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Protecting Humans from the Harmful Effects of Radiation
Published in Robert E. Masterson, Nuclear Engineering Fundamentals, 2017
Standards for the intake of radioactive materials, and radiation protection in general have evolved over the years as man’s understanding of the effects of radiation have increased. The evolution of the technical standards for radiation protection today have followed a slightly different path than the evolution of the government agencies that have been created to administer or enforce them. Most of the technical standards that are used in the world today have been the brainchild of an international organization known as the International Committee on Radiation Protection (ICRP). The ICRP was established in 1928 after a large number of miners and medical workers, including doctors and physicians, were injured or killed through exposure to excessively high levels of radiation. This was almost 15 years before the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded at the Trinity Site at Alamagardo, New Mexico in 1945 (see Figures 19.6 and 19.7). Since that time, most nuclear tests in the United States have been conducted underground (see Figure 19.8). During the cold war, these tests were conducted at the Nevada nuclear test site.
Socio-economic, historical and cultural background
Published in Friedo Zölzer, Gaston Meskens, Environmental Health Risks, 2018
Liudmila Liutsko, Takashi Ohba, Elisabeth Cardis, Thierry Schneider, Deborah Oughton
The Cold War between the US and the USSR, the main producers of nuclear weapons, was part of the socio-historical period just before the Chernobyl accident. Initially these nuclear tests were performed above ground, with the release of radioactive contamination to the environment as a consequence. Later, the tests were held underground. Though the Three Mile Island accident had occurred in the US in 1979 (with a score of 5 out of 7 according to the International Nuclear Event Scale INES), little information was available about it in Eastern European countries. Other accidents related to weapons production, e.g. at the Mayak plant, were also kept secret at that time (Komarova 2000).
Political and Regulatory Aspects of Energy and Environment
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Power Generation and the Environment, 2021
These tests were the biggest and the most controversial nuclear test series to ever take place in the continental U.S., as part of a study of the effects that nuclear explosions had on structures, people and animals. About 16,000 American troops were exposed, as well as some 1,200 pigs. The final tab still is not known, but a 1997 National Cancer Institute Study estimate found that the plumbbob tests could be responsible for causing approximately 38,000 cases of thyroid cancer and some 1900 deaths.
Of fission and fallout: New Zealand in the nuclear age
Published in Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2021
Atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted at various locations on and above the earth’s surface, including on towers, placement on barges on the ocean surface, suspension from balloons, drops from aircraft, and high altitude detonations on rockets. Depending on the location of the explosion (altitude and latitude) the radioactive debris produced entered the local, regional or global environment. For high yield tests most of the fission products were carried high in the atmosphere, giving rise to world-wide fallout, although the major part was in the hemisphere of injection. Because of the long delay times for deposition of stratospheric fallout only the longer lived radionuclides contribute.
Estimated Radiation Doses and Projected Cancer Risks for New Mexico Residents from Exposure to Radioactive Fallout from the Trinity Nuclear Test
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Steven L. Simon, André Bouville, Harold L. Beck
The second of two supplemental investigations within the NCI Trinity study was an evaluation of the amount, the whereabouts, and the health implications of the unfissioned plutonium from Trinity in the environment.2 Although the presence of unfissioned 239+240Pu in the environment from nuclear tests is typically believed by knowledgeable health physics/risk experts to be of much smaller magnitude than health risks from exposures to deposited fission products, the perception by the general public that plutonium in the environment is especially hazardous was an important impetus for this analysis.
Manhattan Project: The Story of the Century, by Bruce Cameron Reed. Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020,
Published in Technometrics, 2022
Up to 2009, the United States produced over 66,500 nuclear warheads of 100 different basic types and variants of types: on average, about 1000 warheads per year, or almost three per day over seven decades. These included weapons to be carried on bombers; mounted on land, surface, and submarine-based ballistic missiles; in landmines; on short-range artillery rockets; on ground, air, and submarine-launched cruise missiles; on anti-submarine rockets; in torpedoes; and on air-to-air, air-to-ground, and earth-penetrating missiles. Some battlefield-scale tactical nuclear devices were small enough to be carried by an individual. These designs naturally demanded an extensive testing program. Before 1992, when the U.S. ceased the testing, they conducted 1030 nuclear tests, plus additional 24 together with the UK. The Soviet Union ceased the testing in 1990 after conducting over 700 tests. Depending on a warhead’s anticipated mission, detonations were conducted at surface level, underground, underwater, and at high altitudes via platforms such as airdrops, balloons, barges, and rockets. The global inventory of deployed and readily-deployable nuclear weapons peaked in 1986 with over 69,000 were available, of which over 98% were in American and Russian hands. Since then, reductions in numbers due to arms-control treaties (for example, the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaties) and unilateral withdrawals have brought the inventory down to about 9500 weapons. Current United States InterContinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) warheads have yields of 300 and 335 kiloton, while Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) warheads have yields of 100 and 455 kt. Warheads carried on smaller aircraft, so-called tactical or nonstrategic weapons, have yields from a few tenths kt up to 170 kt. Current Russian maximum ICBM and SLBM yields are estimated at 800 and 100 kt, respectively.