1The five other sponsoring organizations were the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD/NEA), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

2INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Objectives and Design of Environmental Monitoring Programmes for Radioactive Contaminants, Safety Series No. 41, IAEA, Vienna (1975); Monitoring of Airborne and Liquid Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Facilities to the Environment, Safety Series No. 46, IAEA, Vienna (1978).

3In the context of this Safety Guide, which concerns the radiation protection of the public against both present and future exposure, the term ‘long lived radionuclide’ is applied to radionuclides with half-lives of 30 years or more (e.g. ¹³⁷Cs), in contrast to the usual terminology in waste safety, where this term is usually used for radionuclides with half-lives of 1000 years or more.

4The references cited supersede the following IAEA safety standards: Techniques and Decision Making in the Assessment of Off-site Consequences of an Accident in a Nuclear Facility, Safety Series No. 86, IAEA, Vienna (1987); Response to a Radioactive Materials Release Having a Transboundary Impact, Safety Series No. 94, IAEA, Vienna (1989); Emergency Planning and Preparedness for Accidents Involving Radioactive Materials Used in Medicine, Industry, Research and Teaching, Safety Series No. 91, IAEA, Vienna (1989).

5In some States, the main responsibility for environmental monitoring lies with the regulatory body or with other governmental agencies, in general agreement with IAEA guidance [21].

6Indicator organisms are biota that may not be significant in relation to pathways of human exposure and are therefore not used for dose assessment purposes, but that concentrate radionuclides effectively and so can be utilized as sensitive indicators for assessing trends in environmental radiation levels and activity concentrations of radionuclides in the environment.

7OILs are typically expressed in terms of dose rates, activity of radioactive material released, time integrated air activity concentrations, ground or surface activity concentrations, or activity concentrations of radionuclides in environmental, food or water samples.

8The dynamic range is the range of dose rates or radionuclide concentrations that can reliably be measured by an on-line monitoring system. The lower bound is determined by the detection limit and the upper bound by the acceptable limit on the reliable response of the system as a result of saturation of the pulse counting system of the detector. An on-line monitoring system is a device, usually for the measurement of airborne or water borne activity, that continuously measures emissions from radionuclides flowing through a counting chamber or collected by sampling media at the location.

9Site specific data are data on important parameters used in assessment models that relate to the particular site of interest and that have been obtained for the purpose of the assessment. If site specific data are unavailable, generic estimates (default values) based on measurements made at other locations may be used.

10Screening (see Glossary) models are simple models that use conservative assumptions for the express purpose of identifying those radionuclides and exposure pathways that may be of negligible radiological significance in relation to public exposure due to a particular source in a particular environment.

11The IAEA is revising the requirements and guidance in the subject area of quality assurance as established in Safety Series No. 50-C/SG-Q (1996) for new safety standards on management systems for the safety of nuclear facilities and activities involving the use of ionizing radiation. The term ‘management system’ has been adopted in the revised standards instead of the terms ‘quality assurance’ and ‘quality assurance programme’. The new standards will integrate all aspects of managing a nuclear facility, including the safety, health, environmental and quality requirements, into one coherent system.