ALARA and Reasonableness

The interpretation of what is ‘Reasonable’ in the implementation of optimisation of radiation protection is one of the key issues for our profession and is one of IRPA’s current key themes. In 2017/18 the French Society for Radiological Protection in association with IRPA arranged two workshops to explore this issue. The workshops addressed the implementation of ‘reasonable’ via case studies in three specific sectors – nuclear industry, medical practices and existing exposure situations. As well as identifying important sectoral issues the workshops also developed themes which are common across the sectors and which provide important underpinning for ALARA considerations.

A summary of these workshops has now been published in the SFRP journal Radioprotection. Translations have been arranged by the German-Swiss Association for Radiation Protection and the Japan Health Physics Society.