The Life Extension Achieved by Eliminating a Prolonged Radiation Exposure

A key parameter for evaluating the worth of safety equipment is the extension to life expectancy that it brings about in the population it is intended to protect. Since this is numerically equal to the decrease in life expectancy that would occur were the equipment not there, its value may be calculated by estimating the effect of the prolonged radiation exposure that would occur in the equipment's absence. This paper describes a procedure for carrying out this computation efficiently for cost-benefit studies using the J-value method.