Risk of large oil spills: a statistical analysis in the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that followed the explosion of the exploration platform Deepwater Horizon on 20 April 2010 was the largest accidental oil spill so far. In this paper we evaluate the risk of such very severe oil spills based on global historical data from our Energy-Related Severe Accident Database (ENSAD) and investigate if an accident of this size could have been "expected". We also compare the risk of oil spills from such accidents in exploration and production to accidental spills from other activities in the oil chain (tanker ship transport, pipelines, storage/refinery) and analyze the two components of risk, frequency and severity (quantity of oil spilled) separately.

Bayesian data analysis of severe fatal accident risk in the oil chain.

We analyze the risk of severe fatal accidents causing five or more fatalities and for nine different activities covering the entire oil chain. Included are exploration and extraction, transport by different modes, refining and final end use in power plants, heating or gas stations. The risks are quantified separately for OECD and non-OECD countries and trends are calculated.

Semiclassical model for attosecond angular streaking.

Attosecond angular streaking is a new technique to achieve unsurpassed time accuracy of only a few attoseconds. Recently this has been successfully used to set an upper limit on the electron tunneling delay time in strong laser field ionization. The measurement technique can be modeled with either the time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) or a more simple semiclassical approach that describes the process in two steps in analogy to the three-step model in high harmonic generation (HHG): step one is the tunnel ionization and step two is the classical motion in the strong laser field.

Spectral signature of short attosecond pulse trains.

We report experimental measurements of high-order harmonic spectra generated in Ar using a carrier-envelope-offset (CEO) stabilized 12 fs, 800 nm laser field and a fraction (less than 10%) of its second harmonic. Additional spectral peaks are observed between the harmonic peaks, which are due to interferences between multiple pulses in the train. The position of these peaks varies with the CEO and their number is directly related to the number of pulses in the train.

Attosecond ionization and tunneling delay time measurements in helium.

It is well established that electrons can escape from atoms through tunneling under the influence of strong laser fields, but the timing of the process has been controversial and far too rapid to probe in detail. We used attosecond angular streaking to place an upper limit of 34 attoseconds and an intensity-averaged upper limit of 12 attoseconds on the tunneling delay time in strong field ionization of a helium atom. The ionization field derives from 5.