90% of Nuclear Regulators Sent Home Due To Shutdown 358
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."
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you mean goes mostly unnoticed?
This should be fun, we already have another salmonella outbreak this time drug resistant too.
Destroy the US in order to save it (Score:2, Insightful)
In order to prevent people from feeling the economic pain of Obamacare it is necessary to inflict economic pain.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a bunch of bureaucrats sitting around doing nothing but shuffling papers provides no additional safety.
Sending them home provides no less safety.
The article and the summary would suggest everyone walked away from the control room, or at the very least, that the plant operators will now start drilling through the containment walls to roast hot dogs, or sell all the fuel to Iranians on the black market. More Scare tactics.
Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
The country is once again reminded how useless most layers of government really are.
10% staffed... (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Very little as apparently the article thinks the NRC is responsible for foiling terrorist plots to go after nuclear reactors.
Personally, I'm more worried about increased negligence from operators without somebody breathing down their necks than I am about terrorists.
(The most recent example, luckily nonnuclear, being the juxtaposition between the marathon bombers and the West Fertilizer company. Kill three people with a backpack full of explosives and all of greater Boston goes full tactical on you. Blow up 500,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, killing 15 and leveling a good portion of the nearby town? Eh, we try to avoid burdensome regulations here in Texas...)
Re:10% staffed... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that the NRC inspections could be paid by user fees.
I disagree that when a team elects a 'bare essentials' skeleton crew, that suddenly 90% of the workforce is unnecessary. This is the kind of thinking that lays off a dev team and outsources 10% of the manpower to India and expects the same product. Just because you can pick a couple of people to perhaps be on call when the world ends, does not mean the 90% are unnecessary. This mentality is what produces failed projects and missed deadlines.
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
This time around, there appeared to be no mistakes - - there were inexplicably high radiation levels in an improbable location. Things get pretty serious at that point, and there's a very specific timeline for notifying regulators and taking remedial action. In this case, they verified the readings and determined what had gone wrong within hours. You can't simply fix the fault and continue on as normal, though. There was contamination outside the facility that needed to be addressed according to steps that the federal regulators deemed sufficient, and on an acceptable timeline. In the current shutdown, I'm not sure how well that process would work -- you need a fairly experienced team to work out the most effective remediation solution that balances cost, environmental impact and public safety. There's also the issue that if a regulatory specialist is conducting a site inspection, they aren't available for other work.
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, we can't possibly survive without government.
Because we can't educate our children in private schools or at home.
Roads need repair every single day and won't last a year without the government. Even if people crowd-source a contractor to fix the washout.
Restaurants are all secretly waiting for the day that the inspectors don't show up so that they can poison their customers and ruin their own business.
You're an idiot.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't fall for political blame games. The world will not end because a small part of our overbloated federal government takes a break. 83% of the government is still functioning, only 17% are temporarily furloughed (even less if you count private contractors). It's worth it to shake things up a little bit every once in a while. Last two shutdowns actually had positive results and led to spending cuts in the government bureaucracy. We can only hope this one works out the same way.
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, we can't possibly survive without government.
Because we can't educate our children in private schools or at home.
Roads need repair every single day and won't last a year without the government. Even if people crowd-source a contractor to fix the washout.
Restaurants are all secretly waiting for the day that the inspectors don't show up so that they can poison their customers and ruin their own business.
You're an idiot.
In the long run all of those things are true.
Roads that run through the hundreds of miles of nowhere that connect major cities in the US will deteriorate and eventually become unusable, Education will very quickly become only available to the wealthy, and the FDA was established in response to the crap that was happening prior to regulation (throwing liter rat poison into meet packing hoppers) not in spite of everything being A-OK without regulation.
Now, strictly speaking we do not necessarily need the Federal government to do any of those things provided the State governments take up the slack. However the end result of that will be drastically inconsistent quality of services between states and since it's not like we'll suddenly not owe federal income tax just because the federal government can't keep their collective heads out of their asses long enough to decide how to spend those taxes. And the general public probably can't afford the hikes in sate taxes that would be necessary to cover those services without reclaiming the federal taxes.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we can't possibly survive without government.
Because we can't educate our children in private schools or at home.
Roads need repair every single day and won't last a year without the government. Even if people crowd-source a contractor to fix the washout.
Restaurants are all secretly waiting for the day that the inspectors don't show up so that they can poison their customers and ruin their own business.
You're an idiot.
Ever met home-schoolers? ::shudder::
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thing is, with all those teachers out of work, private schools in rented space will spring up everywhere, and
since the state government won't be collecting taxes, people will be able to pay for these private "Charter" schools.
And, yeah, I have met home schoolers, and the children of home schoolers. They don't stop learning
at 3:30. Their kids are usually better educated and have more social graces than the product of public schools.
Re:Obama is at fault clearly (Score:1, Insightful)
Then the House needs to draft something halfway sane, that has a chance of being considered.
Re:Obama is at fault clearly (Score:2, Insightful)
The House has passed many budgets but they've all been rejected by the Democrats in the Senate because they didn't include money for the ACA.
I'm genuinely curious: what do you think was behind your mistaken belief that that House had passed no spending bills? I ask because I come across the same mistaken belief all the time and still have no idea why people generally are in the dark about this. Are these passed bills simply not mentioned by the press?
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
A flat tax is just that. Same tax rate for everyone. Devil is in the details, most flat tax supporting politicians want to exclude capital gains and solely tax wages. That's essentially not going to work. Total wages were $6,009,831,055,912.11. FY2013 budget is $3.803 trillion. You'd need a 63% tax rate on all wages, with no exceptions, exemptions, EIC or deductions.
Current tax system is partly as FUBAR as it is because folks want to gouge the rich, and the rich don't want to be gouged. So you end up with both. If you're an honest self-employed contractor making between $35k-70k, your tax rate is about 44% in my state. Half of social security taxes are paid by the business, unless you're self-employed. The rich didn't like their 12.4% + 2.9% haircut on something they'll never use, so the SS and Medicare taxes cap out at $113,700.
If everyone paid their share without trying to gouge anyone else, it wouldn't be a nasty mess. But good luck trying to teach economics and tax codes to Occupy Wall Street crowd, and surprisingly some of the dumber or more short term focused rich folks.