New regulations for radiation protection for work involving radioactive fallout emitted by the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi APP accident--disposal of contaminated soil and wastes.

The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Atomic Power Plant that accompanied the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, released a large amount of radioactive material. To rehabilitate the contaminated areas, the government of Japan decided to carry out decontamination work and manage the waste resulting from decontamination. In the summer of 2013, the Ministry of the Environment planned to begin a full-scale process for waste disposal of contaminated soil and wastes removed as part of the decontamination work. The existing regulations were not developed to address such a large amount of contaminated wastes. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), therefore, had to amend the existing regulations for waste disposal workers. The amendment of the general regulation targeted the areas where the existing exposure situation overlaps the planned exposure situation. The MHLW established the demarcation lines between the two regulations to be applied in each situation. The amendment was also intended to establish provisions for the operation of waste disposal facilities that handle large amounts of contaminated materials. Deliberation concerning the regulation was conducted when the facilities were under design; hence, necessary adjustments should be made as needed during the operation of the facilities.

Uncertain science and a failure of trust. The NIH radioepidemiologic tables and compensation for radiation-induced cancer.

In the late 1970s, the U.S. Congress was debating a number of different proposals to provide monetary compensation to residents of Utah and Nevada who had been exposed to radioactive fallout from government nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s. Yet scientists and government officials expressed concern that such a program would end up compensating many people for cancers that were not caused by the fallout. Thus, after much debate, Congress directed the National Institutes of Health to produce a set of statistical tables--the radioepidemiologic tables--to target compensation awards to "deserving" individuals. Advocates of the tables, notably Senator Orrin Hatch, argued that reliance on scientific data would provide compensation decisions with predictability and evenhandedness. Yet in the end, the effort to employ the tables failed. The substantial scientific uncertainties in the tables and in their application to individual claims failed to deliver the authority they promised. Additionally, the goal of fairness and objectivity could not be convincingly met because of persistent controversy and mistrust surrounding the government's role in the study of health effects of low-level radiation.

British atomic tests in Australia.

The United Kingdom and Australia have reached agreement on the British payment for cleaning up the Maralinga (South Australia) site at which the UK tested some of its atomic weapons in the 1960s. The tests were conducted amid great secrecy and only in recent years has the truth about the health hazards fully emerged. The peace movement opposed the tests and its stand has been vindicated. Also vindicated have been the claims by Aborigines that more damage was done by the tests than was earlier admitted.

The controversy over radiation safety. A historical overview.

The hazards of ionizing radiation have aroused concern since a short time after the discovery of x-rays and natural radioactivity in the 1890s. Misuse of x-rays and radium prompted efforts to encourage radiation safety and to set limits on exposure, culminating in the first recommended "tolerance doses" in 1934. After World War II, the problems of radiation protection became more complex because of the growing number of people subjected to radiation injury and the creation of radioactive elements that had never existed before the achievement of atomic fission. Judging the hazards of radiation became a matter of spirited controversy. Major public debates over the dangers of radioactive fallout from atmospheric bomb testing in the 1950s and early 1960s and the risks of nuclear power generation in later periods focused attention on the uncertainties about the consequences of exposure to low-level radiation and the difficulties of resolving them.