Results of whole body counting for JAEA staff members engaged in the emergency radiological monitoring for the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Takada, Chie ; Kurihara, Osamu*; Kanai, Katsuta; Nakagawa, Takahiro ; Tsujimura, Norio   ; Momose, Takumaro  

A massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 resulted in an enormous amount of release of radioactivity to the environment. On the day after the earthquake occurrence, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) started emergency radiological monitoring. The measurements with whole body counter (WBC) for the staff members who had returned from Fukushima started at the end of March. The measured activity of I due to inhalation for emergency staff varied from LLD to 7 kBq, which corresponded to a range of estimated initial intakes of 1 to 60 kBq when extrapolated back to the date on which the staff started the operation in Fukushima. The measured activity of Cs and Cs were both in the ranges of LLD - 3 kBq. The range of initial intake of Cs to I was 11 when taking a median from all the measurements. The maximum committed effective dose of 0.8 mSv was recorded for a worker, a member of the 2nd monitoring team dispatched from March 13 to 14.