Nuke’em ‘Till They Glow »

Steve Blank talks about his job as an electrical engineer in a nuclear reactor in the 50s.

Steve’s mention of seeing Cerenkov radiation for the first time reminded me of a school excursion to the reactor at ANSTO, and the strange, at once both attractive and repulsive, thought that I had to dive into the fuel rod storage pool. Our guide at the time figured I’d be OK, as long as I didn’t go more than 3 meters deep, or stay in too long. In the end, I erred to stay on the dry side.

Preventing errors: Looking for ugly »

Kevin Kelly:

Preventing errors within extremely complicated technological systems is often elusive. The more complex the system, the more complex the pattern of error. But a curious thing happens in systems that are kept relatively error free: as major errors are prevented, it gets more difficult to forecast future major errors — because so few happen! In these kind of mission-critical systems the genesis profile of a major failure may be unknown because major failures are so rare.