https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01538-7
Regular Article
The first remediation of elevated radon levels in one public school building in Croatia: a case study
1
Department of Physics, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
2
National Radiation Protection Institute (SURO), Prague 4, Czech Republic
Received:
31
August
2024
Accepted:
17
February
2025
Published online:
10
March
2025
A targeted indoor radon survey in more than 200 high occupancy public buildings (117 schools and 87 kindergartens) in potentially radon prone area of Istria County revealed that 15.5% of kindergartens and 21.0% of schools had average radon concentrations exceeding the reference value of 300 Bq/m3. As an initial and temporal remediation measure, the National Radiological Protection Authority advised increasing natural ventilation during working hours. However, integrated and continuous follow-up radon measurements, using both track-etched and Tesla TSR3 detectors, indicated that increased ventilation reduced radon levels by only 15%, highlighting the need for the application of more effective mitigation techniques. Therefore, a radon mitigation project was implemented by installing a sub-soil depressurisation system consisting of radon sumps at six locations around the school, along with pipe works and inline fans to exhaust radon from the building. The system’s effectiveness was evaluated during the IAEA Regional Workshop in November 2022, when 25 continuous radon monitors (RadonEye Plus 2, Corentium Pro, Tesla TSR4 and AlphaGUARD) were deployed throughout the school. The obtained results demonstrated that when the system was fully operational, radon concentrations were reduced to well below 50 Bq/m3 and the efficiency of the installed system was 95%. However, radon levels rapidly increased when the fans were switched off. From this case study can be concluded that the mitigation system is effective, further cost–benefit analysis and system optimization are recommended to balance with radon reduction and power consumption of the installed mitigation system.
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Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
