As part of the UK continuing to transpose Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom into our legislation there have been some amendments made to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.
Today, 2nd May 2018, The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2018 come into force.
One of the key amendments in the new legislation is to Schedule 23 of EPR2016 concerning radioactive substances activities by the insertion of “geothermal energy production” as being a “type 2 NORM industrial activity”.
A new provision disallowing dilution has been added meaning that “where the concentration of radioactivity in a substance or article is reduced by diluting it to make it out of scope, it will remain in scope.”
Paragraph 8 substitutes new out of scope concentration values for some radionuclides arising from NORM industrial activities (column 2 of Table 1 in Part 3), and paragraph 9 replaces the table of out of scope concentration values, inserting new values for some radionuclides for the purposes of the definitions of radioactive material and waste (Table 2 in Part 3).
Paragraph 16 substitutes a new definition of high-activity sealed source, by reference to Annex III of the Basic Safety Standards Directive which sets out new radioactivity values for radionuclides contained in a sealed source.
There are various other amendments but the ones stated above are probably the key ones for you to be aware of.