Simple cost risk-benefit calculation: nuclear plant backfit analysis

The radiological risks include the probabilities and consequences of severe accidents at commercial nuclear power plants. The purpose of this paper is to present a valuation on the expected person-rem or societal committed dose from major accidents to identify whether back-fits in design modification can be supported. The approach of project evaluation by engineers of amortization is somewhat modified for these probabilistic events. A sample calculation is presented along with examples from published analytical calculations for several US light water reactors.