Radiological monitoring in some coastal regions of the Saudi Arabian Gulf close to the Iranian Bushehr nuclear plant
Introduction
Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) is ubiquitous but show a heterogeneous distribution in the environment, and identified as the background radiation in our dwelling environment. A range of natural and/or anthropogenic activities including mineral exploration, mining, milling, etc., may redistribute and enhance the level of background radioactivity in our dwelling environment. In addition, a wide variety of artificial radionuclides has been discharged into the atmospheric and oceanic environment via deliberate or accidental nuclear events. All such phenomena contributed and enhance the level of environmental radioactivity that contributes to an increase in the environmental radiation dose. The accurate assessment of the environmental radioactivity is an important task to evaluate the human exposure to natural and man-made radiation. Specifically, measurement of radioactivity in beach sand may provide valuable information on transport mechanisms and the environmental fate of radionuclides, reflecting both on health risks to neighbouring areas. Since the natural radioactivity in beach sands is a non-negligible source of external exposure, therefore many studies are conducted worldwide, focusing in particular on sites of natural high background radiation areas (Khandaker et al., 2018).
In connection to this, this study was undertaken for the terrestrial and anthropogenic radionuclides in seawater and shore sand and sediment of some important regions along the Saudi Arabian Gulf coast. The selected regions Khafji, Safaniyah and Menifah are located on the Saudi Arabian Gulf in front of the Bushehr nuclear plant of Iran. The geographical position of sampling points is listed in Table 1. Two earthquakes with the magnitudes of 6.2 and 6.0 on the Richter scale rocked north-western Iran's East Azerbaijan province on 11 Aug 2012 (Information Bulletin, 2012). In the event of a leak from the Bushehr plant by another earthquake, radiation would be easily carried to the coastal regions of the Arabian Gulf countries, particularly as it is located near Khafgi, Al Safaniyah and Menifah along the Saudi Arabian coast. Moreover, in Khafji and Safaniyah, there are two main and large oil fields compared to the oil field in Menifah, as shown in Fig. 1, which may introduce radium isotopes to the seawater and shore sediments through the discharge of produced water (Dowdall and Lepland, 2012).
A search of literature reveals that no earlier study on natural radioactivity is available in the present area of interest, but several similar works are reported from various beach zones of other gulf countries like Egypt, Iran, Oman, Kuwait, including KSA. While the studies of other gulf countries focusses on the assessment of natural radiation level in sand and sediment samples, the study from KSA was performed only for the artificial radioactivity in surface marine sediments of the Arabian Gulf in Saudi Arabia. More particularly, in the year of 2007, Al-Kheliewi and Shabana (2007) determined the anthropogenic radionuclides 238Pu, 239+240Pu, 90Sr and 137Cs in sediment samples collected from the Arabian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia (Al-Kheliewi et al., 2002). They collected bottom sediment samples at 2–10 km from the Saudi shore, and reported an average activity concentrations of 137Cs, 241Am, 238Pu, and 239+240Pu were 4.58, 0.26, 0.044 and 0.35 Bq/kg respectively. To this end, present study aims to determine the concentrations of naturally occurring 226Ra, 232Th and 40K, and man-made (if detected) radionuclides in beach sands and water from selected coastal locations of Khafji, Safaniyah and Menifah along the shores of Arabian gulf, and to evaluate the associated radiological implications on public health due to the natural radionuclides of the beach sands. The study may also contributes to the radiation data bank of Saudi Arabia, especially as it is moving towards acquiring its first operational commercial Nuclear Power Plant within the next few years.
Section snippets
Methodology
The sampling stations (Khafji, Safaniyah and Menifah) were selected for their closeness to the Iranian Bushehr nuclear plant and the presence of non-nuclear activities (oil fields) on these sites. Three sampling stations were selected (Khafji, Safaniyah and Menifah), and in each station, three samples were collected. The samples numbers and the interval between them were selected based on the selected region and the measurement capacity.
The beach sand/sediments were collected utilizing a
Results and discussion
Using 250 g sample weight and germanium detector with 70% relative efficiency, the anthropogenic radionuclides 137Cs and 241Am were not detected in all samples. The activity concentrations of 226Ra, 228Ra and 40K in Bq/kg dry weight, together with ±1σ uncertainties in the beach sand samples are shown in Table 2.
The average activity concentrations of 228Ra, 226Ra, and 40K in the analyzed samples are 5.9, 3.5 and 113.5 Bq/kg respectively, as presented in Fig. 3.
The differences in the activity
Conclusion
Concentrations of terrestrial radionuclides 226Ra, 228Ra and 40K were measured in shore sediments and seawater samples collected from the coastal region of Saudi Arabian Gulf due to its closeness of nuclear (Iranian Busher nuclear plant) and non-nuclear fuel cycle (Oil fields) activities. A high purity, high resolution and high efficiency gamma ray spectrometer was employed to measure the activities in the studied samples. No artificial radionuclides were found in any of the samples studied.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Jamila Alzahrani: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition. Aljawhara Almuqrin: Funding acquisition, Investigation, Supervision. Hanan Alghamdi: Data curation, Funding acquisition. Badriah Albarzan: Funding acquisition, Resources. Mayeen Uddin Khandaker: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. M.I. Sayyed: Project administration, Writing – original draft.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
This reacarch was funded by Deanship of Scientific Research at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University (Grant No. 39/S/266).
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