At a nuclear disaster the efficiency of emergency management on-site as well as off-site is closely connected to the quality and reliability of the actual status information. Reliability and short response time of the data communication path are important in the early phase. In order to protect investment and minimize TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) the dose rate measurement systems should also be adequate for the later phase emergency management and rehabilitation of contaminated areas. Based on three years experience the pros and cons of available GSM / GPRS / UMTS / TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) and satellite based technologies are compared with SkyLINK - a proprietary wireless network which is fully owned by the supervising authority or a nuclear installation. The European Commission’s decision to opt for this state-of-the-art technology within the TACIS program fulfills highest standards in terms of:

• independency of public communication lines,
• good data availability also in rural areas and in emergency scenarios,
• fast installation, system startup and training all done in up to 3 days
• extreme mobility in emergency cases,
• high flexibility for changing tasks,
• a very high degree of autonomy,
• low operating and maintenance costs over a ten year lifetime,
• long-term reliability of probes and data management system.

The GammaTRACER / SkyLINK systems installed around three Russian NPPs are operated by the concern Rosenergoatom. They are one example of other systems on a worldwide scale.

Interested in the Saohymo lecture . .. ( 1,84 mb, 27 pages)