we cant even convince otherwise informed, intelligent people to keep adequate backups, by-and-large. the list goes on forever. gun control laws? abortion? in-vitro fertilization? Women with equal voting rights?

so you hit nail on the head.... and when it comes to nuclear facilities, no small amount of amrchair stats are enough to make truly informed risk/reward calculation, and given the risk part generally includes components involving death and destruction on a fairly large scale, shot and long term, and given we all put our own values on human life and all that, for some no amount of losses are acceptable. Im not agreeing or disagreeing either - thenerd side of me feels then same way - "smart people should be able to se this is our best option" - the zen side of me says there is ia much bigger picture at stake, one i am not currently involved in , and its also not a decision i am personally faced with right now, so im sort of wasting my time even writing this post, right?

Zen version: is any discussion here going to have an impact on large scale nuclear policy at this point in time, one way or the other? If not, it is a pontless avenue of discussion, we can all go focus on something more important to us individually, whatever that is. right?