Geophysical Centre in Dourbes

Solar eruptions and energetic particle events will cause significant increase in the radiation levels within the Earth's atmosphere and even at ground level. Prolonged exposure to radiation represents a health hazard – risk that increases to airplane passengers and crews and to astronauts. The contemporary regulation require a close follow up of the occupational radiation burden of aircrew. The current regulations require that air-companies have to protect their employees and explicitly determine the annual dose in the cases when the latter might have surpassed the threshold of 1 mSv/year . More information can be find on the site of the  FANC.

The main objective is to develop and maintain an own Belgian code for the evaluation of the radiation doses on board airplanes. Currently there is discrepancy between the free and commercially available codes with the applied ICRP 103 dose conversion factors. These performance issues are addressed in validation studies within the EURADOSE WG 11 under Task 1.