Protect: Protection of the environment from ionising radiation in a regulatory context

The EC EURATOM Framework 6 funded PROTECT project (FI6R036425) set out to develop dose rate thresholds for wildlife to help to determine the risk of exposure to ionising radiation. Without such criteria any radiological protection framework for the environment cannot be applied usefully in a regulatory context. The PROTECT consortium consisted of five organisations: Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK), Environment Agency (England and Wales), IRSN (France), Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (Norway) and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (Sweden).

All of the outputs from the PROTECT project can be accessed from the following links:

• Deliverable reports and associated consultation documents
• Workshop reports
• Refereed papers

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Recommendations of the PROTECT projects

International coordination and cooperation in this developing field of radiological protection of the
environment should continue.

• To improve consistency in the modelling approaches, there is a need to review and agree on
  internationally accepted data to model the transfer of radionuclides to biota.
• Research effort should be directed at better understanding the variation and uncertainty between
  the available assessment models and that this should be kept under review (for example when a
  standard set of transfer parameters becomes available).
• We need to have some numeric criteria against which the results of environmental impact
  assessments can be compared. There are a range of approaches that can be applied to generate
  such numeric criteria, but we caution against those relying mostly on expert judgement. We
  recommend the use of methods based on statistical evaluation of the available biological effects
  data such as the Species Sensitivity Distribution approach where the data permit. This is also the
  approach recommended for chemicals assessment.
• More biological effects data on key wildlife groups need to be either extracted from the available
  scientific literature or obtained through experimentation to fill data gaps thus allowing more robust
  wildlife group specific screening levels to be determined.
• Where possible, the available effects data should be summarised by wildlife group (e.g. fish, plants,
  mammals etc.) that may be relevant when undertaking environmental impact assessments.
  Numeric screening values should be determined for each of these wildlife groups, where the
  amount of data allows it.
• In the interim, following a rigorous review of the available biological effects data and consideration of
  the relevance of the endpoints being measured in terms of maintaining populations, a numeric
  screening value of 10 μGyh 1
  should be used in environmental impact assessments. The 10 μGyh 1
  should be used to identify situations which are below regulatory concern with a high degree of
  confidence. Above the 10 μGyh 1
  further assessment work will be required to identify if there is a
  potentially significant risk to a population. The use of a numeric screening value in this way is
  consistent with the use of an exemption value (such as the 10 or 20 μSvh 1
  ) applied in human
  radiological protection.
• In some circumstances, where a refined environmental impact assessment continues to identify that
  a site may be potentially at risk from the impact of ionising radiation, it may be helpful to have an
  higher numeric value to aid an assessor and so we recommend that the concept and use of a
  second, higher numeric value be explored by the wider radiological protection community.

All the outputs from the project are available at http://www.ceh.ac.uk/protect. These
outputs will help to inform a future revision of the EC Basic Safety Standards. The project consisted of
three interlinked work packages (WP):
WP1: Environmental protection concepts
WP2: Assessment approaches: practicality, relevance and merits
WP3: Requirements for protection of the environment from ionising radiation