Andy's insights

Opinions, thoughts, archivements

Tue, 27 Dec 2011

Economic Risk Management

The situation at Fukushima with its operator Tepco shows how economic risk managment works in edge cases. They had no clue how to handle such a situation. The report shows that the emergency service unit was not trained to handle blackout situations nor did they now where the hydrants are. This is dilettantish. The embarkments had a height of six meters even if an own study of Tepco showed before that this is not sufficient. But unless it’s regulated they didn’t do anything.

This is what happens in our economic system when there is a relativly low risk1 but an enourmous worst case impact: The risk analysis of the operators only looks at the financial aspects. They are quite low. The only reason higher standards are in effenct are because of goverment regulations.

It’s quite clear that this depends a lot on the goverment in question: Are they really independent? Have lobbyist infiltrated goverment?

We should really ask ourself: Is our local goverment good enough to ensure that our high risk sites (like nuclear power stations) are protected enough. Will they do their best to ensure all risks are identified and counter measurments are taken?

Anybody who claim that atomic power stations are safe ignore the single one factor that makes them unsecure: Humans. Not the workers, but the humans who have to decide. An atomic power station that is secure enough is not economical.

1 Well experience show that there is about one maximum credible accident in 25 years world wide.

posted at: 14:28 | path: /politics/energy | permanent link to this entry