COUNTRY REPORT ON STATUS OF RADIATION PROTECTION IN MALAYSIA

Mohd Yusof Mohd AliMalaysian Institute for Nuclear Technology Research (MINT)

Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor

Prepared for presentation at the RAS/9/029 Mid-Term Review Meeting in Beijing, China on 7-11 June 2004,

1. Introduction

Malaysia is a small country with population of about 23 millions. Its economic activities are more of industrial base rather than agriculture. It has nuclear and radiation technology being used mainly in industry, medicine, research and education. It does not have a nuclear power, but there is a small research reactor (1 MW) used for research and isotope production. Industry basically makes use of nuclear gauges, radiographic devices and gamma irradiators. Hospitals, on the other hand, have nuclear medicine, radiotherapy and diagnostic equipment and facilities. Research and education typically uses much less amount and activity of short-lived radioactive materials.

2. Legislative and regulatory Infrastructure

There is a legislative framework established to control practices involving radiation practices, transport and waste safety in Malaysia. It is a two-tier system with the Atomic Energy Licensing Act forms the basis and is supported by sets of regulations. At present, three regulations have been established to support implementation of the Act and as the name implies, the regulations were established to facilitate enforcement of licensing activities besides to provide standard guidelines for effective implementation of radiation protection activities and safe transport of radioactive materials and wastes.

In addition to the act and the regulations, the legal framework is also supported by various other non-legal binding technical documents produced specifically to provide more detailed guides on how to comply with certain specific requirements of the regulations and the Act. These documents are called Technical Guidance and Codes of Practice. A list of existing regulations and supporting documents are given in Table 1.

The Atomic Energy Licensing Act has a clause, which allows for the formation of Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) as the highest authority to enforce the requirements of the Act and its subsidiary legislations. The Act clearly defines the functions of the Board and its empowerment to carry out those functions. The

government has formed a secretariat with adequate number of staff to assist the Board in carrying out its functions more effectively. The Ministry, under which AELB is operating, has allocated enough fund to ensure that the legal functions and responsibilities of the Board are carried out as prescribed by the Act.

The dates of the Regulations reflect that all of the existing Regulations have been around for quite a long time (between 15 – 18 years). Most of them were drafted based on earlier recommendations of IAEA. Changing in technology and current economic values, and emergence of new knowledge and information that are made available during this period makes the regulations slightly out of contact by today standard and irrelevant in some situations which warrant the regulations to be revised. The need for revision is further emphasized by current IAEA recommendations and recommendations of IAEA experts during peer review missions to the country. AELB has initiated the long process of revision of these regulations (see Figure 1) and the draft of the revised regulations have gone through certain stages of the process, but the progress made was very slow because of procedural constraints and technical problems faced by the committees involved. The current status of this revision exercise is shown in Table 2.

In line with the recommendations of IAEA and as a result of increasing number of radioactive sources used and volume of radioactive wastes being generated in the country, the AELB identifies the need to have separate regulations to cater for local waste management. The preliminary draft of the waste management regulations has been completed by AELB and they are now in the process of being reviewed by a technical committee before it is finally presented to AELB’s Standing Safety Committee for final editing and endorsement.

Based on the current status and magnitude of nuclear and radiation technology usage in the country and the possible scenarios of accidents that can happen resulting from their usage, AELB is of the opinion that it is not necessary to have special regulations to cater for radiological emergencies. The present Basic Safety Standard Regulations and also their revised version have allocated enough clauses to address the necessary requirements to be taken by all parties involved in case of an emergency. Furthermore, major accidents including radiological accidents and natural disasters that may have significant impact to the country are already covered under the existing separate regulations enforced by the Malaysian Safety Council.

As reported earlier, the regulatory authority obtained ISO 9002 certification in 2000 for its customer service section. Like 2002, significant effort was also made in 2003 to maintain its certified performance. The proposed new organisational structure of the regulatory authority, which reflects the current need to ensure more effective regulatory control and safety of radiation sources, as shown in Figure 1, was approved in 2003. However, due to financial constraint faced by the government, the new structure was not immediately implemented. Recruitments of new staff had been done in 2003 to replace those leaving the service besides to beef up some sections of the agency, which were found to be less effective because of limited manpower.

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3. Activities of regulatory authority

Notification and authorization system has been applied by the regulatory authority for many years to control practices and sources of ionizing radiation in the country. Though government agencies were initially partially excluded from this exercise, but steps have been taken to include them in total into the scope of the enforcement of the Act. Feedbacks and information gathered from notification issued to all licensees in the private sectors and users in the government sectors manage to pull together the information on radiation sources used in the country and the latest inventory of these sources is given in Table 3. There are two inventories kept separately by the Ministry of Health for medical applications and AELB for non-medical applications. However, effort is on the way to combine the two inventories together to become one, which will be kept by AELB.

AELB has established inspection priorities, frequencies and schedules to assess and review the status and condition of licensed practices to ensure that they are always in compliance with the requirements of the Act and its regulations. Inspections may be announced or unannounced, the latter applied more frequently in relation to practices such as industrial radiography. Unannounced inspections are usually made on medical, dental and veterinary practices.

The AELB has developed an inspection procedures manual, which explains in some detail the responsibilities of particular personnel. Specific checklists are also used for the different radiation practices inspected and require a “yes/no” response from the inspector although space is provided for comments on each item verified. It is normal practice for two officers to perform inspections. Inspection normally starts with a briefing given to licensees at an entrance interview followed by a review on documentation required to be held by the licensee (their licence, radiation protection programme, personal dose records, instrument calibration records, incident reports etc.) before it is concluded with the practical inspection of the facilities. These were reported on at the exit interview. Licensees are required to sign the inspection report (checklist) and a copy is retained by the licensee.

AELB can take enforcement actions on the licensees based on the findings of the inspection in respect of non-compliance. The Act provides adequate regulatory provisions for AELB to take such action for most situations.

4. Control of occupational radiation exposure

The existing Basic Safety Standard Regulations require for all areas where radiation sources are going to be installed or used to be classified as clean, supervised or control area based on the anticipated annual dose received by personnel working in them. In addition, workers working in these areas should be categorized as radiation or non-

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radiation worker. It is required by the BSS Regulations for all radiation workers working in the controlled area to be assigned with individual personal dosimeter and to a group of workers in case of supervised area for external radiation measurements.

Personal dosimeters are adequately provided by a centralized service center for all radiation workers in the country. The center is currently established and operated by MINT through direct involvement of its SSDL and, at present, it is the only center recognized and approved by AELB to provide such services to all users in Malaysia. MINT has been providing this service for more than 18 years covering radiation at environmental, protection and therapy level. The radiation involved is quite varied and practically covers the present need of the country, namely x-rays, rays, beta and neutron.

In coping with demand for high quality dosimeter services and in fulfilling the requirements of the regulations, the center had taken every effort to meet these expectations and had eventually emerged with success with conferment of ISO 9002 Version 1994 in January 2002 by the standard certifying body, SIRIM QAS Instrumentation Sdn. Bhd. However, quality improvement does stop right after the center obtained its ISO 9002 certification. In its quest for higher achievement of the quality service, the center further improve its facilities, procedures, skill and knowledge of personnel involved and eventually surpass the qualifying requirements and was awarded with ISO 9001 Version 2000 in May 2003.

Being the national focal point for secondary standard dosimetry laboratory, it is important for MINT to always benchmark its capability and accuracy against other recognized international standard laboratories. To ensure this, MINT continues to participate in inter-comparison programs whenever there is an opportunity. It currently participates in Inter-comparison on Measurements of the Quality Personal Dose Equivalent HP (10) in mixed n- fields organized by IAEA, which started in June 2003. The TLD systems are used and the results for are very encouraging with deviations fall within the acceptable range stipulated by IAEA. However, for neutron, the deviations of the results spared very badly as most of them fall outside the acceptable range stipulated by the IAEA. The problem was analyzed and it was found to have been caused by improper calibration of the dosimeters used.

In addition to IAEA inter-comparison program, MINT also participates in another inter-comparison program of dosimeters organized at the regional level. The one which was just concluded was Phase 3 Round 2 program, which involved deep dose (HP (10)) and skin dose (HP (0.07)). TLDs were again used and the results were found to be very encouraging with the deviation varies between -6% and +3%.

The dosimetry service center in MINT currently provides 100 percent of the dosimeters used by radiation workers in the country. The service still largely relies on film dosimeters which currently account to about 10,500 units being issued in a year. TLD dosimeters, though they have been strongly encouraged by MINT to use, but they do not seem to have caught the attention of users yet since the number issued in a year is still

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small i.e. only 800 units. These dosimeters are used to measure x-rays, external gamma and beta radiation and they are issued on monthly basis. Neutrons users are much smaller in term of number because of limited uses of neutron sources in the country. They have been provided with special dosimeters made of TLD 6 and 7 to measure neutron dose, but since the total number of users is small, the number of dosimeters issued by the center is also small, i.e. around 200 units in a year.

In addition to external exposure, MINT also provides dosimetry services for internal exposure. It has facilities for thyroid counting, gamma whole body counting using a chair type counter and uranium, thorium and tritium analysis using bioassay techniques. However, these facilities are down at the moment because of problem of maintenance and acquiring spare parts and standard radionuclides and also because of no demand to justify their sustainability and priority. Some of the work that may create air or surface contamination is assessed through routing surface and air monitoring.

Results of monthly dose assessment released by MINT will be transferred to official records of accumulated dose issued by AELB to individual radiation workers and these records, which include both external and internal exposure, are kept by the licensees for a period determined by a person’s involvement with the radiation. Results of external exposure indicate that majority of the workers (~ 84%) received annual doses below 0.2 mSv, ~ 0.6% received doses higher than 20 mSv and ~0.1% received doses higher than the annual limit of 50 mSv. As a precaution, MINT will inform the authority whenever a person receives annual dose higher than 20 mSv.

In addition to personal dosimeters, MINT service center also provides calibration services for all radiation measuring instruments used in the country covering x-rays, -rays, beta and neutron measurements. The number of instruments being calibrated at the center continues to increase every year and for 2003 alone its service record indicates that about 1986 instruments had successfully been calibrated. Like dosimeter services, calibration services also demand for performance and maintenance of high quality of the service provided. To fulfill this expectation, the center has taken similar approach to improve its facilities, equipment, procedures and skill of personnel involved and it is confident to meet all qualifying requirements to be certified as ISO/IEC 17025 in June 2004. As part of QA program for the calibration facilities, MINT participated in Inter-comparison program organized by IAEA in 2000 to check on its gamma calibration facilities using alanin dosimeters and the deviations were found to be within the acceptable limit set by IAEA i.e. ± 5%.

5. Control of medical exposure

In spite of the fact that regulations on controlling medical practices are being drafted, the requirements to ensure effective control of medical exposure are covered under the existing Basic Safety Standard Regulations, Code of Practices for Radiation Protection in Medical X-ray Diagnosis and Ministry Circulars to notify General Practitioners (1999) and private hospitals (2000) of additional requirements for compliance, including

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operator qualifications, annual image, annual quality audit, annual film reject analysis, and annual QC tests on radiation equipment. The regulatory authority has established a QA and QC systems for evaluation, review and monitoring of the medical facilities, equipment and procedures to ensure that they are safe and met the requirements of the regulations, codes and standards. The QC tests must be performed annually by a certified medical physics expert. The systems are implemented effectively through out the practice and to all personnel involved in the practice.

There is a requirement to have an RPO for all medical practices who is responsible to look after all matters pertaining to radiological safety of the practice and sources within a practice. Practices are further ensured safe by allowing only trained personnel to handle and operate equipment, facility and radiation sources. For practices involving higher risk of radiation exposure i.e. radiotherapy and nuclear medicine, in addition to RPO there is also a requirement for licensees to have services of Medical Physicist.

It is also a requirement for any accidental exposure involving medical practices to be reported immediately to the regulatory authority.

6. Control of public exposure

In Malaysia, public exposure, at present, may arise from discharges of radioactive materials to the environment, transport of radioactive materials, radioactive waste disposal and decommissioning of a NORM contaminated plant. Among these four sources of exposure, the waste disposal seems to be potential to stand out as the biggest contributor to the population dose over a long term.

Open sources are of limited use in Malaysia and they are mostly found in hospitals and research institutes. Most of these applications make use of short half-lived radioisotopes and the wastes are normally contained for decay rather than discharge immediately to the environment upon its generation. The biggest facilities in MINT generate waste containing short half-lived radioisotopes produced by its research reactor, but these wastes are treated and relieved off their radionuclides before they are monitored and discharged to the environment. The Basic Safety Standard Regulations require for a discharge limit to be established and approved by AELB before any discharge of radioactive wastes into the environment can be made. The discharge limit is established and valid only for a particular practice. There has been no discharge limit (reference level) established for emergency situation. Once approved, the effluent is allowed to be discharged provided it does not exceed the discharge limit and it should be closely monitored to ensure that its concentration in the environment is always within the approved limit. Monitoring records are kept and will be verified by AELB to confirm compliance with the approved limits.

Environmental monitoring capability exists at a number of facilities to cater for environmental monitoring as a result of discharges. The facilities in MINT participated in inter-comparison program organized by IAEA a few years ago. MINT also has facilities

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and established procedures to cater for food monitoring, which were used very extensively during Chernobyl accident. It is available and can be used in case of radiological emergency.

Malaysia has no problem with radon exposure due to the fact that uranium content in the soil is low and residential houses are always open for natural ventilation to take place. In spite of this, there is an on-going research conducted by MINT to assess the risk and the extent of radon exposure to the Malaysian population.

AELB and MINT have jointly prepared a draft national policy on radioactive wastes based on recommendations of the IAEA Safety Series No. 111-F and have submitted it to the Ministry for endorsement. With the help of MINT, national procedures for characterization and segregation of the wastes are also being established.

The radioactive wastes, in general, can be grouped into two. The first one is man-made radioactive wastes generated by industries, hospitals, researches and education which are generally of small volume with varied activities. The second one is NORM wastes generated by mineral sands and oil industries, which are typically present in big volume and of low activity. Wastes belong to the first group are currently managed by MINT’s Waste Management Center, the only waste management center recognized by AELB for disposal of radioactive wastes in the country. It provides a centralized storage facility to cater for national need. The facilities and procedures are currently being upgraded to meet the requirement of ISO 9001 Version 2000. All the wastes are currently treated, conditioned and stored at the facility and MINT is in the process of finding a suitable site for their permanent disposal. Classification of the wastes is done according to IAEA Safety Series No. 111-G-1.1. Inventory of radioactive wastes is being established at MINT and at AELB using IAEA Radioactive Waste Management Registry software. To enhance capability of MINT’s Waste Management Center, a TC project, MAL/9/012, has been applied and approved by IAEA with aims to establish a conceptual planning for national radioactive waste repository. This is a three year project and will be finished by end of 2004. In addition to the TC project, MINT also participates in the implementation of Model Project RAS/9/027 on national work plan for management of radioactive wastes in the country. It has successfully completed the necessary requirements on QA in waste management, staffing, waste inventory and pre-treatment and treatment of the wastes. It is now in the process of implementing conditioning technologies.

The NORM wastes belong to the second group are disposed of directly at the disposal site built by the industry with an approval from AELB. One of the plants generating significant amount of NORM wastes is already close down and is in the process of being decontaminated and decommissioned (D&D). Its licensee has got an approval from the regulatory authority to dispose the D&D wastes into the same repository. The disposal method adopted is near surface burial with two separate engineered cells built side by side to cater for operational NORM wastes and D&D wastes.

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7. Transport safety

Transport of radioactive material do take place within the country and often this is carried out as a result of buying new radiation sources or devices containing radioactive materials from foreign countries. A few other transport activities may involve supplying of radioisotopes prepared by MINT to a number of hospitals and movement of portable machines or devices containing radioactive material from one place of work to another.

In Malaysia, AELB is the regulatory authority for all matter pertaining to radioactive materials and radiation sources including transport and this status has been communicated to IAEA. AELB works closely with Custom Department through a special arrangement made between the two agencies to ensure effectiveness of the mechanism of controlling importation of all radioactive materials and radiation sources from foreign countries.

Licensing Regulations require any person who wishes to transport radioactive material to have a license Class D from AELB. Transportation shall be carried out in accordance with the requirements of the Transport Regulations 1989, which, as explained earlier on, were drafted based on earlier recommendations of IAEA as appeared in Safety Series No. 6, 1985. They are in the process of being update to take into account of the new recommendations of IAEA Transport Regulation No. TS-R-1 2000.

Since transportation is involved with potential exposure to members of the public, in addition to workers, and the operation is already on-going, in drawing up of the national emergency plan for the country, transportation is taken into account and has been considered as one of the scenarios that may require the plan to be activated.

8. Planning for and response to radiological emergencies

There is an emergency plan established at the national level to cater for radiological emergency. It was established with assistance from IAEA expert. The plan identifies all possible accident scenarios that can happen in the country and recognizes AELB as lead technical agency. It also identifies the roles and responsibilities of other relevant agencies involved in emergency including MINT as the technical support agency. The plan is integrated into a national disaster plan managed by National Safety Council, which caters for all major accidents and natural disasters that may have significant impact to the population in the country. The plan has never been revised and tested in full scale since it was established. However, part of the plan, which involves with the response capability of MINT and AELB, was tested last year. AELB is also in the process of revisiting the agencies involved in the plan to give them awareness briefing on the plan and their roles and responsibilities during radiological emergency. This will then be followed with a tabletop exercise on the response action involving all agencies. The full scale real exercise will be carried out only after all support agencies are clear about the plan and their respective roles and AELB is satisfied with the outcome of the tabletop exercise.

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In addition to emergency plan at the national level, licensees are required by the Basic Safety Standard Regulations to establish their own local emergency plan and procedures to cater for anticipated accidents that may occur as a result of carrying out their licensed practices. This plan is normally submitted to AELB together with an application form when applying for a license to get authorization of a practice. It is normally established as part of the overall emergency plan of an organization. Once approved, the plan is required to be tested at a regular interval and record of the exercise will be reviewed by AELB during its compliance assessment.

Malaysia has not had much to highlight in term of medical preparedness. AELB has identified Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL) as a national referral center for patients involved in radiological emergencies. A few medical doctors from A&E department of the hospital had been sent for a special training course organized by NIRS in Japan in 2002. As a follow up to this course, the group organized similar training course at the national level last year (2003), which was attended by medical doctors and paramedics from selected hospitals in the country.

9. Training

The important of training in radiation safety has never been overlooked. Thus, in 2003, like previous years, training courses on radiation safety continue to dominate the programs of radiation protection scheduled by different groups in the country. It is very pleased to see that, once again, training was given priority by the regulatory authority and radiation users.

Training programs were scheduled according to standard training syllabus developed in 1998 and recognized by the regulatory authority. Previously MINT was the only recognized training centre in the country that was allowed to conduct training programs for the licenses and users. However, beginning 2002, a few other training centres have also been recognised by the regulatory authority, but they are recognised only to provide training courses to diagnostic radiographers and medical practitioner.

Like previous years, training of radiation safety officers and radiation workers in industrial radiography and other industrial applications continued to be given priority by MINT with more frequent number of courses scheduled. Such arrangement was made in order to meet significant increase in demand for personnel training put up by the licensed users. In addition to radiation safety training in non-medical sectors, the training programs in medical radiography have also been carried out, which allows practicing x-ray machine operators and medical practisioners to undergo a more comprehensive training to become a competent radiographer. A summary of what had been carried out by MINT in the last two years in the training activity is shown in the following Table 4.

At the regional and international level, trainings conducted by IAEA under the Model Project and RCA are continued to be given priority by the projects’ counterpart. We had sent 9 persons for various radiation protection training courses scheduled under the

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projects in 2003 and another 4 persons up to May 2004. These figures include staff of the regulatory authority and persons involved in radiation practices.

10. Peer review mission

The second mission was carried out by a team of experts appointed by IAEA in February 2004. The team consisted of one IAEA expert, Dr Lubomir Dobis, from Slovakia and three experts from the Region, namely Dr Barry Cobb from Australia, Dr John Le Heron from New Zealand and Dr Warapon Wanitsuksombut from Thailand, and was headed by Dr Tony Wrixon from the Agency’s Radiation and Waste Safety Section.

A report was prepared by the team at the end of the mission, and major comments and recommendations made by the team are indicated in Table 5 below. Various efforts have been taken by the government through the regulatory authority and MINT to improve the situation and to provide the necessary requirements as recommended by the team. Some activities were done in 2003 as a continuation of what was recommended in the earlier mission. The current status and condition of the respective issues pertaining to radiation protection infrastructure highlighted by the team are briefly described in Table 5.

Comments from IAEA/ IAEA ExpertInitiated and prepared By AELB Secretariat

Figure 1 Revision Process

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New draft Regulations/Codes

Review by Technical Committee

Review by Standing Safety Committee

Final endorsement by AELB

Submission to Ministry and Minister for gazette

Final editing and translation by AG Office

Figure 2 The new organizational structure of AELB

Table 1. List of current regulations and supporting documents

Atomic Energy Licensing Act 1984 Radiation Protection (Licensing) Regulations 1986 Radiation Protection (Basic Safety Standard) Regulations 1988 Radiation Protection (Transport) Regulations 1989. Code of Practice for Radiation Protection (Medical X ray Diagnosis) MS838:1985 Code of Practice on Radiation Protection in Industrial Radiography (LEM/TEK/33:1995) Guide for Safe Transportation of Radioactive Minerals in the Amang Upgrading Industry

(LEM/TEK/32:1994) Statistics on facilities, inspections, number of radiation workers, etc Inspection Procedures Inspection checklists Enforcement procedures Prosecution procedures Licence application forms Atomic Energy Licensing (Exemption Order) 2001 – Scanning Electron Microscope Atomic Energy Licensing (Exemption Order) 2001 – Zirconium Silicate Atomic Energy Licensing (Exemption Order) May 2002 – Low Level Radioactive Sources Atomic Energy Licensing (Exemption Order) May 2002 – Irradiating Apparatus With Energy

Below 5 keV

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Table 2 Revision of legal documents in 2003 - 2004

DocumentNature of the

Document Comment/Status

1. Amendment of Atomic Energy Licensing Act 1984

Act Being drafted by AELB Secretariat

2. Radiation Protection (Basic Safety Standard) Regulations

Regulations Endorsed by AELB. With the AG office for final editing and translation

3. Radiation Protection (Medical, Dental, Veterinary) regulations

Regulations Accepted by AELB Standing Safety Committee. Waiting for AELB endorsement and submission to AG office

4. Radiation Protection (Waste Management) Regulations

Regulations To be reviewed by AELB Technical Committee

5. Radiation Protection (Licensing) Regulations

Regulations Ready for submission to AELB Standing Safety Committee

6. Radiation Protection (Transport) Regulations

Regulations To be reviewed by AELB Technical Committee

7. Radiological Safety in Oil and Gas Industry

Code of Practice To be reviewed by AELB Standing Committee

8. Radiation Protection In Non-Medical Irradiation Facilities

Code of Practice Being drafted by AELB Secretariat

Table 3 List of radiation sources

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Practices No. facilitiesNo. licensed end of 2002

No. inspected in

2002

No. Radiation Workers

No. Radiation Workers

monitored in 2002

Number of RPOs

Radiodiagnostic 1865 1663 86 5925 4953 1865Radiotherapy 19 17 4 225 225 19Nuclear Medicine 10 6 10 88 88 10

NDT Sources 56 56 71 946 946 56Industrial Irradiator

5 4 5 65 65 5

Gauges / Well logging

524 524 198 5620 4160 524

Neutron Generator 2 0 0 10 10 1Research Reactor 1 0 0 5 5 1Isotope Production 1 0 0 7 7 1

Waste Storage Facility

2 1 2 14 14 2

Totals 2485 2271 376 12905 10473 2484

Ministry of Health inventory (February 2004)

RADIATION SOURCES PRIVATE PUBLIC

Irradiating (X ray) 2226 1447

Sealed radioactive source 95 5

Unsealed radioactive source 41 14

TOTALS 2362 1466

Table 4 Training activities for 2003 & 2004

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Type of course

2003 2004(until May)

Number of courses offered

Number of participants

attended

Number of courses offered

Number of participants

attended

1. Radiation Protection for Officers

8 360 2 94

2. Radiation protection in industrial radiography

a. Radiological safety for Radiation Protection Supervisor

b. Industrial Radiography level I

c. Industrial Radiography level II

-

5

-

-

69

-

-

1

-

-

10

-

3. Radiation protection (medical field)

a. Special training for X-ray machine operators

b. Special X-ray training for Medical Practisioners

5

5

50

12

2

2

26

34

4. Radiation Safety and Health & Safety Awareness

8 156 1 38

5. Radiation protection (in-house basic course for a company)

11 348 3 39

6. Radiation Protection for Workers

2 52 - -

Total 44 1047 11 241

Table 5 Important Recommendations of the IAEA Peer Review Mission 2004

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Recommendations Current Status

1. The source inventory is complete but kept separately. Need to have a single national source inventory for all radiation sources to be administered by AELB

The inventories of sources: for medical practices kept by MOH and non-medical practices by AELB

2. Amendment of the Act to cover government agencies

Draft being prepared by AELB

3. Formation of one regulatory authority Two enforcing bodies, AELB and MOH

4. More complete licensing system to cover government agencies

Government agencies are currently control through administrative procedures

5. Updating the regulations to be consistent with BSS

1. BSS Regulations – Waiting to be gazetted2. Licensing Regulations – to be reviewed by Safety

Committee3. Transport Regulations – To be reviewed by technical

Committee4. Waste Management regulations – to be reviewed by

Technical Committee5. Medical, Dental Regulations – Being endorsed by

AELB6. Effective independence of the Board. Recommend to place AELB under the PM Department and regulatory arm of MOH to be effective independence.

Under MSTI which is also responsible for MINT and various other government agencies.MOH also control its own hospitals and clinics

7. Training of regulatory personnel Is always considered and given priority for RCA/ITC courses

8. Shortage of manpower in AELB Is taken care under the new organisational structure

7. Establishment of National emergency plan and maintain its preparedness

Establishment of RADPLAN under the National Disaster Plan

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