Search results

AbstractI entered the field of risk analysis forty years ago from a background in physics followed by doctoral training and experience in decision analysis. I came into the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) after participating as a committee member in the 1983 National Academies report, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process. The insights and recommendations from this report, and successor reports from 1996 and 2008, merit revisiting on this 40th anniversary. Risk analysis includes risk assessment, a process of summarizing applicable science to inform decisions; and risk management, a process of making informed choices, usually involving multiple stakeholders. Inherent in both is the need to deal with complexity, uncertainty, and differing perspectives and goals. The lessons I have learned include the need for a conceptual separation of risk management from risk assessment, the benefit of an iterative dialogue between these activities, and the wisdom of articulating and assessing what we know, what we want, and what we can do as we seek to understand and manage risks affecting ourselves and those we advise.

The U.S. government has the obligation of managing the high‐level radioactive waste from its defense activities and also, under existing law, from civilian nuclear power generation. This obligation is not being met. The January 2012 Final Report from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future provides commendable guidance but little that is new. The author, who served on the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board from 1989 to 1994 and subsequently on the Board on Radioactive Waste Management of the National Research Council from 1994 to 1999, provides a perspective both on the Commission's recommendations and a potential path toward progress in meeting the federal obligation. By analogy to Sisyphus of Greek mythology, our nation needs to find a way to roll the rock to the top of the hill and have it stay there, rather than continuing to roll back down again.

The management of spent nuclear fuel and high‐level nuclear waste has the deserved reputation as one of the most intractable policy issues facing the United States and other nations using nuclear reactors for electric power generation. This paper presents the author's perspective on this complexissue, based on a decade of service with the Nuclear Waste Technical ReviewBoard and Board on Radioactive Waste Management of the National Research Council.