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Radiation Emergency Planning — Damage Evaluation and Control Procedures
Published in Kenneth L. Miller, Handbook of Management of Radiation Protection Programs, 2020
Robert G. Gallaghar, Robert L. Gallaghar
The best advice for protection against radiation accidents is to plan for them. The results of thorough accident investigations have invariably shown that most accidents could have been prevented had (1) the potential for that type of accident been recognized well in advance and (2) effective action been taken to eliminate the conditions that created the “ideal environment” for an unfortunate incident to have expanded into a full-scale radiation emergency. We must consider the possibility that natural emergencies (fire, flood, earthquake, etc.) or incidents involving toxic or hazardous materials can occur which may also create the release of radioactive contamination.
The internal radiation hazard
Published in Alan Martin, Sam Harbison, Karen Beach, Peter Cole, An Introduction to Radiation Protection, 2018
Alan Martin, Sam Harbison, Karen Beach, Peter Cole
As with external radiation, the consideration in the control of the radioactive contamination hazard is to ensure that doses are as low as reasonably achievable and that the relevant dose limits are not exceeded. However, the basic approaches to controlling exposure are quite different. In the case of external radiation, the dose rate in a working area can be easily measured, and the dose received by workers can be continuously monitored and controlled using personal dosimeters. Where there is significant radioactive contamination, however, there is much greater uncertainty both in the levels of radioactivity on surfaces and in the air in the workplace and, particularly, in the quantities likely to be inhaled or ingested by a worker. Therefore the approach must be to avoid the contamination of working areas wherever possible and clean up any releases that do occur. Nevertheless, in many radioactive facilities there will be situations where some exposure to contamination is unavoidable, for example when it is necessary to break into contaminated equipment for repairs or maintenance. In such situations, the approach is to protect the worker by means of appropriate clothing and respiratory protection.
What Are Radionuclides?
Published in Michael Pöschl, Leo M. L. Nollet, Radionuclide Concentrations in Food and the Environment, 2006
Radioactive contamination is the uncontrolled distribution of radioactive material in a given environment. Such contamination is typically the result of a loss of control of radioactive materials during the production or use of radioisotopes. Radioactive contamination may also be an inevitable result of certain processes in nuclear fuel reprocessing.
Differential gene expression in chronically irradiated herbaceous species from the Chernobyl exclusion zone
Published in International Journal of Radiation Biology, 2023
Ekaterina M. Shesterikova, Vladimir S. Bondarenko, Polina Yu. Volkova
Plants as sessile organisms are exposed to a wide range of environmental stressors. Radioactive contamination due to radiation accidents is an important anthropogenic stress factor. The study of molecular, biochemical, and physiological changes in plant populations growing under conditions of chronic irradiation provides unique data on the mechanisms of adaptation to long-term radiation exposure. Populations of short-living plants growing in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exclusion zone (CEZ) have been exposed to high levels of sparsely and densely ionizing radiation for many generations. Living organisms in their natural habitat can be an order of magnitude more sensitive to radiation exposure as compared with organisms in controlled conditions (Garnier-Laplace et al. 2013) due to confounding environmental factors. The determinants of plant sensitivity to chronic irradiation are poorly studied and, possibly, have a functional (rather than structural) basement associated with species-specific features of molecular responses to prolonged stress.
From tangled banks to toxic bunnies; a reflection on the issues involved in developing an ecosystem approach for environmental radiation protection
Published in International Journal of Radiation Biology, 2022
Carmel E. Mothersill, Deborah H. Oughton, Paul N. Schofield, Michael Abend, Christelle Adam-Guillermin, Kentaro Ariyoshi, Nicholas A. Beresford, Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati, Jason Cohen, Yuri Dubrova, Stanislav A. Geras’kin, Tanya Helena Hevrøy, Kathryn A. Higley, Nele Horemans, Awadhesh N. Jha, Lawrence A. Kapustka, Juliann G. Kiang, Balázs G. Madas, Gibin Powathil, Elena I. Sarapultseva, Colin B. Seymour, Nguyen T. K. Vo, Michael D. Wood
The final paragraph of Darwin’s monumental monograph preempts our modern understanding of the interconnectedness of an ecosystem, its complexities and the variety of processes at play within it. Understanding the impact of environmental contamination on an ecosystem is a fearsome task, assessing damage still more so, given the subtlety of perturbations that might be later amplified to produce potentially catastrophic changes. In a series of papers, on topics where radiobiology and radioecology interact, of which this is the third, we have attempted to draw from the community a consensus view on how to capture the effects of radioactive contamination on an ecosystem, with the aim of defining ecological parameters that might be used for development of safety and regulatory guidelines, and help us to further understand the fundamental science of radioecology.
Elena Alexandrovna Timofeeva-Resovskaya at the forefront of radiobiology in the XX century
Published in International Journal of Radiation Biology, 2022
An outstanding woman scientist, radiobiologist Elena Alexandrovna Timofeeva-Resovskaya performed researches from the 1920s to the 1970s (Figure 1). In her experiments on different objects using various radioisotopes, she investigated the effect of radiation exposure at the main levels of organization of living matter such as genetic, organismic, population, and biocenotic. Her radiobiological researches were among the first regarding each of these levels. This fact can be proved by her bibliography, which includes 55 scientific articles, 1 monograph and 28 scientific reports (Babkov and Sakanyan 2002). In the early 50 s, when E.A. Timofeeva-Resovskaya took part in the USSR Atomic Project, she conducted the first research on the radiobiology of aquatic ecosystems. The research results turned out to be important both for solving the problems of radioactive contamination of territories and for the development of modern radioecology.