Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Salamanca (IRNASA-CSIC), CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, C/Cordel de Merinas, 40, 37008, Salamanca, Spain.
Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), Avd/ Complutense, 40, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
Environ Pollut. 2020 Mar;258:113825. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113825. Epub 2019 Dec 16.
The establishment of a screening index would be a powerful tool to decide whether abandoned uranium mining areas should be rehabilitated or decommissioned. Thus, in this work we established a radiological index which uses the activity concentrations of different groups of gamma emitters from the natural radioactive series of U, U, and Th, as well as K and Cs. These activity concentrations were calculated by using the absorbed gamma radiation dose value of 175 nGy h specified in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations. We studied our index in an abandoned uranium mining area in Salamanca, Western Spain, and found that the most influential factors in this area were the presence of organic matter in the soil and the possible effect that plants and fungi may have on the retention of these aforementioned radionuclides. In addition, the results showed that contaminants are migrating in an easterly direction in line with the prevailing wind direction and we were able to identify areas in which the radiological risk is likely high. The mean effective dose rate was 2.51 ± 0.98 mSv y which was equivalent to the levels obtained in previous works.
建立一个筛选指标将是一个有力的工具，用于决定是否应该对废弃铀矿区进行修复或退役。因此，在这项工作中，我们建立了一个放射性指标，该指标使用来自铀、钍和铀自然放射性系列的不同组伽马发射体以及钾和铯的活度浓度。这些活度浓度是通过使用美国联邦法规中规定的 175nGy h 的吸收伽马辐射剂量值计算得出的。我们在西班牙西部萨拉曼卡的一个废弃铀矿区研究了我们的指标，发现该地区最具影响力的因素是土壤中有机质的存在，以及植物和真菌可能对保留上述放射性核素的影响。此外，结果表明，污染物沿与盛行风向一致的东向迁移，我们能够识别出放射性风险可能很高的区域。平均有效剂量率为 2.51±0.98mSv y，与以前的工作中获得的水平相当。
