HEALTH RISKS OF ENERGY SYSTEMS

摘要

Electricity generation from fossil, nuclear or renewable sources causes an increased level of ambient air concentration of pollutants or an increased level of ionizing radiation due to activities at the various process steps of the energy systems, resulting in adverse health effects on the general public. The results presented in the paper have been derived from a detailed impact pathway analysis, using air quality and dose effect models in a stepwise analysis of the chain of causal relationships, starting with the release of emissions from a power station through their interactions with the environment to a physical measure of impact. Public health impacts from increased levels of airborne pollutants due to fossil fuel electricity generation have been calculated using a set of air quality models and recently reviewed exposure response functions. Since airborne pollutants from renewable energy (photovoltaic, wind) systems are mainly emitted from upstream activities, a full life cycle analysis has been performed to capture major impacts. Public health risks from the nuclear energy system generally result from increased levels of ionizing radiation due to activities at various stages of the energy system. Since accidents are among the most controversial features of nuclear fuel cycle risk assessment, the paper focuses on the analysis of accident consequences using the COSYMA ACA package. The results show that the ranking of energy systems according to public risk depends strongly on the choice of the risk indicator. However, the general conclusion that can be drawn is that the risks resulting from the use of solid and liquid fossil fuels are at the upper end, while electricity generation from wind is an option with rather low risks per kilowatt-hour. A methodological framework, combining process analysis and input/output analysis, has been established to quantify occupational health risks from the full life cycle of the energy systems. To quantify the marginal risk induced by the choice of a specific technology, the concept of net risk has been introduced, taking into account only the difference between the risk of average industrial activities and the risk of the specific activity related to the fuel cycle of concern. Because of the high risk of underground mining, electricity production from coal has by far the highest occupational risks. Net risks from the photovoltaic system are negative, while occupational net risks from lignite, natural gas, wind and nuclear systems are positive but very low.