"Melt down" has traditionally meant that the fuel has overheated and breached the primary containment vessel. I don't see how that definition would not apply here. Just because the primary coolant loop uses molten salt instead of water shouldn't much matter.
"meltdown" and "melt down" have different meanings in English. Skimming the title and seeing the words "melt down" is fairly clear about context. I found the title fairly straightforward, the title isn't very surprising as newspapers like to make plays on words like this.
Not native English speaker, but current title ("Molten salt reactor claims melt down under scrutiny") is fairly clear that claims melt down, not the reactor.
Apologies if the title has been changed since initial comments. Otherwise, probably the case of "mentally read beginning and end of sentence" :).
[and yes, journalists seem to have love of puns and 'puns' that others can only groan at... my favourite in IT is of course The Register, which can raise a stink in the room just by listing the headlines;-]
Correct, we both interpret the title the same way as there's only one proper interpretation of the title. It's not unusual for writers to make punny titles like this.
The title is a garden path sentence trying to be too clever with using "melt down" in the context of nuclear reactors. I had to read the first few sentences to have any idea what it was talking about. You don't need to question people's language skills for this. Regardless, it's easy to take "Molten Salt Reactor" as the name of a company, just as if you saw a title saying "Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant claims meltdown".
I'm just tired of people on HN complaining about misleading titles like if they were something that kicked your dog. If you are a native speaker that was familiar enough with nuclear power to know what a 'molten salt reactor' might be (the journal is 'powermag', after all), then for you to read that title as "omg! there might be a meltdown" is just being lazy.
Please don't demand the dumbing-down of content for everyone else because you want to be spoon-fed.
Your hostile tone is not lending any credibility to your argument.
I'm a native English speaker. In retrospect, I see how the title is supposed to read - but that is not how I initially read it - and it took me several times to actually realize that 'claims' was not the verb.
Two centuries of journalistic tradition disagree with you. Newspapers have always dones this, hence my comment on the native speaker. If you're a native speaker, you will have grown up with this kind of pun happening around you all the time.
And yes, my tone might be a bit aggressive, but people making trivial complaints about titles has been on the rise at HN recently. I've been hanging around here for years, and it's never been a problem before. You then talk about (horror!) having to read the first two sentences of the article to realise that it's not in fact a nuclear meltdown, though really you should have realised there wasn't a nuclear meltdown when it mentioned students a dozen words in.
Besides, reading it the way you're suggesting would mean that the supposed nuclear meltdown was caused by the scrutiny, which is just nonsensical.
This is what frustrates me into making these comments; that people prefer to be spoon-fed content rather than use their brain a little.
That's like saying "Bus stop claims transport strike under scrutiny" or "Jail cell claims long sentence under scrutiny" are natural-sounding sentences.
That only sounds weird because you made it so narrow. Bus stops and jail cells don't have their own staffs. But an entire jail or museum or whatnot most definitely can "say" things. Here are some headlines:
Reactors don't have staff either - and unlike bus stops or jail cells, they don't even have any kind of human in them when they're functioning. The equivalent to your jail or museum is a power plant, not a reactor. Yes, reactors have caretakers, but so do jail cells (and bus stops, in nicer places).
Many people would point at the entire facility and call it a 'reactor'.
Anyway you're getting really picky now. I've demonstrated that inanimate locations can "say" things by the standards of headline-writers, so I'm done. It was flat-out wrong to imply such a thing is a non-fluent mistake.
Also you should stop conflating "has a pun" and "is a garden-path sentence" in your other line of conversation, thanks. You're mostly arguing for the former there, other people are arguing against the latter, and they are totally orthogonal.
> Also you should stop conflating "has a pun" and "is a garden-path sentence" in your other line of conversation, thanks
Yeah, a niche journal targeting the power industry should be careful not to instill momentary panic in their specialist readership that way. They should definitely use the blandest terms possible.
It's just another reason why these complaints about titles are irritating - people demand titles for the general public from sources catering to specialists, implying that it's bad journalism to do otherwise.
> by the standards of headline-writers, so I'm done
If you were going by the standards of headline-writers, you wouldn't have started here. This kind of headline has been par for the course for almost as long as there's been headlines.
I like the pun. The pun is great. My dislike of the garden-path sentence has nothing to do with the pun. I do not want bland terms at all. Pun headlines are standard, garden-path ones are not.
If there had only been one claim then "Molten Salt Reactor Claim Melts Down Under Scrutiny" would be a great headline. Witty but not grammatically confusing.
In reality, it's just an energy startup's exaggerated performance claims that "melted down" (were proven incorrect) when examined by the community.