The US has approved the production of its first civilian nuclear reactor in thirty years. This despite sensationalistic reports about the dangers of a Russian ballistic missile sub that caught fire in late December. I'm not surprised the Russian government lied about this for two reasons 1) It's the Russian government. 2) The danger is overstated.
If the fire had spread from the outside of the hull to the interior--a dangerous turn which could have been prevented/addressed by sinking the boat--it might have reached either the nuclear missiles or the nuclear reactor. Because the reporters involved don't know any more about nuclear power than that it's scary, they're saying Russia was on "the brink of a nuclear disaster." Having only been taught about US Navy nuclear reactors, I can't say definitively that it wasn't, but I feel more qualified than the political and cultural writer who penned it, even if his Facebook pic is a thousand times cooler than mine.
