Context and scope
Source: gov.uk (2025-04-03)

The requirements for operators and those for regulators supporting environmental protection legislation across the UK, and the scope of this guidance.

This ‘Environmental radiological monitoring: planning and implementing your programme’ guidance is for the operators of nuclear sites in England and Wales who are required to conduct environmental radiological monitoring to comply with their radioactive substances activity permits.

It is also for regulators and other organisations who have or participate in independent environmental radiological monitoring programmes.

It is set within the framework of Radioactive Substances Regulation (RSR) presented in the Environment Agency’s RSR objective and principles and aligns with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Safety Requirements (GSR) Part 3 (https://www.iaea.org/publications/8930/radiation-protection-and-safety-of-radiation-sources-international-basic-safety-standards). (Requirement 32: Monitoring and Reporting.)

The UK government is committed to meeting international standards on the safe management of radioactive waste. An important reference for environmental radiological monitoring is Environmental and Source Monitoring for Purposes of Radiation Protection (IAEA, 2005) (https://www.iaea.org/publications/7176/environmental-and-source-monitoring-for-purposes-of-radiation-protection) and the supporting IAEA report on Programmes and Systems for Source and Environmental Radiation Monitoring (2010) (https://www.iaea.org/publications/8242/programmes-and-systems-for-source-and-environmental-radiation-monitoring). These references provide the foundation for our guidance on planning and implementing routine environmental radiological monitoring programmes.

Guidance for operators

The Environmental Agency and Natural Resource Wales (NRW) require operators of nuclear sites to define, document and carry out radiological environmental monitoring around their sites using the best available techniques (BAT). By using this guidance, an operator will be able to support demonstration that their radiological environmental monitoring programmes are using BAT.

Guidance on the principles and framework for undertaking studies on optimisation and the identification of BAT can be found in our publication, Principles of Optimisation in the Management and Disposal of Radioactive Waste (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rsr-principles-of-optimisation). Additionally, the Nuclear Institute has produced a good practice guide for industry: Best Available Techniques (BAT) for the Management of the Generation and Disposal of Radioactive Wastes. Both guidance documents are relevant to demonstrating the use of BAT for environmental radiological monitoring programmes by permit holders.

We also require operators of nuclear sites discharging radioactivity into the environment to monitor and report their discharges to us. We publish discharge data through the pollution inventory (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/pollution-inventory-reporting) and provide a summary of annual discharges from nuclear sites in the annual Radioactivity in food and the environment (RIFE) report (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/radioactivity-in-food-and-the-environment-rife-reports).

Guidance for regulators and other agencies

Environmental radiological monitoring programmes are conducted by the Environment Agency together with NRW, and by other UK environmental regulators, and other agencies, such as the Food Standards Agency. These monitoring programmes support the requirements of environmental protection legislation across the UK, together with other national and international agreements, policies, regulations and standards, for example the OSPAR (https://www.ospar.org/work-areas/rsc) convention by which nations cooperate to protect the North-East Atlantic).

Scope of guidance

Our guidance for planning and implementing routine radiological environmental monitoring programmes, covers:
- requirements for objectives, requirements for environmental monitoring programmes to be sustainable, the need for proportionality and optimisation of programmes, considerations for health, safety, welfare, and quality control
- process for defining monitoring programmes
- what to monitor, where and how often and monitoring and sampling techniques
- examples for defining particular monitoring programmes
- keeping records, reporting, and interpreting monitoring results
Operators should use our guidance to design their environmental radiological monitoring programmes as required by their permit. The guidance is primarily for designing new or reviewing existing programmes around nuclear licenced sites to monitor the effects of permitted discharges.

Similar practices are also appropriate for:
- monitoring short term releases
- monitoring around non-nuclear sites, if required
- monitoring to meet international obligations
The guidance does not cover:
- conventional (non-radiological) environmental monitoring
- incident monitoring (other than elements that would indicate an accidental or non-permitted release)
- effluent monitoring
- scientific investigations into the behaviour of radionuclides in the environment
- baseline monitoring prior to development of a new nuclear site or discharge
- validation monitoring following completion of all planned work involving radioactive substances as defined in the Management of radioactive waste from decommissioning of nuclear sites: Guidance on Requirements for Release from Radioactive Substances Regulation (GRR) (https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/radioactive-substances/guidance-and-reports/)
Data from routine monitoring programmes may supplement scientific studies and provide continuity for baseline and validation studies as long as any constraints on the data are understood.

The Environment Agency is open to innovation in environmental radiological monitoring, and we have noted where there may be future developments in this guidance. We are happy to discuss proposals from operators on innovations, particularly where this may not fully align with this guidance.