Preface

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At its meeting in Paris in March 2005, the Main Commission of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) approved the formation of a new Task Group, reporting to Committee 4, to develop guidance on the implementation of its new Recommendations (ICRP, 2007) for the protection of people living in long-term contaminated areas after a nuclear accident or a radiation emergency.

The terms of reference of the Task Group were to provide guidance on:

In developing its guidance, the Task Group was encouraged to co-ordinate with the concurrently approved Task Group in charge of elaborating recommendations on the application of the Commission’s Recommendations for the protection of people in emergency exposure situations (ICRP, 2009).

The present report takes account of past experience of the protection of populations living in contaminated areas, particularly in the Commonwealth of Independent States countries affected by the Chernobyl accident, and to a lesser extent to other past accidents and events that resulted in the contamination of large areas. It takes also into account recent methodological and practical developments at international and national levels: the INEX programme of the Committee of Radiation Protection and Public Health of the Nuclear Energy Agency/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (NEA/OECD), the EURANOS Project of the European Commission, the French CODIRPA exercise, the ETHOS Project, and the CORE Programme on post-Chernobyl rehabilitation in Belarus.

The guidance offered by the Task Group is generic, providing a basic framework that can be tailored for specific circumstances. The detailed implementation of the Commission’s Recommendations is a matter for the relevant national authorities.

The membership of the Task Group during the period of preparation of this report was:

The corresponding members were:

The membership of Committee 4 during the period of preparation of this report was:

The Task Group met four times:

The Task Group members wish to thank Peter Schmidt from Wismut GmbH who gave a useful presentation on management of the rehabilitation of areas contaminated by uranium mining and milling activities in the former East Germany, Mikhail Savkin from the Biophysics Institute of Russia for sharing his experience of the management of the long-term consequences of the Chernobyl accident, and Céline Bataille from CEPN-France for her scientific assistance.

The Task Group would also like to thank those organisations and staff that made facilities and support available for its meetings. These include NEA/OECD (Paris) and WHO (Geneva).

The report was adopted by the Commission at its meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 25 October 2008.

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References 

1. ICRP . The 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. ICRP Publication 103. Ann. ICRP. 2007;37(2–4):
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2. ICRP, 2009. Application of the Commission’s recommendations for the protection of people in emergency exposure situations. ICRP Publication 109. Ann. ICRP 39 (1).
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