ABSTRACT
An objective study on the 'safety' of high-technological systems is a difficult enterprise, and more so, of the nuclear industry. Consistent with the technical safety objective, the International Safety Advisory Group prescribes the target for power plants, to minimise the occurrence of severe core damage, to below about event per Plant Operating Year (POY). The normal accidents theorists' view is that the nuclear industry, as an extremely complex and nuclear energy production process, is not a set of independent serial steps, rather, it requires many coordinated actions by numerous mechanical components and operators. Responding to the allegation of nuclear accidents and disasters, they assert that disasters occur in all industries but the nuclear industry gets unprecedented attention owing to the negative popular perception of anything nuclear. The merit of the issue should be judged not from the allegations but from any instance of safety compromise that the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) may ever have committed.
