Roofing ceremony on the Schauinsland

New building of the BfS measuring station on the Schauinsland

The roofing ceremony for the new building of the BfS measuring station on the Schauinsland near Freiburg was held on 11 April 2018. The new building is attached to the main building of the international measuring station and will host, among others, a new, highly sensitive RASA (Radionuclide Aerosol Sampler and Analyzer) measuring device.

With the help of the fully automatic RASA measuring technology, it is possible to detect even the lowest concentrations of airborne radioactive substances. In the next weeks, the new measuring technology will be delivered from the USA and be installed. It replaces the technology from 1999 that has been used until now. The new facility will be taken into operation at the end of 2018.

Sustainable building with silver fir wood

Roofing ceremony speech for the new building made from solid white fir wood

The new building became necessary because the steel container which had housed the previous measuring facility had become too small and cannot be extended. A single-storey solid wood construction was erected to house the new measuring technology.

When the new building was planned, the criteria of sustainable building and the requirements for building in a nature, landscape and bird reserve were taken into account. By using domestic white fir wood, which becomes grey naturally when exposed to air, it blends harmonically into the scenery on the mountain in the Black Forest. In addition to the walls, roof and facade, all interior structures consist of white fir.

A glass walkway connects the new building with the main building. Construction costs amount to about 500,000 euros.

Measuring station is part of national and international measuring networks

Since the 1950s, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) has been operating a measuring station for atmospheric radioactivity on the Schauinsland. Today, the measuring station is also part of the international measuring network for the monitoring of the UN Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, CTBT. There are 69 radionuclide measuring stations world-wide.

Apart from the highly sensitive measuring facilities for trace analyses, the station on the Schauinsland has a number of measuring apparatuses with the help of which measured values are gathered online in the context of emergency preparedness. Among others, the radioactive cloud resulting from the reactor disaster in Chernobyl in 1986 and traces of the reactor accident in Fukushima in 2011 were detected in the measuring station on the Schauinsland.