Risk Governance in the US

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Risk Governance in the US

• Gail Charnley, PhD

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Outline of Presentation

• Evolution of risk governance in the US
• roles of science, law, policy
• Evolution of risk governance as applied to
  nuclear waste
• inconsistent efficiency effectiveness
• Need to strengthen reliance on risk as the common
  currency for risk decisions
• increase transparency
• Public risk perceptions of nuclear waste

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Evolution of Risk Governance
Law
Precaution
Risk
Science
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Legal Evolution

• Delaney clause
• zero risk standard for food additives
• Ethyl decision
• ban leaded gasoline even if benefits unclear
• Benzene decision
• regulate only significant risks
• Food Quality Protection Act
• without science, protect children

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Regulatory Risk Assessment

• Developed in reaction to laws calling for limits
  on chemical exposures that protect public health
• with an adequate margin of safety
• with a reasonable certainty of no harm
• Evolved as a way to provide a quantitative basis
  for achieving qualitative standards of safety

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Judicial Review of Proposed Risk Regulation

• Administrative Procedure Act
• Proposed risk management actions are subject to
  judicial review
• Actions can be found arbitrary and capricious
  if not supported by extensive factual record
• Health risk decisions
• US Avoid false positives
• Europe Avoid false negatives

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More Transparency

• More transparency (through judicial review or
  other means) leads to more consistent and
  efficient decisions about reducing risks

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Risk Governance ofRadioactive Waste

• Patchy, uncoordinated, inconsistent, inefficient
• 1946 Atomic Energy Act
• 3 categories of nuclear material source,
  byproduct, special nuclear
• assured security, not safety
• Subsequent laws regulations continue to define
  waste by source, not risk

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Whos in charge?

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• controls commercial nuclear activities
• Department of Energy
• controls defense nuclear activities
• Environmental Protection Agency
• sets radiation protection criteria standards
• States
• control low-level waste disposal

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Low-level waste is NOT . . .

• Spent nuclear fuel, high-level waste from fuel
  reprocessing, transuranic waste, or byproduct
  material from uranium or thorium ore processing
• Classified legally through defined limits on
  radioactivity
• Classified according to risk, so treatments
  inconsistent with potential to cause harm

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Example

• Both treated as Class A wastes, requiring
  identical disposal in near-surface, US
  NRC-licensed facilities
• Slightly radioactive solid material, such as
  debris rubble from nuclear facility
  decommissioning (mostly cement)
• Discrete, highly radioactive sources that are no
  longer useful (e.g., sealed sources used in
  medical diagnostics, industry, and research)

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New NAS Committee

• Sponsored by Army Corps of Engineers, Department
  of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency,
  Nuclear Regulatory Commission, coalition of
  states
• Evaluate and recommend options for improving
  current patchwork system that regulates low-level
  radioactive wastes according to their source
• Goal use risk as common currency

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Negligible Risk Levels(incremental upper-bound
lifetime cancer risk)

• Chemicals
• Occupational below 10-3 for 45 years exposure
  to limit
• General population below 10-4 to 10-6 for 70
  years exposure to limit
• Radiation
• Occupational more that 1 in 10 for working
  lifetime at limit (NRC) 10-2 for 50 years
  exposure to limit (ICRP/NCRP)

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ALARA

• Prevents exposures at or near the limit
• No basis for making efficient risk management
  decisions
• No basis for making risk comparisons
• No transparency
• Health-protectiveness unknown (or known only to a
  few)

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Harmonising Risk Governance for Chemicals and
Radiation

• Risks estimated differently
• Radiation integrates exposures
• Chemicals usually considered individually
• Toxicity
• Radiation cancer, death
• Chemicals many types of effects
• Routes of exposure
• Radiation integrated
• Chemicals oral, dermal, inhalation

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Public Risk Perceptionsand Radioactive Waste

• Distrust of risk governance due to complexity,
  inflexibility, inconsistency
• Risk-based approach not universally accepted

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Clarify what probabilistic risk assessment is and
isnt

• Framework for organizing scientific information
  in order to clarify what is and is not known
  about a particular risk
• Uniform framework useful for guiding decisions,
  not for calculating actual risk
• Useful for setting priorities and targeting
  resources
• Guide to choosing safety measures
• Part of larger decision-making process

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Environmental Health Risk Management Framework
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Why is a probabilistic risk-informed approach
better than deterministic?

• Can compare different safety measures in terms of
  their efficiency and effectiveness
• Can clarify how much of a public health benefit
  may result from different levels of safety
  investment
• Improves confidence in choice of safety measures
  because the way risk has been estimated
  accounted for is more transparent
• Can evaluate tradeoffs e.g., nuclear energy
  clean air versus coal-fired generation air
  pollution

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Examples

• More risk information led to more stringent
  controls asbestos, lead, diesel fuel
• No risk information lead to over-reaction
  widespread bankruptcy Alar apples
• Risk information guides priorities CERCLA
• Recent OMB report benefits of environ-mental
  regulations outweigh their costs
• BUT 60,000 more lives could be saved if
  investments were guided by risk

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Conclusions

• Basing radioactive waste governance on source,
  not risk, leads to inconsistent, inefficient,
  potentially ineffective controls.
• By extrapolation, excluding risk considerations
  from nuclear safety in general is inefficient
  of unknown public health protectiveness
• A risk-informed approach is needed to understand
  threats and evaluate risk reduction efficiency
  effectiveness -- more transparency, less
  obfuscation
• (Dont think risk and talk rem Talk risk!)