Results of environmental radiation monitoring at the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories,JAEA, following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident

In response to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, emergency monitoring of the environmental radiation was performed at the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories (NCL), Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). This article describes the results of the monitoring, including air absorbed dose rate and radionuclide concentration in air and fallout. The air absorbed dose rate began to increase from about 1 am on 15 March 2011 and varied over time, with three peaks: 4.8 μGy/h, 2.1 μGy/h and 3.1 μGy/h at 8 am on 15 March, 5 am on 16 March and 4 am on 21 March, respectively. The increase in the radionuclide concentrations in air and fallout showed a tendency similar to that in the case of the dose rate. The ¹³¹I/¹³⁷Cs concentration ratio in air varied considerably every day, and the maximum was about 100. The ¹³⁷Cs amount in the fallout for a month from 15 March to April 15 was about 120 times higher than that after the Chernobyl accident in May 1986 and about 30 times higher than that in Tokyo in June 1963 during the atmospheric nuclear weapon tests. The committed effective dose due to inhalation was estimated from the observed radionuclide concentration in air.