Response to the Draft Australian Radiation
Protection and Nuclear Safety Regulations, 1998.

Summary

The regulations fail to meet the stated aim of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency Act (1998), the object of which is ‘to protect the health and safety of people, and to protect the environment, from the harmful effects of radiation.’

With regard to the above, this response deals only with regulations 55-58, which detail the permitted radiation exposure limits for members of the public and workers. The regulations allow for exposures up to the maximum recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). As the ICRP dose limits represent the maximum permissible risk all efforts should be made to keep as far under the dose limits as possible. The ARPANSA regulations do not address this important issue. Indeed, the regulations on permitted radiation exposure fall well short of world’s best practise and are also in breach of the ICRP recommendations. Other countries, some of which operate massive spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants and nuclear weapons production facilities have recommended exposure limits for workers and the public much lower than the doses permitted in the regulations.

The regulations also contain exemptions to the dose limits which would allow the CEO of ARPANSA to arbitrarily raise the doses over certain periods above those recommended by the ICRP. There is no explanation given for this.

The concept of limiting harm to the ‘environment’, via limiting the contamination of food, air and water, is not expressed in the regulations. The ‘end point’ – that is the permitted dose limit for humans – is the only figure given. This is another major shortcoming in the regulations.

The way in which the ARPANSA Act and regulations have been formulated and progressed does nothing to inspire public confidence. They appear hastily prepared and ill thought out. As the regulations stand it is impossible to recommend that they be accepted by the parliament or public

Explanation

The recommended radiation exposure in any one year for a member of the public, as recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) is 1milliSievert (mSv). For a worker the limit is 20mSv per annum - with the proviso that the exposure in a given year may exceed this (but must not ever exceed 50mSv in any one year) and that averaged over any determined five year period the dose should not exceed 20mSv per annum.

Unfortunately the regulations allow for the CEO to give approval to increase permitted exposures to the public over and above the ICRP’s recommended limits and, in the case of workers, for periods in excess of those recommended by the ICRP. For example:

Applying the first exemption in regulation 57 could lead to a worker receiving a dose of 250mSv within a five year period – one quarter of a worker’s maximum permissible lifetime dose in almost one-tenth of their expected working life (47 years) – or two and a half times the ICRP maximum recommended limit over five years.

Using the second exemption in regulation 57 could, for example, lead to a dose of 30mSv per annum for six years, followed by 5mSv per annum for four years. This would result in a 200mSv dose over 10 years and would still be within the recommended NHMRC ‘limits’. However, such a scenario would mean that for six years a worker could be exposed to 50% more than the ICRP’s recommended annual limit – 50% more than the maximum acceptable risk posed by 20mSv. Again, this is in breach of the ICRP’s recommendations, which Australia (as a signatory to the statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency) is bound to apply.

These exemptions are not recommended by the ICRP, but are simply a repeat of the highly questionable ‘guidelines’ published by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in 1995. No written or public explanation has ever been given as to why these to caveats are included in the Australian guidelines.

How is it that the ARPANSA regulations can allow the CEO to override the international recommendations? The CEO has conceded (submission to the Senate Committee, November 1998) that the dose limits "effectively represent the upper bounds of risk from radiation exposure." How do these exemptions in the regulations gel with the intention of the Act to ‘protect people and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation’? Who would be involved in such an approval process to increase exposures above the levels normally recommended for the public and workers? Where is the stipulation that all potentially exposed stakeholders would be involved in discussing these exemptions? How does this fit with the concepts of the ‘justification’ of radiation exposure and making sure that the ‘benefits’ of exposure outweigh the additional risks - issues raised by the CEO of ARPANSA in his submission. How can anyone be sure these concepts, which are problematic to define, will be applied through the exemption process?

It is believed that the NHMRC approved the exemption clauses in order to accommodate underground uranium mining activities which could not meet the 1990 recommendations of the ICRP (an issue discussed at length in a submission made to the Senate Committee on Uranium Mining and Milling in 1996). However, it would be a serious mistake to include the very lax recommendations of the NHRMC in the regulations. To do so would mean passing legislation which would not be world’s best practise. With regard to this consider the radiation dose limits other countries apply.

In the UK, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) recommends applying constraint limits for workers of 15mSv per annum and, for members of the public, 0.3mSv from any single installation. These limits ‘alert’ licensed operators of nuclear installations to their obligation to keep doses under the maximum levels. Similar, if not tighter constraint limits, should be in the regulations being discussed.

Indeed, limits for exposure from operations in Australian could – through licensing – be set at far lower limits than in the UK. The operational needs and radioactive discharges – and therefore potential exposure – would surely be much less for any of the types of nuclear installations being planned for Australia than in the UK where large scale nuclear power reactors and spent fuel reprocessing plants are operated. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the UK estimates that the dose to the most exposed individual from the massive Sellafield spent fuel reprocessing plant is 0.14mSv (MAFF Annual Monitoring Report of Coastal Waters, 1995). The dose estimates from Australia’s largest (indeed only) nuclear site is much less.

ANSTO estimates that off-site doses from the Lucas Heights site are under 0.1mSv and the in the future new technology will decrease exposures to as low as 0.003mSv. Thus, the licence could reflect that by using the estimated dose as the limit of exposure allowed from that site. Presumably, through the ARPANSA licensing process, there will be independent checks on the dose estimates. As this exposure is considerably less than 1mSv, and much less than the ‘exemption’ limit of 5msv, it is worth asking what circumstances could lead to an exemption being sought – particularly as ANSTO operates Australia’s largest nuclear facility? Are the ‘exemption’ powers being suggested for the CEO to allow for accidents? If so, this should be explained along with the legal consequences of such actions.

As it is the limits for workers and members of the public, as expressed in the regulations, are totally inadequate and quite belated. They are not a welcome and timely additional to protecting Australian workers and the public from radiation exposure, but a rehash of the past mistakes of the NHRMC.

The ARPANSA regulations come 12 years after the NRPB in the UK first moved to decrease exposure limits to workers and the public (in line with the preliminary findings of the review of dose limits by the ICRP). The ICRP itself moved to tighter standards in 1990, but it took the NHMRC until 1995 to publish its recommendations – which it still managed to get wrong. As some of those involved in the discussions on the NHMRC recommendations have conceded the guidelines were "the best of a bad deal’ pushed through in order to get something on the table after a five year delay. Hardly the best criteria for making decisions on such an important issue.

If ARPANSA is to have a role in standard setting then the first major step it should take would be to set permitted dose limits well below those contained in the NHRMC guidelines and then, through its own work, set about changing the NHMRC guidelines. As it is, it is very much a case of the tail wagging the dog, with ARPANSA being led by the NHMRC, rather than the new agency leading the way in radiation protection.

Conclusion

Regulations 55, 57 and 58 should be deleted and replaced by the following:

For workers there should be a constraint level of 15mSv averaged over five years consecutive years with no more than 20msv in a single year (see NBPB’s Consultative Document ‘Board Advice Following Publication of the 1990 Recommendations of the ICRP, November 1991). The operator must show that normal operating procedures will not lead to exposures in excess of 15mSv. There should be no exemptions to the worker dose limits to allow exposures in excess of 20m Sv.

For the public the permitted radiation dose not be allowed to exceed 0.3mSv per annum from any single site. The operator must show that normal operating procedures will not lead to exposures in excess of 0.3mSv. There should be no exemptions to the public dose limit to allow exposures in excess of 0.3m Sv.

All application for licences to operate nuclear facilities must show that all effort has been made to keep worker and public exposures as low as technically achievable - not just as low as reasonably achievable. Dose limits should be set within the licence as part of the operating conditions – this should specify the lowest dose which the operator can achieve and which must, therefore, be adhered to during operations. There should be no difference between the estimated exposures from operations and the dose limits set in the licence for that site.

Jean McSorley

It should be noted that comments on steps to increase radiation health and safety should not be taken as an endorsement of the activities of the nuclear industry.

22 Burfitt Street, Leichhardt, 2040

Tel 02-9568 3265 or mobile 0417 662 720.

Many thanks to Jean McSorley for supplying this article to SEA-US Inc.
Page last updated February 22, 1999.
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