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

["Heinmiller, Bruce" <heinmillerb@aecl.ca>]

Using the present paradigm, wouldn't 10 000 person-rem be expected to result
in four divided by some weighted aggregate lethality fraction (of, I don't
know, about 0.7) cancers?  Or, to avoid the lethality-fraction mess,
wouldn't the present paradigm suggest that 10 000 person-rem would be
expected to result in (i.e., give an expectation value of) four fatal
cancers in this working population?

Bruce Heinmiller CHP
heinmillerb@aecl.ca


> ----------
> From: 	Al Tschaeche[SMTP:antatnsu@pacbell.net]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Monday, February 08, 1999 7:13 PM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	Re: U.S. NRC Approves Westinghouse Risk-Informed, In-Service
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> 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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