fh OMY FTOM £0:
/ LEDERBERG Professor Be Lindell

NOV 11 1970

Radiatien Protection. Cost-Benefit analf¢sis

Thank you for your prompt reply. I was alse
deeply gratified at the correspondence of our
conclusions; I had had theretofore only a
vague intuitive impression that the practice
of health-physicists would generate a number
in the range of $10 - 100 per manrad, but
surely with many idiosyncratic and irrational P.S., Re SSI:1970-027
exceptions,

Your "PQR" approach is one with which, ob- The extrapolatien te eventual levels of
viously, I am in close accord. De you know energy productien (pp. 18 ff) may be slightly
also Chauncey Starr's paper (Science, 9/19/69) tee rigorous. In principle, one might elect
-- which, however, I believe to be quite faul- to build somewhat leakier reactors today, .
ty/ in concept. He does not approach what and use the economic savings, and engineering
people will be willing to pay for incremental design experience, to budéld even better con-
improvements in safety, under conditiens ef trolled ones in future. But this does re-
reasenable information, quire a rigerous plan (and economic justifi-

William Gorham, now president ef the Urban cation .. like PQR... ) for the future as
Institute in Washington,D.C., when he was well as present program.

Asst. Secy of HEW for Program Coordination, What is the present situation, of the cost
developed a series of studies published by of population-dose-reduction in the nuclear
HEW as "Program Ahalysis/Disease Centre] Pre- reactor field? a
grams", "1966-5"; they calculate the present we

value of expected earnings of the “average

27-f¥ear old male" at $125,060, and calculate
cost-benefits of other programs accordingly.

I did not directly include non-economic
costs in my calculations. If I did, they might¢

Mick OG ery

Would the ecenomic advantage of nuclear
power replacement of fossil-fuel today justi-
fy using up all, or one tenth, of the IRCP
guidelines?

%

A wb we

exceed the GNP: My approach, like yours, ‘J
rather observes the economic behavior of peo-
ple who actually make decisions. te

Do you have ststistics on the dverage duty i
cycle, or manrad per day delivered, per machin.
3¢

x I fally accept your lpoint on dose-

commitment, which was als De eeEsSOR JOSHUA LEDERBERG
* epartment enetics
welll-covered in the UN com- Sctrool of Medicine

mitjtee analyses of fallou Stanford University
t ¥ * Stanford, California 94305

 

cron

Postadress ;
Fack National Institute of !

104 01 Stockholm 60 Radiation Protection