Monitoring the vicinity of WISMUT facilities in Thuringia

The lecture explains the fundamental approaches and procedures defined for environmental monitoring of uranium mining facilities. There is very little experience worldwide to date with such systematic monitoring. The legal basis of those activities and the various methodological issues are discussed and the existing measuring networks are briefly described and further illustrated by some selected examples and results. The information focuses on aspects of environmental radioactivity monitoring. An important fact to be noted is that the radiological situation in the vicinity of mining facilities exclusively results from natural radionuclides. Monitoring of chemical radioactive contamination is not considered and will have to be discussed in other lectures. (orig./DG)