> Nuclear power was “shovel ready” by 1960. The unpredictable fundamental research was done and the “investment” that remained was to build power plants. Shove

> Nuclear power was “shovel ready” by 1960. The unpredictable fundamental research was done and the “investment” that remained was to build power plants. Shovel-ready, perhaps. But consistent-safe-operation-ready? Highly debatable. (Source: In the 1970s I was a Navy nuclear engineering officer, qualified among other things as [chief] engineer officer aboard the eight-reactor aircraft carrier USS Enterprise during three years of sea duty there. I became convinced that the then-existing pressurized-water-reactor designs simply weren't safe around populated areas because of the possibility of cascading human error — see, e.g., Three Mile Island and Chernobyl — and the potentially-catastrophic nature of a black-swan event. Relatedly, I'll be interested to see what the cause of the loss-of-power accident was aboard the container ship that dropped the bridge in Baltimore.)