ABSTRACT
The system of radiological protection developed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) governs the regulation and practice of radiological protection worldwide. The first recommendations of ICRP's predecessor organization, the International X-Ray and Radium Protection Committee (IXRPC), were developed in 1928. Ethics deals with questions of human conduct, and the recommendations of ICRP deal with human conduct in the field of radiological protection. In 2009, some informal discussions on elucidating the ethical basis of the system of radiological protection began to occur within ICRP. It had long been recognized that the system stood on three pillars: science, values and experience. Great efforts had been made to understand and explain the scientific basis of the system in the publications of the ICRP, but very little had been done explicitly addressing the ethical basis. The objectives of Task Group are to develop an ICRP publication presenting the ethical foundations of the system of radiological protection.
