NUCLEAR MATERIAL EVENTS DATABASE (NMED)
Updated through 3/18/2011.

The NMED contains records of all non-commercial power reactor incidents and events, including medical events, involving the use of radioactive byproduct material. Regulated licensees and agreement states report the information to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Basic records of each event, records of abnormal occurrences (events that could be a risk to the public), information about the radioactive material involved, the type of the event and other measures are included in the data.

There are nine categories of events, as well as one "other" category that serves as a catch-all. The category/event types are: Equipment problems involving licensed material, overexposures to licensed material, fuel cycle facility events, loss of control events, leaking sealed sources involving licensed material, medical events involving licensed material, non-power reactor events, release or contamination events involving licensed material, and transportation events.

The database has 12 relational tables with entries from 1990 through March 2009. Some events occurring before 1990 appear in this data, but the most consistent reporting is for records from 1990 and later.

Included in the data:

1. Coding Manual.pdf - The latest version of the NMED coding manual (January 2010). Note that some CFRs have been revised since this date.

2. Data Dictionary.pdf - A description of the tables and fields contained in loc_data.mdb.

3. Loc_data.mdb - The NMED data tables as of 3/18/2011 in Microsoft Access 2010. See Data Dictionary.pdf for a complete description of the tables and fields contained in this file.

4. Loc_vald.mdb - The NMED picklist tables in Microsoft Accesss 2010. These picklists are used to ensure consistent coding of event data. In some cases, the fields in loc_data.mdb contain code values that correspond to text fields in the picklists. Those cases are defined in Data Dictionary.pdf.

Two Folders containing the individual tables in the Loc_data and Loc_vald Access databases are also included. The tables are in .dbf format and can be imported into legacy versions of Access.

2009 changes- According to an NRC represenative, the following tables have been removed from the NMED database, because the data were determined to be unnecessary or no longer of specific interest (generally, this information was already contained in the event narrative and did not need to be also contained in a specific table): modelno, organcd, orgdose, procedur, releaset.

2010 changes - None.



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