Radiological Protection of People and the Environment in the Event of a Large Nuclear Accident


Draft document: Radiological Protection of People and the Environment in the Event of a Large Nuclear Accident
Submitted by Kaoru Kobashi, No Nukes Kobe
Commenting as an individual

I strongly question the framework of raising the permissible dose limit in both emergency and existing exposure situations far beyond the normal level of 1 mSv per year. It is unreasonable to set the different levels according to the situations of "normal" or "emergency." When the permissible dose limit is 1 mSv per year under normal circumstances according to the ICRP Publications, the same limit should be applied under emergency and existing exposure situations. It is simply because a human body can not change its tolerance to radiation exposure while you can easily change frameworks or wording in the ICRP Publications. Nobody should be allowed to be exposed to higher radiation than the normal level, so people living in long-term contaminated areas such as in Fukushima or eastern part of Japan should be offered enough measures to avoid the risks of the exposure.

In order to make the above clear, as Kanna Mitsuta wrote in her comment, the clause “a typical value used for constraining the optimisation process in long-term post-accident situations is 1 mSv/year” in the current ICRP Publication 111 should be retained. The proposed wording change, “with the objective to reduce exposure progressively to levels on the order of 1 mSv per year” (e.g. main point 4 and para 80), is too ambiguous, and the phrase “levels on the order of" should be deleted.


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