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Fear Itself: Assessing The Risks Of Transporting High-Level Nuclear Waste, Fred Carl Dilger

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This thesis contrasts and compares two approaches to risk assessment as they apply to the problem of transporting high level radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, NV. Risk assessment, a lineal descendant of cost-benefit analysis, is an increasingly popular tool for justifying policy or programmatic decisions that involve some potential for public harm. The study uses Frank Fischer's framework for policy analysis to examine the problem of transportation risk assessment and to propose a new process for risk assessment that has political legitimacy, rather than technical elegance, as its goal.