The Environmental Radioactivity Unit (URA) is the federal agency responsible for coordinating the national environmental radioactivity monitoring programme. The annual sampling and measurement plan indicates which samples are to be taken and measured.
Tritium is the radioactive isotope of the element hydrogen. Its half-life is 12.3 years. As tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, its behaviour in the environment is mainly related to the water cycle (tritiated water; tritium replacing hydrogen in the water molecule).
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Tritium is a pure beta emitter of low energy. It is therefore not measurable by gamma spectrometry, the most widely used technique for monitoring radioactivity in the environment, and is therefore also ‘invisible’ to the URAnet aqua automatic river water radioactivity network.
This publication is available only in French and German.
