The Approach to Risk Analysis in Three Industries: Nuclear Power, Space Systems, and Chemical Process

Abstract

The aerospace, nuclear power, and chemical processing industries are providing much of the incentive for the development and application of advanced risk analysis techniques to engineered systems. Risk analysis must answer three basic questions: (1) What can go wrong? (2) How likely is it? and (3) What are the consequences? The result of such analyses is not only a quantitative answer to the question “What is the risk?” but, more importantly, a framework for intelligent and visible risk management. Because of the societal importance of the subject industries and the amount of risk analysis activity involved in each, it is interesting to look for commonalities, differences, and, hopefully, a basis for some standardization. Each industry has its strengths: the solid experience base of the chemical industry, the extensive qualification and testing procedures of the space industry, and the integrative and quantitative risk and reliability methodologies developed for the nuclear power industry. In particular, most advances in data handling, systems interaction modeling, and uncertainty analysis have come from the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) work in the nuclear safety field. In the final analysis, all three industries would greatly benefit from a more deliberate technology exchange program in the rapidly evolving discipline of quantitative risk analysis.