Monitoring nuclear facilities

Together with emissions monitoring, location-specific monitoring of the vicinity (immissions monitoring) aims to facilitate an evaluation of human exposure to radioactive substances from waste air and water from nuclear facilities. This serves the purpose of monitoring compliance with maximum permitted activity releases and dose limits.

For this reason, environmental media are examined that may be affected by emissions from the facility in question and could therefore add to the radiological exposure of human beings. This includes air, soil, ground or surface water, plants, plant-based foodstuffs, milk, fish and drinking water.

The monitoring of the vicinity is laid down in the Atomic Energy Act in conjunction with Article 48 of the Radiation Protection Ordinance (StrlSchV). The Federation and Länder coordinated the Guideline concerning emission and immission monitoring in order to ensure uniform execution nationwide. The guideline requires operators of facilities to determine the emissions and report them to the competent supervisory authorities.

The results of the monitoring is summarised in quarterly and annual reports which must be submitted to the supervisory authorities, the Federal Environment Ministry and the federal coordinating offices for monitoring environmental radioactivity. This is to ensure that radioactive immissions in Germany are monitored and assessed in a uniform way.

The Federal Environment Ministry summarises the results from the reports and informs the German Bundestag and the Bundesrat once a year about the development of radioactivity in the environment.