I’m not rich or have money invested.

Sorry to disappoint.

Bureaucracy does have a purpose but it can also become a problem. Sometimes technology can advance much quicker than the paperwork can process. It’s not a miracle or propaganda.

But spouting the same anti- nuclear shit that has been spouted for the last 50 years IS propaganda.

Let me know how it goes. I honestly would love to know.

The problem with nuclear is: business wise, it is a TOUGH sell to the public, even without the anti-nuclear lobby groups fighting with safety propaganda.

It takes a much higher capital spend to start up nuclear than any other type of plant, so you won’t “break even” for 30 plus years, if ever.

It doesn’t help when there are high profile sites that are being refurbished, whose costs are already phenomenaly high, and then the managing firm fucks it up (I’m looking at you Crystal River).

It makes it high risk, financially. And it’s the public that ultimately ends up paying.

My hope is that SMR’s become viable. They introduce a new factor though. If you get small, “cheaper” nuclear plants, then you will get more operators and you will get some that may run fast and loose. One fuck up can ruin it for everyone.

He said nuclear waste. Most of those are accidents involving radiation exposure (Are you lobbying we stop radiation therapy too?), Russian subs, and Soviet era handling of nuclear sources.

The rare incident of death cause by nuclear waste was an explosion at a testing facility in Japan that was apparently trying to research a new way to deal with nuclear waste.

One death attributed to Fukushima is amazing to me. That was a catastrophic event. (The tsunami that caused the incident may have killed some that would have otherwise died from exposure, but without the tsunami, there wouldn’t have been an incident, so I don’t know how to argue that one.)

A better argument is cost. It is EXPENSIVE to store nuclear waste. We are not allowed to just bury it and we can’t just shoot it into the sun… yet.

I’ve seen all kinds of novel ideas for modern ways of dealing with nuclear waste but the current rules are tied up in so much bureaucracy, it would practically take an act of God for approval of any change. People fighting nuclear cause more problems than they help.

Take the San Onofre plant in California. They replaced a system that was aging, then some time later, they shut down for routine maintenance and discovered that the replacement system was wearing out much faster than it should. So the plant said they would stay off until they found the problem and fixed it. At no time was the public in danger. But the anti nuclear whackos took their opportunity to pounce, took advantage of that famous California NIMBYism, and got the plant shut down permanently. Now electricity is provided by natural gas.

That was a waste of fucking money. Plant was already producing electricity, and now there is more CO2 getting pumped into the air.

I don’t trust the anti-nuclear power crowd anymore than I trust the oil industry. They both lie their asses off and don’t care about facts. One just has a lot more money than the other.

Yeah it fucking sucked. I don’t necessarily disagree with how or why they did it though.

It taught you that no matter how tough you are, everyone breaks. Nobody made it through that scenario without saying whatever they told you to say. You are to resist as much as you can but it is not worth your life.

So as a tool to demonstrate that everyone has a breaking point, it was very effective. But as a method for actual intelligence gathering, torture has and always will be notoriously unreliable, and in my opinion, not worth the ethical sacrifice.

I thought the Army had their own version of SERE.

You’ll like this story. I was a helicopter crewman off the Kitty Hawk when 911 happened.

They kicked off most of the airwing. The kept a few of us helos, some hornets, and some S-3’s (for refueling).

Then we took on a bunch of Rangers and Delta, and turned us into an Army Carrier. Then straight to hanging out just barely in international waters outside of Iran/Pakistan.

It was 75% Chinooks and Blackhawks. No rotor brakes or folding rotor heads. No real carrier landing quals, and half the hand signal were different. But we made it work.

We had to give up our Ready Room and some other “primo” spaces to “Task Force Sword”, but post 9/11, there was zero inter service rivalry. It was all, “what does the mission require.” and “What do you need from us?”

Our Aircrew shop was next to the Ready Room and it only took a day for a couple of the operators to realize we had Unreal Tournament. So our shop became a common rest stop between missions.

Man that was a crazy deployment.

I was a helicopter aircrewman. They sent all aircrew through.

I definitely wouldn’t consider myself “harder than a woodpecker by any stretch”, and yes, I got the box and there were several songs they would loop that were designed to prevent you from relaxing. The “Boots” song is one I probably won’t forget

The box actually didn’t bother me. But there were a lot of things that really messed with head. They were also still water boarding back then.

We still had SEALs going through the same school (they have their own now), and we had one that kept escaping. You couldn’t really escape though, because this was all training, so you if you did escape, you were supposed to stop and announce it, and let the guards come get you. And then you get punished. So it was stupid to escape. Except this fucking guy didn’t give a shit. He just kept escaping. The stripped him, hosed him down, slapped the shit out of him, he didn’t care. In the debrief, they said they almost failed him because they thought he wasn’t taking it seriously. I thought they weren’t taking it seriously if it was that easy to escape

That wasn’t something I ever want go through again.

There was a brief moment, while I was going through SERE training, in the Navy; it was before we were “captured” but long enough that I hadn’t eaten in a while. We were in the low mountains of SoCal, dry and hot. Whenever we would stop movement for a moment and take a seat, I could smell when an ant was on me.

I didn’t recognize what the smell was at first until I saw an ant, after smelling it. I hooked him on my finger and brought him close to my nose and it was clear, he was the source.

I couldn’t describe it very well though, not a common smell to me. Never experienced it since.

Maybe it was the combination of no food or bathing, and heightened stress. My SiL also went through SERE, says she has no idea what I was talking about, and just makes fun of me about it. But she’s also the type of person who would lie about it, just to fuck with me.

So who knows.

Date a 17 year old when he was 30. Just sex predator stuff.

A. Who gives a fuck if Stamos didn’t actually shave his head.

B. Fuck Dave Coulier.

At a minimum, please put that in a high yield savings account. A quick search shows there are still some between 4-5%. Fairly easy to setup and not too bad to get out of, if you need to. (That’s free $30-40 a month)

Once there I would consider where to start putting that money to work.

(Just some quick easy advice that you probably already know.)