Post-accident environmental radiomonitoring in the vicinity of the Chernobyl NPP

After the Chernobyl accident, the vicinity around the fourth reactor unit, destroyed after explosion, has become the largest outdoor laboratory, where the mankind's knowledge concerning the, radionuclides behaviour in the environment can be essentially tested and improved. An international group of scientists from the Ukraine, USA and the IAEA fellows from Brasil, Kenya, Syria and Iran as participants of Summer School on environmental monitoring, took participation in field exercises to investigate radioecological situation inside 30-km Exclusion Zone at three different sites: two fields and one forest with inherent levels of contamination. The present radioecological situation inside the 30-km Exclusion Zone is mainly determined by the 137Cs + 134Cs, 90Sr and transuranic elements as well. The international group divided into teams and performed gamma and beta surveys, in-situ gamma-spectrometry and vegetation and soil sampling in contaminated field and forest locations. The aim of this work was to investigate the peculiarities of measurement at different sites and to develop recommendations on group-made environmental monitoring