论核事故应急救援人员的特殊性与个体素质要求

核事故应急救援行动是减少核事故给公众带来危害的重要途径和手段.由于核事故的特殊性和复杂性,核事故将对应急救援人员形成不同程度的危害.为了降低核事故救援活动中对救援人员产生的危害,文章从核事故救援人员分类入手,分析核事故应急活动救援人员的特殊性,并重点探讨核事故应急救援人员应具有的个体素质,以期为我国核应急救援队伍建设提供参考.     

Waste Package Performance Evaluations for the Proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain

The evaluation studies of the proposed repository for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, are underway. Fulfillment of the requirements for limiting dose to the public, which includes containment of the radioactive waste emplaced in the proposed repository and subsequent slow release of radionuclides from the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) into the geosphere, will rely on a robust waste container design, among other EBS components. Part of the evaluation process involves sensitivity studies aimed at elucidating which model parameters contribute most to the waste package and overlying drip shield degradation characteristics. The model parameters identified for this study include (1) general corrosion rate parameters and (2) stress corrosion cracking (SCC) parameters. Temperature dependence and parameter uncertainty are evaluated for the general corrosion rate model parameters while for the SCC model parameters, uncertainty treatment of stress intensity factor, crack initiation threshold, and manufacturing flaw orientations are evaluated. Based on these evaluations new uncertainty distributions are generated and recommended for future analyses. Also, early waste package failures due to improper heat treatment were added to the waste package degradation model. The results of these investigations indicate that the waste package failure profiles are governed by the manufacturing flaw orientation model parameters.     

Risk communication and attitude change: Taiwan's national debate over nuclear power

This article reports the first analysis of the effects of a national risk-communication program that disseminated the facts about the risks associated with nuclear power plants. It relies upon a unique set of circumstances in Taiwan. The state-operated power corporation sponsored a national debate in an effort to promote greater public consensus on the need for a fourth nuclear power plant. This analysis uses statedrisk perceptions and attitudes toward the plant to evaluate the effect of the debate. The results are based on a panel of households interviewed before and after the debate. They suggest that the debate did not reduce respondents' perceived risks from nuclear power and had little perceptible effect on the attitude changes of our sample. The only systematic influences detected on the observed attitude changes imply that respondents reacted counter to the debate's objectives, and thus the debate seems likely to continue to erode support for the new plant.The authors are, respectively, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Economics, Academic Sinica; and University Distinguished Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University, and Resources for the Future University Fellow. Thanks are due Jin Long Liu for his excellent research assistance in developing these results, to Kip Viscusi for constructive comments, and to Barbara Scott for her helpful editing of earlier drafts of this article. Partial support for Smith's research was provided by National Science Foundation grant SES-8911372.     

Institutionalizing dissent: The United States structure of political opportunity and the end of the nuclear freeze movement

This article uses the recent nuclear freeze movement as a vehicle for analyzing the ways in which United States political institutions cope with dissident movements. Building on the literature on political opportunity structure, I argue that United States political institutions reflect James Madison's strategy for coping with dissent by fragmenting political power. The Madisonian structure of United States government, by providing relatively easy institutional access to some challengers and numerous venues for often ritualized participation, serves to fragment, coopt, and dissipate dissident movements. I identify three complementary components of the process of fragmentation and dissipation: marginalization, depoliticization, and institutionalization. I then examine the political implications of institutionalization in the case of the nuclear freeze movement with a discussion of the movement's influence on policy. I conclude with a call for more comparative research on the process and political impact of institutionalizing social protest movements.     

Risk Decision Making in Operational Safety Management– Experience from the Nordic Benchmark Study

Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) and Studsvik AB, Sweden, have simulated decision making of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate and a power company by applying decision models in a benchmark study. Based on the experience from the benchmark study, a decision analysis framework to be used in safety related problems is outlined. By this framework both the power companies and the safety authorities could be provided with a more rigorous, systematic approach in their decision making. A decision analytic approach provides a structure for identifying the information requirements of the problem solving. Thus it could serve as a discussion forum between the authorities and the utilities. In this context, probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has a crucial role of expressing the plant safety status in terms of reactor core damage accident probability and of risk contributions from various accident precursors. However, a decision under uncertainty should not be based solely on probabilities, particularly when the event in question is a rare one and its probability of occurrence is estimated by means of different kinds of approximations.     

Media discourse as a symbolic contest: The bomb in political cartoons

The mass media provide a series of arenas in which symbolic contests are carried out among competing sponsors of meaning. Measuring the display of competing interpretations is a way of assessing relative success. The Cold War period involved a long competition within the United States between two competing advocacy networks, each offering a general package on issues of nuclear war and Soviet-American relations. This paper examines how this contest was played out in one particular arena—that of editorial cartoons. Our results suggest certain dilemmas and vulnerabilities in Cold War packages and the strong cultural appeal of Common Security packages in spite of the access and resource handicaps of their sponsors.This is a substantially revised version of a paper originally presented at the conference, Discourse and the Nuclear Arms Race, Ballyvaughan, Ireland, August 8–15, 1987.     

Improbability of Igneous Intrusion Promoting a Critical Event in Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposed in Unsaturated Tuff

In their regulations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit the omission of features, events, or processes with probabilities of <10(-4) in 10(4) yr (e.g., a constant frequency of <10(-8) per yr) in assessments of the performance of radioactive waste disposal systems. Igneous intrusion (or "volcanism") of a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain for radioactive waste is one disruptive event that has a probability with a range of uncertainty that straddles this regulatory criterion and is considered directly in performance assessment calculations. A self-sustained nuclear chain reaction (or "criticality") is another potentially disruptive event to consider, although it was never found to be important when evaluating the efficacy of radioactive waste disposal since the early 1970s. The thesis of this article is that the consideration of the joint event--volcanism and criticality--occurring in any 10,000-year period following closure can be eliminated from performance calculations at Yucca Mountain. The probability of the joint event must be less than the fairly well-accepted but low probability of volcanism. Furthermore, volcanism does not "remove" or "fail" existing hydrologic or geochemical constraints at Yucca Mountain that tend to prevent concentration of fissile material. Prior to general corrosion failure of waste packages, the mean release of fissile mass caused by a low-probability, igneous intrusive event is so small that the probability of a critical event is remote, even for highly enriched spent nuclear fuel owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. After widespread failure of packages occurs, the probability of the joint event is less than the probability of criticality because of the very small influence of volcanism on the mean fissile mass release. Hence, volcanism plays an insignificant role in inducing criticality over any 10(4)-yr period. We also argue that the Oklo reactors serve as a natural analogue and provide a rough bound on probability of criticality given favorable hydrologic or geochemical conditions on the scale of the repository that is less than 0.10. Because the product of this bound with the probability of volcanism represents the probability of the joint event and the product is less than 10(-4) in 10(4) yr, consideration of the joint event can be eliminated from performance calculations.     

核电站非连续性需求条件下的业务外包风险研究

在一般业务外包风险研究的基础上结合非连续性需求条件下供应风险的特点,研究了非连续性需求占优的核电站供应管理中的业务外包风险及其产生的原因。由于非连续性需求的特点,容易造成核心竞争力识别错误,容易被承包商锁定,容易失去对承包商经营状况和技术改进的跟踪,从而带来危害更大、后果更严重的风险。     

Sociology and nuclear weapons: A view from outside

Calling attention to the relatively few contributions made by sociologists to the study of nuclear issues, a political scientist suggests a number of areas and questions that sociology may be particularly well equipped to deal with. The study is divided into a canvas of questions that come from the first 45 years of the nuclear age, and then assesses the questions that may emerge in an evolving post-Cold War era.     

论我国核废料监管制度的再建构

核废料监管制度在核安全制度中具有举足轻重的地位,使用核能的各国基本都构建了相应的核废料监管制度。通过分析我国现存核废料监管制度中的问题与不足,根据涉及核废料监管的国际条约,并结合我国相关法条中有关核废料监管制度的内容,给出该制度在我国再建构的途径,意在进一步完善我国的核废料监管制度。