Reply #2: Not all that surprising [View All]

[KamaAina]

a huge amount of what the DOE does is nuclear-related research. :eyes:

http://www.slate.com/id/1006979

Is eliminating DOE still a good idea? Absolutely. For starters, the majority of DOE's $19 billion budget goes toward running the nuclear weapons labs, a responsibility that has to do with energy only in the sense that nuclear bombs release large amounts of it in the process of killing people. The Energy Department has always managed the weapons labs badly--before the latest round of security concerns there was the scandal of inadequate storage of dangerous radioactive materials. Even today, the Energy Department spends as much money on environmental cleanup as it does on maintaining the nuclear stockpile. In any event, it would make much better organizational sense for the Pentagon--which, for all its faults, is a model of bureaucratic efficiency compared to DOE--to be in charge of making nuclear weapons. Management of environmental cleanup could be transferred to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Want to guess how much of the Energy Department's budget goes toward what we all think of as its primary mission--i.e., subsidizing the energy industry? Twelve percent! (You don't believe Chatterbox? Check out Jerry Taylor's chapter on the Energy Department in the Cato Institute's new Handbook for Congress, on which this item is heavily reliant.) Among the energy sectors subsidized by DOE is the nuclear industry, even though a nuclear power plant hasn't been built in the United States in decades. (Bill Clinton promised to eliminate this subsidy in 1993, but it never happened.) We can argue about whether it's wise for the federal government to invest in renewable energy--Chatterbox favors it, Taylor opposes it--but we shouldn't pretend that DOE expends much effort on it. The programs worth keeping should be transferred to EPA. The power marketing administrations, of course, should have been privatized or transferred to the states long ago.