Safer Nuclear Power, at Half the Price

Transatomic, an MIT spinoff, is developing a nuclear reactor that it estimates will cut the overall cost of a nuclear power plant in half. It’s an updated molten-salt reactor, a type that’s highly resistant to meltdowns. Molten-salt reactors were demonstrated in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Lab, where one test reactor ran for six years, but the technology hasn’t been used commercially.

The new reactor design, which so far exists only on paper, produces 20 times as much power for its size as Oak Ridge’s technology. That means relatively small, yet powerful, reactors could be built less expensively in factories and shipped by rail instead of being built on site like conventional ones. Transatomic also modified the original molten-salt design to allow it to run on nuclear waste.

Wind Power (17th century tech) and Solar (Useless more than half the time) will never run our civilization. We owe the future better choices than we have been creating.

So, why do we still have gun massacres if there has been mandatory background checks for decades?

Maybe Republicans should try being popular

[Excerpts] After the slaughters at Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., Tucson, Ariz., and Newtown, Conn., every sentient person knows we need to do something about institutionalizing the mentally ill and — at the very least — keeping guns out of their hands.

That happens to be impossible right now. Involuntary commitments even for the severely psychotic went the way of vagrancy laws. Although federal law technically requires background checks to include records of mental illness, the states and mental health industry refuse to provide that information.

Preventing crazy people from buying guns is hard. The ACLU will sue and we’ll be tied up in lawsuits for a decade, at which point a Democrat-appointed judge will rule that including records of paranoid delusions in FBI background checks is unconstitutional.

As former federal judge H. Lee Sarokin (a Clinton appointee) might say, “We should revoke their condition, not their gun permits.”

The Democrats’ gun proposals are like the joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamplight:

“Is that where you dropped them?”

“No, but the light’s better here.”

The light’s better over by the sane, responsible gun owners, who wouldn’t hurt a fly — unless it’s a schizophrenic shooting up a shopping mall.

As Gramp used to say,”You don’t have to be crazy to be a Democrat, but it helps!”

Start Small…

Get used to the idea…

Then you realize, that together, you and your friends are a force to strike fear in the hearts of the liberal scum.

Psst! In front, you’re winking…

Update on Steve Rattner, Friend of Investors (as long as they are rich or voted for Obama)

A Detroit News piece by my Princeton classmate Henry Payne has more:

The administration has treated obstacles to its agenda with ruthless tactics. In April 2009, that agenda was to hand an outsized, 55 percent majority interest of embattled Chrysler to the United Auto Workers in a government-orchestrated bankruptcy. But by law secured creditors are first in line in bankruptcy, and bondholders — representing their working-class pension clients — refused to accept Obama’s unfair deal for a measly 29 cents on their investment dollar.

Send in the muscle.

“One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight,” said Tom Lauria, lawyer for Perella Weinberg investment firm, on Frank Beckmann’s Detroit radio program. Lauria later said the brass knuckles belonged to White House Auto Task Force leader Steve Rattner. Lauria’s account was disturbing, too, in revealing the confidence that the White House has in its press allies to aid Obama’s agenda. Sure enough, Washington reporters quickly attacked the messenger. “(Lauria’s) charge is completely untrue,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told ABC News’ Jake Tapper, “and there’s obviously no evidence to suggest that this happened in any way.” Actually, there was plenty of evidence. Jim Carney of Business Insider corroborated Lauria’s account, reporting that “sources familiar with the matter say that other firms felt they were threatened as well.” The White House escalated the threats when Obama himself singled out creditors for obstruction, accusing them of being “speculators” preying on an American auto icon — bullying words from a man with the IRS and SEC at his disposal.

“The sources, who represent creditors to Chrysler, say they were taken aback by the hardball tactics that the Obama administration employed to cajole them into acquiescing to plans to restructure Chrysler,” continued the Insider. “One person described the administration as the most shocking ‘end justifies the means’ group they have ever encountered.”…

“The president’s attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him,” wrote Cliff Asness, a managing partner at AQR Capital Management. “Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.”

Al Capone would be proud.