Environmental radioactivity monitoring program in Iraq: outlook and results

Environmental monitoring studies have been started in Iraq during the 1970's as part of research projects carried out by the Health Physics Department. Nuclear Research Center, IAEC. These studies were concerned mainly with the determination of global fallout in rain water and the activity concentration of radionuclides in environmental samples. No fission products could be detected in rain water. However, soil and vegetation samples contained ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs. The activity concentration of those radionuclides were very low (10 Bq kg^‐1).

In 1981, the radioactivity monitoring program was enlarged due to the construction of two French made reactors: Tammuz 1 and Tammuz 2. An extensive radioactivity monitoring program around Tuwaitha site was instituted. It included exposure rate measurements as well as the determination of activity concentration of radionuclides in environmental samples such as: soil, grass, milk, vegetables and river water. Thus the radiological background was established before the commissioning of the two reactors. The results obtained had indicated that the average exposure rate was 7.0–0.8 μ R h,^‐1 and only few Bq kg^‐1 of ¹³⁷Cs were detected in some soil and vegetation samples.

At the beginning of 1986 a radioactivity in imported food monitoring program was established. This program proved to be very useful on the national level, since our laboratories were officially designated by the Iraqi government following the Chernobyl accident to measure the activity concentration of radionuclides in imported foods, where thousands of samples had been analyzed. The contamination levels in the vast majority of the samples were below the Iraqi derived intervention level of 370 Bq kg^‐1.

The Chernobyl accident had the greatest impact on the environmental radioactivity monitoring programs in Iraq. Almost all areas in Iraq were monitored for possible fallout debris contamination. It was found that the exposure rates had increased substantially, in some points up to eight times the background levels, and high activity concentrations of ¹³¹I,¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs were detected in many environmental samples such as: soil, milk, meat, grass and grains, with lower concentrations of ⁹⁵Zr, ⁹⁵Nb, ¹⁰³Ru, ¹²⁵Sb, ¹⁴¹Ce and ¹⁴⁴Ce.