A probabilistic cost assessment of a nuclear reactor accident focused on evacuation and radiological health effects

Abstract

The economic cost of a severe accident at a nuclear power plant was evaluated with the probabilistic approach. A 1 GWe PWR plant at Uljin in Korea was selected as the model plant and the accident scenario giving the highest radiological consequence, after calculations with MACSS code, was used as the conditions for input variables. The assessment covers only the cost that would incurred due to the evacuation of affected population and the radiological health effects. The two dimensional Monte Carlo Analysis method was applied to cope with the variability and uncertainty in the variables determining the cost. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed to indentify the important variables in assessment of economic costs. The resulting cost of around 100 billion Korean Won (approximately 100 million US dollars) seems somewhat lower than the speculated, which can be attributed to the fact that the model plant is located at a remote site from the highly populated areas.