There's an excellent talk from Nick Means (GitHub) called "Who Destroyed Three Mile Island?". Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xQeXOz0Ncs https://www.you

There's an excellent talk from Nick Means (GitHub) called "Who Destroyed Three Mile Island?". Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xQeXOz0Ncs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xQeXOz0Ncs One thing it discusses is how the alerts inside the control hub were so noisy, and were logged via a reasonably slow printer, that the alerts which suggested the reactor was in serious trouble only printed hours after you could do anything. And the alert light that said "shits fucked" was placed right next to the light about an elevator being out of order. Human error is rarely intentional, and even if it is, a system that fails in response has missed the mark. The talk explains the amazing finds made by the government committee hired to investigate the incident, once they left the idea of 'human error' at the door. I do suggest you watch the video, but as a teaser: it turned out that at the time, most US nuclear engineers had been sourced from nuclear subs. Subs have totally different rules on how to manage the reactor, and train their staff inappropriately for a land-based reactor. Pretty significant cultural find...