Society News Archive

4 September 2015
NRC Seeks Comments on Draft Reg Guide NUREG–1530, "Reassessment of NRC's Dollar Per Person-Rem Conversion Factor Policy, Revision 1"

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued for public comment draft NUREG-1530, "Reassessment of NRC's Dollar Per Person-Rem Conversion Factor Policy, Revision 1." 

This proposed revision to NUREG-1530, "Reassessment of NRC's Dollar per Person-Rem Conversion Factor Policy," revises the dollar per person-rem conversion factor. NUREG-1530 was initially published in December 1995. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) uses the dollar per person-rem conversion in cost-benefit analyses to determine the monetary valuation of the consequences associated with radiological exposure and establishes this factor by multiplying a value of a statistical life coefficient by a nominal risk coefficient. The 1995 version of NUREG-1530 set the dollar per-person rem value at $2,000. This number resulted from the multiplication of the value of a statistical life ($3 million) by the risk coefficient for stochastic health effects (7.3 x 10-4 per person-rem). NUREG-1530 instructs the staff to round the dollar per person-rem conversion factor to the nearest $1,000 value. This revision to NUREG-1530 makes five changes to the previous version, including updating the dollar per person-rem conversion factor to $5,100 per person-rem.

More information and the draft guide are available on the NRC website.

To ensure consideration, comments should be submitted prior to 3 November 2015.