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Regulating By the Numbers

Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Nuclear Power

University of California, Berkeley

Aaron Wildavsky

University of California, Berkeley

Probabilistic risk assessment has been promoted within the Nuclear Regulatory Com mission as both a means of judging the extent of risk to the public and a direct means of determining what specific regulations should be strengthened, better enforced, or possibly abandoned. These uses have met with skepticism not only from public interest groups but from lower level bureaucrats. Interviews with engineers and other technically trained personnel reveal the difficulties created by expectations that probabilistic risk assessment can be applied to everyday regulatory decision making. While most think PRA is technically useful, they express concern that it may be used in ways they see as inappropriate.

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