LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.
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We're still awaiting charging stations from the billions in congressional spending.
Obama had Solyndra, we'll see if Biden can one up his predecessor.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuscale-layoffs-nuclear-power_n_65985ac5e4b075f4cfd24dba
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuscale-uamps-nuclear_n_654c317ce4b088d9a74d17db
https://hbr.org/2023/03/capital-is-expensive-again-now-what
These articles mention cost overruns as well. At the same time, of course, costs of wind and solar, as well as energy storage are dropping steadily.
As an aside, if this technology efficiently removes CO2 from the air, I wonder why we can't just power it with coal, and pump those emissions into the ground along with the other carbon it removes. Wyoming where this project is located has immense coal reserves that can be produced at low cost, of course, it is the nation's largest coal producing state.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml
This would require a few hundred gigawatts of energy to be made available, this could be done by windmills as he suggests, nuclear power plans, or perhaps by beaming the energy from space in the form of microwaves onto special receiver arrays, using orbiting solar arrays - there could perhaps be other options as well of course,
The CO2 would then be placed for long-term storage in insulated landfills, there might be a low rate of overall sublimation due to insulation of course, which would be easy to deal with.
It does require some intrastructure construction in antarctica but the amount needed could be relatively minimal.
It does look especially feasible if undertaken by many countries rather than one, which would make sense anyways due to the treaties in place around antacctica.