Systematic Radioecological Experiments in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for Nuclear Safety and Emergency-Preparedness

Abstract

Nuclear power and other radioactivity-producing industries like oil and gas, desalination, etc. are rapidly maturing in the arid countries, most importantly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Thus, it becomes vital to study and model the transfers and impacts of radionuclides’ release into the local environments. Baseline or predictive studies on this subject are extremely scarce for the UAE-like desert-marine ecosystems. In global literature, the retention and transfer mechanisms of natural and anthropogenic radionuclides in arid soils and plants are grossly underrepresented. We debrief the recent research activities in the UAE and nearby nations on background radioactivity measurements in soils and plants, as well as those estimating the radioecological transfer factors or concentration ratios. Soil to plant transfer is a key sought after data for arid region radioecology. We further outline some systematic field and laboratory experiments executed by Khalifa University of the UAE, which includes numerous field surveys, identifying radionuclides and crop categories of importance, sampling in representative localities in the Abu Dhabi emirate, developing protocols for sample management and processing, and radiometry using gamma-spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma mass-spectrometry.