Managing Uncertainties in the Regulation of Nuclear Facilities and Materials

This presentation will describe the NRC’s mission, the traditional approach to regulation of nuclear power facilities, and the NRC’s more recent use of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) in regulation. The presentation will also explore uncertainties in PRA and the role they play in NRC decision making.

About the speaker: The Honorable George Apostolakis was sworn in as a Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on April 23, 2010, to a term ending on June 30, 2014.

Dr. Apostolakis has had a distinguished career as an engineer, professor and risk analyst. Before joining the NRC, he was a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and a professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also a member and former Chairman of the statutory Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards of the NRC.

In 2007, Dr. Apostolakis was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "innovations in the theory and practice of probabilistic risk assessment and risk management." He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal Reliability Engineering and System Safety and is the founder of the International Conferences on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management. He received the Tommy Thompson Award for his contributions to improvement of reactor safety in 1999 and the Arthur Holly Compton Award in Education in 2005 from the American Nuclear Society.

Dr. Apostolakis is an internationally recognized expert in risk assessment. He has published more than 120 papers in technical journals and has made numerous presentations at national and international conferences. He has edited or co-edited eight books and conference proceedings and has participated in many probabilistic risk assessment courses and reviews.

Dr. Apostolakis received his diploma in electrical engineering from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece in 1969. He earned a master's degree in engineering science in 1970 and a Ph.D. in engineering science and applied mathematics in 1973, both from the California Institute of Technology.