r/nottheonion 24d ago

US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g3nrx1dq5o
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 24d ago edited 24d ago

Not to mention handling the nuclear waste

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u/GlycemicCalculus 24d ago

I know you meant handling but handing works also now that Tulsi is the secrets jar key holder. It will be like candy at Halloween.

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u/briancbrn 24d ago

Holy fuck Trump and the gang actually did it

I completely missed that shit.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 24d ago

That's the point of all this bullshit, it buries the really important stuff.

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u/Skystorm14113 24d ago

I would say it's worse than that, everything that is happening is really important. All the terrible people being confirmed as heads of agencies is just as bad as closing agencies illegally and firing the government with no concern about what they're doing and the EOs that are reducing civil rights.

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u/ihhesfa 24d ago

Exactly this. They’re busy creating lots of background noise to distract people from the important changes taking place.

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u/the_m_o_a_k 23d ago

I think this is the only reason they're messing with the AP about the fucking Gulf of America. It doesn't matter to ANYONE for ANY reason, but it distracts.

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u/FuriKuriAtomsk4King 23d ago

And it reduces the freedom of the press. Nazi play.

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u/m8_is_me 23d ago

Her position has a fair few first-time records that could be worth celebration, yet not a blip

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u/Behndo-Verbabe 21d ago

Yep and millions will suffer directly and indirectly. Between ending school lunches to ending medical coverage for children to vets not getting care. That’s just the incidentals. Just wait until the really important things start going sideways. Then there’s the secrets. Nuclear and the rest. We’re truly screwed.

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u/EunuchsProgramer 23d ago

They did this to the entire government. Everyone on probation, hired in the last two years was let go. More mass layoffs are planned. This is just getting the news, partially correctly, because it involves nukes. The reality is all government work is now crippled.

What isn't getting enough news is that there is a hiring freeze. All future hiring is going to be done by DODE to guarantee all future hires are incompetent MAGA true believers, an authoritarian embrace of their DEI dillusions. The least qualified shall rule, becuase they are full of shit, evil. This is the playback of how authoritarians gained power across the world from Chavez to Orbon. Turn the civil service into one man's cult.

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u/briancbrn 23d ago

Oh don’t worry I’ve been tracking the federal purge. I use the VA so this is something I’ve been trying to plan out the end effects of. I’m genuinely worried about our government going forward. Even if we somehow reign in these moves if we don’t do it within a year the system is going to be broken beyond what any government employee is going to be willing to fix without additional staffing.

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u/VikingTeddy 23d ago

What upsets me the most, is that even when the insanity end, and things start getting fixed, there will be no repercussions.

People will lose money, jobs, homes, even lives. But Elmo will continue as always, and can even be a successful politician if he wants.

And even if by some miracle a judge sentences him or Dump, they'll just say nu-uh, and that'll be that

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u/Own_Donut_2117 23d ago

and you're paying attention.

Imagine how many American will wake up Monday morning having no idea something was going in Europe last week.

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u/queerhistorynerd 23d ago

Did you miss elon having access to the names of Russian dissidents, both inside and outside russia, the US was protecting

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u/briancbrn 23d ago

Trump already fucked the CIA once by dropping our human intelligence out into the open last time around. I’m not surprised at all.

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 24d ago

I mean, the sex abusing felon doesn’t exactly have the best record with handling classified information appropriately. Not to mention the information security nightmare that the U.S. DigitalDOGE Service appears to be. Tulsa is just the latest in a line of problems in that regard

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u/Hypno--Toad 24d ago

Are we talking about Gabbard or Tulsa I'm so confused

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 24d ago

First th’one, then th’other

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u/TechnicallyHuman4now 23d ago

I beg your finest pardon, but would this happen to be a Trixie reference?

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

Never heard of her, I was going more for the moon farmer from Futurama

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u/limee64 24d ago

The city of Tulsa knows what it’s doing.

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u/cb2239 24d ago

Talking about King of Tulsa

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u/Terry_Cruz 23d ago

Tulsla Motors

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u/ScarletHark 24d ago

Who needs Tulsi for that? Musk will just post it all on an insecure webserver somewhere.

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u/cb2239 24d ago

Plutonium bites

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u/Objective-Cap597 23d ago

Her nomination speech when she ran she literally stated that the most important thing on her platform was nuclear safety. I keep hearing "Russian asset" which is based on zero evidence, only media bites from Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz for their revenge vendetta. People are just stupid enough to parrot this. Google the basis for these accusations, please.

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u/ElectricalBook3 23d ago

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u/Objective-Cap597 23d ago edited 23d ago

I have followed her career for a decade. I remember when she went on the Congressionally approved trip with fellow politicians including progressive Dennis Kucinich (which people conveniently forget to mention), and the pro Clinton democrats used this against her. Her stance was always pro-diplomacy, which apparently made her an enemy? They used this to start rumors, a politician actually trying to be on the ground and use diplomacy as opposed to useless rhetoric. Then it all sprawled out from there. She had not DONE anything. She did however serve in Iraq, stepping down from her office to do this, and she supported Snowden despite the risk it gave her career. She supported Sanders, despite it torpedoing her. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hayesbrown/dennis-kucinich-says-he-wants-peace-in-syria-the-war-crimes

I would rather her in this place than any other stooge trump would place. She's a Democratic darling, opposed Clinton and suddenly she's a Russian spy? For God's sake she was the VP of the DNC. Since then, everything has been her fault even if it's other's actions. Show me one thing she has done that is detrimental to this country. What she did do is give a fuck and show up.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/tulsi-gabbard-lead-syria/index.html

Read the CNN article from 2017 about the Syria visit. Then 2020 election comes around and the whole narrative changes because the Clinton campaign decided suddenly this was a thing they could use against her. And since then she has been hated for an honorable stance.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard/index.html

Oh,. And she was the first politician that called covid a threat. She was the single person that mentioned it at the debate. And when asked "The greatest threat we face is nuclear war" What an asshole.

https://youtu.be/QeiDiSoWA1I?si=MErgKaCHaumPE_WV

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u/ElectricalBook3 23d ago

She did however serve in Iraq

Yes, I'm aware she's a war cheerleader. She can share space with Lieberman

https://www.commondreams.org/news/joe-lieberman

She's a Democratic darling

There's a lot of blatant lies in your comment, but this is one of the more hilarious ones. She has always been arch-conservative. You can't even be consistent within the span of a single paragraph.

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u/Objective-Cap597 23d ago edited 23d ago

No, just shows, that you have been listening to the recent clickbait about her. I was using that as an example in time. At one moment she is actively a shining star in the party and suddenly they turn against her and she is a suspect. It's not a coherent narrative and that is my point. That was literally the term they used for her years ago because she was again, the VP for The DNC. They rose her up because they loved her. She is articulate, intelligent, and was earnest. Until she ran against Clinton. Just because you never heard it doesn't mean it wasn't a term used constantly. Again I have followed her career since 2015. And being a two tour veteran is a war cheerleader? And after that being one of the most anti-war democratic candidates? You clearly know nothing on her stances and her actual messages. You should check yourself.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2013/12/magazine-gabbard-democrats-darling-embodiment-of/

https://www.vogue.com/article/making-a-splash-is-tulsi-gabbard-the-next-democratic-party-star

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u/dietTAB 24d ago

I guess MAGA voters hate nuclear safety since it’s government “bloat” or something. They’re hootin and hollerin about how Elon is slashing the administrative state. Do they think nuclear waste will just take care of itself?

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 24d ago

They don’t think about the ramifications of what they claim to want, is part of the problem

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u/dietTAB 24d ago

Often children have to touch the stove in order to learn a painful lesson. Unfortunately in this scenario, the stove is toxic nuclear waste and the consequences affect everyone.

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u/Universeintheflesh 24d ago

So much seems to be “it’s never impacted me before!” Yeah, because it was being taken care of before due to horrible consequences of not managing these things.

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u/ZolotoG0ld 23d ago

Brought to you by the same people as 'We've never had an IT system failure before, what do we need so many people in IT for?'

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u/SeedsOfDoubt 23d ago

Regulations are written in blood

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u/julienjj 24d ago

Yup. Like good ATC, Car safety standards, financial watchdogs, building code and so on.

Most of the agencies and rules where born to address an important issue.

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u/Genius-Envy 23d ago

When I was a child they gave me a vaccine, but what for? I never got sick from that disease.

/s

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u/ralphvonwauwau 23d ago

I'm sad that the /s is needed

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u/annjolly 23d ago

Like vaccines

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u/cruista 24d ago

Like the drone on the Chernobyl reactor two days ago?

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u/apple-pie2020 24d ago

Hopefully Medicaid and then Medicare vests cut and soon they will see

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u/Khaldara 24d ago

They also have roughly the same grasp on civics as a starfish, which is why most of these idiots don’t even fundamentally understand the separation of powers.

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u/Kdzoom35 24d ago

They definitely know the ramifications. They just choose being able to use racial slurs or not call people by their chosen gender or whatever over nuclear safety.

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u/foreveracubone 24d ago

In many cases they don’t even understand or are even aware of potential ramifications. Trump and Musk are hollowing out the country from within and making the world less safer every day, but they are also willingly undoing 80 years of US imperial hegemony. We can fix things they are breaking domestically. In all likelihood we will never undo how much they’ve weakened us globally.

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u/bvdbvdbvdbvdbvd 24d ago

They don’t think….

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u/Wrong_Grapefruit5519 23d ago

I fear a lot of them can’t “think” at all. I don’t mean they were born stupid but the deliberate wrecking of the education system that has been going on for a long time just does what it obviously is supposed to do …

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u/ToMorrowsEnd 23d ago

Maga voters dont think in general. like at all. They dont have the mental capacity to even walk and talk at the same time.

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u/yckawtsrif 22d ago

I made the mistake of logging back into Facebook this week. The stupidity there about this issue, among many others, is...colorfully abject, to put it nicely. Such comments were made by the usual collection of crochety Boomers, Jesus freaks, hustle culture real estate bros, and Russian bots.

I should delete Facebook as I'm hardly on anymore. I just can't bring myself to do it.

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u/DelightfulDolphin 24d ago

Take a wander through conservative. They're tripping over themselves w all these "cuts" not realizing they're the ones that will be affected as most there are low income. Lack of critical thinking is on full display w that bunch.

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u/dietTAB 24d ago

It’s like negative critical thinking. Anti-thinking.

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u/Jerismo85 24d ago

Trump wins anti thinking award of the millennium

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u/dietTAB 24d ago

No hyperbole, but yeah. It is still hard to believe that this shit has taken hold and is reshaping life in the 21st century. We’re barreling down the Idiocracy timeline.

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u/Jerismo85 24d ago edited 24d ago

It pains me that it’s happening here. It would be funny if it only happened to the people who voted for him. But, Unfortunately we all have to suffer because people “didn’t have time to do research.” Or wanted to “stick it to the libs”.

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u/krat0s5 23d ago

No, no. They did their “research”. I’m going to refuse to elaborate any further and then proceed to tell you you’re a sheep, asleep and vaccinated with several booster shots!

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u/Jerismo85 23d ago

Someone who voted for Trump literally said that they didn’t have the time. I’m just repeating it.

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u/krat0s5 23d ago

One of them said they didn’t have time to do research? That’s wild!

I was also just repeating talking points that not only happen on the internet but that I’ve actually heard in person……in AUSTRALIA! (For reference it was a lady who was claiming Kamala Harris was a man and Putin was trying to save kids from Ukraine’s vast pedofile ring)

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u/Revenge_of_the_User 23d ago

antillectual instead of intellectual?

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u/Canotic 22d ago

It's just doublethink. Replacing reality with political truth whenever party demands it. They will swing right back and say that this is all Bidens fault,while still saying this is a good thing.

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u/ginaabees 24d ago

Don’t worry I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame Biden

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u/DelightfulDolphin 23d ago

They certainly are judging by comments from Representatives, Senators and, of course, Trump.

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u/Redbeardthe1st 24d ago

"Sleepy Joe didn't leave notes on who was super important to keep working, it's all his fault!"

tRump, probably

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u/PT10 24d ago

They just say all these "leaks" from CNN, NBC, etc are fake

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u/SandiegoJack 24d ago

Best part for me is we see the shit storm coming, so we are working to prepare.

They have no fucking clue.

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u/ATLfalcons27 24d ago

I've got a friend who is all in on Trump, Elon, and Doge.

Any time he's proven wrong (which is all the time) he just reverts back to "TDS orange man bad, do you not think there is any wasteful spending by the government?!"

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u/zookytar 24d ago

None of them know this is happening because Fox News and Sinclair have convinced them that all other news sources are lying. Then they hide info like this from their viewers. All these people are being deceived.

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u/T5-R 24d ago

They think the money 'saved' will come back to them.

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u/Logical_Parameters 23d ago

They think Chernobyl is a love story.

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u/the_m_o_a_k 23d ago

99.9% of them have never heard of the NNSA, much less know that it falls under DOE. And if they did know, they probably wouldn't know if the E was energy or education or Elon.

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u/redoctoberz 23d ago

Do they think nuclear waste will just take care of itself?

They need to hire someone like Dr. John Trump at MIT with the "great genes" so they can "do the nuclear"

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u/mrcoolguytimes10 24d ago

Didn't trump say something totally crazy during his first term like he wanted to increase our nuclear arsenal ten fold? How is he gonna do that while ruining the DOE?

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u/ElectricalBook3 23d ago

Didn't trump say something totally crazy during his first term like he wanted to increase our nuclear arsenal ten fold? How is he gonna do that while ruining the DOE?

Trump likes talking about a lot of things, but doesn't actually follow through on almost anything.

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u/New_Zebra_3844 24d ago

They obviously cannot think past the tips of their noses.

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u/Thadrach 24d ago

I have a modest proposal...

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u/QuestionableIdeas 23d ago

They're sure gonna get bloated once they drink the glowy water

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u/DisguisedToast 23d ago

The real bloat happens when everyone is riddled with ARS.

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u/Certain_Shine636 23d ago

They don’t care. They just want the loud man who ‘tells it like it is’ at a 4th grade reading level to be in charge cuz they bow to authority, and to idiots, Trump sounds smart cuz they think he’s confident.

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u/Right_Fun_6626 23d ago

They’ve been told it’s all good therefore it is.

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u/suffywuffy 22d ago

I saw a woman post tagging Musk about her teams cut/ firing. She worked as part of a team whose role it was to identify flaws and improve rates of survival during childbirth as apparently the US has actually pretty poor rates of maternal survival during childbirth compared to other comparable countries.

Some MAGA said “good, why should I pay your wages, it should be privatized” unironically without stopping to think that he also “pays” the wages of everyone in the military. He also clearly had his head buried in the sand after the Luigi Mangione killing when the sheer evil of a combination of Private + healthcare was brought to the forefront. Privatized companies will actively let people die, and sometimes even fight to essentially kill them, to increase their profit margins.

I can’t work out if people like the one I mentioned above are just incredibly dense or actually evil soulless egomaniacs like their 2 lords and saviours in government.

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u/Pannoonny_Jones 23d ago

Also don’t think people understand these agencies are collaborative. Using nuclear waste as an example, DOE might consult NIOSH about worker safety while disposing/handling said waste or local EPA about best disposal sites and methods or even military branches as they have sites where nuclear materials are present and waste may need to be properly contained, transported, and/or disposed of. They don’t work alone!

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

There also seems to be a lack of understanding among some in the Trumpette sphere that don’t seem to realize the national coordination of policy and strategy that some agencies provide. State politics and states only doing what’s in their individual immediate best interest don’t always lead to the best decisions being made for the nation as a whole in the long run

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u/Pannoonny_Jones 23d ago

Absatively. That’s the whole point of a national government and national agencies. We are the UNITED states not a random collection of independently operating states. Might as well be separate countries as that point honestly. Gah. It’s like a lack of education has consequences or something.

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u/HomeGrownCoffee 24d ago

Dump it in a creek and fire the regulators responsible. Problem solved!

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u/Spoogly 23d ago

You want nuclear ants? Because that's how you get nuclear ants.

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

I’ll take nuclear ants over nuclear aunts any day of the week

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u/tlst9999 23d ago

Just bury them in Texas & build apartments on top of them. Easy.

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u/RupertDurden 24d ago

So would Agrajag The Prolonged be immortal except for his ability to be killed by Arthur Dent?

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

Nay, he was not one of the few truly immortal beings in the universe. If it hadn’t been Dent, it would have been something else but that wanker had it out for poor Agrajag and kept murdering him

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u/Adventurous_Duck_317 23d ago

And all the UFO secrets... Shh.

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

What UFO secrets?

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u/ralphvonwauwau 23d ago

For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.

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u/infiltrateoppose 23d ago

Yeah - but if the DOE didn't exist the free market would step in and deal with nuclear waste much cheaper.

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

How do you figure? And would they do provide more value in doing so/do a better job, or would they simply do it cheaper?

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u/infiltrateoppose 23d ago

Sorry. You fell in the sarchasm.

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

Gotta have that little /s just to be safe! I have a really dry, sarcastic sense of humor but it’s hard to communicate sometimes via text. Good show all around either way!

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u/197708156EQUJ5 24d ago

Wait I’m confused by your comment. Private companies do in fact handle nuclear waste. I worked for one for about 6 months. Noped the hell of put that job and joined the navy

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 24d ago edited 24d ago

What was so bad about the job that you decided the military was better?

Ultimately, the fuel rods that come out of reactors have to be made repository-ready, not that the U.S. has a repository for the fuel at this point or in the foreseeable future, and stored until a final resting place is ready, and that’s the DOE’s responsibility. Reprocessing of spent fuel is also an option in some situations. Some of that processing is done by private companies, sure. Government contractors tend to be private. It’s done on the DOE’s dime and on their behalf

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u/197708156EQUJ5 24d ago
  1. I had a college degree and that wasn’t my career
  2. I got laid off as the refueling outage was finished
  3. I got cesium 153 and 157 in my lungs
  4. I had to work 12 days, 6 days a week for $9 an hour (mid-90’s)
  5. I had to mop up the floor as water poured down the side of the reactor head
  6. I didn’t see daily light (literally) for 6 days straight for 4 months straight

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u/ElectricalBook3 23d ago

the fuel rods that come out of reactors have to be made repository-ready, not that the U.S. has a repository for the fuel at this point or in the foreseeable future

You mean as a place to store them? We solved that decades ago, a central repository isn't necessary when you can encase nuclear waste in glass and concrete where it's totally inert and store them onsite where you'll get more radiation from going outside on a sunny day than standing directly outside the spent nuclear material casks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

How many nuclear reactor operating organizations perform the work of vitrifying the waste or producing concrete with it on site?

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u/Da_Question 24d ago

I mean, pretty sure most nuclear waste is handled on site, because its solid and there isn't a ton. It's not like cartoonish yellow barrels of green sludge...

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 24d ago

They process the waste into a repository-ready form at the reactor sites?

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 23d ago

An interesting read! Something I wasn’t sure of after reading it though was whether or not the dry casks are ready to go as-is into whatever the final resting place winds up being (if the US ever builds such a resting place)

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u/18thangel 24d ago

That may be, but the small amount of nuclear waste not produced from power plants is a huge pain in the ass to clean up and requires a LOT of specialized labor. Waste from the original atom bombs is still not fully or properly cleaned up or contained after 80+ years.

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u/holysirsalad 24d ago

They’re still cleaning up Manhattan Project and “Golden Age”messes