Follow up to: “accidents’ consequences can lead to diverging societal impacts: where lies the difference?” and “Metaphoric description of risks and their perception”

Windscale fire was the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain’s history

This blogpost is in follow up of Identical single accidents’ consequences can lead to diverging societal impacts and similarly, the Metaphoric description of risks and their perception.

Nuclear Reactors:

Let’s look at some accidents types, i,.e. c1, c2, c3.

c1: Class 5+ accidents (Fukushima, Tschernobyl, Kyshtym disaster, Windscale fire, Three Mile Island accident, First Chalk River accident,  and Lucens partial core meltdown) were likely to be interpreted as Sword of Damocles metaphor, but would likely be Medusa now.

c2: Nuclear Waste storage can be easily considered to belong to the Pandora interpretation, evolving into Cassandra (presently), then later it may evolve into Cyclops. Finally,

c3: Post accidental exposure is Cassandra but for people onsite it is a Sword of Damocles.

Tailings Failures:

Based on the above we can imagine that Tailings Dams failures can be societally and personally interpreted as one major, catastrophic accident. Actually,  a vivid one with “unthinkable” consequences (for example Lac Megantic) or Class 5+ accident (such as Fukushima).

In fact, we can now set-up a table with the various accidents examples. In addition, we include their related metaphoric descriptors at personal/local or societal/general level, including public perception and likely reactions.

accidents’ consequences can lead to diverging societal impacts

What we see in the table

It is obvious that when personal/local risks belonging to the Cyclops, Sword of Damocles metaphors have societal/general potential for Medusa perception, then we should consider them as “societally intolerable”. Indeed, they soon trigger mitigation, moratoriums, protests, etc.

Furthermore we notice that he development of a societal Medusa interpretation varies from case to case:

a1,b2,c1 quickly turn into full blown Medusa
b1, c2,c3 are slow Medusa, which can abort. Finally,

a2 is intrinsically “contained”, so it will most likely never evolve into a Medusa interpretation.

In fact, we can use the German metaphors for discussing image and societal perception of risk scenario.

If we consider any scenario to have a high Medusa perception we can also considered it to be at the limit of societal tolerance. Indeed that is true whatever the factual consequences may be, even if they are relatively small.

If we consider Medusa as fast developing than the ensuing crisis will probably lead to a major crisis, with potential catastrophic corporate consequences.

Tagged with: First Chalk River accident, Fukushima, Kyshtym disaster, Lucens partial core meltdown, Nuclear Waste storage, societal impacts, Three Mile Island accident, tolerance, Tschernobyl, Windscale fire

Category: Consequences, Hazard, Tolerance/Acceptability