Nuclear power: levels of safety.
Nuclear power: levels of safety.
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核电：安全水平。
DOI：
10.2307/3577197
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发表时间：
1988
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
L. Lidsky
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
L. Lidsky
美国核电工业的兴衰是一个有据可查的故事，其社会技术冲突足以填满数十本学术书籍和非学术书籍。无论我们现在所处的情况是什么原因，无论我们如何分配责任，这个国家是否使用核电的最终选择是由公用事业公司和公众做出的。最后，他们的选择基于某种形式的风险收益分析。这种分析是由公用事业公司以有据可查且明显合乎逻辑的形式进行的，而由公众以相当不成熟但不一定不太准确的形式进行的。核电在美国失败了，因为实际和感知的风险都超过了潜在的好处。国家决定不依赖目前形式的核电并不是一个不合理的决定。广泛的公共风险和收益平衡需要对风险进行清晰可信的分类，以便公众能够评估与给定技术结构相关的风险。定性四级安全阶梯提供了这样一个框架。核反应堆的设计明确且明显地符合每个可能的质量安全水平。令人惊讶的是，似乎更安全也可能意味着更便宜。重要的国家决策已具备智力和技术先决条件。部署质量不同的第二代核反应堆可以给美国带来重要好处。令人惊讶的是，很可能是“核机构”本身拒绝了第二代反应堆，因为它拥有巨额资金投资和对现有核系统的自豪感。在第一代核工程师和核电倡导者退休之前，我们可能不会拥有第二代反应堆。
The rise and fall of the nuclear power industry in the United States is a well-documented story with enough socio-technological conflict to fill dozens of scholarly, and not so scholarly, books. Whatever the reasons for the situation we are now in, and no matter how we apportion the blame, the ultimate choice of whether to use nuclear power in this country is made by the utilities and by the public. Their choices are, finally, based on some form of risk-benefit analysis. Such analysis is done in well-documented and apparently logical form by the utilities and in a rather more inchoate but not necessarily less accurate form by the public. Nuclear power has failed in the United States because both the real and perceived risks outweigh the potential benefits. The national decision not to rely upon nuclear power in its present form is not an irrational one. A wide ranging public balancing of risk and benefit requires a classification of risk which is clear and believable for the public to be able to assess the risks associated with given technological structures. The qualitative four-level safety ladder provides such a framework. Nuclear reactors have been designed which fit clearly and demonstrably into each of the possible qualitative safety levels. Surprisingly, it appears that safer may also mean cheaper. The intellectual and technical prerequisites are in hand for an important national decision. Deployment of a qualitatively different second generation of nuclear reactors can have important benefits for the United States. Surprisingly, it may well be the "nuclear establishment" itself, with enormous investments of money and pride in the existing nuclear systems, that rejects second generation reactors. It may be that we will not have a second generation of reactors until the first generation of nuclear engineers and nuclear power advocates has retired.