Abstract
It has been more than 50 years since UNSCEAR was established in 1955 when the world was trembling with the fear of nuclear war. UNSCEAR set its task as assembling scientific data on the effect of radiation on human health and functioned well together with ICRP to evaluate radiation risk and to provide frameworks of radiation protection. However, UNSCEAR is now forced to face a transition from two sides; changes in politics and economy, and changes in the scientific framework. One such example of changes in the scientific framework can be the move to limit the overuse of the LNT based collective dose approach on risk assessment of a large population with trivial level of radiation doses. The collective dose when applied to the whole European population and trivial doses from the Chernobyl accident resulted in a number of causalities which has no meaning except a simple mathematical calculation. Another scientific issue surfaced out recently in UNSCEAR discussion is how to evaluate psychological effect of radiation accident. The most devastating effects were seen on the psychology of the inhabitants in the area contaminated by the Chernobyl accident, but the effects cannot be evaluated by the dose to the people. Thus, the issues handled in UNSCEAR may be expanding from natural science to sociological science. These changes will be discussed in relation to the future of UNSCEAR.
