Iodine-129 measurements in soil samples from Dolon village near the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site

Endo, Satoru*; Tomita, Jumpei*; Tanaka, Kenichi*; Yamamoto, Masayoshi*; Fukutani, Satoshi*; Imanaka, Tetsuji*; Sakaguchi, Aya*; Amano, Hikaru; Kawamura, Hidehisa*; Kawamura, Hisao*; Apsalikov, K. N.*; Gusev, B. I.*; Whitehead, N. E.*; Shinkarev, S.*; Hoshi, Masaharu*

Dolon village located about 60 km from the border of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site is known to be heavily contaminated by the first USSR atomic bomb test in August 1949. Soil samples around Dolon were taken in October 2005 in an attempt to evaluate internal thyroid dose arising from incorporation of radioiodine isotopes (mainly I). Iodine-129 in soil was measured by using the technique of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. From the relationship between I and Cs (corrected for background and decay from 1949 to 2005) accumulated levels, the background level of I and the I/Cs ratio around Dolon were estimated to be (6.4 0.4) 10 atoms m and 0.25 0.16, respectively. This I/Cs ratio is almost similar to the fission yield ratio for Pu fast fission (0.24).