McKenna Thomas, Welter Phillip Vilar, Callen Jessica, Martincic Rafael, Dodd Brian, Kutkov Vladimir
*Incident and Emergency Centre, Department of Nuclear Safety and Security, International Atomic Energy Agency, Wagramerstrasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria; †Brian Dodd Consulting, 10313 Cogswell Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89134-5209.
Health Phys. 2015 Jan;108(1):15-31. doi: 10.1097/HP.0000000000000157.
Experience from past nuclear and radiological emergencies shows that placing the radiological health hazard in perspective and having a definition of "safe" are required in order to prevent members of the public, those responsible for protecting the public (i.e., decision makers), and others from taking inappropriate and damaging actions that are not justified based on the radiological health hazard. The principle concerns of the public during a severe nuclear power plant or spent fuel pool emergency are "Am I safe?" and "What should I do to be safe?" However, these questions have not been answered to the satisfaction of the public, despite various protective actions being implemented to ensure their safety. Instead, calculated doses or various measured quantities (e.g., ambient dose rate or radionuclide concentrations) are used to describe the situation to the public without placing them into perspective in terms of the possible radiological health hazard, or if they have, it has been done incorrectly. This has contributed to members of the public taking actions that do more harm than good in the belief that they are protecting themselves. Based on established international guidance, this paper provides a definition of "safe" for the radiological health hazard for use in nuclear or radiological emergencies and a system for putting the radiological health hazard in perspective for quantities most commonly measured after a release resulting from a severe emergency at a light water reactor or its spent fuel pool.
以往核与辐射应急的经验表明，为防止公众、负责保护公众的人员（即决策者）及其他人员采取基于辐射健康危害并无正当理由的不当且有害行动，需正确看待辐射健康危害并明确“安全”的定义。在严重核电站或乏燃料池应急期间，公众主要关心的问题是“我安全吗？”以及“我该怎么做才能安全？”然而，尽管已采取各种保护行动以确保公众安全，但这些问题仍未得到令公众满意的解答。相反，在向公众描述情况时，只是使用计算得出的剂量或各种测量量（如环境剂量率或放射性核素浓度），却未根据可能的辐射健康危害正确看待这些量，即便有这样做，也是不正确的。这导致公众在认为自己在保护自己的情况下采取了弊大于利的行动。基于既定的国际准则，本文给出了在核或辐射应急中用于辐射健康危害的“安全”定义，以及一个针对轻水反应堆或其乏燃料池发生严重紧急情况释放后最常测量的量来正确看待辐射健康危害的系统。
