Airborne Radioactive Contamination in Inhabited Areas: Volume 15 (Radioactivity in the Environment, Volume 15) - Hardcover

Andersson, K.G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0080449891 ISBN 13: 9780080449890

Publisher: Elsevier Science, 2009

Synopsis

For many decades, investigations of the behaviour and implications of radioactive contamination in the environment have focused on agricultural areas and food production. This was due to the erroneous assumption that the consequences of credible contaminating incidents would be restricted to rural areas. However, due to the Chernobyl accident, more than 250,000 persons were removed from their homes, demonstrating a great need for knowledge and instruments that could be applied to minimise the manifold adverse consequences of contamination in inhabited areas. Also, today the world is facing a number of new threats, including radiological terrorism, which would be likely to take place in a city, where most people would become directly affected. A recent report from the US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism concludes that it is most likely that a large radiological, or even nuclear, terror attack on a major city somewhere in the world will occur before 2013.

For the first time ever, the specific problems of airborne radioactive contamination in inhabited areas are treated in a holistically covering treatise, pinpointing factorial interdependencies and describing instruments for mitigation. The state-of-the-art knowledge is here explained by leading scientists in the various disciplines of relevance.

* Unique holistic description of airborne radioactive contamination of inhabited areas and its consequences
* State-of-the-art information on problems associated with both accidental and malicious contamination events, in particularly 'dirty bombs'
* Detailed description of processes and parameters governing the severity of contaminating incidents
* Written by key experts in the world

About this title

Synopsis

Traditionally, urban radioecology has had much less attention than agricultural radioecology. Actually, this is the first ever holistic "guidebook" on the topic. This is in spite of the fact that some 260,000 persons were removed from their homes after the Chernobyl accident, to some extent because of the consequences of the contamination were not fully understood. Naturally the social and economical repercussions were immense. Also in the context of meeting the current threat of terrorist attacks, in the form of so-called 'dirty bombs' (radioactivity dispersion devices), a thorough understanding of the potential problems in a contaminated residential complex is essential. The various conceivable sources of contamination of residential areas are discussed, focusing on airborne dispersion. On this background, the relevant processes of deposition and resuspension and their implications are explained. The contamination can lead to a multitude of different dose pathways.

This calls for detailed descriptions of contributions to dose from radiation from the many different contaminated environmental surfaces indoors and outdoors, radiation from contaminations on humans and radiation from inhaled radionuclides.

Edition details

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0080449891
• ISBN 13: 9780080449890
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: K.G. Andersson