Radiation Protection Glossary

A radiation protection glossary for Radiation Protection Supervisors (RPS), Radiation Protection Advisers (RPA) and anyone else interesting in radiation safety terms and definitions. The glossary is a mixture of health physics , phrases related to radiation protection legislation, transport, practical safety, technical terms and similar.

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For formal advice, see our Radiation Protection Adviser pages. 

Reasonably Foreseeable

The term Reasonably Foreseeable is used in a number of areas of Radiation Protection, including Risk Assessment, Safety Cases and Probabilistic Safety Assessments (PSA). Reasonably foreseeable can be taken to mean an incident or accident which is thought to be Credible. It can be expressed numerically and this value will differ depending on the situation being assessed (but perhaps in the range of 10-5 to 10-6). The term does not appear to be defined exactly in legislation and there is certainly an interchange in interpretation with 'Credible'.

In radiation protection I spend most of my time explaining to clients what they do not need to worry about.

– Mark Ramsay -