Fissile Thorium Reactor

[Occhidiangela]

We were lied to. Oh, I'm sure the people who developed the risk assessments believed them. They didn't think they were lying. But it was still wrong. And that is why new construction stopped in 1978. . . until safety improved.

Your rhetoric betrays your emotion. Lied to? They were lying? Jesus wept, that's an irresponsible indictment of an entire class of professional engineers and scientists. (Nuclear waste is a related issue, and IMO it still needs work, and the funding to get that work done. )

As for North Anna, your question is laughable. If I'm the emotional one, the one who can't understand risk, how come YOU are the one asking a question that has the implicit assumption that N. Anna should have blown up by now? Do you really think I'm that stupid? Evidently you do.

The intent was to point out the absurdity of your attempt to defend a dead end argument. For a man with as refined a wit as you have, I wonder at your choosing to miss that. Get blinded by emotion much?

As for the Navy, their record is commendable. I would bet that they stick to the procedure scripts more closely than civilians do and thus have less issue with human factors. Maybe the Navy should run the inland power plants. Of course, I do wonder that if they did have any mishaps (that weren't externally obvious) if the American public would hear about them.

I'd bet against that. There was a lot of cross fertilization of the talent pool from the Navy to the private sector, indeed, such was a big talent drain on Rickover's nuclear navy in the seventies, and I'll not indict the civil nuclear engineers and plant operators simply because they didn't wear a uniform. No one I know in the nuclear industry (a couple of nuke engineers from my HS graduating class, some academy classmates as well ) is anything other than serious about getting it right.

So .. I am the one who switched my opinion on the issue, and yet you accuse me of being hard-headed,

You sure are, given my welcoming you to the right side, (prodigal son returns and all that) and adding that you made my day, to which you responded by spitting in my face. That's twice that you chose to start it with me, the original being your crap slinging at me in re Obama. I'm your huckleberry if that's what you want.

Or we can knock this off.

The choice, Willow, is yours.

Occhi