RE: Whither ALARA?

["Abelquist, Eric" <AbelquiE@orau.gov>]

Jerry-

I believe there will always be ALARA because it makes sense at certain
levels.  First of all, the incidence of cancer is a stochastic process, even
if there is a threshold (once you exceed threshold, probability increases).
Even if it can finally be agreed upon that anything less than 10 rem does
not pose a risk (i.e., a threshold exists) - what is the risk of various
cancer types once the threshold is exceeded?  If exceeding the threshold is
deemed unacceptable, how close do you want to get to it?  My point is that
even if 10 rem is the threshold, I'd prefer to be at 1 rem, provided that
it's reasonable (maybe $2000/rem reduction) to achieve that level.  Given
biological variability I think ALARA will always make sense - at least at
reasonable dose levels [read: at above background levels, not a fractions of
background].

Regards
Eric Abelquist 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Cohen [mailto:jjcohen@prodigy.net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 2:49 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Whither ALARA?


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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