Investigation of the State of the Radiation Control Systems and the Actions of the Competent Authorities and the Population in the Event of a Change in the Radiation Background in Bulgaria

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Abstract After the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, the monitoring of radiation at a real-time and timely publishing the information about the changes in order to inform the population has a major importance nowadays. In Bulgaria this system is working since 1997 to nowadays, and over the years it has been retrofitted twice. I made a research among 38 specialists in this field, 158 others trained to operate in a nuclear, chemical or other accident and 196 randomly selected representatives from the society. The results of my survey show the state of the radioactive background control systems and the knowledge about their working process by the specialists and also the population. The number of people that are familiar with the National Automated System for Continuous Control of the Radiochemical Background and the Radiation Population Disease Forecasting System in the Event of a Major Nuclear Accident of the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology is extremely low. The responses to the issues of coordination of the responsible authorities and agencies give us a real picture of the population's interest in the real situation of a radiation. The picture in the assessment of the coordination between the departments which announce the changing in the radiation situation on the territory of Bulgaria is similar. Most of the people who take part into the survey did not make suggestions on improving the situation, but on the other side there are also very reasonable and argumented ones. First of all, the participants indicate an increase in the population training about the real problem and conduction of such a regular and quality exercises