REQUIREMENTS FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY

The BSS contain a number of requirements which are relevant to safety and security. In the jargon of the BSS they are known as administrative requirements, radiation protection requirements, management requirements, technical requirements and verification of safety requirements.

In the light of what we have learned in recent years, it would now seem that the administrative requirements — which were previously thought to be of secondary importance, simply because they appeared to be so obvious — have become very important.

The administrative requirements of the BSS are extremely simple: the BSS rely on the existence, in every single country, of a system for the notification, registration and licensing of radiation sources. What is taken as a self-evident requirement in many Western countries is, I repeat, not met in many parts of the world. Indeed, many countries are not even aware of the need to meet this requirement, and consequently the authorities in those countries do not know how many sources exist within their ter-ritories or where the sources are, and, it follows logically, there is no registration of sources. That is why the administrative requirements are so important.

As the BSS regrettably took the existence of the administrative requirements for granted, they placed more emphasis on the three technical requirements, relating to security of sources, defence in depth and good engineering practice. With the benefit of hindsight, I feel that we were very naive in placing so much emphasis on the tech-nical and management requirements when the basis — the administrative require-ments — had not been established.

The defence in depth requirement — that is to say, the requirement that there be a multilayered system of safety provisions for the purpose of preventing accidents, mitigating the consequences of accidents and restoring sources to safe conditions — was, I think, highlighted in the excellent review presented by J. Croft in Briefing Session 1. Good engineering practice is something which we have taken for granted at times but which is not always in place. The BSS presume that sources are always reliable and built to approved engineering standards, with sufficient safety margins, and (this is very important) that they take account of research and development results

— not being fossilized in time.

The security of sources requirement focuses on the prevention of theft, damage and unauthorized use by ensuring that control is not relinquished, that sources are not transferred to unauthorized users and that periodic inventories are conducted, partic-ularly of movable sources. We continue to believe that this requirement covers all essential security issues and that the problem of security cannot be tackled by con-trolling illicit traffic at borders or asking the police to find sources. The problem of security will be solved only when there are everywhere national systems that ensure that control is not relinquished, that sources are not transferred to unauthorized users and that periodic inventories are being conducted. Unfortunately, however, we are not in such a situation. That is why the help of customs and border controls and of the police is at the moment essential.

The management requirements include — besides quality assurance, attention to human factors and the use of qualified experts — safety culture. This is a very elu-sive requirement. The expression 'safety culture' is not the most felicitous, and when it is translated into other languages there are problems. Basically, what was intended with the concept of safety culture was to make it clear that safety should be the highest priority in organizations handling radiation sources, which should be prepared to identify and correct problems promptly; that clear lines of responsibility should be established, not only for organizations in handling sources but in the governmental agencies controlling the use of sources. The lines of authority for decision making should be clearly defined, but, as you know, this is not normally the case, particularly in the medical field, where the highest authorities in hospitals are often unaware of the safety conditions in their radiology and nuclear medicine services.

The problem of safety culture — or lack of safety culture — is particularly critical, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the Newly Independent States, where there is a lack of tradition in the control of radiation sources.

As regards the quality assurance requirement, the recent accident that occurred with radiation sources in Costa Rica, where several people were killed, clearly resulted from the fact that this requirement was not being met.

As regards the human factors requirement, the main point is that operating personnel should be properly trained and qualified. In many of the accidents reported at this Conference, lack of training and qualifications was a common cause of failure.

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Also important are design in accordance with ergonomic principles, the availability of equipment and software for reducing the likelihood of human error, and the provision of means for detecting human error and facilitating intervention when it occurs.

The possibility of verifying safety is very important, but it does not exist in many countries, as they are failing to identify potential exposure pathways, to esti-mate probabilities and magnitudes of potential exposure, and to assess the quality and extent of safety provisions.

Last but not least, monitoring for the verification of compliance and record keeping are things which the BSS call for very specifically.

4. OUTLOOK

The foregoing is a summary of what the BSS offer the international community, but are the BSS requirements enough? In my opinion, they are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ensuring safety and security.

First, sufficiency demands a higher level of quantification, and I would like to see international bodies adopting — as soon as possible — the ICRP's latest techni-cal recommendations concerning the safety of sources, recently published as ICRP Publication 76 [2]. Those recommendations offer us an opportunity to embark on a more quantified approach to radiation safety.

Second, the security requirement should clearly be expanded; it takes up only half a page in the BSS. Even if countries, following what appears in the BSS Preamble, adopt legislation and establish regulatory authorities and, following the administrative requirements, adopt systems of notification, registration and licensing, and, following the technical requirements, adopt measures for ensuring that the control of radioactive sources is not relinquished, all that is not enough for tackling the problem of security.

The essential issue is not the existence of standards, but their application. Under its Statute, the International Atomic Energy Agency has to provide for the application of the BSS. There are several ways of providing for the application of such standards, a very important one, particularly for those countries where the situation is critical, being the provision of assistance through the IAEA's Technical Co-operation Programme. But this is the subject of the next presentation, by J. Qian, the IAEA's Deputy Director General for Technical Co-operation.

REFERENCES

[1] FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION, OECD NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY, PAN AMERICAN HEALTH ORGANIZATION, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources, Safety Series No. 115, IAEA, Vienna (1996).

[2] INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION, Protection from Potential Exposures: Application to Selected Radiation Sources, Publication 76, Pergamon Press, Oxford and New York (1996).

IAEA-CN-70/B2.2

THE IAEA TECHNICAL CO-OPERATION