Radioactivity monitoring in the environment - the role played by associations

Since the Chernobyl catastrophe, the public opinion has been mobilized to get more transparency in the assessing of the impact of nuclear accidents. Several associations in France and abroad have been created to perform regular measurement of radioactivity: Umweltinstitut in Germany, CRIIRad and ACRO in France. Both French associations have implemented a quality assurance plan and have performed inter-laboratory comparisons in order to get a license and be able to produce valid and acknowledged measurements of radioactivity. ACRO performs a monitoring of the radioactivity at the scale of the country thanks to a network of voluntary trained technicians. In 2011 when the Fukushima happened, ACRO launched a mapping of the radioactive fallout on all the French territory, based on vegetal samples. The results showed that the impact of Fukushima accident was very weak but detectable on French soil. (A.C.)