My father was a Civil Service Electrical Engineer at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. When he served in uniform, he was an antiaircraft missile fire cont

My father was a Civil Service Electrical Engineer at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. When he served in uniform, he was an antiaircraft missile fire control officer. He had a great deal of admiration for Admiral Rickover. It's a complete surprise to me that Rickover is regarded as a jerk. Liquid sodium-cooled reactors can be a lot more efficient than water-cooled reactors because you can get the liquid sodium a lot hotter. The efficiency of heat engines is determined largely by the difference between the hot part and the cold part. So a Congressional committee invited the Admiral in to explain why the Navy didn't build submarines with sodium-cooled reactors. He responded by dropping a piece of sodium into a glass of water. (Sodium burns on contact with water.) Despite being a government employee himself, my father hated government employees with a furious passion.