Determining Cs-137 Background Body Burdens for Wild Pigs at Savannah River Site
- Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC (United States). Savannah River National Lab. (SRNL)
In Gaines and Novak, an effective method for determining the background 137Cs body burden for the white-tailed deer population on the SRS was developed, using data collected during public hunts combined with gamma overflight data to determine the areas contaminated by site activities. However, a background 137Cs body burden for the wild pigs present on the SRS has not been developed to date. In this work, we applied the Gaines and Novak methods to determine the 137Cs background concentration in wild pigs. The determination of a site-specific home range for wild pigs on SRS with establishing background hunt compartments for calculating the background body burdens of 137Cs resulted in an upper bound concentration in wild pigs on SRS of 1.97 pCi/g. This value bounds 95% of the possible 137Cs contamination value for wild pigs from the background compartments with 95% confidence. Therefore, it is recommended that 1.97 pCi/g be used in the SRS Hunter Dose Tracking System as the background 137Cs concentration for wild pigs on SRS. This concentration should be decay corrected from the year 2014. It is also recommended that this assessment of background concentrations in SRS wild pigs (and whitetailed deer) be performed at least every five years.
- Research Organization:
- Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC (United States). Savannah River National Lab. (SRNL)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC09-08SR22470
- OSTI ID:
- 1561207
- Report Number(s):
- SRNL-TR-2019-00193; TRN: US2100453
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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