History

PROCORAD is a not for profit association founded in November 1995. The founders were biologists and pharmacists from the Association of French Nuclear Biologists (association des biologistes de l'industrie nucléaire française) who worked in the medical laboratories of nuclear plants and as such were responsible, with the occupational health services on site, for monitoring workers exposed to ionising radiation.

The first intercomparisons took place in 1978. Designed according to a French Ministry of Health model that guaranteed confidentiality for participants, they involved a small group of French laboratories as well as the French Institute for Nuclear Safety and Protection (Institut de Protection et de Sureté Nucléaire).

• Since 1992, more and more foreign laboratories have been taking part. This increase in the number of participants led to the creation of a structure capable of organising international quality controls, i.e. PROCORAD.

• In 2000, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)in Vienna sought PROCORAD's assistance in organising an intercomparison exercise for member states. The intercomparison concerned the detection and measurement of gamma radioemitters in urine.

• Apart from the IAEA's own laboratory, 33 laboratories, each representing a country, took part in the exercise. On 11-12 September 2000, a meeting to present the results was held in Vienna. The IAEA was extremely appreciative of the technical contribution that PROCORAD made to this intercomparison.

The cooperation was pursued in 2001 when PROCORAD was requested to organise a similar series of intercomparisons to detect actinides in urine. The exercise was organised by the LAM COGEMA Marcoule on behalf of the IAEA. A statistical analysis of the exercise and the summary of the results have been presented to the participants in Vienna in 2002 by Didier Cavadore