Population Exposure Dose Reconstruction for the Urals Region

This presentation describes the first preliminary results of an ongoing joint Russian-US pilot feasibility study. Many people participated in workshops to determine what Russian and United States scientists could do together in the area of dose reconstruction in the Urals population. Most of the results presented here came from a joint work shop in St. Petersburg, Russia (11-13 July 1995). The Russians at the workshop represented the Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine (URCRM), the Mayak Industrial Association, and Branch One of the Moscow Biophysics Institute. The US Collaborators were Dr. Anspaugh of LLNL, Dr. Nippier of PNL, and Dr. Bouville of the National Cancer Institute. The objective of the first year of collaboration was to look at the source term and levels of radiation contamination, the historical data available, and the results of previous work carried out by Russian scientists, and to determine a conceptual model for dose reconstruction

Application of exhausted excavations for nitrogen compounds removal from the quarry waters

Typical pollutants, whose content in drainage waters of mining enterprises exceeds the maximum permissible concentrations, are nitrogen compounds - ammonium, nitrite and nitrate nitrogen. Their presence in drainage waters is a consequence of the use of explosives based on ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) for preparing the rock mass for excavation. The article presents the results of studies performed in quarries of a large mining enterprise, which justify the possibility of preliminary natural treatment of drainage waters of mining enterprises from nitrogen compounds in exhausted open-cast excavation. Natural purification occurs due to two processes - the first is a natural nitrification of the ammonium ion NH4+ and the nitrite ion NO2- to the nitrate ion NO3- (the nitrate ion represents the least environmental hazard of these nitrogen compounds) with prolonged storage of drainage water in exhausted open-cast excavation in the presence of atmospheric oxygen. The second is a dilution of drainage waters in open-cast excavation by natural underground waters and atmospheric precipitation entering it in a natural way. The results of the studies given in the article became the foundation for the development of the project for the enterprise purification system for drainage water, which successfully passed state expertise and is currently being implemented. The use of preliminary natural treatment of drainage water from nitrogen compounds in exhausted open-cast excavation significantly reduced the cost of the project and subsequent post-treatment at specialized biological treatment facilities, which is especially important in the current economic situation