Projects - NERIS

OPERRA > CAThyMARA

Details: Category: Projects; Published: Tuesday, 31 May 2016 15:52

Child and Adult Thyroid Monitoring After Reactor Accident

Project overview and rationale

A nuclear power plant accident will cause uncontrolled release of a large amount and complex mixture of radionuclides; however ¹³¹I generally makes the largest dose contribution. After the Chernobyl accident, many citizens received thyroid doses exceeding 1 Gy due to radio-iodine intakes and more than 6 000 thyroid cancers (mostly in children) were attributed to radio-iodine intakes. After the Fukushima accident, about 98% of the effective dose received by emergency workers was attributable to radio-iodine intakes.
Following a large scale nuclear accident, or even a small accidental release, citizens will expect to be individually monitored rather than rely on calculated dose. This project focuses on post-accidental ¹³¹I measurement in the thyroid, particularly for children.
This project focuses on the monitoring strategies and assessment of thyroid doses resulting from intakes of radio-iodine. Monitoring strategies will address monitoring of children and adults, required capabilities and existing gaps. Strategies will also address harmonization of measurements and dose assessment to be done by national authorities, within the European Union and neighbouring countries.
This project relies on a review of existing European means, on two thyroid measurement inter-comparison circuits, focusing on children, on Monte-Carlo based device calibrations and on the development of emergency oriented dose assessment methods.
Identified gaps such as the children case will be solved and other potential gaps will be revealed.
The main outcome of the project will be guidelines based on practical experience and on the comparison of existing and required means. Guidelines will also benefit from the inputs of the civil society.

Work package organization

WP2: Review of existing plans and means

Survey on existing response capacities in Europe in case of emergency, focusing on internal exposure monitoring, thyroid monitoring and the children case
Review of international recommendations about internal exposure monitoring in case of emergency, focusing on thyroid monitoring and the case of children
Compare existing capacities and international recommendations
Review the Fukushima experience and the NTW survey on Emergency preparedness in Europe, focusing on internal exposure monitoring and the involvement of citizens
Study the advantages and drawbacks of citizenship measurements

WP3: Measurement inter-comparison for spectroscopic devices

Manufacture and distribute to volunteer teams thyroid sources corresponding to different ages (5 years-old, 10 years-old, adult) for measurement of the unknown thyroid activity
Evaluate the response and help teams to improve their measurement process

WP4: Measurement inter-comparison for non-spectroscopic devices

Same as WP3 but for devices such as dosimeters, count-rate meters, gamma-camera

WP5: Factors affecting measurements

Study the factors affecting thyroid measurements with spectroscopic devices such as thyroid volume, detector design, measurement distance, contribution of other radionuclides
Use Monte-Carlo calculations, realistic age-specific computational models, validated detector models

WP6: Thyroid dose assessment in case of emergency

Establish ready-to use tables to assess the thyroid dose or committed effective dose from measurement
Takes into account: the age of the measured subject, the short lived radio-iodine isotopes, the fetus case, the case of iodine prophylaxis

WP7: Guidelines

Based on the work of the other work packages, on literature review and on the experience of the participants the following guidelines will be made publically available:

Guidelines for development of monitoring strategies and derivation of reference levels
These guidelines will focus on the purposes of monitoring; who should be monitored; the results needed; which measurements should be made; the radionuclides to be measured; at what locations, and over which time periods, should the measurements be performed. These guidelines are mostly intended for decision-makers and professional in charge of emergency preparedness.
Technical guidelines for radio-iodine in thyroid monitoring
These guidelines will focus on equipment, measurements, calibrations and dose assessment. They are mostly intended for professionals performing measurements and dose assessment.

Outcomes

The guidelines and the report of work packages will be made publically available on June 2017.
Conclusions will be presented in conference and peer-reviewed articles

Funding

This work is funded by the European Commission for 18 months through the OPERRA (Open Project for the European Radiation Research Area, project #604984) project. OPERRA is part of the FP7-Fission-2013 program.

Participants

IRSN (France), CIEMAT (Spain), Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic), Gothenburg University (Sweden), IFIN-HH (Romania), IST-ID (Portugal), MTA- CER (Hungary) , Mutadis (France), NCBJ (Poland), Public Health England (UK), RPI (Ukraine), SCK-CEN (Belgium, SÚRO (Czech Republic)

If you need further information, please contact the project coordinator: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

OPERRA > HARMONE

Details: Category: Projects; Published: Tuesday, 31 May 2016 15:52

Beginning of November 2015, HARMONE started as integral part of the European OPERRA project. It will last for 18 months and consist of six research partners (HMGU, IRSN, KIT, PHE, SCK•CEN, UCEWP) and three advisory organisations (BfS, IAEA, RIVM). HARMONE aims to reduce scientific, methodological and operational gaps identified in the strategic research agendas of the four European Platforms in the area of radiation protection and issued as TOPIC 2 of the OPERRA-2014 Call: “Spatial and temporal environmental modelling and human dose assessment after a nuclear accident”.

HARMONE aims to harmonize and expand the modelling approach of the European decision support systems (DSS) RODOS and C3X/SYMBIOSE. To achieve this goal, the project will deal with many possible release scenarios, environmental characteristics and shortcomings on information in the early phase of an emergency. To adapt the models better to the environmental conditions all over Europe, geographical and climatic influences on regional fishing and farming practice will be assessed. It is then planned to divide Europe into regions with common radioecological characteristics, collect the relevant data and implement them as generic information in the DSS. Aquatic, groundwater, snow melt, forest and terrestrial models in these DSS will be updated with the new data sets and their implementation improved.

Uncertainty analysis of the SYMBIOSE models can be done to identify relevant exposure pathways, parameters and FEP for the different scenarios and regions. Results from this process may suggest improvements in monitoring strategies which are also part of HARMONE. With this information, recommendations for the monitoring of radiological parameters necessary for the DSS after radiological incidents can be developed. Finally, the project will develop a knowledge data base and guidance that allows, according to the first event description, to propose a first management strategy to reduce doses and highlights potential issues for the dose assessment.

OPERRA > SHAMISEN

Details: Category: Projects; Published: Tuesday, 31 May 2016 15:52

In the unlikely yet not impossible case of a future nuclear accident, what do we need to do (or not do) in order to improve the follow-up of affected populations and respond to their needs without creating unnecessary anxiety? This is what the European SHAMISEN project tries to answer. Indeed, as part of the OPERRA European Research project, the SHAMISEN project aims to draw lessons from the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents and other major nuclear accidents in order to make recommendations for medical and health surveillance of affected populations. These recommendations should improve preparedness for responding to the needs of people affected by previous and possible future radiation accidents, while minimising unnecessary anxiety.

For further information, please visit the SHAMISEN website.

PREPARE

Details: Category: Projects; Last Updated: Sunday, 31 March 2019 15:32; Published: Wednesday, 09 January 2013 17:45

The PREPARE project (2013-2016) aimed to close gaps that had been identified in nuclear and radiological preparedness following the first evaluation of the Fukushima disaster. Among others, the project addressed the review of existing operational procedures for dealing with long lasting releases, cross border problems in monitoring and food safety and further developed missing functionalities in decision support systems ranging from improved source term estimation and dispersion modelling to the inclusion of hydrological pathways for European water bodies. In addition, as the management of the Fukushima event in Europe was far from optimal, a so called Analytical Platform have been developed exploring the scientific and operational means to improve information collection, information exchange and the evaluation of such types of disasters. This was achieved through a collaboration of industry, research and governmental organisations in Europe taking into account the networking activities carried out under the NERIS-TP project.

For further information, please download the dedicated document.

Proceedings related to PREPARE Workshop held in Oslo in January 2014 are published in a special issue of the journal Radioprotection (Vol. 51 - HS n°2 -2016).

The programme of the final dissemination PREPARE Workshop, held in Bratislava in January 2016 can be downloaded here. The presentations can be downloaded with the following links:

NERIS-TP

Details: Category: Projects; Last Updated: Tuesday, 17 April 2018 10:37; Published: Wednesday, 09 January 2013 17:36

The NERIS- TP Project (2011-2014) aimed on the one hand to keep the momentum gained through the European Project EURANOS in establishing a platform where the operational and research community can meet and discuss with all the relevant stakeholders the topics related to emergency response and recovery preparedness and on the other hand to tackle urgent research topics in the area of nuclear emergency response and recovery preparedness. Through a collaboration of industry, research and governmental organisations in Europe, methodological aspects and computational models have been developed to be consistent with recommendations from international bodies such as the ICRP (International Commission for Radiological Protection) and improve Europe’s response by coupling decision support systems with an emergency information system such as the European wide information system ECURIE. Within this project, the NERIS platform was established as a unique place for combined meeting of the research and the operational community.