Environmental monitoring around the Swedish Nuclear Facilities

The environmental monitoring programme for the nuclear facilities has shown that the radioactive discharges increase the concentrations of some radionuclides in the local marine environment around the Swedish nuclear facilities. Samples from the terrestrial environment rarely show increased radionuclide concentrations. From a radiological point of view the most important nuclide in the environmental samples usually is CS-137. However, the largest part of the present concentrations of Cs-137 in the Swedish environment originate from the Chernobyl accident. The concentrations of radionuclides that can be found in biota around the nuclear facilities are much lower than the concentration levels that are known to give acute damage to organisms. The total radiation doses from the discharges of radionuclides are small. (au)