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 abolishment 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” 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 the recommendation from the Council, will abolish the ministerial ordinance without delay.
Key points of the revision are as follows (See Annex 3 for details.)
* For the work to maintain reactor cooling function or function to restrict the release of radioactive materials, the upper radiation exposure dose limit for emergency work, i.e. 100 mSv will be applied to workers in accordance with the Article 7 of the Ionizing Radiation Ordinance.
* As a transitional measure, for workers who have been engaged in the emergency work at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and whose effective dose that had received during the emergency work had already been larger than the 100 mSv and who cannot be substituted with other workers (Note 2) because of their high level expertise and experiences inevitable for the work to keep the cooling function of the reactor facility (Note 1), the upper dose limit of 250 mSv will be applied during the period up to 30 April 2012