Re: Whither ALARA?

["Jerry Cohen" <jjcohen@prodigy.net>]

That's true, but meeting dose limits is a requirement that must be met.
Whatever it takes to keep dose levels below regulatory limits is simply the
cost of doing business, and cannot be considered an ALARA program..
                                                        jjcohen@prodigy.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Vargo, George J <vargo@pnl.gov>
To: 'radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu' <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Cc: 'ograabe@ucdavis.edu' <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>; 'jjcohen@prodigy.net'
<jjcohen@prodigy.net>
Date: Monday, March 06, 2000 10:21 AM
Subject: Whither ALARA?


>Jerry Cohen wrote:
>
>"Otto,
>    Your point is well stated.  Of course a key consideration  that follows
>is that if  LNT is an invalid concept,  it would logically appear  that
the
>concept of  collective dose is also invalid , and   the whole business of
>ALARA is also bogus.       How about that?           jjcohen@prodigy.net"
>
>I disagree.  Even in a world without a LNT-based system of dose limitation
there
>will still be individual dose limits for workers (if even only to prevent
>deterministic effects).  There will always be some economic incentive to
>maintain worker doses below the dose limits to maintain operational
flexibility
>in the event of unforeseen events and to avoid the cost of training and
>qualification of replacement workers.  The latter can be fairly expensive
and
>there are some well documented very valid cost-benefit models based solely
on
>replacement worker costs.
>
>In most nuclear facilities there is a positive synergy between ALARA and
good
>operational performance.  Witness the correlation between collective dose,
>outage length, and overall O&M costs at US nuclear power plants over the
last
>10-15 years.
>
>George J. Vargo, Ph.D., CHP
>Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
>International Nuclear Safety Program
>PO Box 999
>902 Battelle Boulevard
>Richland, WA  99352-0999
>509-375-6836; -2019 (fax)
>vargo@pnl.gov
>http://insp.pnl.gov:2080
>

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