An External Costs Assessment of the Impacts on Human Health from Nuclear Power Plants in Korea

As the first comprehensive attempt at a national implementation, this study aims at assessing the external costs of major electricity generation technologies in Korea, particularly an evaluation of the impacts on human health resulting from exposures to atmospheric radiological emissions from nuclear power plants, and a monetary quantification of their damages. The methodology used for the assessment of the externalities of the selected fuel cycles has been developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), namely the SimPacts Model Package. The model is internationally recognized as a tool which can be applied to a wide range of fuels, different technologies and locations, for an externalities study. In this study, the relevant emissions are quantified first and then their impacts on human health are evaluated and compared. The study focused on all the nuclear power plants for the last 6 years ($2001{\sim}2006$) in Korea. With respect to nuclear power, the impact analysis only focuses on a power generation, however the front- and back-end nuclear fuel cycles are not included, namely uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, reprocessing, conditioning, etc., because these facilities are not present in Korea. The analysis results show that nuclear power in general, generates low external costs. The highest damage costs from the nuclear power plants among the 4 sites in Korea were estimated to be 3.9 mills/MWh, which is about 1/20th of the result for a similar case study conducted in the U.K., implemented through the ExternE project. This difference is largely due to the number of radionuclides included in the study and the amount of released radioactive emissions based on up-to-date information in Korea. In this study, the sensitivities of the major factors for nuclear power plants were also calculated. The analysis indicates that there was around a ${\pm}3%$ damage costs variation to a ${\pm}15%$ change of the reference population density and a ${\pm}1%$ damage cost variation to a $1{\sim}30$ meters change of the effective release height, respectively. These sensitive calculations show that there is only a minor difference when the reference costs are compared.

국내원전운전(國內原電運轉)에 따른 보건영향(保健影響)의 외부비용평가(外部費用評價)

본 연구에서는 국내 4개 원전 부지에서 가동 중인 20기에 대한 보건영향을 평가하였다. 이를 위해 국제원자력기구가 최근 개발하여 보급하고 있는 원전에 대한 평가도구인 '뉴크팩스(NukPacts) 모형'을 활용하였다. 국내 원전의 부지별 피폭 경로에 따른 중대 영향인자를 분석하고 보건영향 발생 빈도를 비교하며, 보건영향의 연간 피해비용을 산출하여 발전량당 피해비용을 유럽 국가의 산출 결과와 비교하였다. 동일 배출량 조건 하에서의 상대적 중요도, 피폭 경로의 상대적 중요도 및 연도별 경향 분석 등을 통해 부지별로 가장 크게 영향을 미치는 방사성물질을 분석하여 최소 비용으로 그 효과를 극대화할 수 있는 방안을 도출하였다. 주요 입력 파라미터의 변화에 따른 영향을 분석하기 위하여 인구 밀도, 유효 배출 고도 등에 대한 민감도 분석을 수행하였다.