That said, in general there’s a bit of a double standard with regards to nuclear technology about what we consider “safe,” hence why I brought up industrial chemical accidents.

People seem very willing to accept (or more often simply ignore) a certain low level of dangerous and even deadly accidents in most other industries while still considering them generally “safe,” but even very minor accidents involving nuclear technology are harped upon as proof for all time that the atom is too dangerous for man to tamper with.

However, the point I was trying to make is that the Pentagon has obviously lied by omission as far as nuclear weapon safety is concerned, and so assertions like “naval reactors… had been operating for years without incident” are suspect. I’m wondering if that is a result of the government lying by omission. We’re not told about accidents or problems, so we assume it’s safe.

Also, I’m not anti-nuclear; I’d like to see more nuclear power added to our mix of coal-oil-natural gas. But governments (and big organizations in general) tend to hide their faults, and this is a case where complete transparency is necessary for public safety.

Also, what about the thousands of times each year there are accidents with highly dangerous industrial chemicals, frequently ones vastly more deadly than the sort of nuclear material used in weapons or power plants?

He was provided with the Pentagon’s official list of 32 instances of ‘Broken Arrows’ — nuclear materials accidents in the US military. Using the Freedom of Information act, however, he was able to ascertain that between 1950 and 1968 alone, there were more than 1,000 accidents involving nuclear weapons.

Although I was exposed to high levels of pro-nuclear propaganda as a child (who remembers ‘Our Friend The Atom’?), I’ve had less confidence in the idea of anything nuclear that moves around as time goes on…