IAEA/RCA Project Planning Meeting of the RCA Project on ‘Establishing a Benchmark for Assessing the Radiological Impact of Nuclear Power Activities on the Marine Environment in the Asia-Pacific Region’ will be held from 11-15 June 2007 in Sydney, Australia in cooperation with the Government of Australia through the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

The Meeting aims at 1) assisting RCA Member States in developing and strengthening coordinated regional marine radioactivity monitoring programmes and in ensuring that the results are useful, verifiable and transferable (i.e. harmonized) to meet regional objectives, 2) refining dose assessment from the ingestion pathway of seafood by establishing transfer factors that are specific and more appropriate to the species found in the region, 3) establishing a system for maintaining and updating the regional database to serve as a repository of new data generated from the monitoring programmes and enhance the utility of this regional resource for analyzing trends and understanding the fate and behavior of key radionuclides in the marine environment, and 4) establishing a documented quality management system (QMS) for marine radioactivity monitoring programmes as well as data generated by Member States.