Environmental impact of the Research Institute of Physical Chemistry in Obninsk on soils of the nearby territory

Abstract

This work focuses on the study of radioactive and chemical contamination of the soil caused by non-power generation nuclear facilities. For this purpose, the environmental monitoring of terrestrial ecosystems around the Karpov Institute of Physical Chemistry, located in the Obninsk region and exploiting research nuclear reactor, has been carried out. The annually published environmental safety reports of the Karpov Institute for the period of 2011-2018 served as sources of the initial information about the facility impact on the environment. In summer 2019, the sampling of soils around the facility was carried out in 19 locations. In laboratory studies, the following indexes of physical and chemical properties of the soil are studied: type of the soil, soil density, hygroscopic moisture, moisture capacity, acidity. Instrumental methods such as potentiometric analysis were performed to determine the content of chloride in the soil. Specific activities of radionuclides were measured in soils using gamma spectrometry. It was found that the physical and chemical properties vary from point to point. Specific activities of radionuclides in the soil also vary, and in some points the radionuclides content is particularly higher than in others. Finally, all the data were compared with a similar research done in the previous year, and we found that our physical and chemical properties are similar and the specific activities are little lower than the previous year. For everything mentioned before, it is strongly suggested that more studies about the consequences to the environment and humans should be done, in more nuclear non-power facilities.