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I think navy nuclear culture has changed quite a bit for the better since then. All of the officers and petty officers I have talked to are at least as conscious of rad safety as the civilian techs.

On the radiology and nuclear medicine side, air force and navy techs seem a lot more rad safety conscious than the army people I have met.

2 comments

I read that in the exact opposite way.

Having whoever screwed up worst buy everyone else beer each week strikes me as a very good way to shame that person, and encourage people to try to avoid being that guy.

Yes, it is done in a joking manner, and it is accepted that everyone will be that guy some time. But I know how I'd react.

Sounds like something that I have seen/heard at a couple of dev shops. Break the build, buy doughnuts for your team. Not too expensive so as to ruin the person, but enough of a token that you think about what you're doing.

Another variation from http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html, item 3, break the build, it is now your job to shepherd the daily build until someone else breaks it.

That actually seems a lot more severe a form of punishment than buying donuts. Release management can be a full-time gig.

(Aside: how many articles was Joel planning on writing when he came up with that URL scheme? Crikey.)

That actually seems a lot more severe a form of punishment than buying donuts. Release management can be a full-time gig.

Some teams want everyone to be familiar with how they do it. If that is your goal, you have to pick the unlucky person in some way.

I've always been a bit bemused that any branches other than the Navy are operating reactors. At least, until there are nuclear aircraft and tanks!

Due to Idaho, I think the army may have the worst accidents per hours operating ratio.

For those who don't know, rdl is referencing the SL-1 accident (involving an Army operated research reactor in Idaho):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

To this day it remains one of the worst reactor accidents, with design and operational mistakes on the scale of Chernobyl. It's enormously fortunate that the reactor was fairly small.

Not exactly -- the reactor did shut down "safely", just not fast enough to avoid a steam explosion. Chernobyl was dangerous because it had a positive "void coefficient": the more the coolant boils, the more reactive the core becomes. It's easy to see why this is a bad thing.

SL-1 had a negative void coefficient: as the coolant boils off, fewer neutrons are slowed down to speeds where they can be readily captured by fuel and the reaction slows down, creating a negative feedback loop. This type of passive safety is all but mandatory in modern reactor designs. SL-1 blew up because the feedback loop lagged behind the pressure buildup by a few milliseconds, and it spontaneously disassembled (kaboom). No meltdown, no china syndrome -- just a bunch of fuel all over the place and a guy impaled on the ceiling.