Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

AduroTri t1_is720q1 wrote

Nuclear energy is safe. It's just people being stupid and lazy that cause problems.

44

blastuponsometerries t1_is7a9qi wrote

>people being stupid and lazy that cause problems

That is not how safety engineering works.

If an individual being lazy or making a mistake means the whole thing blows up, you just made disaster inevitable because people will sometimes be lazy.

But good design and good organizational design can nearly eliminate entire classes of failure modes.

The real big problem is creating durable organizational culture that can last for the decades the plant is operational. Maintenance and training are annoying to deal with and get in the way of short term profits. The work culture has to be able to strongly resist these forces for a few generations of employees. From new plant with the builder available all the way to when it is deeply out of date and eventually needs to wind down operations and get decommissioned.

Life cycle management of major projects is challenging in governments with low turnover and long time horizons. Its extremely difficult in the private sector where management can change at the drop of a hat.

34

HoundsOfChaos t1_is9kiip wrote

>The real big problem is creating durable organizational culture that can last for the decades the plant is operational.

More than anything, this is what worries me. It's not just operating the plants, it's the whole chain, including waste management. Can we trust that our safety culture will still be intact in 50 years from now? What about 100 years?

We can be optimistic and hope so, but there's just no guarantee.

That's a pretty bold bet with hazardous material dumped in various locations that can be dangerous for hundreds of years or even longer (and not just nuclear waste, btw).

2

Tubtimgrob t1_is94fsk wrote

And the only way a work culture can resist errors is through a rigid system of processes, error identification, feedback and tedious repetition.

1

blastuponsometerries t1_isar0yj wrote

I think that is too gloomy of a lens. Maybe you are correct with regards to maintenance schedules. But there is so much more then that.

If an organization is too rigid, it won't be able to respond effectively to newly arising problems. A lot of it comes down to a few basic principles (they are just hard to do consistently).

One major piece is empowering the low-level employees that are actually doing the real work and day to day interactions with the equipment. That means sometimes they are going to raise problematic issues at inconvenient times.

Are these individuals punished or ignored? Or are they taken seriously and allowed to make consequential decisions, like stopping work until a problem is solved? The Toyota Production System is famous for this feature. A line worker can shut down a whole production train if they find a defect at great cost to the company. Yet, over time the company understands that solving defects early on is overall far far cheaper then allowing them to accumulate silently.

But that means a specific plant can't only be judged on total output at any given time, so the incentives and directives given to middle management have to align with longer term company goals. The work culture has to incorporate these ideas into everyday operations, not just tacked on as an afterthought.

A second major piece involves looking at top level design and revisit periodically as time goes by. Etc...

1

Tubtimgrob t1_isdtj8j wrote

You are highlighting the freedom aspects of a quality system and everything you say is correct. But you will also know that it all still needs to exist within a rigid system. The system is routinely updated based on feedback and the expertise of employees. On a daily basis it's still a framework with strict rules and procedures. The culture must exist inside that framework with the power and authority to make improvements.

Toyota is a good example. They pioneered a lot of quality principles. Yes, a worker can shut down production - if shutting down is part of the process. Not if they suddenly feel like it. Can the employee ask for the process to change because they have a better practice? Of course. The system restricts the individual in certain tasks, so they have time and power to do other things. Besides, all Toyota production is done by robots. Why? To avoid variation and increase performance. In other words, humans are slow and erratic. Automation is now replacing many retail jobs for the same reason.

This may seem gloomy and tedious, but it's the main way companies stay competitive. I also believe philosophy should spend more time on these principles. They are the only solution to urgent problems in larger society.

1

NotACockroach t1_is7f04p wrote

People are stupid and lazy. If something depends on people not being stupid and lazy to be safe, then it's unsafe.

9

AduroTri t1_is7x6qk wrote

Well, the thing is, you have to make it reasonably easy and simple to check it and make sure there are at least 3:1 ratio of competent people that will actively do the job and know what they're doing.

I mean if the philosophy of giving a difficult job to a lazy person so they could find the most efficient route applies here. Then great.

0

TheRoadsMustRoll t1_is76ax3 wrote

>It's just people being stupid and lazy that cause problems.

but that has been the major problem with fossil fuels. its been known since the industrial revolution that adding CO^(2) to the atmosphere would increase global warming. 100 years later and we're still arguing about it while suffocating. had we taken action early on we could have mitigated a lot of the problems.

i'm all for switching to nuclear with that issue nailed down in advance: Once we identify (publicly and transparently) how the industry should operate any deviation would be a criminal offense.

So that sticky safety valve at 3 mile island that the designer knew about but didn't replace? Prison time for that board of directors. That experimental overheating paradigm they were trying at Chernobyl? Life in prison for anybody signing off on those gymnastics.

in my mind it's not about switching to a new source; it's about operating outside of the stupid-box.

6

Sovhan t1_is7hn69 wrote

Modern reactors are foolproof, and nowhere near resembling the design of the Chernobyl ones. Meaning that even if nothing is done ( as in, "there is no human intervention possible, and/or no control available" ) the reaction will shutdown itself by lack of moderator. And even if a nefarious agent was to still force corium creation, the underbellies of reactor vessels now make the corium deposit thinner, stopping the reaction altogether.

And even if all these passive protections were folded by heavily modifying the powerplant at the cost of billions, you would still endanger "only" a 200km² area (size of the Chernobyl no go zone, and this is a worst case scenario as the Fukushima accident proved by only having a risk zone just around the power plant, and the city having residual radioactivity bellow safety standards.) If you weigh this against risking the destruction of all our support ecosystems; there's no need to be awfully bright to understand the non issue the is nuclear energy.

1

TheRoadsMustRoll t1_is7ku9y wrote

>Modern reactors are foolproof

this is exactly the stupid-box that we need to be out of imo.

i remember that oil rig in the gulf that had a "foolproof" valve that would disengage from the well in case there was a leak. there was a leak and it didn't disengage and it leaked for months and they couldn't figure out how to shut it off (to my knowledge its still leaking today.)

I've studied engineering. nothing is foolproof.

try this: "there's absolutely no risk" -full stop stupidity.

or this: "passive protections" -institutionalized complacency.

try throwing in "modern algorithms" which are "foolproof" and have many "passive protections" in place.

i don't buy any of it and you shouldn't either. this mentality is what stops me from advocating nuclear energy because its the exact same mentality that gave us problems with fossil fuels.

imho.

−5

Sovhan t1_is7nioc wrote

So you tell me you don't understand that by design, if the water inside the reactor boils the reaction stops, is foolproof? This means you don't believe in the absoluteness of the laws of physics. Big claim on your part.

When I say that current gen are foolproof, I mean they are humanproof. You would have to literally distort the functional possibilities of physics to have a meaningful accident, or cause a literal cataclysm on the site of the powerplant that would make the underlying nuclear accident a joke in comparison.

The reactors do no rely on valves or other complicated industrial design gor security. They rely on basic geometry and physics. If you don't want to hear that from a lowly internet lurker, i can understand, but refuting an expert on the subject would be much harder; so i invite you to read :

Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima by James Mahaffey, an actual seasoned nuclear energy scientist and PhD.

5

Xjsar t1_is7nrv9 wrote

I honestly don't know what your experience is with nuclear, but seriously look into it. It's not just a single save all fulcrum device like on an oil rig. There are safeties upon safeties upon safeties.

Palo Verde nuclear plant near Phoenix, from what little I know have at a minimum 3, redundancies for any major system on top of redundancies for those systems. Not to mention the insane safety precautions and procedures required for anything to happen.

Thats not to say shit doesn't happen or won't happen. At least in the US, the regulation bodies are beyond anal about keeping things safe. Reactor technology is lightyears ahead of what it was decades ago making it incredibly safe and viable for energy production.

To say anything can fail is why I don't like it is ignorant.

4

TxAho t1_is8pk93 wrote

Please go look up void coefficients in reactor physics. Positive vs. negative makes a big difference.

1

AduroTri t1_is7xn6t wrote

If something is foolproof, the universe will give us a greater fool.

0

madmanthan21 t1_is8k9r8 wrote

If the greater fool can break the laws of physics, that's even better, means our understanding of them was wrong, and now we can improve it.

2

AduroTri t1_isa8mub wrote

And then the universe will refine the fool and give us an even more foolish one.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people, especially when they're in large groups.

0