Operating as Experimenting: Synthesizing Engineering and Scientific Values in Nuclear Power Production

Abstract

Four hundred seventy-six nuclear power plants are in operation or under construction around the world. Are concepts for designing and operating plants safely sufficient? Conventional approaches are premised on expectations of predictability and control of radiation release and on assumptions that plant operations are closed systems. Field observations in the industry find, however, that the periodic necessity to refuel, test safety equipment, and continuously upgrade plant designs introduces challenges to control not originally calculated. The social and cultural contexts of markets, regulation, and work systems create additional contingencies. In this dynamic environment, reactor operations produce invaluable data about the states of the entire technology and organizational system. Rereading these dynamics as "experiments" suggests an alternative epistemology that synthesizes science's values of doubt, discovery, and documentation with engineering's values of efficiency, optimization, and problem solving. This redefines plant-based risk handlers as ethologists, geologists, and anthropologists of an ecology of visible and invisible hazards.

The nuclear power industry as an alternative analogy for safety in anaesthesia and a novel approach for the conceptualisation of safety goals

“…The US nuclear power industry has undergone significant cultural change and system re‐design in the pursuit of safety over its lifetime – spending vastly more time and money on safety than the health care industry. The nuclear power industry has also made early use of incident monitoring and simulation training to improve safety [15, 17]. A wealth of documentation and systems analyses exist for cases of significant system failure in the nuclear industry, whereas significant system failure in anaesthesia is relatively under‐documented, and what documentation there is tends to focus on blaming individuals rather than on an analysis of the system.…”

Geological Disposal of Radioactive Waste: A Long-Term Socio-Technical Experiment

“…Schot and Rip 1997;von Schomberg 2013;Owen et al 2013). Another approach is to reduce complexity to the degree possible by means of simplifying system architectures (Weyer 1995;Perin 1998). We argue that the longterm RWM technology of GD as proposed by the international radwaste community offers a rather outstanding effort to pursue the latter approach.…”

Introduction

“…While studying for her master's in city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania (1967) in a program joining architects, planners, and landscape architects, she began to consider how they and social scientists might collaborate. With Man in Mind (Perin 1970) proposed concepts and methods for relating their perspectives. Her second career in anthropology began when she received a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago (1972) and a Ph.D. from The American University (1975).…”

“…Her second career in anthropology began when she received a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago (1972) and a Ph.D. from The American University (1975). In Everything in Its Place: Social Order and Land Use in America (Perin 1977), she drew on her earlier field experiences in planning and zoning studies to reconsider the history and continuing power of the category and belief systems underlying prevalent land use patterns that produce widespread housing and educational discrimination in metropolitan areas. She interviewed entrepreneurs, public leaders, and citizens in two metropolitan areas for their &dquo;habits of thought&dquo; and treated their technical conventions, economic practices, and social customs as &dquo;elemental facts&dquo; in their own right.…”

“…She interviewed entrepreneurs, public leaders, and citizens in two metropolitan areas for their &dquo;habits of thought&dquo; and treated their technical conventions, economic practices, and social customs as &dquo;elemental facts&dquo; in their own right. Continuing her concern with social order in Belonging in America: Reading Between the Lines (Perin 1988), she explored the ways in which middle-class systems of meanings deal with ambiguity. In this book based on interviews with middle-class white Americans living in the suburbs of five major cities, Perin investigated the symbols and meanings which &dquo;block belonging and thriving in America&dquo; (Perin 1988, 23).…”