Re: What would we do with a threshold? -Reply

["Thomas Graham" <graham@ccmail.nevada.edu>]

     Radsafers,
     
     We do urgently need to save money for many useful things.
     
     I propose that ALARA and threshold concepts can and do work together.  
     Simply put, some statements need to be made regarding what is 
     REASONABLY ACHIEVABLE in broad terms.  In fact, our experience has 
     shown that ALARA is not meaningful without a threshold.  As practicing 
     health physicists, we do set limits to how far we look for a vanishing 
     source term.  Similarly, the HPS position statement "works with" LNT 
     giving guidance regarding at what point we cease to consider LNT 
     projections towards zero.
     
     Technically, we act on the mathematical concept of "zero" as a limit 
     we can only approach, no matter how small.  Most people have some 
     fairly practical daily concepts of "zero" as readily achievable.  When 
     the cookie is "gone," most of us do not search the floor for crumbs to 
     be sure we ate the whole thing.
     
     It will never be easy, but we can continue to honestly call some level 
     of risk "safe" and be prepared to defend the judgement, or more 
     likely, defend the quotation.  I have not given up on the scientific 
     communities as viable sources of useful information, interpretation, 
     and credentials.
     
     
     Tom Graham
     
     graham@ccmail.nevada.edu
     
     
     
     


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: What would we do with a threshold? -Reply
Author:  radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu at SMTP-UNS
Date:    8/29/97 9:47 AM

snip

money could be saved or spent on something useful.  Occupational exposure limits
do not seem to be a serious problem most places, but "ALARA" costs are real. 
For example, nuclear power plant operators report spending over $25,000 dollars 
to avoid a person-rem of occupational dose.  Add that the NPP workers still 
recieve
some 20,000 person-rem annually (down from over 56,000 person-rem in 1983) and 
it is evident that there is a significant sum involved; the benfit is not so 
evident.  
     
It is not certain that this issue can ever be be resolved but it is evident that
the
concerns are real and significant.
     
Charlie Willis
caw@nrc.gov