Current status of individual dosimetric monitoring in Ukraine

About 50 000 workers are being occupationally exposed to radiation in Ukraine. Individual dosimetric monitoring (IDM) is provided by 77 dosimetry services and laboratories of very different scale with a number of monitored workers ranging from several persons to ∼9000. In the present work, the current status of personal dosimetry in Ukraine was studied. The First National Intercomparison (FNI) of the IDM labs was accompanied by a survey of the laboratory operation in terms of coverage, types of dosimetry provided, instrumentation and methodologies used, metrological support, data recording, etc. Totally, 34 laboratories responded to the FNI call, and 18 services with 19 different personal dosimetry systems took part in the intercomparison exercise providing 24 dosimeters each for blind irradiation to photons of 6 different qualities (ISO N-series X-rays, S-Cs and S-Co sources) in a dose range of 5-60 mSv. Performance of the dosimetry labs was evaluated according to ISO 14146 criteria of matching trumpet curves with H₀ = 0.2 mSv. The test revealed that 8 of the 19 systems meet ISO 14146 criteria in full, 5 other labs show marginal performance and 6 laboratories demonstrated catastrophic quality of dosimetric results. Altogether, 18 participating labs provide dosimetric monitoring to 37 477 workers (about three-fourths of all occupationally exposed workers), usually on monthly (nuclear industry) or quarterly (rest of applications) basis. Of this number, 20 664 persons (55 %) receive completely adequate individual monitoring, and the number of personnel receiving IDM of inadequate quality counts 3054 persons. (authors)