Last edited Wed Dec 24, 2025, 08:50 AM - Edit history (1)
...to understand what "free rein" in a nuclear program is.
In general, antinukes at the highest level, the Joe Romm types, Ed Lyman, Amory Lovins are incompetent to understand broad risk which is why they make absurd claims along the lines of there being a "false dichotomy."
There is no false dichotomy. The coal industry kills people whenever it operates normally. The nuclear industry has a spectacular record of operating with comparatively trivial loss of life which only take place in rare accidents.
The word "dichotomy" can be looked up in the dictionary if one is about comparison of two opposed things. To my mind, albeit understanding the limited purview of antinukes, who couldn't care less about fossil fuels, the generation of heat by fission and the the generation of heat by combustion of coal oil and gas are entirely different, opposed, things for generating heat that can be subject to contrast. Thus a real dichotomy exists if one is familiar with appropriate use if the English language.
The nuclear industry is 70 years old. I've been aware of it myself since before Chernobyl exploded. When I was a stupid uneducated antinuke, I read the delusional predictions put out by the dubiously named Union of Concerned Scientists on what a major release of the radioactive contents of a reactor would be. This theory unfortunately was tested by an unintentional experiment, Chernobyl. To the disappointment of antinukes everywhere, the experimentation results were quite different than the UCS's paranoid predictions.
Now we have modern antinukes dragging out further bull from UCS. Note that the shithead Ed Lyman who misses the opportunity to see a dichotomy because he doesn't give a fuck about coal death in Wyoming, says the Terrapower will be dangerous, not could be dangerous with even a shred of insight to the reactors design.
He is not a nuclear engineer nor does he have any role in the inappropriately vast array of documentation connected with reactor approval. He in fact fits the bill for evocation of the logical fallacy known as "appeal to authority" where the fallacy arises when the "authority" is competent in an area not connected to the things he purports to judge.
Antinukes do everything in their power to obstruct saving the world from climate collapse by the use of nuclear energy out of ignorance and irrational fear. It is not ethical to believe that it's OK for millions to die to prevent a few deaths from radiation exposure, deaths that are rarely observed while we never stop seeing fossil fuel related deaths on a vast scale.
In the 1950s and 1960s nuclear Cowboys built and ran nuclear reactors of a rather large array of types. They did so with minimal regulation and low human mortality. They built them, ran them, and took them apart. Modern nuclear engineers are going through their records to rediscover what might have been lost.
I support wise regulation for which what neither the nuclear industry nor the fossil fuel are subject to appropriate levels, vast overkill in the former, not merely enough in the latter. It will be a good day when the fossil fuel industry is required to show that its waste products will never kill anyone anywhere in any century here and beyond.
As for Ed Lyman and his head up the ass whining, I consider him an RFK Jr. equivalent, a person who asserts his ignorance to kill people. He can go fuck himself.
I wish you the happiest of holidays in this season.
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