Ten years on: ISOE considers expansion

摘要

Occupational doses in nuclear power plants have been declining since the early days of nuclear power. Since the Information System on Occupational Exposure (TSOE) was set up at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) at the start of the 1990s that trend has been "confirmed and consolidated", ISOE says in its recently published report, "Ten years of experience". Few would argue with the report's claim that ISOE has contributed to strengthening that downward trend in dose, by "improved communication and experience exchange between radiation protection managers of nuclear power plants worldwide, provided by the ISOE network, as well as the growing use of improved work management procedures developed and published through ISOE." The ISOE databases have a number of uses for radiation protection managers. First, they provide benchmarking data that allows every plant to measure its progress against its peers. Data can be provided for similar plants "sister" groups with the same suppli- er, design, and generation - or for plants in the same country, so that managers can develop precise targets for annual cumulative exposures. The databases can also be "mined" for information on dose accumulated during specific work procedures or maintenance tasks.