To ascertain solid tumor mortality in towns near Spain's four nuclear power plants and four nuclear fuel facilities from 1975 to 1993, we conducted a mortality study based on 12,245 cancer deaths in 283 towns situated within a 30-km radius of the above installations. As nonexposed areas, we used 275 towns lying within a 50- to 100-km radius of each installation, matched by population size and s...

A windowless silicon (Si) diode (4 mm(2)) was evaluated as alpha particle detector and spectrometer for field measurements. It was irradiated with alpha particles from a (241)Am (2.3 kBq) and a (210)Po (9 kBq) source at source-detector distances (SDD) of 0.5, 1.0 and 1.8 cm. The energy resolution in terms of full width at half maximum was 281, 148 and 113 keV for SDD of 0.5, 1.0 and 1.8 cm, res...

As of 1996, 48 nuclear power reactors were operating in five newly independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union: 29 units at nine sites in Russia, 15 units at five sites in Ukraine, a double unit plant in Lithuania, and one unit each in Armenia and Kazakstan. These nuclear power facilities need to be reliably protected against possible radiological sabotage or terrorism. The post-Soviet ...

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many scholars, journalists, and public officials expressed fear about the security of nuclear facilities in the United States. Terrorists could attack military bases, weapons in transit, or nuclear weapons production and dismantlement plants in order to steal a weapon or its components. Terrorists might a...