Estimating radiation doses from reactor accidents

In order to plan for emergency response to reactor accidents involving large radiation releases, it is necessary to determine the medical resources, such as diagnostic laboratory tests, hospital facilities and convalescent care, needed to care for a large population exposed to radiation. A determination of the needed medical resources is difficult because of the widely varying sensitivity humans exhibit to radiation exposure and because of the large number of assumptions involved in predicting radiation dispersion. This paper demonstrates a simple method for approximating medical needs in response to a severe reactor accident. The method requires a model for radiation dispersion from the accident and data for population distribution surrounding the reactor. With this information, tables developed in this paper may be used to project medical needs. The needs identified by this methodology may be compared against the actual medical resources of nearby communities to determine the size of the area impacted