The determination of the natural radioactivity of 238U, 232Th, and 40K in sediments of Bahr Al-Najaf Reservoir wetland /Iraq
Author(s):
Ahmed Qasim Ubaid†, Ahmed Mohammed Ali Savore‡, Nadia Mohammed Majeed‡†, Mohammed Jawad Salih Al-Haidarey‡‡*
Affiliation(s):
† College of Education for pure sciences
‡ Education Directorate of Wasit Province
‡†Department of Basic Science, College of Dentistry, University of Wasit, Iraq
‡‡Department of Ecological Sciences, University of Kufa-Iraq
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Soil is one of the most significant natural sources of ionizing radiation to which humans are exposed, as natural radionuclides (such as uranium-238 nuclear series and thorium-232) are present in soil which affects human health by one way or another. Therefore, this study aimed to studied the natural radioactivity of 238U, 232Th, and 40K in ten sites of Bahr Al-Najaf reservoir-Iraq sediments, to determine the concentration of 238U, 232Th, and 40K in using NaI(Tl) 3″×3″ system. The results showed that the radioactivity of 40K ranged between (428±4.83 – 309±4.1) Bq/Kg, 238U ranged between (8.45±0.36 – 3.7±0.24) Bq/Kg, 232Th ranged between (4.61±0.26 – 0.01±0.002) Bq/Kg, and Radium equivalent ranged between (39.62±0.71 – 30.2±0.6) Bq/Kg. The Absorbed dose rate in air ranged between (20.892±0.354 – 16.000±0.300) nGy.h-1. By comparing the experimental results with the globally standard, results found that effectiveness of radiation concentrations of the samples studied within the globally range.