Risk Methodologies for Technological Legacies : Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Bourgas, Bulgaria from 2 to 11 May 2000
The Cold War Era left the major participants, the United States and the former Soviet Union (FSU), with large environmental legacies in terms of facility contamination and environmental degradation. Although the countries face similar issues from similar activities, important differences in waste management practices make the potential environmental and health risks of more immediate concern in the FSU and Eastern Europe. In the West, most nuclear and chemical waste is stored in known contained locations, while in the East much of the equivalent material is unconfined, contaminating the environment. The knowledge and experiences of the U.S. in these initial cleanup efforts are seen as important information in many North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Partner countries, where the environmental problems are more severe and the cleanup budgets more limited. An Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on ''Risk Assessment Activities for the Cold War Facilities and Environmental Legacies'' was held in Bourgas, Bulgaria, May 2-11, 2000. The objective of the ASI was to provide information to facilitate and enable decision-making activities affecting the environment and human populations in the NATO and Partner countries. Specifically, the ASI provided a forum to communicate the current status of risk analysis and management methodologies and their appropriate application. It addressed scientific approaches and application experiences from the initial U.S. risk assessment activities. This book is the product of the ASI. The power of the text lies in linking information on legacies with an integrated view of controlling the risk of those legacies. Risk can only be effectively controlled by proper balance of three central concepts: risk analysis, risk perception, and risk management. The editors were drawn together by the joint recognition that risk analysis methods had matured over the past 30 years in several fields, relatively independent of each other. It was time to integrate all these forms of risk analysis under one framework, identifying the reasons for the seemingly disparate approaches and the gains to be reaped by bringing them together. Part I of this book gives detailed information on the three central concepts and gives further definition to facility-centered and human-centered approaches to risk analysis and risk management. Part II of this book gives extensive information on the legacies, our perception of the risk associated with them, and, in some cases, tools for analyzing that risk. Part III of the book relies heavily on applications as a means of presenting detailed information on risk assessment programs and methodologies. Finally, Part IV provides details on future activities. Applications were selected for this text that illustrate the strengths and limitations of different risk methodologies for assessments of military and Cold War legacy facilities in NATO and Partner countries. The textbook shows how specific needs have been met by the various risk methodologies and stress the need for an integrated view that uses the various risk methodologies in a complementary rather than competitive manner.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 15009866
- Report Number(s):
- PNWD-SA-5921; TRN: US200430%%1364
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Bourgas (BG), 05/02/2000--05/11/2000; Other Information: PBD: 1 May 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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