Perhaps using the Web isn't the appropriate solution for a nuclear power plant control panel. There are other, more suitable, internet protocols to use for this sort of appliance than the Web (if indeed, making a nuclear power plant control panel accessible over the Internet is an actual requirement).
Perhaps using The Web isn't appropriate for SCADA controls, but what's the reason why using a web stack is inappropriate? People here seem to forget that things like J2EE and ASP.NET have displaced decades of crappy console and Windows Forms applications.
The moment you accept that there is The Web and there are web apps and they're not the same thing, you're right in the middle of the debate Shiflett is talking about. The down-with-hashbang crowd doesn't acknowledge any such difference.
