Remediation strategies for rural territories contaminated by the Chernobylaccident

The objective of the present paper is to derive remediation strategies for rural settlements contaminated by the Chernobyl accident in which annual do ses to a critical group still exceed 1 mSv. Extensive radioecological data have been collected for TO contaminated settlements. A dose model based on these data resulted in estimates that are on average close to and a bit les s than the official dose estimates (catalogue doses') published by the resp onsible Ministries of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. For eight remedial actio ns that call be applied on a large scale, effectiveness and costs have been assessed in light of their dependence on soil type, contamination level an d on the degree of previous application of remedial actions. Remediation st rategies were derived for each of the 70 settlements by choosing remedial a ctions with lowest costs per averted dose and with highest degree of accept ability among the farmers and local authorities until annual doses are asse ssed to fall below 1 mSv. The results were generalised to II contamination/ internal-dose categories. The total numbers of rural inhabitants and privat ely owned cows in the three countries distributed over the categories were determined and predicted until the year 2015. Based on these data, costs an d averted doses were derived for the whole affected population. The main re sults are (i) about 2000 Sv can be averted at relatively low costs, (ii) th e emphasis on reducing external exposures should be increased, (iii) radica l improvement of hay-land and meadows and application of Prussian blue to c ows should be performed on a large scale if annual doses of 1 mSv are an ai m to be achieved, (iv) additional remedial actions of importance are fertil ising of potato fields, distribution of food monitors and restriction of mu shroom consumption, and (v) for inhabitants of some settlements (in total a bout 8600) annual doses cannot be reduced below 1 mSv by the remedial actio ns considered. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.