Build me this house.

Ever build a home or know how the home building process works? Imagine you and your happy family wants to build a home. It’s a pretty simple process, fairly straightforward to navigate

Well I would like to pose a thought experiment to illiterate another point.

Try building a home when the government has the right the change your design standards after they have been submitted, approved and then inspected. For example a 2X4 stud wall that was approved at 16” on center gets changed to 12” on center after your conduit plumbing and drywall work are done. Even though you followed all the relevant desgn guidelines and have included significantly large safety margins, the reason for this change can be as arbitrary as the inspector saying “do it because we say so”.

Try building a home where the government’s regulation of your building material supplier has been so burdensome that you cannot go to Lowes or Home Depot for your lumber wire and roofing shingles (they have all been driven out of business); you now have to buy all of it from France and Japan.

Try getting a loan for this house when there is no guarantee that even if you jump through ever single hurdle presented above there is no guarantee that you will receive your occupancy permit.

During every step of the way your worst enemies petition the government to stop you, have courts grant injunctions against the building, and have the government change what your house looks like.

Now imagine that through all of this you having to pay for lawyers to fight your enemies and pay for all of the tradesmen when they either cant work or have to rework what they have done.

A home that would normally cost $250,000 and take 5 months to build would cost $2,000,000 and take 5 years to build.

How many houses would be built if the process was like this? Not too many.

Welcome to the state of the US nuclear industry,

The Bush administration gave nuclear a big boost early on, but lost the political capital to push ahead, although the US Indian Nuclear agreement was just the shot in the arm that the US nuclear industry needed.

When just another Illinois politician Obama was supportive of Exelon, if not necessarily of the nuclear industry as a whole. During the campaign, The Dear Leader played the good fence sitting politician by saying “we should explore nuclear power as part of the mix" but considering the opposition to nuclear power only a strong commitment on the part of the government will get things going again.

The next times some dickhead starts whining about the “republican war on science", ask him about nuclear power.