Monitoring of radionuclide levels in soils of the Derekoy,Hamzabeyli and Pazarkule borders

Humans, constantly have been exposed by radioactivity since creationof the universe. The most common radiation sources to which humans are exposed by natural radioactivity from long life time of radionuclides in the earth's surroundings and the interaction of cosmic rays on the earth's atmosphere. The natural radioactivity in soil comes from U and Th series and natural 40K. In addition to naturally occurring radionuclides, a large number of radionuclides have been produced and released into the environment by human nuclear activity, including nuclear weapons testing, the operation of nuclear power plants, research reactors, and nuclear fuel reprocessing. Thus the investigation and monitoring of these radiations is important. By monitoring researches the environmental radioactivity, the dose of radioactivity that people and other creatures are exposed to and the important differences at environmental radioactivity are being identified. In this thesis, it is aimed to determine the radioactivity in soil of Derekoy,Hamzabeyli and Pazarkule borders in Trakya region. In soil samples, radioactivity levels of 226Ra (238U), 40K, 232Th, 137Cs are measured and determined by using HpGe gamma spectrometry. For soil samples, the average activity concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th, 40K and 137Cs are 38.16±4.04, 36.34±1.76, 51.53±1.22, 766.67±8.93 and 7.68 ±0.5 Bq/kg, respectively. The average absorbed dose rates for soil samples were calculated to be 80.55, 71.20 and 88.59 nGy.h-1, respectively. The calculated external annual effective dose rate of the region ranged from 40.43 to 124.93 μSv.y-1, with an average value of 98.25 μSv.y-1. Keywords: radioactivity, soil, gamma, HpGe, dose