How the Next US Nuclear Accident Might Happen

Lasrick writes: Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson analyzes safety at US nuclear facilities and finds a disaster waiting to happen due to an over-reliance on automated security technology and private contractors cutting corners to increase profits. Gusterson follows on the work of Eric Schlosser, Frank Munger, and Dan Zak in warning us of the serious problems at US nuclear facilities, both in the energy industry and in the nuclear security complex.

Comments

Antropologist

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone unqualified to access the safety of nuclear power plants declares them unsafe.

Re:Antropologist

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Someone unqualified to access the safety of nuclear power plants declares them unsafe.

Did you bother to even skim the article? It was essentially entirely focused on human and organizational risk factors, the sort of thing that anthropologists do actually study, in US nuclear facilities and preferred methods of securing them.

If the concern is "will the roof resist a hardware-store-improv mortar attack?", sure you don't want an anthropologist on the job. If the concern is "so, will the guards notice, give a damn, and do something about it; or will I just have to walk past a token force optimized for cheating its way to passing grades during perfunctory audits at lowest possible cost?", that's an anthropological question. And the answer appears to tend toward the latter.

Just private contractors?

[Fire_Wraith]

He thinks it's just private contractors that cut corners to save money?

That's adorable.

Re:Anthropologist

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he really doesn't do anything. There doesn't appear to be any study, only the subjective (i.e., qualitative) third party claims, which doesn't mean that they are wrong, just that he didn't do anything himself. He does however launch an attack at quantitative methodology, which isn't a surprise, given that his article approach is a defence of his own field, at heart: If you can measure it, it is by default open to quantitative assessment.

This applies to scales (hello psychometrics) which are almost never measured without error (heh, look: Error in variables and latent measurement models!), open ended responses (latent direlecht allocation models and similar) and multiple measurements from different sources (back to reliability and latent measurement models). He is right in principal, and makes the point in the article that having poor test security and design (where the testees' employers have access to, or even provide the examinations and assessments themselves) is wrong, and that systems that provide too many false positives are ignored.

The correct approach to the final system would be a layered system, in which sensitivity increases with depth. As for assessments: no shit, don't let people grade themselves. Ever. And impose penalties and randomly conducted tests by third parties. If you want to hire this out: make it so that whoever succeeds get a bonus. Make the two sides compete. This only defines why QA is of vital importance.

Re:Profit over safety

[Anonymous Coward]

And I provided a refutation to his points, regardless of whether he is or not. If he's speaking hypothetically, then his lack of knowledge proves that he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's another old argument that can easily be disproven. Like how "old nuclear plants are less safe", even though the oldest plants in the country today are orders of magnitude safer now than they were when they were built.

I sure hope he doesn't get on an airplane run by a private company - by his logic only the government should be allowed to run airlines. I can think of nothing more terrifying or uneconomic.

Re:Profit over safety

[rtb61]

Private corporations also generate "stifling, inattentive bureaucracy, under motivated employees", this as a direct result of nepotism and of course under paying and overworking employees that corporations routinely treat as disposable.

So private corporations exhibit all the worst behaviour of government organisation they just another layer of crap on top being greed and egocentric management and nepotism.

Seriously Wall street should be gutted and no corporation should ever be allowed to be worth more than a billion dollars unless it is willing to abandon the protection of limited liability for share holders. Share holders in over sized corporations should be fully liable for those debts generated by those corporations due to the impact upon society when they inevitably fail.

Re:Wrong about automation and profit

[circletimessquare]

The article carries echoes of the "profit is evil and government is good" mantra so popular lately.

that's a false dichotomy that only appeals to a simpleton

profit taking cannot occur without the stability and security established by government. likewise, government cannot exist without tapping into the profits it makes possible. government without the individual pursuit of capital is hell. and the social darwinistic pursuit of capital be damned the externalities is a simply another flavor of hell

it's just ignorance to imagine that capitalism and government are enemies. one does not exist without the other