The Atomic Ocean Liner

[Default] Thus spake AZ Nomad :

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:48:15 -0700, RayC wrote:
AZ Nomad wrote:
It's the govt's fault if people are too ****ing lazy to crack open a
book or in today's age type "atomic energy" into a web browser?

I don't know whose fault it is ... but you hit the nail on the head.

Way back when I was going through my training, every book we had was
marked with a big CONFIDENTIAL or SECRET label and we had to have a lot
of special handling of every document we generated as dictated by the
Atomic Energy Acts of 1946 and 1954.

Some time in the mid 70s, they split up the Atomic Energy Commission
into the DOE and the NRC and quietly declassified a LOT of general
information. But, it went into boring old encyclopedias because nobody
wanted to hear about Nuclear Power in the 70s because we were finishing
up a stupid war, getting hit with the Arab oil embargoes and still
trying to get back the "free love" days. Nobody cared!

Do people have that information today? You betcha! Do they search it
out? NOPE!! It is easier to rely on the TV news, their friends or just
not care.

I grew up in the 70's and the information was available in any
encyclopedia -- the ones I had access to were printed in the 60's.

You wouldn't find exact blueprints, but the genera theory was there.

By the early 90's when I was doing automated testing of submarine
nuclear reactor control rod drive mechanisms, very little of it was
classified. For those assemblies, the only thing classified was their
length.

Yeah, but if you really wanted it, you could have called the
Soviet/Russian embassy and ask for it. You could have probably gotten
it for a good steak or two.
--

- dillon I am not invalid

The more I drink, the less I think. The less I think,
the better I feel. The better I feel, the more I drink.
And so goes the circle of life.