Ronald E. Evans, the command module pilot for Apollo 17, performed a deep-space extravehicular activity (EVA) to retrieve a film canister during the mission’s return to Earth. At about 160,000 miles from Earth, it was the most distant spacewalk ever conducted in deep space under full-spectrum GCR. (Photo: NASA)
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Chris Wagner, chief executive officer of Eden Radioisotopes.
Inset: Fission Mo-99 process. (Images: Eden)
Chris Wagner has more than 40 years of experience in nuclear medicine, beginning as a clinical practitioner before moving into leadership roles at companies like Mallinckrodt (now Curium) and Nordion. His knowledge of both the clinical and the manufacturing sides of nuclear medicine laid the groundwork for helping to found Eden Radioisotopes, a start-up venture that intends to make diagnostic and therapeutic raw material medical isotopes like molybdenum-99 and lutetium-177.
Clockwise from top left: Calutron operators at their panels in the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., the USS Nautilus SSN571, women working in a factory of the United States Radium Corporation, and the front face of the B Reactor at the Hanford site.
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
