But at Independence Day celebrations in May, as Georgia's emotional national anthem is sung for the first time in front of the gleaming glass dome, it's hard not to be impressed.
Wandering among the turbines, we passed some Ping-Pong tables, where a competition was under way, and stopped in front of a shiny white dome that looked like the nose of a passenger jet.
We understood -- and I think BP was somewhat out front on the notion that the chances of the containment dome working were, I think they said, a one-in-three chance.