Advice concerning radionuclide release of nuclear power plants and public health

Amongst the severe accidents with nuclear power plants, a number of scenario's is theoretically possible. These scenario's lead to more or less serious consequences for the environment. Characteristics for the category of accidents was the early breakdown of the containment of the reactor. In recent years more and more doubt has risen with regard to the most serious scenario KE. In the Netherlands the Committee for Reactor Safety (CRV) has reported on this subject (annex 1). According to the CRV the release of a number of important radionuclides, in the case of scenario KE, will be very much less than was supposed in the past. Also, the nuclides will be released much later than was supposed before. A committee of the Dutch Health Council, starting from the CRV-report, has made calculations on the radiological consequences of the KE-scenario, corrected in accordance with these new developments (KEH). As could be expected, this category KEH proves to be considerably less dangerous than was supposed before. Irradiation of the surrounding population with a lethal dose would not occur anymore. The number of somatic and genetic effects would be very small. The conclusions drawn from these calculations are given. These results are compared with calculated consequences of an accident of the KM-category. The CRV has defined a maximised accident from this category (KMM). The report includes the report of the Dutch Commission on Reactor Safety (CR-82-71) as an appendix. (Auth.)