Concept of a "lifetime dose" of 350 mSv

After the Chernobyl accident, a number of radiation protection criteria for the early and intermediate phases of the accident were set up by the authorities to protect the public in affected areas. For the late phase, an intervention level of 350 mSv over a lifetime, the so-called 350-mSv concept, has been recommended by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) in the USSR. This concept has been strongly criticized by opponents in the affected republics as being far too high and therefore inhumane. However, a lifetime dose of 350 mSv would impose on an individual an average annual risk of the order of 10(-4) y-1, which is lower than the annual individual risk due to nonradiation causes prevailing in many areas in the USSR. The basic radiation protection principles for nuclear accidents as recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are at present very difficult to apply in the USSR because the concepts of risk and acceptable risk are rejected categorically. If, however, principles of justification and optimization had been used, the result might have shown that the present lifetime dose limit of 350 mSv, as an intervention level, is actually too low.