(Teleborsa) – New measuring instruments for monitoring greenhouse gases and of ionizing radiations they were developed by the consortium of 17 international partners of the European TraceRadon project, which also includes ENEA with the National Institute of Metrology of Ionizing Radiations (INMRI), the Institute of Radioprotection and the Laboratory of Observations and Measurements for the Environment and the climate.
These new measures – explains the official note released by ENEA – they have been calibrated on radon, a natural radioactive gas generated in soils and rocks which accumulates in closed environments and is considered the main source of ionizing radiation. The more accurate data obtained with these new methodologies will be useful for atmospheric monitoring networks to calculate both CO2 and radiation protection levels.
“THERadon can be used as a natural tracer for atmospheric studies which concern the transport of air masses and the concentrations of gaseous pollutants which accumulate mainly in the part of the atmosphere directly influenced by the earth’s surface”, explain the researchersFrancesco Cardellini and Marco Capogni of INMRI-ENEA. “The variation in the height of this layer (from a few tens of meters to a few kilometers) affects the concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere and therefore also that of radon. Consequently, a precise, accurate and reliable measurement of the concentration of this element in the atmosphere and the flux from the ground is of considerable importance for atmospheric models which allow, for example, the estimation of greenhouse gases such as CO2″, they add.
Among the main results achieved by the project, the development of new methods and procedures for calibrating instruments useful for measuring outdoor radon concentrations (from a few units up to hundreds of becquerels per cubic meter), to be used in atmospheric monitoring and radiation protection networks. “In particularENEA has developed an accumulation chamber for measurements of radon flow from the soil, whose data, combined with physical analyzes of the soil and atmospheric parameters, have made it possible to validate various mathematical models of transport of this gas”, underline the two researchers of INMRI-ENEA.
Furthermore, experts from all over Europehave participated at the ENEA Casaccia Research Center in one of the four measurement campaigns to develop procedures capable of detecting, in an increasingly reliable way, the flow of radon from the soil. “Improving these types of measures will help research on climate change and radiation protection, including their use to identify so-called priority areas at risk of radon, a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas, which can pose a serious health risk: its radioactive decay generates unstable atoms, radionuclides, which once inhaled emit energy in the form of radiation in the respiratory system”, explains Alessandro Rizzo of the Institute of Radioprotection.
Already today, in the European research infrastructure ICOS, of which the ENEA Observatory of Lampedusa is part, there are stations where radon in the atmosphere is measured continuously. “However, instruments and measurements of this gas still need to be improved especially in the presence of low concentrations, so as to be able to provide increasingly reliable data for the study of air pollution[2] and for radiation monitoring to support national surveillance systems”, underline Damiano Sferlazzo and Francesco Monteleone of the ENEA Laboratory of Observations and Measurements for the Environment and Climate. “Thanks to this project we will now aim to transfer the new instruments to calibration laboratories for measurements in the field of ionizing radiation, to organizations developing standards (e.g. IEC, ISO) and finally to users active finals in greenhouse gas monitoring and radiation protection,” conclude the researchers.
