The national network has been developed under the aegis of the Nuclear Safety Authority. Its management has been entrusted to the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).

The other actors in the network include representatives of the main ministries concerned, health agencies, public institutes, nuclear industry, qualified persons, environmental and consumer associations.

THE STEERING ORGANIZATION

The national network is led by a steering committee under the ASN presidency, in charge of defining the strategic orientations of the network. In addition, an accreditation committee issues a notification to the laboratories which request the ASN approval. The different RNM actors are represented in these two bodies.

The steering committee meets twice a year. The meetings minutes are available in « The publications » section. The steering committee gives its opinion on the strategic orientations of the RNM. This opinion may be based on the evolution needs of the RNM proposed by ad-hoc working groups.

The mission of the accreditation commission is to ensure that the measurement laboratories have the organizational and technical skills to provide the network with quality measurement results. The commission is competent to propose the approval, refusal, withdrawal or suspension of approval to the ASN. The ASN then makes the decisions to grant or not the authorization, decisions which are published in the ASN Official Bulletin.

The management of the national measurement network has been entrusted to the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), which is in charge of the development, technical exploitation and operation of the RNM.

TRANSMISSION OF MEASUREMENT RESULTS TO THE RNM

Most of RNM actors contributes to the RNM by feeding it with their measurement results.

Each contributor sends, via a secured internet connection, the data formatted according to a jointly defined data exchange protocol. To date, 66 contributors send environmental radioactivity measurements to the national network.

These results have been fed into the central database of the national network since it was started in January 2009. On average, near 30 000 measurement results are transmitted each month.

THE ORGANIZATION SCHEME

RNM instances' actors and main contributors (visit the glossary to have the signification of the abbreviations).

EXPLOITATION AND RNM INFORMATION RELEASE

These data, centralized in the RNM information system, are released to the public and experts via a web portal (www.mesure-radioactivite.fr).

Based on this information and their analysis, a radiological assessment of the environment status is made public every 3 years. To view corresponding reports, go to "The publications" section.

SOME KEY FIGURES

The national measurement network database contains 3530969 prelevements and 5322625 measurements.

These measurements concern 67 sites subject to regulatory monitoring of environmental radioactivity.

Measurements are carried out in air, water, soil, fauna, flora and food products. Most of measurements are relative to the air compartment, and in particular, the ambient gamma dose rate obtained by telemetry sensors (automated and continuous measurement of ambient radioactivity) accounting for 2222384 measurements.