ASN Report 2017

56 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 01  - Nuclear activities: ionising radiation and health and environmental risks 3.1.3 Flight crew exposure to cosmic radiation Airline flight crews and certain frequent flyers are exposed to significant doses owing to the altitude and the intensity of cosmic radiation at high altitude. These doses can exceed 1 mSv/year. Since 1st July 2014, the date of entry into effect of the Order of 17th July 2013 relative to the medical and dosimetric monitoring card for workers exposed to ionising radiation, the Sievert system (system put in place by the DGAC - General Directorate for Civil Aviation, IRSN, the Paris Observatory and the French Institute for Polar Research Paul-Emile Victor (www.sievert-system.com ) , has been changed. It is IRSN that calculates the individual doses via the SievertPN application on the basis of the flight and personnel presence data provided by the airlines. These data are subsequently transmitted to Siseri, the French national worker dosimetry registry. 2016, the first year of full operation of SievertPN, represents a consolidation period for this system. On 31st December 2016, SievertPN had sent Siseri all the flight crew doses for ten airlines having subscribed to the system, giving a total of 19,875 flight crew members monitored by this new system. In 2016, 18% of the individual doses were below 1 mSv and 82% of the individual doses were between 1 mSv and 5 mSv per year. 3.2 Doses received by the population 3.2.1 Doses received by the population as a result of nuclear activities The automated monitoring networks managed nationwide by IRSN ( Téléray, Hydrotéléray and Téléhydro networks) offer real-time monitoring of environmental radioactivity and can highlight any abnormal variation. In the case of an accident or incident leading to the release of radioactive substances, these measurement networks would play an essential role by providing data to back the decisions to be taken by the authorities and by notifying the population. In a normal situation, they contribute to the evaluation of the impact of BNIs (see chapter 4). However, there is no overall monitoring system able to provide an exhaustive picture of the doses received by the population as a result of nuclear activities. Consequently, compliance with the population exposure limit (effective dose set at 1 mSv per year) cannot be controlled directly. However, for BNIs, there is detailed accounting of radioactive effluent discharges and radiological monitoring of the environment is implemented around the installations. On the basis of the data collected, the dosimetric impact of these discharges on the populations in the immediate vicinity of the installations is then calculated using models simulating transfers to the environment. The dosimetric impacts vary, according to the type of installation and the lifestyles of the reference groups chosen, from a few microsieverts to several tens of microsieverts per year. There are no known estimates for nuclear activities other than Basic Nuclear Installations, owing to the methodological difficulties involved in identifying the impact of the facilities and in particular the impact of discharges containing small quantities of artificial radionuclides resulting from the use of unsealed radioactive sources in research or biology laboratories, or in nuclear medicine units. To give an example, the impact of hospital discharges could lead to doses of a several tens of FOCUS Results of dosimetry monitoring of worker external exposure to ionising radiation in 2016 (Source: Occupational exposure to ionising radiation in France - IRSN results, June 2017) ཛྷ ཛྷ Total population monitored: 372,262 workers. ཛྷ ཛྷ Monitored population for whom the dose remained below the detection threshold: 283,195 workers, or nearly 76%. ཛྷ ཛྷ Monitored population for whom the dose remained between the detection threshold and 1 mSv: 74,849 workers, or about 20%. ཛྷ ཛྷ Monitored population for whom the dose remained between 1 mSv and 20 mSv: 14,217 workers, or nearly 4%. ཛྷ ཛྷ Monitored population for whom the annual effective dose exceeded 20 mSv: 1 worker above 50 mSv. ཛྷ ཛྷ Collective dose (sum of individual doses): 63.2 man-Sv. ཛྷ ཛྷ Annual average individual dose in the population which recorded a dose higher than the detection threshold: 0.71 mSv. Results of internal exposure monitoring in 2016 ཛྷ ཛྷ Number of routine examinations carried out: 275,659 (of which fewer than 0.5% were considered positive). ཛྷ ཛྷ Population for which a dose estimation was made: 497 workers. ཛྷ ཛྷ Number of special monitoring examinations or verifications performed: 10,660 (of which 15% were above the detection threshold). ཛྷ ཛྷ Population having recorded a committed effective dose exceeding 1mSv: 5 workers. Results of cosmic radiation exposure monitoring in 2015 (civil aviation) ཛྷ ཛྷ Collective dose for 19,875 flight crew members: 40.7 man-Sv. ཛྷ ཛྷ Annual average individual dose: 2 mSv.