I think the design of these plants, at least the mechanical and electrical
systems, is considerably less sophisticated than you realize. (Hint, have you
ever read the comic strip "Dilbert"?)
The biggest problem is that these are difficult systems to design, and it is
hard to find enough people who are truly competent to design them. You can't
take the average college engineering student and convert him into someone who
can do this at a high level. And when it filters down to the companies and
employees that actually get hired to design these things, they are trying to do
it to make money so they are not hiring the best that they could hire. The
same thing happens in my branch of engineering. My feeling is that the plants
are too complicated and complication affects reliability.
> plants designed by the best and brightest who supposedly took every possible
> problem into consideration. As one writer said after the latest accident it
> will simply be a matter of time before some country becomes uninhabitable
> because of a nuclear accident.
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