On the Radiation Protection of the Environment

Over the last decade, substantial advances in what is know as legal protection of the environment, -as a different matter from human being protection- have been made. Some national legislations include serious penalties against environmental damage. It is becoming customary to consider a serious offence any excess in the prescribed limits of radioactive materials release to the environment. What these limits mean, however, is not completely clear nowadays. According to the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) the standards of environmental control needed to protect man to the degree currently thought desirable will ensure that other species are not put at risk, although, occasionally, individual members of non human species might be harmed. However the use of limits of radioactive releases resulting from the direct application of ICRP recommend limits as legal references for the applicable offences in environmental protection is certainly a misconception. In this paper a conceptual framework for the calculation of legal limits for environmental radioprotection are presented. The approach is based on an ecosystem perspective, assessing the impact of radioactive releases on the ecosystem dynamics and equilibrium. The method is based on functional groups models -i.e. groups of species that are selected from a number of criteria such as play similar rules in the chain of nutrients or have the same radiosensitivity- providing the basis for prescribed limits of the radioactive material release to the environment. The methodology is applied to a system of three functional groups in equilibrium, with is affected by radioactive intrusion. Different impacts on the equilibrium can be identified, depending on the amount of radioactive material released to the environment. It is shown how the concept of equilibrium breakdown can be applied in order to assess the radiological impact. (Author) 8 refs