RADIATION STANDARDS, INCLUDING FALLOUT

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age of the formal legal standards. More generally the quantity and
variety of radiation sources or the very complexity of the facilities
involved is such that the program has to be headed by a separate
responsible radiological safety officer. Such a man will haveatleast
some knowledge of the history and development of the basic recommendations and is in a position to guide the program by applying
the underlying philosophy and intent of the standards as well as the

actual] terminology of the legal instruments.

The first chart (table I, p. 319) if Dr. Taylor will be good enough to
show it shows someof the details which get involved in the work of the
large contractors in making a tight internal system of control with the
controls responsive to the legal standards but characteristically are
morestringent because of the potential for significant exposure which
arises in these cases and mainly because of the complexities of converting different types of exposure to a commonbase, which believeisstill
actually the major problem for all of us.
Another important administrative aspect is the establishment in
the larger industrial concerns of a work climate and an employee atti-

tude favorable to good radiological control. Webelieve that written

standards and procedures alone just do not give assurance that people
have the understanding to enable them consistently to do the right
thing.
Continuing education in the basic intent of protection standards
seems to be important in this. The final success of such a radiation
protection program is then, as we see it, usually more dependent on
the voluntary acceptance of a way of life in dealing with radiation
than upon literal conformance to somerule.
A word now about the present problem areas in the industrial application of standards. Let me say first that we see no current major
problem in this area, except the one I mentioned before of the realistic
adding up of all the contributions to exposure. With this limitation
the possible problemsare like this. First, the transfer of certain regulatory responsibilities from the AEC to the States has been going
on in the period we are talking about. Despite the probable intent
of all the parties to maintain reasonable uniformity within the State
regulations there is opportunity for inconsistencies, gaps, and overlaps
between these several codes. Some of these, although in truth they
are relatively minor, have already appeared. The future or potential
problem encountered by an industrial firm which may have atomic
activities in several States each with different requirements and also
having licensee and contractor relationships with the AEC is obvious.
Another problem is the actual formatand language of the standard
itself. We have our divergent viewpoints on the degree of specificity
and the amount of methodology which should be contained in these
standards, but broadly the industrial users join in making a very
strong plea that it is important that the standards be written as performance standards and not as a specific detailing of the mechanics or
interpretive methods for doing the jobs. Identifying the end point
and not the methodis the key issue here.
Relating to these problems of incorporating methodology into standards is the imparting of the same apparent sense of validity and
weight of law in the various secondary standards that are so used
as is warranted in the case of the primary or basic standards. The

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