Evaluating the nation's risk assessors: nuclear power and the 'value of life'

Nuclear power, like transport and most of the everyday activities monitored by the Health & Safety Executive, imposes risks-occasionally, as Chernobyl showed, catastrophic ones - on all of us. Yet in principle, the value of reducing them should be measured in the same way. In fact, widely differing values are in use. It is time a common basis of measurement was adopted.