Radiological study of exposure levels in El Maghara underground coal mine

Abstract

Coal is largely composed of organic matter, but it is the inorganic matter in coal minerals and trace elements that have been cited as possible causes of health, environmental and technological problems associated with the use of coal. Some trace elements in coal are naturally radioactive. These radioactive elements include uranium (U), thorium (Th) and their numerous decay products, including radium (Ra) and radon (Rn). Although these elements are less chemically toxic than other coal constituents, such as arsenic, selenium or mercury, questions have been raised concerning the possible risk from radiation. In order to accurately address these questions and to predict the mobility of radioactive elements during the coal fuel cycle, it is important to determine the specific activity, distribution and form of radioactive elements in coal. The assessment of the radiation exposure from coal burning is critically dependent on the specific activity of radioactive elements in coal and in the fly ash that remains after combustion. The El-Maghara coal mine is the only producing coal mine in Egypt. It is located in the middle of the Sinai desert about 250 km north-east of Cairo, where a coal-fired power plant is intended to be built. In this study, a pre-operational radiological baseline of the site and the occupational radiation exposures due to radon progeny in the mine were determined. The specific activities of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in soil and coal dust samples collected along the main gallery ranges were found to be 6-22.9, 9.6-47.3 and 77-489 Bq kg-1, respectively. Soil samples collected around the mine showed concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in the ranges 2.7-20.2, 3.2-12.6 and 14.6-201 Bq kg-1, respectively. All of the mean values of radon progeny were lower than the action levels for working places recommended in the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) 65.

Assessment of elemental and NROM/TENORM hazard potential from non-nuclear industries in North Sinai, Egypt

“…Other investigation of the The world range of mineral soil (Parinson and Quamby 1974) is also given Fig. 2 Dendrogram of coal, sludge, waste, and charcoal as a function of Euclidean distance calculated using all measured concentrations of major and trace elements same mine (Amer et al 2002) reported concentration ranges for 226 Ra, 232 Th, and 40 K of 6-22.9, 9.6-47.3, and 77-489 Bq kg −1 , respectively, in the soil-coal dust collected from the gallery. The activity concentrations in sludge and waste are higher than that in extracted coal.…”

Occupational exposure of phosphate mine workers: airborne radioactivity measurements and dose assessment

“…One working level represents any combination of short-lived radon daughters' concentration in 1 l of air that results in the ultimate emission of 1:3 Â 10 5 MeV of alpha energy, taking no account of the radon (Amer et al, 2002). Thoron ( 220 Rn) progeny concentrations were measured using Rock method (Rock, 1975).…”

“…It has been indicated that 222 Rn gas (a decay product of 238 U-226 Ra series) and its progeny constitute the largest single contributors to human radiation exposure from natural and man-made radioactive sources (UNSCEAR, 1988(UNSCEAR, , 1977. Inhalation of radon and its short-lived decay products constitutes the most important occupational exposure of workers in mines (Amer et al, 2002).…”

“…In spite of the fact that monitoring itself does not improve working conditions, but demonstrates if operational radiation protection measures function as intended, or whether further protection measures should be considered (Othman et al, 1992). A number of studies have been made to evaluate the occupational exposure in uranium, phosphate, and coal mines (Bigu et al, 2000;Kenawy et al, 1999, Hussein et al, 1997Amer et al, 2002). Our work aims at the evaluation of the occupational radiation exposure in Abu-Tartor phosphate mine through airborne radioactivity measurements and, assessment of environmental and personal radiation dose rate.…”

The natural radioactivity in vicinity of the brown coal mine Tusnica – Livno, BiH

“…Many studies had been performed in order to explore the problem and to found parameters that could be used in risk assessment models [1][2][3][4]. The goal of this paper is to explore the impact of the coal mines Tusnica which has slightly rising levels of natural radionuclides 238 U and 226 Ra into acoount the risk for population and for environment.…”