TECHNICAL PAPERS
Dec 1, 1990

Health‐Risk Assessment: Production of Electricity

Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 116, Issue 3

Abstract

The central focus of the paper is to develop the technical bases for intertechnology comparisons based on health risks. To achieve this objective, the paper unifies deterministic and probabilistic aspects of energy‐related health‐risk assessment. The first section of the paper discusses the measures of risk assessment used in making comparisons among different technologies that generate electricity. Beginning with such risk measures as the constant slope and zero intercept hypothesis, the discussion progresses through risk scaling, summation, and other measures. The shortcomings and advantages of each measure are discussed and illustrated. The second section of the paper introduces and discusses the basis for probabilistic risk assessment through frequency‐severity models and hazard functions. The third section provides a summary of intertechnology comparisons and discusses their usefulness for the decision maker. This section includes technology comparisons based on confidence tables as a means to represent the degree of confidence in the estimates of risk between and among technologies. Conclusions complete the paper.

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Go to Journal of Energy Engineering
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 116Issue 3December 1990
Pages: 130 - 147

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Published online: Dec 1, 1990
Published in print: Dec 1990

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Louis A. Cox, Jr.
Mgr., U.S. West Advanced Tech., Englewood, CO 80111
Paolo F. Ricci
Assoc. Prof., School of Public Health, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024

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