At the beginning of 2005 a new and different Battle of North Anna again threatened to rend apart America's heart and soul, but unity prevailed and the homeland has emerged the stronger for it.

Canadians, like the Communists before them, have been allowed to creep into the homes and industries of the heartland, let in by apathy, naiveté, and the wholesale bleeding-heart betrayal of traditional American values.

Nowhere are these values entrenched stronger than in the sovereign domain of nuclear energy, the cornerstone of America's God-given right to military and industrial supremacy, bestowed through the sweat and toil of red-blooded American scientists in the middle of the last century.

The CANDU nuclear reactor, a hodge-podge of ideals cobbled together by obstinacy, traces its roots to the desperate attempts of refugee enemy aliens to replicate American innovation during the Second World War.

This pretender to genius came knocking at America's door, and utterly astounded observers by winning the bulk of DOE pre-licensing funding announced late last year. Largesse in hand, Dominion Energy's North Anna expansion vaulted leagues ahead of other nuclear resurrections around the country.

"This just ain't right," protested Budd Snively of the group Keep Atoms American, "we haven't seen a disregard for U.S. birthright like this since the Toyota Corolla."

Snively shakes his head as he recounts an undercover investigation his group undertook, in the guise of NRC safety analysts.

"They just ain't like us up there. All this talk of 'milli-k' and using computer codes we've never heard of. They weren't even applying the ANS standards. They're worse than the French."

Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority agrees. "The Canadians are Satan's engineers. They speak in tongues and invoke their heathen spirits. I'm told they worship their heavy water like a god. This is blasphemous and unnatural: God intended us to harvest the energy that sustains us from His bountiful elements: the water, the air, and the rocks of our earth."

"American enrichment of uranium is acceptable", Falwell concedes, "After all that makes use of the technology that makes America strong and safe, which is our God-given right."

Budd Snively echoes this criticism of the insurgent Canadian technology: "They lay their reactor on its back and refuel it with these long phallic machines, day in and day out. It's an affront to American decency and family values."

"I'm certainly not surprised," adds Falwell. "We're talking about a country that legalizes abortion, marijuana, and homosexual marriage - but not," he adds with obvious contempt, "atomic weapons."

What happened next was a call to arms worthy of Paul Revere. America awoke and took action long before this technological Pearl Harbour got a chance to progress any further.

The moral outrage evinced by the likes of Snively and Falwell found resonance in the living rooms and boardrooms of the nation.

In less time than it takes a stuck-open pressure relief valve to uncover a BWR core, Dominion Energy announced that it had decided instead to go with General Electric, a reassuring turn to the old red, white, and blue: familiar to housewives coast to coast and keeping Americans strong since 1892.

The moral underpinnings of this sudden reversal were downplayed in Dominion's official announcement. "We simply told the Canadians," a company spokesman recounted on Larry King Live, "that the Virgin Mary appeared to us over the Christmas break and begged us not to do it."

With the plaid-shirted, monarchist horde successfully turned back at the border for now, time has been found for sober reflection, and even a bit of sportsmanlike concession from the safe vantage point of total victory. Some American engineers have mused aloud about the significantly better fuel efficiency found in CANDU, compared with U.S. designs.

"Ah yes," intones Budd Snively with measured disdain, "that's what they said about the Corolla too."

Ed. note: Most of the above springs solely from the author's mind. Sadly, this includes Budd Snively.