This summer we spent nice holiday week in Gosau, small alpine town laying at mountainside of Gosaukamm in a part of Austria known as Salzkammergut. It is very nice place with lot of natural attractions in surrounding area (mountains, lakes, caves, fossils, etc.). When we prepared for the holiday, I looked to the maps of Cs-137 contamination in Austria, since I've known, that there are some areas which were hit by highly contaminated air masses after Chernobyl NPP accident [1,2]. I found out, that the place where we should spend our holidays is also one of such Cs-137 hotspots (Image 1, place is marked with a circle). Surface activity of Cs-137 at this place reached level 60 - 80 kBq/m2 [2]. So the last day of our week in Gosau, I took about 0.5 kg of soil from small meadow in a town for a measurement.
I was really curious to compare Cs-137 contamination in the Czech Republic and Austria, so immediately upon arrival at home I dried my soil sample and prepared it for the measurement. The preparation of the soil sample was the same as described in previous article (Soil contamination with cesium-137 in the Czech Republic). After sieving the soil through a 0.5 mm mesh, 260 g of dry material was taken and gamma spectrum was collected for 39 hours.
Image 1. Map of Astria Cs-137 contamination (May 2016). Source: Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety [2]
| Sample | Soil 260 g (Gosau - Austria, N47°35'13"N, E13°32'16"E ) |
| Gamma spectrometer | Scintillix SCGS-01 |
| Scintillation probe | NaI(Tl) 3" |
| Integration time | 140400 (39 h) |
| Background correction | Yes |
| Shield | Lead |
| Software | Theremino v.7.2 |
For the clarity, how high is the contamination in this part of Austrian Alps, I made a graph (Image 2), where gamma spectra of soil samples from the Czech Republic are compared with the spectrum of the soil from Gosau.
Image 2. Comparison of Cs-137 soil contamination in the Czech Republic (Hradec Kralove, Rasosky) and in one of Astrian Cs-137 hotspots (Gosau). Gamma spectrum processed by moving average (n=7).
Unlike the cases, when I measured Cs-137 contamination in the samples from our country, in this case, cesium photopeak was clearly visible after couple of minutes. I have known, that contamination in some parts of Austria is rather high, but I’ve been still surprised by Cs-137 peak height if compared with measurements, which I've done before.
So what is the conclusion from this experiment? I definitely would not eat anything like mushrooms, blueberries, game, etc. from this area, at least not in higher quantities.
References:
[1] Contamination of Austrian soil with caesium-137, Bossew P., Ditto M., Falkner T. Henrich E. , Kienzl K., Rappelsberger U., J Environ Radioact. 2001;55(2):187-94. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0265-931X(00)00192-2 (link)
[2] Radioactivity monitoring of meat and animal feeds and emergency preparedness in Austria, Katzlberger Ch., Hofer P., Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, , 2016 (link)