Radioactive material may be suddenly or steadily introduced into the environment as a result of various human activities (industrial, medical, military, scientific) and is also naturally present throughout the earth and the atmosphere. Such material consists of unstable isotopes of various chemical elements (for example: carbon, hydrogen, iodine, strontium) called radio-nuclides, whose atoms undergo transformation into atoms of a different element, sometimes also unstable, at a known constant rate. Because they are chemically indistinguishable from their stable isotopes, radio-nuclides behave chemically like non-radioactive nuclides. They are thus similarly distributed among the various components of the environment and, through ingestion of food or inhalation of air containing them, may be deposited in various tissues of the human body, depending on the properties of the chemical compounds of which they are part.
The ionizing radiation that radio-nuclides emit during radioactive decay is what causes biological damage, whether the radiation reaches human tissues from inside or outside the body. The resulting effects depend on the amount of energy imparted by radiation per gramme of a specific tissue, a measurable quantity called the absorbed dose.
Radiation has always been a part of the natural environment, and the major part of the radiation dose received by the public at large is unavoidable. On the other hand, the uses of nuclear techniques in fields as diverse as industrial radiography (for quality assurance) and medicine (for diagnosis and treatment) is increasing; and nuclear energy is making an expanding contribution to electricity generation: currently ten percent of the world total. The radiation exposure of groups of workers and of the public at large is inevitably increased by the use of these nuclear techniques. Individual risks and 'detriment' to the population resulting from radiation exposure have been evaluated by national and international bodies of experts, and it is now widely recognized and accepted that practices conforming to the system of dose limitations recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) should have no significant radiological impact.
Radioactive contamination is regarded as the number one environmental problem in Russia. In 1992, up to 2.7 million people still lived in the areas affected by the 1986 nuclear power plant explosion at Chernobyl. A total of 1.3 million people were registered in hospital as suffering from diseases related to radiation exposure from Chernobyl by that time. In other areas affected by nuclear radiation, many people became invalid, suffering from headaches, bleeding, anaemia and leukaemia.
In 1993, it was estimated that for every year of operation of a proposed new nuclear processing plant at Sellafield in the UK, around 200 deaths from cancer would be caused worldwide. This would be mainly due to emission of two very long-lived radionuclides, iodine-129 and krypton-85 which circulated globally and therefore irradiate large numbers of people. Incidence of childhood leukaemia in the area is already up to 10 times the national average.
Some 85 per cent of the average total radiation dose to UK individuals comes from natural radiation sources such as radon, gamma and cosmic radiation. Radon accounts for half of the total average population dose. Artificial radiation accounts for the remaining 15 per cent of total average population dose, most of which comes from medical sources. Less than 0.1 per cent of total population exposure from artificial radiation results from discharges from nuclear installations. High level radioactive waste results from the processing of nuclear fuel. Stocks stored at Sellafield and Dounreay fell by 3 per cent between 1991 and 1994. Intermediate level radioactive waste includes, for example, nuclear reactor components and metal cladding for nuclear fuel. Stocks stored at UK nuclear installations increased by 19 per cent between 1991 and 1994.
It was revealed in 1998 that the Israeli El Al cargo jet, that plowed into a low-income housing complex near Amsterdam in 1992, contained 270 kilograms of depleted uranium, used for ballast in the tail section of the older aircraft. That kind of uranium emits a low-level alpha radiation and is not hazardous unless ingested, but can be toxic if burned at high temperatures. Although more than half of the uranium was recovered, it was still not known what had happened with the rest.
In the past few decades there has been increasing public and scientific discussion on the effects on man and his environment of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation. Public attention has tended to focus on potential risks which might eventually arise from the projected expansion of nuclear-produced electricity, as a result of the increase in discharges of effluents contaminated with radioactive materials. It is for this reason that the nuclear industry has developed measures and techniques to prevent this radioactive 'pollution', which are generally considered more advanced and sophisticated than those used for other industrial pollutants. Every new radioactive discharge must be justified by demonstrating that economic gains will outweigh the damage to human health. As a result, the nuclear power industry is a very minor contributor to population radiation exposure – accounting for a little over 0.1% of the average individual radiation dose in industrialized countries.
There was a strong consensus among 116 scientists at a conference in 1993 that there was no evidence of any regional-scale radioactive contamination in the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans that posed a threat to human health or caused environmental concern.