A sensitive new technique for detecting radioactivity in rain water has been developed by Hebrew University and Weizmann Institute scientists. Tests using the technique show that radioactive iodine in rainfall rose 30 times more in West Germany following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster than it did in Israel.
The new technique, developed by Dr. Michael Paul of the University’s Racah Institute of Physics and his colleagues at the University and at the Weizmann Institute, is able to detect radioactivity in rainwater at concentrations one million times less than could be previously measured.
Paul, working at the 14 UD pelletron particle accelerator at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, has developed a method of measuring the tiny concentrations of radioactive materials created naturally in the atmosphere by cosmic radiation, for which no other method of measurement exists.
Following the Chernobyl reactor disaster, which released a quantity of radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere, Paul was able to measure the increase in concentration of a long-lived radioactive isotope of iodine (with a half-life of 16 million years) present in rain water samples from Israel and West Germany.
A control sample of rainwater collected in Israel in 1984 was used to measure the natural quantity of radioactive iodine. The results showed the effect Chernobyl had on rain water, and particularly on the German sample which contained 30 times more radioactive iodine than the Israel rain water from the same period.
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