Humans make mistakes all the time, yet nuclear power is extremely safe. A wide range of precautions and protocols are in place to ensure nuclear safety, starting from the work culture. This interesting video by Smarter Every Day shows the refueling process of a nuclear reactor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0afQ6w3Bjw
While seeing insides of a nuclear reactors and how they're refueled is interesting, I find the safety&security processes and practices around the process even more interesting.
This video gives you some idea why nuclear power-related accidents are so rare. People do make mistakes, but the overlapping and multilayered safety&security processes catch the mistakes before they can lead to bigger problems.
There are things to learn here for even the world outside of the nuclear industry:
- Having a work culture that encourages reporting mistakes without reprisal and reprimand helps catch issues early, as they are more likely to be reported.
- Identifying the critical systems and having layered safety&security is important. Not everything needs to be super tight. Applying the super tight rules everywhere would likely just make people ignore the rules, at least in part.
- Training is important. Understanding the reason why tight safety/security is in place in a system is crucial. With this understanding, it is more likely that the rules are obeyed.