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Natural radionuclide concentrations in thermal springs of east Algeria

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Abstract

The variation of the natural radionuclide concentrations depends on the chemical composition of each site. In this work, two thermal springs in the east of Algeria have been chosen to assess the activity concentration of natural radionuclide, mainly the three natural radioactive series 238U, 235U and 232Th, and 40K. The high-resolution gamma ray spectroscopy was used to determine these concentrations. In these water samples, 235U, 234Th, 210Pb, 226Ra radionuclides are less than the minimum detectable activity. The activity of 238U is dominant. The 238U activity was determined by taking the mean activity of two separate photo-peaks of daughter nuclides 214Pb at 351.92 (37.2%) keV and 214Bi at 609.31 (45%) keV. The measured activity concentrations of 238U in water samples obtained from the concentrations of 214Bi and 214Pb ranged from 0.56 ± 0.20 to 1.13 ± 0.20 Bq/L. The annual effective dose value due to the ingestion of the measured radionuclide 238U in 1 L of water, for an adult, ranged from 9.20 to 18.56 µSv.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by DAC laboratory, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research-Algeria. Gamma spectrometry analysis was realized in the Laboratory at surety service and radioprotection of the Nuclear Research Center of Birine-Algeria (CRNB). We express our thanks and acknowledgement to the Staff of the Nuclear Research Centre of Birine (CRNB), for their help, especially Mr Azzouz, a research master at surety service and radioprotection for their collaboration and assistance given all along our experimental work program.

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  1. Hadda Kebir

    Present address: Physics Department, Faculty of Sciences, Mohamed El-Bachir El Ibrahimi Bordj Bouarreridj University, 34000, BBA, Algeria

Authors and Affiliations

  1. DAC Laboratory, Physics Department, Faculty of Sciences, Ferhat Abbas Setif-1 University, 19000, Setif, Algeria

    Hadda Kebir & Ahmed Boucenna

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  1. Hadda Kebir
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  2. Ahmed Boucenna
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Correspondence to Hadda Kebir.

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Kebir, H., Boucenna, A. Natural radionuclide concentrations in thermal springs of east Algeria. Environ Earth Sci 76, 52 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-6373-z

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