To accurately quantify and compire environmental emissions from energy technologies, each phase of the fuel cycle, including resource extraction, facility construction and facility operation, must be evaluated. Meanin@ comparisons among the various technologies should also be based on a common measure of each technology's useful output. This analysis establishes a framework for conducting a comparative evaluation of the total fuel cycle of different energy technologies. Environmental considerations for each technology and each phase of the fuel cycle, categorized by major types such as air emissions, water emissions, solid waste emissions and materiel requirements, are evaluated individually for different environmentally significant substances.

No abstract