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."
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
The idea that anything bad could happen is just crazy talk. This is the United States!
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Very little as apparently the article thinks the NRC is responsible for foiling terrorist plots to go after nuclear reactors.
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...)
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Read the article. The onsite inspectors and regulators aren't being furloughed.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
87,000 IRS employees are still staying home without pay. That makes it all worth it.
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NPS (National Park Service) is the agency in charge of US federal parks and monuments. Usually. They have intentionally blockaded monuments normally left "open" (it's a pile of metal or stone, in the open). That wasn't enough, so NPS Rangers blockaded private businesses that were located on public but federal land. Say, an inn that leases land along a highway on federal land. They can't turn off the federal highways (don't ask, long story), so they try to annoy citizens by blocking the sides of the road or
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If we didn't have such an impossibly complex tax code we probably wouldn't need many of those 87K and we wouldn't have the need for so many extensions and refunds.
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No, it wouldn't be -- it'd mean that the obscenely rich people that hoard their money (rather than spending it) would no longer be taxed on that money or on the income derived from it in the form of interest. Meanwhile, since lower & middle-class people spend the vast majority of their income, we'd all end up paying much *more* back in taxes than under the current system. While there would be a rebate, poor people very often lack the energy, time, or knowledge needed to tackle the kind of paperwork re
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.
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if TL;DR then try to work through this whole paragraph:
Let me stress, however, that all of our resident inspectors will remain on the job and any immediate safety or security matters will be handled with dispatch. We can — and will without hesitation — bring employees out of furlough to respond to an emergency. We must, in this regard, err on the side of safety and security.
You here that Taliban weirdos? We're still on to you guys. Don't mess with the big stuff.
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Resident inspectors have a real fun life, they aren't allowed to stay in any one town for more than 2 years before moving on to the next inspection post.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
Resident inspectors have a real fun life, they aren't allowed to stay in any one town for more than 2 years before moving on to the next inspection post.
Is this practice meant to discourage regulatory capture, replacing it with some sort of regulatory "catch & release?"
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
I think that the people who are approving remolding the current plants should be sent home. There's no good reason for remolding the plants when so much effort has been spent on getting rid of mold.
(Sorry.)
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We SHOULD be building new nuke plants, with lessons learned from older nuke plants. I always want to strangle folks that don't want to build new plants because old plants are "dangerous" (which they're not, they're much safer than even solar power). It's downright disturbing that we're relying on such old plants for so much of our national power grid.
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.
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Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
Well, nothing bad other than millions of Americans suddenly becoming essentially unemployed, even if temporarily, for which I can see no possible negative effect. /sarc
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
Well, nothing bad other than millions of Americans suddenly becoming essentially unemployed, even if temporarily, for which I can see no possible negative effect. /sarc
Apparently you haven't heard!
They are all going to get paid [washingtonpost.com]
Yes, well, unless grocery stores and gas stations have suddenly started to accept IOU's in lieu of payment, that does them fuck-all worth of good right now, doesn't it?
House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed government workers.
President Obama has expressed his support for the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid supports the measure, but said Saturday that if furloughed workers are guaranteed back pay, there’s no reason to keep them out of work.
They should be working, since they will be getting back pay.
Why does Obama keep them home?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act [wikipedia.org]
Now, how this applies to, say, air traffic controllers, but not worthless-ass congresspeople and their equally-worthless staffers is beyond me.
Re:Obama is at fault clearly (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the House has passed a number of budgets. All have been shot down by the Senate or have not been brought to a vote. Even if they had been accepted by the Senate they would be vetoed by Obama.
There hasn't been a real budget passed pretty much since Obama took office. The old budgeting model was to have a budget for each individual agency or, sometimes, groups of agencies. The last few years have seen continuing resolutions; its very name tells you what it is: a resolution to continue last year's spending with no formal budgeting process.
What the House is attempting now is a combination of old fashioned budgeting with the current continuing resolution model - pass an individual continuing resolution for each department. The Senate is rejecting those.
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It's also true that House Republicans negotiated clean bill back in July [go.com] with the Senate and reneged on it a few weeks ago because "OMG Obamacare!". It's a fact that there are enough votes right now in the House to pass a clean bill if only one was put up for vote.
While I have no love for either party, and I would love to do a clean sweep in all three branches of government, the blame for this crisis lies primarily in the lap of one group. The Republicans (and more specifically, the Tea Party) are throwin
Re:Obama is at fault clearly (Score:5, Informative)
The house has passed the exact same sane bills that would be in a clean cr excep separated from a single cr.
How that is not sane is beyond me. Please explain what you think is sane.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
Well, nothing bad other than millions of Americans suddenly becoming essentially unemployed, even if temporarily, for which I can see no possible negative effect. /sarc
Pay them to build a bridge to nowhere. Then they'll be employed, and things will be just like they were before.
Yea, ok... OR, and stick with me here: we could pay them to fix and/or replace our aging infrastructure; that way, they'll be employed, and things will be better than they were before!
Oh, wait, this is American bureaucracy we're talking about - making things better hasn't been on the table for a long, long time.
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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: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::
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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:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Home schoolers generally have parents who care about them (otherwise they wouldn't be home schooled). Public schools are for everyone, including those whose parents don't give a shit. Private schools are reserved for those who have money (whether they give a shit or not).
Do you see the problem with direct comparisons here?
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Nothing bad could happen due to regulators being off for a few weeks. These aren't reactor operators we're talking about (who would mostly be employees of utility companies, not government employees in the first place). These are people who write and enforce regulations. It will take quite some time for their absence to matter (especially since they might return any day).
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In all fairness nothing is likely to go wrong unless a reactor is being experimented on, or an unusual catastrophic event/mechanical failure occurs (even a fully staffed reactor doesn't necessarily mean they'll be avoided). Lack of staffing should be the least of our worries!
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If a "mechanical failure" occurs, the last people you call are the regulators.
You call your own technicians.
You seem to have a very odd understanding of what these paper pushers really do in life.
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How many hours do they have to respond.
Big deal, you make the call.
Their answering machine and your telephone log relieves you of any fault.
Mean time you solve the problem by the book, and document it the same way you always would.
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.
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In the short term there should be absolutely no impact. If the shutdown lasts more than a year then I'd start getting concerned.
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What do you mean goes mostly unnoticed?
This should be fun, we already have another salmonella outbreak this time drug resistant too.
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Hopefully these teahadists are not going to go that far. Even that seems too much.
I guess you missed the speech Obama gave yesterday, in which he stated that he would only be willing to negotiate if the Republicans conceded completely and unilaterally? Compromise is a 2-way street, but both sides have put up "one way" signs and refuse to so much as discuss anything, let alone come to an agreement.
Face it - there are no good guys in this fight.
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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.
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No, I avoid listening to him. He is not funny.
They are religious fanatics and Tealiban does not have the same ring to it.
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:4, Informative)
"The Debt Ceiling can remain ignored for months."
It has been. The actual "Debt Ceiling" was reached back in May. But Lo! and behold! The government found some "extra cash" lying around, and managed to survive until now anyway. Of course you don't hear about this on the news.
"The government takes in enough tax revenue each month to pay the interest on bonds many times over. There is zero possibility of the government 'defaulting' and wiping out their credit rating."
The default scare is just another Big Lie. First, the government HAS defaulted on its debt before. The most recent time I know about was when Nixon nixed the Bretton Woods system in '71, eliminating any last vestige of a gold standard. The dollar (in International Trade) was almost instantly devalued, which for all practical purposes was a default on large portion of the huge foreign debt. In fact, that's why he did it: the U.S. government did not have enough money (including for repaying debt), by virtue of its gold reserves, to cover its exorbitant spending.
Second: not raising the debt ceiling will not automatically lead to a default. The government would simply have to spend less money! Of course, Obama has been showing that he'd rather cut spending on things The People find valuable (or are scared into thinking are essential), than cut spending on things that actually make sense.
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he'd rather cut spending on things The People find valuable (or are scared into thinking are essential)
Isn't that how it is supposed to work? If he (and by extension, "the gov't") did what he damn well pleased, isn't that... a dictatorship...actual tyranny?
As for "what makes sense" - you'd get 435+ different answers as to what that is if you asked, I don't know, the House of Representatives.
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"Isn't that how it is supposed to work? If he (and by extension, "the gov't") did what he damn well pleased, isn't that... a dictatorship...actual tyranny?"
No. The way it's supposed to work is that the government operates lawfully and Constitutionally.
The Government is breaking the law by not having passed a budget in 4 years or more. As a result of that (by definition) crime, the government has given itself discretion, not backed by any law, as to how it will spend its money.
Obama is further breaking the law by furloughing civilian employees at a Strategic Air Command base [examiner.com], when he just signed the Pay Our Military Act the other day, which was passed UNA
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The immune system naturally purges salmonella infections in about a week. Antibiotic treatment is not required and is not recommended. The only people who worry about this are the handful of immunosuppressed individuals who already have many other things to worry about. To the remaining 99.99% of the population a "salmonella outbreak" is at most a week-long inconvenience.
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You believe no one dies of dehydration then?
The chicken processor should be paying for all these hospital stays.
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You have *no* idea what you're talking about, medically speaking.
Water in an IV would kill the patient -- they use Lactated Ringer's Solution (or something a lot like it), which is a mix of various electrolytes/salts in a concentration that closely mimics blood plasma. If you became dehydrated due to vomiting/diarrhea, then the chances are that you can't keep remotely enough liquid down to make up for the fluid loss, and could wind up in serious danger. If you try rehydrating with plain water, then you'll
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Assuming no cross contamination, no uneven heating and basically perfection? Sure.
If meat has to be cooked to the FDA temps to be edible I rather be a vegetarian. At the point it is so dry as to be a chore to eat.
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You know what the sad thing is? Even with the government "shutdown" we're apparently managing to spend money so fast that we'll hit the debt ceiling just as soon. You'd think that the cuts would make enough of a dent to push it back a few days, but no.
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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:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:5, Informative)
If the debt ceiling is not raised we will default. That puts it on the table. If a single bill goes unpaid we are defaulting. It doesn't matter if it's a bond or a social security check. The market will treat it the same and it's going to be catastrophic. We run the risk of a collapse of the entire world economy (which is predicated on the stability of the US bond market).
Treasury has no way (without rewriting their entire software that controls the payment system) to sort payments by type. They would have to sort manually and with millions of payments due every single day it would take thousands of people to sort them all and pay only one type.
People that are downplaying default don't know what the fuck they are talking about. You want an example of default, refer to Argentina. They defaulted almost a decade ago and they STILL can't borrow money. Every single thing they import must be paid for with hard currency extracted from products they sell to other nations. Much like Venezuela they have shortages, business can't get parts and a whole host of problems that would make living there hellish. The US has a import/export deficit of several hundred billion dollars a month. That means all that stops, nothing will be imported without a corresponding export of equal value. Do you have any idea how much that would impact the world economy let alone the US economy? It would lead to a recession that would be WORSE than 2008. In fact we probably wouldn't recover from it without a big fucking world war again.
Maybe I'm being paranoid but you are seriously playing down severe risks. If we default (meaning we don't pay a bill when required) we are looking at a severe recession with high double digit unemployment that will make the last few years of 12% unemployment look like a picnic.
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It doesn't matter if it's a bond or a social security check. The market will treat it the same and it's going to be catastrophic.
Wow, you are completely wrong on that one. I'm not even sure why you would think the market would treat that the same. Does the bank treat you the same when you fail to make a mortgage payment as when you fail to pay an electric bill? No, they don't.
It's a difference between, "I'm not going to get paid" and "some other guy is not going to get paid." If the US demonstrates a willingness to make bond payments before social security payments, it could actually increase purchases of US debt.
Maybe I'm being paranoid but you are seriously playing down severe risks. If we default (meaning we don't pay a bill when required) we are looking at a severe recession with high double digit unemployment that will make the last few years of 12% unemployment look like a picnic.
Yeah, you are bein
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You don't understand the cost of the Federal Gov. Last I checked, wages and such cost approximately $88 Billion/year (http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2013/10/01/send-furloughed-federal-workers-home-for-good-wont-save-much-money/) and that's from the discretionary side. Grandma, disability, medicaid, medicare, etc. is 2/3 of the approx. $3.8 trillion budget. So while much of the government (I would argue the effective part) is on furlough, Grandma is not, and boy will she be pissed if the pols put
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Grandma is not, and boy will she be pissed if the pols put her on furlough.
They've already cut her effective benefits in half with bureaucratic accounting tricks [youtube.com].
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So WIC does not exist in your world?
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Not the point in the lease, the reduction of WIC is the no dog and no pony show that you are getting.
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WIC is such a small part of the federal budget that it doesn't make any difference. It follows the pattern of everything else that's been "shut down." Nothing that actually costs the government enough money to make a difference has been affected: the military is still out killing brown people, people are still getting their medicare, it's just a few high-profile things like WIC, like the national monuments to cause enough of a stir. Naturally, Republicans are blaming Obama and Democrats are blaming the Repu
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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.
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:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:4, Informative)
That's what pisses me off about people who rag on social programs: the cost to run them is but a drop in an endless sea compared to what we spend killing foreigners, propping up dinosaur corporations, scratching banker's backs, etc.
This is untrue [wikipedia.org]. Per wikipedia the DOD is 19% ($670B) of the US budget, while "social security" is 22% ($768B) and "medicare and medicaid" are 23% ($802B). I will grant that this chart is not at all granular and the issue is surely more complicated than this, but 45% of the US budget on just two social programs are hardly "a drop in the bucket." Personally, I think we have to cut military spending, AND social spending, AND raise revenue (however the hell we manage to do that).
I'm also at a loss as to how some people think that massive expansions in spending on medical care somehow makes things more affordable, but I think I'm at the point where I've accepted that the vast majority of people in this nation (citizen and lawmaker, on both sides of the aisle) simply don't live in the real world.
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WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
And the Women!
uhh.. AND THE INFANTS !
My god, WIC is a triple threat!
What's the difference by the way between a child and an infant. I wonder if some of these women aren't making double by labeling their child both a child and an infant.
There should be an investigation!
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.
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"Sadly, we'll pay all the back-pay, so it's really just a free vacation for more federal workers."
Of the ones who are currently working for no pay. Like all the security at the capitol, etc.
No one's made any promise that currently-furloughed workers would get paid.
No one's getting a free vacation.
Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome! (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the house voted 407-0 to approve back pay [washingtonpost.com], so it will be either Harry Reid's or Obama's fault if they do not get paid. Simple as that. But no one really believes they won't be paid. They got back pay the last time this happened [usatoday.com] (see last paragraph). And many times before that. And both Harry Reid and Obama have publically supported the house bill.
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.
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Meanwhile an October 17th debt ceiling that will cripple the world economy goes mostly unnoticed.
Mostly unnoticed by whom?
The debt ceiling is the #2 political story right now, and delivered as a tie-in to the lead news story of the shutdown.
It's listed in the first story that Google News shows me about the shutdown -- and the shutdown is the first thing on the page. In short, the second story on Google News is debt ceiling.
Nope. (Score:2)
Like they were going to stop earthquakes???
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Like they were going to stop earthquakes???
It depends on how you define "incident"
If you mean "Prevent the natural disaster that occurred" then obviously they couldn't do anything. If you mean the cluster-f#@k that followed involving incompetence, lies, and not doing as much as you could to try to clean up afterwards... then yeh this plays into that.
Let's face it, if it hits the fan and there IS a natural disaster... you want to keep the amount of incompetence to a minimum. Having almost everyone who's responsible to monitor the reactors and coord
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Like they were going to stop earthquakes???
How's that joke go - "What do you call 90% of an agency's bureaucrats standing out in front of a tsunami"?
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Hard at work?
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Either A pretty good start, or Not enough sand.
How many does it take? (Score:2, Funny)
Checklist:
1. Is it glowing?
2. Is there a smoking, glowing crater where the plant used to be?
If both are no, the back to napping.
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Checklist:
1. Is it glowing?
2. Is there a smoking, glowing crater where the plant used to be?
If both are no, the back to napping.
Perhaps an urban legend (I can't find a reference), but didn't operators of nuclear reactors used to sit on one legged chairs, so they couldn't nap at the controls?
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.
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You act like these morons thought this out at all. Their Orange leader has not a single sensical thought in his head. Probably all that fake tan. All they know is if it says Obama on it they must fight it. No matter if it is a republican plan to begin with or not.
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In the last few days, other republicans have figured that out, as a result the orange guy has gained a lot of power in the party, and will change the fight to be about cutting spending on *something*. He'll probably get it, too.
Unsafe Under 30 Days? (Score:5, Interesting)
If your nuclear systems become unsafe in under 30 days, are they really safe at all?
Sounds like the NRC should be funded solely by fees paid by the companies they regulate.
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I think we need to move the majority of government services to this concept. Sure, there are exceptions. But a lot of what the government does is necessary for commerce. And Commerce pays the government for those services. So let's take out the middle man, and allow entities like this to collect and manage their own funds. If they consistently go broke and come back to congress for more money, either OK a fee increase or
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Sounds more like, "We get to raid NRC fees for funds for other shit and starve the NRC whenever we feel like it." -Congress
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Conflict of interest. If the NRC is funded by those it regulates, it has an incentive to keep those funds coming, which won't happen if it shuts down plants.
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SNP (Score:3)
At least the Springfield Nuclear Plant is in good hands.
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....
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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.
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Makes me wonder why we pay for the other 90%.
Who else is going to deny every application to build safer, more modern reactors?
Fukushima-like incident? (Score:2)
regulatory efforts to prevent a Fukushima-like incident in the United States have ceased.
I didn't know the Nuclear Regulatory Commission prevented earthquakes. Japan's government wasn't shut down when Fukushima happened, why didn't Japan's regulators stop it?
Regulators not Operators (Score:2)
Wait, "congressional approval"? (Score:3, Informative)
It takes two to tango. Both the congress and president are to blame. Appropriations may originate in the House, but they also have to pass the Senate and either get signed by the President or overriden after a veto by a highly unified body of legislators over at the Capitol.
If the House is holding true to their strategy as used so far this round, they've probably approved this expenditure piecemal and been rejected or not taken up by the Senate. Call it political if you like, but any politician that refuses to do so deserves to to be run out of Washington on a rail.
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Re:Wait, "congressional approval"? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure you understand the constitution if you don't understand how passing a non-omnibus appropriations bill works.
Panic Needlessly (Score:2)
That would impress me at all if the ACTUAL work being done to keep nuclear reactors safe was not all done by the workers actually monitoring the reactors. The government organization is in charge of the REGULATIONS around nuclear reactors. Regulations existing reactors all conform to already...
It might hamper a new nuclear reactor being built; but since there are so many other people trying to do that anyway I can't see we'll notice much of an effect.
The sky is falling! (Score:2)
regulatory efforts to prevent a Fukushima-like incident in the United States have ceased
As usual when we read a panicked outburst like this in the summary, we know it isn't true. For instance, TFA says ""We are going to make sure that we continue our oversight of the plants because the resident inspectors will be on duty, and we are prepared to respond to an emergency on short notice," then goes on to mention that additional help will be recalled if there is in incident. In other words, the same thing that happens if there is an incident at midnight on a Saturday.
without regulators, shouldn't nukes shut down? (Score:3)
believe it is in everybody's plant license that they must be continually regulated.
rolling blackouts, anybody?
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The answer to your rhetorical question of "why must the world be so cruel" is that our nation elected 536 preschoolers with suits and grey hair, expecting them to act like adults.