Radiation hazard of solid metallic tailings in Shangluo, China

Abstract

The radiation hazards of five kinds of different solid metallic tailings collected from Shangluo, China were determined on the basis of natural radioactivity measurements using low background multichannel gamma ray spectrometry. The activity concentration of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in the tailings ranged from 5.1 to 204.3, 3.8 to 28.5, and 289.6 to 762.3 Bq/kg, respectively. The radium equivalent activities and the external hazard indexes of all studied metallic tailings were below the internationally accepted value of 370 Bq/kg and unity, respectively. The internal hazard index of vanadium tailings exceeded unity, while the internal hazard indexes of other analyzed metallic tailings were less than unity. The indoor air absorbed dose rate values for all studied metallic tailings except lead-zinc tailings and gold tailings were higher than the world population-weighted average of 84 nGy/h and the annual effective dose values of all metallic tailings except for vanadium tailings were lower than 1 mSv. The study showed that vanadium tailings present a radiation hazard and their usage as building materials should be restricted.

Keywords

• metallic tailing
• building material
• natural radioactivity
• radiation hazard
• radium equivalent activity