Evaluation of Hungarian monitoring results and source localization of the Ru release in the fall of 2017.

Anthropogenic Ru has been detected in the environment from late September to early October 2017 by several European environmental radiological monitoring networks. The paper presents the comprehensive evaluation of Hungarian monitoring results related to the occurrence of Ru in various environmental compartments (airborne particulates, deposition, plants, and terrestrial indicators), which was implemented to determine the temporal and spatial variation of the contaminant on a national scale and also to verify the findings based on the data arising from environmental monitoring at a local scale in Budapest. Difficulties in direct comparison of the diverse reported data were also considered; results arising from varied sampling periods were corrected with account taken of the relation between the sampling duration and 4-day-long plume residence (estimation based on the daily monitoring of air and backward trajectory analysis).

Methods, results and dose consequences of Ru detection in the environment in Budapest, Hungary.

From late September to early October of 2017, the majority of European networks involved in environmental radiological monitoring - including the environmental monitoring system of the KFKI Campus in Budapest - detected Ru isotope of artificial origin in the atmosphere. The reported values higher than the minimum detectable activity (MDA) concentrations were in the range of 0.8 μBq/m - 145 mBq/m.