Радиационная гигиена (Jan 2016)
the history of the natural sources dosimetry laboratory in st. petersburg research institute of radiation hygiene after professor p.v. ramzaev: 1. 1956–1970
Abstract
In 2016, St. Petersburg Research Institute of Radiation Hygiene after Professor P.V. Ramzaev celebrates 60-th anniversary since its’ foundation. Mindful of the Institute as the research organization 60 years is not too much but it was exactly that time period which spanned radiation hygiene’s origination and development as science. The Institute was established only just 11 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, against the backdrop of nuclear weapons tests when the awareness of ionizing radiation’s disastrous consequences for population and environment was not just confined to a narrow circle of specialists. By that time the famous F-1 reactor had already been in operation and new perspectives of nuclear energy peaceful use were lying ahead. There had been an urgent need for scientific studies on personnel and population safety, for development of research hardware, for special personnel in-service training etc. So the Institute’s creation was necessitated by life itself, by objectives unthinkable without a specialized scientific research organization. Since the very beginning, the Institute specialists mostly aimed at studying technogenic radiation sources. That was the very purpose of the Institute’s creation. Nevertheless almost simultaneously with that the Institute had initiated studies on natural radioactivity. New devices had been created in order to identify natural and technogenic radionuclides at such levels which are hardly achievable even these days. It will be demonstrated below that some of the 1970s and 1980s hardware developments retained their uniqueness. Mindful of the upcoming jubilee we consider it expedient to think back to the most outstanding scientists who had made a profound contribution into the establishment of the Institute as the contemporary scientific school of radiation hygiene and domestic hygienic science. This publication describes the infancy of the natural sources dosimetry laboratory. Subsequently it is planned to display the further advancement laboratory’s studies of natural radiation as one of population exposure major sources.
