Activities of (137)Cs, (241)Am and (239,240)Pu were analyzed with special emphasis on better understanding of radionuclide transport from land via the Neman River estuaries to the Baltic Sea and behavior in the marine environment. Although activity concentrations of (137)Cs in water samples collected the Baltic Sea were almost 100 times higher as compared to the Curonian Lagoon, its activities ...

The cosmogenic radionuclide 10Be is produced by cosmic-ray spallation in Earth’s atmosphere. Its production rate is regulated by the geomagnetic field intensity, so that its accumulation rate in aeolian sediments can, in principle, be used to derive high-resolution records of geomagnetic field changes. However, 10Be atmospheric fallout rate also varies locally depending on rainfall rate. The ac...

Environmental biomonitoring has demonstrated that organisms such as crustaceans, fish and mushrooms are useful to evaluate and monitor both ecosystem contamination and quality. Particularly, some mushroom species have a high capacity to retain radionuclides and some toxic elements from the soil and the air. The potential of mushrooms to accumulate radionuclides in their fruit-bodies has been we...

The Hydrological Dispersion Module (HDM) of the RODOS (real-time on-line decision support) system for nuclear emergency management in Europe has been is developed at IMMSP, Kiev, Ukraine; NRG, The Netherlands; FZK, Karlsruhe, Germany; SPA “TYPHOON”, Obninsk, Russia; IPEP, Minsk, Belorussia, and NCSR “Demokritos”, Athens, Greece. Initial testing and customisation work was performed by NPPRI, Slo...

The current study was conducted primarily to investigate and estimate Cs activity concentrations and the external dose rate due to fallout radionuclide Cs. Soil samples were collected from different 25 locations at Riyadh Province and analyzed using low level γ-spectrometry equipped with HPGe-detector. Cs activity concentrations and calculated dose rate were found in the range of 0.8 3.1 Bq·kg ...

We investigate the use of the short-lived fallout radionuclide beryllium-7 ( Be; t1/2 = 53·4 days) as a tracer of medium and coarse sand (0·25–2 mm), which transitions between transport in suspension and as bed load, and evaluate the effects of impoundment on seasonal and spatial variations in bed sedimentation. We measure Be activities in approximately monthly samples from point bar and stream...

Anthropogenic radionuclide signatures associated with nuclear testing are increasingly utilized in environmental science to explore recent sedimentation. In this study, we assess the suitability of Pu radioisotope analysis in floodplain lake environments in the Amazon Basin to form geochronologies during the 20 century. The 240Pu + 239Pu (240+239Pu) signatures in six sediment cores indicate sed...

The β radioactivity of snow-pit samples collected in the spring of 2011 on four Tibetan Plateau glaciers demonstrate a remarkable peak in each snow pit profile, with peaks about ten to tens of times higher than background levels. The timing of these peaks suggests that the high radioactivity resulted from the Fukushima nuclear accident that occurred on March 11, 2011 in eastern Japan. Fallout m...

This paper describes a measuring procedure for the determination of shielding factors for vehicles passing through areas that have been contaminated by activity released to the atmosphere from a reactor accident. In open areas the radiation field arises from an infinite plane source. In urban areas the radiation field consists of the contribution from fallout deposited on a road and on the buil...