Management of Slightly Contaminated Materials: Status and Issues

Usually, when values in risk assessment are discussed, e.g., within RISCOM and VALDOR, it is said, that there are values behind the risk assessment by the experts and that these values are hidden within the basic assumptions made and are not easily visible, especially to the higher-level decision-makers. It is shown in this paper, that the opposite can also happen: the decision-makers, those that set the standards, may not be aware of the all the relevant facts or they may ignore them because of how their institutional role and mandate are framed. In particular, it is important to realise that while nuclear power by-products are indeed specifically recognised for their radioactive hazard, radioactive products, by-products and 'wastes' also arise from practices other than nuclear power generation. As the threshold radioactivity levels for classifying a material as waste - or, what is the same, for allowing it for free release - become lower and lower, a larger and larger amount of by-products of human activities become concerned by the question 'is this radioactively dangerous material?' and how to deal with it. A holistic look at radioactivity both of man-made and natural origin needs to be implemented in order to claim and achieve consistency in the protection of public health and avoid issues of intra- and inter-generational equity