that makes the collection of parts a firearm is itself legally a firearm. In other words, what keeps the state from defining that part as a "car"? If that part is now legally a car then you are back where you started, Tesla will have to get dealerships to sell the "car part" since it is defined as a car under the law.
Continuing the firearm analogy what people will do is sell an "80% firearm" through the mail. It is lawful to produce your own firearm. It is lawful to sell machined hunks of metal through the mail. So what dealers will do is machine a part that is really close to being a firearm but still requires the drilling of holes or some other critical machining to technically be a firearm.
Tesla doing something like this would be very difficult. They would have to sell a "car kit" with all the pieces required to build a car but lacking some critical machine work so that they are not technically selling a car. The problem is that while people that manufacture firearms for their own use do not have to register them, excepting places like New Jersey where state law requires it, every state requires cars to be registered to be lawfully driven on public roads. That means the person that assembles the car kit would have to go to the state and complete all kinds of paperwork so they can drive their car.
Requiring people to buy a Tesla car kit, assemble it themselves, and go through the paperwork to have it registered would likely have a serious impact on people willing to purchase it. I would also believe this would make a serious support headache for Tesla as they would have people calling about how they could not get their car put together correctly.
In short, people tried that already and the people that wrote the laws have undoubtedly thought of that too.
I recall reading some articles where people did the math on pumped hydro and other electric storage technologies we have now. There currently is no viable grid level power storage, none. There's not enough water for pumped hydro, not enough lead for batteries, not enough holes in the ground for compressed air.
Pumped hydro storage would require a dam nearly the size of Hoover Dam for every nuclear power plant.
Storing electric power is stupid. It makes much more sense to not produce it until you need it. A solution that seems obvious to me is the molten salt reactor. MSRs can load follow, no need for storage. If done right it should be cheaper than wind and solar, and competitive with coal and natural gas. All of our energy could come from MSRs. Nuclear waste from them don't seem to be an issue since they burn up more radioactive material than they produce. They'd actually eat existing nuclear waste.
Nuclear power is the only solution I can think of. Wind and solar are too expensive and unreliable to replace coal. There aren't enough rivers worth a dam for hydro power to replace all the coal plants. Things like wave power and geothermal are mostly theoretical.
If people want to replace coal the solution isn't to buy them out, it's to out compete them. $50 billion could go a long way to get some nuclear power plants built. The biggest hurdle though is not the lack of funds but the government regulations. There are plenty of people willing to invest in nuclear power but the way the laws are written no one can build a nuclear power plant without first getting permission from the federal government, and they aren't giving anyone permission.
I think the states need to have a tiny revolt on federal authority. The states need to tell the federal government that they can manage nuclear power just fine without their help, and then get some nuclear power plants built.
Driving coal power plants out of business without also replacing them with something just as cheap and reliable will leave everyone penniless, cold, and hungry. Coal is what drives our economy. People suggesting replacing coal with anything other than nuclear shows that they are ignorant of technology, economics, or both.
Finally someone in Congress speaks up about the overreach of the executive branch. What boggles my mind is why Congress talks so much about it but does so little. These executive agencies exist only because Congress allow them to. If Congress wants them to stop then they should make it stop. One sure way to make it stop is to dissolve the agency responsible.
The issue of government spying is, IMHO, a symptom of professional politicians. Senator Feinstein has spent her entire life in government. She knows nothing about living a life outside of the privileges of a government paycheck. She must think she's "better" than those that voted her into office. That she's "more equal" than the other animals.
I used to think that no one should be able to serve more than two terms in the same office. Now I think that no one should be able to serve more than one. The terms "re-election" and "incumbent" should be foreign to us. There are more than 300 million people in this country, it's nearly statistically impossible that we cannot find someone better for the job than her. She's 80 years old and has served as a Senator for 22 years, it's time she retired.
So, Senator, you don't like the government spying on you? Welcome to the party, there's a lot of us that don't like the government spying on us. The difference between you, Senator, and me is that you can make it all go away with a vote. As a Senator you can have anyone you deem responsible fired, including the President of the United States.
I know you won't though, Senator, because the people that are spying on you work for the same entity that you work for. I don't mean the federal government, I mean the Democrat Party. If there was a Republican POTUS right now you wouldn't be talking to reporters right now, you'd be hauling people in front of a Senate committee and have them answering uncomfortable questions under oath.
Senator, you allowed this beast to be created, now you and I have to live with it. You are the reason we need term limits, you just don't know when to quit. I suspect that you will be like many of your predecessors, the only way you will leave office is feet first. So, FOAD already.
How many of these five million people with security clearances work for or are related to an elected member of Congress, a state government employee, or someone in the federal court system?
Will Congress ignore the executive branch spying on them? I suppose they will, they don't seem to be doing much of anything to keep the federal government from growing out of control.
I disagree that to have a uniform standard for searches that the agents performing the search must be government employees. There are several major airports that go fed up with the poor quality work done by federal employees, and with the complaints from passengers on the federal employees. What they did was hire their own security that had to meet the standards set by the TSA. People were happy as complaints were met with greater interest and care, those being rude or not doing their job were fired or moved away from the passengers. There is still a TSA presence at these airports but they act as inspectors and supervisors, never performing searches themselves.
As to your second question I never did have my colon searched but I have been given additional searches at just about every airport I visit. Might have something to do with my appearance. I'm a pale white farm boy, 240 pounds, 6 foot 5 inches tall, crew cut hair (slightly grayed), eyeglasses, business casual dress, and since I despise checking in luggage I tend to carry two bags on board with me. With my bad feet I tend to carry a cane. And considering that the flights are typically cool I'll carry a long duster style coat. Considering my business I might have a magazine on guns, computers, military, hunting, or flying. Carry on bag may contain a computer, multimeter, safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, and steel toed boots.
Someone inevitably asks me to step aside so they can poke around through my bags and ask me about where I'm headed, what I plan to do there. I'll talk about high voltage oscillators, fast running pigs, airplanes, and shooting things.
Perhaps they find me interesting. Perhaps they want to make double sure I have nothing sharp on me. Perhaps they want to keep me aware from their women and children are safe from someone so dangerous. I can only guess they have heard of my motion sickness. I drug myself as I board the plane.
I don't know what they look for, whatever its they don' find it.
As much as people would like it to be otherwise our economy runs on oil. Without cheap oil we'd be living a life not much different than Little House on the Prairie right now. We burn oil now to drive our economy and we will burn oil for another century.
I'm glad that BP found a way around this stupid law, we need to keep the oil that drives our economy flowing or we will have to choose between starving or freezing to death. President Obama is doing everything he can think of to drive out oil and doing next to nothing to find a replacement. Without a replacement to cheap oil we starve.
Sure, he gave gobs of money to people that claimed they could turn sunshine into gold but anyone that took even a glancing look at their business plans would have to know they were just throwing that money away. We need real solutions. We need nuclear power.
I've seen research in fusion power and I think it looks promising if given the freedom to conduct their research and government funds even close to on par with solar. Advanced fission power is even better. People like Flibe Energy have designs that they claim can burn up our existing nuclear waste. It seems that they aren't even asking for government money, just permission to conduct their research.
Wind power has promise IMHO, but it has to be set free from the constraints of government subsidies. There isn't profit in it unless they qualify for government funds so no one is doing any real research in it. Instead of trying to make it profitable through competition they make it profitable by lobbyists.
We'd have all kinds of jobs if only the federal government got out of the way. We'd be building nuclear power plants, oil wells, and windmills. We'd be swimming in cheap energy. It's energy that drives the economy, everything we produce, ship, or compute takes power. Cheap power means cheap everything else. We'd be exporting energy if the government got out of the way. Instead we have to play nice with dictators in far off places. We have to send our young men and women over to these hell holes to die because we just can't seem to figure out that it'd be much cheaper, easier, and safer if we drilled for the oil here instead.
We're going to be importing and exporting oil until we figure out something better to power our way of life. Dumping money into solar panels, windmills, and bio-energy is going to leave us cold, hungry, and poor. We've been subsidizing these things for decades and have little to show for it. Research in nuclear power has brought us a long way. We need more. Mostly we just need government approval, not their money. People know nuclear is safe, clean, and most importantly it is profitable.
I believe the judge ruled correctly. The law stated a condition of "undress or partial undress" or words that are similar. If the judge ruled that the act was illegal then he'd be ruling that all women in skirts are partially undressed. That would make for an interesting precedent for other court cases to follow.
Go ahead and try that, good luck with your second degree murder trial.
That's not how "stand your ground" works and you should know better. You can't just shoot someone and then claim after the fact "I thought he had a gun" and expect to get away with murder.
I don't want my colon rooted through, how do you propose I not bring that on the plane?
Also, it's one thing to be searched by a private entity, it's another to be searched by an agent of the government. The government cannot issue a warrant to search but upon probable cause and with making note of what is to be searched and what items or persons are to be seized.
If American Airlines wants to have an employee look through my bags before I board their plane then fine, go and search. If the government wants to search my bags before I board an American Airlines flight then they need to get a judge to sign a warrant.
Yep, I agree. While we're at it let's stop subsidizing the solar power industry, the windmill industry, and the ethanol industry.
Part of the reason fuel is so expensive is that there is a subsidy in the form of mandated ethanol use. Another reason is a ban on cheap imported sugar. All so the corn growers can make a lot of money and turn the Great Plains into a corn monoculture.
It's very unfortunate that the oil spill happened, that was a lot of oil that could have been used to keep people warm and fed. Much has been done already to keep something like this from happening again, just simply requiring all oil tankers to have a double hull would prevent many spills like this. The United States has already required all oil tankers that travel between US ports to have double hulls.
Less transport of crude oil in tankers would help. A really big pipeline would be nice, like the Keystone XL. More domestic oil drilling would be nice too, I understand that there is a lot of oil just off the California coast. So much it's seeping out of the ground and washing up on beaches. But, no, we can't drill for that oil. Somehow allowing "natural" oil to collect on the beach is "good" but "unnatural" oil collecting on the beach is "bad". I say that all oil on beaches is bad. Much better to burn it and get some benefit from it rather than wait for it to decompose to CO2 on its own.
I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix. They are much cheaper too. But the tree huggers think that if we don't build pipelines that somehow we won't be burning that oil. No, we will burn it. We will move it from where it is plentiful to where it is needed. We will just move it by means more likely to spill.
If we want to stop burning oil we need something better. By "better" I don't mean something with less carbon emissions. If less carbon output was the goal then the solution is not doing whatever it is we do with that oil. I mean like we let our food spoil and we freeze to death in our homes. Of course people suggest that is precisely what we should do, and I suggest they do it first and I'll consider it.
Conservation is an excellent goal but all it does is mean we burn a limited resource at a lower rate, we will still run out but just later. By "better" I mean something just as convenient, just as cheap, and just as safe but also more plentiful. I say we need nuclear power. Anything else means choosing between starving to death or freezing to death.
The continuous-process system envisaged by LFTR enthusiasts needed to purify the molten-salt stream and prevent the reactor from shutting down due to poisoning can be tapped to extract any particular element with a bit of surreptitious work, and that includes extracting pure kickstarter U-235 (which is easy to make a bomb from) or pure kickstarter Pu-239 (trickier to weaponise but still possible) or U-233 bred from thorium (which also works as bomb material but not as well as U-235).
Removing fuel from a running reactor, and thinking no one will notice, is insane. Thinking you're going to be able to remove weapon grade material from a running reactor is beyond insane. Once that reactor reaches critical there's going to be all kinds of interesting isotopes created. The plutonium will quickly be contaminated with Pu-240 and the uranium contaminated with U-232.
Current conventional reactors produce a mixture of Pu-239 and Pu-240, useless as bomb material, in spent fuel since the operating cycles last for a year or more between refuelling and some of the Pu-239 undergoes another neutron capture to make Pu-240. Pu-239 can't be separated from Pu-240 without great effort; the centrifuges or other enrichment equipment needed could purify U-235 from raw uranium much more easily.
Same goes for MSR. The operators of the reactor are not going to remove any fuel until they can sustain a critical state with bred U-233. That will take about a year. Taking out any fuel before then is going to make a noticeable drop in power output. That fuel is hot enough to melt aluminum and most common steels. It will also be contaminated with isotopes that are gamma emitters, easily detectable from vast distances.
If the Pu-239 is going to be stolen it's going to be before it gets to the reactor, that holds true for MSR and MOX.
MOX fuel formulations are only a small percentage of Pu, typically something like 6% or so hence the term Mixed-OXide comprising both uranium oxide and plutonium oxide. A MOX fuel element will still have Pu in it after it has spent a cycle in the reactor but much of the original Pu-239 and Pu-240 will have been fissioned. More Pu will have been bred from the U-238 comprising most of the rest of the fuel element but the total inventory of Pu in the spent fuel will have been decreased while producing a significant amount of process heat for electricity generation and other uses such as desalination. The spent fuel rod can of course be reprocessed and the Pu reconstituted as fresh MOX fuel.
That's nice, Pu-239 and Pu-240 is reduced in MOX fueled reactors. In MSRs the Pu-239 and Pu-240 is destroyed, it never leaves the reactor.
I don't know of any proposed LFTR operational cycle that would produce Pu-238 in any significant quantity; breeding up from Th-232 all the way to Pu-238 is a lot of steps requiring several neutron captures and decays with several intermediates which would interrupt the chain if fissioned. Adding Np-238 to the molten-salt fuel might work to make Pu-238 but the only source of Np-238 in quantity is a conventional nuclear reactor...
LFTR does not produce Pu-238 in significant quantity. It produces enough to be financially advantageous to extract. My point is that any plutonium that is produced will peak at Pu-238, it will rarely get heavier since Pu-239 and Pu-241 are so readily fissile.
Your claims of stealing Pu-239 from MSRs makes as much sense as stealing it from MOX fueled plants. The difference is that getting Pu-239 from MSRs is near impossible. All the Pu-239 we have right now came from solid fuel reactors like those fueled with MOX. This feature is why the MSR technology was not pursued, the reactors were worthless for producing weapon grade material.
Everything you say about MOX fuel in conventional reactors also applies to LFTR. So long as there is enough U-235, or U-233, to offset the presence of the Pu-240 the LFTR will have sufficient neutrons to get critical. The nice thing about LFTR is that it avoids the requirement for expensive fuel processing, the fuel does not have to be manufactured into pellets.
The problem with currently used reactors is that once the fuel is spent it must be disposed of or processed again. LFTR, as most every MSR, the fuel is never "spent" but is continually processed. The plutonium would never leave the reactor once put in. With currently used designs the spent fuel, even if started with MOX, will contain more plutonium than what was put in. Not effective for destroying plutonium.
LFTR does produce some plutonium but the majority of it will be the valuable Pu-238. It's worthless for bombs but very useful in RTGs. MOX fuel contains U-238, which makes more "bad" Pu-239. LFTRs do not contain any U-238, so any plutonium it produces will tend toward the "good" Pu-238.
Ignore LFTR then. We have shown that molten salt reactors can burn a mixture of U-233, U-235, and Pu-239. Burning any one of them alone in the reactor does not take a leap of faith even if not shown experimentally.
What alternatives do we have? What alternatives make sense? Making economic sense would likely be a big factor in the choices. We can leave the plutonium sit. It can sit in ready made bombs that can be stolen. It can sit in spent PWR fuel where the plutonium is essentially refining itself into weapon grade material, making it more valuable to anyone that wants to make weapons the longer it sits. We can reprocess it into MOX, an expensive process for reactors that are getting to be fewer and older. My favorite is to put that plutonium in shiny new MSR reactors where the processing of the weapon cores, and spent PWR fuel, is cheap and easy.
What is more expensive in the long term? Keeping the plutonium under continuous guard for the next billion years? Or, guard it only so long as it takes to burn it up in a reactor?
The plutonium already exists. If the concern is to remove the risk of the plutonium being used against us in a weapon then the only way to remove that risk completely is to destroy the plutonium. The only means we have to destroy the plutonium is to burn it in a reactor. It's not like the government is just going to hand this stuff over to the private corporations, they will still watch it. The difference is that once in a reactor the plutonium is no longer weapon grade, it will be contaminated very quickly.
Getting back to LFTR. It does not require Pu-239 to start the reaction, it is only one option. That Pu-239 does not have to be weapon grade, it can be down blended just like it is now for MOX fuel. The difference between PWRs and MSRs is that the fuel does not require an expensive manufacturing process. Putting the plutonium in MOX fuel is a good idea. Putting that plutonium in MSRs is a better idea. Leaving the plutonium sit until it all decays away in a couple billion years is a bad idea.
Are you serious? Nuclear powered aircraft? I can see nuclear powered ships, even trains, but not anything that flies. Nuclear power gets more efficient the bigger it is. That makes it perfect for things like ships at sea. The bigger the ship the less material it takes for the cargo carried. The bigger the ship the less crew needed for the cargo carried. The bigger the ship the smoother the ride. That is why we already have nuclear powered ships at sea.
Things that need to be fast need to be light. Radiation shielding is heavy. A light and fast nuclear powered aircraft can be made if the passengers don't mind the radiation.
A worry with most of the LFTR designs is that commercial companies will have access to bomb-grade Pu-239 which can be chemically extracted from the kickstarter fuel load.
Do you believe that anyone can keep an industrial level plutonium purification process secret for long? Wouldn't you think that both the government and the private corporation would be highly motivated to make sure that no fissile material leaves the reactor site? The nice thing about using plutonium as fuel is that it has value now. Currently plutonium is worthless except to those that want to make bombs from it. People tend to not care if worthless things go missing.
Another nice thing about using plutonium as fuel is that it is destroyed in the process. We're ridding the world of plutonium, removing the threat of it being stolen to be used in bombs. Any new plutonium created in MSRs will remain in the reactor until it is burned as fuel. If anyone is going to steal plutonium after nuclear reactors becomes the norm then it is likely to be stolen to be used as fuel. It has a much higher value as fuel then as a weapon. Dynamite is cheap and it does not take a team of nuclear scientists to produce it, form it into a weapon, and detonate it. If someone wants to blow up something then there are much easier ways to do that than build a plutonium bomb.
I have an alternative for you. Allow the people to possess the tools necessary for personal protection on their person at all times. These tools could take several forms, allow people to choose what works for them.
One tool is willingly allow recording. Let people put trackers on themselves and place the data in some sort of third party data store. In the event of a crime against them the data could be released by them or their advocate.
If we get the technology then we could have people with their own personal force fields.
What has shown to be effective, and inexpensive, is the common handgun. If muggers and rapists know that there is a high probability of getting shot for committing a violent act then crime goes down. Not only is it cheap and effective there is no tracking data for someone to abuse.
One problem we've seen with tracking technology is that the thugs figured out that if there are too many of them then they do not see any meaningful punishment. Getting caught for the crime is only an effective deterrent if they know they will be punished. Having armed law abiding citizens does carry the very effective deterrent of punishment.
How do you stop the government from placing cameras everywhere to track our movements? Easy, you see a government camera you smash it. Tell everyone you meet to do the same. If enough people do this then the government can't replace them fast enough. If people get arrested for it then demand a trial by jury. If the jury is equally pissed off about the cameras then no one gets a conviction. Vote for people that won't put cameras everywhere.
If none of that works then what you have is the police arresting everyone that smashes a camera. Because they know a jury will not convict then these people have "unfortunate accidents" while "resisting arrest" and due to "unforeseen traffic conditions" they die in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. What happens then is open war by the government on the citizens. At that point we stop breaking cameras and start breaking skulls.
In other words, use the four boxes of liberty. Soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge boxes. Use them in that order, starting now.
Use of the ballot box should be sufficient. If these elected officials cannot stop themselves from spying on the people that voted them into office then they should not be surprised when they get dragged from office feet first.
I went to the extreme of pointing out the possible use of the fourth box of liberty only because I know that a government that spies on its citizens is inevitably doing more than just spying. They spy for a reason. They spy so they can act against us. They govern only with the permission of the governed. Once permission is removed those that govern can step down on their own power, or not. They get to choose. If they choose poorly then they leave public office feet first.
I will agree for the moment that only government can internalize the externalities because it has little relevance to my argument. Who does it is irrelevant as the result is the same.
First we need to define the externalities. It can be defined as the CO2 output itself, or the net effect on the atmosphere. If we define it as the CO2 output then we'd internalize it by building systems that can reverse the process. This system must be able to draw the CO2 out of the air without adding more or causing some other economic or environmental hazard. The treatment of the net effect on the atmosphere can be done in a number of ways such as using taxation to divert funds from those burning the oil to those affected so that they can perform the tasks needed to reverse or minimize the effects.
One way these people can minimize the CO2 damage is to build dikes to hold back the rising sea levels, develop machines to spread water vapor or particulates into the air to reflect back solar rays. Or these people can take the money to implement the first solution, pull CO2 out of the air. Which ever means they decide upon will require power. Using oil, coal, or natural gas to power this will only make the problem worse. These processes will take, barring some very interesting physics, more energy than that produced from the carbon producing energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics are against us.
So we will need an energy source that consumes CO2 and produces nothing that would be detrimental to society or the environment, and do so at a cost on par with burning that oil. I believe we have such a technology by pairing up waste annihilating molten salt reactors and jet fuel from seawater converters. As these two technologies together we can build an infrastructure that produces energy in a form that we can use to power our battleships, bombers, and battle tanks. By products include pure oxygen, fresh water, helium, and radioactive isotopes needed for medicine and space exploration. Inputs to the system includes seawater, municipal waste water, spent nuclear fuel from LWR power plants, and thorium. We have plenty of these and they cost next to nothing.
Do we internalize the externalities by taxing oil? No. We must continue the subsidies to make sure our ability to defend our nation continues. What we can do is shift the subsidies from the oil taken out of the ground to the oil we can create from seawater. After enough time passes we won't need to drill for oil, it will be cheaper to produce it. Any CO2 produced from burning it goes into the environment where it gets collected again for producing more jet fuel.
Only nuclear power can do this. We don't have the technology to make solar or wind produce the heat needed to make it work, or with the reliability to make it cheap. I've been assured by some very smart people that this technology works and can be done cheaply enough to compete with current oil, coal, and nuclear. The problem is that the federal government does not see this the same way. They've been doing energy the same way for fifty years. To change their mind will take education and a desire to act. The government talks a lot about acting but they don't seem to have the desire.
The federal government is not taking climate change seriously. As much as these politicians bitch and moan about how nothing is done about it they have no one to blame but themselves.
As I see it the federal government regulations are preventing research into alternative energy. There's so many regulations that if someone so much as sneezes a dozens forms have to be filled out. I'm not suggesting that the government allow people to pollute rivers in the name of scientific advancement. I'm saying the government is taking safety above all else, to the point they will allow our house to burn down so as not to create a tripping hazard with the water hose.
One example is that I believe Prohibition set back bio-fuel development at least fifty years. Prior to Prohibition it was not uncommon for farmers to turn a portion of their crop into alcohol for their tractors. While Prohibition no longer exists the regulations on alcohol production are such that anyone that wants to do research on it will have to have a full time lawyer to keep the BATFE from throwing them all in prison.
Even though we have seen considerable advances in nuclear power there is only so much that can be simulated. The simulation is only as good as the data provided to it. If we want to see cheap safe and reliable nuclear power then we will need actual production size reactors built. They will not be perfect, there is always the possibility of something going terribly wrong. This gets to my earlier analogy, nuclear power is the water hose that can put out the climate change fire. Yes, we might trip over it and bust our heads on the ground. We have to do something, the house is burning.
Yes, let's remove the subsidies to oil companies. I completely agree. We should not subsidize oil, coal, or natural gas. Let these people pay their own costs for once.
Now, with that out of the way I will say that we should also remove subsidies for ethanol, wind, solar, and geothermal. Let them pay their own costs for R&D. Let the market sort them out. These energy sources need to sink or swim on their own. We cannot afford to subsidize them forever.
It annoys me to no end how people will bring up oil subsidies as somehow keeping wind and solar from taking over the market. Here's a clue about wind and solar, you can't pour that stuff into an airplane and expect it to fly. We will be burning oil until it takes more energy to pump it out of the ground then what we get from burning it, and we will still be pumping it out of the ground for years after that. We burn oil because it has properties that no other energy source has, we can pour it into a tank and expect it to stay there.
Do I think that we should subsidize oil because it has these wonderful properties? No. What I do think is that the federal government realizes that current battleships, bombers, and jeeps run on oil. To keep them running means making sure the infrastructure for that oil exists and has sufficient capacity. An easy way to do that is to give them money. That does not make it right, it's just how the world works right now.
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Something like that is done for firearms. It is illegal to sell firearms by mail so what retailers will do is sell a kit that has all the parts of a firearm except the part that is legally the firearm. Problem with your example is that the critical part that makes the collection of parts a firearm is itself legally a firearm. In other words, what keeps the state from defining that part as a "car"? If that part is now legally a car then you are back where you started, Tesla will have to get dealerships to sell the "car part" since it is defined as a car under the law.
Continuing the firearm analogy what people will do is sell an "80% firearm" through the mail. It is lawful to produce your own firearm. It is lawful to sell machined hunks of metal through the mail. So what dealers will do is machine a part that is really close to being a firearm but still requires the drilling of holes or some other critical machining to technically be a firearm.
Tesla doing something like this would be very difficult. They would have to sell a "car kit" with all the pieces required to build a car but lacking some critical machine work so that they are not technically selling a car. The problem is that while people that manufacture firearms for their own use do not have to register them, excepting places like New Jersey where state law requires it, every state requires cars to be registered to be lawfully driven on public roads. That means the person that assembles the car kit would have to go to the state and complete all kinds of paperwork so they can drive their car.
Requiring people to buy a Tesla car kit, assemble it themselves, and go through the paperwork to have it registered would likely have a serious impact on people willing to purchase it. I would also believe this would make a serious support headache for Tesla as they would have people calling about how they could not get their car put together correctly.
In short, people tried that already and the people that wrote the laws have undoubtedly thought of that too.
I recall reading some articles where people did the math on pumped hydro and other electric storage technologies we have now. There currently is no viable grid level power storage, none. There's not enough water for pumped hydro, not enough lead for batteries, not enough holes in the ground for compressed air.
Pumped hydro storage would require a dam nearly the size of Hoover Dam for every nuclear power plant.
Storing electric power is stupid. It makes much more sense to not produce it until you need it. A solution that seems obvious to me is the molten salt reactor. MSRs can load follow, no need for storage. If done right it should be cheaper than wind and solar, and competitive with coal and natural gas. All of our energy could come from MSRs. Nuclear waste from them don't seem to be an issue since they burn up more radioactive material than they produce. They'd actually eat existing nuclear waste.
Nuclear power is the only solution I can think of. Wind and solar are too expensive and unreliable to replace coal. There aren't enough rivers worth a dam for hydro power to replace all the coal plants. Things like wave power and geothermal are mostly theoretical.
If people want to replace coal the solution isn't to buy them out, it's to out compete them. $50 billion could go a long way to get some nuclear power plants built. The biggest hurdle though is not the lack of funds but the government regulations. There are plenty of people willing to invest in nuclear power but the way the laws are written no one can build a nuclear power plant without first getting permission from the federal government, and they aren't giving anyone permission.
I think the states need to have a tiny revolt on federal authority. The states need to tell the federal government that they can manage nuclear power just fine without their help, and then get some nuclear power plants built.
Driving coal power plants out of business without also replacing them with something just as cheap and reliable will leave everyone penniless, cold, and hungry. Coal is what drives our economy. People suggesting replacing coal with anything other than nuclear shows that they are ignorant of technology, economics, or both.
Right, I should have qualified that. Senator Feinstein can make it go away tomorrow with a vote.
Finally someone in Congress speaks up about the overreach of the executive branch. What boggles my mind is why Congress talks so much about it but does so little. These executive agencies exist only because Congress allow them to. If Congress wants them to stop then they should make it stop. One sure way to make it stop is to dissolve the agency responsible.
The issue of government spying is, IMHO, a symptom of professional politicians. Senator Feinstein has spent her entire life in government. She knows nothing about living a life outside of the privileges of a government paycheck. She must think she's "better" than those that voted her into office. That she's "more equal" than the other animals.
I used to think that no one should be able to serve more than two terms in the same office. Now I think that no one should be able to serve more than one. The terms "re-election" and "incumbent" should be foreign to us. There are more than 300 million people in this country, it's nearly statistically impossible that we cannot find someone better for the job than her. She's 80 years old and has served as a Senator for 22 years, it's time she retired.
So, Senator, you don't like the government spying on you? Welcome to the party, there's a lot of us that don't like the government spying on us. The difference between you, Senator, and me is that you can make it all go away with a vote. As a Senator you can have anyone you deem responsible fired, including the President of the United States.
I know you won't though, Senator, because the people that are spying on you work for the same entity that you work for. I don't mean the federal government, I mean the Democrat Party. If there was a Republican POTUS right now you wouldn't be talking to reporters right now, you'd be hauling people in front of a Senate committee and have them answering uncomfortable questions under oath.
Senator, you allowed this beast to be created, now you and I have to live with it. You are the reason we need term limits, you just don't know when to quit. I suspect that you will be like many of your predecessors, the only way you will leave office is feet first. So, FOAD already.
How many of these five million people with security clearances work for or are related to an elected member of Congress, a state government employee, or someone in the federal court system?
Will Congress ignore the executive branch spying on them? I suppose they will, they don't seem to be doing much of anything to keep the federal government from growing out of control.
TSA agents are not law enforcement, they have no authority to arrest.
I disagree that to have a uniform standard for searches that the agents performing the search must be government employees. There are several major airports that go fed up with the poor quality work done by federal employees, and with the complaints from passengers on the federal employees. What they did was hire their own security that had to meet the standards set by the TSA. People were happy as complaints were met with greater interest and care, those being rude or not doing their job were fired or moved away from the passengers. There is still a TSA presence at these airports but they act as inspectors and supervisors, never performing searches themselves.
As to your second question I never did have my colon searched but I have been given additional searches at just about every airport I visit. Might have something to do with my appearance. I'm a pale white farm boy, 240 pounds, 6 foot 5 inches tall, crew cut hair (slightly grayed), eyeglasses, business casual dress, and since I despise checking in luggage I tend to carry two bags on board with me. With my bad feet I tend to carry a cane. And considering that the flights are typically cool I'll carry a long duster style coat. Considering my business I might have a magazine on guns, computers, military, hunting, or flying. Carry on bag may contain a computer, multimeter, safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, and steel toed boots.
Someone inevitably asks me to step aside so they can poke around through my bags and ask me about where I'm headed, what I plan to do there. I'll talk about high voltage oscillators, fast running pigs, airplanes, and shooting things.
Perhaps they find me interesting. Perhaps they want to make double sure I have nothing sharp on me. Perhaps they want to keep me aware from their women and children are safe from someone so dangerous. I can only guess they have heard of my motion sickness. I drug myself as I board the plane.
I don't know what they look for, whatever its they don' find it.
As much as people would like it to be otherwise our economy runs on oil. Without cheap oil we'd be living a life not much different than Little House on the Prairie right now. We burn oil now to drive our economy and we will burn oil for another century.
I'm glad that BP found a way around this stupid law, we need to keep the oil that drives our economy flowing or we will have to choose between starving or freezing to death. President Obama is doing everything he can think of to drive out oil and doing next to nothing to find a replacement. Without a replacement to cheap oil we starve.
Sure, he gave gobs of money to people that claimed they could turn sunshine into gold but anyone that took even a glancing look at their business plans would have to know they were just throwing that money away. We need real solutions. We need nuclear power.
I've seen research in fusion power and I think it looks promising if given the freedom to conduct their research and government funds even close to on par with solar. Advanced fission power is even better. People like Flibe Energy have designs that they claim can burn up our existing nuclear waste. It seems that they aren't even asking for government money, just permission to conduct their research.
Wind power has promise IMHO, but it has to be set free from the constraints of government subsidies. There isn't profit in it unless they qualify for government funds so no one is doing any real research in it. Instead of trying to make it profitable through competition they make it profitable by lobbyists.
We'd have all kinds of jobs if only the federal government got out of the way. We'd be building nuclear power plants, oil wells, and windmills. We'd be swimming in cheap energy. It's energy that drives the economy, everything we produce, ship, or compute takes power. Cheap power means cheap everything else. We'd be exporting energy if the government got out of the way. Instead we have to play nice with dictators in far off places. We have to send our young men and women over to these hell holes to die because we just can't seem to figure out that it'd be much cheaper, easier, and safer if we drilled for the oil here instead.
We're going to be importing and exporting oil until we figure out something better to power our way of life. Dumping money into solar panels, windmills, and bio-energy is going to leave us cold, hungry, and poor. We've been subsidizing these things for decades and have little to show for it. Research in nuclear power has brought us a long way. We need more. Mostly we just need government approval, not their money. People know nuclear is safe, clean, and most importantly it is profitable.
I believe the judge ruled correctly. The law stated a condition of "undress or partial undress" or words that are similar. If the judge ruled that the act was illegal then he'd be ruling that all women in skirts are partially undressed. That would make for an interesting precedent for other court cases to follow.
Go ahead and try that, good luck with your second degree murder trial.
That's not how "stand your ground" works and you should know better. You can't just shoot someone and then claim after the fact "I thought he had a gun" and expect to get away with murder.
I don't want my colon rooted through, how do you propose I not bring that on the plane?
Also, it's one thing to be searched by a private entity, it's another to be searched by an agent of the government. The government cannot issue a warrant to search but upon probable cause and with making note of what is to be searched and what items or persons are to be seized.
If American Airlines wants to have an employee look through my bags before I board their plane then fine, go and search. If the government wants to search my bags before I board an American Airlines flight then they need to get a judge to sign a warrant.
Yep, I agree. While we're at it let's stop subsidizing the solar power industry, the windmill industry, and the ethanol industry.
Part of the reason fuel is so expensive is that there is a subsidy in the form of mandated ethanol use. Another reason is a ban on cheap imported sugar. All so the corn growers can make a lot of money and turn the Great Plains into a corn monoculture.
It's very unfortunate that the oil spill happened, that was a lot of oil that could have been used to keep people warm and fed. Much has been done already to keep something like this from happening again, just simply requiring all oil tankers to have a double hull would prevent many spills like this. The United States has already required all oil tankers that travel between US ports to have double hulls.
Less transport of crude oil in tankers would help. A really big pipeline would be nice, like the Keystone XL. More domestic oil drilling would be nice too, I understand that there is a lot of oil just off the California coast. So much it's seeping out of the ground and washing up on beaches. But, no, we can't drill for that oil. Somehow allowing "natural" oil to collect on the beach is "good" but "unnatural" oil collecting on the beach is "bad". I say that all oil on beaches is bad. Much better to burn it and get some benefit from it rather than wait for it to decompose to CO2 on its own.
I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix. They are much cheaper too. But the tree huggers think that if we don't build pipelines that somehow we won't be burning that oil. No, we will burn it. We will move it from where it is plentiful to where it is needed. We will just move it by means more likely to spill.
If we want to stop burning oil we need something better. By "better" I don't mean something with less carbon emissions. If less carbon output was the goal then the solution is not doing whatever it is we do with that oil. I mean like we let our food spoil and we freeze to death in our homes. Of course people suggest that is precisely what we should do, and I suggest they do it first and I'll consider it.
Conservation is an excellent goal but all it does is mean we burn a limited resource at a lower rate, we will still run out but just later. By "better" I mean something just as convenient, just as cheap, and just as safe but also more plentiful. I say we need nuclear power. Anything else means choosing between starving to death or freezing to death.
The continuous-process system envisaged by LFTR enthusiasts needed to purify the molten-salt stream and prevent the reactor from shutting down due to poisoning can be tapped to extract any particular element with a bit of surreptitious work, and that includes extracting pure kickstarter U-235 (which is easy to make a bomb from) or pure kickstarter Pu-239 (trickier to weaponise but still possible) or U-233 bred from thorium (which also works as bomb material but not as well as U-235).
Removing fuel from a running reactor, and thinking no one will notice, is insane. Thinking you're going to be able to remove weapon grade material from a running reactor is beyond insane. Once that reactor reaches critical there's going to be all kinds of interesting isotopes created. The plutonium will quickly be contaminated with Pu-240 and the uranium contaminated with U-232.
Current conventional reactors produce a mixture of Pu-239 and Pu-240, useless as bomb material, in spent fuel since the operating cycles last for a year or more between refuelling and some of the Pu-239 undergoes another neutron capture to make Pu-240. Pu-239 can't be separated from Pu-240 without great effort; the centrifuges or other enrichment equipment needed could purify U-235 from raw uranium much more easily.
Same goes for MSR. The operators of the reactor are not going to remove any fuel until they can sustain a critical state with bred U-233. That will take about a year. Taking out any fuel before then is going to make a noticeable drop in power output. That fuel is hot enough to melt aluminum and most common steels. It will also be contaminated with isotopes that are gamma emitters, easily detectable from vast distances.
If the Pu-239 is going to be stolen it's going to be before it gets to the reactor, that holds true for MSR and MOX.
MOX fuel formulations are only a small percentage of Pu, typically something like 6% or so hence the term Mixed-OXide comprising both uranium oxide and plutonium oxide. A MOX fuel element will still have Pu in it after it has spent a cycle in the reactor but much of the original Pu-239 and Pu-240 will have been fissioned. More Pu will have been bred from the U-238 comprising most of the rest of the fuel element but the total inventory of Pu in the spent fuel will have been decreased while producing a significant amount of process heat for electricity generation and other uses such as desalination. The spent fuel rod can of course be reprocessed and the Pu reconstituted as fresh MOX fuel.
That's nice, Pu-239 and Pu-240 is reduced in MOX fueled reactors. In MSRs the Pu-239 and Pu-240 is destroyed, it never leaves the reactor.
I don't know of any proposed LFTR operational cycle that would produce Pu-238 in any significant quantity; breeding up from Th-232 all the way to Pu-238 is a lot of steps requiring several neutron captures and decays with several intermediates which would interrupt the chain if fissioned. Adding Np-238 to the molten-salt fuel might work to make Pu-238 but the only source of Np-238 in quantity is a conventional nuclear reactor...
LFTR does not produce Pu-238 in significant quantity. It produces enough to be financially advantageous to extract. My point is that any plutonium that is produced will peak at Pu-238, it will rarely get heavier since Pu-239 and Pu-241 are so readily fissile.
Your claims of stealing Pu-239 from MSRs makes as much sense as stealing it from MOX fueled plants. The difference is that getting Pu-239 from MSRs is near impossible. All the Pu-239 we have right now came from solid fuel reactors like those fueled with MOX. This feature is why the MSR technology was not pursued, the reactors were worthless for producing weapon grade material.
Everything you say about MOX fuel in conventional reactors also applies to LFTR. So long as there is enough U-235, or U-233, to offset the presence of the Pu-240 the LFTR will have sufficient neutrons to get critical. The nice thing about LFTR is that it avoids the requirement for expensive fuel processing, the fuel does not have to be manufactured into pellets.
The problem with currently used reactors is that once the fuel is spent it must be disposed of or processed again. LFTR, as most every MSR, the fuel is never "spent" but is continually processed. The plutonium would never leave the reactor once put in. With currently used designs the spent fuel, even if started with MOX, will contain more plutonium than what was put in. Not effective for destroying plutonium.
LFTR does produce some plutonium but the majority of it will be the valuable Pu-238. It's worthless for bombs but very useful in RTGs. MOX fuel contains U-238, which makes more "bad" Pu-239. LFTRs do not contain any U-238, so any plutonium it produces will tend toward the "good" Pu-238.
Ignore LFTR then. We have shown that molten salt reactors can burn a mixture of U-233, U-235, and Pu-239. Burning any one of them alone in the reactor does not take a leap of faith even if not shown experimentally.
What alternatives do we have? What alternatives make sense? Making economic sense would likely be a big factor in the choices. We can leave the plutonium sit. It can sit in ready made bombs that can be stolen. It can sit in spent PWR fuel where the plutonium is essentially refining itself into weapon grade material, making it more valuable to anyone that wants to make weapons the longer it sits. We can reprocess it into MOX, an expensive process for reactors that are getting to be fewer and older. My favorite is to put that plutonium in shiny new MSR reactors where the processing of the weapon cores, and spent PWR fuel, is cheap and easy.
What is more expensive in the long term? Keeping the plutonium under continuous guard for the next billion years? Or, guard it only so long as it takes to burn it up in a reactor?
The plutonium already exists. If the concern is to remove the risk of the plutonium being used against us in a weapon then the only way to remove that risk completely is to destroy the plutonium. The only means we have to destroy the plutonium is to burn it in a reactor. It's not like the government is just going to hand this stuff over to the private corporations, they will still watch it. The difference is that once in a reactor the plutonium is no longer weapon grade, it will be contaminated very quickly.
Getting back to LFTR. It does not require Pu-239 to start the reaction, it is only one option. That Pu-239 does not have to be weapon grade, it can be down blended just like it is now for MOX fuel. The difference between PWRs and MSRs is that the fuel does not require an expensive manufacturing process. Putting the plutonium in MOX fuel is a good idea. Putting that plutonium in MSRs is a better idea. Leaving the plutonium sit until it all decays away in a couple billion years is a bad idea.
Are you serious? Nuclear powered aircraft? I can see nuclear powered ships, even trains, but not anything that flies. Nuclear power gets more efficient the bigger it is. That makes it perfect for things like ships at sea. The bigger the ship the less material it takes for the cargo carried. The bigger the ship the less crew needed for the cargo carried. The bigger the ship the smoother the ride. That is why we already have nuclear powered ships at sea.
Things that need to be fast need to be light. Radiation shielding is heavy. A light and fast nuclear powered aircraft can be made if the passengers don't mind the radiation.
I believe it has been tested for real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
A worry with most of the LFTR designs is that commercial companies will have access to bomb-grade Pu-239 which can be chemically extracted from the kickstarter fuel load.
Do you believe that anyone can keep an industrial level plutonium purification process secret for long? Wouldn't you think that both the government and the private corporation would be highly motivated to make sure that no fissile material leaves the reactor site? The nice thing about using plutonium as fuel is that it has value now. Currently plutonium is worthless except to those that want to make bombs from it. People tend to not care if worthless things go missing.
Another nice thing about using plutonium as fuel is that it is destroyed in the process. We're ridding the world of plutonium, removing the threat of it being stolen to be used in bombs. Any new plutonium created in MSRs will remain in the reactor until it is burned as fuel. If anyone is going to steal plutonium after nuclear reactors becomes the norm then it is likely to be stolen to be used as fuel. It has a much higher value as fuel then as a weapon. Dynamite is cheap and it does not take a team of nuclear scientists to produce it, form it into a weapon, and detonate it. If someone wants to blow up something then there are much easier ways to do that than build a plutonium bomb.
I have an alternative for you. Allow the people to possess the tools necessary for personal protection on their person at all times. These tools could take several forms, allow people to choose what works for them.
One tool is willingly allow recording. Let people put trackers on themselves and place the data in some sort of third party data store. In the event of a crime against them the data could be released by them or their advocate.
If we get the technology then we could have people with their own personal force fields.
What has shown to be effective, and inexpensive, is the common handgun. If muggers and rapists know that there is a high probability of getting shot for committing a violent act then crime goes down. Not only is it cheap and effective there is no tracking data for someone to abuse.
One problem we've seen with tracking technology is that the thugs figured out that if there are too many of them then they do not see any meaningful punishment. Getting caught for the crime is only an effective deterrent if they know they will be punished. Having armed law abiding citizens does carry the very effective deterrent of punishment.
How do you stop the government from placing cameras everywhere to track our movements? Easy, you see a government camera you smash it. Tell everyone you meet to do the same. If enough people do this then the government can't replace them fast enough. If people get arrested for it then demand a trial by jury. If the jury is equally pissed off about the cameras then no one gets a conviction. Vote for people that won't put cameras everywhere.
If none of that works then what you have is the police arresting everyone that smashes a camera. Because they know a jury will not convict then these people have "unfortunate accidents" while "resisting arrest" and due to "unforeseen traffic conditions" they die in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. What happens then is open war by the government on the citizens. At that point we stop breaking cameras and start breaking skulls.
In other words, use the four boxes of liberty. Soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge boxes. Use them in that order, starting now.
Use of the ballot box should be sufficient. If these elected officials cannot stop themselves from spying on the people that voted them into office then they should not be surprised when they get dragged from office feet first.
I went to the extreme of pointing out the possible use of the fourth box of liberty only because I know that a government that spies on its citizens is inevitably doing more than just spying. They spy for a reason. They spy so they can act against us. They govern only with the permission of the governed. Once permission is removed those that govern can step down on their own power, or not. They get to choose. If they choose poorly then they leave public office feet first.
I will agree for the moment that only government can internalize the externalities because it has little relevance to my argument. Who does it is irrelevant as the result is the same.
First we need to define the externalities. It can be defined as the CO2 output itself, or the net effect on the atmosphere. If we define it as the CO2 output then we'd internalize it by building systems that can reverse the process. This system must be able to draw the CO2 out of the air without adding more or causing some other economic or environmental hazard. The treatment of the net effect on the atmosphere can be done in a number of ways such as using taxation to divert funds from those burning the oil to those affected so that they can perform the tasks needed to reverse or minimize the effects.
One way these people can minimize the CO2 damage is to build dikes to hold back the rising sea levels, develop machines to spread water vapor or particulates into the air to reflect back solar rays. Or these people can take the money to implement the first solution, pull CO2 out of the air. Which ever means they decide upon will require power. Using oil, coal, or natural gas to power this will only make the problem worse. These processes will take, barring some very interesting physics, more energy than that produced from the carbon producing energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics are against us.
So we will need an energy source that consumes CO2 and produces nothing that would be detrimental to society or the environment, and do so at a cost on par with burning that oil. I believe we have such a technology by pairing up waste annihilating molten salt reactors and jet fuel from seawater converters. As these two technologies together we can build an infrastructure that produces energy in a form that we can use to power our battleships, bombers, and battle tanks. By products include pure oxygen, fresh water, helium, and radioactive isotopes needed for medicine and space exploration. Inputs to the system includes seawater, municipal waste water, spent nuclear fuel from LWR power plants, and thorium. We have plenty of these and they cost next to nothing.
Do we internalize the externalities by taxing oil? No. We must continue the subsidies to make sure our ability to defend our nation continues. What we can do is shift the subsidies from the oil taken out of the ground to the oil we can create from seawater. After enough time passes we won't need to drill for oil, it will be cheaper to produce it. Any CO2 produced from burning it goes into the environment where it gets collected again for producing more jet fuel.
Only nuclear power can do this. We don't have the technology to make solar or wind produce the heat needed to make it work, or with the reliability to make it cheap. I've been assured by some very smart people that this technology works and can be done cheaply enough to compete with current oil, coal, and nuclear. The problem is that the federal government does not see this the same way. They've been doing energy the same way for fifty years. To change their mind will take education and a desire to act. The government talks a lot about acting but they don't seem to have the desire.
The federal government is not taking climate change seriously. As much as these politicians bitch and moan about how nothing is done about it they have no one to blame but themselves.
As I see it the federal government regulations are preventing research into alternative energy. There's so many regulations that if someone so much as sneezes a dozens forms have to be filled out. I'm not suggesting that the government allow people to pollute rivers in the name of scientific advancement. I'm saying the government is taking safety above all else, to the point they will allow our house to burn down so as not to create a tripping hazard with the water hose.
One example is that I believe Prohibition set back bio-fuel development at least fifty years. Prior to Prohibition it was not uncommon for farmers to turn a portion of their crop into alcohol for their tractors. While Prohibition no longer exists the regulations on alcohol production are such that anyone that wants to do research on it will have to have a full time lawyer to keep the BATFE from throwing them all in prison.
Even though we have seen considerable advances in nuclear power there is only so much that can be simulated. The simulation is only as good as the data provided to it. If we want to see cheap safe and reliable nuclear power then we will need actual production size reactors built. They will not be perfect, there is always the possibility of something going terribly wrong. This gets to my earlier analogy, nuclear power is the water hose that can put out the climate change fire. Yes, we might trip over it and bust our heads on the ground. We have to do something, the house is burning.
Yes. It's called the waste annihilating molten salt reactor, look it up.
Yes, let's remove the subsidies to oil companies. I completely agree. We should not subsidize oil, coal, or natural gas. Let these people pay their own costs for once.
Now, with that out of the way I will say that we should also remove subsidies for ethanol, wind, solar, and geothermal. Let them pay their own costs for R&D. Let the market sort them out. These energy sources need to sink or swim on their own. We cannot afford to subsidize them forever.
It annoys me to no end how people will bring up oil subsidies as somehow keeping wind and solar from taking over the market. Here's a clue about wind and solar, you can't pour that stuff into an airplane and expect it to fly. We will be burning oil until it takes more energy to pump it out of the ground then what we get from burning it, and we will still be pumping it out of the ground for years after that. We burn oil because it has properties that no other energy source has, we can pour it into a tank and expect it to stay there.
Do I think that we should subsidize oil because it has these wonderful properties? No. What I do think is that the federal government realizes that current battleships, bombers, and jeeps run on oil. To keep them running means making sure the infrastructure for that oil exists and has sufficient capacity. An easy way to do that is to give them money. That does not make it right, it's just how the world works right now.