Environmental gamma radiation measurement in the northwest of England

Abstract

The radiations emitted from Sellafield (nuclear power station in the UK), nuclear accidents and nuclear weapon testing have contaminated the northwest of England. Thus, the objective of this project is to determine the activity of naturally occurring and man-made radionuclides that occur in the environmental samples taken from the northwest of England. Therefore, three cores (wet, medium wet and dry) were collected from West Kirby and analysed via Broad Energy Germanium (BEGe) detector in the radiation laboratory at the University of Liverpool. The research has shown that the activities of the singly natural occurring radionuclides (K-40) are ≈ 200 Bq/kg, and the activities of naturally occurring decay chain isotopes (Bi-214 and Ac-228) are ≈ 5 Bq/kg, which are consistent with the measurements in the literature review section. For man-made sources, the Cs-137 activity ranges shown in Table 19 for the wet and medium wet cores are consistent with the Cs-137 activities found in the literature review measurements. However, the activities of Cs-137 determined in the dry core did not achieve validation with other cores as well as with the previous measurements in the literature review. The research has speculated that the dry core might need to be collected with deeper samples or that the collected dry core might have been disturbed by human activities. Additionally, the Am-241 activities found in the three cores are consistent with the Am-241 activities found in the literature review measurements.