The regulatory bodies usually have coordination centres that are highly specialized to respond to nuclear and radiological emergencies. The main mission of these centres in the case of a nuclear emergency is to provide national authorities with timely and accurate technical information and give recommendations for managing the emergency situation. To do that, these centres are usually designed to process information received from every nuclear power plant, from national meteorological services, from environ­mental surveillance networks, and from other technical sources, to assess the evolution of the consequences of the emergency situation in terms of dose rate existing or predicted in the affected areas. The result of these assessments is used to recommend emergency measures to national, regional and local authorities depending on projected dose in accordance with the evolution of the accident and the meteorological conditions around the plant and the affected areas. These centres are usually equipped with sophis­ticated devices and systems able to catch and transmit large amounts of technical data on the operational situation of the facility originating the emergency, the radiological situation within and outside the facility, the meteorological situation and forecast, and other technical and environmental data, and to process them and give recommendations to the national authorities concerning the implementation of emergency countermeasures.

The emergency centres of regulatory bodies are usually equipped with access to automatic radiological environmental surveillance networks. These networks cover all of the national territory and are denser in the vicinity of the nuclear facilities. They are designed to detect and give an urgent and independent warning on atmospheric releases above certain threshold levels set up as a function of intervention levels.

In many countries the emergency centres of regulatory bodies also have a very important role regarding public information in the case of a nuclear emergency, since they are able to provide accurate and independent techni­cal information. In this regard, they are responsible for classifying the nuclear emergency in accordance with the International Nuclear Event Scale (IAEA, 2009) issued by the IAEA as a simple and common tool to communicate the severity of nuclear events all over the world. It is also very common that the emergency centre owned by the regulatory body acts as the national contact point regarding the international conventions on early notification and mutual assistance in the case of nuclear and radiological events. Figure 12.4 shows the emergency operational centre (Sala de Emergencias, Salem) of the Spanish nuclear regulatory body (Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear, CSN).