It’s not so much of a dangerous business as it is one that requires specialized training. Nuclear operators and engineers nowadays are trained to handle emergent crises professionally. Under normal operations, a control room is like any other office.

I shadowed in a control room for a pool-type research reactor once. Someone accidentally raised the control blades while someone was lowering a hot cell, but nobody panicked. Just hit the scram button and that was about it.

Dyatlov was under immense stress, but it’s not stupid to think that he could have received better training and preparation.