POLISH MEMORIES OF CHERNOBYL...April 26th 1986

I thought "Oh great, the irresponsible humanly-careless Russians managed to commit another atrocity and f*ck up things again with their failed inferior attempts at immitating the superior West"

I grew up near nuke stations in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. I was fishing across the river from Three Mile Island when it went down. I also served in a US Navy nuclear submarine (a "boomer", or missile boat). Nuclear power never scared me, (and the 'horror' stories about TMI are overblown by the anti nuke crowd). Not even when I was in the Navy and could only get a few meters from the reactor. Especially then! Even today I'd go back to sea in the oldest, most overworked boat in commission.

Chernobyl changed my outlook on nuclear power in the civilian world. The pains taken in the U.S. Navy (can't speak for other navies) to design and operate a reactor to "fail-to-safe" is unbelievable! Not so much in the civilian world. The horrors of Chernobyl and the Japanese incident have convinced me that, for civilian uses at least, we can and must do better.