(SpaceViews) --The British government is expected to release a report Monday that will recommend that it spend several million dollars a year on programs to look for near-Earth objects that could pose an impact risk to the Earth.

The report is the result of several months' of work by the Task Force on Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), a three-person group created in January by the British government to look into the threat such objects pose to the Earth and what role the UK should take to mitigate that threat.

The task force will reportedly conclude that the cost to Britain of doing nothing is on the order of 120 million pounds (US$192 million) a year. That figure is based on the damage a one-kilometer (0.6-mile) asteroid colliding with the Earth once every 100,000 years would do.

"The risk of asteroidal or cometary impacts substantially exceeds the limits of tolerability applied by the Health and Safety Executive to the nuclear power industry and the transport of hazardous goods," Spaceguard UK, a British organization that supports expanded NEOs searches, noted in a statement.

The report will recommend that the government spend a small fraction of this cost -- less than three percent -- on efforts to reduce the threat of such an impact. This work includes telescopic surveys of NEOs, studies of their physical properties, and public education about NEOs.

The report culminates several years of lobbying of the British government by Spaceguard UK to become more involved in the search for NEOs, an effort to date that has been dominated by the United States. They have also received support from Lembit Öpik, a member of the British Parliament.

The three-person Task Force is chaired by Harry Atkinson, the former head of Britain's Science and Engineering Research Center who also served as chairman of the European Space Agency's Council.

The two other members of the committee are Crispin Tickell, chancellor of the University of Kent and a former British ambassador to the UN who has been active on environmental issues; and David Williams, an astronomy professor at University College London.

Lord Sainsbury, the British science minister, received a copy of the report in August via the British National Space Center, the UK's space agency. The report will be released on the web at the site http://www.nearearthobjects.co.uk/.