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Frequently Asked Questions

Basic principles of radiation protection

The principles of radiation protection and safety are presented in the International Basic Safety for Protection against Ionizing Radiation or in appropriate National Regulations (Standards).

Summary of the principles is as follows:

-           practice that entails or that could entail exposure to radiation should only be adopted if it yields sufficient benefit to the exposed individuals or to society to outweigh the radiation detriment it causes or could cause (i.e. the practice mint be justified);

-           individual doses due to the combination of exposures from all relevant practices should not exceed specified dose limits;

-           radiation sources and installations should be provided with the best available protection and safety measures under the prevailing circumstances, so that the magnitudes and likelihood of exposures and the numbers of individuals exposed be as low as reasonably achievable, economic and social factors being taken into account, and the doses they deliver and the risk they entail be constrained (i.e. protection and safety should be optimized);

-           radiation exposure due to sources of radia­tion that are not part of a practice should be reduced by intervention when this is justified, and the intervention measures should be optimized; the legal person autho­rized to engage in a practice involving a source of radiation should bear the primary responsibility for protection and safety;

-           safety culture should be inculcated that governs the attitudes and behavior in relation to protection and safety of all individuals and organizations dealing with sources of radiation; in-depth defensive measures should be incorporated into the design and operating procedures for radia­tion sources to compensate for potential failures in protection or safety measures; and

-           protection and safety should be ensured by sound management and good engineer­ing, quality assurance, training and qualification of personnel, comprehensive safety assessments and attention to lessons learned from experience and research.

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