Lower Bound of Dose Constraints in Radiological Protection of the Public Taking into Consideration Dose Criteria for Exemption

Abstract

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has published a safety guide, RS-G-1.7, that gives specific values of activity concentration for radionuclides of artificial origin that may be used for bulk amounts of material for the purpose of applying exemption. The primary radiological basis for establishing these values is that the effective doses received by individuals should be of the order of 0.01 mSv or less per year. On the other hand, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has published the new concept of a representative person in Publication 101. This representative person is a hypothetical person exposed to a dose that is representative of the most highly exposed persons in the population. On the basis of the new concept of the ICRP, it is reasonable that, theoretically, the 95th percentile of the distribution of the dose received by the population is lower than the dose constraint, which indicates that the main part of the dose distribution is considerably lower than the dose constraint. Taking into consideration the rationale of IAEA/RS-G-1.7 and the new recommendations for probabilistic dose assessment in ICRP/Pub.101, it is possible to propose that the minimum dose constraint for the optimization of radiological protection of the public should be set to 0.1 mSv/y.