1“An ‘authorized party’ is the person or organization responsible for an authorized facility or an authorized activity that gives rise to radiation risks who has been granted written permission (i.e. authorized) by the regulatory body or another governmental body to perform specified activities. The ‘authorized party’ for an authorized facility or activity is usually the operating organization or the registrant or licensee (although forms of authorization other than registration or licensing may apply)” [2].

2“Public information activities shall reflect the radiation risks associated with facilities and activities, in accordance with a graded approach” [2].

3A ‘satisfaction committee’ generally consists of representatives of the regulatory body, the public and other relevant interested parties, including the media, non-governmental organizations and governmental bodies. At their meetings, members of the satisfaction committee will review the extent to which the communication and consultation process has improved the credibility, transparency and openness of the regulatory body and enhanced satisfaction levels.

4INES is used to classify events according to their safety significance to facilitate a common understanding between the technical community, the media and the public. INES comprises seven levels from 1 (anomaly) to 7 (major accident). Events without safety significance are classified as “below scale/Level 0”, and events that have no safety relevance with respect to radiation or nuclear safety are not classified on the scale. As highlighted in the definition of the term ‘accident’ in the IAEA Safety Glossary [33] (italic denotes a term with an entry in the IAEA Safety Glossary):“There is a fundamental mismatch between the terminology used in safety standards and the designations used in INES. In short, events that would be considered accidents according to the safety standards definition may be accidents or incidents (i.e. not accidents) in INES terminology”.This definition also points out that this discrepancy is “a potential cause of confusion in communication with the news media and the public”. The emergency response classification system is not to be confused with INES. INES is used for communicating to the public the severity or estimated severity of an event and cannot be used as the basis for emergency response actions [10]. The relevant IAEA publications provide more information on INES [10, 17, 34, 35].

11 INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, IAEA Safety Glossary: Terminology Used in Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection, 2016 Revision, IAEA, Vienna (in preparation).