junebug2 [comrade/them, she/her]

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  • 35 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2022

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  • i’m happy to be corrected on this, but my understanding is that the key role of the war cabinet was a consensus builder. netanyahu and the opposition leaders, including gantz, were all in the room making decisions together, because the war transcended the political divide or whatever. the opposition is not opposed to genocide, so this will not affect anything ongoing with the military. the opposition decided that for whatever reasons, netanyahu is running the war poorly and has no plan for victory. someone in the news mega a few days ago said that gantz is just so excited for the CIA to pick him as the leader of a color revolution in “israel”. internal “israeli” politics have been operating in a coalition, but now the main opposition has pulled out and performatively submitted a bill for dissolving parliament/ fresh elections. i say performative because they lack a majority or alternative coalition to likud, so the bill has no chance. the contradictions of Zionist civil society are heightening, but this is another brick in the wall instead of any sort of inflection point



  • i think if anything graham’s comments give us some insight into different factions within the US mono-party. vicky nuland spent a decade trying to make this war happen out of sheer love of the game (belief in the necessity and possibility of beating russia on the battlefield). when she got replaced, but the war didn’t end, it’s obvious there’s at least one other school of thought in the democrat camp. looks like some republicans are also interested in ukraine, even though the two parties just pretended to fight about war aid. the mineral resources in question are predominantly coal and natural gas, and both chevron and shell were on track to begin exploitation before the SMO. it’s not so much saying the quiet part out loud, but saying one of several. the US famously feels no obligation to discuss its intentions, and also famously has a dozen different groups trying to grab the policy lever. so it says something about what a shit show ukraine is that not only is the squabbling open to the public, two different interest groups have had to put their cards out on the table. obviously admitting stuff won’t change anything, but i think it’s a source of some optimism that the US war and foreign policy machines are running less and less smoothly



  • i appreciate the clarification comrade, definitely a dialect mixup there. i think that colored some of the rest of my response.

    by salt injection, i mean creating artificial caverns deep inside salt formations and then injecting a waste slurry into them. i do not mean the existing methods used in south carolina or the proposal for yucca mountain. if you’ve seen evidence that creating artificial salt caverns doesn’t work, i’d love to see that.

    i feel like the last paragraph is something we’re both saying. the real life and historic use of nuclear energy in USamerica, at every step, has involved the horrible treatment of the workers and the people who lived near the sites. i feel that that is a result of the US government, not the inherent nature of nuclear power. to give an example, my uncle fell off a roof putting up solar and is on disability right now. i can think of a good number of friends, family, and neighbors with long term health issues because of contracting work. i think that that means we ought to have higher safety standards and better working conditions, not that building houses or installing solar is a lost cause


  • yes, improperly stored radioactive waste can leak into water and soil. the mining waste that existed historically (and is still being made today by fracking) was damaging to the environment because it was not regulated. you refuse to acknowledge this point, i guess? and why are you randomly wielding people with cancer like a cudgel? i’d love for you to explain what i said that is so offensive you think it’d be worth shooting me for. nuclear policy, like literally any other matter of politics, can not be determined by our personal feelings or by repeated reference to how things have effected people we know.

    most of the worst effects that exist today are a matter of regulatory failure, and most uranium mining in USamerica has been shut down. i made a point about how already mined and processed “waste” uranium can be used in a reactor. you didn’t address what i said about almost anything. if you think batteries are a mechanical device, i don’t think there’s hope for you in this conversation. speaking pretentiously about not having time and then saying i should watch my mouth is not a substitute for an actual point


  • what type of long term battery solutions are you thinking about? batteries are not light enough, efficient enough, or environmentally sustainable enough for mass networks like some people talk about for EVs and solar storage. even if nickel hydride is a perfect battery, slapping batteries on everything will not save us from the fact that solar, wind, and wave energy have peaks and valleys unrelated to consumption. nuclear is a competitor in the field of non-scalable power, so it’s not like one solves problems of the other.

    nuclear waste can be stored safely, by salt injection at the very least. it’s worth mentioning many of the worst forms of radioactive waste come from reactors that were designed for weapons production and from oil production. the fact that radioactive waste is poorly stored is because of massive regulatory failure in the US. for instance, oil waste legally cannot be hazardous in USamerica, so the workers and sites that handle the waste don’t have to worry about radiation. similarly, a lot of the southwestern contamination you’re talking about is from weapons testing and production. any just society wouldn’t have set off dozens of nuclear weapons anywhere. the bit about running out of fuel is based on humanity never improving reactor designs. pebble bed reactors have been designed to use the byproducts from the military’s depleted uranium. if and when the political will is there for it, there are plans to build a reactor near the plant in kentucky where they have acres and acres of uranium.

    i appreciate your concern for the real effects nuclear power and energy have had in the US, but they didnt happen because nuclear power can’t ever be used. they happened because the US has been reckless and evil about it