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The objective of the ExternE National Implementation project was to establish a comprehensive and comparable set of data on externalities of power generation for all EU member states and Norway. The tasks included the application of the ExternE methodology to the most important fuel cycles for each country and the aggregation of the site- and technology-specific results to more general figures. For countries already involved in Joule II, these data have been applied to concrete policy questions, to indicate how these data could feed into decision and policy making processes. Other objectives were the dissemination of results in the different countries, and the creation of a network of scientific institutes familiar with the ExternE methodology, data, and their application.

The objective of the ExternE National Implementation project was to establish a comprehensive and comparable set of data on externalities of power generation for all EU member states and Norway. The tasks included the application of the ExternE methodology to the most important fuel cycles for each country and the aggregation of the site- and technology-specific results to more general figures. For countries already involved in Joule II, these data have been applied to concrete policy questions, to indicate how these data could feed into decision and policy making processes. Other objectives were the dissemination of results in the different countries, and the creation of a network of scientific institutes familiar with the ExternE methodology, data, and their application.

The methodology used for the assessment of the externalities of the fuel cycles selected has been the one developed within the ExternE Project. It is a bottom-up methodology, with a site-specific approach, that is, it considers the effect of an additional fuel cycle, located in a specific place.

To allow comparison to be made between different fuel cycles, it is necessary to observe the following principles:

Transparency, to show precisely how the work was done, the uncertainty associated to the results, and the extent to which the external cost of any fuel cycle have been fully quantified.

Consistency, with respect to the boundaries placed on the system in question, to allow valid comparison to be made between different fuel cycles and different types of impact within a fuel cycle.

Comprehensiveness, to consider all burdens and impacts of a fuel cycle, even though many may be not investigated in detail. For those analysed in detail, it is important that the assessment is not arbitrarily truncated.

These characteristics should be present along the stages of the methodology, namely: site and technology characterisation, identification of burdens and impacts, prioritisation of impacts, quantification, and economic valuation.

Quantification of impacts is achieved through the damage function, or impact pathway approach. This is a series of logical steps, which trace the impact from the activity that creates it to the damage it produces, independently for each impact and activity considered, as required by the marginal approach.

The underlying principle for the economic valuation is to obtain the willingness to pay of the affected individuals to avoid a negative impact, or the willingness to accept the opposite. Several methods are available for this, which will be adopted depending on the case.