Contamination levels for Swedish Armed Forces in environments contaminated with radioactivity

Within the Armed Forces Research Programme for CBRN and Environmental Issues and its project R-detection and dosimetry one key issue is which action levels for radioactive contamination should apply for operations in radioactive environments. The report describes the initial work towards suggesting suitable action levels. At an initial workshop at the National CBRN Defence Centre (SkyddC) in Umeå the difference in various concepts such as limits, action levels, recommended value and reference value was discussed. Some guiding documents were presented and the backgrounds to the, in many cases unrealistically low, action levels in these documents were addressed. Finally a draft for regulations concerning clearance of material that is under preparation by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) was presented. There are four principally different situations in which one might become contaminated when practising a profession. 1) One can work in a licensed activity with ionising radiation. Here, legal limits according to prescriptions from the SSM apply. 2) One can as emergency personnel or police be the first person on-scene after a radiological accident or event. In this case there are recommendations and action levels to keep radiation doses as low as possible. 3) In a later phase, military DIM-personnel or radiation protection experts will enter the area. They are trained for operations in radioactive environments and their actions can be planned. According to international recommendations the same restrictions in radiation doses should be applied as for licensed activities. 4) One can by accident end up at the place for a radiological accident or event. This report will focus on alternative 3, skilled personnel with duties in radioactive environments. There are a number of documents dictating how the Swedish Armed Forces should operate in radioactive environments. Documents discussed in the report are applicable on non-article 5 crisis response operations, that is peace-keeping or peace-enforcements missions. Swedish military missions in Kosovo or Afghanistan are applicable examples. Key documents are NATO ATP 3.8.1 ´CBRN Defence on operations' and corresponding Stanag-documents. The documents give guidance about contamination values acceptable in different radiation scenarios. The report discusses the background to the given values and why they, in our opinion, are unnecessarily low. The report concludes by giving some issues on which forthcoming work should be focused. Among these one can mention that limiting levels can be considerable higher than those given in actual documents. The values given in the coming prescription from SSM about clearance of material should be used by the Armed Forces to judge if objects are clean after decontamination. The continuing work with developing suitable action levels for Armed Forces applications should be done in as close accordance as possible with work done in civilian radiation protection and preparedness preparations. Finally, to push the issue about contamination levels forward, a working group should be established with members from FOI, SkyddC, SSM and perhaps from the Surgeon General of the Armed Forces (GL) and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB).