Cost-benefit analysis for environmental impacts and radwaste system for nuclear power plant

During operation of nuclear power plant, radioactive material is inevitably formed. This radioactive material must be safely processed by radwaste system so that essentially zero activity is released to the environment. However zero released activity is not really practicable and population doses resulted from released activity are proportional to total annual cost for the radwaste system. In this study, cost-benefit analysis for the radwaste system of the Korean Nuclear Units 5 and 6 is performed to evaluate the optimization between the total annual cost for the radwaste system and population doses within 80 km from the plants. From the analysis, the following results are obtained; 1. the total population dose is estimated 4.04 x 103 man-rem/year, 2. total annual cost for the radwaste system is required $ 1.74 x 106, 3. cost-benefit ratio is estimated $ 429/man-rem. (Author)