Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

21 November 2011
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 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”

An exemption to apply the dose limit of 250 mSv for emergency workers at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant will be abolished.

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.)


Key points:

  • The upper dose limit for the workers engaged in the emergency work that had been 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, was reduced from 250 mSv to 100 mSv except for certain work specified by the Minister of the Health, Labour and Welfare on 1 November 2011.
  • The proposed revision abolishes the increased upper dose limit of 250 mSv applied to exemption specified by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare with the completion of the process (Step 2) to achieve the state of cold shutdown at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Subsequently, the dose limits specified in the Article 4 of the Ordinance on Prevention of Ionizing Radiation Hazards will be applied to the radiation work (50 mSv/year and 100 mSv/5 years)*

* 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


Note 1: The case in which one of following types of work will be conducted in the reactor facility and steam turbine and its auxiliary facility or areas around them with potential ambient dose rate may exceed 0.1 mSv/h:

  1. Work to maintain cooling functions of the reactor facility or spent fuel storage pool,
  2. Work to maintain radioactive material release restriction functions

Note 2: Approximately 50 employees of TEPCO


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