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In complex systems accidents do not tell the whole story, one has to also look at incidents and the "safety culture" of the organization (i.e. ~ how they avoid
by blub 6y ago
In complex systems accidents do not tell the whole story, one has to also look at incidents and the "safety culture" of the organization (i.e. ~ how they avoid failure and how they react to failure).
Aviation for example has The Aviation Herald, where one can see that there's in fact quite many incidents that almost never result in accidents. There's lots of literature on safety engineering in aviation.
What's the equivalent for the nuclear industry? I was admittedly not very interested in this topic, so I'm only aware of the descriptions from Perrow's "Normal Accidents" book where he reported on several incidents which were actually published by the involved organizations. They didn't inspire confidence at all, on the contrary they were downright scary (and much scarier than one can find on the Av Herald).
Maybe the nuclear industry grew up, but it's absolutely necessary to have transparency here. Looking at global accidents is like trying to map a castle through a keyhole.
- jboog 6y agoI'm not a nuclear engineer, although I have a couple friends that are and have assured me the risk is incredibly low. The scientific literature backs this up. What annoys me is climate change activists that paint nuclear power as some terrible boogeyman we must never use lest we irradiate the entire United States. They will never ever "show their work" and do the cost/benefit analysis of the ongoing thousands who die from coal and other carbon energy sources or the potential millions who will die from climate change. No, no it's all just alarmist BS about nuclear being "dangerous" so let's just not use literally the only power generating technology that can replace almost every single fossil fuel plant in the US. Not even solar and wind can claim that! So I think it's accurate to describe this view as "anti-science" at least for those who want to abolish the use of nuclear altogether (Green new deal types)