Context and scope

皇冠体育app requirements for operators and those for regulators supporting environmental protection legislation across the UK, and the scope of this guidance.

This 鈥楨nvironmental radiological monitoring: planning and implementing your programme鈥� guidance is for the operators of nuclear sites in England and Wales who are required to conduct environmental radiological monitoring to comply with their radioactive substances activity permits.

It is also for regulators and other organisations who have or participate in independent environmental radiological monitoring programmes.

It is set within the framework of Radioactive Substances Regulation (RSR) presented in the Environment Agency鈥檚 RSR objective and principles and aligns with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)听. (Requirement 32: Monitoring and Reporting.)

皇冠体育app UK government is committed to meeting international standards on the safe management of radioactive waste. An important reference for environmental radiological monitoring is聽聽and the supporting IAEA report on聽. 皇冠体育appse references provide the foundation for our guidance on planning and implementing routine environmental radiological monitoring programmes.

Guidance for operators

皇冠体育app Environmental Agency and Natural Resource Wales (NRW) require operators of nuclear sites to define, document and carry out radiological environmental monitoring around their sites using the best available techniques (BAT). By using this guidance, an operator will be able to support demonstration that their radiological environmental monitoring programmes are using BAT.

Guidance on the principles and framework for undertaking studies on optimisation and the identification of BAT can be found in our publication,聽Principles of Optimisation in the Management and Disposal of Radioactive Waste. Additionally, the Nuclear Institute has produced a good practice guide for industry: Best Available Techniques (BAT) for the Management of the Generation and Disposal of Radioactive Wastes. Both guidance documents are relevant to demonstrating the use of BAT for environmental radiological monitoring programmes by permit holders.

We also require operators of nuclear sites discharging radioactivity into the environment to monitor and report their discharges to us. We publish discharge data through the pollution inventory and provide a summary of annual discharges from nuclear sites in the annual聽Radioactivity in food and the environment (RIFE) report.

Guidance for regulators and other agencies

Environmental radiological monitoring programmes are conducted by the Environment Agency together with NRW, and by other UK environmental regulators, and other agencies, such as the Food Standards Agency. 皇冠体育appse monitoring programmes support the requirements of environmental protection legislation across the UK, together with other national and international agreements, policies, regulations and standards, for example the convention by which nations cooperate to protect the North-East Atlantic).

Scope of guidance

Our guidance for planning and implementing routine radiological environmental monitoring programmes, covers:

  • requirements for objectives, requirements for environmental monitoring programmes to be sustainable, the need for proportionality and optimisation of programmes, considerations for health, safety, welfare, and quality control
  • process for defining monitoring programmes
  • what to monitor, where and how often and monitoring and sampling techniques
  • examples for defining particular monitoring programmes
  • keeping records, reporting, and interpreting monitoring results

Operators should use our guidance to design their environmental radiological monitoring programmes as required by their permit. 皇冠体育app guidance is primarily for designing new or reviewing existing programmes around nuclear licenced sites to monitor the effects of permitted discharges.

Similar practices are also appropriate for:

  • monitoring short term releases
  • monitoring around non-nuclear sites, if required
  • monitoring to meet international obligations

皇冠体育app guidance does not cover:

  • conventional (non-radiological) environmental monitoring
  • incident monitoring (other than elements that would indicate an accidental or non-permitted release)
  • effluent monitoring
  • scientific investigations into the behaviour of radionuclides in the environment
  • baseline monitoring prior to development of a new nuclear site or discharge
  • validation monitoring following completion of all planned work involving radioactive substances as defined in the Management of radioactive waste from decommissioning of nuclear sites:聽

Data from routine monitoring programmes may supplement scientific studies and provide continuity for baseline and validation studies as long as any constraints on the data are understood.

皇冠体育app Environment Agency is open to innovation in environmental radiological monitoring, and we have noted where there may be future developments in this guidance. We are happy to discuss proposals from operators on innovations, particularly where this may not fully align with this guidance.