Radiological Protection Ordinance
(RPO)

1 In this Or­din­ance:

planned ex­pos­ure situ­ation means an ex­pos­ure situ­ation which arises from the planned op­er­a­tion of a ra­di­ation source or from a hu­man activ­ity which al­ters ex­pos­ure path­ways, so as to cause the ex­pos­ure or po­ten­tial ex­pos­ure of people or the en­vir­on­ment;

emer­gency ex­pos­ure situ­ation means an ex­pos­ure situ­ation due to an emer­gency, as defined in Art­icle 132;

c.

ex­ist­ing ex­pos­ure situ­ation means an ex­pos­ure situ­ation that already ex­ists when a de­cision on its con­trol has to be taken and which does not call or no longer calls for ur­gent meas­ures to be taken; this in­volves, in par­tic­u­lar, ra­di­olo­gic­al legacies, radon, nat­ur­ally oc­cur­ring ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al and long‑term con­tam­in­a­tion fol­low­ing an emer­gency;

d.

oc­cu­pa­tion­al ex­pos­ure means ex­pos­ure due to oc­cu­pa­tion­al activ­it­ies; oc­cu­pa­tion­al ex­pos­ure may in­volve em­ploy­ees, self-em­ployed per­sons, ap­pren­tices and stu­dents;

e.

med­ic­al ex­pos­ure means the ex­pos­ure of pa­tients or asymp­to­mat­ic in­di­vidu­als for dia­gnost­ic or thera­peut­ic pur­poses, with the aim of im­prov­ing their health, and ex­pos­ure of carers and com­fort­ers in medi­cine and of par­ti­cipants in hu­man re­search;

f.

pub­lic ex­pos­ure means any ex­pos­ure of per­sons, ex­clud­ing oc­cu­pa­tion­al and med­ic­al ex­pos­ures;

g.

ra­di­olo­gic­al pro­tec­tion ex­perts means ex­perts, as spe­cified in Art­icle 16 of the RPA, who have the know­ledge, train­ing and ex­per­i­ence in ra­di­olo­gic­al pro­tec­tion needed to en­sure the ef­fect­ive pro­tec­tion of people and the en­vir­on­ment; ex­perts are re­spons­ible for im­ple­ment­a­tion of the leg­al re­quire­ments in in­tern­al ra­di­olo­gic­al pro­tec­tion dir­ect­ives and for mon­it­or­ing com­pli­ance with­in the en­ter­prise;

h.

nat­ur­ally oc­cur­ring ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al (NORM³) means ma­ter­i­al with nat­ur­ally oc­cur­ring ra­di­o­nuc­lides which does not con­tain ar­ti­fi­cial ra­dio­act­ive sub­stances; ma­ter­i­al in which the activ­ity con­cen­tra­tions of nat­ur­ally oc­cur­ring ra­di­o­nuc­lides have been un­in­ten­tion­ally changed by some pro­cess is also NORM; if con­cen­tra­tions of nat­ur­ally oc­cur­ring ra­di­o­nuc­lides are de­lib­er­ately en­hanced, in par­tic­u­lar to util­ise their ra­dio­act­ive prop­er­ties, then they are no longer con­sidered to be NORM;

i.

ion­ising ra­di­ation means en­ergy trans­mit­ted in the form of particles or elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves of a wavelength of 100 nm or less cap­able of ion­ising an atom or mo­lecule dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly;

j.

clear­ance lim­it (LL) means the value cor­res­pond­ing to the spe­cif­ic activ­ity level of a ma­ter­i­al be­low which hand­ling of this ma­ter­i­al is no longer sub­ject to man­dat­ory li­cens­ing or, ac­cord­ingly, su­per­vi­sion; the val­ues are spe­cified in An­nex 3 Column 9;

k.

NORM clear­ance lim­it (LLM) means the value cor­res­pond­ing to the spe­cif­ic activ­ity level of nat­ur­al ra­di­o­nuc­lides in NORM be­low which this ma­ter­i­al may be freely dis­charged in­to the en­vir­on­ment; the val­ues are spe­cified in An­nex 2;

l.

li­cens­ing lim­it (LA) means the value cor­res­pond­ing to the ab­so­lute activ­ity level of a ma­ter­i­al above which hand­ling of this ma­ter­i­al is sub­ject to man­dat­ory li­cens­ing; the val­ues are spe­cified in An­nex 3 Column 10; they do not ap­ply to NORM;

m.

guid­ance value means a value, de­rived from a lim­it, the ex­ceedance of which trig­gers cer­tain meas­ures and com­pli­ance with which also en­sures com­pli­ance with the as­so­ci­ated lim­it; guid­ance val­ues for air­borne activ­ity (CA) and sur­face con­tam­in­a­tion (CS) are spe­cified in An­nex 3 Columns 11 and 12;

n.

ra­di­ation source means a ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al or in­stall­a­tion cap­able of emit­ting ion­ising ra­di­ation;

o.

ma­ter­i­al is a gen­er­al term cov­er­ing sol­id, li­quid or gaseous sub­stances, mix­tures, raw ma­ter­i­als and fin­ished products and art­icles man­u­fac­tured there­from;

p.

ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al means a ma­ter­i­al that in­cor­por­ates ra­di­o­nuc­lides, is ac­tiv­ated or con­tam­in­ated with ra­di­o­nuc­lides and which meets the fol­low­ing con­di­tions:

1.

hand­ling there­of is sub­ject to man­dat­ory li­cens­ing and su­per­vi­sion un­der ra­di­olo­gic­al pro­tec­tion or nuc­le­ar en­ergy le­gis­la­tion,

2.

hand­ling there­of is not ex­empt from man­dat­ory li­cens­ing and su­per­vi­sion un­der ra­di­olo­gic­al pro­tec­tion or nuc­le­ar en­ergy le­gis­la­tion;

q.

ra­dio­act­ive sub­stance is syn­onym­ous with ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al;

r.

ra­dio­act­ive source means ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al em­ployed for the pur­pose of util­ising its ra­dio­activ­ity;

s.

sealed ra­dio­act­ive source means a ra­dio­act­ive source whose struc­ture is such as to pre­vent, un­der nor­mal con­di­tions of use, the re­lease of ra­dio­act­ive sub­stances and thus ex­clude the risk of con­tam­in­a­tion;

t.

un­sealed ra­dio­act­ive source means a ra­dio­act­ive source that does not meet the re­quire­ments for a sealed ra­dio­act­ive source;

u.

orphan ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al means ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­al that is no longer un­der the con­trol of the own­er or li­cence hold­er;

v.

in­stall­a­tionsis an ab­bre­vi­ated form of in­stall­a­tions that gen­er­ate ion­ising ra­di­ation; in­stall­a­tions are equip­ment and devices used to gen­er­ate photon or particle ra­di­ation.

2 In ad­di­tion, for this Or­din­ance, the fol­low­ing ap­ply:

the defin­i­tions giv­en in Art­icles 5–7, 26, 49, 51, 80, 85, 96, 108, 122, 149 and 175;

the defin­i­tions of pre­dom­in­antly tech­nic­al terms giv­en in An­nex 1 and the defin­i­tions of dose-re­lated terms giv­en in An­nex 4.