Following consultation, the extended Part 2A regime including radioactivity came into force on 4 August 2006 (this was extended to include nuclear licensed sites in 2007). The regime also implements the requirements of articles 48 and 53 (concerned with ‘intervention’) of Council Directive 96/29/Euratom (BSS Directive). This lays down the basic safety standards to protect the health of workers and the general public against the dangers from ionising radiation.
The extended regime provides a system to identify and remediate land, where contamination is causing lasting exposure to radiation of human beings and where ‘intervention’ is liable to be justified.
Defra recently reviewed the contaminated land regime in England and found the primary legislation remained fit for purpose. However there were flaws in the accompanying Statutory Guidance which had undermined the effectiveness of the regime and created considerable regulatory uncertainty.
The Defra web pages provide more details on this review and the recent public consultation on proposals for changes to the contaminated land regime:
The flaws in the statutory guidance do not apply to the regime for radioactive contamination because determination of radioactive contaminated land is dependent on dose to humans which is measurable and therefore there are no regulatory changes to the radioactive contaminated land regime. However, to help reduce the complexity of the arrangements for both radioactive and non-radioactive contaminated land, the guidance which currently covers both radioactive and non-radioactive contamination has been reissued as separate guidance documents to increase clarity.
Revised statutory guidance covering radioactive contaminated land came into force on Friday 6th April 2012.
Revised statutory guidance covering conventional contaminated land can be found on the Defra: contaminated land web pages.
The Industry profile series of documents provides background information on many of the activities which have given rise to land contamination, and on factors which may help identify sources of contamination. This is the industry profile specifically for land uses that may be subject to radiological contamination:
The Radioactively Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment (RCLEA) is the recommended model for radiation exposure assessments in connection with the Part 2A regime. It is based on the Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment (CLEA) methodology for non-radioactive contaminated land.
The RCLEA can be used to carry out initial screening assessments or as the sole modelling tool to determine land as radioactively contaminated, provided all the conditions in the statutory guidance are met. More information can be found on the Environment Agency: Radioactive contaminated land exposure assessment web page.