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.

Search the Glossary by either clicking on a letter or typing a keyword into the search box. This glossary is relational so when looking at one term you can click through to other related terms as required.

For formal advice, see our Radiation Protection Adviser pages. 

Risk

In general terms risk can be defined as the potential for unwanted, adverse consequences to human life, property, health, environment or society. The calculation (or estimation) of risk is usually based on the Probability of the event occurring multiplied by the consequence of the event given that it has occurred. In order to do this a Risk Assessment has to be made which looks at all the hazards, severity and conditional probabilities.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness

– Bill Bryson -