Japanese talk of poor operating conditions at Byron Nuclear Power plant
For eight minutes, you’ve raised your middle finger to the meltdown gods,” one reactor operator said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If anything else happened in that window — and it’s a safe bet one problem causes another — you’re screwed.”
Without any operable safety equipment or a clear idea of what had caused the accident, operators knew the plant was vulnerable to any number of accident scenarios, ranging from the trivial to the catastrophic.
In the aftermath of the incident, the technical details didn’t bother the plant’s reactor operators — it had been an oddball event. The human element, however, was troubling.
