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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.
Often big accidents are not caused by technology failing unexpectedly, but by not following procedures or bad decision making. So it seems to me that an antropologist might actually have useful things to say about the weakest links: human operators and their managers.
I am GM of a nuclear power plan and my bonus is based on the total production of my power plant. My engineering tells me I have to take an outage to fix a pump but if I do that I am going to mix my goal and I am not going to get as big a bonus. That is a fact. The chance that the power plant might melt down that is theoretical. I am not going to take a real loss for a theoretical one no matter how bad the theoretical loss might be. And that is why nuclear power plants can't be run by for profit companies.
You may have read the report of the USS Srark. This was a US naval ship fired on by an Iraqi F1. The facts of the case are that it was fired on and hit by two missiles and never fired a shot in defense or revenge. The captain was indicted and several officers were drummed out of the Navy. The official inquiry essentially blamed the ships officers. I looked more deeply into the matter a few months ago when I wanted to find out about possible reasons these guys weren't blown out of the water. Back to that later.
My research on the Stark indicated that most of the ship's defensive systems including two kinds of fire control radar and the PHALANX CIWS were offline awaiting parts or maintenance that needed to be done by a contractor in port.. The real cause of the ship's poor performance under fire was accounting procedures designed to provide an 80% readiness/50% cost solution. Instead of acknowledging the cause the Navy chose to blame the closest people to the incident and call it done.
Now the piracy incident. First, one of the comments says the pirates were in the big boat and the rafts were US Navy attacking it. I don't believe this to be true. I looked up comments on several forums found a consensus agreeing with a Youtube comment:
This happened in 2006, the ship in the video is the USS Cape St George and then video was shot from the USS Gonzalez. They didn't try to attack or board anything, we sent a boarding team to talk to them and they pointed an RPG at us. All of the mounts kept jamming because they had old shitty ammo sitting on them exposed to the weather for months and there are no sights on those weapons (you're supposed to walk fire onto targets, difficult to do when your weapon jams every 3 rounds). Source: I was there
The consensus was that the ammunition on the firing ship hadn't been properly kept dry, and was old. This causes jams. And they didn't do enough live-fire exercises to be able to reliably prevent this problem. Again, an 80%/50% solution. This isn't to say it's easy to hit small rafts in the dark with a jamming weapon but that's not the point. The Navy has all the latest whizbangery and night vision gear. Those rafts should have been shot up by the third burst.
A third happenstance, part of the Stark incident IIRC: The ship was carrying old missiles and had to dump them into the sea ASAP. This prevented returning fire on the attacking jet. My conclusion is that the US Navy has a firmly entrenched culture of saving money at the cost of readiness.
incomplete source: http://www.jag.navy.mil/librar...
All that said: Why should we believe that if general military readiness is flagging to save costs in official government programs the government would do any better than these contractors? A choice has to be made and stuck to: budget or safety. The half assing, ass grabbing, and ass covering needs to stop.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
My vote goes to the next nuclear accident being caused by environmentalists. Not direct sabotage, mind you, but protesting anything that might be done to upgrade or even maintain old plants or replace them with newer ones or safely store nuclear fuel. Then they'll say, "See how dangerous it is -- we told you so."
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Every time nuclear power comes up someone blames environmentalists for the industry's problems -- in this case before the problems have manifested. It's an article of faith.
So far as I can see there's only ever been one plant in the US that's ever been cancelled for environmental concerns is the proposed plant at Bodega Harbor, which as you can see on the map would have been right on top of the San Andreas fault. In every other case projects have been shut down after serious miscalculations in the industry's economic forecasting (e.g. lower energy prices in the 80s than anticipated in the 70s), often exacerbated by poor project management performance. In those cases environmentalists were just a convenient scapegoat for management screw-ups.
You can see that because after the very largest anti-nuclear protests in history -- against Seabrook in NH and Diablo Canyon -- the plants were built and put into operation anyway. If a company had a plant under construction that it could make money operating, that plant would get built, even if thirty thousand people turned out to protest.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.