NEA Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health Celebrates 50 Years

The NEA Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH), the Committee has recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. On that occasion, the CRPPH held a special session to discuss the topic of Radiation Protection in Today's World: Moving Forward Together. During that session, the CRPPH presented the results of its new Collective Opinion, representing two years of work to identify ongoing and emerging Radiation Protection challenges for the coming 10 or so years.


CRPPH Meeting room

In the spirit of moving forward together, the next two sessions of the workshop were dedicated to the views of key RP stakeholders - international organisations (IAEA, IRPA, UNSCEAR, ICRP, EC) and top regulatory authorities (from France, Canada, Spain and Japan) - on future RP challenges. The final session was a moderated discussion to develop a consolidated list of key challenges and to gather stakeholder views on their priority. The results of the meeting showed broad agreement on the RP challenges identified in the CRPPH Collective Opinion. These included:

  • the increasing relevance of balancing local, national and international needs when making decisions,
  • the need to take new approaches to applying the precautionary principle to worker and public protection, and
  • the need to consider application of the RP system to particular situations and activities (decommissioning, discharges, expansion of medical use of radiation, emergencies and malevolent acts), as well as knowledge management and transmission of inheritance.

Moreover, presentations by regulatory authorities and international organisations strongly identified several additional issues, including the central role of stakeholder involvement in decision making, the importance of preparing to address RP issues that could arise from the potentially extensive new build of nuclear reactors, the need for strong and consistent international support for coherent application of RP standards. In particular, the new ICRP recommendations and the need to assure their consistent application in the revised BSS through a collaborative partnership of all co-sponsoring organisations was recognized.