Managing radiation risk

This paper has explored the ways in which radiation risks are managed in normal operation, potential accident and intervention situations. In each case, the considerations are different, but the end result appears to be a coherent system. Generally, standards of protection and safety are set to correspond to levels of fatal risk in a range from above 1 in 1000 per year to below 1 in 1,000,000 per year, representing the clearly unacceptable to the trivial. The levels of associated dose could change, however, either because new data alter our estimates of risk per unit dose or because acceptance of risk and required standards of safety change. 1 fig., 1 tab