This section is currently incomplete. While we eventually will use it to list terms and jargon often connected with nuclear technology; we’re starting this off as a list of terms that we use that readers–even those familiar with the literature–may not be familiar with.
ADAMS-nik
A (usually non-technical) person with a knack for finding documents in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Agency Document Access and Management System (ADAMS) and “rewording” them.
Beach Debate
24-year-old rich kids playing second-grade politics over matters of little to no importance in the most weaselly, spineless suburban language possible, often by playing dumb, being paternalistic, or being dismissive, while people’s lives are at stake. Usually the practitioners of Beach Debate either do not care that people’s lives are at stake, are too stupid to figure it out, or willfully ignore it. Beach Debate is highlighted by hypocrisy, entitlement, and the belief that worrying about how to actually do things is not the participants’ job (that being identifying evil people and preventing them from doing things–emphatically not identifying evil things and preventing people from doing them).
Champagne-Popper
A pro-nuclear person who constantly and in the face of all evidence celebrates every small step with a declaration that a “second bandwagon market” is coming, during and after which everyone will love and accept nuclear power plants and fight each other for the opportunity to build them.
Croissantisme
The practice of sitting around in meetings eating croissants and thinking of increasingly complicated ways to express the simple and obvious in order to seem profound. A variant on this is the method by which complex analyses are used to defend ridiculous ideas, and taken seriously because and only because they are complex–the analyst’s ability to understand and generate the complex analysis being the point, rather than the validity of the analysis. See also Life-Cycle Analysis.
Lumberjack Defense, The
An argument using a variant of the Monty Python “letter from a viewer” which appeared after “The Lumberjack Song,” in which the supposed viewer states that “many of my best friends are lumberjacks, and only a few of them are transvestites.” This type of bad communication occurs when a conclusion is drawn from a slightly flawed analysis that is based on grossly inaccurate assumptions. Obviously, there is no evidence that transvestitism is any more prevalent among lumberjacks than other groups–and it’s probably a lot lower–so it would seem ripe for a counter-argument along those lines, demolishing the flawed analysis. However, that doesn’t matter to the writers of The Lumberjack Song; what matters is the comic effect of the contrast between the expected image of the lumberjack and the given portrayal–in other words, the whole point is that they’re trying to get you to accept the premises, so they can launch another attack (in this case, that society’s traditional view of masculinity is flawed). Preventing the second attack requires that the responder address not the flawed analysis, but rather the grossly inaccurate assumptions. Another example:
ACCUSATION: Nuclear power plants emit carbon dioxide.
WRONG ANSWER: Only in very small amounts, even according to your analysis.
SECOND ATTACK: How can you possibly defend polluters? You want to pollute the whole environment and destroy everything. [Note that the assumptions behind a statement often change the meanings of words. If you don't challenge assumptions that seek to redefine your words, you will quite often appear to be making your opponent's point.]
RIGHT ANSWER: Show me the smokestack. [The analysis is assuming that emissions of carbon dioxide that don't physically have to result from an activity can be blamed on that activity, even when the activity used a product that somebody chose to produce one way when it's entirely possible to do it another way. That approach is obviously indefensible--why grant that something is true when it isn't?]
This page was written by Stewart Peterson on May 29, 2009
