Determination of atmospheric Radon. El Farallon station at Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant

During the last two decades the study of radon levels has a big booming, because of the fact that it is considered as one of the natural radioisotopes of major risk, being in some countries a matter of Public Health. Radon is originated form the Uranium present in soil and can be released to the atmosphere where it is found in the form of gas associated to particles or go into liquid in water. In this work, preliminary results of a study carried out in the Monitoring and Environmental Dosimetry Laboratory of CFE, located at 'El Farallon' upon environmental levels of Radon and daughter products in atmosphere particles and rain water, are presented. A system of Gamma Spectrometry with Germanium detector, was used for this determinations, analyzing samples of particles collected in a glass fibre filters and samples of a rain water. Concentrations of Pb-214 and Bi-214 vary depending on the rain intensity, reaching figures of 533.7 Bq/l and 862.7 Bq/l respectively. Radon concentrations were obtained through the analysis of daughter products as Pb-214 and Bi-214 which concentrations were 1.29 Bq/m3 and 1.79 Bq/m3 in a range of 0.70 to 2.31 and 0.96 to 4.43 respectively. Besides the variation of concentrations of radon daughters in atmosphere particles was observed. (Author)