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Early detection of radioactive fallout by gamma spectrometry.

Radioactive fallout should be detected as early as possible. A new and efficient method for detection of low-level irradiation from manmade radioactivity is developed. Radiation abnormalities are detectable down to air kerma rates of 0.5 to 1.0 nGy h(-1) for 137Cs and even lower for 131I. For multi-gamma energy radioactivity the detection level is 2.6-3.5 nGy h(-1). A standard NaI detector and a 512-channel analyser are used together with noise adjusted singular value decomposition (NASVD). Statistical noise is removed and the measured spectra are reproduced using spectral components produced by NASVD. Stripping is not used and false alarms due to washout of atmospheric radon progeny are almost eliminated. Detection levels and the criteria for setting warning and alarm levels are discussed. The method may also be useful in other situations, for example where low-level signals from radioactive sources need to be detected.

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Lessons from Chernobyl: the event, the aftermath fallout: radioactive, political, social.

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station on April 26, 1986, released about 300 MCi of radioactive substances, including about 40 MCi of 131I and 100 MCi of short-lived radioiodines. In the immediate surroundings there were 143 cases of acute radiation syndrome, 34 deaths, and hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes, many permanently. The social and psychologic stresses that followed have been enormous and long-lasting. This article focuses on the rising incidence of thyroid cancer in exposed children. Radiation-induced thyroid cancer following external radiation is well documented but there is little evidence in humans of thyroid cancer from internal radiation and the risk coefficient for radioiodine exposure is known. To achieve this, thyroid dose reconstruction and prospective follow-up of about 50,000 persons who were children in 1986 will be required. Thyroid cancer in children of southern Belarus began to increase in 1990 and there now are about 1,000 cases in Belarus and northern Ukraine. These aggressively growing tumors, almost all variants of papillary thyroid cancer, are typical for thyroid cancer in children not exposed to radiation, and a low mortality rate is to be expected. It also is expected, however, that malignant as well as benign thyroid neoplasms will continue to arise in these exposed children well into their adult life.

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