TPTB received a garbled message from SugarFree. As best we can tell, Hunter is mounting his own “special operation” on one of those Venezuelan drug boats, and SF is riding along to document it. Details hopefully forthcoming. If you hear about a bunch of dudes with far too much blow shouting “Am I being detained? For what? Enjoying cocaine? Enjoying this stimulating cocaine?!” you’ll know that it was a success. It sounded like Hunter told SF he had a deal with the Secret Service to make sure that “his” boat wasn’t on the drone strike list, but you can’t trust lawyers who are drug addicts. Its like a perfect lying storm.
Oh wait, we’re getting actual footage of Hunter in South Florida…
I don’t think that airboat is going to make it across the Caribbean Sea, but I wish him Godspeed.
“Seriously, Lana, this must be what it’s like to have sex with me.”
“How can an air boat be selfish?”
I think Sugarfree got a Cease and Desist order. I hope he has ten billion dollars stashed under the couch cushions.
Meanwhile, the drizzle has turned into a thunderstorm. Global Warming, FTW!
Maybe they found his cameras.
I think that SugarFree has mastered the art of remote viewing.
No word on whether the goat survived.
EvilSheldon:
Did the rabbit die?
SF is the three-eyed raven?
Nevermore!
HO-DOR.
You can laugh all you want. The CIA devoted significant resources to remote viewing. Had its own department and everything.
Probably still does and they just lie about it.
My real guess is a severe Hanukkah hangover.
Being treated for menorah wax burns on his nipples?
Wait, is SF is one of (((them)))? Or is he just looking for an excuse to get trashed?
Or yes?
Telekinetically exploded goat entrails make for the most accurate haruspex.
It is known.
Since it’s open I’ll post this ray of sunshine.
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/2025/09/27/shrimp-basket-customer-saved-at-home-by-pensacola-crew/86369061007/
FL isn’t all bad!
My meories of Florida was all Humidity and Anoles.
I had a customer like that at the greasy spoon I cooked for. Lunch and dinner every day: California basket – no mayo. Every. single. day.
When I worked at McDonald’s, there was a group of about 10 seniors who came in every morning for their $0.25 coffee (free refills) to sit and talk. We would ask if we didn’t see someone for a couple of days.
I have breakfast every Friday at a certain greasy spoon in town, and I have noticed when one of the old timers stops showing up.
I don’t ask.
The McD’s my wife managed had a senior coffee crowd, too. During the Covid closures they brought lawn chairs and sat in the parking lot.
My wife left that job about three years ago, and we still run into members of her “coffee crowd” around town occasionally.
I’m confused.
Confession?
No thanks, I’m not catholic.
Personally I am celebrating the anniversary of the closure of Project Blue Book in 1969.
Maybe Sugar Free is celebrating the burning of commies during the Romanian Revolution with Pie?
I’m confused.
It’s time for Wapner!
That can’t be right, I’m still in my cube at work.
ACA subsidies extension to get vote after 4 Republicans buck leadership
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/17/johnson-aca-republicans-health.html
So we can’t even cut spending that makes things worse across the board. That bodes well for the future.
The Stupid Party is as the Stupid Party does.
Team Red said they’d bring it to a vote as part of ending the shutdown.
They tried to get out of doing it and those in vulnerable districts aren’t happy. I find it hard to believe this is going to help them keep their job however.
Three PA RINOs – no surprise.
CNN is describing these 4 as “centrists”.
Rino’s, and Dino’s, are by definition centrists.
I’m sorry, but if you voted to end the ACA, then subsidies wouldn’t be an issue.
Twenty-five years!
From October 2024 to September 2025, temperatures across the entire Arctic region were the hottest in 125 years of modern record keeping, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said, with the last 10 years being the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic.
OH
MY
GOD!
So?
due to the burning of fossil fuels,
They screamed.
You know, I’d like to see a high as fuck Hunter steal an airboat from a gay redneck and steer it out into deep water. With Joe Biden in the passenger seat. Into a hurricane.
You don’t even need a hurricane. Flat-bottomed airboats are not suited for open sea. The waves will down it.
I feel sorry for Hunter Biden.
When he talks, he sounds just like Joe.
That has to cause mental problems.
Hunter has to be one of the most unhappy people alive. Hookers, blow, and sex with his own family can’t make him happy. I can only say that because it is SugerFree Wednesday. Otherwise, that would be weird.
Truly a Florida Man trapped in a Delaware family.
It must be a law of politics that all political families devolve into Florida men. The Kennedys, the Bidens, the Bushes.
Barron Trump, Florida Man?
You forgot the Reiner’s, Jaimie
The other two sound OK. Never knew anything about any three, to their credit.
,em>“There’s been a steady decline in sea ice and unfortunately we are seeing rain now even in winter,” said Druckenmiller. “We are seeing changes in the heart of winter, when we expect the Arctic to be cold. The whole concept of winter is being redefined in the Arctic.”
We plugged the data into our model, and Alaska will be a tropical rainforest in another few years. It will be covered with herds of hairy elephants before you know it.
What was that movie…right, Equalizer 2000. Truly, a hidden gem.
I’ve been watching a local retired meteorologist on YouTube lately. He likes to keep an eye on Alaska for some reason. There’s a town near the Yukon that recently had 3 consecutive mornings with temperatures below -50F. He didn’t speculate on whether it was raining there or not.
My grand daughter and husband are teachers in a remote village at an ex- AF base. School closes at a -50. Kids come from even more remote smaller
villages and live in the dorm(s) (ex AF barracks) during the school year.
When the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services issued the first Dietary Guidelines in 1980, 15 percent of adults were obese. Forty-five years later, 40 percent of American adults are now obese, three-in-four live with at least one major chronic disease, and one-third have prediabetes. Heart disease remains the nation’s leading killer.
Good news NYS and others may help change some of the the leading causes of death!
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5649677-the-war-on-saturated-fat-never-based-on-good-science-can-now-end/
It’s so bizarre that even bringing this up makes you lose your prog card and brands you as a MAGA white supremacist.
Hopefully certain groups continue to chug seed oils.
I’d like to take this opportunity to chime in on the great Christmas music debate. After careful consideration I decided when I’m King again Christmas music will be allowed during the Twelve Days of Christmas and no other time:
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/kids-tudors/twelve-days-of-christmas/
Violators will be put in the stocks.
But in the meantime here’s something to help. The Glibertarian Campfire Song is to the tune of a modern Christmas ballad. When I hear it mentally following along with the lyrics cheers me up immensely:
STEVE SMITH the Big-Dicked Sasquatch,
Has a very lengthy dick!
And if you ever saw it,
You would even say it’s thick!
Try not to see STEVE SMITH though.
Avoid him like a shaven ape!
He has a way with hikers.
You could even call it rape!
When one balmy Summer’s Eve,
STEVE SMITH came to camp.
There the hikers took a fright (at)
“STEVE SMITH RAPE ALL YOU TONIGHT!”
Then all the hikers got some.
The bruising was so sad to see!
STEVE SMITH the Big-Dicked Sasquatch,
Please stay far away from me!
And now I’ve got your attention I’d like to remind those I mailed a Glibertarian pin if you didn’t receive it please let me know so I can mail a replacement. If you’ve been too shy to ask for a pin it’s not too late. Details are here:
https://www.glibertarians.com/2025/09/free-as-in-beer/
Forgot to let you know, but I got my replacement after I left the one Fourscore gave me somewhere in Minnesota.
Thank you
I still have 3 left, for the unadorned newbies at next year’s HH.
Mr. Richard, that is very appropriate, and funny.
Outside of that, if it’s modern pop Christmas music, I don’t want to hear it. Classical, choirs, or nothing
My two default Christmas albums are A Christmas Together (featuring John Denver and The Muppets), and Mannenheim Steamroller’s Christmas in the Aire. I’m being completely unironic in my enjoyment here.
I also (hopefully repeat?) my thanks, Richard! Once my jacket arrives, one of ’em will have a home.
New! Improved!
Formula 1’s biggest technical overhaul isn’t just reshaping the cars and the way drivers extract performance from them — it is also redefining the language of racing.
Ahead of the 2026 season, F1 — after consulting with the FIA, teams, fans and engineers — has introduced a shared set of terms to describe the key on-track features of the new regulations, focusing on the driver taking “centre stage” with greater responsibility than ever before.
I watched a thing yesterday about all the newfangled gimmickry coming next year. I’m sure the racing will be fabulous. Not like ye olden tymes when the cars were light and simple with more power than grip.
Bring back Colin Chapman!
He’s currently spinning in his grave after his company created this 6,000lbs SUV. Made in China, naturally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Eletre
Ugh. That’s fucking awful.
Be afraid
The number of 3D-printed guns recovered at crime scenes has increased dramatically in recent years, according to a report released Wednesday by the gun control advocacy group Everytown For Gun Safety.
——-
In the report, Everytown identified 20 cities with five years of data on the recovery of 3D-printed guns, which can be made at home and are generally untraceable because they lack a serial number. In 2020, those cities recovered 32 of the printed firearms at crime scenes. In 2024, the number recovered climbed to 325, a 1,000% increase. While 3D-printed guns only represent a small number of the guns recovered at crime scenes overall, the growth of their use in crimes is worrisome.
“It’s been a less significant phenomena so far in jurisdictions where guns are easier to source,” Pucino said. “The places where we have the strongest gun laws, we’re seeing it growing most rapidly.”
New York, for instance, has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. In 2023, authorities in New York City recovered 33 3D-printed guns at crime scenes. In 2024, that number rose to 123, according to the Everytown report. Last spring, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged companies that sell 3D printers to take action in stemming the flow of these guns into the city.
Why do I assume they are grossly misusing the term “3D printed”?
Also- Why do I assume you’d be better off using a pointed stick than a “3D printed” gun in your crime spree?
Anything that’s polymer in a modern firearm can be safely printed.
Ban anything that can be turned into a weapon …
They can have my broken glass bottle when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Burt Lancaster concurs
“Why do I assume they are grossly misusing the term “3D printed”?”
Because you still remember them making a big show of people dying WITH Covid.
Just in case anyone would like to print themselves a frame, https://3dgunbuilder.com is a good place to start.
I don’t have the cash reserves to be a test case on the unconstitutional law in my state.
99.97% likely.
I guess they don’t have ghost gun to kick around anymore.
Stupid planned obsolescence!
I’ve been keeping my ion chromatographs running long after the company got bought by Thermo Fisher — they’re like five generations “obsolete” now, but work just a well or better than new ones (I got a new one in 2023, I know).
TF has stopped (well, will stop at the end of the year) making a consumable shared between the generations and the new one will not run on the software used by my oldest models. I had already planned on a long gradual decline into cannibalism but this is going to accelerate EoL considerably.
😭
What’s the consumable?
A suppressor. I have four spares, and am now seeing how many are left on the market.
The long gradual decline into cannibalism always seems to take a sharp turn right at the end.
I’m sure you are already aware of them, but for used Semiconductor and lab equipment: https://bidservice.com/collections/metrology
Weird, I though prohibition would work this time.
*thought*
not though
OT: Wayne’s World is still funny as hell IMO.
Gun control advocates say there are strategies to regulate the printing of these firearms. Companies that make 3D printers could develop algorithms to block the printing of firearms, for instance, or states could make it illegal to publish blueprints for 3D printing a gun.
“I think what makes sense is to explore all of (the strategies) right now, to have every approach and push it forward,” Pucino said, “because this is such a new area and it’s such a concerning threat.”
Ban 3D printers. Problem solved.
What’s a First Amendment?
Old slave owners, Dude.
State’s banning something on the internet. So easy! Florida tried to ban porn for Floridians. How’s that working?
You can make 3D printer manufacturers put whatever block on the device you want. People will find workarounds or someone will make one that doesn’t have it.
These aren’t serious people.
So, I got stuck on brainstorming how one might try to enforce something, and how it might be overcome.
The printers don’t have much in the way of processing power, so you’d have to do the attempted identification in the slicer if you want to dynamically look for it. This could be bypassed by using an unofficial slicer that behaves like today’s software. This workaround could be coutnered by attempting to make the printer only accept signed gcode, but bypassing cryptographic signature systems is something the community does for fun. Similarly, you could force the use of a cloud control for the printer, examining the prints on the way. You could even go with “only prints pre-screened designs” using some sort of proprietary formats – having a similar weakness to the cryptographic signatures.
I assume the slicer as well.
You could add some kind of DRM to slicer that it needs to send to the printer to start the print.
That was sort of what I was thinking with the signed gcode. I have been moving gcode by usb thumb drive, so I overlooked making it only network controlled, removing sideloading print files.
Bongino apparently quitting.
Kind of sad. I wanted him to stay and set fire to large sections of the agency. I think he discovered that is almost impossible. Hope he gets to talk about it.
From last night’s thread on Trump and his tweets.
He may not have the phone personally in his hand, but he personally controls and dictates what gets posted. I have no doubt about that. He’s not paying some intern/staffer of his to tweet in his voice and take credit for it. The deranged, impulsive, stupid shit that ends up on his Truth Social? it all stems from his brain.
No other Chief Of Staff would have to have a live feed of their hack’s social media page because everything that ends up on there is crafted by the Chief Of Staff to begin with. There aren’t surprises.
Scott Atlas, in his book on his time being a special advisor during Rona Panic, hinted that Jared Kushner controlled at least some of Trump’s tweets.
Maybe Trump 2.0 is different. Who knows.
CNN is describing these 4 as “centrists”.
Think of them as the “flaccid” right.
The X says P r n +hub has leaked 200M users including watch history.
I’m waiting to see what politicians signed up with their real names.
Pornhub hacked: View and search history for Premium members could leak
Never, ever pay for porn. Never make an account. Never give any information.
What do you get for a premium subscription other than your viewing habits leaked to your grandma?
Porn. But MORE.
You get access to your grandma’s viewing habits as well.
CPA:
Morty explains why. (Generally SFW).
The profile tracking will be beneficial for tuning generative AI porn.
You can type “Pornhub” here.
Or are you worried people will learn about your kinky porn viewing habits?
Not when I’m keylogged.
Pornhub is merely your Thai coworker’s name.
They don’t encourage you at work to be your whole self?
Good thing I never paid for pr0n
Jimmy Kimmel got up on his soapbox to attack Trump for attacking Rob Reiner postmortem.
I think Trump’s comments still rank below lying and spreading propaganda for your side after an assassination to score cheap political points. Slightly more “sick and irresponsible” than Trump getting a cheap laugh out of Reiner’s misfortune at the hand’s of his son.
Reiner embodied TDS. If Trump wants to piss on his grave, I don’t care.
Politically — tactically; strategically — it’s stupid. But Trump does not play the game the way people generally play the game.
Charlie Kirk embodied MAGA racism and misogyny. If x wants to piss on his grave, I don’t care.
If x wants to piss on Charlie’s grave. So be it.
If x’s boss decides fire x. So be it.
See. It’s easy.
You know, employers didn’t organically just decide to fire anyone in most cases. They were harassed by MAGA-land into doing so on the supposed principle that it was uncouth to celebrate death over political disagreement.
Bros – same thing happened in reverse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_birdwatching_incident
Then the left boycotts the employers. So be it.
Sensei, everyone here is familiar with leftists canceling people. That the right didn’t start the war doesn’t mean they didn’t escalate it with Kirk’s death and that Trump didn’t make them looking like fucking hypocritical tards by making those statements about Reiner.
Got it. Fair point, but I’m unsure the other side gets it unless your ramp it up.
We will know for sure when the tear down ballroom Trump is building at their first opportunity.
Can I get you guys to consider one idea?
The U.S. government is a loose alliance of organized crime gangs that steals more money from the citizenry, assaults more members of the citizenry than all the other criminal gangs or individual criminals combined.
Getting worked up debating the conduct of the current capo of one of the factions of this crime family is absurd. Do you get exercised about John Gotti and the Cambinos? Would you ever find yourself in daily discussions as to whether today’s version of Whitey Bulger is doing the smart thing or not?
The U.S. government is, thankfully, dying. It’s probably less than a decade away from joining its brother the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the ash-heap of history.
You have lives, you have loves, passions, responsibilities and duties to things you care about. None of the stuff that matters to your happiness is at all affected positively by spending time ineffectually gossiping about crooks. Put your energy into things that matter. And if this discussion is something that materially affects something you care about, you have my pity.
Tarran hits it out of the park. Id expand it even further. 98% of what comes to your attention as “news” serves no purpose aside from raising your blood pressure.
There would literally be no downside to you replacing the time and energy you spend consuming current events with vigorous sessions of digging holes and refilling them.
Sub prime
The CEO of subprime auto firm Tricolor directed a deputy to send him $6.25 million in bonuses in August as fraudulent schemes propping up the company unraveled, U.S. prosecutors alleged.
Daniel Chu, the CEO and founder of Tricolor, told Chief Financial Officer Jerome Kollar to send the final two payments of his $15 million annual bonus on Aug. 19 and 20, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
Chu, who is accused of engaging in “systemic fraud” over roughly seven years through 2025, used some of the money to buy a “multi-million-dollar property” in Beverly Hills, California, later that month, according to the filing.
Within days of Chu’s bonus payments, Tricolor put more than 1,000 employees on unpaid leaves of absence. By Sept. 10, the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
He was doing a great job. He earned every penny.
Johns Hopkins freshman class shows impact of Supreme Court admissions ruling
The Asians are back.
I’ve been assured over and over again by people on the left that standards have never been lowered for black students and professionals. That if you see a black pilot or surgeon, you can rest easy because that person had to work twice as hard to accomplish the same thing as a white person.
This is obviously systemic racism to appease Trumphitler.
Fixed it for you.
The yellow faces of white supremacy?
How many remedial classes are they offering this year?
The abrupt collapse of Tricolor was one of a string of defaults that churned the U.S. banking industry this fall, sparking concerns over underappreciated risks in the American financial system.
This is why we need to get back to free money. Get those interest rates back down where they belong.
This bubble is not going to inflate itself!
IIRC, Tricolor’s specialization was offering car loans to illegal immigrants. I wonder what could have changed for them to be in trouble?
r/comics, more nauseating than SugarFree?
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1pp2f4q/hallmark_oc/
What is that garbage?
Apparently an entire reddit community where they post the lamest comics imaginable.
Got my 5yo nephew, Mini-Ev so far, a play cash register for Christmas. It was a recommendation, and a good one. I’m getting him a semi Play Dough kid where you can crush things up and build ’em back together, just a tiny thing.
Best gift was mine for his last bday. I gave him a list of things (watermelon, bicycle, milk and toothpaste) to find in Walmart with ~$20 so he could get anything he wanted. My scheme was to get him to explore the whole store. Surprisingly to me, he didn’t go after food. Instead, completely out of the blue for him, IMO, he found a watch! It had simple little games and such, as well. My internal Glib idea was to show him everything and have him make his *own* choice(s).
He still uses it, ~six months later, which greatly pleases me and shocks us all. I’ve been collecting solid Uncle Moments with the him and 12yo as well, to a lesser extent (gotta snag ’em while they still last), and the 10yo’s kinda difficult for all to figure out, but it seems like he’s lowballing himself until he’s fully confident in what’s going on.
One more week before a fancy AirBnB trip to Chatanooga w the fam. Dad is certainly going to push Civil War stuff, to the other half of the family’s lack of interest. (Oddly, I globalized the family ‘tradition,’ and Bro is actually the renegade, w his programming career ‘n businesses.)
Re: Pornhub hack
And therein lies the problem with making an account. I’d assume search and view history is retained and, good god, does that ever give hackers a motivation to hack. Incognito mode behind a logless VPN is the only way to look at that stuff if you must.
I have a bunch of Ryobi P3320 hybrid fans that use 18V batteries or plug in. Great fans. All of them need cleaning. I could barely see down the the hole to identify the face plates screws – turns out the damn things have six T-10 Security Torx screws holding on the face plates. Hole is too narrow to use a driver and bit. I had to buy a special T-10 security screwdriver to handle this.
Someday I would love to meet the engineer who thought you needed T-10 torx security bits to hold a fan faceplate on. And jam one of these right up his ass.
“The mandate was to encourage users to replace, or, failing that, to use official service channels.”
I bought full sets of security bits on a whim one day from Amazon. I think they cost me like $8 or something.
Torx bits in general are great — except my Wheeler Fat Wrench did not include all of the ones commonly used on guns for some reason.
My iFixIt sets for electronics work on the firearms components I’ve encountered.
The tools in my watch maintenance kit work well on my guns too.
OH! This and the 3D printing stuff upthread reminds me.
I found an STL for grips for the Shadow 2, and I have candy apple red filament. I said I was going to make the Shadow 2 candy apple red, so I have to got print out a set, even if I take them back off again because they’re PLA.
I bought a relatively inexpensive kit that has most of those strange bits.
It’s come in handy multiple times.
Yeah, that won’t work. I have three Torx security bit sets. The hole is as narrow as the screw. You can’t get the bit driver down the hole, which is 2 inches deep. It had to be a custom one-piece screwdriver. Thankfully it was only five dollars. Once I get these out I am replacing them with Philips head.
I suspected that was the case, but didn’t want to jump in with that, in case I’d read wrong.
You’re far too kind, R.J.. A T-10 Torx security bit is far too small to be painful to such an experienced sodomite. I would recommend trying the entire fan, then switching it on.
Consider it done.
Ryobi don’t like you fucking with their tools. I broke the head of my reciprocating saw and my Son-in-Law had one he burnt up the motor.
We cannibalized to get one good one, but it was a lot more difficult than it should have been.
Someday I would love to meet the engineer who thought you needed T-10 torx security bits to hold a fan faceplate on.
NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE
Wacky Bavarian cover band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbsEZzgCwmI
When it is not your time to die. 😳
https://x.com/Crazymoments01/status/2001124652119417024
Posted to fast. How AI does this look at first glance?
Women always unload groceries on a remote wilderness highway.
Pretty fake. That doggie is way too big. Unless it’s one of those reconstituted dire wolves.
A remote wilderness highway with a camera.
She has no keys in her hands and the power lift gate controls would not be inside the frame of the gate.
The wolf looks out of place. Like it was layered on top or something.
The angle at which it was filmed and that there was even filming taking place makes little sense to me and is probably the clearest evidence.
UnCivil: Jeeps and several other brand have push buttons inside the frame. I don’t think any have a button up high where she kicked though. Still fake.
My daughter’s GMC has a button about where she kicked, but the fact that the wolf was larger than the car when it was across the road and shrunk as it got closer was the first sign.
I don’t think that airboat is going to make it across the Caribbean Sea, but I wish him Godspeed.
Just strap a rocket booster to it. What could possibly go wrong?
DEG – have you ever played “Kerbal Space Program”?
No
What could possibly go wrong…
If we’re putting Hunter and Joe in the boat, then the only thing that could go wrong is the rocket failing to fire.
The U.S. government is, thankfully, dying. It’s probably less than a decade away from joining its brother the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the ash-heap of history.
Let’s hope so. It would almost be worth hanging around to watch that.
You know, it’s cute to compare how a government functions to organized crime. It’s another to suggest that we should pay as much attention to it as we do organized crime ‘families.’ The mafia at this point sticks to its own shit. It certainly isn’t very active where I am or influence my life much.
The political shit impacts my life in a myriad of ways.
And it’s wishful thinking that the US government is on the verge of collapse or that it will go anywhere near as quietly as the Soviet Union. If the US collapses, there’s no one coming to save us. No one who is going to provide aid and guidance in the chaos that ensues.
It is easier to break up when your components are mostly nation states. How would the US break?
The urban enclaves turn into city/states.
As far as the rest, mostly regions with common cultures.
I’ve said before, the states comprising the Louisiana Purchase make a coherent whole with a pretty vibrant economy. The issues is port access.
Cue ominous music
Now, a new Trump administration program is sidestepping the regulatory system that’s overseen the nuclear industry for half a century. The program will fast-track construction of new and untested reactor designs built by private firms, with an explicit goal of having at least three nuclear test reactors up and running by the United States’ 250th birthday, July 4, 2026.
If that goal is met, it will be without the direct oversight of America’s primary nuclear regulator. Since the 1970s, safety for commercial reactors has been the purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But the NRC is only consulting on the new Reactor Pilot Program, which is being run by the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
New and untested. They’re going to scoop radioactive fuel into a heap and light it, just to see what happens.
The NRC has kept us safe for half a century by completely blocking any new reactors.
No place left to cut.
The existing staff of that office recently asked outsiders for help. In an email seen by NPR, the Office of Nuclear Energy requested volunteers from universities to assist in speeding up safety reviews. “DOE is currently evaluating creative ideas to help manage anticipated resource constraints,” read the Nov. 17 email, which was addressed to members of the National Organization of Test, Research and Training Reactors.
That’s crazy. This process should be carried out in house and all safety policies implemented by decree.
Critics, however, worry that the tight July 4 deadline, political pressure and a lack of transparency are all compromising safety. Even a “small” release of radioactive material could cause damage to people and the environment around the test sites.
“This is not normal, and this is not OK, and this is not going to lead to success,” warned Allison Macfarlane, a professor at the University of British Columbia who served as chairman of the NRC under President Barack Obama. “This is how to have an accident.”
The real mission of the regulators is to prevent anything from being built.
I’m curious to know how old the designs they’re building actually are.the first new reactors went up in 2023 and 2024 in Georgia apparently. It had been 40 years before that since another one was built. There apparently was a reactor in Tennessee started in the ’70’s which they only completed in 2016 due to the sort of fuckery they’d like to force Trump to engage in.
Can you guarantee that your reactor can withstand a direct hit by a nuclear weapon?
But Macfarlane is unconvinced. She said relying on the hasty DOE analysis for the construction of potentially dozens or even hundreds of small reactors around the U.S. is the real risk.
“They can look at what the DOE did, they can take it as a piece of input, but they have to do their own separate analysis,” she warned. “Otherwise, none of us are safe.”
NPR, rallying their AWFL legions to thwart the evil techbros.