Procedures

Written operating procedures must be developed and made available to anyone that will be working with radiation sources or X-ray producing equipment. These procedures must be specific to the equipment and its use in a particular application. Simply making the equipment manufacturers operating instructions available to workers does not satisfy this requirement. The operating procedure must be followed at all times unless written permission to deviate is received from the Radiation Safety Officer.

Standard Operating Procedures

As a minimum, operating procedures must include instructions for the following:

• Appropriate handling and use of licensed sealed sources and radiographic exposure devices so that no person is likely to be exposed to radiation doses in excess of the established exposure limits.
• Methods and occasions for conducting radiation surveys.
• Methods for controlling access to radiographic areas.
• Methods and occasions for locking and securing radiographic exposure devices, transport and storage containers and sealed sources.
• Personnel monitoring and the use of personnel monitoring equipment.
• Transporting sealed sources to field locations, including packing of radiographic exposure devices and storage containers in the vehicles, placarding of vehicles when needed, and control of the sealed sources during transportation.
• The inspection, maintenance, and operability checks of radiographic exposure devices, survey instruments, transport containers, and storage containers.
• The procedure(s) for identifying and reporting defects and noncompliance.
• Maintenance of records.

Emergency Procedures

Procedures must also be developed that guide workers in the event of an emergency. A few of the items that could be covered include:

• Steps that must be taken immediately by radiography personnel in the event a pocket dosimeter is found to be off-scale or an alarm ratemeter alarms unexpectedly.
• Steps for minimizing exposure of persons in the event of an accident.
• The procedure for notifying proper persons in the event of an accident.
• Radioactive source recovery procedure if licensee will perform the recovery.