An approach to societal risk acceptance criteria and risk management

Technical Report · Wed Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 1977

OSTI ID:5167106

Okrent, D; Whipple, C

A quantitative approach to risk acceptance criteria and risk management is proposed for activities involving risk to individuals not receiving direct benefits, such as employment, from the activity. Societal activities are divided into major facilities or technologies, all or part of which are categorized as essential, beneficial, or peripheral, and a decreasing level of acceptable risk to the most exposed individual is proposed (say, 0.0002/year for essential, 0.00001/year for beneficial, and 0.000002/year for peripheral activity). The risk would be assessed at a high confidence level (say, 90%), thereby providing an incentive to the gaining of better knowledge. Each risk-producing facility, technology, etc., would have to undergo assessment both of risk to the individual and to society. The cost of the latter would have to be internalized, probably via a tax paid to the Federal Government, which in turn would redistribute the benefit as national health insurance or reduced taxes to the individual. Risk aversion to large events would be built into the internalization of the cost of risk.

• Research Organization: California Univ., Los Angeles (USA). School of Engineering and Applied Science
• OSTI ID: 5167106
• Report Number(s): PB-271264; UCLA-ENG-7746
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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COST
EMPLOYMENT
ENERGY FACILITIES
ENERGY SOURCE DEVELOPMENT
EVALUATION
HAZARDS
MANAGEMENT
PERSONNEL
RISK ASSESSMENT
SOCIAL IMPACT