Speaker
Description
Abstract
In the Kingdom of Morocco, a new law (142-12) on safety, security and safeguards has been promulgated in 2014. To implement this law, national regulations and related documents are being updated or created to ensure that the national regulatory framework is compatible with the recent IAEA Safety Standards and recognized good international practices. The scope of the decree on the licensing and notification system of activities involving ionizing radiation sources has been extended to cover Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in Industry. The administrative regime will now apply, under the provisions of this decree, to the industrial activities that involve the "fortuitous" presence of natural ionizing radiation sources and that could cause a significant increase in the exposure of workers or the public. These activities are subject to an authorization or notification system. The list of these activities which has been established by the IAEA has been included in this decree. However, further investigations based on the radiological characterization of raw material, by-products, products, radioactive wastes and residues are to be conducted in order to identify the NORM industries that need to be controlled.
The Moroccan legal and regulatory framework establishes a graded approach for the control of activities concerned by NORM. To this end, exemption levels have been adopted for each of the natural radionuclides. If these levels are exceeded, a declaration or an authorization request to the regulatory authority is required. Based on the radiological characterization of NORM, which must be carried out by recognized technical services providers, the administrative regime in which the industrial activity is involved is determined. A derogation from the regulatory system can be claimed by the operator if the industrial process used does not lead to the concentration of natural radioactivity
The conditions for the recognition of laboratories performing sampling and NORM's radiological characterization measurements are set by the regulatory authority. Among these conditions are accreditation according to the Moroccan standard NM ISO / CEI 17025 which covers, in particular, requirements relating to the implementation of a quality management system, the sampling and measurement methods, the necessary equipment to carry out the measurements requested by the operators and the recording of the measurement results. The technical requirements for the NORM radiological characterization are also defined by the regulatory authority.
Key Words: AMSSNuR, NORM, Radiological characterization, radiation exposure, Radiation protection, Regulatory Control.
