Environmental dose reconstruction for the urals population
- Urals Research Center for Radiation, Chelyabinsk (Russian Federation)
In 1948 the Mayak plutonium production facility was put into operation in the Southern Urals approximately 100 km northwest of the city of Chelyabinsk. This facility consisted of three main sites: reactor plant, radiochemical facility, and waste management facility. A series of releases and accidents occurred in the initial period of intense activity during the start-up and early years of operation of the Mayak facility. The major sources of radioactive contamination were: (1) the discharges of 2.75 million curies of liquid wastes into the Techa River in 1949-1956, (2) an explosion in the storage facility of radioactive wastes in 1957 (so-called Kyshtym Accident) which led to the form East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT) as a result of the dispersion of 2 million curies in the atmosphere, (3) the resuspension of 600 curies with dry silt from the shores of Karachay Lake during a heavy thunderstorm, and (5) gaseous-aerosol releases (about 560,000 Ci of {sup 131}I) mainly during the first decade of the facility`s operation. A large fraction of the releases into the Techa River and during the Kyshtym Accident consist of long-lived radionuclides, mainly {sup 90}Sr. This article covers the following, besides the sources and history of radioactive contamination: data bases for dose reconstruction and risk assessment; the approaches to population dose reconstruction. 13 refs., 10 figs.
- OSTI ID:
- 518627
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950408--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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