Long term prognosis of individual and collective exposure doses to the population

For the purpose of evaluating the long-term consequences of radiation contamination following the Chernobyl accident, it was decided to divide the whole of the Soviet Union into a number of regions. Calculations were made with a special software package. The collective dose commitment to the country's population due to caesium isotopes will amount to 117,000 man-Sv, of which the first year accounted for about 27%. Thus, the main contribution to the aggregate dose will be made in the second and subsequent years, i.e., a period when the formation of dose burdens to the population can be effectively influenced by strict monitoring of agricultural products, agrotechnical measures in the contaminated area and even by a thoroughgoing reformation of the economy. Many of these measures have already been taken in the USSR. On the whole, the average individual dose commitment to the country's population will be about 1.2 mSv, which, given an annual level of background radiation in the USSR of 1 mSv/year, adds only 2% to the natural background dose. In view of all the measures taken, the main contribution to the population dose commitment comes from external gamma radiation from the radioactive products released during the accident - ?% - and about 38% from internal exposure resulting from the consumption of contaminated food products. (author). 9 refs, 5 tabs.


Pavlovskij, O.A.


chernobylsk-4 reactor; contamination; decontamination; dose commitments; external irradiation; food; human populations; internal irradiation; man; radiation accidents; radiation doses; accidents; animals; cleaning; enriched uranium reactors; graphite moderated reactors; irradiation; kinetics; lwgr type reactors; mammals; populations; power reactors; primates; reactors; thermal reactors; vertebrates

Subject Category

Actual Accidents



Place of Publication

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)


Available from INIS in electronic form.