Radioactive contamination of the semipalatinsk testing area

Abstract

At the time of each nuclear explosion, a radiation survey of the testing area, conducted on the ground and in the air, measured the equivalent dose rate of gamma radiation on the radioactive trail. The zones surveyed included, as a rule, the epicentral region of the explosion and the near radioactive trail inside the testing area, The findings of the survey of the radiation field close to the earth's surface were usually mapped as a system of isolines of the gamma-ray dose rate 3 h after the blast. The distribution of the analogous characteristics of the radiation field was also given along the axis of the rail.The following two problems were solved successively, while devising a method for reconstructing the contamination characteristics of the testing area in the form of two-dimensional fields:1) the two-dimensional field of the gamma-ray dose rate over the earth's surface at points on a regular reference grid was reconstructed in terms of coordinates of the level lines of this field and its values at singular points (points of extreme value on the crest line);2) the contamination density of the region for individual radionuclides was plotted, according to data for the gamma-ray

Composition and proportion of elements on the surface of crustose lichens from the experimental field of the former Semipalatinsk test site and from the town of Kurchatov (Republic of Kazakhstan)

“…km, respec tively (Gabbasov et al, 1995). The absorbed dose at a height of one meter was 120-140 nGy/h, and the per centage of artificial radionuclides in that dose at dif ferent points of the experimental field ranged from 49 to 99% (Shebell and Hutter, 1998).…”