Environmental Radiation Dose Criteria and Assessment -- Pathway Modeling and Surveillance

The controversy in recent years over the extent of the risk to the public from environmental radioactivity attributable to nuclear facilities (in particular nuclear power plants and fuel reprocessing facilities) has resulted in a lowering of previously "acceptable" environmental radiation levels. The proposal by the AEC to limit effluents from light-water-cooled nuclear reactors so that the exposure of any individual in the public would not exceed 5 mR/yr, and the pronouncement by the BEIR Committee that the current environmental radiation protection guides are unnecessarily high, are illustrative. In turn the AEC has issued a Safety Guide calling for considerable refinement in the measuring and reporting of effluents from nuclear power plants, and has only recently issued a counterpart dealing with the measuring and reporting of radioactivity in the environs of nuclear power plants. The EPA has also recently issued a guide for the surveillance of environmental radioactivity. Currently, power reactor operators are being required by the AEC Regulatory Staff to conduct detailed, sensitive environmental surveillance, at levels consistent with the proposed concentration limits of Appendix I. Much of this appears to be based on extremely conservative assumptions throughout, including dose-effect relationships, exposure situations, pathway models, reconcentration factors and intakes, which cannot be substantiated when examined in the light of current experience in the vicinity of existing power reactors. The expenditures occasioned by the required additional in-plant features necessary to meet the currently proposed effluent release criteria appear difficult to justify on a reasonable basis.