Editorial: Nuclear safety: Waste remediation, radiation protection and health assessment

Abstract

Editorial on the Research Topic Nuclear safety: Waste remediation, radiation protection and health assessmentRadioactivity is a natural occurrence, and natural sources of radiation are environmental factors. Radiation and radioactive material can also be of artificial origin and have a wide range of useful applications, including medical, industrial, agricultural, and scientific applications, as well as nuclear power generation (Abojassim and Rasheed, 2021). Radiation dangers to persons and the environment from the use of radiation and radioactive materials must be assessed and managed through the implementation of safety standards (Martin et al., 2019). Ionizing radiation exposure of tissues or organs can cause cell death on a large enough scale to compromise the function of the exposed tissue or organ. This sort of consequence, known as 'deterministic effects,' is clinically evident in an individual only if the radiation dosage surpasses a particular threshold (Kamiya et al., 2015). A deterministic impact is more severe at a larger dosage over this threshold level (Mallya, 2019). As a result, all countries have adopted national radiation protection regulations and regulated safety standards. Justification, optimization, and dose limitation are the three main principles of radiation protection. Systematic rule implementation to check and ensure that the recommended safety guidelines of practice are strictly followed would aid and improve the safe practice of using ionizing radiations to generate optimum radiological images for correct diagnosis with lower doses for personnel, patients, and the general public (Fiagbedzi et al., 2022).It is important to draw attention to technological developments in the field of radiation protection, such as the creation of environmentally friendly and reasonably priced materials for radiation shield construction (Eid et al., 2021;, the development of environmentally appropriate solutions for dealing with radioactive waste (Dawoud et al., 2023; Abdelhamid et al., 2023), and enhancing the characterizations of the materials utilized in immobilization of nuclear wastes (Saleh, 2014;Saleh et al., 2020a;Saleh et al., 2020b) or that used in packing of nuclear waste in order to achieve a human-safe and clean environment (Saleh and Koller, 2021).Radiation dose, or the amount of energy conveyed per unit mass of an absorbing medium, can be evaluated or direct biological effects and compliance with radiation exposure limits can be monitored (Adlienė and Adlytė, 2017). Radiation safety professionals define radiation absorbed dose and dose rate for occupational, environmental, and medical exposures using carefully defined quantities and units (Adlienė and Adlytė, 2017). The