Radiation early warning system

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As radiation early warning system in is Austria a measurement and reporting system referred to, which will help increase ionizing radiation to initiate already early on in the territory and to allow the necessary measures.

Legal basis

According to its own Radiation Protection Act and EU law (Art. 35 EURATOM Treaty ), Austria is obliged to operate an environmental monitoring network for constant radioactivity monitoring.

business

The measuring system, which was built in the late 1970s and is constantly being expanded, has been operated by the Ministry of Life since 2000 . Currently (2011) 335 measuring stations, known as local dose rate measuring station or ODL station for short , are connected across the board . The measured values ​​are automatically delivered to the headquarters in the ministry, after which the departments involved, such as the federal warning center or the state warning centers of the federal states , can access them. The population can also access the data from 111 representative measuring points via the Internet without special access rights. In addition, the values ​​have been published on ORF teletext for years .

The gamma radiation is measured . The concentration of radioactive substances in the air is also measured in an additional ten air monitoring stations installed in the border regions.

Emergence

The structure of the system is based on a legal mandate from 1975. As early as 1983, 336 measuring stations were connected. At the time of the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, it was the only fully automatic, area-wide measuring system in Europe. At the time of its creation, the system was geared towards the nuclear weapon scenario due to the still ruling Cold War .

In the beginning, each station consisted of three Geiger-Müller counter tubes with different measuring ranges that switched automatically. The count rates were output on a printer and had to be converted manually to the dose rate . The current proportional counter tubes with a measuring range of 10 nSv / h to 10 Sv / h carry out these calculations automatically and issue an alarm when certain limit values ​​are reached .

According to the international guidelines, the probes have been relocated to locations where the measuring probes are one meter above the ground since 1995 . The ground can be established by flat roofs, but also by uncultivated meadows. This increases the informative value of the measured values ​​and it is easier to estimate the radiation exposure to which the population is exposed. In the process, probes with the locations of ZAMG weather probes were merged so that the current weather situation can also be used when evaluating measured values.

A telecontrol system was set up to control the measuring probes , which remained in operation for around 20 years. The data was saved on two computer systems of the federal radiation warning centers, which were set up redundantly in Vienna and Salzburg due to the military scenarios . Vienna was put into operation in 1978 and that in Salzburg in 1984. In the years 1977 to 1985, the state radiation warning centers were set up, which also had the ability to query the data.

For data transmission, data lines from the post office were used at times , later also radio links from the armed forces to the federal radiation protection warning centers . Between 2004 and 2007, the telemetry and security system from Telekom was used. The connection between the state warning centers and the federal warning center takes place via the dedicated lines of BOS Austria .

Data exchange with abroad

Real-time data exchange of dose rate data with Slovakia was established as early as 1994 . This was followed in 1999 with Slovenia , 2001 with the Czech Republic , and 2004 with Hungary . From Germany, the data, which is limited to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg , has only been included since 2006.

The network of air monitoring stations was also extended to foreign areas through bilateral agreements and with Austrian funding. Stations were installed near the nuclear power plants Krško in Slovenia, Bohunice in Slovakia, Temelín in the Czech Republic and, most recently, in 2006 Paks in Hungary, and integrated into the Austrian radiation early warning system.

Warning level

Range of gamma dose rate
level from to
0 up to 30% above the
average value at the place of installation
1 Upper limit of level 0 300 nSv / h
2 300 nSv / h 1 µSv / h
3 1 µSv / h 10 µSv / h
4th 10 µSv / h 100 µSv / h
5 100 µSv / h 1 mSv / h
6th 1 mSv / h 30 mSv
7th 30 mSv / h 300 mSv / h
8th over 300 mSv / h

Source: Ministry of Life

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Measuring systems for the radiation early warning system in the 2008/2009 annual report, accessed on April 17, 2011