Stuff Happens

I once had the privilege of working two summers at a nuclear fuel processing plant in NY.  They didn't generate power there, just store and repackage nuclear waste.  I often joke that what I did there was cut radioactive grass with a radioactive lawnmower -- but that's a pretty apt description.  So one day I'm mowing along when I see something shiny in the grass.  I stop the mower and just before I pick up the plumber's wrench (lying 50 feet from the nearest building) I had a better idea.  I called over a safety tech to look at the wrench.  It pegged his Geiger counter!  It was hotter than blazes, throwing off rads like crazy and it's lying in the middle of the lawn.  How did it get there?  Even though all tools were supposed to be marked and traceable, we never figured out how it got there.  Things like that happened there with some frequency.  Things happened that weren't supposed to happen.

Naturally some of those memories are coming back these days as I see the damaged power plants in Japan.  The question of safe power will be back on the table now for awhile.  No one expected tsunami damage on the scale that NE Japan received last week.  But it happened any way.  Things happened that weren't supposed to happen.

Whatever forms of electrical power generation or motive power we use in the coming years had better  make allowances for human error, acts of nature, or other things that aren't supposed to happen. Because things happen that aren't supposed to happen.

Isn't it time we learned to expect the unexpected?