tions. Approximately half the states in the United States participate. The kinds of authority that are delegated are those pertaining only to byproduct materials and source materials of less than a critical mass. Special nuclear material is kept for Federal purview. These regulatory authorities go to the states, when a program proposed by a state is approved by NRC. One of the base requirements of those programs is that they have compatibility with the Federal regulations. As has already been said, there is pre-emption by the Federal government of radiation standards setting for byproduct, source, and special nuclear material. Now as to how our system works. Basically, our system of regulation is divided into four functional areas. We write standards in the form of regulations. Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations contains NRC regulations. We license individual facilities as they fall under these regulations. We do a case-by-case review for each new reactor, processing plant, uranium mill, whatever. We inspect the operation of those facilities against licensed conditions which are specified as a matter of contract, if you will, with the Federal government. "Contract" is not the right word; I should explain that. License conditions are a matter of law, i.e., enforceable under law, within those license conditions are contained the primary requirements for monitoring by our licensees. That is, rather than the Federal government monitoring each facility caseby-case, we require as a matter of license, for each facility, that the licensee do the monitoring. We require effluent monitoring, environmental monitoring, and monitoring of the people who work in the facility. All of this monitoring is specified along stringent lines contained in our regulations. In addition, we inspect the operation of each facility against its license conditions to see that the licensee is doing the monitoring. In addition we audit in the sense of independent measurements to confirm licensee measurements. Not at all facilities all of the time, but as a sort of spot check. Our success with monitoring has been very good. I might note that there have been a number of states who have become involved in third-party monitoring, if you will, in addition to the licensees and the NRC. States have said they want to keep track of the emissions from various fuel cycle facilities. We encourage that, in fact, we have a program for some partial funding of that through the Federal government. It has worked very well in the past, it goes back some twenty-five years, way back to Shippingport. we have, in fiscal '76, some 2,200 people in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a budget of $218 million this year. I did leave out a functional category in that regard, confirmatory research. We do some research at NRC of a confirmatory nature. Unless there are further questions on the budget, I would just as soon leave it at that. Dr. Morgan. Do you consider that your program is adequate? Dr. Morgan. Dr. Caldicott? Dr. Caldicott. As a pediatrician, and if we proceed with nuclear power as it seems that most people around this table think is a good idea, can you guarantee that in a hundred years or 500 years the standards that you are talking about now will be conformed to, both in America and throughout the world, because I do not come from America? Dr. Mattson. The operating life of the facilities we are licensing with this particular standard is over 30 years. You are talking about waste management, is that what your concern is? Dr. Caldicott. Waste management from breeder reactors. Dr. Mattson. We have no standards for the licensing of breeder reactors at the moment. Dr. Caldicott. Are we going to have standards of radiation acceptable to the population when breeder reactors come into being? Dr. Mattson. I do not believe we have licensed a breeder reactor yet. Dr. Caldicott. Are we planning to? Dr. Mattson. There is one that has applied for a license. Yes, ma'am. Dr. Caldicott. Are we planning to go ahead with the breeder reactor program? Dr. Mattson. I think we talked about that this morning and the role of NRC in that regard to make independent judgments regarding the safety and environmental impact of reactors for which people file an application. That is quite a different question than are we going ahead with the breeder reactor program. Dr. Morgan. Dr. Bross. Dr. Bross. I would like to start with the statement which was made by Dr. Mattson and others, in which he said, in effect, there is no human data on the low-level effects, genetic effects. results in the children of their various health hazards. In this connection, I might add parenthetically, in connection with EPA'S comment, following up this particular group would almost be a direct answer to the specific kind of study it asks for. - The point is, if the members of the regulatory agency sitting here before you are going to say, there is no data this is not a question of science, it is a question of fact: is there data or no data? There is in our files, in our records, material in computable, usable form. It is a matter of fact, whether there is data on this or not. There is data. What we have here is a simple refusal on the part of the regulatory agencies to look at the data, to think about the data, to use this data. I publicly challenge the NRC to set up an adversary science hearing. I will come down to argue this point. They can present any experts they wish against me or against our side. We will thrash out whether or not we can show clear-cut genetic effects from low-level radiation on the order of 1 rad. We will carry on this debate so members of the public can understand what we are talking about, not esoterically. Now I think, if we don't use the data we have, it does not really do much good to set up an elaborate system for collecting data. I have been in public health for 25 years, all the way back to the smoking and lung cancer issue. It was always: We need more data. We don't do anything about cigarettes. We are going to get more data. I do not think this is the way to solve the problem. I do not think obscuring the issues by bringing in cost factors and making a big mess of things is helping, either. There are human beings exposed to risk. The question is: Are they going to have diseases, are they going to die, as a result of this kind of exposure? That is the issue. It does not involve a lot of costs. The question is: Are there a lot of people who are going to get killed? If so, we do not want to do it. Let me say that I strongly support a program for getting better data and I think this has come up several times for lowlevel radiation hazards. I support it with the intent that it is going to be used to do something about these hazards and not as a method of simply delaying public action. We know what to do right now. (Applause) Dr. Morgan. Dr. Mattson, you have been thrown the glove. Will it be pistols, or will it be swords? Do you care to respond? -56 were not any human data. I think that the conclusions drawn from the data were not hard evidence of a direct link between low-level radiation and health effects in man. We have heard people discuss both sides of that issue all day today. I assure you, Dr. Bross, you need not throw down a gauntlet to have an ear in my office. Dr. Morgan. He has suggested that there be a public hearing. Maybe you might consider that also. Dr. Mattson. There are procedures for obtaining formal hearings by the NRC. I am sure you are aware of them. They are called Petitions for Rule-Making and Requests for a Hearing. I certainly, as an individual, am not empowered to grant such a request on behalf of the Commission. I repeat, my telephone line is open, my door is open. If you want to discuss this subject, bring in the data. We are there to listen. Dr. Morgan. Dr. Burr? Dr. Burr. I am Dr. Burr from ERDA. I will comment briefly, because ERDA's role has been touched on already. ERDA does retain the responsibility for its contractors and our environmental monitoring budget for ERDA contract operations is approximately $6 million a year. This involves about 450 people, including both ERDA and contract personnel. The data is gathered, reviewed and published. Dr. Burr has a set of information from the recent environmental monitoring program that we would like to leave with the committee. Dr. Morgan. Thank you, Dr. Burr. Dr. Burr, we will receive it. We will now hear from Dr. Archer in reference to NIOSH. Dr. Archer. The major governmental agencies dealing with radiation have already been heard from. There are three others that have some concern. One is the Mine Enforcement and Safety Administration MESA. The other two are the twin agencies created under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. They are the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, NIOSH and OSHA. MESA, the Mine Enforcement Safety Administration, gets their authority from a special metal mine act which gives them authority to control all hazards in mine operations. It is mines they are concerned with, and they have a very active program for measuring the concentrations of radioactive material in essentially all mining operations. They concentrate on radon daughters in underground mines. The law which created NIOSH and OSHA has provided very wide lems and OSHA to enforce standards. They have very wide powers to look into and control occupational hazards. However, the law also puts in an exception, it excepts those situations where authority has been delegated to other agencies. In this case, nearly all of the authority for radiation protection has been delegated to other agencies; both NIOSH and OSHA are concerned very little with it. The one study that NIOSH retained was the study of uranium miners. We retain this for historical reasons. The Public Health Service got into that study at a time when none of the other agencies were interested in it. Thank you. Dr. Morgan. Thank you. Dr. Bertell? Dr. Bertell. I think we are talking here about protecting the health of the public and when I think about protecting the health of the public, the first thing I wondered about is how healthy are the people? I look back at the OSHA form which has to be filled out by employers. If you have an occupationally-related illness, you have to report this at least in the state of Vermont within 72 hours. Unless you received more than a 50 rad dose and got immediately sick from radiation, that is, within 72 hours, there is no obligation to report radiation-related disease. I read Dr. Lassiter's report3/ he is from OSHA. He gave this report at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences in March 1975. He said the OSHA reporting form from employers picks up 2 percent of the medically-diagnosed, occupationally-related disease, 2 percent. This is not watching people. This is not seeing what is happening to the people in the occupational situation. Reports in industry need to be kept only five years. Again, you have eliminated a whole slew of diseases. You do not have a cumulative record that moves with the worker. If he changes employment, he starts all over again. We say we are very interested in people exposed to medical radiation. We have done several extensive studies on the doctor, the physician radiologist. Dr. Vilma Hunt4/points out that no studies have been done on women who are the x-ray technologists. We brought up Women's Lib a few minutes ago. I think there is something radically wrong with a monitoring program when we do not look at the people and say, are they sick? I just finished reading a report on the uranium mineworkers. It says in this group of 25 there were no cases of lung cancer. They told you nothing else about the people, are they sick, what is the matter with them, have they died of anything? I just think that the important issues are being lost in a whole lot of paperwork. |
