First “Days of Risk” aim to bring together researchers and doctoral students whose work consists in human, organizational and societal challenges related to nuclear technology deployment. They will focus on risks affecting different stakeholders and features of the investigated fields.
Risk management has become a major concern in modern societies over the past few decades (Beck, 1986; Jonas, 1979). Enterprises and organizations followed have had the same evolution, particularly in the sectors using « high risk » technologies, i.e. shipment, chemistry, petrochemical and nuclear activities (Perrow, 1984). Organizational reliability and industrial safety are nowadays at the heart of the performance of these organizations. Since an accident can lead to far-reaching catastrophic consequences, reliability of these organizations is a prerequisite for their acceptability in their vicinity, as well as for obtaining operating authorization from the regulatory authorities. The crucial question here concerns the way manner in which reliability is added to the other dimensions of the performance, particularly economic, industrial, social and environmental dimensions. While being shared by all risk industries, these questions have been asked in a particularly acute way in the nuclear industry.
Initiatives had been taken by publically supported research institutions and by some industrialists. Risk days particularly rely on the RITE research chair (Pays de la Loire) and RESOH research chair (Areva, DCNS, IRSN) at École des Mines of Nantes. Days of risk are organized and designed in synergy with AGORAS (ANR) and NEEDS (CNRS) research programs.
Risk days aim to bring together these challenges around three themes:
- Investigating the nuclear
- Men and organizations as network: collective management of risks and industrial safety
- Nuclear territories
Each of these themes is the subject of the three calls for contribution presented below. The symposium intends to be wildly opened and will be addressed to academic disciplines such as management, sociology, safety sciences, political sciences and ergonomics.
Risk days aim to involve young researchers. The first day is intended for doctoral students. It offers them the opportunity to share and discuss their works with researchers, lecturers, professors who are experts in these domains. Doctoral students’ contributions are subjected to a selection process by a scientific committee to whom they are invited to submit their proposals.
