RE: Germany: Costly radiation protection (Nucleonics Week June 7, p.6-8)

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@AECL.CA>]

Bjorn Cedervall wrote,



I wonder if anyone could comment the revision of German radiation standards.



The following is from the intro. of a text in Nucleoniccs Week (June 7, 

2001, p.6-8):

<SNIP>



For you who have access to Nucleonics Week - any comments to the rest of the



text will also be greatly appreciated.

<SNIP>



....just so everyone knows what's being discussed here, this is the text in

question:





NUCLEONICS WEEK - June 7, 2001 

GERMAN RAD LAW CARRIES HEFTY PRICE

TAG-BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE

Following intensive lobbying by German industry and

scientific organizations, the upper house of the German parliament

agreed June 1 to a new proposed radiation protection

ordinance (SSV) that, even in its altered form, may cost as

much as DM 2-billion to implement.

It could have cost even more, industry officials say, had

not the Bundesrat passed it only on condition that key rules

for nuclear installations, sought by top nuclear regulator Juergen

Trittin, were dropped. The rules, which would have required

complete rewrite and relicensing of facility emergency

plans based on new European Union (EU) personal dose

ceilings, would have punished operators of nuclear facilities

and set back licensing of repositories, industry representatives

told legislators.

Nonetheless, industry experts said after the Bundesrat

vote, the changes in rules and practices called for by the new

SSV are so thoroughgoing that the cost of adjusting to the

new ordinance-assuming that the federal government bows

to the Bundesrat's recommendations-will amount to between

DM 1- and 2-billion (U.S.$434- and $868-million).

The new SSV was mandated by changes in EU law which

incorporated recommendations from the International Commission

on Radiological Protection (ICRP), particularly reducing

ceilings for professionals using radiation from 50

milliSievert per year to 20 mSv/y and for non-professionals

from 1.5 to 1 mSv/y.

Germany, like all other EU states, began amending national

rules during the late 1990s to meet an EU deadline of mid-2000.

But in late 1998, German voters elected a new government

coalition of formally antinuclear Social Democrats

(SPD) and Greens, and the federal government's leading

radiation protection scientific body, the Radiation Protection

Commission (SSK), was immediately exposed to the political

agenda of the new SPD-Green rulers.

Trittin, a Green and Federal Minister of Environment

& Nuclear Safety (BMU), dissolved the SSK at the end of

1998 and in early 1999 amended its statute and staffed it

anew, appointing persons affiliated with the movement in

Germany to end the use of nuclear energy.

Last month, the chairwoman of SSK, Maria Blettner,

resigned. In an open letter to Trittin, Blettner May 14 complained

that Trittin had politically used the SSK and hindered

its scientific work, in particular by naming appointees based

on their political qualifications (NW, 24 May, 6).

Blettner told Nucleonics Week that interference from

BMU had prevented SSK from meeting the EU's 2000 deadline

for adapting German radiation protection rules. That

work was concluded only this spring. Last week, German

legislators rejected some of Trittin's recommendations while

accepting modifications which harmonize German guidelines

with EU rules approved in 1993.

Rules Too Costly

Industry asserted that the new rules would cost firms,

researchers, and medical institutions billions to comply. The

Bundesrat, which represents the German states, June 1 reject-

ed some provisions of the proposed law after it had concluded

that Germany's 16 states would face costs of about DM 10-

million ($4.3-million) per year to implement the changes.

Under German parliamentary procedure, the recommendation

by the Bundesrat must be followed by BMU and the

federal government. If the federal government does not agree

to drop passages the Bundesrat rejected, the entire package

cannot be enacted and the existing SSV will be retained.

In particular, the states' chamber rejected changes Trittin

sought to existing licensing guidelines for nuclear installations.

In line with the lowering of dose ceilings from 50 mSv/

y to 20 mSv/y, Trittin's SSV text had ordained that accident

management planning procedures at installations be based on

the new EU-wide personal dose ceilings. This new rule had

unleashed protest from power reactor operators and utility

management concerned with the licensing of waste repositories.

Industry officials said that fresh planning guidelines for

accidents would delay for years licensing of the beleaguered

German national low-level and medium-level waste repository

project at the former Konrad iron mine.

According to one industry official, Trittin's move to require

that accident planning for nuclear installations be based

on the ICRP recommendations for personal doses "is completely

arbitrary. There is no new technical baseline for this,

and it isn't being considered elsewhere in the EU."

The Bundesrat rejected the imposition of new ceilings

for accident planning at installations "after the states grasped

what that would have cost" in licensing paperwork, this expert

said. The states were "encouraged" by industry to reject

the proposed measure, he said, but some states which rejected

it also supported retaining some stipulations from the older

radiation ordinance which more recent research suggests are

obsolete. By a vote of 9-7, the states retained ceilings on

organ doses, even though "it is now clear that these don't

make any sense and aren't scientifically justified," the expert said.

An industry official remarked that the new proposed SSV

"virtually replaced every paragraph" of the old regulations

with new ones, making necessary the compilation of new

radiation protection handbooks for every application in Germany.

The new SSV "is a completely new document, and the

cost of adjusting to it will be very high," he said. According

to one industry estimate of adjustment cost passed on to legislators

in recent weeks, the total tab will be as high as DM 2-billion.

Political pressure on legislators to accept or reject the

proposed rules was great right up to the end. In a statement

last week, Trittin warned the Bundesrat not to torpedo the

proposed rules, arguing that in rejecting the new rules, the

states would refuse to adopt valid public health norms "in

order to balance their budgets."

At the same time, environmental and antinuclear organizations

urged the states to reject the new rules because they

did not go far enough. In particular, these groups charged that

Trittin had caved in to industry by agreeing to guidelines

which would allow a large volume of scrap metal recovered

during the decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear installations

to be reused for conventional applications.

-Mark Hibbs, Bonn

POLITICAL INFIGHTING UNDER WAY

OVER FUTURE OF GERMAN RAD PANEL

Federal Minister of Environment & Nuclear Safety

(BMU) Juergen Trittin has begun discussions with members

of the government's Radiation Protection Commission (SSK)

to choose a successor to the chairwoman who quit last month.

She charged Trittin and BMU had politically interfered with

the panel's work.

Maria Blettner, an epidemiologist from the University of

Bielefeld, resigned from SSK May 14 (NW, 24 May, 6).

Since then, eight of 14 SSK members have signed a letter to

Trittin, backing Blettner and seeking a discussion to resolve

issues which led Blettner to quit.

Since then, sources said, Trittin has discussed the matter

with SSK members including the body's two co-vice-chairmen,

Guenter Dietze and Wolfgang Koehnlein. Trittin has

also discussed the future of the SSK with Blettner.

In late May, some experts close to the panel said that

four members of SSK had urged the whole group of eight to

resign. One of these said that Blettner's open letter to Trittin,

which was posted on the University of Bielefeld website,

"was harmless and didn't go far enough, given the level of the

government's interference" with Germany's leading radiation

protection advisory body. But the majority of the eight scientists

instead sought a "dialogue" with Trittin in the interest of

assuring that mainstream radiation protection experts would

continue to staff the organization, officials said.

According to radiation protection experts in German industry

this week, political jockeying surrounding the succession

to Blettner revolves in part around the future of Koehnlein,

a scientist who is close to Trittin's ruling Greens and

who has repeatedly claimed that the dangers of ionizing radiation

are seriously underestimated.

Koehnlein, a radiation biologist from the University of

Muenster, was appointed to SSK in 1999 by Trittin. Trittin

disbanded the previous SSK soon after taking office at BMU

in late 1998. Koehnlein has been associated with a non-official

health physics group, the Society for Radiation Protection

(GSS). GSS and its members have made alarming claims

about the effects of radiation related to the Chernobyl accident,

transports of spent fuel, and depleted uranium munitions.

Other members of GSS include Horst Kuni, a Marburg

University physician whose attempted appointment to SSK by

Trittin last month triggered Blettner's resignation, and Inge

Schmitz-Feuerhake, a scientist from the University of Bremen

who has long asserted without substantiation that a serious

nuclear accident in Germany was covered up and caused a

leukemia cluster.

Experts among the eight SSK members who supported

Blettner's resignation said they sought to assure that, if Blettner

did not reach agreement with Trittin and return, she would

be replaced by Dietze, an expert at the German Bureau of

Standards (PTB) who is described as conforming to Germany's

scientific mainstream. "At any rate the last thing (the

majority on SSK) want is for Koehnlein to be put in charge,"

a radiation protection expert in German industry said June 5.

Telephone calls to Koehnlein's office at the University of

Muenster were not answered last week and this week.



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