Radioactivity in Drinking Water: Routine Monitoring and Emergency Response

摘要

Radioactivity monitoring programs to check the quality of drinking water are in place in many countries. For routine monitoring of drinking water and especially in case of a radiological emergency, certified reference materials (RMs) are needed to build confidence in the analytical results. A review of potential nonnuclear and nuclear emergencies as sources of exceedingly radioactivity in the environment shows that radionuclides to be targeted by monitoring programs are generally not the same in both emergency types. In each type of emergency, the likely radioelements involved have different chemistry and ionizing radiation emissions. In spite of occasional interlaboratory analytical comparisons for radionuclides in water, exercises and RMs available do not test the full range of radioactive contaminants required. Therefore, there is a need for reference materials suitable for this purpose.