Re: U.S. NRC Approves Westinghouse Risk-Informed, In-Service

[Al Tschaeche <antatnsu@pacbell.net>]

Even though I come late to this thread, I can't resist this one.

60 person rem is not a particularly large collective dose, even if one believes
collective dose has some realistic relation to low dose health effects.  It
takes (theoretically, hypothetically or ephemerally) 10,000 person rem of low
dose radiation to create one cancer (according to the present paradigm with
which I strongly disagree).  Any collective dose lower than that creates less
than one cancer and so, logically, does not create any cancer since one can't
have a fractional cancer.  Yes, I know this is bunk.  But so is collective
dose.  Even the IAEA/ICRP are beginning to see that.  Roger Clark at the last
annual HPS meeting gave us a preliminary view of what may soon be the death of
collective dose.  So I agree with you Mike and think there will be absolutely
no real, measurable health improvement (let alone any "significant health
safety benefits) because of lower doses from use of the Westinghouse
instrument.  Now, if Westinghouse is talking about benefits other than
radiological safety and health, they should say so and may have some.  But,
radiationwise there will never be observable ones to the workers.  There may be
some to management, regulators, lawyers, epidemiologists, etc., but not to the
radiation workers.  Al Tschaeche, CHP antatnsu@pacbell.net

Michael Mokrzycki wrote:

> Jim Dwyer wrote (and others said essentially the same thing):
>
> >>I believe the reference to a reduction of more than 60 rem over a 10 year
> period refers to person-rem.  In other words, over a 10 year period, a
> facility may be expected to reduce the total exposure received by all of
> their workers, by more than 60 rem.<<
>
> A followup question: I gather from this and other responses (to the list
> and private) that the dose savings for any individual worker would actually
> be quite small, perhaps well under 1 rem per year? If that is the case,
> would anyone care to comment on whether this new approach really does offer
> the "significant health safety benefits" Westinghouse touts? I know, in
> part from past threads on this list, that many in the radiation
> protection/health physics world believe there is no evidence that low doses
> of radiation cause health problems.
>


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