Jack, the zerohedge article you referenced was actually written by Michael Snyder. Also, Tyler Durden isn’t a real person – a group of ZH editors write collectively under that name. None of this changes anything you said, I’m just throwing it out there for clarification.

My county in Wisconsin (of all places) has completely lost it’s mind when it comes to animals in the city. They’re passing an ordinance that includes ducks, partridge, quail, chicken, rabbits, and partridge which specifies how far away from any property line their housing must be (17 feet) and you are only allowed a maximum of 5 of any combination of of the animals listed. Also no males of any of the bird species. You must now also pay a small livestock fee that they still haven’t publicly specified the cost of the fee. They basically said either we allow them under these specifications and requirements or you don’t get to have any at all. They compromised slightly by not requiring that people get written permission from all their neighbors before they get the animals which was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately not enough people in the community still wanted to fight for better legislation and they settled for what’s listed above. Coming from a prominent farming state and an even more active urban farming community I’m ashamed of what has been allowed to happen.

NUCLEAR: Note that if the listener who called in with the question on nukes has specific questions, I’m willing to have a discussion directly and can help with the “it depends” based on the specific plant in question. With respect to nuclear power plants, I am likely one of the most knowledgeable members of the TSP community. I have designed them, built them (ships), and continue to work in and around them as my career. I will eventually get a guest form filled out to allay continued fears in the community about power in general. Until then…

“Old” nuclear plant is a bit of a misnomer. Plant owners have invested billions in every existing operating plant (beyond the initial cost) to upgrade systems due to evolving safety/regulatory requirements. The exterior building may be 50-60 years old, but the systems inside have been replaced/upgraded either piecemeal or wholesale over time. For example, I worked a project 2010-2012 where we spent >$800M to replace the major components in 28 different systems around one of our plants. The plant’s older than me, but a huge chunk of the machinery is younger than my kids. Same story across the industry.

Most nukes are located remotely from population centers (two of my company’s sites are major exceptions in NYC & Boston). I would love to live out in the country where most of our sites are. I also wouldn’t hesitate to buy property there if it fit my lifestyle. Unfortunately, I am tied too closely to the suburban fringe with my family. The biggest concern from a life perspective is that the security force typically has their training facility on site. So you can expect to regularly hear a bunch of select fire 5.56. SOME sites do have some measurable tritium in groundwater. But that info is public, so you can look into it. Only a concern if you have a well deep enough to get to it. A couple of miles all but eliminates that POTENTIAL concern. This wouldn’t affect surface water (ponds, swales, etc).

Finally, reactors designed in the US don’t go boom like Chernobyl… they slowly melt (in the very worst cases) and you have DAYS to get out of an area before something like the hydrogen detonations at Fukushima can occur. Further, the natural disaster that CAUSED such an event is probably the real driver for bugging out. Recall that at Fukushima, the first radiation release of ANY size (caused by the site blowing its top due to Hydrogen explosion) was almost a day and a half after the accident. Even then the release was miniscule; the large release of contamination was waterborne into the ocean, not airborne. The Fukushima reactors are definitely some of the oldest vintage of boiling water reactors that we have in the US. Since the accident, the industry became like ultra-preppers… My company alone spent almost half a billion to make sure our plants are good to go for earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, etc. WAY beyond what they were originally designed to do. We also bought and staged tons of equipment in robust storage (or in multiple sites… 2 is 1…) just in case SHTF even worse than the events we postulated that were worse than we had ever designed for. The entire industry did the same.

Bottom line, if you have the freedom to live near a plant, don’t let the plant be a concern. You might even take advantage of the proximity by offering a temporary RV camp site for outages. A bunch of residents near our plants rent out their pastures for 5th-wheel camping and make enough to pay for their land.