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When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

practical.engineering

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Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#51

Post by jrjeksjd8d »

12_throw_away wrote: post #33
daymanstep wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they made critical material purchasing decisions based on what some guy thinks he heard in a meeting, rather than official written documents written by and cross-checked by multiple engineers.

> I'm surprised they made critical material purchasing decisions based on what some guy thinks he heard in a meeting Right? We don't store nuclear waste where I work ... BUT one time we needed to buy a bunch of ethernet cables, basically the same thing. We wrote down our requirements, came up with some options. The engineers evaluated the options before purchasing and checked what we received before installing it. Th…

The difference is that in a large organization the people documenting the procedure, the people doing the procurement, the people receiving the order and the people packing the drums are all different people. Potentially in different buildings. You can't expect the original scientist who wrote the white paper based on experiments in a glovebox to be present every time they pack waste into drums.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#52

Post by PaulHoule »

cperciva wrote: post #30
bloomingeek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess, they were afraid to ruffle the feathers of their higher-ups. Yes, that's moronic, but this is the world we can find ourselves in IF the bosses are egotistical kingdom makers.

Right, people need to feel empowered and not just worried about ruffling feathers.

The second accident here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents

was an example of where that "empowerment" went wrong. It is usual for workers in Japanese factories to make continuous improvements in process for quality and cost and it is usually a good thing... but criticality accidents involve invisible dangers and "following procedures strictly" in that kind of work saves lives.

Notably Japan has been the world leader in nuclear accidents since the 1980s and some of that is that they kept working on things like fast reactors after many other countries quit and others that are cultural. For instance at American BWR reactors it is routine to test the isolation condenser whenever the reactor is shut down so everybody knew what it sounded like (LOUD!) when it worked but when somebody at Fukushima was asked if it was working they saw a little steam coming out the ports but had never seen it work before and didn't know what to expect.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#53

Post by mikestorrent »

rmonvfer wrote: post #45

Love this part “It’s almost unbelievable that we entrust ourselves - squishy, sometimes hapless bags of water, meat, and bones - to navigate protocols of such profound complexity needed to safely take advantage of radioactive materials.” Maybe it’s just me but I feel like that all the time, not specifically about radioactive stuff, but about other highly complex and regulated environments where a simple mistake can h…

> there are so many ... and yet many incidents take place every year

If there weren't so many of us, it would be a lot harder to accept the losses.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#54

Post by PaulHoule »

csours wrote: post #44

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge Well, I knew what I meant. I tried to commit documentation to our source repository; I was told to upload it to the documentation site instead. The documentation site that we've used for one year, subsequent to the previous documentation site the we used for 3 years, subsequent to the previous documentation site that we used for 5 years. Following the trend, by the end of…

I have a strong preference for checking in docs with the source code but I'm a software dev.

We have a data team where I work that has a huge Confluence Wiki that helps them maintained shared reality about procedures and standards. I never log into it, if I need to know something from their point of view I go next door and ask one of them.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#55

Post by ceejayoz »

gambiting wrote: post #38
hinkley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find it terrifying that even robots couldn’t survive the Chernobyl hot zone.

They could, if they were specced correctly. Wasn't the story that they intentionally requested robots hardened against lower radiation level than required to not disclose the true extent of the catastrophe? So the German company that built them underspecced the shielding and so they died quickly.

The real story is a little less dramatic - it got stuck, and that meant it was exposed to the radiation for much longer than planned.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#56

Post by cperciva »

PaulHoule wrote: post #52
cperciva wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, people need to feel empowered and not just worried about ruffling feathers.

The second accident here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents was an example of where that "empowerment" went wrong. It is usual for workers in Japanese factories to make continuous improvements in process for quality and cost and it is usually a good thing... but criticality accidents involve invisible dangers and "following procedures strictly" in that kind of work saves lives. Notably Japan ha…

Let me rephrase that. People need to feel empowered to stop a potentially dangerous process. They definitely shouldn't be empowered to implement new dangerous processes without external review.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#57

Post by PaulHoule »

cperciva wrote: post #56
PaulHoule wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second accident here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents was an example of where that "empowerment" went wrong. It is usual for workers in Japanese factories to make continuous improvements in process for quality and cost and it is usually a good thing... but criticality accidents involve invisible dangers and "following procedures strictly" in that kind of work saves lives. Notably Japan ha…

Let me rephrase that. People need to feel empowered to stop a potentially dangerous process. They definitely shouldn't be empowered to implement new dangerous processes without external review.

Or modify them. For instance the people at Tokaimura felt empowered to take steps to speed up the mixing, that, plus them mixing a higher enrichment blend led to disaster.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#58

Post by PaulHoule »

hinkley wrote: post #31
foobarbecue wrote: post #19

I did a sort of internship at Los Alamos which involved building some drones. A year or two later I got a call from my advisor there, out of the blue asking me if I had anything immediately available that could do recon underground effectively. I didn't really, so I declined. I asked what they needed it for and he said it would be easier if I got the info from the news. That was kinda terrifying ... turned out to be…

I still find it terrifying that even robots couldn’t survive the Chernobyl hot zone.

Electronics tend to fail at dosages (20 greys or so) similar to what destroys your nervous system.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#59

Post by PaulHoule »

foobarbecue wrote: post #19

I did a sort of internship at Los Alamos which involved building some drones. A year or two later I got a call from my advisor there, out of the blue asking me if I had anything immediately available that could do recon underground effectively. I didn't really, so I declined. I asked what they needed it for and he said it would be easier if I got the info from the news. That was kinda terrifying ... turned out to be…

I went to school in New Mexico and had really mixed feelings about the culture around Los Alamos and Sandia.

There are a lot of brilliant people there both in terms of science and project management. However, the best person I knew got driven out. But I think also a lot of nepotism and a security clearance culture that filters out really interesting people and leaves behind the dangerously milquetoast.

Re: When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

#60

Post by ninalanyon »

eqvinox wrote: post #43
echelon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> specced Totally orthogonal, but you just reminded me of a pet peeve I have. This word is correct, but I can't stand it. I wish we spelled this "specked", even though that has a homonym. Like trafficked, panicked, frolicking, etc. "specced" makes my brain wince.

> Like trafficked, panicked, frolicking, etc. Those aren't truncations of longer words though? I'd write it as spec'ed but that's German grammar with ' as a truncation mark (signifying the omitted "ifi").

It's also normal English usage.
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