Publications
Transportation scenarios for risk analysis
Transportation risk, like any risk, is defined by the risk triplet: what can happen (the scenario), how likely it is (the probability), and the resulting consequences. This paper evaluates the development of transportation scenarios, the associated probabilities, and the consequences. The most likely radioactive materials transportation scenario is routine, incident-free transportation, which has a probability indistinguishable from unity. Accident scenarios in radioactive materials transportation are of three different types: accidents in which there is no impact on the radioactive cargo, accidents in which some gamma shielding may be lost but there is no release of radioactive material, and accident in which radioactive material may potentially be released. Accident frequencies, obtainable from recorded data validated by the U.S. Department of Transportation, are considered equivalent to accident probabilities in this study. Probabilities of different types of accidents are conditional probabilities, conditional on an accident occurring, and are developed from event trees. Development of all of these probabilities and the associated highway and rail accident event trees are discussed in this paper.