Radiation Hazards
H.S. VIRK
Professor Emeritus
Eternal University, Baru Sahib,
Himachal Pradesh, India
Historical Background
Nuclear fission was discovered by Otto Hahn,
Strassman and Lise Mietner in 1938 in Germany,
when they bombarded uranium with neutrons.
Enrico Fermi demonstrated the chain reaction in a
nuclear pile (reactor) on 2nd December 1942 in
Chicago (USA) which led to the making of first
Nuclear Bomb (Atomic Bomb) under the Manhattan
Project at Los Alamos in the desert of New Mexico
(USA). Two thousand million dollars was the budget
estimate for Manhattan Project. The test explosion
of Atomic Bomb on 16th July 1945 was a complete
success.
Manhattan Project
Beginning with the Manhattan Project, during the
World War II, USA created a vast arsenal of nuclear
weapons based on plutonium. The inputs came
from a number of nuclear complexes spread across
the country and they included a number of nuclear
reactors to produce plutonium, reprocessing plants
to
extract
plutonium
and
weapon-research
laboratories and production plants. As an example,
at Hanford (Washington State), a typical nuclear
weapons complex, there were 9 nuclear reactors
producing plutonium, 5 reprocessing plants and 200
tanks storing nearly 200,000 m3 of high level
radioactive waste.
Sources of Environmental
Radiation
The sources of environmental radiation
are both natural and artificial; the bulk of
average annual effective dose (2.4 mSv)
being contributed by the natural sources
of radiation including radon (52.5%) and
cosmic rays (16.2%).
Artificial sources include Radioisotopes,
Accelerators, Nuclear Reactors and
Atomic Bomb Explosions.
Radiation as a Tonic
Health-stimulating effects of natural radon were
known to Europeans and the radon spas were
used for treatment of patients in Romania,
Austria, Hungary, Germany and Russia, more
than a century ago. Radium-rich water was used
as a tonic. Most of the thermal springs are rich
source of radon and have been pilgrimage
centres in India, for example, the Manikaran
spring is also believed to have miraculous
healing powers.