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30 July 2010

Answer to Question #5892 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"

Category: Radiation Safety Careers

The following question was answered by an expert in the appropriate field:

What role does a health physicist play at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)? This is of great interest to me as nuclear sciences will be my career.

The NRC has a large variety of health physics opportunities in four major program offices. These include health physics opportunities in the (1) Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, (2) Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards, (3) Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and (4) Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response. While NUREG-1350, Vol. 18, NRC Information Digest provides an overview of all of the programs for which NRC has responsibility and oversight, some specific functions that health physicists perform at NRC include:

Industrial and Medical Applications

Provide technical support for radiation protection, medical use of radioactive material, and source material issues (including licensing, inspection, and enforcement).
Use computer modeling to provide protection for radioactive material dispersal dose assessment during incidents for emergencies.
Provide technical assistance for issues arising in NRC regional offices or Agreement States that need in-depth assessment or research (such as an environmental impact assessment for high-level waste or a new radiation process).
Provide dose and risk assessments in the use of radiation and radioactive material (that is, preevaluation of safety procedures, equipment, scenarios, dose projection, post-occurrence evaluation in dose reconstruction, and dose assessment).

Fuel Manufacturing and Reactor Programs

Evaluation of the licensee's radiation protection program.
Determination of whether the licensee's integrated safety analysis adequately characterizes radiation hazards and identifies appropriate radiological controls.
Evaluation of the licensee's emergency plans.
Evaluation of a licensee's environmental protection program.

Research

Develop a solid scientific basis for understanding and modeling processes that control radionuclide movement through the environment.
Define source term(s) and assess the performance of engineered barriers from both the safety and security perspectives. For more information, please visit the NRC Web site.

Cynthia Jones, PhD

Answer posted on 8 November 2006. The information and material posted on this Web site is intended as general reference information only. Specific facts and circumstances may alter the concepts and applications of materials and information described herein. The information provided is not a substitute for professional advice and should not be relied upon in the absence of such professional advice specific to whatever facts and circumstances are presented in any given situation. Answers are correct at the time they are posted on the Web site. Be advised that over time, some requirements could change, new data could be made available, or Internet links could change. For answers that have been posted for several months or longer, please check the current status of the posted information prior to using the responses for specific applications.