Minimal Dose, ALARA and regulators

[BLHamrick@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/19/2002 11:05:49 AM Pacific Daylight Time, michael.g.stabin@Vanderbilt.Edu writes:




> Of course in fairness, the people in St. Lucie are spending 
>
> hundreds of hours on these low exposures because the regulators are insisting. 




I'm rather ashamed of that, as a regulator.  I suspect that California would NOT do that, only because it appears to me (who, as we all know, does not speak for the Department) that this particular agreement state does not have adequate funds or staff to piddle around with such trivial doses.  


The one and only time I cited for ALARA, involved a licensee that reported an individual's annual dose as very, very, very, very close to 5 rem (not that there's anything wrong with that...necessarily...from a pure health and safety perspective).


The dose was relatively uniform over the 12 months, so it's not as though this was the result of one slip up.  The errors in the dose assessment, both external and internal, exceeded the margin remaining before the dose limit was exceeded.  This was not an overexposure situation necessarily, but the fact is that important detail couldn't be determined, AND the fact is this was a slow train that left the station in January, so there was plenty of time to evaluate the potential for an overexposure, and how exposure might be reduced, before December.  Personally, I felt totally justified in that citation.


Barbara