Large-scale Nuclear Risk Analysis: Its Impacts and Future

The international emergence of the large-scale nuclear risk study has stimulated both common and divergent responses and societal impacts. In this sense, it functions rather like a generic environmental impact statement. Risk analysis, used broadly, refers to a broad miscellany of techniques and analytic methods. Probabilistic risk analysis is but one form of the more generic activity, and the plant-specific analysis is a recent form of this type of analysis. The purposes of generic risk analysis have been several – to increase knowledge about risk; to inform licensing and regulation; to improve plant design, construction and management; and to provide a base for energy policy decisions. Large-scale risk studies have deeply and extensively influenced safety work in nuclear power. The significance of risk studies for nuclear plant design is quite apparent in the Federal Republic of Germany. A party’s political stance on overall energy policy is likely to colour political response to particular risk studies.