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To: Freedom4US
“Tickling the dragon” was yet another procedure entirely. It was a bit insane but they knew what they were doing.

I myself can be a bit inadvertently unthoughtful or careless in operating potentially deadly equipment (like an automobile, for instance), so I have to realize that and try to compensate for it. That doesn't always work. So this is why in 1962. upon graduating with high grades as a B.S. Ceramic Engineer, I (with careful consideration for self and as the father of four) declined the generous beginning salary with Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL)(click here) (GE, reporting basically to U. S. Navy and Adm. Hyman G. Rickover). whose developing history is now summarized online:

Extract From Wiki:
"In 2006 KAPL achieved full remediation of the S1C Prototype Reactor site located in Windsor, Connecticut. The S1C site remedial action was declared to be complete by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection in October 2006. KAPL had taken over operation of the S1C Prototype in the 1960s after expiration of the Navy's original contract with Combustion Engineering."
and similarly also from the Connecticut Advanced Nuclear Engineering Laboratory (CANEL)(click here) (Pratt & Whitney, reporting to U. S. Air Force)

Image excerpted:

That opportunity I also put aside after traveling to examine these sites, never to be considered again.

Several years later, after working at another company as a research engineer, then having gone back for the PhD, followed by employment in that capacity, another company offered me w very attractive position guaranteeing employment to retirement age, developing materials for a more reliable trigger for the nuclear bomb, which I also forsook, and took an offer on the research staff of a well-known state university.

Looking back now, I think those decisions I made fifty years ago helped me obtaing longevity faith in my Savior and Redeemer and His spiritual urgings.

Be wise, my FRiends; not all attractive propositions are wise and prudent. Sometimes less appealing ones can be far more beneficial in long-lasting and pragmatic results.

36 posted on 05/26/2026 3:31:17 AM PDT by imardmd1 (To learn is to live; the joy of living: to teach. Fiat Lux! )
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To: imardmd1

Yeah, safety “rules” and regulations are there for a reason. And I can’t say that I haven’t bent the rules a time or two over the years sometimes to get things done. With long experience we know what we can get away with. Or … we think we can. Until something happens. Now there’s a Problem.

Management or higher ups are quick to give Atta Boys, but all that built up good will, it will disappear instantly when something bad happens, and it is found one was deviating from established procedure. Oops.

In that sense it is a huge mistake to try and workaround those things. They expect you to get the job done but this not save your ass. “You should have known better”.


40 posted on 05/26/2026 5:35:12 PM PDT by Freedom4US
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