Review of the Methods Used to Assign Radiation Doses to Service Personnel at Nuclear Weapons Tests

摘要

Between 1945 and 1962, about 203,000 military personnel, including civilian employees of the Department of Defense, participated in atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted at proving grounds in the southwestern part of the United States and in the Pacific Ocean. DNA instituted a program of dose assignment, known as the Nuclear Test Personnel Review (NTPR). The NTPR involves the collection and processing of an extraordinary amount of information, and a major problem encountered by the Committee was that no single report summarizes the scope of the NTPR, the procedures used, and the uncertainties involved in the dose assignments. The NTPR has developed procedures that permit satisfactory estimates to be made of the external doses received by the participants. There are uncertainties in the dose estimates, but it appears that 99% of the personnel received doses of less than 5 rems, which is approximately the average dose received by the general population during the last 30 years from exposure to natural radiation and the use of ionizing radiation during medical procedures.