Examination of Hot Particles Collected in Budapest Following the Chernobyl Accident

Characteristics of radioactive particles released from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor

“…Some individual particles were found to contain only one or two predominant radioactive elements. These were 103Ru and 106Ru-106Rh, 140Ba-140La, 134Cs and 137Cs-137Ba, 141Ce and 144Ce-144Pr, or U and U plus Zr (1,2,5,10,11).…”

“…Therefore, most of the released 131I and 140Ba could not have been incorporated into large insoluble particles. In fact, a large portion of the radioiodine was reported to be in vapor form (5,6) and was absent from other analyses of radioactive particles (10,11). Highly radioactive particles containing the more refractory radionuclides 103Ru,141Ce, still persist on the ground near Chernobyl.…”

Alpha-emitting `hot particles' in the vicinity of BNFL Sellafield, Cumbria

“…A number of accidents at nuclear installations have also led to the release and dispersal of hot particles. Most notably, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 distributed radioactive particles as far afield as Scandinavia (Raunemaa et al 1987), Germany (Rudhard et al 1992) and Bulgaria (Balashazy et al 1988). In the UK, between 1951 and 1957, routine operations at the Windscale plant, Cumbria, led to the release of radioactive particles into its immediate vicinity (Chamberlain 1987) and McMahon et al (1994) describe irradiated uranium oxide particles collected from the Windscale area in 1956.…”

Biokinetics of nuclear fuel compounds and biological effects of nonuniform radiation.

“…The number of hot particle-induced lung cancer cases for the Bulgarian population was estimated as four to six, or approximately 10% of the total number of lung cancer cases which are expected from external and internal irradiation after the Chernobyl accident (49). Balashazy et al (7) estimated the-lung cancer risk due to inhalation of Chernobylreleased hot particles to be less than 10-10 for individuals living in Budapest. In Finland, the epidemiological studies have focused on the fallout and incidence of childhood leukemia (50).…”

“…The Chernobyl fallout had a special feature, different from the earlier observed nuclear reactor accidents: it contained extensive amounts of pulverized nuclear fuel from the reactor which first exploded and then burned for several days. The nuclear fuel particles were composed of uranium and its nonvolatile fission products, including the R-emitters zirconium-95 (95Zr), niobium-95 (95Nb), ruthenium-103 ('03Ru), 106Ru, cerium-141 (141Ce), and 144Ce (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8).…”