this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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[–] Chessmasterrex@lemmy.world 33 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The lack of sleep was the worst part of the long extended deployment period that I was on. Our work center had like three people doing rotating shifts standing watch, keeping equipment running. I’d be up all night and in the morning we couldn’t go to bed until after quarters and the XOs inspection of berthing, which was like 11am. But then it was lunchtime and after that we couldn’t sleep because of GQ drills in the afternoon. Basically when all that was done and over I had to go back on watch. There would be times I’d be awake for several days straight. When the stars aligned perfectly and I could get 8 hours straight, oh man it was the best sleep I ever had.

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I barely have memories from that time I was so sleep deprived.

"You're gonna reenlist, right? You're a great sailor! Civilian life sucks, you just don't even know."

"I was a civilian for a decade before I signed up. I know what's it's like. You don't. No, I got the GI Bill now. I'm going to Colorado, to hike deep into the mountains without telling anyone where I'm going, and smoke myself into a coma."

And I did.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago

Was it a restful coma?

[–] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 14 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I’d be up all night and in the morning we couldn’t go to bed until after quarters and the XOs inspection of berthing, which was like 11am.

Seems like a command staff seriously out to lunch. A good commander would recognize that letting your people get sleep they need is more important than making sure every bed is made correctly.

[–] RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Yeah that's... Not how the Navy does things.

Sleep deprivation is the norm across the Navy, particularly in the engineering community and particularly in nuclear engineering.

I would commonly go 36 hours without sleep, generally a few times a month. People keep this up for decades.

[–] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Given that the oversight and operation of nuclear reactors is a fairly simple and straightforward process with few consequences for mistakes and benign failure modes, I'm sure that operator error incidents due to sleep deprivation would have few consequences and are generally not worth preventing.

[–] RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You don't want to know about the number of times a fast recovery has been done asleep or a full plant startup is done by an RO who is actively blackout drunk.

We all have, at least, one of those stories.

[–] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's fun. I'm really glad to know that. Thank you. :\

Jokes aside- while I realize there's lots of safety systems in place, this seems like a dangerous culture that's long due for some change. In aviation, an awful lot of our regulations are written in blood, and we've gotten rid of a lot of the 'we've always done it that way' and 'Captain always knows best no matter what' / 'Always listen to authority' stuff because it literally kills people.

I'm curious, if you're willing to share, why we've not seen a major accident due to this sort of culture?


Also in exchange for this fun information you've provided, I have some more fun knowledge...

Pools. Everybody knows the chlorine kills germs.
Thing is, chlorine has relatively little odor. When chlorine binds with organic materials it produces chloramine, which has a very distinctive chlorine-y smell. This happens very quickly with urine. In a properly maintained pool, 'shock' treatment is regularly done to burn off the chloramine.

So when you visit a pool and you smell the chlorine, all that means is the pool is badly maintained and/or someone recently peed in it.

Have a nice day :D

[–] RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

That is fun to know!

With regards to why the culture hasn't changed. To be honest nuclear power is really safe. We used to play little thought experiments on the boat about how we would get a meltdown to happen and it's hard

It goes beyond safety systems and automatic protective actions. The design of the cores themselves makes it so you have to jury rig a situation where you get prompt criticality (reactor criticality due entirely to prompt neutrons vice delayed+prompt; very very bad). Frankly operators are there for regulatory reasons; nuclear operations are so safe and formulaic you could run a 1GW plant with ~3 people total given all the available automations.

So why change the culture? The program has literally never had an incident in 70 years of operation. Not one fission product release in close to a century. We have no blood to write rules in.

[–] Jumi@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

That can only lead to excellent results and will never result in any mistakes whatsoever, I'm absolutely sure.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

This is a very Low-T comment