Summary of Chris Clearfield & András Tilcsik's Meltdown

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Ventana Nuclear Power Plant, located in the San Gabriel Mountains just east of Los Angeles, experienced a tremor in the late 1970s. The control room crew opened relief valves to get rid of the excess water, but in reality, the water level wasn’t high at all.
#2 The Three Mile Island meltdown began as a simple plumbing problem. A work crew was performing routine maintenance on the nonnuclear part of the plant, and the set of pumps that normally sent water to the steam generator shut down. Without water flowing to the steam generator, it couldn’t remove heat from the reactor core.
#3 The author Charles Perrow, a sociology professor, studied the organization of textile mills in nineteenth-century New England. He became interested in meltdowns when the presidential commission on the Three Mile Island accident asked him to study the event.
#4 Perrow’s group reflected his personality. He was a demanding teacher, but his students loved his classes because they learned so much. He had a reputation for giving unusually intense but constructive criticism.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 13 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669353447
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Chris Clearfield & András Tilcsik's Meltdown
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Ventana Nuclear Power Plant, located in the San Gabriel Mountains just east of Los Angeles, experienced a tremor in the late 1970s. The control room crew opened relief valves to get rid of the excess water, but in reality, the water level wasn’t high at all.

#2

The Three Mile Island meltdown began as a simple plumbing problem. A work crew was performing routine maintenance on the nonnuclear part of the plant, and the set of pumps that normally sent water to the steam generator shut down. Without water flowing to the steam generator, it couldn’t remove heat from the reactor core.

#3

The author Charles Perrow, a sociology professor, studied the organization of textile mills in nineteenth-century New England. He became interested in meltdowns when the presidential commission on the Three Mile Island accident asked him to study the event.

#4

Perrow’s group reflected his personality. He was a demanding teacher, but his students loved his classes because they learned so much. He had a reputation for giving unusually intense but constructive criticism.

#5

The more Perrow learned about the Three Mile Island accident, the more fascinated he became. It was a major accident, but its causes were trivial: a plumbing problem, a stuck valve, and an ambiguous indicator light.

#6

The difference between complex and linear systems is that in a complex system, we can’t go in to take a look at what’s happening in the belly of the beast. We need to rely on indirect indicators to assess most situations.

#7

The butterfly effect is an example of how small changes can have huge effects. At Three Mile Island, a cupful of nonradioactive water caused the loss of a thousand liters of radioactive coolant.

#8

The second element of Perrow’s theory is about how much slack there is in a system. When a system is tightly coupled, there is little slack or buffer among its parts. In tightly coupled systems, it’s not enough to get things mostly right; the quantity of inputs must be precise and they must be combined in a particular order and time frame.

#9

The danger zone in Perrow’s chart is the upper-right quadrant, which is the combination of complexity and tight coupling. These systems are extremely rare, but they can cause meltdowns if small mistakes are combined with other errors in perplexing ways.

#10

In 2012, Starbucks launched a social media campaign to get coffee lovers in the holiday spirit. It asked its customers to post festive messages on Twitter using the hashtag #SpreadTheCheer. The company also sponsored an ice rink at the Natural History Museum in London, which displayed all the tweets that included the hashtag.

#11

The Starbucks campaign is a great example of how systems are constantly interacting with one another, and how this can lead to increased tightness. The campaign increased tight coupling because it required users to use the right hashtag to get their posts displayed prominently.

#12

The Thanksgiving meal is a good example of how systems can become too complex. As people cook, they worry about making mistakes, which can lead to Thanksgiving disasters.

#13

Erika Christakis, a Yale student, emailed an early childhood expert about appropriate Halloween costumes, and the controversy ensued. It quickly escalated, and students demanded that Nicholas and Erika resign.

#14

The university is a good example of a system that has become extremely complex and tightly coupled. With the amplifying power of social media, such videos can quickly spread and become a part of a tightly coupled system.

#15

The financial system is a perfect example of a complex and tightly coupled system.