A new regulation on the prevention and control of radioactive pollution will be established next year in east China's Jiangsu Province, a local environmental official said last week at a seminar on the control of radioactive material in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu.

 

According to Liu Jianlin, head of the Management Department for Nuclear Safety and Radioactivity under the Jiangsu Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau (JEPB), more than 4,000 organizations and companies in the province used radioactive technology or equipment and 1,000 of them owned radioactive energy sources.

Of the 8,071 radioactive energy sources found in the province so far 7,502 are in use while 569 have been suspended. The number of radioactive energy sources is increasing at 10 to 15 percent every year as demand grows for nuclear technology, said Liu during the seminar.

 

"Due to the imperceptibility of the hidden risks of nuclear radiation and the imperfect management of radioactive energy sources there's an urgent need for specific regulations in the field to ensure the safety of the environment and human health," said Yao Xiaoqing, deputy director of the JEPB.

 

According to Yao, the new regulation aims to govern organizations and companies involved in nuclear and electromagnetic radioactive energy use in public security and for industrial, agricultural, scientific and medical use.

 

The regulation, which is currently being drafted by experts in the field, will be sent to the local People's Congress by the end of this year and come into effect in 2007.  

 

Jiangsu is one of several provinces that houses large quantities of radioactive energy sources and equipment. The majority of the sources detected here have already been brought within the national safety standard, said Yao.

 

Both Suzhou and Nanjing, home to about half the radioactive energy sources in the province, have already set up nuclear safety and radioactivity supervisory administrative centers to watch over their sources.

 

And the province's storage bank for abandoned radioactive energy sources has brought more than 1,000 of them under control since it went into operation in 1995.

 

The province has launched a campaign to improve the professionalism of staff directly involved in the production, export and import, sale, use, transport, storage and disposal of radiation sources, aimed at promoting safety awareness and providing training and examinations.

 

To better supervise radioactive energy sources the province requires producers to code each source to make it traceable after being sold. JEPB staff said that coding makes it easier for officials to trace missing radioactive energy sources that could be stolen and sold on.

 

(China Daily August 14, 2006)