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Notes -
Sam Brinton is in the news this week.
For those who don't know, Sam is the first non-binary, gay drag queen to hold a federal government leadership position. I know him for his distinctive appearance, with moustache, bald head, and typical cross-dressing clothing and makeup. Here's another piece about him, from several months ago. The culture war angle should be obvious, as this man was highlighted, along with Rachael Levine, as examples of progressive hiring in the Biden administration. Suffice to say that he is not the kind of person I can take seriously, and I do not think he should have been hired, and certainly shouldn't have been celebrated. But that's not why I'm posting.
Now, why was he in the news this week?
Brinton was caught stealing luggage from an airport terminal. I'll notice that this article has no pictures of him. A summary, from here:
So he's been put on leave, for now, and he's due in court on the 19th of this month. At first, I wouldn't have considered posting this, as I simply found it funny in an absurd way, but then I ran across what is really the reason why I posted. I ran across a thread on twitter explaining why this was actually serious, and reflected a dangerous escalation of perverse behavior. I'll quote the main points:
Go ahead and read the whole thread.
I hadn't considered this angle, at first, but once it's been pointed out to me, I can't shake it. It's the most plausible argument I've heard of for why Sam would steal the woman's luggage, given that all others make no sense.
So, to wrap up, my questions. First, should he be fired for stealing? Second, how likely is it that Sam stole the luggage specifically for underwear? And third, does this move the needle for you in any way, when considering whether to trust, hire, or promote people like Sam?
The job this individual was assigned to do was oversee the management of spent nuclear energy fuel. I'm totally confident that even the biggest idiot couldn't make that much worse than it already is.
The US was supposed to develop a permanent waste storage site by the 1990s. Yucca mountain was investigated for a waste storage site in 1978. Work continued for decades, into the 2010s because of ridiculous requests that waste be safely stored for millions of years. Local politicians just didn't want it at all, no matter how safe it was. The project has basically been abandoned by now after billions of dollars worth of research and engineering. The US paid and is paying tens of billions more to nuclear power plants who have to store the waste onsite because the govt couldn't be bothered to fulfill its contract supplying a permanent waste dump.
Nuclear waste management is already very dysfunctional. The policy is effectively just to squander money achieving nothing. This is a great post to put mentally ill people. Insane people, insane policy - it works out very nicely.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just shoot the stuff into deep space?
It's very expensive getting stuff out of Earth's orbit. Nuclear waste is very dense but also extremely heavy by space standards. It's extremely light by industrial waste standards.
My solution is - build a medium-large sized warehouse in a geologically stable desert. Put the nuclear waste into big lead boxes. Put the boxes in the warehouse. Have some guards outside watching the warehouse, cameras, barbed wire... Simple as that!
Why not just store the concrete casks outside like they are now?
Well they still need to be guarded since they could be used as radiological weapons. One central storage facility is better than 120 small facilities next to reactors, all needing guards. Concrete or lead doesn't really matter.
In fairness there's no extra overhead to storing them at active reactors because they're all required to be ridiculously well guarded anyway. It's the ones that shut down and force you to move the fuel that cause trouble, but so far they seem to just be foisting it off on still-active plants.
(Tangent, but that's something that always annoyed me about the Small Modular Reactor hype this guy was involved in. Are they going to reduce security requirements down to "if the alarm goes off my cousin Bob will drive round with his shotgun" to make them cost-effective for, like, heating steam in paper mills? Good luck pushing that one through.)
Well the USG was paying enormous sums to nuclear power plants because they breached a contract saying that they'd have the permanent waste dump ready decades ago. Apparently they charged a fee on nuclear electricity to pay for a waste dump, then didn't make it, so they have to compensate the power companies...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act
I suppose they have to pump up those nuclear costs, can't risk nuclear energy being too affordable!
As for small modular reactors, I don't see any reason for them aside from mobility. Let's just grow up as a civilization and make large nuclear reactors properly.
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rocket blows up and you irradiate a massive area.
what we're doing now - burying it hundreds of meters deep in a salt deposit - is as future proof as you can get.
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Anti-nuclear activists don't want to get rid of it, because they like the problem too much.
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It costs ~$1000/kg to launch into orbit and a similar ballpark cost to launch out of orbit. So how much was being spent to not do anything about it while we argued?
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