Original Tender Description
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is responsible for food safety in England, Northern Ireland and Wales (Food Standards Act, 1999) and thereby undertakes monitoring and dose assessments of the food safety implications of radioactive wastes discharges to the environment. FSA’s radiological monitoring programme establishes radioactivity concentrations within the vicinity of, and at distance from, nuclear licensed sites and demonstrates that radioactivity from manmade sources does not compromise food safety and are within national and EU acceptable limits of 1 mSv per annum. The FSA programmes conform to the requirements in Article 35 and 36 (Directive 96/29/Euratom) laying down Basic Safety Standards (Directive 2013/59/Euratom) for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation. The purpose of this contract is to deliver a combined sampling/radioanalytical programme that is cost-efficient and effective in meeting the FSA’s statutory requirements and provides resilience in the event of a radiological emergency/incident in the UK. The work requires collection, preparation and radioanalysis of aquatic and terrestrial food samples, and the timely reporting of information and results in specified formats, from locations around the nuclear sites (and away) across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The results will then be used to estimate the radiological exposure (doses) to consumers