I have a cousin who is a shift captain at a nuclear power plant, and he tells me potentially dangerous "incidents" happen all the time, and many of them are not anomalous situations, they very often arise out of sheer stupidity, neglect, or even malice. Of course, most of them have no dire consequences, either automatic systems kick in as they are designed to do so, or human operators solve the problem safely. And yes, it is very true, even the worst of these designs has had a lot of very clever people work very hard to design and operate them safely.

The whole point is that we never hear about this, and that a culture has arisen of "controlling information flow", to prevent "public panic or misunderstanding", and "media exaggeration". This is not a problem peculiar to the nuclear power industry, it happens anywhere large numbers of human beings work together on complex projects with a potential for injury or death: just look at how many "close calls" there are in the airline industry and how few accidents actually happen. The close calls in nukes rarely get reported outside the "regulatory process".

The danger is that this benign conspiracy has a tendency to seduce us into a false sense of the inherent security of these devices. A lot of effort has gone into making and keeping nuclear power safe, even fail-safe, but there is a lot of effort going into keeping it efficient and profitable, too, and we must never forget these are conflicting and contradictory dynamics!

My cousin feels perfectly safe on his job, and he is amazed at how paranoid the press and public are about the technology. But when pressed, he is the first to admit that the only reason he feels that way is because of the enormous amount of regulation and oversight this industry is subjected to. He simultaneously holds two apparently contradictory opinions:

1) The regulation of the industry is exaggerated, often unnecessary, extremely expensive, and sometimes does more to aggravate the problems and risks than to mitigate them.

2) Without this regulation and oversight, economic pressure would inevitably lead management to cut corners and take chances, and accidents, perhaps even major ones, would be a lot more common than they are.

I will give you an example of this, one he feels very strongly about because he is involved in it as a technical manager. This relates not to a specific technical issue, but to an administrative one (in complex systems, there is little distinction between the two).

The industry used to be very keen on developing their staff. Active programs were supported that provided training and job advancement and long-term staff development. This was done with the cooperation of the unions, who found it in their interest for technical staff (plumbers, insulators, machinists, electricians, pipefitters, welders, etc) to be constantly trained and drilled, nuke-certified, and salaries and advancement were linked to their level of training. Utilities competed for these workers, and they did very well financially. A conscious effort was made to reward valued employees who chose not to go into the "management path", but who felt more comfortable on the purely technical end. For those of you who have been in the military, think "Warrant Officer", or "Senior NCO".

As the nuclear industry in the US declined, the number of these skilled employees relative to the jobs available increased, many of them went to other jobs in related industries. The industry no longer had to compete for these workers, and the incentive to keep them happy and in-house decreased. There is a constant effort to "streamline" operations so less and less of these expensive people are needed. More and more of this work was outsourced from in-house techs to specialized labor contractors, many of them employing foreign workers, so there was no market mechanism operating to counteract this trend. The result is that these specialized workers are becoming older, they are forced into accepting temp positions, in other words, the industry is mining its human resources, not growing them, a policy with safety implications just as severe as not doing preventative maintenance on valves and pumps when required. Does any of this sound familiar?

My cousin described this development ( with a bit of Cuban hyperbole, of course) thusly,

"Today, when the plant needs to go down for refueling or major maintenance, they send some guy into the midwest or the hills of Appalachia with a big ram's horn, where he lets out a long blast. Out of the hollers and small towns start to come out these old rednecks, wearing coveralls and sporting ZZ TOP beards, each carrying his own toolbox. They leave their unemployment lines and their jobs in the mines and make a damn good short term income at the nuke (they are damn good men), then they go home until the next call. But every year there are fewer of them, and they are older..."

Short term profit, long term problem, and no unions.