Title: Safety and productivity trade-offs: managing nuclear reactor outages

Authors: Michelle M. Baron, M. Elisabeth Pate-Cornell

Addresses: School of Business and Public Management, Victoria University of,Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand. Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-4024, USA

Abstract: Risk management is a critical function in all organisations, particularly those that operate high-risk systems such as chemical processing facilities or offshore oil platforms. In this context, risk management extends beyond the protection of financial assets to deal with issues of public concern including human safety and environmental impact. It is clear that these critical systems operate with several important objectives. It is less clear that decision makers are adequately equipped to deal effectively with trade-offs between objectives, particularly under time pressure or other constrained resources. The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical approach that can be used in the public and private sectors to guide the management of risk-critical systems, and to illustrate its application to the management of nuclear power plant outages.

Keywords: critical systems; decision support; maintenance; nuclear reactors; operations; production; reliability; risk management; safety; trade-off.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRAM.2000.001486

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 2000 Vol.1 No.1/2, pp.1-19

Published online: 04 Jul 2003 *

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