The Rub

And here it is the low down, the rub.
The reason why no matter how technical, how over engineered, how much money you spend, how well designed, how well trained your staff, nuclear energy will always be deadly and dangerous..........




HUMANS


I've just been watching an EDF propoganda video about the components of a nuclear reactor, they show this CGI video of all the bolts and everything being assembled. Something that on the face of it quite seems small & is extremely obvious hit me, you cant gain access and physically inspect what is going on in the way with any other kind of engineered device that you could think of including spaceships. All of these controls and safety systems and the best minds in the business are brought to bear on the issues of what is what and what could go wrong. And where does all of this get us when the shit hits the fan? Absolutely nowhere, there is a concept called the law of uninintended consequences, that anyone who has come across or studied systems thinking will be familiar with. This law says that no matter what you do, there will always be unintended consequences that are impossible to predict as they arise of out of interactions between the different components of the system. the more complex the system and its components and the more complex the relationships the more complex and numerous and difficult to predict are the consequences that arise.

Now consider that humans are just another component in this system, and that humans have a multitude of ways they could responses in any given situation. This in itself introduces a highly unpredicatable component of the system and eventualities that you can't design for.

Voila!
You have all of the ingredients you need for disaster:
A highly technical piece of engineering
It is so irradiated it can't be physically de-constructed and examined close up.
Humans ultimately are in control and interact with the control systems, including the ability to override safety systems!

Despite all of the instrumentation the operators are in essence working blindly when operating a reactor.You only have to look at all of the disasters and near misses that have happened they are often the failure of small seemingly insignificant parts such as bolts, valves etc, this is then usually escalated into a disaster by human expectation and interpretation of what the instrumentation is telling them. At this point, things are escalated further because they can't physically inspect and look at the parts of the machine to verify for themselves, what the instruments are telling them.

The new generation of reactors being built in France Finland China and now the UK are all subject to the issues discussed above, no exceptions. In addition to that, economic risks and financial viability have been prime consideration to such a large extent during the design stage that here in both Finland France & the UK they're struggling to get the reactor designs to meet 'basic principles of reactor design'.

You cant even take any reassurance from the so-called preparedness of authorities in the event of a disaster,from how the operators perceive it and react, to how the authorities walk with it (time & again they play down what's really happening, either trying to avoid panic or to save their own skin), to the media, and even the emergency services, just look at London our capital, and how authorities and emergency services struggled to cope with even an event such as 7/7.



Nope that's the rub...as long as human error is a possibility (and it always will be) risks such as nuclear power are just not justifiable - the stakes are too high and the danger too inherant.