David Peat

Re-envisioning the Planet 171tems that will kick into action should such a potential disaster occur.The final result of their calculations tells us the, albeit remote, risk of aserious malfunction in a nuclear power station.Risk analysis is applied to a variety of situations—loss of controlin a jumbo jet, the possibility of two trains colliding in a metro system,the escape of deadly viruses from a research laboratory, the accidentalrelease of genetically modified substances into the environment, andso on.Because risk analysis involves a great deal of analysis and calculationand its end result is a series of numbers indicating risk, the approachappears “scientific” and lulls us into feeling relaxed aboutthings. Finally, we feel, science and reason have placed a fence of certaintyaround chance and hazard. But we should never forget that therewill always exist two important areas of uncertainty. The first is thatthe approach on which risk analysis is based is that of anticipating allpossible failures and accidents. In practice this means everything thatan engineer can imagine will ever go wrong. What can’t be accountedfor are missing factors and things overlooked. 2The other, and more serious, uncertainty is that low-risk systemsonly operate properly in the context of a well-run and well-fundedinfrastructure. Provided that an airline company, or the owners of anuclear power station, are highly reputable and have no serious cashflowproblems, things go smoothly. But what happens when institu-2There is a tragic irony that these sentences were written before the terroristattack on September 11, 2001, that destroyed the twin towers of the World TradeCenter in New York City. Risk analysis may be good at making a quantitative estimateof the probability of an anticipated event (however remote) but will never be able to“predict the unpredictable.” Certainly the possibility of fire in the building or evendamage caused by the collision of a light aircraft had been taken into account by thearchitects who designed the building. Its steel frame was protected by cladding ableto withstand high temperatures over a certain period of time without the steel losingits strength. What had not been anticipated were the consequences of an impact by alarger airliner filled with fuel. Indeed, according to a report in the British newspaperThe Guardian, a spokesman for the U.S. Insurance Information Institute said that“the possibility of the loss of both structures was seen as so remote that cover was nottaken out on those lines.” In a previous year a ship as vast and well designed as theTitanic, with its waterproof bulkheads in case of damage below the water line, wasconsidered “unsinkable.”