Topical Session 2 included a keynote address by R.H. Taylor, Head of Environmental and Safety Policy and Strategy, British Nuclear Fuels Limited, and member of the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG). His address was entitled Cultural and Organizational Issues Underpinning Radiological Protection.
Various authors contributed 24 papers in Topical Session 2 — Infrastructure Development. The papers were summarized by the rapporteur, S. van der Woude of the National Nuclear Regulator of South Africa.
The keynote address focuses on facility level infrastructure and discusses the cultural and organizational pre-requisites for developing and maintaining a good safety culture in operating organizations. The paper draws heavily on concepts taken from INSAG publications. Organizations with a strong safety culture have an effective safety management system, one which encourages total commitment, involvement, support and ownership of protection and safety at all levels of the organization.
The general framework for operational safety as proposed by INSAG-13 consists of the following essential elements:
(a) Definition of safety requirements and organizational safety goals;
(b) Planning, control and support;
(c) Implementation;
(d) Audit, review and feedback from operating experience.
To ensure an efficient safety management system it is necessary to develop an assessment plan to assess the integrity of the system.
R.H. Taylor indicates that when management is able to get everybody ‘on board’, with a clear understanding of requirements, corporate goals for protection and safety, and when individual and collective commitments to achieving and sustaining safety improvement are established, then a learning organization has been created with a self-sustaining safety culture.
With regard to managing change, R.H. Taylor draws attention to the need to review and assess the impact of technical and organizational changes affecting safety before embarking on such change. Organizational capacity to manage this change
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must also be considered in order not to undermine the already existing safety status of the organization.
INSAG has recently addressed the need for independence in regulatory decision making and a report on this will be published.
From the keynote and rapporteur presentations, several issues were raised as discussion points and the following key issues were discussed.
1. DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE ROLE OF THE REGULATORY AUTHORITY
Infrastructure is the term used to describe the basic organization and management required to discharge the functions related to protection and safety. A national level infrastructure as well as a facility level infrastructure should be developed, commensurate with the number and complexity of practices, plants and installations in a given country.
On the issue of the independence of the regulatory authority, the focus should be on effective independence to make decisions and to control actions related to protection and safety, not necessarily administrative independence. It was emphasized that attributes of knowledge, competence, transparency, trustworthiness and the existence of good relations between the regulatory authority and its staff are critical to the establishment of effective independence. Establishment of independence is an evolutionary process and the focus should be on radiation protection and safety, not on bureaucratic authority. The IAEA should emphasize this in its guidance documents and expert missions. The challenges to effective independence are inadequate funding of the regulatory authority and limited numbers of adequately trained and motivated personnel.
It was accepted that basic education, training and working experience are essential to competence building in radiation protection and safety for regulators, operators and service providers. Mechanisms to enhance the effectiveness should be considered, namely, short, focused, practically oriented courses/workshops, fellowships, distance learning through the internet and standardization of training materials so that there is uniformity of competency and performance.
IAEA efforts in these areas should be upgraded and strengthened.
2. SAFETY CULTURE
Safety culture in an institution has two levels, namely, the corporate level and the individual level. The three stages of developing and maintaining safety culture should be used to strengthen individual and corporate safety cultures:
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(1) Safety should be governed by compliance with, and adherence to, externally imposed rules and regulations imposed by the regulatory authority.
(2) Good safety performance should be based upon achieving well-established organizational safety targets and goals.
(3) Safety should be accepted as being not an event but a continuing process of safety improvement to which everyone in the organization should be given the opportunity to contribute.
Everyone in the organization, including management, should have a strong attitude towards, and place a high priority on, safety.
On the issue of quantifying safety culture, it was pointed out that it is not an easy task since factors to be considered are complex. However, INSAG-15 provides some guidance on approaches as well as recommended questions to be asked. One may consider using a similar safety climate assessment to that applied in other disciplines. The implementation and evaluation of safety culture in occupational radiation protection requires more attention in IAEA guidance documents, training and expert missions.
3. COMMUNICATION OF RISK
It was accepted that communication of risk by radiation protection professionals and regulators to the public is generally unsatisfactory. There is the need to develop proficiency in using plain language to communicate radiation protection concepts and principles, safety culture and risk estimates to decision makers, workers, the media and the general public in order to have full participatory involvement on issues of protection and safety.
4. MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE
Analysis of the age structure of regulators, operators and service providers indicates that there is a high probability of loss of corporate memory as regards very knowledgeable and experienced personnel. Concern was expressed about this trend.
Strategies for promoting capacity building for the younger generation of regulators, operators and supporting service organizations have to be addressed to ensure sustainability and continuity of performance.
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5. ISSUES OF FUTURE CONCERN
5.1. Infrastructure development at facility level
The IAEA has provided guidance in IAEA-TECDOC-1067 on Organization and Implementation of a National Regulatory Infrastructure Governing Protection Against Ionizing Radiation and the Safety of Radiation Sources, which covers the essential elements of safety infrastructure at the national level required to apply the International Basic Safety Standards to radiation sources used in medicine, agriculture, research, industry and education. It also provides guidance on approaches to the organization and operation of the infrastructure aimed at achieving its maximum efficiency.
There is the need to develop a similar practical document for infrastructure at the facility level in the immediate future.
5.2. Guidance on communication of risk
The IAEA, in collaboration with the appropriate experts, should consider developing guidance on the communication of risk to all stakeholders involved in issues of protection and safety. A starting point could be to consolidate lessons learnt in different countries.
5.3. Harmonization of radiation protection and safety and operational safety and health infrastructure development
The IAEA, the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization should spearhead an initiative to harmonize radation protection and safety and promote occupational safety and health infrastructure development.
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TOPICAL SESSION 3
STATUS OF OPERATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF BASIC SAFETY STANDARDS
Chairperson’s Summary Z. Prouza Czech Republic
Close collaboration at international and multilateral levels is necessary for establishing or improving national radiation protection infrastructures. In this regard, the IAEA model project is a good example of international co-operation for strengthening radiation safety infrastructures. The degree of active involvement of Member States and the progress achieved in the implementation of the International Basic Safety Standards (BSS) were analysed. The conclusion regarding model project implementation was that it was good, but there was still some way to go. The desirability of assessing the situation in the non-Member States of the IAEA, for which there is very little information, was emphasized.
The conclusion from a number of presentations, and reinforced in the discussion, is that in several countries the improvement of legislation, radiation protection standards and services requires:
(a) An adequate scheme for classification of sources, including natural and artificial sources.
(b) The identification of potentially hazardous practices by assembling information on the behaviour of relevant radionuclides in the processing of natural materials and the determination of mechanisms of concentration of radionuclides in products and waste releases into the environment.
(c) The development of standards and guides for control of exposure to natural sources in industry. These should include acceptable risk boundaries for optimization and the establishment of intervention levels.
(d) The establishment of radiation and waste safety profiles, action plans and procedures to monitor implementation in Member States.
(e) The maintenance of a strong safety culture.
(f) The solution to the problem of losing skilled and experienced employees in the future.
The improvement of occupational exposure control is an important area when updating radiation safety standards; in some cases this problem can only be solved by good collaboration between radiation protection organizations and scientific institutions. In this process, particular attention should be given to:
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(a) Methods for routine individual monitoring of internal exposure to obtain reliable information on compliance with standards. In this process, uncertainties in dose assessment should be taken into account.
(b) Methods for planning occupational exposure using the ‘as low a reasonably achiev-able’ (ALARA) principle: dentification of groups of workers likely to be subject to higher exposures; analysis of operations that lead to high exposures; investi-gation of types of irradiation field (gamma, neutrons, etc.); analysis and improve-ment of monitoring systems; and qualification and training of workers, etc.
For many radionuclides, the protection of female workers also provides sufficient protection to the embryo or foetus. However, there are a number of radionuclides for which a chronic intake by inhalation at levels close to the dose limit for workers may result in an effective dose to the offspring of up to some tens of millisieverts, depending on the period of inhalation. For certain types of incident, especially during pregnancy, doses to the embryo or foetus may be higher than the effective dose to the mother. Adequate working conditions, justification of a given practice and optimization of radiation protection for female workers are the key points.
A European Worker Passport (EWP), the property of the worker, has been proposed for facilitating movement of contract workers in regulated nuclear installations (not only nuclear power plants) within the European area. The goal is to reinforce their dosimetric and health medical follow-up in conformity with the law of each country. The EWP is not intended to replace national dosimetric data on the occupational health of workers. That proposal may be useful for transient workers but it should not undermine the licensees’ obligation or the regulatory authorities’
requirements.
The European ALARA network continues to increase in size, covering more countries in Europe and proposing new means for facilitating ALARA implementation in radiation protection practice. The network is a useful tool for:
(a) Promoting the efficient and effective application of the ALARA principle at regional level,
(b) Providing a means for improving the feedback of experience,
(c) Preparing proposals for the appropriate use of optimization to control all types of exposure.
The implementation of similar ALARA networks in other regions was identified as an important issue for the future.
It was suggested that the International Labour Organization’s Safety Convention 115 could be used more as a tool, and that the ‘special circumstances’ of the BSS may no longer be required. Three direct actions were suggested:
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(1) Update Convention 115 to make the language more relevant and to include reference to the BSS,
(2) Find a mechanism to investigate the situation on implementation of the Convention in non-Member States of the IAEA,
(3) Analyse the possibility of integration with other occupational health and safety measures.
TOPICAL SESSION 4
MONITORING OF OCCUPATIONAL RADIATION EXPOSURES Chairperson’s Summary
K. Fujimoto Japan
At first, C. Wernli from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland presented his keynote paper. He covered whole aspects of occupational radiation monitoring including the purpose of radiation monitoring, quantities and units, present status of monitoring practices, recent development of dosimetry, problematic areas and future needs, referring to related IAEA Safety Series publications. His highlights are included in the following summary. Then, D. Cavadore, from COGEMA in France, reviewed 20 papers in his capacity as rapporteur. His findings are also included in the following summary. Following the two presentations, the chairperson made some comments to facilitate the discussion. Intensive discussion followed the presentations.
This session was intended to cover at least the following four aspects:
(1) Individual monitoring and exposure assessments for external and internal exposures;
(2) Monitoring of the workplace, monitoring techniques, biological dosimetry;
(3) Recording and reporting procedures;
(4) Intercomparison programmes.
As regards the first aspect, several papers were presented and described successful monitoring performances for external exposure. External monitoring of photons is relatively easy and many commercial services are available. However, some difficulties are encounted with beta and neutron dosimetry, although a bubble detector and an electronic dosimeter using a silicon diode were demonstrated as giving good performance for neutron measurement. In addition, the questions of who should be monitored and how it should be performed, including the use of background
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subtraction, have not clearly been answered yet, although some instruction regarding acceptable uncertainty range is given in Safety Guide No. RS-G-1.3 (Assessment of Occupational Exposure Due to External Sources of Radiation)
Internal dose assessment is recognized as being more difficult than external dose assessment and it is still in a formative state, although several papers were presented on how to overcome some difficulties. Some countries have no proper internal dose assessment system, although there is a possibility of internal exposure in various facilities such as mining, milling, research, radioisotope production and hospitals. Further improvement is required in internal exposure assessment. It is necessary for the IAEA to help some countries improve their internal dose assessment capabilities.
As regards the second aspect, that of monitoring techniques, new monitoring techniques for external and internal radiation were presented. In particular, direct electronic readout dosimeters could be useful tools and in some countries they are already recognized as a being a legal dosimeter. Personal dosimetry service accreditations were also presented and demonstrated good performance. No biological dosimetry was presented. In an accidental exposure, chromosome aberration analysis is one of the useful techniques for dose estimation, although not so many countries have such a capability.
As regards the third aspect, recording and reporting procedures, no paper touched on this clearly except that given by the keynote speaker (C. Wernli).
However, this is an important issue. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation Report 2000 mentioned that it had difficulty in compiling or comparing the data supplied from many parts of the world owing to the lack of a standardized format for monitoring data. For ease of comparison and compilation it is required to have standardized data formats for recording and reporting. Dose distribution of occupational radiation exposures and their trends could be a good measure of the overall quality of the radiation protection infrastructure. Therefore, monitoring results should be used not only to check compliance with regulations but also to improve the optimization of radiation safety. In addition, occupational dose records should be maintained by a central dose registry system. That system is especially useful for workers who change their jobs. This situation could be further improved by a new international convention. However, some concerns are raised on recording level and identification of name when the database becomes larger, especially with regard to a foreign workforce.
Regarding the fourth aspect, intercomparison programmes, several papers were presented on this topic. The intercomparison exercise is essential to keep a high quality of performance of dosimetry service. It was found that results in some countries were not satisfactory. Further improvement is necessary, especially in Latin America.
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Some problems were recognized in the following areas. Proper calibration was not performed with regard to the energy and irradiation conditions. Delayed adaptation of the International Basic Safety Standards (BSS) was found and that they used the old dose limit of 50 mSv/a and old terminology. Misunderstanding of the optimization was also found. It should be emphasized that compliance with dose limits or dose constraints is not proof of optimization.
The large demand for occupational monitoring attracts commercial companies to take over and control the market. Such large commercial dosimetry services have the advantages of offering well-developed, standardized methods, entailing low cost to the customer. On the other hand, the local expertise may diminish and the flexibility for site specific solutions may become limited.
In conclusion, certain progress has been made in occupational radiation monitoring. However, additional efforts are needed to improve the following aspects.
Individual monitoring for neutron, beta and internal exposure is still a challenge. For neutron dosimeters, energy dependence of response, sensitivity and dynamic range are limiting factors in most available systems. For beta radiation, new designs of detector that make them comfortable to wear and less energy dependent are still needed. Active devices are still missing. Optimization of monitoring practice is another concern. Who should be monitored? How should it be performed? National dose registries have been set up in several countries; some others do not envisage a centralized dose registration system. Standardization of data formats for recording and reporting is required for ease of data compilation and comparison. Development of harmonized criteria or requirements for the adoption of direct electronic readout dosimeters is required for legal dosimeters. Some countries have not updated their regulations in accordance with the recent BSS. They use different quantities and units, hindering ease of international communication.
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TOPICAL SESSION 5
OCCUPATIONAL RADIATION PROTECTION IN MEDICINE Chairperson’s Summary
J. Liniecki Poland
The keynote paper, rapporteur’s report and discussion during the session led to the several conclusions.
The application of ionizing radiation in medicine for diagnosis and treatment takes place within the framework of several specialities:
(a) X ray diagnostics, (b) Interventional radiology, (c) Nuclear medicine, (d) Radiation therapy.
The benefits to human health from these practices are extremely valuable when indications are appropriate (justification) and performance of the respective procedures is qualitatively satisfactory.
Great benefits to human health are accompanied by some risk of deleterious effects occurring. Optimizations of the patients’ protection depend upon obtaining the required diagnostic information of good quality at possibly low doses, and in therapy on accurate delivery of the prescribed treatment dose. These are, however, requirements of good medical practice, which is not the subject of this Conference.
Exposure of workers who perform diagnostic and therapeutic procedures is an unavoidable part of the risk that accompanies the health benefits obtained. These workers form the largest, or one of the largest, groups of people in the world exposed occupationally to ionizing radiation.
In developed countries, exposure of workers in radiotherapy and X ray diagnostics has been progressively reduced over the last decade and has reached the
In developed countries, exposure of workers in radiotherapy and X ray diagnostics has been progressively reduced over the last decade and has reached the