Determination of internal and external hazard index of natural radioactivity in well water samples

Abstract

Abstract Well water is an environmental component that is always used by people but is vulnerable to contaminated. The impact of the contamination of water bodies could cause danger to human health. Water pollution could be caused by radioactivity that exceeds recommended limits. Source of radionuclide pollutants in water bodies could be caused by the operation of nuclear facilities. Analysis of radioactivity has been carried out on several samples of well water near the TRIGA 2000 reactor facility, followed by calculating the internal and external hazard index of radiation dose. The results of the analysis using a gamma spectrometer show that the radionuclides contained in well water samples are not fission products, but they are Ra-226, Bi-214, Pb-214 and K-40 in the form of natural radionuclides. The highest radioactivity in the sample was 5.808 Bq/L from K-40 and the lowest was 0.103 Bq/L from Bi-214. The internal and external hazard index has been determined where the internal hazard index was 0.013-0.023 while the external hazard index was 0.006-0.012 which is below the maximum hazard index value based on UNSCEAR which is ⩽ 1. So, based on the results of this study on the radioactivity parameters show that well water is still safe to be used.