We speak of technical debt at times here on HN and other places where workers struggle with complex systems. The Chernobyl incident can be characterized as a c

We speak of technical debt at times here on HN and other places where workers struggle with complex systems. The Chernobyl incident can be characterized as a consequence of technical debt. The test that was being performed had been deferred since prior to the start of plant operations and the operators were attempting to complete it while under pressure from multiple sources, including securing their own annual bonuses. Dr. Paul Josephson covered a lot of the inside baseball surrounding Chernobyl and other aspects of Soviet nuclear power and weaponry in his book Red Atom (2005).