June 23, 1980 Comments on Report: Assessment of Radiation Health Effects of the Resettlement of Enewetak Atoll Prepared by M. A. Bender and A. B. Brill by JA oe Karl Z. Morgan School of Nuclear Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 30332 The following are a few brief comments on this report by M. A. Bender and A. B. Brill dated October 12, 1979: 1. In general, this is an excellent report. The report accepts the dose measurements of Robinson et al. (1979) without providing the reader with any of the pertinent infor- mation needed so that he can judge its adequacy. For example, there is no breakdown of the dose between that which is external and that which is internal, There is no indication whether internal dose values include a contribution from the actinide alpha-emitters, yet one would expect that some of the islands have appreciable quantities of 239pu, It is not stated, but I assume their dose values are almost entirely from 90 “Sr + 90 ~“Y and 137 Cs plus 239, u. I would expect the ntribution from other radionuclides to be negligibie. 3.} It seems odd that values are given only for total body dose 90 Sr + 90, | 137 Cs an ince, as stated above, the dose is mostly from 23954, one would expect the external dose to be primarily beta-dos because 90 “Sr and 30 Y are pure beta-emitters and 13766 is a strong bet and x-ray emitter. One wonders if the beta bremstrahlung dose we included with the total body dose. 4.) What would their estimate be on the skin cancer induction fr: this skin dose. UNSCEAR gives a wide variation of skin cancer ¢ efficients of 2 x 107” to 1.8 x 107? skin cancers per person rem. doubt these values apply here, however, because some of the bet radiation in this case has high energy and can penetrate 1] cm it