Radiation Protection Standards

Hi guys,

For this post I will be talking about radiation protection standards. If you have ever thought that the public was at risk of being irradiated, fear not, unless you are conspiracy theorist and think we are all just guinea pigs in some government experiment, I honestly would not put that past most politicians, There are laws in place to keep this from happening.

We shall take nuclear power plants as an example. They are bound by law to follow the regulations set forth by the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC). The NRC tells the plants what protection systems have to be implemented and how well they have to work. They give set dose limits for workers and the public as well. These limits can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/full-text.html#part020-1301.

My guess is that the way they calculate those exposure limits are probably somewhat like how they calculate the cancer risk from radiation. So Im not going to get into that.

Another agency that sets standards for radiation protection is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They published a book that was roughly 280 pages long that explains all the safety standards that they suggest. Trying to read through that is terrible. These documents were produced for some giant companies lawyers to try and read through and pick out whats important.

In the grand scheme of things, I feel the nuclear industry has a bad habit of not explaining things to the public. Whenever I have watched anything on TV concerning the nuclear sector, information is given out by a reporter who doesnt know squat. He/She reads from a manuscript and gives a dose in picorads. Then they try to explain what that means and confuse themselves along with the rest of the public.

I think that these agencies should be mandated to provide information to the public that is not in lawyer speak and that is not buried in some website. The document should highlight what exactly affects the public and the limits that these companies are bound to. This way the public can be a watchdog when inspectors are not always around.

I kinda skipped around alot in this post. Let me know if anything is unclear!

Have a nice day!

The Nuke Cow