Industrial Health Division
Occupational Safety and Health Department
Labour Standards Bureau
Press Release
Consultation with and recommendation from the Labor Policy Council on “the outline of the draft Ministerial Ordinance for partial revision of exemption in the Ordinance on Prevention of Ionizing Radiation Hazards in response to the situation resulting from the Tohoku - Pacific Ocean Earthquake in 2011”
| -Maximum radiation exposure dose workers receiving at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant will be reduced from 250 mSv to 100 mSv – |
The Minister of the Health, Labour and Welfare had consulted with the Labor Policy Council (Chaired by Yasuo Suwa, Professor of Hosei Graduate School of Regional Policy Design) about “the outline of the draft Ministerial Ordinance for partial revision of exemption in the Ordinance on Prevention of Ionizing Radiation Hazards in response to situation resulting from the Tohoku- Pacific Ocean Earthquake in 2011” as shown in Annex 1. The topic has been discussed in the Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (Chaired by Koji Aizawa, Vice-president of Kitasato University). Today, based on the discussion, the Council issued a recommendation as shown in Annex 2 to the Minister of the Health, Labour and Welfare.
The Ministry of the Health, Labour and Welfare, in accordance with a recommendation from the Council, will revise the ministerial ordinance without delay.
Key points of the revision are as follows (See Annex 3 for details)
Key points:
- The dose limit for workers engaged in the emergency work was increased from 100 mSv to 250 mSv for unavoidable cases to prevent expansion of the disaster at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on 14 March 2011.
- The revision will reduce the increased dose limit to the original 100 mSv for workers who will be engaged in the emergency work after the revision date.
* In case of unavoidable emergency and in the case of responding to troubles designated by the Minister of the Health, Labour and Welfare, the dose limit of 250 mSv will be applied as exemption;
- Emergency actions to respond to loss of cooling functions at the reactor cooling facility or loss of functions at the radioactivity confinement facility that restricts release of radioactive materials to off-site, which could result in radiation doses in excess of 0.1 mSv/h.
* The dose limit of 250 mSv will be applied to workers who have already been engaged in the emergency work at the revision date (1 November 2011)
Annexes
- Annex 1 (PDF) PDF 123KB
- Annex 2 (PDF) PDF 162KB
- Annex 3 (PDF) PDF 159KB