Participation of the Unit in....

Two new projects approved for the Unit (December 2021)

The Nuclear Safety Council in its 2021 call for grants has approved two projects in which the Unit of Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment will participate.

The project “Radiological Impact Assessment Regulation”, coordinated by the University of Extremadura, will last two years (2020-2023).
The project “Radon exhalation in building materials; radiological impact and corrective actions”, coordinated by the University of Huelva, will last two years (2020-2023).

More detailed information on these projects can be found on the R&D&I Projects page of this Portal.

Presentation by Milagros Montero, researcher of the Unit, in the 7^th Joint Congress SEFM-SEPR 2021 (June 2021)

The 7^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Society of Medical Physics and the Spanish Society of Radiological Protection (SEFM-SEPR), was held from May 31 to June 4, in virtual format. Milagros Montero, head of the line Radiation Protection in Interventions, of the Radiological Protection of the Public and the Environment Unit, gave the presentation “Recommendations to better face the uncertainties that arise in the decision-making process during the intermediate phase of an emergency. Results of the CONFIDENCE project”.

This presentation was a summary of the methodology used, the main uncertainties identified and the recommendations proposed to face such uncertainties and to promote both good practices for the planning of optimal remediation strategies and the participation of the stakeholders in the decision-making process.

Presentation of the Recommendations of the TERRITORIES Project for the Evaluation and Management of Existing Post-Accident and NORM Exposure Situations, at the 7th Joint Congress (June 2021)

The 7^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Societies of Medical Physics (SEFM) and Radiological Protection (SEPR) was held, in virtual format, from May 31 to June 4. Almudena Real, researcher at the Radiological Protection of the Public and the Environment Unit, representing a group of researchers from the Department of Environment of CIEMAT made up of Roser Sala, Danyl Pérez and Juan Carlos Mora, presented the recommendations made during the European TERRITORIES project to assess and manage existing exposure situations post-accident and NORM (https://territories.eu).

The extended news on this presentation is available on the CIEMAT website https://www.ciemat.es/portal.do?IDM=61&NM=2&identificador=2259

Presentation by Almudena Real, researcher of the Unit, in the 7^th Joint Congress SEFM-SEPR 2021 (June 2021)

The 7^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Societies of Medical Physics (SEFM) and Radiological Protection (SEPR) was held, in virtual format, from May 31 to June 4. Almudena Real, researcher at the Radiological Protection of the Public and the Environment Unit, of the Department of Environment of CIEMAT, has presented the main results, conclusions and lessons learned in the European project EJP-CONCERT (European Joint Program for the Integration of Radiation Protection Research).

The extended news on this presentation can be consulted on the CIEMAT website https://www.ciemat.es/portal.do?IDM=61&NM=2&identificador=2256

Publication "Effects of alpha-emitting radionuclides in non-human biota" (January 2021)

Alicia Escribano Nieto and Almudena Real Gallego, researchers of the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, have recently published the article "Effects of alpha-emitting radionuclides in non-human biota" in the Journal "Radioprotección" (No. 99 December 2020) available in https://www.sepr.es/

Doctoral Thesis defence of our colleague Blanca García Puerta (November 2020)

Last November 2020, the defence of the doctoral thesis of our colleague Blanca García Puerta on "The use of Geographic Information Systems in the creation of tools to improve response plans in nuclear emergencies and for supporting decision-making in agricultural areas" took place, obtaining the qualification of Excellent.

Publication “Uncertainties in the use of concentration ratios for modelling NORM waste sites” (October 2020)

The researcher of the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT Juan Carlos Mora, together with researchers from different countries, has recently published the article “Uncertainties in the use of concentration ratios for modelling NORM waste sites”, which includes results of the TERRITORIES European project, in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity (Vol 222, October 2020, 106315). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2020.106315

The UPRPyMA of CIEMAT participates in a European research project on radon (July 2020)

The RadoNorm project (Towards effective radiation protection based on improved scientific evidence and social considerations - focus on radon and NORM) aims to improve the protection of workers and the public.

Under the leadership of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), 56 European institutions will work together over the next five years to improve the protection of workers and the general public against radioactive radon gas and the waste from industrial processes with increased natural radioactivity (NORM).

The European Union has announced that it will finance the research consortium started and led by BfS with a total of 18 million euros. The project will start in September 2020.

Publication “Dispersion and ground deposition of radioactive material according to airflow patterns for enhancing the preparedness to N/R emergencies” (May 2020)

The researchers of the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, Blanca García y Milagros Montero, together with researchers of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, have recently published the article “Dispersion and ground deposition of radioactive material according to airflow patterns for enhancing the preparedness to N/R emergencies” in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity (Vol 216. May 2020, 106178. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2020.106178).

Publication “On the use of reference areas for prospective dose assessments on populations of wildlife for planned atmospheric discharges around nuclear installations” (March 2020)

The researcher of the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT Juan Carlos Mora Cañadas, together with researchers from different countries, has recently published the article “On the use of reference areas for prospective dose assessments on populations of wildlife for planned atmospheric discharges around nuclear installations” in the Environmental Research journal (Vol 182, March 2020, 109057. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2019.109057).

The TERRITORIES’ D9.76, summarising the Oxford Workshop, has been approved by the EC! (December 2019)

The D9.76, approved by the EC last Friday 29th of November, describes the outcomes of the last TERRITORIES workshop on “Assessing risks from radioactive legacy sites and how to better present uncertain information”, held on 19-20 March 2019 in Oxford, United Kingdom. The workshop was well-attended and included a diverse audience, with 100 participants from 15 different countries, 50% of whom were not members of the TERRITORIES project.

It is worth mentioning the high participation of students and early career scientists (32% of the attendees). This participation was made possible by 25 travel grants financed by TERRITORIES flexible funds

TERRITORIES wants to acknowledge the speakers, the chairs of the sessions and round tables, the panellists of the round tables, the students and early career scientists, as well as to all the participants who have contributed to the success of the workshop and, directly or indirectly, to this deliverable (available at https://territories.eu/ publications).

Presentation of the results of the TERRITORIES European project (November 2019)

The final event of the European project TERRITORIES (To Enhance unceRtainties Reduction and stakeholders Involvement TOwards integrated and graded Risk management of humans and wildlife In long-lasting radiological Exposure Situations) was held in Aix-en-Provence (France) from 12 to 14 November 2019. In this final event, the most outstanding results achieved in the project were presented. The Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment Unit and the Center for Socio-Technical Research of CIEMAT have actively participated in the event.

TERRITORIES, a 3-year competitive project led by the IRSN (France), was selected and funded within the European Joint Program for the Integration of Radiation Protection Research (EJP-CONCERT) in 2017. Eleven organizations, including CEIMAT, from eight European Countries have participated in this project, which had a budget of 4.2 million €. The main objective of TERRITORIES has been the reduction of uncertainties associated with dose assessment to humans and biota in situations where long-term contaminated territories exist.

Highlight the active participation of the CIEMAT researchers in the work carried out in TERRITORIES, which resulted in a significant contribution in the final event, where CIEMAT made 2 presentations (one on all the work done in WP1 and another on the work carried out on the NORM situation in the phosphorous rafts of Huelva, in WP3), made a practical demonstration of the use of the CROM and presented 11 posters showing the results of the work done mainly in WPs 1 and 4.

All the TERRITORIES results, in the form of measurements database (compiled or carried out by the project, within the TERRITORIES Library Database), reports, guides, presentations, posters, etc., can be consulted on the website of the project (https://territories.eu). All the news that had relevance throughout the process can also be read on the project blog (https://territoriesweb.wordpress.com/), which was created and managed by CIEMAT.

http://www.ciemat.es/cargarAplicacionNoticias.do?idArea=-1&identificador=1911

Participation of Blanca García Puerta on the 5^th Conference “Women in Science” in CIEMAT (October 2019)

Blanca García Puerta, a researcher in training at the Unit on Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, made a presentation on the 5^th Conference on “Women in Science” held the 1^st of October 2019, in the Auditorium of CIEMAT.

In addition to the current situation of women in the scientific field, Blanca presented her training, professional career, and experience in the development of her scientific career, both at the public and private sectors, as well as a reflection on women equality in the scientific field.

CONFIDENCE European Project Workshop at CIEMAT (September 2019)

The workshop “Do process-based models have a role in human food chain assessments” was organised at CIEMAT (9 and 10 of September 2019) as part of the activities of the European project CONFIDENCE (COping with uNcertainties For Improved modeling and DEcision making in Nuclear emergeCiEs), in which the Unit on Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment participates.

The workshop had 40 participants from 11 countries, including regulators, industry workers, scientists and international organizations.

The aim of the workshop was to discuss soil-plant process-based models with a range of stakeholders to gain opinion on if end-users saw benefit in their use and development.

To enable discussion presentations were given on: ‘conventional’ food chain models (e.g. the FDMT module of JRodos and FARMLAND); an overview of process based soil-plant models for Cs; application of process-based soil-plant models for Cs post-Fukushima in Japan; and CONFIDENCE activities on Cs and Sr process-based soil-plant models. Presentations were followed by facilitated ‘breakout’ sessions to discuss process-based models and their use.

In the workshop it was concluded that there are clearly some issues we need to address before soil-plant (or other sorts of) process-based models become more widely accepted. There is a need to validate available soil-plant process-based models for a wider range of scenarios (soil types and crops) than have currently been studied. To gain wider acceptance, when communicating process-based models to regulators and other stakeholders we need to make it clear that process-based models are not necessarily very complicated and/or resource intensive.

Five new TERRITORIES deliverables have been approved by the European Commission (September 2019)

Five new deliverables of the TERRITORIES project, in which the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT participates, have been recently approved by the European Commission:

D9.59. Report about the TLD (TERRITORIES Library Database), the radiological state database of selected sites.
D9.60. Guidance to reduce sampling uncertainty.
D9.61. Guidance to select the desirable fit-for-purpose level of complexity for models as applied in risk assessment.
D9.62. Methodology to quantify improvement. Guidance on uncertainty analysis for radioecological models.
D9.70. Framework for socio-economic analysis.

All the deliverables are available in the TERRITORIES webpage:

https://territories.eu/publications

Active participation of the Unit researchers in the 6^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Society of Medical Physics and the Spanish Society of Radiation Protection (July 2019)

The researchers of the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, Almudena Real, Juan Carlos Mora, Alla Dvorzhak, Blanca García y Alicia Escribano made oral presentations in the 6^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Society of Medical Physics and the Spanish Society of Radiation Protection held in Burgos on June 11-14, 2019.

In the Session devoted to novel researchers, Blanca García made the presentation “Development of risk maps as a tool in the establishment of recovery strategies for radiologically contaminated areas”.

In the session Natural Radiation and Remediation of Contaminated Areas, Alla Dvorzhak presented the work "Development of a dynamic model to estimate indoors radon concentrations"

Finally, in the session Radiological Protection of the Public and the Environment. Environmental Radiological Surveillance, three presentations were made: “Facilitating the access and giving visibility to infrastructures for R&D activities in Radiation Protection: AIR² and AIR²D²” (Almudena Real); “Is the use of reference organisms enough in radiological impact assessments to protect all species in a given environment?” (Juan Carlos Mora) and “Need to reduce uncertainties in environmental radiological impact assessments” (Alicia Escribano).

6^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Society of Medical Physics and the Spanish Society of Radiation Protection (July 2019)

The 6^th Joint Congress of the Spanish Society of Medical Physics and the Spanish Society of Radiation Protection was held in Burgos on June 11-14, 2019. In this Congress Juan Carlos Mora, responsible of the R&D line Radiological Impact of Artificial and Natural Radiation Sources, from the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, was co-chair of the Scientific Committee.

Different researchers from the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT had an active participation in the Congress. Almudena Real, Head of the Unit, chaired the round-table "Radiological Protection of the Environment", and presented together with Juan Carlos Mora the approaches developed by different international organizations (ICRP, IAEA, etc.) for the radiological protection of environment, as well as the tools available to evaluate and put into context the risks to biota arising from exposure to ionising radiation. In this round-table Francisco Yagüe Alvarez (Head of Environmental Management, Integrity of Materials and Waste, from Almaraz-Trillo Nuclear Power Plants) described the environmental monitoring programme that is carried out in the Spanish nuclear power plants of Almaraz and Trillo.

Finally, Juan Carlos Mora chaired the round-table “Radiation protection challenges in the transposition of the Directive 2013/59/794. Transposition of the European Directive 59/2013”. In this round-table all the activities related to the transposition of the Directive in which the Spanish Society of Radiation Protection has participated were presented, as well as the challenges associated to the transposition of the Directive in different radiation protection professional sectors.

The UPRPyMA actively participates in the workshop of the TERRITORIES project held in Oxford (UK), on March 19 and 20, 2019 (April 2019)

Within the framework of the European Horizon 2020 TERRITORIES project,on 18 and 19 March 2019 took place in Oxford (United Kingdom) the workshop "Assessing risks from radioactive legacy sites and how to better present uncertain information", in which the Unit of Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment (UPRPyMA) of CIEMAT actively participated.

The researchers of the Unit Almudena Real and Juan Carlos Mora, have been part of the Organizing Committee of the workshop. In addition, Juan Carlos Mora gave the conference "Protecting the public against radiation: Assessing the dose" and Almudena Real chaired the session dedicated to students and young researchers.

All the workshop information, including the presentations, is available at https://territories.eu/workshops

CIEMAT organizes a Workshop on decision making in the remediation of NORM sites (April 2019)

Within the framework of the European Horizon 2020 TERRITORIES project, the workshop “Decision-Making Criteria in the Remediation of NORM Sites” took place the last 6th of March 2019 in the city of Huelva (Spain). The workshop was organized by CIEMAT and it involved 14 representatives from universities, research centres, industry, environmental organizations, and local and regional authorities.

The objective of the workshop was to contribute to improve the decision-making process in the remediation of NORM (Naturally Ocurring Radioactive Materials) sites, based on the experience of attendees in the Huelva’s phosphogypsum case and; thus, promoting the direct involvement of stakeholders. Specifically, a Participatory Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis was carried out to identify what are the main criteria to be taken into account when a remediation strategy is being considered. Particular emphasis was placed on social criteria, trying to go in depth in the relevant aspects being considered by the local community, such as acceptance of the remediation option, confidence, and the information, communication and engagement strategies.

The debate generated among the different stakeholders during the workshop, allowed to identify, define and weight different technical, environmental, economic and social criteria and sub-criteria that should be considered when making a decision on the remediation strategy. The information gathered during the workshop will be analysed by CIEMAT and included in a deliverable for the European Commission. It is expected that the findings can contribute to the improvement of future decision-making processes of contaminated NORM sites.

https://territoriesweb.wordpress.com/

The EC approves the report D9.74 of the TERRITORIES project on the workshop held at CIEMAT in June 2018 (April 2019)

The report D9.74 “TERRITORIES Workshop on: Multidisciplinary forum to discuss the scientific basis for reducing uncertainties and improving risk assessment” summarises the talks given by experts in the different sessions, as well as the discussions held and conclusions reached on the workshop that took place in CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain, the 13 and 14 of June 2018.

The report can be downloaded in: https://territories.eu/assets/files/publications/D9_74_After-each-training_2nd-year_TERRITORIES_WS2018_2018-11-05_approved07112018.pdf

Meeting in CIEMAT of the work package 4 of the CONFIDENCE European Project (November 2018)

On November 13 and 14, 2018 took place in CIEMAT the coordination meeting of the work package 4 "Transition to long-term recovery, involving stakeholders in decision-making processes" of the European project CONFIDENCE. This work package is coordinated by Milagros Montero Prieto, responsible for the R&D line on Radiation Protection in Intervention Situations, of the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT.

The objective of the meeting was to present and discuss the results obtained so far in CONFIDENCE work package 4 and plan and coordinate the work for next year (http://projects.ciemat.es/web/confidence-wp4/).

Representatives of the UPRPYMA at the third meeting of the IAEA MODARIA-II programme (November 2018)

Juan Carlos Mora-Cañadas and Danyl Pérez-Sánchez, researchers from the Radiation Protection Unit of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, participate in the third technical meeting of the MODARIA-II (Modeling and Data for Radiological Impact Assessments) programme of the IAEA, held on October 22-25, 2018 at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna.

Within MODARIA-II, Juan Carlos Mora-Cañadas leads the working group 3 on "Assessments and control of public exposures and biota, for planned emissions to the environment", which has around 40 participants from 22 countries. The objective of the WG3 is to apply an integrated approach to study the impact of discharges into the environment from radioactive and nuclear facilities (e.g. power generation, medicine, research and industry), on people and biota. Based on the results obtained, it will be determined in which cases is necessary to make an explicit risk assessment of biota and in which cases such evaluation is not necessary, taking into account the expected radiological impact.

Danyl Pérez-Sánchez actively participates in the MODARIA-II Working Group 6 on “Biosphere Modeling for long-term safety assessments of high-activity waste storage facilities”. On this occasion, and within the framework of the working group 1 on “Evaluation and decision making in existing exposure situations in nuclear legacy sites and NORM”, he presented the preliminary results of the work that is being done in the European project TERRITORIES on the case of study of phosphogypsum ponds (NORM) of Huelva (https://territories.eu/assets/files/dissemination-presentations/sala-and-perez_D3-3-Spanish-case-study-and-panel_MODARIA-II-Oct2018.pdf)

Participation in the third European Radiological Protection Research Week (November (2018)

Blanca García Puerta and Almudena Real Gallego, from the Unit Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment of CIEMAT, participate in the third edition of the European Week of Radiological Protection Research, held on 1-5 October 2018 in Rovinj (Croatia).

Blanca García Puerta, currently a pre-doctoral student at CIEMAT, made an oral presentation on "Improving the decision-making process to minimize the impact in agricultural areas after a nuclear accident" at the session dedicated to young researchers.

Almudena Real, a researcher at CIEMAT and currently responsible for the Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment Unit, made the oral presentation "TERRITORIES Workshop on: Communication of uncertainties associated with radiological risk assessments to interested groups".

To download the program and the summary book, visit the event website https://erpw2018.com/