Edited by
K.G. Andersson, Risoe National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Technical University of Denmark, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Description
For many decades, investigations of the behaviour and implications of radioactive contamination in the environment have focused on agricultural
areas and food production. This was due to the erroneous assumption that the consequences of credible contaminating incidents would
be restricted to rural areas. However, due to the Chernobyl accident, more than 250,000 persons were removed from their homes, demonstrating
a great need for knowledge and instruments that could be applied to minimise the manifold adverse consequences of contamination in inhabited
areas. Also, today the world is facing a number of new threats, including radiological terrorism, which would be likely to take place
in a city, where most people would become directly affected. A recent report from the US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of
Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism concludes that it is most likely that a large radiological, or even nuclear, terror attack
on a major city somewhere in the world will occur before 2013.
For the first time ever, the specific problems of airborne radioactive
contamination in inhabited areas are treated in a holistically covering treatise, pinpointing factorial interdependencies and describing
instruments for mitigation. The state-of-the-art knowledge is here explained by leading scientists in the various disciplines of relevance.
Included in series
Radioactivity in the Environment
Audience:
ecologists, environmental scientists
