Learning Form Failure

Energy Sector Analysis

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Energy Quarterly

416

Learning from failures

Angela Saini

Today’s complex energy systems are bound to fail under extreme or

unexpected conditions. Preparing for these rare events and containing the

damage is an essential part of managing such occurrences.

I

t is usually in the extremes, say if we lose a job or fall sick,

complex processes, and extreme heating and cooling. Some

that our characters are truly tested. This is something humans

risks are dramatic and insidious like those of nuclear reactors.

have in common with machines: The real measure of us both

Some are apparent like those of mining coal or deep sea oil

is not just in years of survival but in the way we respond to

drilling. Some are invisible like the emission of pollutants and

disaster. And that is certainly the case for the nuclear industry

carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion. According to Mifollowing the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Fukushima

chael Golay, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at

Daiichi power plant in Japan this spring.

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the major difference

Of the 440 reactors in safe operation around the world, this

at Fukushima Daiichi is that the accident was precipitated not by

is the one to have become the focus of debate on the future of

humans, but by a natural event—which is rare. “Usually when

atomic energy. Although China and India may need to press

you’re looking at technological disasters, the lessons are that

ahead with their ambitious plans for new reactors to match

somebody failed, that someone was careless in some important

growing energy demand, the failure at Fukushima has prompted

area. In the case of Fukushima, those lessons don’t apply. That

all countries to revisit safety standards and forensically pick

doesn’t mean that things won’t be learned, but they won’t be

apart the debris of the disaster to figure out what lessons can be

the more obvious...