IRPA 12 Congress
IRPA-12 - Buenos-Aires, Argentina, October 2008.
The twelfth international congress of the International Radiation Protection Association took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina 20-24 October, 2008. The event which was co-cosponsored by the IAEA attracted over 1,300 participants from 90 countries and was the largest international meeting on radiation protection to date. more
Opening Ceremony
Eliana Amaral, Director of the Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety (NSRW) addressed the opening ceremony of the Congress on behalf of the IAEA presenting a message from its Director General, Mr. ElBaradei, in which she outlined the challenges facing the IAEA due to the increasing uses of ionizing radiation and the newcomers in the nuclear energy field and the role of the IRPA and the radiation protection community as a whole.
Director Amaral also presented the activities of NSRW in working towards a harmonised Global Nuclear Safety Regime in the panel on “radiation protection in practice - towards harmonization” where several UN agencies, EC and NEA were represented. In addition she participated a meeting with the current and future Chair of IRPA to discuss how to proceed in order to make the relationship between IAEA and IRPA more effective.
Areas identified for future collaboration were in professional recognition, development of safety standards, dialogue with radiation protection professionals though the IRPA Associate Societies and their networks and in the area of guidelines for professional stemming from the IRPA code of ethics.
Panel on “radiation protection in practice - towards harmonization”
The congress featured an extensive technical programme with in three sections; Epistemology - status of levels and effects of radiation exposure, the Radiation protection paradigm and Radiation safety in practice. The three section included in total twenty refresher training courses, three seminars, three poster sessions, eight plenary sessions and forty technical sessions. The meeting had 1336 participants, 35 exhibitors and 1491 contributed papers. A number of Special Plenary sessions were included in the programme with presentations by representatives from UNSCEAR and WHO on the Status of Levels and Effects of Radiation; ICNIRP, ICRP, and ICRU on Harmonization of Recommendations; and members of the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety (IAEA, EC, PAHO, WHO, ILO, NEA) on Radiation Safety in Practice: Towards an International Safety Regime. Additional Special Plenaries were devoted to Low Dose and Low-Dose-Rate Effects and Models (NCRP), the Epistemology of Radiation Protection, Radiation Protection Paradigm and Stakeholder Involvement in Decision Making. All papers and training material from the congress will be available on the IRPA 12 and IRPA websites in the near future. A summary of the various technical sessions is also being prepared for inclusion in the meeting record. One of the highlights of the Congress was the presentation of the Sievert Lecture. The lecture is presented by the recipient of the Sievert Award who was Professor Christian Streffer from Germany. He presented an excellent lecture entitled Radiological Protection: Challenges and Fascinations of Biological Research. In the presentation he outlined the limitations faced by epidemiological studies in providing low dose radiation effects information. He went on to provide an excellent review of recent biological studies at the molecular level that are extending dose effects information to lower levels than is currently possible through statistical studies.
