OVERVIEW OF THE EGYPTIAN RADIATION MONITORING NET WORK AND RADIOACTIVITY LEVELS OF THE EGYPTIAN TERRITORIES

摘要

The Chernobyl accident in 1986 arose much concern throughout the world regarding the detection of contamination, control of contaminated food, related legislation and environmental monitoring. In Egypt, the environmental radioactivity monitoring program involves the establishment of a radiation monitoring network of stations for continuous monitoring of ambient gamma radiation levels in the air, water, aerosols, dust particles and conventional gas pollutants. The network consists of 42 field stations for gamma monitoring of air, 13 stations for monitoring of water, 14 stations for beta aerosols and 15 stations for conventional pollutants. Soil samples adjacent to the stations distributed all over the Egyptian territories have been collected and analyzed by gamma spectrometry. The natural radionuclides K-40, U-238 series Th-232 series and the global fallout Cs-137 are found in all the collected samples. The absorbed dose rates are calculated and presented.