ALARA Self-Evaluation Guide

Details: Category: Communications; Published: Monday, 09 January 2017 11:26

SCHIEBER C., ANDRESZ S.

Summary

The optimization principle is a comprehensive and iterative approach for using protection and safety measures to make radiation exposure, and the probability and magnitude of potential exposure, As Low As Reasonably Achievable or ALARA. The application of this principle for occupational radiation protection in nuclear power plants implies the elaboration of dedicated ALARA programmes. The evaluation of the efficiency of such programmes cannot be done using only dosimetric results, but should consider also other factors.

In the framework of a study asked by the Swedish utility Vattenfall – after having been questioned by its regulatory authority –, CEPN elaborated an “ALARA Self-Evaluation Guide”. The objective of this Guide is to review the application of the ALARA Principle in a given nuclear power plant through main topics of interest. Six main topics are proposed:

On-site radiation protection organization,
Organization and management of the ALARA programme,
Work planning and organization,
Factors to be addressed in work preparation (“radiation protection in the field”),
Work implementation,
Management of feedback

Each topic is divided into sub topics, each sub topics is evaluated using a three or four levels scale. Level 1 ensures that minimum ALARA requirements are met when the other levels assess the organization more deeply and are more focused on the qualitative and subjective implementation of the ALARA principle e.g. relationship between interlocutors or broadcast of results. A scoring system is also proposed for the evaluation, which can be used to identify on a score basis the strong or weak areas.

Most of the questions and recommendations proposed in this document are based on international reviews, good practices reports and guidelines published by IAEA, NEA, INPO, as well as from feedback experience collected within the ISOE community. This ALARA Self-Evaluation Guide can thus be seen as a list of successful procedures and current good practices from various sources that have proved their efficiency to optimize the radiation protection with a strong involvement of the various actors.

International ISOE Symposium, Fort-Lauderdale, 9-11 January 2017. (A1272)

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