Ethical Frameworks: The Atomic And Hydrogen Bombs

Although society has explored many ethical frameworks to guide the decisions we make in our daily lives to seek out right and wrong, an innumerable amount of unethical decisions have occurred throughout history. There is no single ethical framework that can address the full range of ethical decisions engineers face, therefore engineers must reflect of on historical failures to structure their own ethical framework to effectively support their personal values. This paper will analyze the actions taken by engineers in the development of the Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, as well as the decisions made by at the Three Miles Island power plant. In addition to examining the goals and ethical dilemmas they faced, this paper will also demonstrate how the ethical frameworks, Pragmatism and Utilitarianism, could …show more content…
The TMI engineers had different goals compared to the A-bomb creators that focused more on money rather than science. Unlike the A-bomb engineers, unethical decisions were made like not addressing design flaws in prove in similar designs, down to the lack of communication with the surrounding community about the meltdown. Had they been guided by an ethical framework like utilitarianism the issue of the faulty safety valves would have been addressed since actions are only right if they do no harm to others. A pragmatist would also agree that the faulty valve should be addressed given eleven previous nuclear plants had the same issue . Addressing the faults in design would have prevented a meltdown that dropped the number of Americans who support nuclear-power plants from 70 percent to 40 percent . The failure to address the safety mechanism flaws and properly train technicians have made citizen believe that nuclear power is the most dangerous although “statistics show that nuclear power has killed by far the fewest number of per terawatt hour of any type of power”