I’d like to keep the DOE thread on those topics, so here’s a new one to pick apart Donald Trump’s latest babblefest.
Open Thread: Trump’s Interview With the Wall Street JournalPost + Comments (317)
This post is in: Open Threads, Russiagate, Trump Crime Cartel, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell
I’d like to keep the DOE thread on those topics, so here’s a new one to pick apart Donald Trump’s latest babblefest.
Open Thread: Trump’s Interview With the Wall Street JournalPost + Comments (317)
This post is in: Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Rofer on Nuclear Issues, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Assholes
Several valued commenters have brought up this article. It’s a good article.
The biggest thing I object to about it is the framing of scary. Nuke stuff is always framed as scary. There’s some basis for that, particularly in the time of Trump, but being scared is not the best way to deal with problems.
Some things in the article are not entirely new. Back during the transition, there were many news articles about people who had no idea what the Department of Energy did and, more generally, about the surprise on the part of the Trumpies that they might have to learn what any of the executive departments did. Some of the Trump appointments, like Betsy DeVos, proclaimed that they didn’t need to know what her department did because she had an agenda.
That’s dangerous, because all parts of the government affect our lives, and the people taking over are irresponsible if they don’t care to understand that.
Every new administration learns that providing electrical energy is the smaller part of the Department of Energy’s mission. Some are surprised that the main part of the mission is nuclear weapons. What’s new in this administration is the lack of interest in learning anything of substance.
There is also some robustness built into the executive departments. Most of their employees are civil servants who feel their job is to make the country better. They will continue to do their jobs as best they can. But the Trump administration is damaging the functions of those agencies through their ignorance and ideology.
Even if you know that the DOE mostly makes and manages nuclear weapons while dealing with civilian energy issues on the side, there’s still a lot of detail you might not think of.
A lunch or two with the chief financial officer might have alerted the new administration to some of the terrifying risks they were leaving essentially unmanaged. Roughly half of the D.O.E.’s annual budget is spent on maintaining and guarding our nuclear arsenal, for instance. Two billion of that goes to hunting down weapons-grade plutonium and uranium at loose in the world so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of terrorists. In just the past eight years the D.O.E.’s National Nuclear Security Administration has collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs. The department trains every international atomic-energy inspector; if nuclear power plants around the world are not producing weapons-grade material on the sly by reprocessing spent fuel rods and recovering plutonium, it’s because of these people. The D.O.E. also supplies radiation-detection equipment to enable other countries to detect bomb material making its way across national borders. To maintain the nuclear arsenal, it conducts endless, wildly expensive experiments on tiny amounts of nuclear material to try to understand what is actually happening to plutonium when it fissions, which, amazingly, no one really does. To study the process, it is funding what promises to be the next generation of supercomputers, which will in turn lead God knows where.
A couple of cautions about exactly how scared you should be. Several of the adjectives in this paragraph are overdone (terrifying, wildly expensive), and a couple of sentences are framed with unnecessary fear.
There is very, very little “weapons-grade plutonium and uranium at loose in the world.” The figure of 160 nuclear bombs probably comes from the conversion of research reactors in several countries from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium. That’s a good thing to do, and it makes diversion less likely, but those reactors were pretty well secured in the first place, hardly “at loose.” The amounts of fissile material picked up that are genuinely “at loose” are tiny in relation to what is needed for a bomb. The one exception to that was at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, where metallic plutonium was scattered around. But Semipalatinsk is pretty hard to get to, and the plutonium has been cleaned up.
Another little-known fact: Nuclear weapons modeling requirements have driven increases in computing power. That’s less true now than during the Cold War; modeling for oil exploration and climate change also drive computing power, but for IBM, Cray, and a few others, nuclear weapons were the motivator.
The part of the article that I suspect mostly scared readers was the interview with the former risk manager. Bringing in a risk manager was a good idea of Moniz’s. I would have liked to hear more about risks within the organization, but the article is pretty long as it is.
“At the very top of his list is an accident with nuclear weapons”
This is a legitimate concern. I would like to know more about why it is first; presumably he is talking about an accident that leads to a nuclear explosion. The example given is one from 1961. In 1961, nuclear weapons had been engineered quickly during the big buildup of the 1950s, but even so, they had safety features. Since then, design changes have made them more resistant to accidents. Also, B-52s were regularly flying with nukes, ready to head for the Soviet Union. We don’t do that any more.
North Korea is the second risk on his list. Iran is “somewhere in the top five.” Recent news illustrates why.
A significant contingent of national laboratory personnel were at the talks to develop the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran deal. Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz was gracious enough to recognize them publicly. As I read the material coming out of the talks, I could envision them working through the night, calling back to colleagues. They did an incredible job. National laboratory personnel advising on nuclear treaties. They are the ones who know what is needed to make nuclear weapons.
The safety of the electrical grid is the fourth risk. It’s a big one, and we’re not doing anywhere near enough about it. But Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), the favorite of Newt Gingrich and rightwing think tanks, is not one of the dangers. If I haven’t raved enough about this yet, ask in the comments. Here’s what Jeffrey Lewis has written about it.
And the fifth is project management. This one looks inside the DOE. The example given is the Hanford cleanup. It is a mess, and the managers, all the way back to the Manhattan Project, have not brought credit on themselves. I have many thoughts about both project management and the cleanup.
The author rephrases the fifth risk as “the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term risks with short-term solutions.” That’s a nice way to put it, and it characterizes the way Congress deals with far too many issues. The budget and debt-ceiling fights we will see in the next month or so are an illustration. Since Newt Gingrich institutionalized those fights in the mid-nineties, they have contributed to the DOE’s inability to deal with anything in a long-term way.
Imagine being a project manager for an environmental cleanup and not knowing what your budget will be after the end of September. Not knowing whether you can keep heavy equipment on the job, or whether you will have to store waste on site rather than send it to an approved disposal site. Or trying to schedule requests for proposals so that you can evaluate them and get contracts in place before the budget collapses. That’s where a lot of people are today. I’ve been there.
The author makes a big deal of classified information, but he’s managed to write a fairly detailed article without any. This is something that overawes people. The big issues are the important ones, and you don’t need classified information to understand them.
Most DOE employees, like those of other executive departments, are career people. They are still on the job. How much the Trump administration will damage them remains to be seen.
What The Trump Administration Doesn’t Know About The DOEPost + Comments (50)
This post is in: Open Threads
I need to raise a quick 200k so I can buy a beach house. Paypal is to the right.
In all seriousness, I ma having a great time. Spent an hour at the beach, then an hour and a half skinnydipping in the house pool IN BROAD DAYLIGHT BECAUSE I AM ON VACATION AND FUCK YOU. Just picked up a bag of clams, some fresh shrimp, corn, tomatoes, and old bay seasoning and am going to take a nap and think about dinner.
I need to do this every year.
by DougJ| 194 Comments
This post is in: Music
I really enjoy those Yacht Rock videos, but I very much disagree with their notion of smooth. I don’t think Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, or Steely Dan sound smooth at all. The singing is just too thin and nasal for true smoothness. I don’t mean that as a racial dog whistle, I think that Hall & Oates and Michael McDonald can be pretty smooth at times.
So, what in your mind, are the smoothest songs of all time? I’d like to expand the definition to include stuff beyond the obvious 70s and early 80s choices, though now that I like at my list most of the songs are 70s or early 80s.
On twitter, many people felt that Girl From Ipanema is the smoothest song of all time, and I certainly agree that Stan Getz performs the smoothest sax solo of all time in that song. I’m going to leave smooth songs in the jazz genre out of my list though because I don’t think the best jazz sounds all that smooth, in general.
Here are my smoothest songs of all time (in order):
1. Too Hot — Kool and the Gang
2. Breezin’ — George Benson
3. I Can’t Help It — Michael Jackson
4. Do For Love — Bobby Caldwell
5. Smooth Operator — Sade
6. Footsteps in the Dark — Isley Brothers
7. You Belong To Me — Carly Simon with Michael McDonald
8. I Can’t Go For That — Hall & Oates
9. Regulate — Warren G.
10. Tie: Low Down — Boz Scaggs and Way of the World — EWF
What are yours?
Update: I couldn’t decide which Lou Rawls to go with. You’ll Never Find is the one that got the most radio play but I think that Lady Love and Groovy People are actually smoother.
by Betty Cracker| 227 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Russiagate, Assholes, General Stupidity, Not Normal
NPR broke a story today about how the White House — and possibly Trump himself — colluded with a Texas-based Trump donor and Fox News to push a fake news story about murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. The fake news was broadcast on fake news outlet Fox News specifically to take the focus off the Trump-Russia collusion story:
Behind Fox News’ Baseless Seth Rich Story: The Untold Tale
The Fox News Channel and a wealthy supporter of President Trump worked in concert under the watchful eye of the White House to concoct a story about the murder of a young Democratic National Committee aide, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The explosive claim is part of the lawsuit filed against Fox News by Rod Wheeler, a longtime paid commentator for the news network. The suit was obtained exclusively by NPR.
Wheeler alleges Fox News and the Trump supporter intended to deflect public attention from growing concern about the administration’s ties to the Russian government. His suit charges that a Fox News reporter created quotations out of thin air and attributed them to him to propel her story…
The first page of the lawsuit quotes a voicemail and text from Butowsky boasting that President Trump himself had reviewed drafts of the Fox News story just before it went to air and was published.
Spicer now tells NPR that he took the meeting as a favor to Butowsky, a reliable Republican voice. Spicer says he was unaware of any contact involving the president. Butowsky now tells NPR he was kidding about Trump’s involvement.
“Just kidding” my ass — Trump was on this story like a duck on a June bug, as was Sean Hannity and the Trump sock puppet crew at Fox & Friends. And this on the heels of the news yesterday that Trump dictated the lies about the nature of the meeting at Trump Tower between Russian operatives and Trump’s idiot son, son-in-law, campaign chairman, etc.
Prediction: this story — added to the growing mountain of evidence that Trump lies all the time and orchestrates fake news to cover up his campaign’s involvement with Russia — will furrow many a Republican brow. But it will inspire no action whatsoever from that group.
Meanwhile, the fake president who uses fake news to protect his fake victory, is projecting again this morning:
Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2017
That’s a bald-faced lie, of course. It’s Trump’s supporters and operatives who are begging the shitgibbon to quit tweeting. Those of us who want him to fail (for America’s sake!) fully support Trump’s right to continue to obstruct justice, issue threats and generally make a fool of himself on Twitter.
by David Anderson| 42 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Austin Frakt at the Incidental Economist is highlighting some really cool research on the problem of too much choice in insurance offerings:
Maybe more choices isn’t better? What if helping consumers navigate them is merely second best to reducing the number of choices in the first place?
It sounds a bit crazy, because a premise of an ideal market is that there are so many choices, everybody can find a product to perfectly match his or her preferences. No market achieves that ideal, but clearly fewer choices moves in the wrong directly, theoretically.
Theory is useless if it is wrong. It must be tested.
In a study published as an NBER working paper, Jason Abaluck, Jonathan Gruber did so….
On average, employees spent about $1,000 more on coverage per year than they could have. The number of plan choices varied across district and time. Through 2011, the vast majority of employees had four choices. After 2011, some had as many as ten. Choices ranged in plan style — closed panel HMOs (e.g., Kaiser) and broader network PPOs — as did employer contributions to premiums and cost sharing, all of which was controlled for in analysis…
Finally, the authors examined forgone savings as a function of choice sets. Foregone savings are almost twice as large when employees face a choice of eight plans versus only four plans. Now, this result could occur if what’s going on is that as additional choices include better ones, but that enrollees don’t pick better ones. That is, they could do better with more choices, but they don’t know how to make the right ones….
Insurance is confusing. When I worked at UPMC, I was given three choices ( narrow high deductible, narrow low deductible, broad low deductible). Now that I work at Duke, I have four choices: narrow high deductible, narrow low deductible, broad low deductible, national low deductible. I can figure those choices out. The HR department has spent a lot of time curating the choices to something I can managed and I am an expert in insurance.
Healthcare.gov has an incredible array of choices. For the 2017 plan year the number of unique plan IDs varies from two plans in two dozen counties in Missouri to over 100 choices in some counties in Florida and Wisconsin. The plans vary by network, benefit configuration, out of pocket arrangements, additional benefits like adult dental as an add-on and plan type. This is confusing.
State based marketplaces may have more compressed ranges. Covered California restricts choices to a single, standard benefit design per type per insurer. Even then, a resident in Redding, California sees 10 choices. A resident in Los Angeles sees 38 choices.
We have good evidence that increased insurer competition leads to lower premiums. Do we have good evidence that the increased competition leads to lower spending when compared to the counterfactual of optimal plan choosing? I am curious about that as increased competition, even increased curated competition creates an incredible number of choices that have to be sorted through and made.
by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)| 29 Comments
This post is in: Albatrossity, On The Road, Open Threads, Readership Capture
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. <Link coming soon, when form is moved> You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each submission, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Due to some competition for my attention, there won’t be more than one Swiss picture for this First of August, Swiss National Day.
One of the many things I’ve always loved and valued in Switzerland is their respect: for historic things, for artists, for tradition, for thinkers, and for the Enlightenment and its interpreted values of peace, prosperity, and freedom of conscience.
This is the outside of the HR Giger Museum in the Chateau de Gruyeres, Gruyeres, Switzerland. He occupied it his last 15 or so years. Last time I went there, the Giger Bar was almost open, with oversized Harkonen chairs and bio-organic-looking flooring, roof-beams, furniture, and design elements everywhere. Oddly fitting in a medieval castle.
Giger designed creatures and alien stuff for the Alien and Species movies, and much of Dune. His work is disturbing, often political, highly sexualized, and nightmarish. But there’s something to his horror, especially when you look at one of his giant paintings and scrutinize the detail and complexity and design.
In this photo: the building is part of the castle and is likely centuries old, there’s a a demonic/alien sculpture, a secret society’s commissioned symbol above the door, the famous “population gun” sculpture, and a bio-mechanoid torso of Lil. Quite a huge amount in a small space!
Today, pictures from valued commenter Albatrossity.
Earlier this month (July 2017) I took a road trip through Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and then back through Nebraska. I saw much country, many birds, and way more pickup trucks than cars on those blue highways. Here are some of the images and recollections
Western Nebraska has many iconic chalk/limestone formations that served as markers along the Oregon Trail. Some are more famous than others; here’s one of the lesser known ones, near Bridgeport NE.
This long-legged diurnal owl hangs out in prairie dog towns throughout the West. Found this one near Ogallala NE.
Hay bales, fences, and mountain ranges are ubiquitous elements of any western landscape. This is near the Missouri Breaks National Monument, looking south toward the Judith Mountains.
Prairies resemble oceans in many ways, including the presence of “shorebirds”. This Upland Sandpiper will fly from eastern Montana across the equator to the pampas of Uruguay and Argentina in a few weeks. From the Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Culbertson MT.
One of a pair of pups on the Medicine Lake NWR who took a curious interest in me. Off the refuge, in this part of the country, that curiosity is probably a death sentence. But they sure are cute!
In North Dakota the glaciers left behind a prairie landscape pocked with lakes and ponds. Here’s a view of that, in the Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge near Stanley ND.
Prairie pothole lakes attract lots of different birds, including ducks, pelicans, grebes, shorebirds, blackbirds, and even wrens like this one. Noisy and busy denizens of the cattails across North America, this one was at Lostwood NWR in North Dakota.
Thank you so much Albatrossity, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
The form is being tweaked and moved, so a new link will be published when it’s ready.