Establishment of a routine individual monitoring programme for internal exposure at the NRCN

Monitoring of internal exposure to radionuclides is conducted in order to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements and to assess radiation risks for radiation workers. The assessment of internal dose is based on several parameters that need to be considered: a. Individual monitoring measurements, which might include in vivo measurements, such as whole body counting (WBC) and in vitro measurements, such as urine measurements. b. Additional data concerning the internal exposure, which might include the radionuclide physical and chemical characteristics, internal dose pattern (inhalation, ingestion, etc.), exposure date, etc. c. A biokinetic model, which predicts the internal behavior of the radionuclide, after intake has occurred. Two types of internal exposures monitoring can be identified: workplace monitoring and individual monitoring. In those types there are four categories of monitoring programs that can be defined: routine monitoring, special monitoring, confirmatory monitoring and task-related monitoring. This paper is focused on the process of establishing a routine individual monitoring programme for internal exposure of the Nuclear Research Centre Negev (NRCN) workers