Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. I have to wonder: to what extent did the usability, or lack thereof, of the control room instruments contribute to the disaster? I mean, just imagine trying to make sense of a reactor’s status from this panel indicating fuel rod positions. (The complete gallery has more interesting pictures)

Wikipedia’s article on the disaster has this telling quote:

The unstable state of the reactor was not reflected in any way on the control panel, and it does not appear that anyone in the reactor crew was fully aware of danger.

Still — even if the “unstable state” was reflected somewhere on that massive control console, would anyone have been able to find it in the haystack of instruments?

The Three Mile Island accident is another example of how control console complexity can contribute to exacerbating emergency situations. Again, in that accident, there was no reliable instrument to indicate the statuses of various critical components that had failed. Another telling quote:

There is general consensus that the accident was exacerbated by incorrect decisions made because the operators were overwhelmed with information, much of it irrelevant, misleading, or incorrect.

I’m not convinced that control room “habitability” has improved much since these accidents occurred. Just have a look at this section of the newly-refurbished Pickering A Unit 1’s control room and you’ll see that the instrument panels are just as complex as ever. I worry — if another serious incident were to occur in a nuclear reactor today, would the operators be able to correctly interpret their instrument panels in time in order to prevent an accident?

I leave you with this sobering view of reactor #4’s control room as it sits today, courtesy of Robert Polidori.

This appeared in the The Globe and Mail a little while ago:

It’s a ritual. You walk up to an intersection, press the little pedestrian button that is supposed to change the traffic lights for you, and nothing happens for a long, long time. In this computer-controlled age, you are merely letting the traffic light know you are there. It won’t do anything until its next natural cycle.

And sometimes it won’t do anything at all. New York City’s Department of Transportation acknowledge the other day that 80 per cent of the 3,250 buttons in New York were deactivated long ago, even though the official signs telling pedestrians to push the button to cross the street remain in place. They encourage pressing engagement even as they cause people to miss pressing engagements.

Still, it’s not worth hitting the panic button. That’s probably a sham, too.

… and now for something light-hearted: How to tell when your cat has been on your keyboard.

Jul 15 22:17:10 jupiter kernel: atkbd.c: Keyboard on isa0060/serio0 reports too many keys pressed.
Jul 15 22:18:00 jupiter last message repeated 33 times

Haha!

Finally, Toronto has its own Craig’s List!