Radioactive Contamination Detection in Water Using Wireless Sensor Network

Radioactive contamination is the result of regular operation of nuclear power plants, leakage or accident during the production, or use of radionuclides (radioisotopes). They occur throughout the nuclear fuel cycle and continue to give off harmful radioactive particles and rays for very protracted periods. Radioactive elements can contaminate water adversely affecting human health as well as aquatic lives. It is difficult to manually collect water samples and test the presence of radioactive contamination in those samples. This also limits the area of collection. This paper reviews various methods of detecting radioactive contamination in water resources, their advantages, shortcomings and challenges during implementation. The authors have found self-maintaining, scalable, low cost Zigbee based Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) supporting web technology for detecting and monitoring nuclear radiation technique developed by Li Wu et al. (2014) the most appropriate.