Retrospective Luminescence Dosimetry: Development of Approaches to Application in Populated Areas Downwind of the Chernobyl NPP

Abstract

The cumulative absorbed dose in fired-clay bricks collected from ten buildings in the populated contaminated settlement (137Cs, 1,470 kBq m(-2)) of Stary Vishkov, located 175 km downwind of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in the Bryansk administrative region of Russia, was determined using luminescence techniques by five laboratories. At each location, the cumulative dose, after subtraction of the natural background dose, was translated to absorbed dose in air using conversion factors derived from Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations employed source distributions inferred from contemporary soil contamination data and also took into account heterogeneity of fallout deposition. At four locations the cumulative dose at a reference location was calculated, enabling the luminescence determinations to be compared directly with values of cumulative absorbed dose in air obtained using deterministic models. A "local" conversion factor was also derived from the Monte Carlo simulations for locations where the disturbance of soil was significant. Values of the "local" cumulative dose in air calculated using this factor were compared with those predicted using the deterministic models at each sampled location, allowing location factors to be calculated. The methodology developed is generally applicable to populated areas contaminated by radioactive fallout in which brick buildings are found. The sensitivity of the luminescence techniques for bricks from this region of Russia was sufficient to evaluate cumulative absorbed dose in brick due to fallout of less than 20 mGy.

Study of aluminium oxide from high-alumina refractory ceramics by thermoluminescence

“…The TL emission of ceramic materials and mineral phases concerns inter-disciplinary research areas involving both solid-state physics and radiation physics with wideranging applications in geological (Bailey 2004) and archaeological (Feathers 2003) dating, retrospective assessment of irradiation dose (Pandya et al 2000;Bailiff et al 2005) and detection of irradiated food . These ubiquitous materials appear as a reasonable alternative to the conventional dosimetric systems since they have good sensitivity to radiation, a linear response with the increase of dose and reasonable stability of the luminescence signal with the time of storage (Correcher et al 2004).…”

BiodosEPR-2006 consensus committee report on biodosimetric methods to evaluate radiation doses at long times after exposure

“…The simulations also provide a means of adjusting the conversion factors for the effects of heterogeneous distribution of fallout in the vicinity of the sampled building. So far, demonstration of this approach has been performed for a source energy of 662 keV, but simulations for other source energies have been performed (Bailiff et al, 2005). The absorbed dose to luminescent minerals within the sub-surface of a brick in a wall (at a height of 1 m and facing uniformly contaminated ground) is about half of the dose in air at the reference location (i.e., similar to that expected on the basis of irradiation geometry alone).…”

“…TL and OSL have been used in a limited number of epidemiologic studies including many of the major dose reconstructions carried out to date, e.g., for A-bomb survivors (Young and Kerr, 2005;Ichikawa et al, 1996Ichikawa et al, , 1987Nagatomo et al, 1988Nagatomo et al, , 1991Hoshi et al, 1989), Nevada test site exposures (Haskell et al, 1994), for the Chernobyl accident (Stepanenko et al, 2003;Bailiff et al, 2004aBailiff et al, , 2005 and more recently, for Semipalatinsk nuclear test site exposures (Bailiff et al, 2004b;Stepanenko et al, 2006a-c. Göksu et al, 2006Sato et al, 2006;Simon et al, 2005;Takada et al, 1999). In all cases, building materials were evaluated for TL or OSL signals.…”

Radiation dose to providers of brachytherapy with microsources of 125I for prostate cancer

“…Independently of this, the data from calibration of the sources were compared with measurements performed in the laboratories at GSF (Germany), University of Durham (Great Britain), and Hiroshima University (Japan) and showed good mutual agreement within the framework of the combined dosimetric studies on territories contaminated as a result of the Chernobyl accident and harmed by the nuclear tests performed on the Semipalatinsk test site [6][7][8][9].…”