STS Observatory

There are a lot of studies on the probability of accidents in a nuclear power plant. As far as I understand they use methods of risk analysis to calculate the failure probability of the nuclear reactor.
Here I tried a very simple empirical approach: We know the number of nuclear power reactors in the world, we know (probably) the number of severe accidents up to now, so we can calculate the empirical failure probability of a single reactor per year. Thus we are able to calculate the probability that no reactor in the world, in UK or in another country, will have an accident within the next 5, 10 or 20 years.Or that at least on reactor will fail severely. This can be done by using the Poisson distribution.
Up to now there are at least 4 reactor accidents on INES scale 5 or more. Chernobyl (1986) is the only one on level 7, Three Miles Island(1979), Windscale (1957) are on level 5. Also the present Fukushima accident (or accidents?) is level 5, at least at the moment (27.03.2011). On level 5 there are some more accidents and on level 6 is only one, but they were in other nuclear facilities, not in power reactors. One could argue that Windscale was not a civil but a military reactor, but then in Fukushima there is probably more than one reactor involved. So the number of 4 severe accidents seems quite reasonable.
The number of nuclear reactors worldwide increased drastically from 1955 until 1988, from which date the number is nearly constant. Up to the Fukushima accident there were 443 reactors operating worldwide.
By a simple graphical piecewise interpolation of the number of reactors per year a total of 15.000 reactoryears can be estimated. This crude number should be sufficient for the present purpose.
So the probalilty for one severe accident per reactoryear (ry)is
q=4acc/15.000ry
If there are N reactors in operation, the Poisson distribution gives the probability for x severe accidents within the next y years. In order to apply the Poisson distribution the expected mean number of accidents m within this time has to be estimated:
m=q*N*y
Then the probality to have x accidents when we expect a mean value of m accidents is given by
p(x)=(m^x/x!)*exp(-m)
Thus the probality for no accident is (x=0)
P(0)=exp(-m)
and the probality for at least one accident is
p(x≥1)=1-exp(-m)
Regarding the worldwide situation for the next 20 years, the number of reactors is 443, we expect an average number of severe accidents
m=(4acc/15.000ry)*443r*20y=2.34acc
so 2.34 accidents within any period of 20 years somewhere in the world. The probability for one or more severe accidents worldwide is
p(x≥1)=1-exp(-2.34)=90.36%
How is the situation for a single country? We simply have to count the number of reactors within this country and calculate the respective reactoryears.
                                      World        UK               US            D
reactors                       443           19              104           17
reactoryears             8860        380            2080         340
mean # acc                 2.34         0.100       0.549         0.089
p(≥1                              90.36%    9.55%      42.26%       8.59%
On the average more than 2 accidents are expected worldwide, the probality for at least one accident ist 90% worldwide, more than 9% for the UK and more than 40% for the US.
Do you think these estimations are reasonable? Do you think a 9% probability for a Chernobyl or Fukushima accident in the UK within the next 20 years is acceptable?

I am looking forward to your comments.

The second meeting of the History of Science reading group discussed Peter Galison’s paper “ten problems in history and philosophy of science.” It was a larger group, of philosophers historians and sociologists: whatever the merits of Galison’s specific proposals, his name and his example certainly bring different disciplinary approaches together.

The ten problems described in the paper are as follows:

Problem 1 – what is context – how does a contextual explanation work?

Problem 2 – purity and fundamentality – what counts, at different times, as a ‘pure’ science?

Problem 3 – historical argumentation – when the foucs is on scientific practices, what are the concepts tools and procedures needed at a given time to construct an acceptable scientific argument?

Problems 4 & 5 Fabricated Fundamentals –

1. Making things: it is increasingly hard to separate the made from the found

2. What should we make?

In Galison’s view this seems to be a new change brought about by nanotechnology and genetic-modification. We wondered about what the role of historical analysis would be for understanding fabricated funamentals: would we want to relate genetic modification to earlier examples of animal and plant breeding, or nanotechnology to synthetic chemistry or other techniques of making new natural things? What is the role of the ‘break’, the terrible beauty which is born with new techniques of modification? And what does this have to do with the ethical turn of problem five? Do history and philosophy of science have meaningful things to say about the ethics of artificiality in this sense? Some of us felt it would be hard to base ethical arguments about fabricated fundamentals on an historical basis.

Problem 6 Political Technologies – privacy/ surveillance // what is politics of these new technologies

Problem 7 Locality: what do microhistories towards, or add up to?

We recognised this as ‘bar-talk’ for historians and philosophers of science – that very local studies have proliferated and it is sometimes hard to see how to fit them into broader arguments and patterns. Some of us felt this was less of a problem for historians, who are perhaps more willing to contextualise – than micro-philosophers.

Problem 8 – globality – what aspects of scientific practice simply do not reduce to the local

We wondered what aspects were not captured by local studies: perhaps legal and regulatory aspects, as a broader field of action? And the way in which the claims made about different historical periods fit together, or fail to.

Problem 9 Relentless Historicism – is it possible to write a history and philosophy of science in which the story told truly I historical?

Problem 10: Scientific Doubt.

The STS Department’s new History of Science reading group has had two meetings so far, and very lively discussions. In the first, we discussed Maxine Berg’s paper “From Imitation to Invention”. Berg’s paper takes the question of ‘imitation’ as part of a consumer-focused and global history of processes of industrialisation. It builds on De Vries’ notion of the ‘industrious revolution’, a reorientation of households towards newly intensified forms of production, and the connection of this to the consumption of new commodities. It is an account of the interrelations between consumerism and production. Berg rescues the idea of imitation as a creative process – not mere copying, but a translation and transformation of materials and processes which she traces across the world. Inventive imitation is an ancient and vital part of the trade of processes and ideas: from bronze age skeuomorphs – objects or features which copy the designs of similar artefact in different materials – described by archaeologists, to the attempt to develop a distinctively English style of luxury in imitation of Chinese and Japanese imports.

With no economists in the group we weren’t completely clear on the use of hedonic, another technical term which Berg employs. The way Berg seems to intend it is to describe the different pleasure-giving properties of commodities, and to analyze commodities as bundles of these proprties. We were taken with this emphasis on the experience of physical properties, and the central place this account gives to aesthetics.

Some of us felt parts of Berg’s argument were over-extended and too Eurocentric. For example, Berg argues that the changes in materials in Etruscan burial goods led to the spread of new luxury techniques. This is perhaps a partial and luxuriant way to analyze the burial goods themselves, which in their own cultural setting are ‘essential luxuries’, indispensable to the rites of mourning and the dead. The meaning and attraction of materials – and their transmission from one place to another – may have cultural meanings which are poorly captured by economic histories and a very sunnily aesthetic approach. We speculated on other ways in which you might capture other properties and relations between human bodies, cultures, and materials – this suggested some future reading, but we came to no conclusions.

The pessimistic view of anti-cuts protesters…

Photos say more than a thousand words, though their meassage may depend on what we want to see (see Susan Sontag’s ‘Regarding the pain of others’). Here are more than three thousand words from the rally for Science at Whitehall on the 9th. The blog does not allow me to publish more than one picture per go, for some reason.

Deep concentration

 This is a test to check that the blog image publication is working. JA

There’s been an unusual opportunity over the last few weeks for scientists (and even some science policy buffs) to get involved in some practical efforts at science policy making. I am talking about the recent eruption of scientific political consciousness over expected cutbacks in government investment in research. Apart from the usual pronouncements from the Royal Society, anguished Vice-Chancellors and the like, there’s been a well aimed campaign from CaSE (Campaign for Science and Engineering) and a grass-roots movement ‘Science is Vital’.

The latter two are currently working together to organise a petition (26 000 signatures so far and still open for signing); held a rally in Whitehall (with STS and ex-STS participants –observers): and on Tuesday 12 October a mass lobby of Parliament. The activity itself is remarkable: veterans say it hasn’t happened since the ‘Save British Science’ movement, provoked by Mrs Thatcher’s cuts (and worse, her disrespect) in the nineteen-eighties. What I find interesting about the current campaign is that there is a glimmer of something more than affronted scientists fighting to preserve science’s authority and argue its benefits. I detect more of a political consciousness: science, especially after the investment of the past decade or more, recognises itself as an industry, that like other industries can be a political force. There is a new meaning to ‘the Science Vote’. Is this the ultimate manifestation of ‘epistemic drift’, following from Relevance, Accountability, Impact and all that? Or is the prospect of cuts and resulting campaign just a boundary object that enables a temporary alliance with science-based industry, and charitable funders reliant on a science budget subsidy, and politicians needing a cause to fight for, but with each component retaining its own unadulterated identity. Can the historians of science tell us if it was like this in the eighties – for example was the support of industrialists (as well as Nobelists) as important then as it is today?

Meanwhile, some links for the curious

http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk

http://blog.sciencecampaign.org.uk

www.scienceisvital.org.uk

http://scienceisvital.org.uk/sign-the-petition/

Declaration of interest: I am a member of the CaSE Executive Committee

Norma Morris

So, as Alice Bell hinted in her comment on the key concepts team’s recent post on the most influential people in UK science policy here on the STS Observatory, The Times produced its own list: the Eureka 100. It’s behind a pay-wall, but here it is:

1. Paul Nurse
2. Mark Walport
3. Stephen Hawking
4. Alex Jeffreys
5. Jonathan Ive
6. John Sulston
7. David Attenborough (note!)
8. Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal, President of the RS)
9. Andre Geim (a very late entry, or just good timing?)
10. Nancy Rothwell (VC of Manchester)
11. John Rose (Rolls-Royce)
12. Iain Lobban (director of GCHQ)
13. Philip Campbell (Editor, Nature)
14. Andrew Witty (on our list too, CEO of GSK)
15. Jocelyn Bell Burnell (pulsars, a long time ago)
16. John Beddington (GCSA)
17. Richard Friend (plastics)
18. David Mackay (CSA, Department of Energy and Climate Change)
19. Ross Brawn (Formula 1, boys toys)
20. John Bell (Oxford medical science)
21. James Dyson (polulist inventor, Conservative advisor)
22. Fred Sanger (Cambridge sequencer)
23. Sally Davies (CMO)
24. Brian Cox (not just a pretty face)
25. Richard Dawkins (‘atheist campaigner’ ho ho)
26. Wendy Hall (computer science)
27. Paul Davies (SETI)
28. Peter Mansfield (MRI scanning)
29. Kay Davies (Oxford gene therapy)
30. Martin Evans (stem cells)
31. Simon Campbell (viagra)
32. David Bulcombe (Cambridge botany)
33. Simon Singh (science writer, accidental libel campaigner)
34. Peter Higgs (of possible particle fame)
35. Tim Hunt (Nobellist, cancer research)
36. Mike Stratton (cancer research)
37. Ann Dowling (Cambridge engineer)
38. Harry Kroto (Nobellist, carbon)
39. Anthony Hollander (stem cells)
40. Chris Whitty (chief scientist, DFID)
41. Andrew Wiles (top mathmo)
42. John Houghton (IPCC)
43. Phil Jones (UEA climate scientist)
44. Kim Shillinglaw (BBC science head)
45. David Brennan (CEO AstraZeneca)
46. Greg Winter (Cambridge molecular biology/medicine)
47. Leszek Borysiewicz (VC Cambridge)
48. John Pendry (Imperial invisibility cloak)
49. Steven Ley (Cambridge organic chemist)
50. Adrian Owen (neuroscience)
51. Hermann Hauser (cambridge IT)
52. Tim Berners-Lee (WWW)
53. Chris Stringer (very ancient humans)
54. David King (ex-GCSA, pro-nuclear)
55. Philip Cohen (Dundee biochemist, note recent Willetts speech)
56. David Payne (optic fibres)
57. John Young (Pfizer UK)
58. Steven Cowley (Culham fusion)
59. Harpal Kumar (on our list too, CEO Cancer Research UK)
60. Peter Ratcliffe (Oxford medical science)
61. Ian King (CEO BAE Systems - rather low?)
62. Jim Virdee (CERN)
63. Fiona Fox (Science Media Centre)
64. Colin Blakemore (Oxford neuroscience – rather low too, or maybe had more influence under Labour?)
65. Graham Richards (Isis Innovations)
66. James Lovelock (Gaia, pro-nuclear)
67. Peter Knight (quantum optics)
68. John Browne (President of RAE, ex-BP)
69. George Efstathiou (Cambridge astronomer)
70. Adrian Smith (BIS civil servant)
71. John Krebs (one of science’s great and good)
72. John McCloskey (earthquakes)
73. Heston Blumenthal (super science chef)
74. Robin Millar (Association for Science Education)
75. Simon Donaldson (mathematician)
76. Marcus du Sautoy (popular mathematician)
77. Ben Goldacre (bad science, bad hair)
78. David Sainsbury (former science minister)
79. David Nutt (former drugs advisor)
80. Fiona Goldlee (editor, BMJ)
81. Robert Winston (fertility)
82. Steve O’Rahilly (Cambridge clinical biochem)
83. Guang-zhong Yang (robotic surgery)
84. Mark Welland (nano, CSA to MoD, should be much higher)
85. Mike Richards (cancer research)
86. Janet Thornton (genetics)
87. Steve Sparks (volcanoes)
88. Ottoline Leyser (plant genetics)
89. Mark Miodownik(KCL materials)
90. Michael Rawlins (chair of NICE)
91. Callum Roberts (marine biology)
92. John Armitt (Olympics engineer)
93. Paul Smith (Millennium Seed Bank)
94. Prince Charles (oh yes)
95. Shankar Balasubramanian (sequencing)
96. Sue Ion (BNFL)
97. Paul Westerbury (more big tent engineering)
98. Richard Fortey (writer, NHM)
99. Steve Bramwell (magnetricity)
100. Roy Anderson (remember foot and mouth?)

Plenty to talk about there. UCL does not do well in the Eureka 100 but does spectacularly well in the also-ran ‘just missed out’ column…

The list was chosen by Lord Waldegrave, Alice Bell, Dame Athene Donald and Dr Evan Harris.

The key concepts group, meeting 4th July 2010, propose the following individuals:

David Cameron, David Willetts, George Osborne, Nick Clegg

John Beddington

Andrew Witty (CEO, GSK), Moncef Slaoui (ch, R&D, GSK)

Paul Nurse

Phil Willis

Marja Makarow (CEO, European Science Foundation)

Bill and Melinda Gates

Mark Wolpert (Wellcome Trust)

David Lynn (head of strategic planning, Wellcome Trust)

Harpal Kumar (Cancer Research UK)

The editors of Nature, Science, The Economist

David Attenborough

Archbishop of Canterbury

Who would you add? Is there anyone you would take away?

This piece in The Guardian’s Lay Scientist blog on Monday, does a lot to remind us that there are still many scientists who are quick to bash the media for failing to communicate science ‘properly’.

Certainly useful as a teaching aide, if only to get our students who are studying science in the media to unpick why the way it represents science in the media is unfair, and where maybe it does make points with more merit. If nothing else it serves simply as a contemporary example of scientists’ unscientific characterisations of science in the media.

I wonder what the Science Media Centre would make of this view after all their many efforts over the past years?