PRACTICAL GUIDANCE ON THE REGULATORY MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE LIQUID DISCHARGES FROM MEDICAL, EDUCATIONAL AND RESEARCH LABORATORIES

Abstract

Abstract License applicants are often faced with the need to perform a radiological impact assessment study for the liquid discharges in public sewers, even for practices with short-lived isotopes used in medical, educational or research laboratories. The present paper addresses the regulatory management challenges in performing such assessments and provides a practical calculation toolbox that enables more realistic derivation of doses to critical members, based on a simple calculation means. The proposed methodology is validated through comparisons with results from other models. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated by considering relevant examples of hospitals and education and research establishments in Greece. The results show that the proposed method is a sound tool that achieves a more realistic estimation of the induced doses. In most cases a reduction in the initial screening dose estimates by several orders of magnitude is attained, thus greatly facilitating the effort needed to ascertain regulatory compliance.