Risk Management and the Nuclear Energy Hazard

Date of Submission

1976

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Department

Management

Advisor

Dr. Wilfred Harricharan

Keywords

Insurance, Nuclear Hazards, Risk Insurance

LCSH

Insurance, Nuclear hazards insurance, Risk (Insurance)

Call No. at the Univ. of New Haven Library

AS 36 .N29 Bus. Adm. 1976 no.1

Abstract

(Introduction, pp. 1-2)

The concept of risk management is a fairly recent one. With the advent of nuclear power as a source of energy, this concept needs to be looked at from a slightly different point of view. Because of the unique nature of nuclear energy, the usual risk management techniques are not always feasible. It is my intent to first of all define "risk management," and then do a detailed analysis of the nuclear energy hazard in order to show why it is sometimes difficult to apply normal risk management tools to this particular area.

There is very little information written on the subject of risk management of the nuclear hazard. There have been a smattering of articles written on the subject of nuclear insurance, but this has not often been expanded to the much broader field of risk management. Because of the very controversial nature of the risk, as well as the potential danger of the use of nuclear energy, this topic seemed timely. I found after diving into the material that there are a number of very important unanswered questions and gaps in protection. Because of the recent "energy crisis" the problem of risk management of the nuclear hazard will have to be considered much more closely and more seriously by everyone.

I became interested in this topic initially because of a number of questions that were arising in,my day to day work for a risk management consulting firm. In my search for answers to these questions, I tried for the most part to confine my efforts to more recent publications because of the ever-changing nature of the field. My search for information took me to several college libraries, the Harvard University Law School library, and the Insurance Library Association of Boston.

My study starts out with a discussion of risk management in general, as a sort of broad background for the rest of the study. I then go into the subject of nuclear energy in Chapter III, and nuclear energy insurance in the fourth chapter. Without the Chapter III discussion first, I felt that the information in Chapter IV would lose a great deal of it's impact.

In the fifth chapter I have tried to combine the areas of risk management and the nuclear energy hazard, and have attempted to illustrate why it is often difficult to apply the usual risk management concepts to the nuclear energy hazard.

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