The nature in which people respond is professional helpful and not the least condescending. I am a student of mechanical engineering and would like some input on how engineers in gerneral are being environmentaly responcible. This protocol is carried forward into all change processes throughout the site, in that environmental reviews are required for any change that can potentially affect the environment. Environmental receives more resources that most other engineering programs. It is a high visibility program in all industries now.
Nuclear power is no exception.
Nuclear Power is one of the most highly regulated industry in the world. The ODCM uses actual site specific environmental parameters, population profiles and food chain pathways to determine the potential health and saftey impact to the theoretical maximum exposed individual in the site surrounding areas. This model establishes the limiting conditions for effluents during normal operation and accident scenario evaluations. Unlike most industries, the hazards of byproducts containing radioactivity have been well understood from the inception of the commercial program and have been conservatively assumed to have no minimum threshold for health affects. Thus just meeting the regulatory limits on parameters is not the end point for applying engineering safeguards and preventative measures in determining acceptable risk for activities at a nuclear facility.