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Comment by jari_mustonen | Hacker News Reader

Some years ago, I listened a person who was both involved in governmental oversight of the building project and a card carrying member of Green Party. He was really happy that they had spotted a missing welder's certificate. (There was no complaint about the quality of the work, only about the missing paper work.) He was laughing out loud, in a joy of an accomplishment, for the fact that the project was delayed for year or so for this.

So yeah, I would go for the bureaucracy.

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There have been numerous issues with the quality of the work (the Wikipedia article has a list.) "Many large components, such as pressurizer forgings and some reactor internal parts, had to be re-manufactured once or twice to achieve the specified quality."

The thing was that safety oversight was not about the safety but about finding loopholes and formalities to cause maximum cost overruns and maximum delays to the project.

Or to put it in another words: I guess that same guy (and his friends) are having a raging boner for such number of delays. They consider each and every delay an accomplishment. It's a fucked up attitude.

If you are building a nuclear reactor and have doubts about the qualification of a worker, it would be irresponsible to not investigate.

If in 2 years the building collapses, and they find out that one of the welders had no certificate, how would the public react? How would you react? (even if the collapse had nothing to do with the welding itself)

I've never heard anyone complain ever about the quality of certification of workers when something went badly wrong except as part of a larger pattern of serious abuses.

So I'll go with nobody caring. If one rogue welder can cause a project to fail then the safety systems are beyond deficient and the undercertified welder would be the least of their problems.

If this set a project back by 12 months then the inspectors were overzealous. There were probably other problems that set the project back and the bureaucrat didn't understand the situation.

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