RP2020?

[Rennhack]

As you are all aware, the populations of Radiation Safety Technicians and Health Physicists are declining rapidly with a minimal pipeline of replacements.  Recently an article published in the summer NRRPT Newsletter entitled "RP2020?", this shortage was outlined and help was requested from the current population of radiation safety personnel.  Below is that article by Tim J. Kirkham, Principal Health Physicist at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.  It is reprinted here with his permission.

RP2020?

No RP2020 is not the new dose goal for the industry nor is it a new technology to measure EDE.  RP2020 is a Radiation Protection Strategic Plan developed to help determine what the field will look like in the year 2020.  This article will explain the meaning of RP2020 but not until I share a little industry background.

To prove what we already know, Figure 1 shows how dose to radiation workers has been steadily decreasing up to about 1998.  Granted, this is not total dose or even dose per worker because it only includes doses above 1 Rem.  Does this mean that ALARA has reached its end point?  Of course not, but it does indicate that more efforts need to be put into dose reduction techniques and hints toward development of new innovative techniques for dose reduction.  Furthermore, considering the possibility of an NRC adjustment in the annual dose limit from 5 Rem/year to 2 Rem/year, this chart implies that we cannot wait for "someone else" to figure it out or wait for the new generation of nuclear power plants.


Figure 2 shows the Radiation Protection cost in dollars per Megawatt-hour.  Again, you can see where our costs were slowly reducing until about 2002.  Why?  I could speculate but then that would only get me in trouble.  The real message is that we must find a way to become more efficient at protecting our workforce from radiation exposure; especially considering that all power companies are reducing their radiation protection budgets while expecting our performance indicators to improve.


Somebody Stop the Madness
Now that I have your attention – this is what RP2020 is all about.  NEI (Nuclear Energy Institute), in conjunction with INPO and EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute), initiated a program a few years ago aimed at determining what the industry was going to look like in the year 2020.  The Health Physics Task Force of NEI decided that to determine the future of radiation protection, an initiative would be needed that began planning now for our future; this became known as RP2020. 

Several planning/brainstorming sessions were held and, in a nutshell, several challenges presented themselves for our future:
•   Radiological Protection performance and cost trends are not improving
•   Workforce turnover is projected to increase with difficulty replacing staff and retaining knowledge
•   Emerging RP standards imply lower dose limits and increased regulatory burden

These challenges are really opportunities in disguise – right?  By initiating a plan to address these challenges now, we can influence our industry in the future. 
1)   We need to organize and focus industry RP resources in a common mission
2)   Update the RP paradigm to reflect advances in science, policy and practice
3)   Reform RP regulations and oversight to reduce unnecessary burden

The RP2020 plan
Mission Statement for RP2020
Reshape radiological protection at nuclear power plants to achieve significant improvements in safety performance and cost-effectiveness


Priority Issues
In order for this industry to apply its resources to identified issues, we needed to determine our main issues and then 'bin' them into priority areas.  They fell out into 4 main priorities:
•   Staffing
o   Providing support and advice for ongoing industry workforce initiatives
o   Develop programs to preserve and transfer current RP knowledge base to the next generation
o   Develop an industry program to align industry resource allocations to minimize the impact of workforce trends
•   Standardization
o   Develop a structure and process for standardizing criteria and practices where appropriate to achieve increased effectiveness and efficiency
o   Develop standardized training and qualification programs for RP technicians and rad-workers documented through a PADS-like system
o   Develop standardized guidelines for technology implementation
•   Technology
o   Develop an industry program to identify and integrate new technologies into RP and plant processes in an effective and efficient manner
o   Develop an industry program to assess and improve the effectiveness of existing technologies implemented in RP programs
o   Develop an enhanced dose-field reduction program
•   RP Standards
o   Support ongoing initiatives to influence emerging RP standards to be science-based and flexible
o   Develop an industry program to align industry dose performance to minimize the impact of emerging RP standards

Teams of Task Force members have been assigned tasks under these priority areas and have begun developing measures of success, deliverables and future steps.  Table 1 shows these proposed measures of success.


Several organizations are involved in this work –
INPO            EPRI
      NEI            BWR ALARA owners group
      ISOE-North American    Technical Center (NATC)
      NRRPT         American Nuclear Insurers (ANI)
      Joint Defense Group      Nuclear Suppliers Association
      ANS (invited)         PWR ALARA owners group (invited)
      Health Physics Society (invited)

As you can see, the NRRPT is a part of this work and the organization has formed an Ad Hoc Committee to work with NEI on this project.

What does this mean to me?
Obviously, there is a lot more information and work being done in all these areas and I will not enumerate them here.  The purpose for this article is to communicate to all of you what is being done to ensure our future as Health Physics and Radiation Protection professionals.  The first thing you can do to help this endeavor is to complete a survey that has been posted on the NRRPT web site.    If you do not have access to the Web, or would prefer completing a hard copy, please contact the author.  Our representative (the author of this article) is a member of the Staffing project and has taken the task of assessing our technician work-force as to the why's and why-not's of our aging workforce.

The NRRPT has a poll on their site that I urge EVERYONE to take.  The survey will only take a few minutes to complete.  You do not need to be a member of the NRRPT to take the survey.  The current shortage affects all professionals in our field.  The data from the survey will be collected and included in the NEI RP2020 staffing study, as well as the newly established HPS RP2020 study.  I will try to get a copy of the data as well.

It is at this address of the poll:
http://www.nrrpt.org/index.cfm/pageID/50

[alphadude]

interesting plea, however there are many roadblocks placed by the industry that prevent the qualified from working- i am not talking about FFD. The double secret probation lists took its toll, and nuclear power made an intentional decission to NOT produce entry level technical staff. (with EPRI and INPO help i might add). Back in the late 80's and early 90s, entry level programs were placed on the back burner. then in the mid 90s entry level programs were done away with to increase profits for the utilities. At present, HP rent a techs have a tuff time making a living off of 4 months work a year. a solution to that would be raise pay very high to off set the lack of work, but the monoploy of the body shops sets the standards and there is no hope there. Do what utilities and body shops did back in the early 80s- $$$$$$$$$ raise pay. When i left the road in 1982 I was making almost $20 an hour with perdiam. Then the utilities raised their pay and I went to work for them. Its all about the money..... otherwise i would be a Rabbi or monk.

[Rennhack]

If you havent taken this poll, please do so, it's located at this link:

http://www.nrrpt.org/index.cfm/pageID/50