Carter banned the recycling of nuclear fuel rods. Regan reversed it. To this day, there is no infastructure to recycle the rods. Once government bans something private industry stops investing in it because the risk of a future ban is too great.

Is it rediculous that over 40 years later we still just store the old rods in a containment pool instead of recycling them? Yes it is, but it is nonetheless true. Government regulation has an extremely long lasting chilling effect.

 

Uh huh...so was private industry was scared to brew beer after prohibition bc it might get banned again? Private industry won't do things that don't make money, if it's cheaper for them to throw them out, that's what they do unless told otherwise. Most of the time anyway.

 

I thought the no furlough portion expires in June

 

A nothing burger? Hardly that. It isn’t just the pilots who admittedly it’s often cheaper to keep around and keep current than to incur training costs, it’s the whole business. International flying is in the cr@pper and UA is affected by that as much as anyone. That ripples down. Do you seriously think that UA isn’t being hurt by having billions of dollars worth of wide bodies parked in the desert? Have you ever run a business? I mean even a lemonade stand? Because you clearly don’t understand the effect of that. Most of the big capital expenditures UA makes are financed through bond sales. A bond sale is essentially renting money. The last bond sale UA did they were expecting to pay 11% per year to rent that money:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...lion-junk-bond

and they couldn’t get enough takers to make it work:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/united-a...ints-1.1433725

the problem is they have a LOT of bonds maturing from previous years - bonds they sold at 3.5-4%. They don’t have the money to pay off those bonds, they’ll have to refinance them. So their debt service will climb substantially, those parked 787s costing them more and more until international flying resumes.

Even if they don’t furlough a single pilot you better believe it affects UAEX, and the career prospects for every UAEX employee.

 

The comparison is terrible. Prohibition put a lot of legit business out of business but there were a lot of people making a lot of money brewing beer during prohibition. Repealing prohibition just made it legal again. No one was making money recycling nuclear fuel rods during the Carter ban.

 

I get your point re. regulation.

But for clarity, recycling spent fuel doesn't eliminate the need to store spent fuel... the hot isotopes are still hot and still need to be stored. Recycling separates the very hot stuff (which needs very long-term stoarge) from not-so hot stuff which will decay sooner, and also separates out unburned fuel and which can be repackaged in new fuel and isotopes which can be used in medicine and industry (mostly for imaging).

Elements cannot be destroyed or modified (outside of a reactor core), they can only be chemically or physically separated from each other. If it has a long half-life, you're stuck with it.

 

I meant the protections for us bottom dwellers on the list

 

It was a nothing burger as far a news. Everyone was told it was a temporary recall and when the money ran out they would be furloughed.

Next never assume anything. I don’t need to throw my educational background and previous career experience around like you do. Besides what do you know about aviation. Weren’t you just a regional pilot and a back seater. Not even a real pilot 🤣

 

Ah, but the thread title is ‘the future of United Express.’ Do you assume the economic health of UA is irrelevant to that? The pilots eventually are all going to find jobs, but how quickly they do that and where they find jobs and how viable things like Aviate are is strongly dependent upon the business success of UA.

Do you truly believe that UA having a loss of $7.1 Billion, a loss only exceeded by them back in 2005 when they went into bankruptcy is “a nothing burger”? That it won’t affect UA and all of UAEX?

More fool you then.

 

According to the LOA, United can furlough around 2,000 in June only if they sign up for all federal money (grants and loans). If they don’t, they can’t furlough until December. With the exception of putting seats back in the 175’s, the only triggers that could terminate the agreement this year would be profitability or recovery, both of which would make a furlough very unlikely. We just ran a big vacancy bid to get most people back into their previous seats and the company has said that they have no plans to furlough pilots.