Radiation protection of the environment: providing knowledge and skills to the user community

Protection of the environment from ionising radiation has only been actively addressed in the UK and internationally over the last decade. Internationally, there had been an increasing recognition of the inadequacy of the existing statement of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP): The Commission therefore believes that if man is adequately protected then other living things are also likely to be sufficiently protected. The UK has been one of the first countries to regulate radioactive releases from the perspective of potential radiological impact on the environment. The key driver in the UK has been conservation legislation with respect to UK implementation of the EC Birds and Habitats Directives and the consequent need to demonstrate that plants and animals are protected from radioactive substances. The need for radiological environmental assessments in the UK (and many other countries) is increasing as a consequence of potential building of nuclear power plants and waste repositories. In the UK approximately 12 sites are currently being considered as potential locations of new nuclear reactors. Worldwide, the need for radiological environmental assessments will continue to increase as more countries adapt their legislation to reflect developing international recommendations and standards. There is, therefore, a requirement to have sufficient suitably qualified people (including regulators and industry) who can conduct and understand the results of radiological environmental assessments. Approaches have been developed to assess the risk to wildlife of exposure to ionising radiation. These include the ERICA Tool, an output of an EC funded consortium, which is now recommended for use in the UK and Europe. Such tools are in comparatively early stages of development and consequently have limitations. These limitations and the rational/scientific justification behind the models and their parameters need to be understood by users as instances of misuse of default model parameters are occurring. This proposal describes a work programme which will establish training packages (modular courses and web-based tutorials) in radiological environmental impact assessment with a focus on the ERICA Tool. The training is aimed at those organisations that need staff trained in conducting and understanding assessments. This includes regulatory organisations, industry and also researchers/consultants who conduct assessments for either industry or regulators. As the requirements of an assessment are defined by the regulator, there are clear advantages in making the same training available to both regulators and industry. The work programme will also establish a dialogue between the end user-researcher-tool developer communities to highlight future requirements and ensure that further developments meet user needs. This will be achieved by Wiki discussion fora, feedback from course participants and interaction with an advisory group which includes regulators and industry. The training course will familiarise relevant UK bodies with the databases underpining environmental assessment. These include a database of parameters describing the transfer of radionuclides from environmental media to different organism types. The project will facilitate quality controlled entry into this database of data obtained in the UK. This will provide the opportunity to analyse data from UK sites in a cost effective way with the ultimate objective of producing UK based tables. Considerable support has been given for the project from both regulators and industry in both the UK and other countries, as well as the European Community and United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency.