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Candidates for leadership provide statements: ANS Board of Directors
With the annual ANS election right around the corner, American Nuclear Society members will be going to the polls to vote for a vice president/president-elect, treasurer, and members-at-large for the Board of Directors. In January, Nuclear News published statements from candidates for vice president/president-elect and treasurer. This month, we are featuring statements from each nominee for the Board of Directors.
S. Garribba, A. Ovi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 34 | Number 1 | June 1977 | Pages 18-37
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31826
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A statistical formulation of utility theory is developed for decision problems concerned with the choice among alternative strategies in electric energy production. Four alternatives are considered: nuclear power, fossil power, solar energy, and conservation policy. Attention is focused on a Public Electric Utility thought of as a rational decision-maker. A framework for decisions is then suggested where the admissible strategies and their possible consequences represent the information available to the decision-maker. Once the objectives of the decision process are assessed, consequences can be quantified in terms of measures of effectiveness. Maximum expected utility is the criterion of choice among alternatives. Steps toward expected values are the evaluation of the multidimensional utility function and the assessment of subjective probabilities for consequences. In this respect, the multiplicative form of the utility function seems less restrictive than the additive form and almost as manageable to implement. Probabilities are expressed through subjective marginal probability density functions given at a discrete number of points. The final stage of the decision model is to establish the value of each strategy. To this scope, expected utilities are computed and scaled. The result is that nuclear power offers the best alternative.