Naturally occurring radioactive material in waste of the non nuclear industry

In accordance with applicable radiation protection legislation, handling of radioactivity of natural origin is exempted from authorization/licensing to a limit of 500 Bq/g. Within this limit, mass or dose rates are not defined further. In Item VII, EURATOM radiation protection basic standard recommends that the member states define work places affected by the handling of increased doses of natural radioactivity and implement, if necessary, measures for monitoring and/or reducing radiation exposure in these cases. The critical dose rate is 1 mSv/a. This means that energy production and raw material extraction industries are concerned, as well as fertiliser producers, iron, steel and non-ferrous metal processing industries. Nuclide-specific activity of the radioactively contaminated wastes from the production processes in these industries often exceed the limits stipulated in Table A of Annex 1 of the EURATOM basic standard. In these cases, the member state concerned is responsible for exempting this type of work, provided that a dose rate of 10 mu Sv/a for the individual resp. a collective dose of 1 manSv/a is not reached when handling these materials or when an evaluation of an optimised protection shows that exemption is the best possible solution.