71–80 of 254 posts
Maybe just stop building nuclear weapons!? The last thing the world needs is more of this shit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you continued to read the article, you'd see that there was a culture of throwing caution to the wind to increase productivity at not only that lab, but other nuclear facilities around the world. Hell, the article even went on to say that workers at the facility even came up with a euphemism for orders that ignored basic safety protocols, they called them "Bubba said" orders. And the article said that after those…
> other nuclear facilities ... "Bubba said" orders Right, those Bubba said order are from a different lab, not the "profit motive" Los Alamos one.
With that said, I'm not sure it call all be attributed to a profit motive. The article also states that this lab was historically the best funded and generally considered above scrutiny, which led to a culture of arrogance.
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I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted but this is a very prevalent attitude at hazardous facilities that are run by contractors. In particular, when the hazards are relatively low probability events and there are perverse incentives to roll the dice in the name of productivity. In a previous job in a hazardous facility, I’ve had very senior managers sit me down to tell me I don’t want to get the reputation for slowi…
I think this is universal. The safety rules go so overboard that the critical ones get ignored with the stupid ones because employees don’t know which ones are the important ones. If everything is critical nothing is
Also:
“The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” ― Frédéric BastiatEarlier quoted context omitted.
I mean no, it's completely correct. Criticality happens when there's enough plutonium in a small enough space (or not enough plutonium, but in a space with a high density of neutron reflectors). The demon core incident(s), the Cecil Kelley criticality incident, and others don't involve explosives. Just read through the wikipedia list[0], and you'll see that causes included dropping a tungsten brick, an unexpected poo…
Those examples, especially the Demon Core, had much higher quantities of plutonium. The Demon Core [1] was a sphere of 6.2 kg of plutonium surrounded by neutron reflecting tungsten carbide. The photo in this article shows a few small sticks of plutonium. They are not in contact with each other. They are not surrounded by neutron reflecting materials. The chance of criticality in that configuration was insignificant.…
There are probably multiple facets to this story as the article alludes to: a government funded private lab raking in the big bucks and government trying to rein them in a bit with this violation in an overly punitive way. Rendering then useless so production goes elsewhere...
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Doesn’t that happen in every manufacturing or dangerous environment? I always assumed the bubba said or similar euphemisms exist everywhere
If true, that sounds like a serious indictment of manufacturing power sources with the ability to destroy a good portion of the Earth. That does remind me of the incident where a technician dropped a socket off a wrench and quite nearly detonated a 9 megaton bomb in Arkansas.
Many safety rules can be summed up as “don’t be a dumbass” but trying to proceduralize that can be difficult.
It’s part of the reason nuclear stuff is so expensive - you have to work to rule every single time.
I would have though the decision tree for placement of concentrated plutonium was firmly established after the demon core incidents, set roughly in stone as the following: Should I bring high purity plutonium samples together? | V Do you want to die a horrible radiated death taught in textbooks for decades? | | V V No. Yes | | V V Then don’t you’re fired. It seems like Los Alamos may be in need of a fresh printout of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is universal. The safety rules go so overboard that the critical ones get ignored with the stupid ones because employees don’t know which ones are the important ones. If everything is critical nothing is
Classic "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. Also: “The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” ― Frédéric Bastiat
Putting a profit motive anywhere near anything that is safety critical is almost never a good idea. Naval Nuclear Power has it's issues, yet it is so safe that we have almost no incidents. That's because things like this don't happen there due to the culture of safety. That said, this is about production rather than operation, but the overall communities are relatively small and aligned.
Designing things that verify previous steps before acting on the next step is a great way to do it.
Putting a profit motive anywhere near anything that is safety critical is almost never a good idea. Naval Nuclear Power has it's issues, yet it is so safe that we have almost no incidents. That's because things like this don't happen there due to the culture of safety. That said, this is about production rather than operation, but the overall communities are relatively small and aligned.
> Putting a profit motive anywhere near anything that is safety critical is almost never a good idea. Why? And exactly how do you mean that? Is the safety track record of private industry worse than that of eg non-profit or state owned industry.
You can always ensure the profitable accident level stays above this with steeper penalties from regulation though.
My favorite nuclear disaster! Criticality events. I lived in Los Alamos for a while. I looked into renting a studio space. I became curious about the property across the street from my prospective rental which was surrounded by a chain link fence with green canvas. I researched and learned it was the site of an original Manhattan site waste dump which had, a few years prior, been enclosed with a negative pressure ten…
I mean, are they wrong? By all conventional metrics, Los Alamos County is one of the healthiest counties in the country. Obviously there are major confounders, but if it doesn’t readily show in the data maybe zero concern is the right level.