A More Thorough and Accurate Way to Determine Damage From Radiation Releases

The National Academies Press has an excellent article that describes solid methods for more accurately determine risks from radiation releases.    The typical "reports" skip many of these steps and thus underestimate the danger and damage.  

The powers that be, go way out of their way, to intentionally minimize the damage caused by negligence under their watch.   

stock out
http://www.nap.edu/read/4760/chapter/6
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here is a portion of the article

4 Environmental Pathways

HUMAN EXPOSURE TO radionuclides occurs as a result of transport along various environmental pathways. It is the overlap in space and time of the "region of influence" of decaying radionuclides with the presence of a person that results in radiation exposure of tissues and organs. The objective of an environmental pathway analysis is to estimate human exposure rates or to determine radionuclide concentrations in air, water, and foodstuffs. This information is used in the assessment of radiation doses to representative or specific individuals.

The environmental pathway analysis, which in most cases uses the source term assessment as an input, may involve an iterative procedure for making estimates of exposure rates and of environmental concentrations of radionuclides. In the scoping study, which is carried out to determine if there is a need for a full-scale dose reconstruction study, only the most important environmental pathways and radionuclides are considered, and readily available information on the characteristics of the site and on the population distribution is used to estimate the exposure rates and environmental concentrations at a limited number of locations of interest. In a full-scale dose reconstruction study, the number of estimates of exposure rates and environmental concentrations is gradually expanded, and their quality is improved as: 

(1) the full source term is taken into consideration, 

(2) the results of detailed studies of the characteristics of the site with respect to the environmental behavior of the released radionuclides are used, 

(3) all environmental pathways that

could lead to radiation exposures are considered, 

(4) all available historical measurements of environmental radiation are used to bypass environmental transfer models or to validate those models, and 

(5) the uncertainties attached to the results of the environmental pathway analysis are estimated. 

 

It is important to have epidemiologists involved in the full-scale dose reconstruction study in order to ensure that the information developed is appropriate for epidemiologic decisions and planning. The purposes of this chapter are to describe the environmental pathways that need to be considered in dose reconstruction studies and to list criteria for their assessment.

Suggested Citation: "4 Environmental Pathways." National Research Council. Radiation Dose Reconstruction for Epidemiologic Uses. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1995. doi:10.17226/4760.

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