ABSTRACT
It is well recognized that the procurement, production, distribution, and use of energy in its various forms all have the potential for causing adverse effects on people and the environment. Thus in choosing between various energy options one should consider these effects in addition to other obvious factors such as economics. It would be highly desirable to be able to quantify in some meaningful way the possible adverse effects of an activity with the goal of obtaining some figure of merit that could be used in directly comparing various options. Work toward achieving this goal for a variety of man's activities, especially in the area of energy, has been carried out at an ever increasing rate during the last two decades. This paper reviews some of these approaches in the energy field, but because of the very large amount of work that has been done, makes no attempt to be exhaustive. Rather, it discusses some of the more common approaches, how they have been carried out, and some of the major problems that still must be solved before the techniques are fully accepted. In fact a large part of the paper reviews the methods for dealing with rare accidents that have potentially large consequences, such as dam failures, large releases of radioactivity, and fires and explosions in liquid and gaseous fuels. An approach that is being widely used to analyze such risks is probabilistic risk analysis (PRA).
