The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.

This is a positive and accessible account of the effect of radiation on life that brings good news for the future of mankind. For more than half a century the view that radiation represents an extreme hazard has been accepted. This book challenges that view by facing the question "How dangerous is ionising radiation?" Briefly the answer is that radiation is about a thousand times less hazardous than suggested by current safety standards. For many this will come as a surprise and then quickly raise a second question "Why are people so worried about radiation?" This is the out-of-date result of Cold War politics combined with a concern about radiation that was appropriate in an earlier age when the scientific understanding was limited. In the book these answers are explained in accessible language and related directly to modern scientific evidence and understanding, for instance the high levels of radiation used to the benefit of health in every major hospital. Four facts illustrate the need for a new understanding. 1. The radiation levels in the nuclear waste storage hall at Sellafield, UK are so low (1 micro-sievert per hour) that anyone would have to stay there for a million hours to receive the same dose that any patient on a course of radiotherapy treatment receives to their healthy tissue in a single day (1 sievert or gray). 2. The radiation dose experienced by the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs caused 0.6% to die of radiation-induced cancer between 1950 and 2000, that is about 1/20 of the chance of dying of cancer anyway and less than the chance of being killed on US highways in that period. 3. The wildlife at Chernobyl today is reported to be thriving, despite being radioactive. 4. The mortality of UK radiation workers before age 85 from all cancers is 15-20% lower than comparable groups. The case for a complete change in attitude towards radiation safety is unrelated to the effects of climate change. But the realisation that radiation and nuclear energy are much safer than is usually supposed is of extreme importance to the current discussion of alternatives to fossil fuels and their relative costs.