3493

Eh, fusion has many of the same problems as fission: it’s difficult to do, very expensive, highly centralized, and has requirements for high technology that conflict with its environment (vacuum, radiation, temperature, magnetics.) And unlike a fission reactor, which you can bootstrap into power operation with a set a diesel generators, fusion reactors will take an enormous about of energy to start up. (It also, of course, mitigates many negative features of fission: no long-lived radiation, no secondary path to WMD making, easy (too easy?) to shut down, probably won’t need exotic fuel (though may need exotic structural materials.))

3494

This is very much a legitimate concern and one I share. I guess the hope is that it might galvanize the Democratic voters who elected those leaders in the first place.

3495

Doesn’t the neutron flux involved kind of mean you do get long-term radiation and proliferation danger from fusion?

I think in the long term, human existence is going to be more and more energy-intensive, and the way to manage that with minimal environmental impact is some sort of mass-produced fission tech.

3496

That assumption seems quite smart to me. Otherwise it’s all perceived pain of one form or another. For example, we’re going to destroy coal mining as an industry and eliminate all the jobs that depend on it whether directly or indirectly. Probably better do something to employ people too.

3497

Because it wont happen. That has basically been the plan since we realized there was a problem.
Spoiler Alert: the world started using more power and will continue to do so.

3498

Structural materials around the reactor do get activated by the neutron flux, but half-lifes for the radioisotopes of iron, nickel, carbon and aluminum that are of concern are measured in months or single-digit years, rather than billions of years like uranium. Outside of the reactor vessel, there’s no measurable radiation above background just few weeks after shutdown. Inside the vessel, you’ll get a measurable but low-level and fairly safe dose probably for a couple of years after shutdown.

Probably the worst radioisotope is tritium (hydrogen-3), which is pernicious and gets into everything like very very very fine-grained but invisible sand. It’s a contaminant, so can be cleaned up by wiping down surfaces with alcohol, but it bleeds past vacuum interfaces into the vacuum pump oil and makes the oil pretty radioactive. It’s a beta emitter, so is only a problem if you breathe or swallow it (and even this is expelled from the body pretty quickly, within a couple of weeks) but it has a half-life of 12 years, so can be around for decades. Tritium is both a fuel and a byproduct of typical fusion reactions.

3499
3500

Yes, and then no:

  • Safe - The amounts of fuel used for fusion are small compared to fission reactors. This is so that uncontrolled releases of energy do not occur. Most fusion reactors make less radiation than the natural background radiation we live with in our daily lives.
  • Clean - No combustion occurs in nuclear power (fission or fusion), so there is no air pollution.
  • Less nuclear waste - Fusion reactors will not produce high-level nuclear wastes like their fission counterparts, so disposal will be less of a problem. In addition, the wastes will not be of weapons-grade nuclear materials as is the case in fission reactors.
3501

The problem with ignoring the social and economic policies of the GND is that voters would prefer to hypothetically starve in 2030 than to starve now from incredibly regressive taxes (and a potential recession, because “there’s limited money”) to “fund” something planned by people who, at best, aren’t seen as reliable, and certainly don’t care for maintaining livelihoods.
It didn’t go well in France, it didn’t go well in Oregon, and I’m pretty sure it won’t go well for the EGP in the Euroland either.

3502

You don’t need to ignore the social and economic aspects of climate change reversal, but bundling it all into some kind of FDR style brand still distorts the primacy of “keeping earth habitable” as the core policy concern. And, again, it “leftizes” an issue that it is sheer madness to place on a left/right spectrum. I’ll take it, obviously, because it beats the grotesque do-nothingism (or worse) of the GOP.

And no imaginable policy would have voters “starve now.” What they (we) would do, is sacrifice now, which, of course, politicians are afraid to ask. It’s okay to ask it when there’s a war on (correction: it used to be okay to ask it when there was a war on), but it’s not okay when there’s a crisis the magnitude of which dwarfs any known war except possibly World War II.

If, as you claim, the New Deal stuff glommed into it actually makes it politically more viable, then that’s great, but since it’s now harder to tease the social stuff from the “reduce carbon in the atmosphere” stuff, you end up kind of married to that approach.

IMO it all goes back to the deep, deep, entrenched, and in some cases deliberately fomented, misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the issue itself, which in turn is an indicator of how ill-equipped we are – psychologically, politically, morally, and in lots of other ways – to handle it.

3503

Because of who Trump is and how he comports himself Democrats knew that if they won the 2018 midterms they’d have to confront the impeachment question; they also knew that they’d be too afraid to impeach him. This is why they began laying the groundwork to shirk their impeachment obligation before the election. It’s why, once they reclaimed control of the House, they deferred the impeachment question to Mueller, as though Trump’s bad acts were limited exclusively to the issues Mueller had been authorized to investigate.

That made Mueller’s finding of impeachable conduct, which he referred right back to Congress, especially inconvenient. We’ve waited three months for this testimony, and have three more weeks ahead of us, because House Democrats have tried desperately to steer clear of all fights and inquiries that might leave them no choice but to begin impeachment proceedings. They have entered zero appearances in court in pursuit of testimony and documents from current and former administration officials, and we must infer at this point that they fear victory: If the administration provides smoking gun evidence of high crimes, they will have to impeach; if Trump defies a court order, they will have to impeach.

Letting Mueller get away without testifying, after all that’s happened, would have been too conspicuous and too humiliating. By the time he testifies, though, we will be on the cusp of a long congressional recess, after which we’ll be in election season, which will become an argument against impeachment unto itself.

3504

There’s an XKCD for that.

3505

I have actually referred him to that one multiple times! It’s a good one, but apparently denial is really a thing.

3506

I’ve always believed that Pelosi was good at her job, but this is…not good.

3507

Yeah, our Foreign Policy is run by Fredo:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tillerson-jared-kushner-left-him-in-the-dark-on-conversations-with-foreign-nations/2019/06/27/c877a780-64c8-43d5-8567-d4cb2c9b948b_story.html?utm_term=.115fc9cc9f64

In newly disclosed testimony, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson said President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, operated independently with powerful leaders around the world without coordination with the State Department, leaving Tillerson out of the loop and in the dark on emerging U.S. policies and simmering geopolitical crises.

3508
3509

Trump took Tucker Carlson to NK, not Bolton. WTF.

3510

To be fair, anybody, even Carlson, would be better than Bolton.

3511

about 5 months late

3512

2019, when Congress has to go to the Judicial branch in order to actually perform any sort of oversight.

I’m so done with this shithole.