Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles & Its Gross Innaccuracies About Nuclear Power

Last night's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, while quite entertaining and enjoyable, was a TRAVESTY of innaccuracies about nuclear power and nuclear safety! Easily the second most innacurate thing I've seen on TV this week.*

ITEM 1: Since when can Sarah Connor and a frickin' Terminator get a security clearance for a nuclear power plant? And in one day!!! Isn't she "off the grid" and living under assumed names? How can her background "check out"?

ITEM 2: Derek Reese (played by Brian Austin Green, from Melrose Place ...er, so I am told, as I never watched the show...) drives his truck right up to the entrance to the power plant and walks right in. Hello? Where's security?

ITEM 3: The cartoon that Sarah and the Terminator watched on nuclear power, while technically accurate for the most part, depicted fuel rods as glowing green dancing girls. This is a gross exaggeration.

ITEM 4: Sarah, who apparently is just a janitor, is told to enter into some sort of nuclear waste storage area to clean up a spill. A janitor with 1 day on the job, and no experience, training, or authorization in the handling of radioactive material! Oh, and she entered the storage room wearing a hazmat suit (at least the kind of hazmat suit you see on TV). Sheesh!

ITEM 5: After being in said storage room, she is said to be "crapped up." There is no such term in the nuclear power industry. Now, radioactive particulates found in the reactor piping are called CRUD (which stands for Chalk River Unidentified Deposits - named after the Canadian reactor where it was first discovered), but this has nothing to do with getting contaminated. Why didn't they just say she was "contaminated"?

ITEM 6: John Connor meets a hot blond at school and takes her to his home after knowing her for, like, 4 hours. Very unrealistic in my experience (sadly).

Like I said at the top, a very enjoyable show, but would it have killed them to hire an expert in nuclear power? My rates are very reasonable.

- Coach Rossaroni

* The most innaccurate thing I saw this week on TV was a Sci-Fi movie I flipped by on Saturday, in which an actor was wearing an Air Force blue short sleeved shirt with Sergeant stripes, Captain bars on his collar, and was being called "Lieutenant" by his Navy Commander boss.