Appendix CRF - Part 3 - Northamptonshire County Council

11.0 BPM and ALARA Assessment for the Proposed
Radioactive Waste Disposal
11.1 ALARA
11.1.1 The “As Low as Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA) principle is concerned with
optimising radiation doses to humans.
11.1.2 “In relation to any particular source within a practice, the magnitude of individual
doses, the number of people exposed, and the likelihood of incurring exposures
where these are not certain to be received should all be kept as low as
reasonably achievable, economic and social factors being taken into account.”
11.1.3 Conservative radiological assessments for workers and the public in the
operational and post-closure stages are presented in this report and demonstrate
that it is likely that dose constraints, dose limits, design risk targets and design
dose targets will be achieved. The design targets are set at levels beyond which
further measures should only be considered necessary if they do not involve
disproportionate costs.
11.1.4 Operational optimisation measures are described in this report and would be
developed as part of the radiation protection plan for the site. Feedback from
workplace and environmental monitoring would be used to implement further
optimisation measures if required in order to achieve actual exposures which are
a fraction of the constraints and limits.
11.2 BPM
11.2.1 The Best Practicable Means (BPM) principle is essentially a consideration of
whether an adequate argument has been made that further measures to reduce
risk are not needed because the measures cannot be implemented at a
reasonable cost given economic and social factors.
11.2.2 Having carried out a BPEO study to consider what the right option to pursue is,
BPM is concerned with executing that option in the right way.
11.2.3 Whereas ALARA applies to dose optimisation, BPM applies to optimise
radioactive waste management.
11.2.4 Within a particular waste option, the BPM is that level of management and
engineering control that minimises, as far as practicable, the release of
radioactivity to the environment whilst taking account of a wider range of factors,
including cost-effectiveness, technological status, operational safety and
social/environment factors.
11.2.5 To some extent the BPM concept overlaps with the BAT (Best Available
Techniques) concept that underpins the provision of new landfill designs under
Application for disposal of LLW including HV-VLLW under RSA 1993,
for the East Northants Resource Management Facility:
Supporting Information
July 2009
97
WS010001/ENRMF/CONSAPPCRF 416