operations or national defense, against the “risks” (radiation exposure). Obviously, this is an exceedingly complex and, in part, subjective process. In spite of these difficulties this balancing of benefits from normal peacetime operations against risks has been performed by the Federal Radiation Council (FRC) resulting in their recommendingradiation protection guides for this purpose. ** In a letter of August 17, 1962 to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States, the FRC clarified further their published Guides: “... the Guides were originally developed for application as guidelines for the protection of radiation workers and the general public against exposures which might result during ‘normal peacetime opera- tions’ in connection with the industrial use of ionizing ee a ell ae AA ee tn radiation ... the term ‘normal peacetime operations’ referred specifically to the peaceful applications of nuclear technology where the primary control is placed on the design and use of the source. Since numerical values in the Guides were designed for the regulation of a continuing industry, they were of necessity set so low that the upper limit of Range II © can be considered to fall well within levels of exposure acceptable for a lifetime. Furthermore, to provide the maximum margin of safety, the upper limits of Range II were related to the lowest possible level at which it was believed that nuclear industrial technology could be developed...” Guides developed primarily for use by industryin restricting its releases of radioactive effluents to the general environment outside their controlled areas are, of course, very materially lower than those that might constitute a serious health hazard. A fourth reason why concern has been expressed about health risks from fallout maylie inithe area of causal relation- ships, i.e., the identifying or associating of nuclear tests with nuclear war. There mayhave been established in the minds of some that nuclear weapons testing and nuclear wargo hand-in- hand, i.e., the first axiomatically leads to the second. A dis- cussion of causal relationships is beyond the scope of this booklet, yet one point must be made. As a matter of technical fact, nuclear weapons of proven performance would not have been possible without the testing of nuclear devices and the verifying of nuclear concepts that were incorporated into their design. Whatever protection we enjoy from our nuclear arsenal results from a stockpile of testproven nuclear weapons, not a stockpile of drawing board sketches. C54 32