The parts of a boat have funny names to a landsman. Many of the names go back hundreds of years and their origins are often lost. Some make sense only if you know something of sailing ship construction in the 16th century.
Cheap dreams, expensive realities. In the dawn of the nuclear era, cost was expected to be one of the technology's advantages, not one of its drawbacks. The first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, predicted in a 1954 speech that nuclear power would someday make electricity âtoo cheap to meter.â.
This potentially results in cheaper energy, though, because of the very high (and necessary) safety standards used in the nuclear industry, the cost of building and operating fission nuclear reactors is increasing significantly over the years, resulting in nuclear energy being now usually more expensive than electricity from coal power plants.