Human Error
Humankind
has created a technology we cannot control.” Martin
Rees, world-renowned cosmologist and Britain’s Astronomer Royal.
 |
| Photo © Boyd Norton |
Human Error
Humankind
has created a technology we cannot control.” Martin
Rees, world-renowned cosmologist and Britain’s Astronomer Royal.
Audubon magazine published my
article on the Three Mile Island accident in May of 1980, a little over a year
after the TMI meltdown happened. I traveled widely during that year, visiting nuclear plants,
attending hearings in Washington, observing an actual test in Idaho of the loss
of coolant experienced by TMI. While gathering material for the article, I visited
a nuclear power plant under construction in North Carolina. I remember how I
leaned over the temporary railing and stared down into a gargantuan pressure
vessel at Duke Power’s McGuire Nuclear Generating Station, under construction
near Charlotte, North Carolina. Blinding blue-white arcs of welding torches
imparted an eerie, almost stroboscopic glow to the smooth interior of the great
stainless steel container that was being put together, piece by piece. This was
the crucial vessel that would restrain the nuclear fission while withstanding
enormous internal pressures and searing bombardment by neutrons and gamma rays.
And I wondered at the time:
How
do you build the perfect machine? For it takes nearly that to contain and
control the fission process safely.
How
do you guard against
the
hung-over welder
the
foreman whose wife just left him
the stoned
and careless electrician
the negligent
draftsman
the engineer
appeasing management
the
inspector fearful of losing his job
the
inexperienced designer
the
alcoholic manager making decisions
the
incompetent reactor operator
or
the CEO whose primary concern is profits?
In
the end, every nuclear accident can be traced to human error since it is humans
who design, build and operate nuclear reactors.
This is an excerpt from my newest book Tickling the Dragon's Tail, being completed. For those who might be interested here is the first chapter published last fall in the literary magazine, The Kenyon Review. It's about the day I blew up a nuclear reactor - deliberately. Link
