1. Any improbable event may happen in the next minute. Thus an earthquake of
magnitude 9.
2. The most improbable events are combinations of very unlikely events,
whether or not related to a causality. Thus an earthquake followed by a
tsunami.
3. The combinations of controllable events may not be: If A and B are
manageable, it does not necessarily mean that A followed by B is. Thus the
combination of an earthquake and a tsunami, whose simultaneous impact on a
nuclear plant was not anticipated: almost no one had thought that a tsunami
could interrupt the cooling process triggered automatically after an
earthquake. Therefore, the combination of the two was not controlled.
4. No problem should be treated independently of the chain of improbable
events which may be associated with it and which can occur in different
domains. Thus, an earthquake and a tsunami which may lead to a financial
crisis accelerator of panic, making it more difficult to control the
consequences of the earthquake. Worse still if it is revealed that one of
the reactors was a MOX-powered reactor (mixed oxide) and part of the
surrounding area is permanently uninhabitable.
5. The peculiarity of the media is now to put in the front line the most
improbable events and the most events creative of disasters.
6. Globalization creates the conditions for a single hierarchy of
information across the planet, so what is happening in Japan becomes the
headline of every written newspapers, all television channels and all
websites in the world.
7. The globalization of information allows turpitudes to proceed with
impunity if they are not on the top of the hit parade of the tragedies of
the day; as what is happening today in Ivory Coast and Libya, in shadow of
Japan’s events.
8. The essence of politics must be to prepare anwers to threats posed by very
unlikely events triggers of disasters. And thus of Nuclear Safety, which
must be thought of as a set of answers to all imaginable improbable chains
of events. These responses go through measures of prevention or mitigation
of the consequences. Thus the standards of anti-seismic constructions and
tsunami-proof dikes.
9. The essence of democracy is to decide in a transparent manner the degree
of risk that a society is prepared to take for the benefit of innovation and
boldness.
10. The globalization of threats and responses require that of politics. We
need in particular a globalization of standards and processes for nuclear
security. And beyond a globalization of the idea of risk.