November, 2014
‘Bigging Up’ Nuclear
The director of one of the companies I used to work for had a technique of getting contracts which is probably not that uncommon. He would get contracts with promises to deliver with ridiculous short time scales for delivery and also undercut the competitors on price. He then renegotiated the contract after a while once […]
Posted in Jobs and Economics | 3 Comments »
The Problem of Complex Systems
This post is a bit abstract but I hope it will help people understand the problems involved with dealing with complex systems. The reason it is abstract is because I want to make the ‘complex systems’ as simple as possible. We are told that nuclear is ‘certainly’ safe, that there is ‘no possibility’ of an […]
Posted in Accidents and Risks | No Comments »
The Problems Of Fail-safes and Redundancy
When discussing nuclear safety we are often told by the nuclear industry that they have ‘fail-safes’ , ‘built in redundancy’ etc that make their reactors ‘safe’. In this post I shall explore some of these claims. It will, hopefully, not bring up any surprises for people involved in nuclear safety but will hopefully be useful […]
Posted in Accidents and Risks | 2 Comments »