Airborne surveys of Swiss nuclear facility sites

Annually since 1989, biannually since 1994, the environs (similar to 50 km(2)) of the Swiss nuclear facilities are surveyed (by helicopters) flying the same survey lines. The equipment and the data processing software used for these surveys were built and developed at the Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zurich. For mapping of man-made radiation at or around nuclear facility sites a pixel representation and the MMGC (man-made gross count) ratio is used. So far no artificial radioactivity that could not be explained by the Chernobyl event (1986) or by earlier nuclear weapon tests was detected outside the fenced sites of the nuclear facilities. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.