There is no uncertainty that these costs exist and there is no uncertainty about who pays for them. Knowledge and uncertainty about radiation health effects are not exclusively the domain of any individual country. Radiation health effects is an international science. The ICRP, an international body of experts, develops recommendations for a radiation protection system that are based upon international knowledge about radiation health effects and take into account the uncertainties about that knowledge. Despite the fact that the underlying science is common to all, the present U.S. radiation protection regulatory system is neither uniform internally nor consistent with internationally accepted recommendations.
Many factors influence decisions on the setting of regulatory standards for radiation protection.
These are policy decisions. In the final analysis, the flexibility and direction that agencies have in making these policy decisions are dictated by the underlying legislation for regulatory agencies and, in some cases, by court decisions on the implementation of the legislation. In the U.S., different statutory approaches to enable governmental programs to protect workers, the public and the environment combined with court decisions have resulted in a patchwork quilt of radiological protection requirements that often conflict with each other despite the common science basis. This situation does not engender public and political confidence in our scientists and in our policy makers. The ICRP recommendations, while predicated on the LNT concept, constitute a coherent system.