Thomas Wellock (US NRC): "A Figure of Merit: Quantifying the Probability of a Nuclear Reactor Accident"

Thomas Wellock (US NRC): "A Figure of Merit: Quantifying the Probability of a Nuclear Reactor Accident"

Abstract: In recent decades, probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) has become an essential tool in risk analysis and management in many industries and government agencies. The origins of PRA date to the 1975 publication of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Reactor Safety Study led by MIT professor Norman Rasmussen. The “Rasmussen Report” inspired considerable political and scholarly disputes over the motives behind it and the value of its methods and numerical estimates of risk. The Report’s controversies have overshadowed the deeper technical origins of risk assessment. Nuclear experts had long sought to express risk in a “figure of merit” to verify the safety of weapons and, later, civilian reactors. By the 1970s, technical advances in PRA gave the methodology the potential to serve political ends, too. The Report, it was hoped, would prove nuclear power’s safety to a growing chorus of critics. Subsequent attacks on the Report’s methods and numerical estimates damaged the NRC’s credibility. PRA’s fortunes revived when the 1979 Three Mile Island accident demonstrated PRA’s potential for improving the safety of nuclear power and other technical systems. Nevertheless, the Report’s controversies endure in mistrust of PRA and its experts.

Dr. Thomas Wellock is the historian at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). At the NRC, Dr. Wellock writes scholarly and popular history on the regulation of nuclear power. He is currently at work on a history of the use of probabilistic risk assessment in the regulation of nuclear power, and recently published a scholarly article on the topic, “A Figure of Merit: Quantifying the Probability of a Nuclear Reactor Accident.”

Prior to coming to the NRC, Dr. Wellock was a professor of U.S. history at Central Washington University. He has published two books, Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) and Preserving the Nation: The Conservation and Environmental Movements, 1870-2000 (Harlan Davidson, 2007). He has also published numerous articles on the history of nuclear power and environmentalism.

Early in his career he worked as an engineer at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station and as a reactor test engineer on Los Angeles class submarines. Dr. Wellock has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Toledo in 1989, and Doctorate Degree in History from the University of California at Berkeley in 1995.

About the seminar series: This lecture continues a speaker series featuring leading international experts on nuclear emergency response. Part of an NSF CAREER Award (PI Sonja Schmid) and hosted by Virginia Tech’s Department of Science and Technology in Society, with generous support from the Office of the Vice President for the National Capital Region.

• Light refreshments will be served.
• Graduate students are encouraged to arrive at 12:00 to chat with the speaker before his talk.
• The URL to the online version of the event is http://www.ncr.vt.edu/live/ for anyone who'd like to join remotely.
• To submit a question to the speaker, please e-mail it to siren@vt.edu.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Sonja Schmid at 703-538-8482 or email sschmid@vt.edu during regular business hours at least 10 business days prior to the event.