Preliminary screening of fuel cycle and by-product material licenses for emergency planning

This report summarizes work done for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as part of a program considering the need for and appropriate level of emergency response planning at fuel cycle and by-product material facilities. The purpose is to: (1) provide a base of technical information for identifying and ranking those facilities for which the need for emergency response planning and preparedness should be further considered, and (2) perform an initial screening of licenses issued by NRC. A data base containing the radionuclide possession limits for each license was developed. Dose estimates for a unit (1 curie) release of each of the radionuclides in the data base were calculated. To account for the variability in weather, distributions of doses were estimated for a full range of meteorological conditions. As requested by NRC, doses at the 99th percentile of the distribution were used. An initial screening analysis was performed for the approximately 9400+ licenses by comparing the estimated 99th percentile dose for a postulated release of a fraction of the licensed possession limit to the dose levels suggested in the Environmental Protection Agency's Protective Action Guides. Using relatively conservative assumptions in the screening analysis, all but at most a few hundred licenses more » were found to have estimated doses below the protective Action Guide levels. The few hundred identified in this initial screening should be further evaluated using realistic assumptions and site-specific information to establish the need for, apropriate level and extent of, and potential effectiveness of emergency response planning and preparedness beyond that currently required. 51 refs. « less