Society has to be informed and educated

The accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) in Japan, which led to radioactive contamination of territories and entailed evacuation of dozen thousands of people, still remains in the public eye of the whole world. This is true not only of specialists but also the general public of the countries where nuclear power plants are in operation or under construction. The issue of nuclear power safety is actively revisited along with the topic on what threat could be posed by higher radiation levels for the general public, which are regularly reported on from Japan. A real degree of hazard posed by the accident, situation with the nuclear power safety on the whole in light of the Japanese event were elaborated on by Rafael ARUTYUNYAN, First Deputy Director of the Nuclear Safety Institute (IBRAE) of RAS in his interview with Nuclear.Ru.

Nuclear.Ru: During these months there has been much information from Japan concerning excesses of maximum permissible concentrations of radionuclides in sea and tap water, in foodstuff. Meantime, in most cases the recorded radiation levels are not harmful for humans. How should the Japanese and people in other countries react to such reports? How dangerous such values are?

R. Arutyunyan: As regards regulation of radiation risks and public information, the situation is, in fact, extremely confusing and very difficult for understanding by a person who should assess a real degree of danger for own health in the long run. Regretfully, it is a common problem. It relates not only to the situation in Japan but also in Russia and other countries. The thing is that over several recent decades officially established limiting levels of radiation and radionuclide content have been continuously reducing. In 1928 the International Commission for Radiological Protection was established. It’s a non-governmental organization which now works jointly with the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) where world’s leading specialists produce recommendations on how to regulate issues of the radiation safety. Thereat, these recommendations, as a rule, are used in the national legislation.

So about the 1970’s the commission, basing on scientific data and results of large-scale research, approached the impact level where science already didn’t know about any health effects. However, the process did not stop there and ultimately the levels for professionals and, especially, for the general public were reduced by dozens of times. Currently, a maximum permissible radiation exposure level for professionals is 20 millisieverts (mSv) per year and for the general public it is 1 mSv. Both levels are doses at which human health effects are unknown; moreover, they will never be detected. This means that a risk of impact at such levels is so low that the issue of concerns about human health even cannot be raised. Moreover, additional levels are introduced to control a content of radionuclides in the environment, which, in their turn, yet 10 times lower on top of the marginally low radiation exposure levels.

And when they say that a maximum concentration limit has been exceeded, any sane person perceives this as a threat to health. While in fact, there are 100 or 1,000 points to go before the values which actually pose a threat are reached. These are features of regulation in the radiation safety where reference levels correspond to either complete absence of risks or these risks have not been detected. This is so-called linear no-threshold concept. As a result, the guidelines are so that they completely disorient people. Often, they try to attribute this problem to the general public, making them out illiterate and uneducated. People have to be informed and educated, but before informing them it is necessary to introduce a set of indicators which will allow a sane person to understand what he/she is informed on when an excess of some guidelines is spoken about.

In addition, the general public has built up a special attitude to radiation. For example, chemicals also have maximum concentration limits (MCL) and if we take a real statistical data, there are a lot of cases where MCL of airborne chemicals was exceeded by several times. Indeed, maximum concentration limits, both in water and air, which serve as regulatory guidelines today, as a rule, correspond to risks which by 10, 100 times higher than those established for radiation. But with that, the general public takes calmly exceeded chemicals values while being keen on radiation. This issue is in part historical and psychological. Therefore, it is necessary to make it clear for people what is what. And a person is disoriented all the time; on the one hand, they say that a maximum concentration limit is exceeded by 2, 5, 10, 100 times, and at the same time, the same governmental bodies of Japan state that there is no a real threat to health. So how all that should settle in the head of an ordinary person?

At the same time, one has to understand that there are no failure-free systems. There is an acceptable safety level and it should be raised all the time. But we see that any radiation accident is always a burst of emotions, anxiety which are followed by socioeconomic consequences. The government is forced to take measures which the general public treat as a care of their health, though sometimes it has nothing to do with the health care. For example, an evacuation is carried out when there is no need in it; limitations are imposed on foodstuff consumption, for instance, when they are completely unnecessary. In this sense, the way this country reacted to the accident in Japan, for me personally, was the first experience where the information realm notably demonstrated some distinct messages. Also, there were serious efforts made on the part of the Government, EMERCOM, Rosatom and other federal executive bodies, when on the very first days since the beginning of the accident the Cabinet received all necessary information, data, calculations, and forecasts. Our institute, literally, on March 12 already answered the question of highest concern: could problems related to transfer of radiation to the territory of Russia arise? We analyzed the worst scenarios and answered: no, never...