Efforts on to enhance radiation safety: expert

A three-day national symposium on Radiation Physics, with the focal theme ‘Radiation Measurements: Challenges in lowering of detection limit of radiation’, began in Mangalore University on Wednesday.

Inaugurating the Symposium, H.S. Kushwah, former director, health, safety and environment group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Raja Ramanna Fellow, said there is a need to prevent the release of radioactivity to the environment. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents had released radioactivity to the environment, resulting in stress, fatigue and hardship to people living around the nuclear power plant.

Prof. Kushwah said reactor safety personnel are looking for a new solution such as hardened containment filtered ventilation system developed by France, the U.S. and Russia. This system will be connected to reactor containment and there will be no release of radionuclide to the environment, thereby enhancing radiation safety to the public living around nuclear power plant.

Mr. Kushwah said concentration of radionuclides in environmental matrices below the limit of detection or below detection limit or minimum detection limit is often encountered around nuclear power plants. The plants emit minute quantities of radioactive gases and liquids to the environment under controlled and monitoring conditions during normal plant operations. Because these radioactive discharges can have environmental impacts — on human, animal, plant and aquatic/sea life, Regulatory body, namely, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, requires to monitor the discharges and analyse nearby (30 km around reactor) environmental samples to ensure that the permitted discharges results in very small doses to the public living around nuclear power station.

He said the symposium is one of the principal justifications for creating a centre at Mangalore University for advanced research in the measurement of ultra-low-level of radioactivity to detect the trace level of natural and man-made radionuclides.

Mangalore University Vice-Chancellor K. Byrappa, former Vice-Chancellor of Bangalore University K. Siddappa, and former director of BARC D.V. Gopinath were present.

Three-day national symposium on Radiation Physics begins in Mangalore University