Posted By Rod
Firstly, I must warn that this thread deals with very severe risks which many people might prefer not to think about, which is a fair choice that I respect.
So, anyone of a nervous disposition should read no further - really.
But most of us are Risk Assessors, so should be OK with this.
I wish to discuss the biggest Risk Assessment I have ever been asked to do, of truly global implication. I have tried to be proportionate, but the Severity has to be higher than the normal maximum of 5. I would like the opinions of other members on this.
The Risk Assessment is on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva in Switzerland. The largest Physics experiment ever is due to start there in May this year. Two beams of atomic particles will be accelerated to nearly the speed of light in a circular vacuum tube 27 km circumference 100m below ground. One beam will travel clockwise; the other anticlockwise. They will be controlled by a series of extremely powerful super-conducting electromagnets cooled to almost Absolute Zero by liquid helium.
At a certain point, the 2 beams will be brought to a head-on collision with incredible force, which will cause the atomic particles to break into sub-atomic particles in ways that the Physicists do not yet understand. This, of course, is the only reason for the whole project; they want to analyse the particles and hope to discover new ones that may enable them to understand how gravity works, for example.
So far, so exciting, a real chance to understand the Universe...
But, wait a minute, I thought with my Health & Safety hat on, what does the Risk Assessment say? Well, actually, they haven't done one!
So what would any Risk Assessor do in the circumstances? I researched some more and tried to do my own Risk Assessment. This is where it gets scary. It sounds like Science Fiction, but CERN themselves predict that the experiment will produce mini Black Holes and other equally worrying objects. Of course, they assure us, this will not be dangerous because the mini Black Holes will "evaporate" before they can do any damage...
I had better now give you my attempt at a Risk Assessment for you to assess..
Large Hadron Collider – a Risk Assessment
I work in Quality Assurance in industry and also have responsibilities for Health & Safety. In this rôle, I regularly carry out Risk Assessments and was therefore horrified to discover that no proper Risk Assessment appears to have been done on the LHC. In the Abstract of “Report of the LHC Safety Study Group” (2003), CERN say simply:
“We review the possibility of producing dangerous objects during heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider all such objects that have been theoretically envisaged, such as negatively charged strangelets, gravitational black holes, and magnetic monopoles. We find no basis for any conceivable threat.”
This is not a Risk Assessment - it is merely their estimate of the likelihood of this happening.
[Of course, we can disagree with even this estimate of likelihood; for instance they make no mention here of the possibility of human or mechanical error. Before they have even started, they have had an explosive magnet failure.]
The fundamental of any science is to measure. CERN is spending millions of dollars to quantify fundamental particles; I wish to quantify the Risk by means of a Risk Assessment.
Risk Assessments do not need study groups, super computers or millions of dollars in investment. They are to me me a beautiful example of basic 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' science that can be done by anyone on the back of an envelope once they understand the basics:
Risk equals Likelihood multiplied by Severity.
In the most basic form, Likelihood is scored from 5 (Very Likely) down to 1 (Not Likely).
Similarly, Severity is scored from 5 (Very High) down to 1 (Nil).
Therefore Risk has a score from 1 (1*1) to 25 (5*5).
How do we assess the LHC?
Method 1
In the normal workplace Risk Assessment, a Severity of 5 means the death of one person.
In the case of the LHC, Severity is obviously higher.
The destruction of the planet would involve the death of 6.5 billion people, millions of species of plants and animals, the end of millions of years of evolution with no remaining life to restart it, the destruction of our past as well as our future. There would be no sign of us ever having existed, unless some alien astronomer thought: “That's an unusual place to find a black hole.”
If the Earth became a black hole, there would be effects on the rest of the Solar System. This humble scientist would assess this Severity as Infinity!
Therefore, even if you accept the CERN view of Likelihood and put in a Likelihood score of less than 1 (How about 0.0000000000001?),
Risk = (0.0000000000001 * infinity) = infinity!
Method 2
You may be uneasy about putting a value of infinity on anything. I therefore looked for this alternative method, which is from “Jordans Health and Safety Management”.
Risk Rating = Numbers * Severity * Likelihood
This method scores Severity of injury from 1 (Negligible) to 10 (Fatal),
Likelihood of occurrence from 0.5 (Improbable – probability close to zero) to 20 (Certain) and
Number of people affected: 1-5 persons score = 1,
6-50 persons score = 2,
50+ persons (or public/vulnerable persons affected) score = 3 .
There is no consideration in this formula of death of other species, environment or planet. However, let us continue! I will accept the scoring for Severity and Likelihood, but feel it necessary to adjust the scoring for Numbers.
A score of 3 is acceptable for 51 people, but 6.5 billion is somewhat higher! To obtain a reasonable score for such a number, I look at the maximum number of casualties (5) to score 1 and compare it with the maximum number (50) to score 2. The score has doubled for a ten-fold increase in casualties.
A further ten-fold increase to 500 would be the maximum for a further score doubling to 4,
5,000 = 8,
50,000 = 16,
500,00 = 32,
5,000,000 = 64,
50,000,000 = 128,
500,000,000 = 256 ,
5,000,000,000 =512,
50,000,000,000 = 1,024.
Roughly extrapolating between 512 and 1,024,
6,500,000,000 = 529
The Severity is obviously 10 (Fatal). Let us accept the lowest Likelihood of 0.5 (Improbable).
Then the Risk Rating is (529*10*0.5) = 2,645.
Jordans state that a rating of less than 10 is “Risk acceptable unless cost or effort to control risk further is very low.”
The highest they consider is 100+ “Risk totally unacceptable; immediate action required before work activity can continue.”
The LHC certainly comes well into this category!
There is no compelling reason for the deployment of the LHC - 'insatiable curiosity', existing investment and the careers of a large number of physicists do not justify any risk to the existence of the rest of us, who have had no vote on the matter. Further research into particle Physics using existing methods such as astronomical observations will answer some of the fundamental questions, although at a slower rate. Much more understanding is necessary before we can think of commissioning the LHC.
The LHC should be 'mothballed' until a future Risk Assessment passes it as safe. As the Severity of the risk is even greater than that of nuclear weapons, I propose that all such colliders be put under the control of the IAEA, who would fit locks and monitoring equipment.