IAEA Conference: Radioprotection of the Environment

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

We are about 300 people from 53 countries at this conference (Oct. 6-10).

This includes 11 people from Canada, 14 from France, 12 from Japan,

16 from Russia, 8 from Ukraine, 19 from the U.K. and at least 9 from the 

U.S.

Then of course many from the Nordic countries - perhaps about 70 people

(short walking distance to the conference for me :-).



I know that the topic met little interest when I mentioned it the last time

on Radsafers (not a single comment if I recall correctly). It is out there

however and is probably of strategic importance for the nuclear power

industry and also some activities where radiation/radioactivity is used.



A couple of links:

http://www.ssi.se/nyheter/SSI_IAEA_Sto_2003.html

http://www.ssi.se/nyheter/SSI_IAEA_Sto_bild.html

(at the moment of writing - you can see a poster about weighting of

absorbed doses in environental risk assessment (far down)

- many pictures from our City Hall).



For some reason the link to the IAEA conference website has

disappeared - it was there a few days ago.



Within this frame, I am particularly interested in contact with "radiation

people" who also understand evolutionary biology, taxonomy and population

genetics in the context of ecology.



ICRP Publication 91 which just came out deals entirely with the topic.



The shift in thinking seems to be the following:

Rather that and added paragraph about plants and animals to the existing

ICRP framework, radiological protection is to become a subtitle under

"Environmental Protection" (which includes landscape etc - the IAEA

has stated the the radioprotection should begin with biota). One

aspect of this is that radiological protection can become more directly

compared with protection of other potential hazards.



The main reason for all this is not about any known and important

radiation damage to the environment. Instead it seems to be about

satisfying decision makers, the public, lawyers etc (regarding compliance

with existing national and internation agreements, laws, regulations etc).



Note that I am here mainly reporting what is going on rather than expressing

opinions. Please add. correct or whatever if anything is wrong from my side.



My personal action and ideas only,



Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cedervall/



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