Annual report and accounts 1999

This report outlines the work of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) during 1999. The report highlights instances which occurred in 1999 of radioactive materials being lost in transit, and being inadvertently discarded as scrap. Five organisations were successfully prosecuted by the Institute during 1999 for offences under radiological protection legislation. Following the completion in 1999 of its national survey of radon in dwellings, the Institute greatly welcomes the recent Government decision to initiate a scheme of grants to assist householders with the cost of remedying radon problems in their dwellings. A serious concern of the Institute has been the small proportion of the dwellings with high radon levels in which remedial work has been carried out. It is hoped that the new financial incentive to householders to take remedial action will significantly improve this situation. A key responsibility of the Institute is its surveillance of the hazards to Ireland posed by nuclear installations abroad. In 1999 it was granted unprecedented access to safety documentation relating to the storage of liquid high-level radioactive waste at Sellafield, and it has recently published the results of its scrutiny of this material. It identified a number of actions which needed to be taken to minimise the risk of a major accident involving tanks storing liquid high-level waste at the Sellafield site. These findings added to concerns raised by reports, published in early 2000 by the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which were highly critical of safety standards at Sellafield