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[TheDarkStar]

Practically everything Trump has done has made me really uncomfortable so far. Running on a populist platform but then actually putting a bunch of businessmen in his cabinet, wanting to remove all kinds of legal protections for people, advancing isolationist foreign policy, etc.

And it's only week 1.

Isn't a religious test against the Constitution?

afaik trump is temporarily banning immigration from several Muslim countries and wants to have much stronger vetting of Muslims, which seems really borderline - he can claim there are safety concerns for immigration from war-torn countries, but limiting Muslim immigration in general seems like it violates religious freedom.

Ah, but the Constitution only says that a test of religion or law establishing it is forbidden, and is clearly written from the perspective of a genuine religious conviction. It doesn't cover mandating falsely saying you're a Christian and living a restricted Christian lifestyle on pain of death, as I'm sure Trump understands better than most. You can still secretly be something else, fully Constitutional.

Yes it does cover that - the first amendment specifically states that the government can't make laws about establishing religions or limiting people's religious expression (admittedly, they haven't always followed this, but hopefully with a new Supreme Court Justice who uses very literal and old readings, at least this right will be protected - that kind of situation is exactly what the religious clause of the first amendment was designed to prevent).

[smjjames]

Practically everything Trump has done has made me really uncomfortable so far. Running on a populist platform but then actually putting a bunch of businessmen in his cabinet, wanting to remove all kinds of legal protections for people, advancing isolationist foreign policy, etc.

He's not actually THAT isolationist, more "Our priorities first". Didn't Bush 43 want to be a bit more hands off with foreign policy? I think I got the feeling that he'd be more of a domestic than foreign policy President, or at least that's what he wanted to be. Then history intervened. So, events could extremely easily derail Trump's attempts at isolationism. Everything is just too intertwined for isolationism to really work.

Though pissing off Mexico, a close partner in trade and so much else isn't getting off to a good start either.

I wonder how hard he'd have to try to piss off Canada, though I hear that they got worried and scrambled for a meeting after the inauguration speech. edit: Though I suppose it would be too easy for Canada to accidentially piss off Trump, but you guys know what to do in that case anyway.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Ah, but the Constitution only says that a test of religion or law establishing it is forbidden, and is clearly written from the perspective of a genuine religious conviction. It doesn't cover mandating falsely saying you're a Christian and living a restricted Christian lifestyle on pain of death, as I'm sure Trump understands better than most. You can still secretly be something else, fully Constitutional.

Yes it does cover that - the first amendment specifically states that the government can't make laws about establishing religions or limiting people's religious expression (admittedly, they haven't always followed this, but hopefully with a new Supreme Court Justice who uses very literal and old readings, at least this right will be protected - that kind of situation is exactly what the religious clause of the first amendment was designed to prevent).

Ah ah ah. As is clearly laid out in the long established case of Reynolds v. United States, religious expression in the form of action is not protected when prohibited by law. In addition, the government has a legitimate interest in the form of the public good and national defense for forcing everybody to live as and publicly claim they are evangelical Christians. It is clear that the intention of the Founders when protecting religious expression was in the form of freedom of thought, as further supported by their desire for the continuation of Christ-loving lifestyles like that of the Puritans.

After all, that's why America fought for her independence in the first place, in rejection of Great Britain's godless usury.

[Reelya]

IDK, if you could refurb old nuclear plants to get more life out of them safely that's probably better than creating a new one. The sites are already junk, so closing them isn't the answer either. If a site isn't going to usable again for 20000 years then you might as well leave them as a nuclear plant for a few more decades if you can custom-retrofit them to do something valuable. 20000 years vs 20050 years isn't going to make any difference.

Hanford isn't normal. Power plants are really really safe.

That article isn't a fair assessment. About 75% of America's nuclear reactors are reported to have leaked toxic isotopes.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43475479/ns/us_news-environment/t/radioactive-tritium-leaks-found-us-nuke-sites/

BRACEVILLE, Ill. — Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.
...
Previously, the AP reported that regulators and industry have weakened safety standards for decades to keep the nation's commercial nuclear reactors operating within the rules.
...

While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated offsite. But none is known to have reached public water supplies.

- At three sites — two in Illinois and one in Minnesota — leaks have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes, the records show, but not at levels violating the drinking water standard.
- At a fourth site, in New Jersey, tritium has leaked into an aquifer and a discharge canal feeding picturesque Barnegat Bay off the Atlantic Ocean.
...
For example, cesium-137 turned up with tritium at the Fort Calhoun nuclear unit near Omaha, Neb., in 2007. Strontium-90 was discovered with tritium two years earlier at the Indian Point nuclear power complex, where two reactors operate 25 miles north of New York City.
...
-   At the three-unit Browns Ferry complex in Alabama, a valve was mistakenly left open in a storage tank during modifications over the years. When the tank was filled in April 2010 about 1,000 gallons of tritium-laden water poured onto the ground at a concentration of 2 million picocuries per liter. In drinking water, that would be 100 times higher than the EPA health standard.
-   At the LaSalle site west of Chicago, tritium-laden water was accidentally released from a storage tank in July 2010 at a concentration of 715,000 picocuries per liter — 36 times the EPA standard.
-   The year before, 123,000 picocuries per liter were detected in a well near the turbine building at Peach Bottom west of Philadelphia — six times the drinking water standard.
-   And in 2008, 7.5 million picocuries per liter leaked from underground piping at Quad Cities in western Illinois — 375 times the EPA limit.
...
The leaks sometimes go undiscovered for years, the AP found. Many of the pipes or tanks have been patched, and contaminated soil and water have been removed in some places. But leaks are often discovered later from other nearby piping, tanks or vaults.

Mistakes and defective material have contributed to some leaks. However, corrosion — from decades of use and deterioration — is the main cause. And, safety engineers say, the rash of leaks suggest nuclear operators are hard put to maintain the decades-old systems.

Over the history of the U.S. industry, more than 400 known radioactive leaks of all kinds of substances have occurred, the activist Union of Concerned Scientists reported in September.

Several notable leaks above the EPA drinking-water limit for tritium happened five or more years ago, and from underground piping: 397,000 picocuries per liter at Tennessee's Watts Bar unit in 2005 — 20 times the EPA standard; four million at the two-reactor Hatch plant in Georgia in 2003 — 200 times the limit; 750,000 at Seabrook in New Hampshire in 1999 — nearly 38 times the standard; and 4.2 million at the three-unit Palo Verde facility in Arizona, in 1993 — 210 times the drinking-water limit.

Many safety experts worry about what the leaks suggest about the condition of miles of piping beneath the reactors. "Any leak is a problem because you have the leak itself — but it also says something about the piping," said Mario V. Bonaca, a former member of the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. "Evidently something has to be done."

While NRC officials and plant operators argue that safety margins can be eased without peril, critics say these accommodations are inching the reactors closer to an accident.

So yeah, any article that says in idealized storage such and such spent fuel rods are perfectly safe, while that may be 100% true on it's own, it's also not the main problem. So while I'm prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, engineers with a speciality in this field describe the situation as a major disaster waiting to happen, if things go on like this.

One of the highest known tritium readings was discovered in 2002 at the Salem nuclear plant in Lower Alloways Creek Township, N.J. Tritium leaks from the spent fuel pool contaminated groundwater under the facility — located on an island in Delaware Bay — at a concentration of 15 million picocuries per liter. That's 750 times the EPA drinking water limit. According to NRC records, the tritium readings last year still exceeded EPA drinking water standards.

That's still toxic 10 years later.

Also last year, the operator, PSEG Nuclear, discovered 680 feet of corroded, buried pipe that is supposed to carry cooling water to Salem Unit 1 in an accident, according to an NRC report. Some had worn down to a quarter of its minimum required thickness, though no leaks were found. The piping was dug up and replaced.

The operator had not visually inspected the piping — the surest way to find corrosion— since the reactor went on line in 1977, according to the NRC. PSEG Nuclear was found to be in violation of NRC rules because it hadn't even tested the piping since 1988.

Last year, the Vermont Senate was so troubled by tritium leaks as high as 2.5 million picocuries per liter at the Vermont Yankee reactor in southern Vermont (125 times the EPA drinking-water standard) that it voted to block relicensing — a power that the Legislature holds in that state.

Activists placed a bogus ad on the Web to sell Vermont Yankee, calling it a "quaint Vermont fixer-upper from the last millennium" with "tasty, pre-tritiated drinking water."

The gloating didn't last. In March, the NRC granted the plant a 20-year license extension, despite the state opposition. Weeks ago, operator Entergy sued Vermont in federal court, challenging its authority to force the plant to close.

Shit, man, they've got nuclear accident prevention systems in there that are corroding and haven't even been tested or looked at since 30 years ago.

At 41-year-old Oyster Creek in southern New Jersey, the country's oldest operating reactor, the latest tritium troubles started in April 2009, a week after it was relicensed for 20 more years. That's when plant workers discovered tritium by chance in about 3,000 gallons of water that had leaked into a concrete vault housing electrical lines.

Since then, workers have found leaking tritium three more times at concentrations up to 10.8 million picocuries per liter — 540 times the EPA's drinking water limit — according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. None has been directly measured in drinking water, but it has been found in an aquifer and in a canal discharging into nearby Barnegat Bay, a popular spot for swimming, boating and fishing.

An earlier leak came from a network of pipes where rust was first discovered in 1991. Multiple holes were found, "indicating the potential for extensive corrosion," according to an analysis released to an environmental group by the NRC. Yet only patchwork repairs were done.

Tom Fote, who has fished in the bay near Oyster Creek, is unsettled by the leaks. "This was a plant that was up for renewal. It was up to them to make sure it was safe and it was not leaking anything," he said.

And we're supposed to trust the same people who operate these plants that their nuclear fuel rod storage systems are going to be managed oh-so-better than they actually manage the thing that makes them money? Are you going to trust that? Sure, the fuel rod sequestering system will be new and "not 40 years old" when they build it. But what about in 40 years time? Are we expected to believe they won't let them get to the same state as their other gear?

[wierd]

You know Reelya, Tritium is not really that dangerous.  It is frequently used in pressurized glass tubes lined with phosphor in exit signs.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Tritium undergoes beta decay, meaning it can be trapped by things like glass, plastic, conversations with women, and clothes but is also immensely dangerous if allowed to get inside the body, such as by being in the water supply. I assume tritium doesn't bio-accumulate since we'd probably notice the mass death from radiation sickness, but even if it doesn't people are probably still getting damage and/or cancer from it unknowingly as it passes through them.

Edit: Upon further research, tritium does bio-accumulate but its half-life is between one to two weeks and so can't build up much. It is also recognized as a radiation hazard when ingested.

[smjjames]

The point is more that it's not supposed to be there.

And yeah, like MSH, you really don't want to have anything radioactive in your body if you can't help it. At least not something that can actually hurt you, because phosphorous actually has an isotope that is radioactive, but it's not like, dangerous radioactive.

[smjjames]

Edit: Upon further research, tritium does bio-accumulate but its half-life is between one to two weeks and so can't build up much. It is also recognized as a radiation hazard when ingested.

Not sure where you looked, but on wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium , it says the half life is a bit over 12 years.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Edit: Upon further research, tritium does bio-accumulate but its half-life is between one to two weeks and so can't build up much. It is also recognized as a radiation hazard when ingested.

Not sure where you looked, but on wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium , it says the half life is a bit over 12 years.

Misunderstood, it's the biological half-life not the atomic one.

[Baffler]

-ninjad-

[smjjames]

Edit: Upon further research, tritium does bio-accumulate but its half-life is between one to two weeks and so can't build up much. It is also recognized as a radiation hazard when ingested.

Not sure where you looked, but on wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium , it says the half life is a bit over 12 years.

Misunderstood, it's the biological half-life not the atomic one.

Yeah, just found the biological half life, which is basically how long it stays in the body.

[Rockphed]

Zero Hedge the right-wing economics journal has an article about Trump fighting against the "War on Coal". But even they are saying it's baloney. By that token 1900's car makers should be reprimanded for their War On Buggies.

It's kind of self-explanatory that the measures to prop up coal are all supply-side economics. The problem with pouring money into propping up suppliers is that this doesn't directly boost demand, it just depresses prices, so your subsidies might actually have to keep getting bigger each year if you're not careful with supply-side economics.

As I understand its normal usage, "the war on coal" is doing things like setting the emissions standards to regulate CO2 rather than sulfur and nitrogen emissions and making it significantly harder to upgrade an older coal plant to meet modern standards (and get a bunch more efficient in the process) than replacing it with natural gas (even before natural gas's current record low prices come in to play).  At the end of the day, I expect coal mining to stop in any useful form within 50 years, though not for lack of coal.  I am actually happy to see it go: coal is a nasty, stinky, dirty power source.  It just happens to be fairly good at the only thing it is good at: burning for heat.

[smjjames]

Zero Hedge the right-wing economics journal has an article about Trump fighting against the "War on Coal". But even they are saying it's baloney. By that token 1900's car makers should be reprimanded for their War On Buggies.

It's kind of self-explanatory that the measures to prop up coal are all supply-side economics. The problem with pouring money into propping up suppliers is that this doesn't directly boost demand, it just depresses prices, so your subsidies might actually have to keep getting bigger each year if you're not careful with supply-side economics.

As I understand its normal usage, "the war on coal" is doing things like setting the emissions standards to regulate CO2 rather than sulfur and nitrogen emissions and making it significantly harder to upgrade an older coal plant to meet modern standards (and get a bunch more efficient in the process) than replacing it with natural gas (even before natural gas's current record low prices come in to play).  At the end of the day, I expect coal mining to stop in any useful form within 50 years, though not for lack of coal.  I am actually happy to see it go: coal is a nasty, stinky, dirty power source.  It just happens to be fairly good at the only thing it is good at: burning for heat.

A 'war on carbon' would be a heck of a lot more accurate in that case.... which would rile up the climate deniers maybe, or make them join ranks.

Anyway, Trump is talking to a bunch of leaders by phone tomorrow (Saturday). I wonder if he'll talk to Merkel before or after Putin?

[Arx]

You know Reelya, Tritium is not really that dangerous.  It is frequently used in pressurized glass tubes lined with phosphor in exit signs.

Mercury is used in medical thermometers all the time, too, and you even put those in your mouth! It can't be that dangerous, surely.

[wierd]

Hyperbole-- Tritium is a gas. Its primary method of getting into your body is via inhalation.
Hydrogen leaks out of basically every container in existence, because of how small the dimer is. The tubes leak. Tritium is no exception.
Mercury, by comparison, is freaking huge and heavy.

Also, as noted:  Tritium's biological halflife is 2 weeks.  Compare with Mercury, which is not removed in appreciable amounts even after a lifetime of being exposure free. Further, compare the kind of hazard presented by tritium vs mercury inside the body. Tritium is a beta emitter. It emits ONE high powered electron, and 2 neutrinos, when it decays. After that, it becomes deuterium, which is mostly stable in comparison. Granted, that one electron can fubar nearby chemical bonds, but once decayed, the damage is done.  Now-- Mercury-- it replaces many metal ions in important protein complexes, resulting in extended, long term biotoxicity.

The two are simply not comparable in terms of harm they do to a body upon ingestion.