Britain to build Europe's first nuclear plant since Fukushima

[PamW]

2. Some governments see things in perspective..

Some governments see things in perspective, and not as problems without solution.

May I remind people that Great Britain was the first country to introduce the jet airliner; the deHavilland Comet back in the 1950s. However, after a series of crashes of the Comet involving fuselage metal failure; Great Britain got out of the jet airliner business.

The problem with the Comet was that it had square passenger windows. Stress concentrates at corners; and that was what was happening with the Comets. It was a fixable problem; you round the corners; which is why when you have a window seat on an airliner, your window is shaped the way it is. With the rounded corners, no airliner has had a similar problem since.

Unfortunately for Great Britain, they ceded the entire commercial jet airliner industry to the USA. Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas ( later absorbed into Boeing ) owned the commercial jet airliner business, and the jobs that goes with them; for the next couple of decades. In the 1970s, the French Airbus company came on the scene, and now the commercial jet airliner market for the free world is shared by Boeing and Airbus; or the USA and France. There's no market ownership by Great Britain, when they were the ones that started the business.

Unfortunately, Great Britain "threw up its hands" and withdrew from the commercial jet airliner business because jet airliners were an unsolvable problem that was just going to lead to crashes and human carnage. Although jet airliners are not perfect, they are the safest way to travel on a per passenger-mile basis.

Great Britain "gave up" on jet airliners over accidents that were originally seen as a problem without solution. The problem was a design defect that was easily remedied with a redesign of the passenger windows.

This is why we need to let our policies be guided by science and not emotions. Sure one can look at a crashed airliner and see the human carnage and be emotionally tempted to do away with all airliners so that this won't happen again. However, if we don't let our emotions drive us, and instead are driven by science, then one realizes that we can prevent the airliner crashes with a window redesign; and still have airliners. The safety of those airliners has reduced the number of people that are killed in automobiles and/or trains, which would be the alternative if we didn't have airliners.

Great Britain, in essence, "shot itself in the foot" back in the 1950s by abandoning jet airliners and ceding that market to the USA. They evidently learned the lesson of the deHavilland Comet, and won't be repeating that mistake.

The country that didn't learn from Great Britain's mistake in the 1950s is Germany.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW