Yes, you are right George. I meant it figuratively and not literally. Notwithstanding that,the fact is that there was a mass exodus of top notch academics away from the discipline of nuclear science & engineering in universities across US right through the eighties.Besides,admissions to Graduate and research fellow programs in univs were regulated by the government and kept out of bounds to foriegners,especially from Asia.As a result not much talent was groomed leading the struggling professors to abandon the univ labs for positions in defence labs with access to unlimited funds.In fact, significant funds even from the dept of Energy went to weapons tech development rather than civil application developments!!Net result:Not much civil nuke research talent is available in nuke labs (either in universities or in corporate labs)across US today!This fact is giving gitters to the US strategists which have been expressed in think-tank meets,interactions and even in senate hearings!Many strategy analysts and experts have testified that the US civil nuke reasearch sector is woefully short of science and tech manpower with cutting edge knowledge base.These factors too have played a significant role in shaping the 123-Deal,which almost all our experts and strategy analysts seem to have totally discounted.
