Development and application of environmental management technique for nuclear power generation system

Abstract

Today`s nuclear power plants in Korea are primarily used to supply base-load electricity due to the insufficiency of energy resources and rapid increase of electricity demand. In compliance with the government policy, Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) established an ambitious nuclear power plant construction program. According to the expansion of the nuclear power program, it is necessary to analyse the environmental impact of nuclear power generation system. Future requirements would be the improvement of environmental impact assessment of nuclear power generation system with respect to the various environmental themes including radiological and non-radiological assessment. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an appropriate methodology for this requirement. General definition of LCA is a process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process, or activity by identifying and quantifying energy, materials used and wastes released to the environment. LCA studies the environmental aspects and the potential impact throughout a product or service ‘s life cycle. LCA is one of several environmental management techniques and a decision support tool, i.e., LCA is not the decision result itself. However, direct introduction of LCA to the nuclear fuel cycle is difficult more or less due to the absence of the methodology for the radiological impact assessment within the LCA framework. Problems of existing method for the toxicity calculation are pointed and classification factors of radiological impact are calculated by making supplements of these problems. Also the improvement of classification factors for radionuclides derived is explained. The classification factor takes into account both of the exposure to and health effects of radionuclides, which makes supplement to existing Critical Volume (CV) approach. This calculation procedure makes it possible to consider the overall impact of each radionuclide and the pathways available. Also this c...