Environmental monitoring systems: Markets and measuring systems

Measuring environmental radioactivity is still a booming trade, even three and a half years after Chernobyl. The German Federal Government currently establishes an 'Integrated Measuring and Information System'. The Federal States complete their existing monitoring networks around nuclear power plants. Concerned citizens look after their own monitoring stations. Many foreign countries plan or build new measuring systems. All this affects also the development of measuring instruments. The rapidly expanding market and its changing requirements have placed environmental monitoring systems in the front line of technological progress. Despite different national ideas and concepts of optimum environmental networks, some harmonization is beginning to take shape. The desired goal should be a data link among the European countries, a unified European monitoring network for environmental radioactivity. (orig.)