NRC REPORTS LOWEST AVERAGE OCCUPATIONAL DOSE EVER
FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT WORKERS IN 2004
Printable Version

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s latest compilation of nuclear power plant worker doses at U.S. reactors shows the average annual collective dose per plant is 100 person-rem, the lowest ever and half of the dose recorded 10 years ago.

To determine a plant's collective dose, individual doses are added up and the result is expressed in person-rem. The average American receives a dose of about 360 millirem every year from all radioactive sources; the average nuclear plant worker in recent years received about an additional 160 millirem each year on the job. NRC regulations allow workers at nuclear power plants to safely receive a job-related dose of up to 5,000 millirem each year.

"This report shows nuclear power plant operators have very effective plans and procedures in place to reduce workers’ exposure while ensuring the necessary work is done to NRC requirements," said Bruce Boger, Director of the Division of Inspection Program Management in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.

The nation’s 69 pressurized-water reactors had an average annual collective dose of 71 person-rem, down 22 percent from 2003 and the lowest ever for PWRs. The 35 boiling-water reactors had an average annual collective dose of 156 person-rem, the second-lowest ever.

The full report is available on the NRC’s Web-based document database, ADAMS, by entering ML051530296 in the search function at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html.

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Thursday, December 11, 2008