Swedish Radiological Emergency Exercises Retrospect and Future Focus

1
Swedish Radiological Emergency Exercises
Retrospect and Future Focus

• Östlund K.a, Finck R.R.b, Samuelsson C.a and
  Rääf C.a
• aDepartment of Clinical Sciences Malmö, Medical
  Radiation Physics, Lund University, Sweden
• b Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, Sweden

1. Introduction The Swedish Radiation Safety
Authority (SSM) is the competent authority in
Sweden to provide decision support and national
advice on radiation protection, protective
measures and mitigation in the event of a Nuclear
Accident or Radiological Emergency. SSM
organizes and maintains the national expertise
that can be used for assistance in the decision
support of nuclear or radiological emergencies by
the authorities. The national organized expertise
consists of SSMs laboratory and nine other
laboratories at other public authorities,
Universities and private corporations in Sweden.
These laboratories (named National Emergency
Preparedness Laboratories) are obliged through
contract with SSM to maintain their own emergency
preparedness organization and to have measurement
equipment and trained personnel ready to use. In
Case of a nuclear or radiological emergency, a
wide array of different instruments ranging from
mobile radiometry equipment to whole body
counters will be utilized. Methods for this
response are continuously developed. As part of
the program of training and education, SSM
annually conducts a large field exercise for the
national expert support organizations for nuclear
and radiological emergencies. This has been done
since 2006. National Emergency Preparedness
Laboratories, Swedish Police, Swedish Customs,
Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, Swedish Armed
Forces, Swedish Defence Research Agency, The
National Laboratory of Forensic Science, The
National Board of Health and Instructors from
first responders take active part in these
exercises in order to gain knowledge and
experience on how to handle nuclear or
radiological emergencies. The exercises go under
the name LÄRMÄT and the scenarios have a focus on
radiological accidents or malevolent use of
radiation or radioactive materials. LÄRMÄT
provides an excellent opportunity to train
cooperation between radiation experts and first
responders.

• 2. Organizing and training the National Emergency
  Preparedness
• Sweden is a relatively small country and is
  therefore forced to build a different type of
  preparedness compared to larger nuclear power
  nations. The Swedish emergency preparedness is
  limited to a small number of specialists which
  are expected to solve a large number of
  scenarios. The exercise series LÄRMÄT has since
  2007 annually been conducted to increase the
  ability in certain areas, aimed specifically to
  face the challenges of our globalized world with
  changed expectations and goals of the radiation
  protection both internationally and in Sweden.
• This aim called for specialized realistic or
  near-to-real exercise scenarios. Our exercises
  and training have been focused on presenting
  scenarios and problems which allow participants
  to experience a large variety of situations. This
  was an attempt to quickly raise the ability of
  the national expertise without compromising the
  quality of the education.
• By presenting problems with contamination as well
  as handling HASS-source accidents and
  antagonistic use of such, the participants have
  been trained in carefully designed radiation
  environments, that have been well optimized in
  terms of safety and received radiation dose.
  Justification has always been a key issue and
  gain in the value of knowledge have so-far
  outweighed the risk from the radiation dose.
• 3. Results and evaluation
• The Evaluations from each LÄRMÄT-exercise
  (totally 5) clearly show that the exercises have
  been very appreciated but also pointed out some
  flaws and short-comings. In 2009 First Responder
  Instructors started to participate in greater
  numbers and this proved to be valuable when
  transferred to their home organization.
• Presenting situations with an authentic risk of
  being contaminated removes the feeling of
  exercise and brings gravity to the situation.
  Since medical nuclides with very short half-lives
  are used as contaminants, potential mishaps are
  easily corrected.
• When using very strong HASS-sources (Ir-192,
  Cs-137, Co-60) special measures need to be taken
  to allow participants to get in short distance to
  the sources, which is vital in order to learn the
  complexity of performing quality measurement
  while maintaining the dose to a low level.
• Doses have been kept below 100 µSievert for each
  participant and exercise week due to our efforts
  to minimize the dose while maintaining an
  authentic feel to the scenarios.
• Future Exercises and Development
• Exercise REFOX (Radiological Emergency Field
  Operative eXercise), will be the start of
  Swedens next series of exercises presenting a
  new focus Technical Threats. This will be both a
  practical and theoretical effort to investigate
  the present day capacity of our nations
  operative emergency response, as well as to test
  what technical resources can be received from
  other countries (e.g EU) and how this aid is
  implemented in the response. During this exercise
  period we will perform radiological tests that
  also can be used for development and research
  within the field of emergency response.

Christer Samuelsson Assoc. Prof.
christer.samuelsson_at_med.lu.se Phone [phone]
31 21
Karl Östlund Project Manager.
karl.ostlund_at_med.lu.se Phone [phone]
Robert Finck Analyst, SSM. robert.finck_at_ssm.se P
hone 46 8 799 33 07
Christopher Rääf Assoc. Prof. christopher.raaf_at_me
d.lu.se Phone [phone]