Qualified Experts and Radioactive Waste Management

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Qualified Experts and Radioactive Waste
Management An Emerging UK Approach 2nd EUTERP
Workshop Dr C Englefield CRadP MSRP April
2008 Vilnius Lithuania
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Agenda

• Summary of relevant UK regulators
• A current UK project on QEs
• The importance of implementation issues
• The BSSD QE
• The UK QE for radioactive waste
• Defining competences is a task for the regulator,
  but
• Recognise wider professional development needs
• The concept of suitability
• The need for flexibility
• Conclusions

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Summary of relevant UK regulators

• UK law divides radiation protection across
  several pieces of legislation
• Separate regulators for safety, environment,
  transport, etc
• PLUS differences between England, Scotland and
  Northern Ireland

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A current UK project on QEs

• The UK environment agencies are defining a
  competence set for a QE for radioactive waste
  management QE(RSA)
• Research report at www.sniffer.org.uk
• We recognise the multiple uses of the term QE in
  the Basic Safety Standards Directive
• We have to be more clear about what we expect
  from advisers to the people we regulate

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Implementation issues

• Our project spent more time on implementation
  issues than on deriving a draft competence set!
• Government drive to reduce burden on industry
• Impact on companies and individuals
• Time needed to make sure it will work
• Suggest EUTERP should keep this in mind

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The BSSD QE

• The QE defined by BSSD

Safety (RPA)
Medical Exposure
Radioactive waste (QE (RSA))
Instruments
Transport
Other
How many of these do we expect to define
competences for?
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The UK QE for radioactive waste

• Competence knowledge experience
• Experience is essential to enable an expert to
  deal with unfamiliar situations
• The UK is working towards a competence set for
  experts on radioactive waste management based on
  core competences
• PLUS suitability

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Defining competences - a task for regulators

• QEs enable employers to comply with law or
  authorisations
• Compliance is a regulatory issue first
• UK experience is that competence sets grow
  beyond what is required for compliance with the
  law
• Suggest to EUTERP that wider competence sets
  should not become mandatory

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Wider professional development
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The concept of suitability
Regulator defines but certifying body assesses
Suitability
Core
Regulator assesses
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The need for flexibility 1

RPA (Safety)
QE(RSA) (Radioactive waste Management)
Shared but different
Overlap of competences for RPA and QE(RSA) See
next slide
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The need for flexibility 2
QE (RSA)
RPA
Level of Understanding Required
Shared Competences of RPA and QE(RSA)
Overlapping profiles of competence sets for RPA
and QE(RSA)
Suggestion to EUTERP remember national
differences and enable flexible implementation to
maximise success
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Conclusions

• Defining core competences is a task for the
  regulator it is about achieving improved
  compliance with legislation
• Wider professional development is fine, but local
  differences mean a wide scope cannot be mandatory
• The usefulness of core competences is enhanced by
  the concept of suitability. It would be helpful
  if suitability was explicitly required by the
  future BSSD.