The lawful act of stalking "cold fjord" reveals a penchant for gainsaying, short posts and a rolling rally of rebuttal. This can have the effect of people wishing you would just shut up. The post I responded to was more than a 'zinger' and does represent the view of many including some in the military who would gladly take Snowden out in a black op given the chance.

But then again, the lawful act of stalking "TheRealHocusLocus" shows a preponderance of blustery paragraph-rich prose that goes off --- offal at times --- on tangents that do not reconnect with the original topic. People don't wish I would shut up as often because I'm easier to ignore.

Who's to say which extreme style is more effective or necessary? Just glad there are folks out there listening.

Thanks.

Concise way to put it but these declarations are easy to challenge on the basis of this or that President. To add to your statement and share responsibility, the people of the United States have failed to challenge the idea of this perpetual state of emergency because they were blindsighted by anger on 9/11, but also because they have not picked up on parallel clues of history such as the Weimar Republic, lulled by Hitler into the dissolution of its own government. Americans (and Congress) have been contented to be governed in a dictatorial manner.

Rolling back gruesome laws by process of repeal is an appealing idea. Two clear examples are the Eighteenth and Twenty-first amendments and Glass-Stegal. One was cause for a toast. The other is driving us to drink because our economy is toasted.

Prohibition was slapped into place with simple language and it was easy to whack this mole down. But what if... the same result had been achieved by passage of a two-thousand page law that sent tendrils into dozens, hundreds of other laws, modifying language here and there to inject the topic of alcohol into places where it had never been, conflating alcohol with drunkenness though it is not its only cause with even more tendrils branching off into the distance, even bringing into existence two-way relationships with hybrid grafting where some pre-existing thing are now also related to alcohol, and declaring kittens cute, and building a new bridge in Iowa, and other things.

Let a dozen years pass and you find that whole careers and industries have been built around these roots. Other laws have been bound to and around it in careful deliberation or in a partisan frenzy of panic. Anything that does not 'work' has been adjusted by building out exceptions and clarifications. All in all it does not do what it set out to do, but every time anyone suggests that it might be best to roll it back, they are surrounded by an angry crowd of people whose lives now depend on it, and they are holding pictures of --- cute kittens.

Welcome to the 21st Century, when laws over a hundred pages long do not receive the derision, mockery and suspicion they deserve.

I do not see an easy solution to this, unless starting today parents were to start introducing this topic to young children in a stern context. "You need to wash behind your ears or dirt will build up there like special interest clauses in Omnibus Bills." Or "You have to rewrite this essay, it's too long. Are you trying to bury something in it because this is a lame duck session and teachers are in recess for the holidays?" Because it's too easy for 'contempt for the system' to sneak into the system. All it takes is to apply a level of obfuscation that exceeds the level of content. No one will ever call you out on it because they're too ashamed to admit they cannot figure it out.

I see that this story was dropped into the everybody-else-is-watching-duck-dynasty department. I'd better go check out Duck Dynasty to see if something interesting is happening. See ya!

This is a valid and welcome point of view in the discussion. Will you pussies who modded it -1 Troll please stop??

I see 'patriot' as a personal point of view that becomes Patriot-capitalized over time, maybe hundreds of years, usually in some self-serving context. But of course the Founding Fathers were Patriots! Snowden (unlike Assange) has refrained from using his press conduits to leak names which might compromise the safety of individuals involved in covert operations, if he even had access to them. The bulk of the material I've seen is for presentations and slide shows bragging about specific operations and capabilities. I say poo-poo to the arbitrary act of stamping things 'classified' or 'top secret'. Subject matter does count.

If I am shown a slide prepared by some military contractor that gushes about the 'superior kill radius' of their new product I shrug, recognizing that there is a modern context in which such bravado is an accepted practice whether or not it is to my own taste.

If I am shown a slide that indicates that my government has a cavalier attitude to citizens' rights and actively seeks to build out deep taps and communications retention, I get hopping mad. Because they are smart-stupids. Smart in cleverness but stupid in practice and grievous harm. It does not matter the level of cleverness or coolness of the technology. The mere act of building this thing is stupid.

Thus I am grateful for Snowden's revelations and do give him a 'pass'.

I shed crocodile tears for the poor NSA whose operation to listen in on Chancellor Merkel was laid bare. When I recall Merkel's defense of US surveillance practices worldwide, they become crocodile tears of laughter. You can't make this stuff up!

When I read that the Russian government has back-tooled some of its handling procedures for sensitive documents to an earlier era of typewriters and print I think to myself, now that's really clever of them. If only we were as clever...

It is my own opinion that Snowden's exposure of tap capabilities worldwide, such as we have seen, is necessary to establish its capabilities and awaken the American public, prepare them for the coming debate when they (hopefully) might have an opportunity to take a stand against this, stop this. If there was no harm presently being done to US citizens and more evidence of direct malice towards his own country I might revoke that pass. But no, we ARE being screwed, by US. The pass stands.

As to the revelation of 'so-called classified' material, if more sensitive material from the FBI Hoover era had leaked as it happened we could have avoided years of bad road and unlawful harassment, unjustly ruined lives. So much faux-communist in-fact-malfeasance bullshit. Hoover was a loon.

And if the government would strive to protect the value of tyhe dollar with the same verve with which they have attempted to protect their dirty secrets, we'd all be dog-damned rich.

Which is why no one in Congress can be expected to cast the first stone at the NSA. Whether they are in a position to know of its effectiveness or not, they will shy away in mortal political terror of NSA producing clear evidence that mass surveillance has "kept us safe". Still waiting. Likewise, pure judicial challenges run into stone walls as courts circularly argue over jurisdiction.

Or in the case of Hepting v. AT&T the Ninth Circuit committed to a sorry-ass monkey fuck decision where the case was dismissed on the basis of a piece of legislation ('retroactively' granting telecom immunity) that was passed after the case was filed. Pause to reflect on that. Has there ever been a clearer example of dereliction of duty of the judicial branch? Or a clearer admission of guilt by the Government?

That is because the NSA was terrified of Hepting vs. AT&T, more scared than it had ever been. Think of this case as a Pandora's box for them --- in which dozens (if not hundreds) of civilian technicians who had been involved in constructing its backbone taps might be encouraged to come forward to add their own piece to a sketch of NSA's domestic spy apparatus. As they came forward you'd see a map of the USA with taps appearing all over, and that would dispel any rhetoric claiming they did not intend to tap America itself.

And besides --- my own speculation but borne out in several places --- I allege that Hepting vs. AT&T would also have exposed that some technicians building our taps were foreign nationals and foreign corporations under contract to NSA. Countries whose spies we have convicted. Strange bedfellows laid bare. Gathering conversations (not silly metadata) has been portrayed as a high cost of liberty, though in the wrong hands it will subvert liberty. Our challenge is to prove this on three fronts.

We must seek to de-fund the NSA by calling into question the track record of mass surveillance to counter threats as of this day --- today. I draw a line at today because they could be cooking up something for tomorrow...

We must de-construct and demonstrate the motive behind mass surveillance to conclude that its only purpose in the end is to gather blackmail and empower absolute rulers with the tools they need to subvert our system of Government. This is true even if those presently engaged in it have good intentions.

We must defame the NSA and what it has become, the people behind it, the Senators who support it because someone whispered something in their ear --- was it a secret of National Security or was it blackmail? There's the rub --- dismantle it.

And that Constitution thing. Thar be dragins.

Same here, wasted years daydreaming about success, it's just a form of mental masturbation. Now I cherish my fears and revel in my worries... and gain a small measure of success and satisfaction from the knowledge that perception of reality is reasonably accurate.

I apply The Power of Positive Thinking by being positive that I will screw up completely unless I think. I'm Not OK, You're Not OK , but that's okay. I don each mask of the Four Temperments (this one comes with music) in turn as I consider any great challenge or problem, but the phlegmatic fits best.

I 'm the sanest person I ever met. Don't get out much.

Calling it a 'bodice ripper' is obscene.

Earth's Children series comprises six books, ~1.8 million words altogether.

In Clan of the Cave Bear There is brutal sex without consent. It occurs within the context of a culture that does not require a woman's consent, which is how Auel chose to portray the Neanderthals --- yet it is clear that among the clan brutality is not tolerated. This is essential to the story... and a series of encounters between Jondalar and Ayla appearing throughout the books that are as sensual and vivid as one might expect of a young couple in love, sex done 'right'. The scenes are described in extravagant (if you hate sex you might prefer 'lurid') detail. Auel's writing style is strained a bit during these sex passages only in that there are some repeated words and phrases, the cutest of which is the use of the word nodule.

But the lovers are soon satiated and the story moves on, just as it does in real life. It does not detract in the slightest from the series. Do not expect a 'did this, said this' style where the characters' minds are opaque and clumsily presented. Auel is a masterful writer who jumps skillfully between expressed inner thought, dialogue, and the senses.

But her portrayal of Earth's primordial landscapes and the journey/adventure is the real treasure one will find in these books. An avid reader not only sees through the characters' eyes, even down to the minutiae of making camp, it becomes possible to place yourself there, so well is it described. I loved the way Tolkien describes Ithilien and always wanted to tarry awhile without a burdensome ring quest. For me, Earth's Children recaptured that feeling.

I do not hesitate to recommend these books to any child who is old enough to read them, even the unpleasant explicit content within 'Cave Bear'. We do not live in a perfect world where there is no need to learn of such things, and that book portrays brutish and bully behavior in its complete context of the character's jealousy and malice. Many might consider these to be 'adult' themes, but my position is that they are just themes that children are sure to encounter in their lives. There is no 'right time' to introduce kids to these things only a 'right way'. The author neither glorifies nor apologizes for them. Books like these help prepare children for life.

Sorry to bore you. Back to the sex. Here is a Google search for "Ayla's nodule for your enjoyment and titillation. Now get off my lawn.

Right we do. There are just a few pieces of evidence now, but it may be that Neanderthal is actually a distant race that falls within our human specie. If their whole genome diverged from the branch of modern humans ~600,000YA and yet --- if there is additional evidence of interbreeding up to ~50,000YA, and humans from ~50,000YA could interbreed with us today (which I believe is true) --- then I consider it extremely likely that a Neanderthal could breed with a modern human.

And give your children superpowers like X-ray vision.

This is vindication for Jean Auel, whose Earth's Children series of books has popularized this exciting idea for generations of children. As a lay author she has been the lightning-rod target of those who disagree with the hypothesis, and at times her literary critics have even betrayed a tone of indulgent arrogance that just might have been a glimmer of the old Darwinian stuffed shirts, who banished Neanderthal from the human family early on by some of the characteristics that (merely) differentiate races existing today. Central to all of this goofy criticism is the Ayla's hybrid child Durc.

I highly recommend Earth's Children books to all. They are on par with Tolkien in their use of descriptive language, the central characters portray a series of actual humans over time who have made technological discoveries over time. The books are especially fit for children as they imagine the rich and viable human society that we know must have existed long ago, dispelling the silly myths that what we would recognize as civilization is merely a few thousand years old.

I was rushed for time when I wrote that, it didn't come off too well. What I had in mind was from a future where people are being chosen for long term assignments such as a grand tour of the solar system (and part two), extended Mars mission -- or colonization -- where there are qualified volunteers of both genders. There's a lot more to this than sexual liaisons or pair bonding.

The Sex Differences in Psychology is a good read on what has been observed by experiment, there's some physiology in there too. And with any 'delicate' topic, the Wiki talk page for it shows an interesting struggle to identify and manage bias for a topic that is so rich with historical flavor it has its own category of humor.

But a most fascinating tangent from the Wiki page is this recent study Widespread sex differences in gene expression and splicing in the adult human brain (Trabzuni et. al 2013), showing "that sex differences in gene expression and splicing are widespread in adult human brain, being detectable in all major brain regions and involving 2.5% of all expressed genes."

Sequencing inherited genes has taught us that there's no more than ~0.5% variance among the races of the world. We have leveraged the smallness of that number into a scientifically based bias against racism and prejudice which we apply to classic arguments of "nature vs. nurture?" to stack the deck against "nature" when debating things like intelligence and ability.

This is good. This ~0.5% figure gives us a hard baseline for "humanness" superior to that applied by Phrenologists and early Darwinians. If I have inherited a certain gene that affects skull shape or skin color or susceptibility to a disease, I can expect a noble society NOT to apply judgment from it of inherent ability or potential.

So what about that ~2.5% difference in gene expression between male and female brains? "We are not alone." I mean that in the full Close Encounters aliens-are-among us sense, because when discussing sex-triggered gene expression we're firmly in "nature" territory. Science reveals the existence of an intelligent (yet 'alien') species on this planet. And even though your genes are expressed differently, you both fall within the ~0.5% genetic baseline.

This means "including women equally" in everything that matters in a direct or Monte Carlo 50/50 ratio or a process is NOT like that "gotta strive to ensure that all races are represented" thing. The human race is a successful species because of this working partnership. It is a successful one and we ignore or diminish it at our great peril.

By peril I mean that any enterprise without equal genders by default is ahuman. Not 'inhuman' with its connotation of injustice. Ahuman is "not us", creepy, weird, uncanny valley. I propose the gender coin toss+'merit' --- and not just 'merit' (plus equal action political metric) --- as a way to statistically implement what is our intrinsic nature, impose a system that can be agreed upon that eases us into gender parity as the likely default, but yet does what nature does --- when the toss weighs heavily to one side something new is tried.

Because there may be dynamics of gender interaction (not sex) that are not just necessary to evolve. By excluding gender at times through history we may have been losing ground.

For something completely different, see Women: How do they do it?

Get everyone to agree that gender's a 'thang', same gender crews, or seriously imbalanced ratio for an extended mission is an unnatural and cruel idea.

Therefore in deference to human nature, a coin toss for gender of each position is performed as the positions are filled.

Mandating equal number of each invites trouble, if a greater portion of applicants are one gender, it injects the meme among the most arrogant of 'which' particular minority gender positions were filled by the 'least' qualified. An equal gender mission also carries another cruel twist: once monogamous pairs form there is unspoken expectation among those remaining that they too will pair up, and the diminishing possibilities lead to a choice-drama. Tabloid fixation on this formula (by participants and those on Earth) would is an unnecessary distraction.

By going coin toss, the mission is guaranteed to result in a mix of humans that everyone can agree is not the direct result of some manipulative policy, prejudice or conspiracy. It would give the participants freedom to form their own bonds (or not) without the sense that they are playing out some 'experiment'.

Here's a Dr. LeBlanc at TEAC5 2013 describing his denatured reactor concept. And an interview on DMSR and the "tube within a tube" simplification of the original reactor experiments, more video links at the end of the interview. He is projecting ~35 metric tons per GWe year, one-sixth of what is used by a pressurized water reactor.

I get that vibe too. As Dr. Sorensen tells it, he learned the deep details of molten salt experiments from a dusty old book. Imagine that --- you make your way through the modern world with a sense of confidence that everything that is worth knowing is part of the curriculum you have been taught --- or at least, there are experts out there, young like yourself, who grasp these things. And then one day you open this dusty yellowed old book and start to glimpse a future, a great future, that could have been but never was. You're asking yourself, why? And you research it further to discover that the rest of the story is kept in a file drawer somewhere, and those who worked on it are now in their 80s and 90s. And they're bitter.

If that happened to me it would be a moving experience. It would shake any confidence I had that our survival as a species was in any way 'assured'. It would coalesce into a keen sense of desperation to carry on this work, realize the dream Weinberg laid out.

Sorensen tells the story so well I actually experienced a touch of it myself. That is why I'd like to see nuclear technology brought up to date and applied so we might have a smooth (and fun!) transition from the age of fossil and steam to something better, and have tons of surplus energy to play with. The DMSR might be a commercial success first, but I believe "Captain Kirk" deserves the chance to realize the two-fluid reactor.

Because the greatest tragedy of all would be if this LFTR renaissance fades and is some day placed into a dusty digital archive, and some keen young student discovers it and finds Dr. Sorensen a bitter old man.

Pleased to meet ya. Famous myself, though I hardly ever get a -1 Troll. Usually it's an -1 Overrated, which is what meta-mods use when they don't like your face. I have an ugly face.

Beg to differ here. The real reason we've been building out so much utility-wind these last decades is not that it is a workable solution (never was)... it's not that the folks doing it haven't gotten around to running the numbers yet (some have, that's why natural gas plant manufacturers are the real winners)... it's not even that fossil companies actively support these renewable options because they do not pose any kind of threat (so much for conspiracy theory, it's plain conspiracy fact)... it's simply because nuclear has been kept off the table by a social phenomenon of fear that became rooted in the 'environmentalist' demographic, and that group has been steering the ship. I describe the genesis of this in this adjacent post. Chernobyl may have stirred it further but the fear was already entrenched by 1980.

I believe there will be a time --- soon --- when the emerging generation takes the reins and examines the gigawatt-year track record nuclear plants have demonstrated, even with 'old' designs. If Stewart Brand, a founder of the environmental movement, can re-think this fear, why cannot others? If demonstrated wind output on the grid has taught me anything, it is that you will probably never see a windmill produced by a factory that is powered by windmills. Our fixation with wind has produced some great strides in compact Neodymium designs (Tesla would be proud!) but it has delayed us at a crucial time.

Jack Devanney's summary and his slide show prepared for the 3rd Annual Workshop on Accelerator-Driven Sub-Critical Systems & Thorium Utilization, which is fancy speak for 'nuclear furnace'.

This approach is brilliant and deserves more than a one liner --- whether you have the time to work your way through this 69 page summary or not. I have, and though I've never designed a nuclear reactor either, I have boned up on LFTR tech and will try to do it justice...

I can see that he has tacked the heat expansion problems in the reactor head-on by doing something that only a designer of naval ships (and not conventional reactors) might think of --- shrugging off the problem entirely by suspending components. [p.18] "Almost all the vertical expansion is downward. The drain line is hung from the PHX to Pot line and has no direct physical connection to the Can. So this vertical movement is unrestricted and the drain line at Can temperature is free to expand independently of the primary loop."

He's abandoning the Holy Grail of breeding, striving to leverage the proven portions of salt technology into a system that can be built and scale today. [p.16] "ThorCon is a thorium converter, not a breeder. ThorCon requires periodic additions of ïssile fuel. And the ïrst generation ThorCon is not a particularly eïfcient converter. Only about 25% of its power comes from converting thorium to 233U. ThorCon derives its ability to produce power cheaply not from its use of thorium, but from all the other advantages of liquid fuel."

He points out that the FLiBe salts necessary for many LFTR designs are in short supply and current methods for production are not up to the task. [p.16] "The one salt design requires nearly continuous, complex chemical processing of a very hot, extremely radioactive fuel salt. This process has not yet been fully demonstrated even at laboratory scale. Both concepts need highly enriched 7Li which doesnâ(TM)t exist in anything like the quantities required." So --- even though I personally would rather see the two-fluid LFTR as envisioned by Weinberg come into being, I must yield to this important point. This "amateur" has brought up a topic that is not often discussed, even among die-hard Thorium designers and advocates.

Each unit is actually pair of reactors, and his design allows for one of them to be on quiescent cool-down awaiting replacement/refurbishment. Instead of envisioning some periodic shutdown of the reactor or replacement of parts "as-needed" --- who and how are parts going to be inspected in such a hostile environment? --- his whole approach calls for the units to be swapped out on a regular basis, on a time table more often than materials would degrade. Again, this is an example of simple genius at work, under-thinking as opposed to over-thinking. Of course, implied here is the its placement in a shielding container and safe transport to a facility devoted to the inspection and refit of these units. Which simplifies things quite a bit, and guards against the worse aspects of human nature: staffing nuclear plants with competent operators rather than materials engineers who are faced with making progressively difficult judgement calls.

He wants to build these on ocean-going ships. I'm kinda leery about that, but no big deal. If I can afford one of his nuke plant ships some day, I'd just dig a ship shaped hole in the ground and drop it in.

The money quote: [p.3] "Assuming rational regulation, ThorCon can produce reliable, carbon free, electricity at between 3 and 5 cents per kWh depending on scale."

He just presented the idea at the conference in Virginia on October 15th. I wonder how it turned out.

So what is delivered by these compromises? More waste than the legendary Weinberg reactor, but with poroper recycling far less than light water reactors produce. Virtually zero danger of another Fukunobyl. A build-out of base load that would make dreams such as electric transport feasible. Breaking free of fossil fuel. The raw energy to sequester as much CO2 from the atmosphere as you feel is necessary (make carbon based liquid fuel from it and you achieve break-even). And ultimately, survival of the our modern age as it evolves into something even better, not worse.

Yes including pro bono activists who will provide materials, come to your town and help organize opposition. It was not always this way.

First an interesting side trip. Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring introduced Americans to the vision of a dead planet, but it was actually Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book The Population Bomb that really set the stage for doomsday thinking. This bestseller (200 million copies) was not for everyone, but the predictions were vivid and awful. In hindsight, it grossly underestimated our ability to scale agriculture and feed more people over time, and (foolishly) exaggerated the scenario where so-called '3rd world' women living in poverty and hunger will persist in having 5+ children. Hans Rosling demonstrates nicely that it is excess child mortality (not family beliefs) that contributes to this, and once health improves women desire (on average 2-3.5) children.

But if you're an American intellectual in 1968, you would have gotten a sense of foreboding that people would soon overrun the Earth. Mostly dem Indiaafricachina people

In 1972 the UN Club of Rome commissioned a report from MIT, "Limits to Growth" (full text). It sold 12 million copies in 37 languages. This is an amazing piece of work, one of the first uses of computerized models. In it some of the doomsday assumptions made in Population Bomb was deftly woven with projections of food and energy resources to create projections. It also was the first popularized presentation that CO2 would directly increase global temperature.

The Internet has a lot of tinfoil crap floating around about Club of Rome (and yes they are creepy) but it helps rationally not think of Limits to Growth as some secret Illuminati document. It was merely a widely bestselling book at the time. It even "recommended" the adoption of nuclear energy.

I put recommended in scare-quotes because that's exactly what they did. Let's all turn to page 73. Nuclear will solve CO2... that's great. But then they launch into a warning about waste heat from nuclear plants disrupting aquatic life, which is a purely local and manageable phenomenon, why nuclear plants are sited on rivers not lakes. Swans love it. They then go full frontal thermodynamics on cities themselves as emitters of heat, as if we're living in a Dyson Sphere and this is something we should be worrying about today Interspersed with graphs of ever-escalating nuclear waste. Which --- according to a propaganda rule I call "The Frightened Animals of Bambi's Forest Flee In Terror" -- could never be somehow contained, burned completely, or managed properly (by default!). A bit on industrial and municipal pollution, lead is mentioned, glad that shit was stopped, then... we're off into a evisceration of DDT. Yes, even modern agriculture ills.

It's easy to imagine a young ~35 Jane Fonda scared to death by all this. You have to realize that the popular doomsday bestseller with its Malthusian warnings is a relatively recent phenomenon. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries industrial progress yielded direct and awe-inspiring improvements to life. Go ahead, flick a light on and run water from the tap, flush the toilet. I'll wait. By 1970 in the US this blessed infrastructure had become all but transparent.

Leaving us the time and luxury to live in the present. And develop new ideas such as the ugly brand of environmentalism that fails to "run the numbers" or imagines fewer people (job wanted: future Pol Pots) ... and would seek to reduce our modern quality of life, or divert us from innovation and species-evolution. When applied it can be a really malicious idea.

But for many, dissatisfaction with Viet Nam and the government, the dreary looming threat of nuclear war and (unfairly, by association) a growing distrust in the Cold War's nephew, the civilian nuclear program --- reflected a general unease with atoms.

Interesting times. Take a look at this fascinating historic Shah of Iran advertisement for the US nuclear industry and try to fit it into the context of the early 1970s. The 1973 oil embargo shocked the US into realizing that the golden age of endless sweet crude beginning in the 50s was in twilight. Our support for Israel in the Yom Kipper War pissed off the arabs, and in a bold move as sudden as the Israel's war they imposed an embargo. Oil quadrupled from $3 to $12/bbl in six months. Too many Americans in power failed to recognize that the landscape had changed, and instead turned to Israel and the CIA (covertly) and said "Hey! Aren't you supposed to be managing these guys?" That shit continues to this day. The Shah was an 'ally' yet his popularity suffered greatly when he told the New York Times, "You [Western nations] increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and the same for sugar and cement...; You buy our crude oil and sell it back to us, refined as petrochemicals, at a hundred times the price you've paid to us...; It's only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil. Let's say ten times more." This in a time when North America was tapped out (pre-frack) and Middle East oil kept everything rolling. When every day people started running the numbers to imagine what might happen with a '10x increase' they freaked.

So the Shah of Iran was no longer to be the poster boy of the US nuclear industry, and that clear and simple message of post-petroleum survival was lost in the noise of rising political and Cold War lunacy.

While the US was busy proliferating is nuclear arsenal to greater heights, Jimmy Carter halted fuel reprocessing in 1977 for 'proliferation concerns'. So instead of building one (maybe two!) reprocessing plants and watching them closely, we have spent fuel in more than a hundred pools across the US which just sit there, we watch them closely. The government's halt of reprocessing and failure to deliver, as promised, safe off-plant storage is just two of the ways the nuclear industry has been fucked. Way to go.

Then the infamous one-two punch: the release of Jane Fonda's film China Syndrome on March 16, 1979 and while it was still in the theaters, Three Mile Island partial core meltdown Almost overnight a rally cry that had been heard before grew louder, people calling for the immediate end of nuclear energy. It did not help that immediately after Three Mile Island, even before the investigation concluded, the nuclear industry emitted misleading statements and outright lies that claimed nuclear power carried no risk.

It's been 34 years of mostly pain for the nuclear industry. Ironically, as a stellar safety record of disaster avoidance proceeds and the gigawatt-years mount, nuclear electricity exceeds 20% in some states, silly and mean people think it's fun to dis nuclear energy and the folks who keep it running. When I catch a snip of Homer Simpson these days I think to myself, there are real people behind this thing and it's just not funny anymore, even if it ever was.

Never mind the Population Bomb, the Nuclear Bomb or the CO2 Bomb. If our modern technology fails and people die en mass it would more likely be something like this, without the happy ending. In place of that silly cyber-attack substitute something more likely and really boring, like a climate event, continent-wide hard freeze during a brutal Winter, small asteroid impact or supervolcano ash.

Once we lose roads and railroads we lose the coal plants, and the grid. Natural gas distribution would fragment then cease, windmills and solar not even worth mentioning. The only lights in the darkness would be nuclear power plants, with months or years of fuel on hand. Did you know... near a nuclear power plant you can raise a serious crop of fish year-round? It's not "Limits to Growth", and the middlemen who want a piece of your pie to manage it. It's a limit of imagination. We need to fight it.

By the way: remember that Plymouth nuclear plant that was mentioned in the Shah of Iran ad? It's still going, generating ~14% of Massachusetts' electricity. Fish love it. Sometimes the good guys win.

Meant to say incontinence, my bad.