Not a nuke plant, thank goodness

[KLA2]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/29/florid ... index.html

(CNN) -- Preliminary results of an investigation show that Tuesday's massive power outage in Florida was caused by human error, Florida Power and Light President Armando Olivera said Friday.

A field engineer was diagnosing a switch that had malfunctioned at FPL's Flagami substation in west Miami.

Without authorization, the engineer disabled two levels of relay protection, Olivera said.

"This was done contrary to FPL's standard procedures and established practices," he said.

Standard procedures do not allow the simultaneous removal of both levels of protection.

"We don't know why the employee took it upon himself to disable both sets of relays," he added ...

... The error affected 584,000 FPL customers, Olivera said. Another 500,000 non-FPL customers also lost power.

That translates to about 3 million people

[pmcolt]

Maybe I should send my resume to Florida Power and Light. I suspect they're going to have an opening for a field engineer in the near future, and the last guy set the bar pretty low.

Not to be too hard on the guy. No one notices engineers until they make a mistake. Still... engineers just can't let themselves make mistakes like this. On the plus side, the nuclear reactors' safety systems did exactly what they were supposed to do and shut down safely.

[KLA2]

Maybe I should send my resume to Florida Power and Light. I suspect they're going to have an opening for a field engineer in the near future, and the last guy set the bar pretty low.

Not to be too hard on the guy. No one notices engineers until they make a mistake. Still... engineers just can't let themselves make mistakes like this. On the plus side, the nuclear reactors' safety systems did exactly what they were supposed to do and shut down safely.

Yes.

My point was ... the safety systems (designed by brilliant engineers) can be circumvented by (brilliant?) engineers, resulting in catastrophe.

Familiarity breeds contempt? Arrogance? Desperation?

When the stakes are only your own life, that is one thing. When the stakes are the livelihood and lives of others, that is quite another.