Development of The Contaminated Soils Rehabilitation Manual

Period: 2004-2005

Customer: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), USA

The major objective of the project was to develop a manual on the problems of rehabilitation and re-settlement of the excluded lands. The manual contains a list of detailed procedures allowing assessing potentialities of such lands management including their re-settlement.

The project resulted in development of the draft manual presenting methodological basics and methodical aspects of the excluded areas rehabilitation including some algorithms and examples of calculations. The draft manual consists of two parts.

The first one includes the following basic sections:

• general provisions (legal environment, characteristics of the territories that may be potentially subject to rehabilitation processes, principles and criteria of rehabilitation activities);
• fundamental terms and definitions that form a basis of rehabilitation based on dose criteria;
• information basis and criteria for decision-making on rehabilitation of territories;
• assessment of some sites within the excluded areas based of their fitness for rehabilitation in general and determination of a possibility to achieve complete or partial (limited) rehabilitation (sanitary/hygienic characteristic of the excluded areas environment);
• identification of the territories, where rehabilitation is possible (identification of territories for complete and partial rehabilitation);
• identification of a buffer zone and informational basis for its selection;
• identification of rehabilitation activities’ directions and scenarios (agricultural activities, forestry activities, etc.) and comparative assessment of their efficiency and practicability.

The second part of the manual includesthe following algorithms and examples of calculations:

• assessment of current radiological situation within the excluded territories (radionuclide composition of contamination, density of territorial contamination, physical and chemical forms of radioactive fallout and dynamics of their transformation, assessment of possible radioactive contamination of food (with and without countermeasures);
• assessment of possible radiation doses for the public in case of re-evacuation; categorization of the territories based on a type of radiological situation; separation of territories, where partial rehabilitation is possible;
• assessment, classification, and zoning of territories based on their possible rehabilitation potential.

Contact:
Principal Research Officer of International Radioecology Laboratory

Doctor of  Biology
Iurii O. Ivanov
Tel: +38 (04579) 2 44 88
Fax:+38 (04579) 6 15 62
e-mail: bondarkov@chornobyl.net