RE: OT: Three-Mile Island Events

From: <Bruce>
Date: Fri Apr 02 2004 - 09:21:00 EST

It amazes me that educated people continue to think that "engineers" should be able to design and install any system (simple or complex) to be completely fail-proof. Everything becomes obvious in hind-site.

I spent part of 7 years working on TMI cleanup. I got to know the situation fairly well. I even interviewed for a maintenance supervisor job at a sister plant. There were plenty of problems, some are design and engineering related, but the issue of corporate culture (management) and regulatory issues (again, management) were the biggest factors. I suppose we can all point fingers and live in fear, and we as designers and engineers need to take full advantage of peer review and codes to do our best to prevent disaster, but they will continue to happen - especially those that are multiple event causes.

                ... Bruce D. Bullough ...
                Sebesta Blomberg & Associates
                2381 Rosegate
                Roseville, MN  55113    USA
                651-634-7344 direct
                651-634-7400 FAX
                www.sebesta.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Bowers [mailto:pbowers@pipingdesign.com] Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 10:15 PM
To: <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=UFgVca5PCYUQgkAmJ_DGQC5BAhrdfgXltrSZnJMLdObEZAHH2mNd21pjbQllkHuUHbnvFuYdTnQ2D02LYUl1yHWbPyQ">PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com</a> Subject: [PipingDesign] OT: Three-Mile Island Events [bcc][faked-from][bayes]

Interesting discussion about the build-up to the shutdown:

<a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=101979&cid=8695178&threshold=-1&mode">http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=101979&cid=8695178&threshold=-1&mode</a> =nested&commentsort=0

or

<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?I10125AE7">http://makeashorterlink.com/?I10125AE7</a>

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Yahoo! Groups Links Received on Fri Apr 02 09:21:00 2004