The Aviation Paradox: Why We Can \u2018Know\u2019 Jetliners But Not Reactors

John Downer

doi:10.1007/s11024-017-9322-4

Abstract

Publics and policymakers increasingly have to contend with the risks of complex, safety-critical technologies, such as airframes and reactors. As such, ‘technological risk’ has become an important object of modern governance, with state regulators as core agents, and ‘reliability assessment’ as the most essential metric. The Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature casts doubt on whether or not we should place our faith in these assessments because predictively calculating the ultra-high reliability required of such systems poses seemingly insurmountable epistemological problems. This paper argues that these misgivings are warranted in the nuclear sphere, despite evidence from the aviation sphere suggesting that such calculations can be accurate. It explains why regulatory calculations that predict the reliability of new airframes cannot work in principle, and then it explains why those calculations work in practice. It then builds on this explanation to argue that the means by which engineers manage reliability in aviation is highly domain-specific, and to suggest how a more nuanced understanding of jetliners could inform debates about nuclear energy.

Highlights

Reliability and GovernanceIn a recent expert forum on nuclear energy and climate change, one participant—a manager involved in Chinese infrastructure—compared the engineering challenges of nuclear energy to those of civil aviation
Having acknowledged the existence of public concerns about reactors, he confidently asserted that the challenges of nuclear energy were amenable to the kinds of engineering and management practices that led to the development of safe air travel, and predicted that public confidence would come to acknowledge this in time
Both are complex systems that demand extraordinary levels of reliability;1 the industrialized world has been manufacturing both for roughly the same amount of time; and most polities manage their safety through ostensibly similar institutions and practices

Summary

Introduction

Reliability and GovernanceIn a recent expert forum on nuclear energy and climate change, one participant—a manager involved in Chinese infrastructure—compared the engineering challenges of nuclear energy to those of civil aviation. Both are complex systems that demand extraordinary levels of reliability;1 the industrialized world has been manufacturing both for roughly the same amount of time; and most polities manage their safety through ostensibly similar institutions and practices.2 In the US, for example, reactors and jetliners are each the responsibility of a dedicated government regulator (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC], and Federal Aviation Administration [FAA], respectively) that performs various safety-related functions; the most fundamental of which being the formal safety assessment of new designs (airplanes and reactors) prior to their use.

Results

Conclusion