Australia’s nuclear safety Agency has issued a new guide for Government entities making use of radiation to ensure they follow the rules if called on to preserve an affected site.
One of many regulatory guides it produces, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency’s (ARPANSA’s) new Radiation Incident Site Preservation guide contains information for licence holders, on and off-site first responders, Local Authorities and others who may have a role in the event of a radiation incident.
In a statement, ARPANSA said the new guide outlined expectations for incident management to ensure safe, secure, effective and efficient operations where radiation exposure or contamination was known or suspected to be present.
“Effective incident management is important to effective regulation as collection and preservation of information is integral to post-incident investigation, site clean-up and ensuring learnings from past incidents are understood to avoid future occurrences,” ARPANSA said.
“This new guide sets expectations and best practice for site preservation only and does not attempt to inform on recovery or response procedures,” it said.
“Those aspects of incident management are expected to be developed at the local level and be unique to the licence holder’s conduct or dealings.”
The new six-page guide can be accessed on the ARPANSA website at this PS News link.
