Determining radiation dose to residents of radiation-contaminated buildings

There are more than one thousand residents who lived in about 140 radiation-contaminated buildings and received the assessed radiation dose equivalent over 5 mSv/year. In this paper, a systematic approach to dose reconstruction is proposed for evaluating radiation dose equivalent to the residents. The approach includes area survey and exposure measurement, source identification and energy spectrum analysis, special designed TLD-embedded badges for residents to wear and organ dose estimation with Rando phantom simulation. From the study, it is concluded that the ionization chamber should still be considered as the primary modality for external dose measurement. However, lacking of accurate daily activity patterns of the residents, the dose equivalent estimation with the chamber measurements would be somehow overestimated. The encountered limitation could be compensated with the use of the TLD badges and Rando phantom simulation that could also provide more information for internal organ dose equivalent estimations. As the radiation patterns in the buildings are highly anisotropic, which strongly depends on the differences of structural and indoor layouts, it demands a mathematical model dealing with the above concerns. Also, further collaborations with studies on biological markers of the residents would make the entire dose equivalent estimation more helpful and reliable.