The Ministry of Health’s Office of Radiation Safety (ORS) administers the Radiation Safety Act 2016 and the Radiation Safety Regulations 2016 on behalf of the New Zealand Government. This legislation controls all dealings with ionising radiation. For information about non-ionising radiation and radiofrequency such as 5G, please visit Non-ionising radiation page under Environmental Health.
Key requirements of the Radiation Safety Act 2016
The legislation requires the following:
- Managing entities of radiation sources must hold a Source licence authorising them to manage and control those sources.
- Managing entities must register controlled radiation sources with the Office of Radiation Safety.
- Individual users of radiation sources must hold a Use licence unless their use is otherwise authorised by the Act or regulations.
- Consent is required for anyone who wishes to import or export radioactive material.
News
02 November 2020
Frequently asked question (FAQs)
Upon request, a large number of FAQs have been published about our Codes of Practice.
Notice of Office of Radiation Safety Christmas/New Year 2020/2021 closure
Please note that the Office of Radiation Safety will be closed during the holiday period for three weeks from 5pm, 22 December 2020 to 5pm, 9 January 2021. The Office will reopen on Monday 11 January 2021. Licence or consent applications received before 5pm Wednesday 16 December 2020 will be acknowledged and invoiced in 2020.
Second round of consultation on the published Codes of Practice is closed
Following the publication of non-medical codes of practice on 31 July 2020, the Office of Radiation Safety (ORS) received feedback on the appropriateness of the ISO/IEC17025 standard required for external service providers and a suggestion to ask the wider group for their view on the best approach to ensure reliability and uniformity of monitoring or testing outcomes provided by external service providers. Therefore, ORS has prepared for a second round of consultation seeking your feedback on this specific matter.
Submissions closed at 12pm on 31 October 2020. View the consultation.
Database review
The Office of Radiation Safety is in the process of improving the accuracy of data that we hold in our database. The main components we're looking at are the current source licence status and radiation sources registered at each facility (ie, apparatuses such as medical CT scanners and instruments containing radioactive material such as nuclear density meters).