Exactly.

Today if you say the words “reactor safety limit”, that’s an inviolable parameter. If a reactor safety limit is exceeded the plant cannot restart without approval (10cfr50.36). And if there is a potential to exceed one, you are in a reportable event (for example is a safety system was found degraded such that it would actuate too late to protect the safety limit).

As reactor operators we are required to know them from memory.

The same level of deliberate caution around those limits likely did not exist with the USSR and the RBMK design, as evidenced by them withdrawing rods as much as they did. When rods are they far out in the RBMK, you not only get a positive reactivity spike on a scram, but you also magnify your positive void coefficient.