I wouldn’t personally expect that of people. There are a very VERY substantial number of rules in a vast array of disciplines needed to operate a plant generically before even getting into the specifics of the site and all the equipment on it and how that evolves over time as things happen like equipment upgrades or degradation and new operating experience from the same or other plants getting incorporated. Or instructions provided on a case by case basis for performing a task that is now different in some way that matters to one stakeholder who needed a change but that may not be apparent to others. Even people who have been working at the same place for decades with plenty of continuing training can get caught with their pants down on a task they’ve done all the time when a new revision changes something they were accustomed to doing which is why they have to be ensuring that they’re working with the latest revision for each task every time. Often when you’re working with other departments on a common activity you may need help finding out what the applicable procedures or or other guidance that you’ll need to be following even are, let already knowing the latest details on what changes have been made to them and why. And in recent times the industry has a lot less gray and bald heads than it used to so many more people are freshly learning what their own positions are and don’t have the experience and perspective of watching the place evolve over the decades.

I was commenting based on the title not the picture.

The meme itself sure absolutely healthy behavior to know what the heck you’re doing before just ignorantly launching in. Whole point of pre-job briefs, job site reviews, anyone down to the newest person being able to stop work and not proceed in the face of uncertainty.

But the title “If you can’t explain why the rule matters, I won’t follow it” will fly over like a lead balloon.

The title says, “If you can’t explain why the rule matters, then I won’t follow it.” In nuclear you’re expected to follow the procedures and instructions and so on as written unless you went through whatever necessary process to get an exemption or relaxation from that standard. If you know what the rules are and intentionally don’t do that (the “then I won’t follow it”) that’s considered willful disregard and that can get not just the person doing it but also a site tolerating that behavior punished by the regulator to be an example to others because they want nuclear people to strictly adhere to processes regardless of whether they individually think they’re important or not. Everyone has their own view of a facet of some very complex operation and things that appear insignificant to one dude and his coworkers who just see one step as some BS that doesn’t really matter may be necessary to meet a key assumption that is the bedrock of another person’s analysis.

Procedures are often not written in a terribly efficient way to complete the task. That may be intentional if a more obviously efficient method imposes a risk somewhere that the creators/revisors of the procedure didn’t want to take. It could also just be whatever method the writers were familiar with even if a better one exists out there somewhere. So a frequent tension is “Why are we doing it with [Method A] when my used-to plant used [Method B]?” If this other way is immediately better for safety then maybe work should be halted until an exemption or fast track revision is done to have the words match the safer method. If it’s just an efficiency thing though it may take a while to process even a uniformly better method into a new procedure revision such that it has to be done under the existing guidance for the time being… you may well be told that the existing method is flat out worse than the way in the upcoming new rev, but you are expected to fully follow the text of the existing revision regardless.

Or for a different sort of thing with a hypothetical example where there is a guy caught up at a radiological boundary on his way out of the plant. He sets off an alarm on a machine known to be sensitive to the point of occasionally alarming off of background radiation even if you are totally clean. The rule is to wait for radiation protection to show up and clear him before he could go to the cleaner side of the radiological boundary. Most everyone experiences this and generally the way it goes 99% of the time is RP shows up, asks you where you’ve been, they have you go to a monitor another time and sees if you pass or not and if you pass generally they let you go right on through or if not then they start having to be a lot more involved. This guy is impatient after some extended time waiting on RP because he wants to go to the bathroom just on the other side of the boundary and since he’s dealt with a similar situation before he feels it’s OK to just skip the wait for RP, rescan himself again and pass through to the bathroom when he comes up in the clear. By common sense there’s not really a problem, it’s what RP was going to have him do anyway… but it’s not just a matter of common sense. He has just demonstrated that at least in one situation he will not obey the rules that govern radiological boundaries, so how can they be sure he will follow the others? At a site where observing radiological boundaries may make a difference between a normal day and injury or death, that’s actually a huge problem that he can no longer be trusted to always safely stay within the lines he needs to at the times he needs to, an assumption underpinning what areas people are allowed to access. So for that and to enforce the standard and ensure people seriously follow the rules about radiation boundaries, the guy gets fired even though everyone knows that the guy wasn’t actually contaminated upon leaving the boundary.

I worked in the nuclear industry and having this sort of mentality is probably one of the fastest ways to get fired from that line of work. It’s absolutely chock-full of very specifically worded dense procedures which are written the way they are to address anything from obvious concerns to very arcane ones buried deep in lists of references, and inside the plants there are very specific boundaries, signs and expectations that must be followed strictly even without someone around to explain why this particular area got roped off suddenly when it wasn’t before or why work instructions are written in one particular order. Nothing wrong with doing your research, that was encouraged because they don’t want you screwing up (though at some point you do need to actually get stuff done and not just read manuals all day), but willfully disregarding procedure or instructions in favor of your preferred way of doing things without going through the processes to get exemptions will go incredibly poorly for you.