Radiation Protection
Once the BfS had taken over the Asse II mine, it implemented for the first time a complete, verifiable and quality-assured radiation protection regime. To meet the legal requirements in terms of radiation protection, the BfS developed
The radiation protection regulation determines, among others, radiation protection areas and defines “potentially hazardous sites”.
For operational safety reasons the BfS has sealed the last emplacement chambers that were still open. Thus also the radiation exposure due to volatile radionuclides has reduced (in particular radon-222).
The assessed radiation exposure in the Asse repository is too low for there to be a proven link to cancer among members of staff. That is the result of the first step of the Asse health monitoring (GM Asse) which was presented by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) on 10 February 2011. The BfS has assessed in retrospect the radiation exposure to the members of staff for the period from 1967 until 2008. For this purpose available measuring and employment data of the former operator Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) was verified with regard to its completeness and comprehensibility and compared with data from other sources. Furthermore members of staff were interviewed on a random basis. However, it cannot be ruled out that in individual cases people were exposed to higher levels of radiation that were not documented.
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