Tea ceremony and nuclear engineering are both synthetic arts and composite technology. Therefore, to master one of the components of these arts or technology is not enough, but it is necessary to learn every components of the art or technology.There is an old story of an elephant and blinds.
Some blinds touched an elephant, and they talked what it seemed to be. One person touched the nose and he said an elephant seemed to be a snake, and the other touched the ear and said an elephant seemed to be a big fan. One blind touched the leg and said it seemed to be a pillar, and the other who touched the stomach called it as wall.
Nobody said false, but it is impossible to imagine an elephant by any one idea. Every blinds can observe the detail of an elephant, but nobody can make a whole image of an elephant by himself.
Tea ceremony is not composed by only the procedure of making tea, but it includes kaiseki, flower arrangement, and so on. Nuclear technology is the same.
As you know, the core of a nuclear reactor is covered by thick concrete wall, even specialists of nuclear technology cannot see the inside directly. The reactor core can be seen at the clean stage before operation, and once it is operated, the core becomes very active(radioactivity is high). Only water cooled reactor core can be seen during fuel change operation about once a year, but sodium cooled reactor core cannot be observed until the end of life, when the reactor is dismantled.
The reactor core is observed though thick concrete wall by sensors of temperature, pressure, sounds, vibration, or neutron and gamma radiation. The results of all these sensors are gathered and combined to estimate the condition of the core inside.
As the story of an elephant and blinds, any one of the results of these sensors cannot describe the whole condition of the core by its data only. All the results of the sensors and the information of the design can figure out the true condition of the reactor using a super computer.
I think the story of an elephant and blinds has the essence of tea ceremony and nuclear technology.
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