Speaker
Description
The record has shown, 84% cases of material out of regulatory control in Malaysia were contributed by mobile radioactive sources. From the figure, 38% were reported missing while another 38% were reported stolen. In both cases, almost 64% incidents occurred during transit with 68% incidents contributed by the Industrial Radiography Activities. At present, Malaysia has over 90 registered companies in Industrial radiography activities deals with more than 500 category 2 industrial radiography sources. At the latest nuclear security event where one industrial radiography source went missing during transportation, the Government had instructed to include control mechanism involving detection of nuclear and radioactive materials as part of security screening activities to the national scale event such as celebration of National Independence Day 2018 and National Sports Games 2018. Due to growing concern on cases involving industrial radiography sources, Malaysia revise approach towards management and preparedness focusing on major urban areas where some of activities involving radiography sources frequently take place. The main concern is on the potential radiological, economical and sociological consequences in the event if the material falls to the wrong hands of innocent people with limited knowledge on radioactivity or to the individuals with malicious intention. Geographically, the mobile material that goes out of regulatory control could lead to potential effect of transboundary to other major urban cities including to the cities across Malaysia’s border. Learning from experience in securing major public events that was first implemented during visit of President Barrack Obama to Malaysia in 2011 followed by the 2017 South East Asian Games organized at major urban cities, Malaysia had extended the experience in developing such capability for detection at major areas conducted through joint operation between Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) and the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP). In developing nuclear security capability for major urban areas, AELB played a major role in extending technical expertise in supporting RMP for the development of an integrated Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for detection and response. The integrated SOP leveraged the existing capacities and functions from both RMP and AELB to jointly address nuclear security threat at major urban areas. Training programmes were also designed and implemented to enable RMP’s roles for detection at major urban areas by incorporating nuclear security functions to their daily duties with strong focused in enhancing detection by information capabilities. Limited number of detection equipment were also distributed with priority given to police forces in major urban areas and in identified strategic location with volume of radiation activities take place. The concept of information, expertise and asset sharing is applied as strategic approach to build detection capabilities at major urban areas in light of limited resources to ensure a sustainable and effective program availability.
| State | Malaysia |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
