Deposition of Radioactivity in North-West England from the Accident at Windscale

The Role of Radiation Spectrometry in Operational Health Physics

“…Figure 19 is one of many gammaray scintillation spectra obtained from grass samples collected near Windscale after the accidental release of October 1 957. (11) The major gamma activity is seen to be that of iodine 131 (0.36 MeV and 0.64 MeV).…”

Radioactivity, Geochemistry, and Health

“…Radionuclides sequestered in the fuel particles are not immediately available to the biosphere as the particles generally have a low solubility in water, simulated lung fluids, and HCl solutions (Chamberlain and Dunster, 1958;Oughton et al, 1993;Salbu et al, 1994). Release of biologically important radionuclides such as 90 Sr and 137 Cs into the biosphere requires weathering and dissolution of the fuel particles.…”

Challenges in radioecology

“…A significant number of nuclear sources have contributed and are still contributing to radioactive contamination of different ecosystems; nuclear weapon tests (UNSCEAR, 2000;Anspaugh and Church, 1986;Cooper et al, 1994;Dubasov et al, 1994;Danesi et al, 1998), accidents with aircraft carrying nuclear weapons (Espinosa et al, 1998;Lind et al, 2007), nuclear reactor accidents such as fires (Chamberlain and Dunster, 1958) or explosions (Kuriny et al, 1993), re-entry into the earths atmosphere of satellites containing nuclear materials (AMAP, 2002), nuclear waste dumped at sea (Salbu et al, 1997), as well as authorized releases from nuclear and non-nuclear industry. A series of sources may also potentially contribute to radionuclide contamination in the future; accidents with nuclear weapons, reactor accidents especially associated with old generation I and II reactors, accidents associated with reactor-driven vehicles (submarines, ice breakers) as well as accidents associated with spent fuel.…”