Reactor siting and design from a risk viewpoint

Landscape fires as social disasters: An overview of ‘the bushfire problem’

“…However, in the Tasmanian fires of 1967 people ''under-responded'' to ''pre-disaster danger signals'' (Wettenhall, 1975, p. 104); they had ''heard it all before'' (Wettenhall, 1975, p. 71) and yet it ''had never happened there before and why should it now'' (Wettenhall, 1975, p. 72). Otway and Erdmann (1970) considered people's responses to potential nuclear risk and, by so doing, indicated in broad terms the types of reactions people have to the threat of adverse circumstances. Thus, perceiving a chance of death of 1 in a million per year evokes the response that it will 'never happen to me'; a chance of death of 1 in 100, 000 may provoke a precautionary message-'avoid this'; a 1 in 10,000 chance of death may illicit a call for the expenditure of money on the problem, while a 1 in a 1000 chance of death per year is unacceptable to all.…”

Risk-assessment methodology for fast breeder reactors

“…6). The inverted consequence distribution C(f) was multipled by a factor mt/wb (mortality probability per rem of radiation) and integrated with repect to f:…”

“…Some authors (e.g., Bell 5 and Otway and Erdmann 6 ) propose to find the risk from "all" accidents by integraLion over the limit line or the envelope. However, the curves obtained either through a priori definition [Farmer's limit line fF(C)] or through construction as an envelope, say f(C), are not "actual" distributions.…”

“…The envelope-integration approach as actually applied by Otway and Erdmann 6 is not the same as outlined in Eqs. 5.…”

Human Radiation Exposures From Nuclear Power Reactors

“…Accidental releases of radioactivity have not occurred to date from US power reactors, but estimates of the possibility of such accidents demonstrate the risk to be well within that accepted from other sources. 1 One estimate of radiation overexposure from a 200-megawatt, electrical, reactor serving a population of 200,000 persons is 2 X 10-7 per person per year which was compared to the same total risk to the community of two automobiles. …”