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Presenter: Christian Kunze
Date of broadcast: 12 February 2019, 4 pm CET
Organized jointly with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the European NORM Association (ENA)
Occupational radiation protection in industrial activities that involve naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) is attracting increasing attention among regulators and industry. This webinar will look at dose calculation methods to assess occupational doses in practices dealing with NORM in various industries.
Christian Kunze, a German environmental and radiation safety consultant, will introduce Germany’s requirements for the radiological assessment of workplaces. He will highlight Germany’s new legal regulatory framework for occupational radiation protection, which incorporates European Council Directive2013/59/Euratom into national law. He will also describe how the radiological relevance of practices and workplaces can be assessed, and how authorities and workers can be informed about the assessment results.
The webinar will provide a survey of industrial activities that could involve occupational exposure related to NORM and for which radiation protection should be considered. Key features of dose assessments of workplaces, parameters, assumptions and exposure scenarios will be discussed, along with examples. The discussion will focus on the most relevant exposure pathways and nuclides, and how these are influenced by the specific industrial activity, the technological processes and the types of material encountered in each industry. The relationship between the approach used in Germany and international guidance such as the IAEA General Safety Guide Occupational Radiation Protection (Safety Standards Series No. GSG-7, co-sponsored by the ILO) and the IAEA Safety Reports Series publication Assessing the Need for Radiation Protection Measures in Work Involving Minerals and Raw Materials (No. 49) will be also discussed.
Current German statistics of occupationally exposed workers and a forecast of workplaces in which doses may exceed 1 mSv per year will be presented. The discussion will draw on recent surveys of industrial activities involving NORM on behalf of the German Government.
Participants of the webinar will learn about:
Christian Kunze is an environmental and radiation safety consultant with some 23 years of professional experience in radiation protection, environmental assessment, auditing and regulatory support for mining and resource related industries. Trained as a physicist, his early career included experience as a water treatment and waste management expert in the Wismut Uranium mining project, one of the world’s largest mine closure and environmental rehabilitation projects. He then moved into environmental consultancy work for mining companies and other resource related industries, the EU’s EuropeAid, World Bank, regulatory authorities and governments. In In 2017, he was appointed Vice-President of the European NORM Association.
His environmental consulting work has included projects in Europe, Central Asia and Africa. His experience includes technical and environmental audits, mine closures and environmental monitoring and clean-up assignments.