Year
2009
Abstract
systems at the Finnish entry points in 2009-2014 budgets. 10 M€ project will be the largest radiation monitoring infrastructure investment in the Finnish history. The present system is built after the collapse of Soviet Union. The motivation was that Finland has 1300 km long land border with Russian Federation and quite a few orphan sources were also transported to Finland. In the mid-1990s it was one of the first and the most advanced system installed between the east and west in Europe. However, at present system does not fulfil existing standards. Also the devices are at the end of their technical operational life. The previous system was acquired and operated by Finnish Customs, but now the Government decided to direct the funding through STUK, Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority. STUK is also an active research institute in the area of environmental surveillance. Hardware manufacturers of portal and mobile detectors have taken steps forward during the last years and developed their products. However, the implementation of the system is not only hardware procurement project. To set up an efficient system is multidimensional challenge, including determination of the roles and responsibilities of different parties, designing and constructing the information network architecture, setting up operational procedures, training the operators and conceptualising the risk picture. Primary added value STUK can give to this project will be through 1) the knowledge of radiation measurements and radiation properties and 2) experience of running operational radiation monitoring networks. The experiences obtained from software architecture of the external dose-rate measuring network consisting of 300 stations will be utilised in this system. Essential parts of the external dose-rate software and database structures can be directly copied into the new system. With modern information architecture it is possible to run the system efficiently. All parties can receive the information they need in real time in a secure manner. Also the maintenance and quality assurance of the network will be enhanced.