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46. All these factors vary widely depending on differing institutional, legal, and financial arranqements in different countries. Cost generalizations and comparisons are therefore unhelpful or misleading. However, cost associated with several of these factors have increased more rapidly for nuclear stations during the last 5-10 years, so that the earlier clear cost
advantage of nuclear over the service life of the plan has been reduced or lost altogether.[1] Nations should therefore look very closely at cost comparisons to obtain the best value when choosing an energy path.
2.2 Health and Environment Risks
47. Very strict codes of safety practice are implemented in nuclear plants so that under officially approved operating conditions, the danger from radiation to reactor personnel and especially to the general public is negligible. However, an accident occurring in a reactor may in certain very rare cases be serious enough to cause an external release of radioactive substances. Depending upon the level of exposure, people are under a certain level of risk of becoming ill from various forms of cancer or from alteration of genetic material, which may result in hereditary defects.
48. Since 1928, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has issued recommendations on radiation dosage levels above which exposure is unacceptable. These have been developed for occupationally exposed workers and for the general public. The 'Nuclear Safety Standards (NUSS) codes of IAEA were developed in 1975 to reduce safety differences among member states. Neither system is in any way bindinq on governments. If an accident occurs, individual governments have the responsibility of deciding at what level of radioactive contamination pasture land, dinkinq water, milk, meat, eggs, vegetables, and fish, are to be banned for consumption by livestock or humans.
49. Different countries – even different local government authorities within a country – have different criteria. Some have none at all, ICRP and NUSS notwithstandinq. States with more rigorous standards may destroy large amounts of food or may ban food imports from a neighbour state with more permissive criteria. This causes great hardship to farmers who may not receive any compensation for their losses. It may also cause trade problems and political tension between states. Both of these difficulties occurred followinq the Cbernobyl disaster, when the need to develop at least regionally conformable contamination criteria and compensation arrangements was overwhelmingly demonstrated.
2.3 Nuclear Accident Risks
50. Nuclear safety returned to the newspaper headlines following the Three Mile Island (Harrisburq, United States) and the Chernobyl (USSR) accidents. Probabilistic estimates of the risks of component failure, leadinq to a radioactive releass in western style light water reactors were made in 1975 by the U.S.
- ↑ R. Eden et al., Energy Economics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Nuclear Energy Agency, Projected Costs of Generating Electricity from Nuclear and Coal-Fired Power Stations for Commissioning in 1995 (paris: OECD, 1986).
