A semicolon links two independent (yet related) clauses. The first, "all US submarines and aircraft carriers have been nuclear-powered for decades", is roughly true (that is, if you count 15 years as "decades"). The second, "it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents", is demonstrably false.
> calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation.
I can't tell what you mean by "it was the normal operation". I can assure you that the plant was not designed to be in a state of constant leakage and need billions of dollars of continuous investment per year to facilitate its cleanup process for decades without end.
Well, that's a bit of a lie. The plant was designed to leak radioactive waste into the Columbia River under normal operation. But that was considered safe, at that time. Just as many nuclear things are now considered safe, at this time. For instance the Monticello leak less than 6 months ago, which was covered up for months before the news finally got out. Perfectly safe, at this time.
If we've really learned so much since whenever, let's use that knowledge to clean up all the messes we made along the way first. Once we know we can do that well, perhaps we can take on more projects. Until then we're the Junior Dev hopping from greenfield project to greenfield project leaving giant steaming piles of shit behind at every stop and telling ourselves "welp, I definitely learned from that experience! no way I'm doing that again!"
> This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd.
I'm not asking anyone to trust me, I'm not an energy expert and never claimed to be. I'm just asking them to not lie in order to push a nuclear agenda. In general, if a concept is truly with pursuing, it should be able to be presented via a convincing argument without lies.