The Radioactive Substances (Basic Safety Standards) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2003

Amendment to the Radioactive Substances Act 1993

4.—(1) Section 15 (Further exemptions from sections 13 and 14) of the 1993 Act shall be amended as follows –

(a) In subsection (1) after “clocks and watches” (where those words first appear) there shall be inserted the following –

• “on or from any premises in the circumstances described in subsection (1A)”.

(b) After subsection (1) there shall be inserted –

“(1A) The circumstances referred to in subsection (1) are that –

(a) no radionuclide other than tritium, promethium 147 or radium 226 is present in any clock or watch on the premises (whether or not any radioactive waste arises from it),

(b) no such clock or watch contains more than one of those radionuclides, and

(c) either subsection (1B) or (1C) is satisfied.

(1B) This subsection is satisfied if the total quantity of tritium divided by 10⁹, plus the total quantity of promethium 147 divided by 10⁷, plus the total quantity of radium 226 divided by 10⁴, in all such clocks and watches does not exceed 1 (quantity in each case measured in becquerels).

(1C) This subsection is satisfied if –

(a) all such clocks and watches fall within a description specified in the first column of the table below,

(b) radioactive waste arises from no more than five of them,

(c) none of those five gives rise to a quantity of radioactive waste exceeding the figure in the third column of the Table corresponding to the relevant radionuclide listed in the second column.

TABLE

Type of clock or watch	Radionuclide	Relevant value (becquerels)
(i) Watches bearing radioluminescent deposits and intended to be worn or carried on the person	Tritium Promethium 147 Radium 226	2.8 x 108 5.5 x 106 5.6 x 103
(ii) Clocks bearing radioluminescent deposits	Tritium Promethium 147 Radium 226	3.7 x 108 7.4 x 106 7.4 x 103
(iii) Clocks or watches requiring greater luminosity than categories (i) or (ii) above, and having their dials marked at the time of manufacture with “T 25” (tritium), “Pm 0.5” (Promethium 147) or “Ra 1.5” (Radium 226)	Tritium Promethium 147 Radium 226	9.3 x 108 1.9 x 107 5.6 x 104
(iv) Watches containing small sealed glass tubes internally coated with a phosphor and filled with tritium gas	Tritium	7.4 x 109