fey ‘DOBARCHIVES) as) es o -9- Attachment FRC Staff and Working Group Reviews of Prospective Activities The FRC staff and Working Group have kept problems related to radiation hazards and radiation protection under continuous surveillance from the point of view of the desirability of FRC involvement. From these many discussions and briefings, a list of suggested projects was drawn up. These are listed below in order of priority. l. Updating of FRC report 1 --- Several developments have occurred in the past ten years that appear to warrant an examination of the ways to interpret the estimate of the upper limit of risks associated with exposures that could occur under the FRC guidelines. Three methods of interpretation are now extant: (a) an absolute risk estimate expressed in terms of the number of malignancies per million persons exposed per rad of radiation, (b) a percentage increase over the spontaneous risk (incidence) and (c) comparative risks based on comparative doses with the comparison dose usually taken as the average annual dose from naturally occurring sources. Current ICRP recommendations are intended by that organization to apply to mining as well as other occupational exposures and also to potential cosmic radiation exposures associated with high altitude flight. The numerical standards in FRC report 1 have not been applied to either. The mandate to keep exposures as low as practicable has proved to be particularly troublesome in regulatory activities. 2. Updating FRC report 2 --- Current problems indicate that radio- activity concentration guides for 3H, 85xkr, and 137Cs may be needed. 3. Plowshare --- The Working Group has been briefed on the proposal to excavate a new Atlantic-Pacific canal by the use of nuclear explosives. Existing standards did not envision such an activity and thei. applicability is dubious. The use of nuclear detonations for gas stimulation has been discussed at some length. The staff position is that existing regulations in AEC Part 20 are applicable to the experimental phase of such programs but not to commercial use including residual radioactivity in the gas distributed to customers.