There is a scene in the 1979 movie China Syndrome, where Jack Lemmon plays an engineer in the control room of a malfunctioning nuclear power plant.  Alarms are blaring, but the engineer is confused because the gauge on the panel shows that there is plenty of water in the reactor to cool the atomic pile.  Then he gives the gauge a good hard rap and the indicator suddenly drops to zero.  The gauge was stuck, and there is actually no water in the reactor.  The glowing core of the reactor is busy melting its way through the earth to China, hence the movie’s name. The China Syndrome, and the Three Mile Island incident which followed weeks after the movie’s release, effectively killed the nuclear power industry in this country.  Or, at least put it on life support.  Anti-nuclear activists have been scheming to pull the plug on nuclear power ever since.  But the debate on nuclear power is for another time.  This article is about...(Read Full Article)