Health effects of airborne effluents released from the nuclear cycle

Current trends in regulations governing radioactive release from the nuclear cycle and their relationship with population dose and population health damage evaluation are discussed. It is shown that, at least in some cases, current methods may not grant a correct population-dose evaluation. A procedure to better evaluate population doses from gaseous effluents is outlined. It leads to a very simple first approximation expression which is independent of the dispersion area. Two examples, 85Kr and 222Rn, are worked out in order to give first-order evaluations of the population-dose commitment and the related risk. Strong discrepancies between the results and current evaluations are found and discussed.