Risks from electricity generation systems in the far future. Proceedings of a technical committee meeting on approaches for estimating and comparing risks from energy systems in the far future. Working material

Comparative risk assessment of the health and environmental impacts of electricity generation systems can be used for providing information for decisions concerning choice of electricity generation systems and regulation of the systems. Since the beginning of 1990s, there have been several major studies of comparative risk assessment that have advanced the methodology and knowledge for the assessment of health and environmental impacts of electricity production systems. In those studies, many methodological issues were identified, and it was found that one of the major issues that influenced the results was the time period included in the risk assessment. In the results of recent studies, the impacts for long time periods are influential because of the accumulation of the impacts for more than 100 years and the large uncertainties in the estimations. Examples of such long term impacts are those from global climate change and potential impacts from radionuclides ad non-radioactive pollutants originating from nuclear and other electricity generation systems. It is generally expected that the estimates for longer term impacts have greater uncertainty. In order to enhance the comparative risk studies and the application of the results, the methodology and key issues for estimating the impacts for future :generations should be investigated, and approaches for the assessments should be established. In this connection, the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting TCM on Approaches for Estimating and Comparing Risks from Energy Systems in the Far Future was held at the IAEA Headquarters in Vienna, Austria, from 6 to 10 October 1997. This material contains the proceedings of the TCM held in October 1997, and the latest draft of the technical report, Long-Term Risks from Electricity Generation Systems