NASA to Stop a Doomsday Supervolcano by Stealing its Heat

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Thanks for the link. I didn't now Hanford was a DoD site that produced a lot of weapons grade plutonium. Explains the waste problem.

The INL was a different ball of wax.

"The history of nuclear energy for peaceful application has principally been written in Idaho".[1]

Various organizations have built more than 50 reactors at what is commonly called "the Site", including the ones that gave the world its first usable amount of electricity from nuclear power and the power plant for the world's first nuclear submarine. Although many are now decommissioned, these facilities are the largest concentration of reactors in the world.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory

The federal government is the worst polluter in this country, by a wide margin.

There is no way we should also be entrusting it to also be our environmental steward. 

The EPA needs to be defunded, and let the states do that work instead.

[Suppressed]

The federal government is the worst polluter in this country, by a wide margin.

There is no way we should also be entrusting it to also be our environmental steward. 

The EPA needs to be defunded, and let the states do that work instead.

Every state but Alaska and Iowa has authorization to perform oversight of at least some Hazardous Waste cleanup, even at federal-government facilities. 

Much of EPA's hazardous-waste-regulation funding goes to states in the form of grants based on how many facilities they have.  But states often need more horsepower than they have, so they lean on technical and regulatory expertise from the federal level.

Plus, some sites cross state/tribal lines.  For example, groundwater plumes don't just stop at political boundaries.

Yeah, EPA needs very strong pruning, but it would be an inefficient mess to get rid of it or defund too much.

[Suppressed]

NASA is in to Earth Science now.

...as it has been since 1959, with TIROS. 

NASA started October 1958.

[Sanguine]

Every state but Alaska and Iowa has authorization to perform oversight of at least some Hazardous Waste cleanup, even at federal-government facilities. 

Much of EPA's hazardous-waste-regulation funding goes to states in the form of grants based on how many facilities they have.  But states often need more horsepower than they have, so they lean on technical and regulatory expertise from the federal level.

Plus, some sites cross state/tribal lines.  For example, groundwater plumes don't just stop at political boundaries.

Yeah, EPA needs very strong pruning, but it would be an inefficient mess to get rid of it or defund too much.

It's possible that if the EPA was cut to about a tenth of its current size and had a very clearly and tightly defined mission that was based on good science, it could be a force for good.

[Smokin Joe]

It's possible that if the EPA was cut to about a tenth of its current size and had a very clearly and tightly defined mission that was based on good science, it could be a force for good.

You can say that about most of the Federal government agencies.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

...as it has been since 1959, with TIROS. 

NASA started October 1958.

Nasa did not launch Tiros until 1960.  I recall it because my dad was a meteorologist.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

You can say that about most of the Federal government agencies.

The others just cut them entirely as a sore will fester for years and surgery is sometimes the cure for ills.

[Elderberry]

...as it has been since 1959, with TIROS. 

NASA started October 1958.

http://ethw.org/Milestones:TIROS-1_Television_Infrared_Observation_Satellite,_1960

Because of the impact of the weather on all aspects of life, orbital satellite observation of the atmosphere was an obvious application at the beginning of satellite research. William Kellogg and Stanley N. Greenfield analyzed the issue at length in RAND Corporation report R-218 in April 1951. Throughout the 1950s, however, the majority of scientist, engineers, and meteorologists rejected the practicality of satellite-borne TV cameras or their output for weather analysis. United States government agencies and contractors ignored or rejected television applications on satellite because of the relative novelty of electronic video technology. Approved by the Federal Communications Commission for electronic monochrome and color transmission standards in 1941 and 1953, television was still a new part of American life in the 1950s. In 1955, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation received a United States Air Force (USAF) contract to build a satellite reconnaissance system using film cameras, winning over a proposal by RCA to use television cameras.

In addition, meteorologists in that period were still establishing their profession's legitimacy, partly through the sophisticated analysis of the changing physics of the atmosphere--its motion, temperature, and pressure. Most of them rejected the utility of cloud cover imagery as too simplistic and incompatible with the data demands of forecasters. This attitude pervaded the Air Force Cambridge Research Center and the U.S. Army Signal Corps as well.

Despite this resistance, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) proposed TV camera applications to the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in 1956. Some members of the ABMA were interested in satellite-based surveillance TV applications and awarded RCA classified contracts to fund lightweight, slow-scan TV camera development. RCA Laboratories staff had designed, developed and tested the small Vidicon TV camera tube along with the vast majority of associated equipment, from cameras and sensors to transmitters and displays, that made the national television standards practical.

In the fall of 1957 a team from RCA's David Sarnoff Research Center (DSRC) in Princeton conducted a series of classified briefings for the U.S. government. It gave demonstrations to the top levels of the Department of Defense (DoD) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), government technical consultants, and ultimately before the House congressional committees of jurisdiction. These presentations highlighted a lightweight, durable, high-resolution Vidicon TV camera suitable for space applications, and established the feasibility of an orbiting satellite payload and mission involving video reconaissance of the earth's surface.

Coincidentally the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first orbiting satellite that October. Within six months, the DoD's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) transferred management of the TV-based satellite program from the ABMA to the U.S. Army Signal Corps Research and Development Laboratories (USASCRDL) in Fort Monmouth, NJ. RCA created the Astro-Electronics Products Division in 1958 for continued work on contracts with Fort Monmouth, including TIROS, which was commissioned by NASA in January 1959.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Tiros was launched April 1, 1960.  I saw some of the early satellite maps it made in my dad's office at Galveston.

[Elderberry]

Tiros was launched April 1, 1960.  I saw some of the early satellite maps it made in my dad's office at Galveston.

Launched in 1960, but NASA's involvement started in the preceding couple of years.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Launched in 1960, but NASA's involvement started in the preceding couple of years.

who said otherwise?

Do not understand your point in that comment.