Beyond our imagination: Fukushima and the problem of assessing risk [View all]

[kristopher]

Beyond our imagination: Fukushima and the problem of assessing risk
BY M. V. RAMANA | 19 APRIL 2011
Article Highlights

- Severe accidents at nuclear reactors have occurred much more frequently than what risk-assessment models predicted.

- The probabilistic risk assessment method does a poor job of anticipating accidents in which a single event, such as a tsunami, causes failures in multiple safety systems.

- Catastrophic nuclear accidents are inevitable, because designers and risk modelers cannot envision all possible ways in which complex systems can fail.

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/beyond-our-imagination-fukushima-and-the-problem-of-assessing-risk