I believe you meant “decent interest rates…”

This means the Constellation program gets the axe and Ares/Orion will not fly in the forseeable future.

Also he is extending ISS to at least 2020, possibly beyond.

http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

Basically he has gone with the Augustine Commission. Constellation and the subprojects of Ares and Orion were slipping. The commission says that the programs were reasonably well managed and the problems faces would in all likelyhood have been solved eventually. But the scope was too large so extra funding would have been needed to complete, while the slipping timetable would have meant that nothing fruitful happens in a long time. Bascially we’d sit around and wait for them to finish before we can do something fun while the ISS crashes and burns (literary).

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/421061main_augustine_statement.pdf

To carry people to space, the administration is telling NASA to go shopping: get bus rides to orbit from private ventures.

The new direction is supported by among others astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/421062main_Buzz_Aldrin_Statement.pdf

/Michael

        Mike said:

Try sticking your face in one of those big cement containers. It certainly has the potential to cause harm, there’s no possible way you can argue that.

That would depend on how long you stuck your head in there for and how old the spent fuel was. If it’s like 20 years old, it has lost a huge portion of its gamma radioactivity.

Well, yeah, you shouldn’t eat spent fuel. There are a lot of things that are hazardous if you eat them. I’m sure I could find some things under most people’s kitchen sink that you don’t want to eat.

When it comes to ecological disasters that take years to clean up and make huge areas uninhabitable, I could name many circumstances where this has happened due to a huge pile of toxic coal ash spilling and leaving acres covered in toxic gritty sludge. I could also name more than a few examples of oil tankers, chemical storage facilities, hydro electric dams, sewage spills or other disasters that have absolutely decimated enormous areas.

        Chuck P. said:

Bruce,
You’ve made yet another disengenuous implication that spent nuclear fuel is dangerous.
And yet, I asked you here:

and here:

to provide evidence of any member of the public that has been harmed by spent nuclear fuel. I notice that you failed to respond. To repeat, name one single member of the public that has ever been injured by spent nuclear fuel. If this material is so dangerous, why is it so difficult for one of its opponents to demonstrate that it does harm?
It escapes me how anti-nukes like you can expend so much “intelectual” energy on something that harms noone and yet pay so little attention to the wastes of other sources of energy.

While I am completely in favor of nuclear energy, I just couldn’t resist calling you out on the whole “nuclear waste isn’t dangerous at all” thing. Though I believe the main concern is more to do with how to deal with the stuff, it certainly is far from harmless. Don’t agree? Try sticking your face in one of those big cement containers. It certainly has the potential to cause harm, there’s no possible way you can argue that. It’s not exactly distilled water, for sure. Oh, and if you count non-American people, here’s a shining example of the dangers of nuclear waste/Soviet incompetence:

http://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contaminates-you

and here:

to provide evidence of any member of the public that has been harmed by spent nuclear fuel. I notice that you failed to respond. To repeat, name one single member of the public that has ever been injured by spent nuclear fuel. If this material is so dangerous, why is it so difficult for one of its opponents to demonstrate that it does harm?
It escapes me how anti-nukes like you can expend so much “intelectual” energy on something that harms noone and yet pay so little attention to the wastes of other sources of energy.

        Joel Upchurch said:

Maybe I’m overlooking something, but couldn’t the President fix a lot of the problems at the NRC by executive order if he choose to do so? In the end, isn’t he responsible for all the regulations written by the federal government, even if he usually delegates the authority to the various executive departments? Can’t he replace anyone who fails to executes the regulations they way he chooses? It is very difficult to fire a federal employee, but I’ve seen them moved aside and given a desk and chair and no responsibilities until they retire. Could the NRC be bypassed by moving reactor development to DOD? I don’t recall that the Navy submarines have to be approved by the NRC.

Of course, I’d admit a similar reaction when President Obama talked about problems with Medicare. Doesn’t he already own it? Does he actually need our permission to fix it? How much problem is in the laws and how much is in how the laws were implemented.

No the DOD is exempt from the NRC and Obama could do much to change things, although it’s also possible that any executive order could be overridden by congress. Also, one should consider that there’s the political factor too. I mean, he’s done enough for nuclear power recently to upset at least a portion of the “green” sector, that makes up part of his base, so further action is going to need to be weighed against the political implications.

He would need congress to change anything that’s written into the law. A president can’t, on his own, change legislation that already stipulates something directly.

        Bruce said:

http://nukefree.org/news/renewableenergyrisesto10.5%25inUS

Ironic, Obama makes this announcement, just as Renewable energy has risen to 10.5% of the portfolio (see above link).

HAH! Did you even bother reading the fine print at all? Nuclear power production dropped a miniscule amount (not surprising really, considering we are not yet building new reactors and putting them online) and “renewable energy” might look up, but did you bother reading it at all?????

The “Renewable energy” portfolio is made up nearly entirely of hydropower and biomass/biofuel.

Nobody here will deny that hydropower doesn’t account for a lot of energy. It’s one of the only renewable sources that actually does work. It produces a signifficant portion of electricity. Just one problem – we’ve run a little short on rivers.

Then there’s biofuel. The biggest single biofuel in the US (by far) is corn ethanol. You know, that expensive ecologically disastrous stuff that drives up both fuel and food prices? “Biomass burning” is a euphemism for incinerators.

Wind = 8.25% * 10.5% = .8% of energy. Even that seems generous though. I suspect that they’re just counting the raw kilowatts output and not bothering to consider whether it actually displaces anything. Studies of wind when combined with reasonably fast dispatch natural gas show that even under good conditions 2/3 of the energy is lost due to the need to maintain spinning reserve and the loss of throttling and grid response. That being so, you’re actually looking at an even smaller number.

Then solar, what’s that at? A piddly half of that.

PATHETIC

You didn’t read the post did you??????

54 billion of loan guarantees is not a 54 billion dollar handout. That’s simply a BOLD FACED LIE.

But now someone doesn’t like subsidies?

Read it and weep:
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/substypeandfuel.jpg

OUCH

YOU LOSE