Radioactive inventories within the East-Ural radioactive state reserve on the Southern Urals

¹ Institute of Plant & Animal Ecology, Ural Division RAS, Vos'mogo Marta 202, 620144 Yekaterinburg, Russia
² Institute of Industrial Ecology, Ural Division RAS, S. Kovalevskoy 20a, 620219 Yekaterinburg, Russia

Corresponding authors: molchanova@ipae.uran.ru antonov@ecko.uran.ru

Abstract

The large-scale nuclear accident took place at the production association “Mayak” in the Southern Urals in 1957. About 74 PBq of radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere, which resulted in the contamination of a vast area – East-Ural radioactive trace (EURT). The results of our study have shown that the density of contamination of ⁹⁰Sr and ¹³⁷Cs in the frontal part of the EURT are 6700–15000 and 200–400 kBq/m², respectively. The total deposition for ⁹⁰Sr within the East-Ural Radioactive State Reserve was 428.2 (286.4–643.4) TBq, for ¹³⁷Cs – 15.1 (10.2–22.4) TBq, for ^239,240Pu – 1.175 (0.623–2.242) TBq.