HERCA/European Radiation Passbook

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HERCA[1], the association of the Heads of European Radiological protection Competent Authorities, approves the content for a harmonized European Radiation Passbook which will be sent to the European Commission for its inclusion in the European BSS.

On 30 June 2010, at the 5th meeting held in Oslo of the association HERCA, which brings together the Heads of European Radiological protection Competent Authorities, HERCA has approved the content for a harmonised European Radiation Passbook. The requirements for a radiation passbook were established in 1990 by the European Directive 90/641 Euratom, in order to ensure that outside workers[2] in nuclear facilities would benefit from the same level of protection as permanently employed workers, and which has led to an improvement of outside workers’ radiation protection. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of these requirements varies considerably among the different European countries.

During its first Meeting, which took place in Paris on 29 May 2007, HERCA decided to create a working group to investigate on the practical implementation of the Directive 90/641/Euratom within the Member States (MS) and on how a better harmonisation of the radioprotection systems for outside workers amongst the MS could be achieved.

The working group met for the first time on January 24th 2008 and decided to lead a survey about the practical transposition of the 90/641 Euratom Directive within the Member States. This survey allowed to derive the commonalities and variations of the radiation monitoring systems for outside workers within the countries and to compare the content registered in the radiation passbooks to the required information in the Council Directive 90/641/Euratom. Based on these results, further steps towards harmonization of the systems amongst the different countries have been proposed and approved at the HERCA Oslo meeting in paticular: good practices, the data contents of a Radiation passbook and a draft Radiation passbook. In the first instance the Radiation Passbook would be a paper based system. However, countries could opt to use an electronic (possibly web-based) system instead of parts of the paper based system.

The model of radiological passbook proposed by HERCA includes; an harmonised format and terminology; harmonisation of the requirements on data content with a distinction between minimum requirements or mandatory fields (based on annex I of the European Directive but including guidance on what is meant by the wording of the Directive) and optional requirements leaving some data optional to allow Member States some flexibility.

The approval of the Radiation Passbook by HERCA represents a milestone for the work of the association in its aim to develop a common approach to radiation safety and regulation in particular within the European Union. Such harmonisation might also be useful for non-EU European or worldwide “neighbouring” countries. HERCA considers the work as its first major achievement.

HERCA will send the Radiation passbook to the European Commission for its inclusion in the BSS recast. Additionally, HERCA invites all European national competent authorities and stakeholders to express their comments on its implementation at national level.

HERCA Contact Press:

O. Guzmán, Tel : +33 1 40 19 87 64 Fax : +33 1 40 19 88 36 , olvido.guzman@asn.fr

[1] HERCA was created in 2007 at the initiative of the French Nuclear Safety Authoritiy (ASN). Since 2008 it is chaired by Mr. Ole Harbitz, Director General of the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authorities. Its activities are carried out by five Working Groups

• WG1: Outside Workers & Dose Passport
• WG2: Justification and Optimisation of Radioactive Sources
• Working Group on Medical Applications
• WG4: Emergency Preparedness & Action Levels
• WG6: Surveillance of collective doses from medical exposures

[2] Outside workers receive more than 80% of the collective dose from most nuclear facilities and most of the time higher individual doses than the workers of the nuclear operators