Re: dose limits for members of the public

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@HOTMAIL.COM>]

 >>It may be of general interest to the Radsafers group to know (unless I 

mentioned it earlier) that we now are heading for 0.01 mSv/yr - the

>>decision was taken three months ago.

-----------------------------------------------------

>Sweden is a member of the European Union. The maximum permissible dose

(rate) is 1 mSv/a for member of the publics and this had to be implemented 

into national law. Sweden has implemented it. If a member state would like 

to set different limits (not only regarding doses!), it has to provide the 

European Commission with an explanation of the reason, why it wants to do 

that. It is not thinkable, that the Commission and the other states would 

accept a dose limit of 0.01 mSv per year. Moreover I would like to know, how 

this could be controlled - with backgrounds of at least 1 mSv/a!

----

I agree - just a few more comments:

We are presently at 1 mSv/yr. The proposed change can be found at our 

government site: 

http://miljo.regeringen.se/propositionermm/propositioner/pdf/p200001_130.pdf



This text (pdf file) is in Swedish - the critical text is on page 72 - a 

translation can be as follows:

1. The year 2010 the concentration of substances released to the environment 

from all activities shall be so low that public health and the biological 

diversity is not threatened. The individual increase in dose to the general 

public shall be below 0.01 mSv per person and year from each separate 

activity.



(The next point may also interest some Radsafers:

2. The year 2020 the annual number of skin cancers caused by sun exposure 

shall be below that of the year 2000.)



Now - what comes up on the political radiation protection agenda in Sweden 

may very well become established at an EU level.



This cannot be taken for granted however - as an example:

Our government representatives in 1999 found spam to be no problem and of 

great potential commercial value and therefore decided that it should be 

allowed in most forms. This became a law - but now this law has to be 

changed because EU to the opposite standpoint...



The bottom line should perhaps be that this (0.01 mSv/yr) is at least a 

warning: Say that it is very cold some day here in northern Europe and we 

are already lacking 1000 MWe for some reason and in addition some small 

nuclear fuel damage occurs somewhere: Should that nuclear plant then be shut 

down = we black out the equivalent to a city with perhaps 100 000 

inhabitants that day (I refer to the magnitude of the potential problem - 

just a very rough estimate from my side)?



Now - it is more complicated than this because an increased _rate_ of 

release is allowed for a shorter time period as long as we don't cause a 

total of an individual in a critical group to receive more than 0.1 mSv/year 

(0.01 mSv/yr in the future?).



Part of the problem is that the general public has no idea about what is 

going on, the context, potential impact and so on. I don't think that most 

people would accept the 0.01 mSv/yr if they had a reasonable perspective of 

the issue.



My personal ideas only - please correct or add anything that should be 

added,



Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers@hotmail.com





_________________________________________________________________

Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/