News

After the successful implementation of the Strategy for the EURAMET Technical Committee for Ionising Radiation (TC IR), the TC now focuses on closer collaboration with industry. The annual meeting of the TC IR Contact Persons in Prague (17 to 18 October 2013) was the perfect place to develop the next steps.

Two Working Groups have been agreed to ensure the implementation of the strategy and to respond to current needs of the specific industries. Working Group Healthcare will be related to healthcare projects and Working Group Radionuclides will be covering the nuclear industry, decommissioning, environmental radioactivity and research for homeland security and climate change.

“The goal of the working groups is to establish a closer and formal collaboration with relevant industrial partners, standard committees and academia in order to continue to develop successful joint research proposals in the future” explains Lena Johansson, Chair of the Technical Committee for Ionising Radiation. Currently, the TC IR is taking part in eight joint research projects within the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) and has three proposals submitted in the 2013 EMRP Energy and Environment call. The contacts and dissemination routes established in these projects will act as a sound foundation for the task of the working groups.

The TC IR includes 26 countries and the European Commission and holds approximately 2000 Calibration and Measurement Capability (CMC) claims. This is half of all CMCs in the field of Ionising Radiation worldwide and a significant part of the overall international CMC claims. A third working group on CMCs and Comparisons will ensure that the CMC claims are maintained within the TC IR and that relevant key comparison exercises to support these claims are initiated.

Two important surveys have commenced this year that will support the TC to gain a clear view on important strategic issues. One investigates the legislation for ionising radiation calibrations in European countries and the other looks into the distribution of capabilities in the member countries. The result of the surveys will be available as soon as they are evaluated.

“Our heartfelt thanks go to the host of our TC IR meeting, the Czech Metrology Institute (CMI) and its General Director, Pavel Klenovský. Everything was magnificently organised by our colleagues from CMI.” comments Lena Johansson (NPL, UK). The next meeting of the TC IR will be held in Oslo in the autumn of 2014.    

For more information on TC IR visit http://www.euramet.org/index.php?id=tc-ir