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EUTERP Newsletter issue 21 - March 2020


Spring – and our first newsletter of 2020 – is here !

It has been a relatively quiet, but not inactive, few months for  EUTERP since our September newsletter.  On the administrative side we have had elections to the Board, some changes to our list of Associates and progressed work to update both our website and our social media presence. You will find further detail on all of this work below.

We have also managed to  start  progressing the key workstreams that came out of the Malta workshop.  In December, EUTERP presented a summary of the outcomes of  the workshop to the IAEA’s annual meeting of its Steering Committee on E&T in Radiation Protection and Waste Safety; this prompted positive discussions on possible routes for the development of competence standards for radiation protection trainers. We will keep you updated on how this progresses in further newsletters.

EUTERP is planning to participate at IRPA15 in Seoul in May having had an abstract accepted for an oral presentation on the work of EUTERP  and been invited to be part of  a panel discussion on “The future of our profession”.  This is a good opportunity for EUTERP to extend its network and continue discussions and we are very grateful to IRPA15  for the invitation and support . However, as I sure many of you are aware, the outbreak of COVID-19, has cast some uncertainty on whether or not IRPA15 will go ahead.

Best wishes. 

Joanne Stewart
President

 

New Board

Following the nominations by the Associates and the subsequent election of two Board members, the EUTERP Board is now at full strength of 8 members. Joanne Stewart of PHE (UK) the previous  President was re-elected and Folkert Draaisma of the NRG (the Netherlands) was elected and then appointed by the Board as the Treasurer. The EUTERP Board members are registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. The new Board expressed its sincere thanks to Marcel Schouwenburg of TU Delft who resigned last year after serving as a Board member for 9 years.
As the EUTERP Foundation was founded in June 2010 as a sustainable independent entity, it will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Let us know if you have any specific ideas as to how we should mark this event!

 

EUTERP Associates

The EUTERP has maintained 26 Associates, having lost one through retirement (RadPRO Consulting) but gained another following on from the Workshop in Malta. Our most recent Associate is the Institut de Radiophysique (IRA) from Switzerland whom we are most pleased to welcome. Associates make an input to the Board membership, EUTERP work plans and the budget. Their ideas and opinions are invaluable to the functioning of the Foundation. All organizations involved in radiation protection education and training in Europe are invited to become Associates. The benefits, listed on the EUTERP website, are now widely recognised and appreciated. 

If you feel that that a talk on the work of EUTERP at a national or professional event would be of interest please contact the EUTERP President or Secretary to discuss further.  

The Board welcomes approaches from potential Associates and if you know of any education and training organizations involved in radiation protection training, in your country or elsewhere, that would benefit from joining our community, please send the secretary a contact name and e-mail address so that we can then invite them to join us. Any such organization may of course apply directly, using the application form from the How to Join page on the EUTERP website. We look forward to hearing from you!

Radiation Protection training for regulators

Education and Training (E&T) in Radiochemistry and Radiation Protection (RP) for those in competent authorities, such as regulators, is seen as one of the main issues to ensure good practice of RP. The European HORIZON 2020 project MEET-CINCH took that into account by developing a tailored training event for members of regulatory and administrative bodies. One difficulty foreseen was that attendees from administrative bodies from different European Countries would not be willing to participate in an English language pilot project. Additionally, national regulations concerning radiation protection differ in various countries and are written in national languages. To overcome that problem an e-learning solution was developed. 

The central objective of the course was to decide from the perspective of the authority representatives, for three different scenarios, whether a (virtual reality) radionuclide-lab fulfils all the technical and structural requirements to be licensed according to German regulations (defined in the technical rule DIN 25425). The virtual laboratory uses nearly no language; details of objects that cannot be visualized are described with few words which can be exchanged easily in order to enable the use of different languages. Necessary information like the set of handled radionuclides, the amount of activity and the way in which the nuclides are handled are described in separate documents. Hence, a solution was found to develop a course for members of regulatory bodies and authorities that can be adapted to national rules and languages very easily and therefore can be used in different countries. A prototype of the course was conducted on 29.08.2019 at Leibniz University Hannover. Nearly 120 members of regulatory bodies attended the course; approximately half of them entered the virtual lab as part of pre-course preparation and they completed the entire course. The results were evaluated and the feedback given was extremely positive. The virtual lab including all descriptions is still available (download) and can be used for training at any time.

Jan-Willem Vahlbruch
Institut für Radioökologie und Strahlenschutz (IRS)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover
 

Implementation of E&T under the BSS

Each EU Member State should have by now implemented the BSS of 2013 in their national legislation. As a consequence, we would appreciate it if all National Contact Points would update their EUTERP webpages to reflect current national requirements for education and training in radiation protection. Please include the requirements for all key roles identified  in your legislation ,for example, RPE, RPO, workers, emergency responders, etc. This will ensure that the EUTERP website is the “go-to” place to identify the requirements in each country.

As an example, up to now the official version of the German act on radiation protection the Strahlenschutzgesetz StrlSchG and the associated  radiation protection ordinance the Strahlenschutzverordnung, StrlSchV are to our knowledge only available in the German language. However there are English versions circulating within the German radiation protection community that can be found on the EUTERP website in the German National Pages.

As soon as there is an official version available this link will be updated. Chapter 5 of part 2 (planned exposure situation) of the ordinance (StrlSchV) contains some details on the requirements in education and training but detailed directive(s) regarding E&T are still in preparation.

The implementation of the new Council Directive in Slovenia has been formally concluded at the beginning of the year 2018 when the Law was updated and all second-level legislation has been approved. One of the updated Rules relates to the training of workers and radiation protection officers. The number of different courses for workers defined in Regulation (16 courses) was not changed substantially, but the duration of most courses (range is 4 hours to 40 hours) has been shortened. This applies also for workers in medicine, where also the part of the course related to the protection of patients has been extended. What was left unchanged were requirements for the training of workers in nuclear facilities.

Training of radiation protection officers in nuclear facilities has also been unchanged (200 hours), but the training of radiation protection officers in other practices (persons responsible for radiation protection in Slovenia) has been reduced to the training of normal workers. This is not an improvement, especially considering the extended duties and responsibilities of these persons in the updated legislation.

Matjaž Koželj,
Nuclear training centre, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana

 

EUTERP presence in social media

EUTERP is increasing its presence and participation in social media to reach out to its Associates and National Contact Points and to promote the Foundation activities to others in the field of radiation protection training and education.

Since September 2019, EUTERP has a new LinkedIn account, that is open and so can be followed by all the people with an interest in our activities. This now coexists with the EUTERP Twitter account.

For the last few weeks, the Board has been promoting these two communication channels among the organizations that have similar interests, to link with them, increase mutual understanding and to share the EUTERP Foundation activities. Our efforts are showing positive results and we have increased the number of followers and visits to both these channels and also to the EUTERP website, www.euterp.eu.

The board intends to post in both channels all the news related to E&T in radiation protection, items of interest, upcoming events, etc. Both these channels could also be used to disseminate the E&T activities of the Associates that will be included in the database in the near future. A fast communication with people demanding information on E&T in radiation protection is seen to be crucial.

From the Board, we encourage you all to follow us and to invite your contacts to follow EUTERP as well. please share:

 

Website updates

The Board has simplified the website by reducing the number of tabs and making the headings and subheadings more intuitive. Obviously when pages are moved around, links may be lost so we are currently going through each page to verify that everything works as it should. If you find we have missing links, or any other anomalies, do please let the secretary know.  While we are striving to increase the content and ensure it is focused on your needs, we would welcome your suggestions as to additional information or links that we should make available.