Distribution of radionuclides and radon levels around KGF, Kolar District

The radiation exposure of non-uranium mining, in general, has been drawing more attention during the present decade. The level of this difficulty could be gauged by the enormously large number of underground miners and the presence of considerably high levels of radon activity observed in non-uranium mines, especially in the non-coal sectors. Radon is a radioactive noble gas produced in the environment due to decay of radionuclides present in the soil, ground water, gas deposition and building materials. Radon and its daughter products contribute 55% of radiation exposure to the public. Radon is one of the naturally occurring radioactive noble gas produced from the decay series of 238U, 232Th and 235U. In the present work, measurement of radioactivity concentration of radionuclides in the samples of soil and rock and radon concentration level have been measured around Kolar Gold Field (KGF) of Kolar district using HPGe detector and SSNTDs technique, respectively. The activity levels of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K found to be more than global average 40 Bq.kg-1, 40 Bq.kg-1 and 400 Bq.kg-1, respectively and the indoor concentrations of radon in the dwellings of study area varied from 19.2 Bq.m-3 to 116.4 Bq.m-3. (author)