External Dose Conversion Coefficients to Assess the Radiological Impact of an Environmental Radiation on Aquatic and Terrestrial Animals

To assess the radiological impact of environmental radiation, a set of external dose conversion coefficients for 7 Korean reference aquatic and terrestrial animals (rat, roe-deer, frog, snake, Chinese minnow, bee and earthworm) are presented for 25 radionuclides (H, Be, C, K, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Co, Zn, Sr, Zr, Nb, Tc, Ru, I, I, Cs, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, U, Pu, and Pu). The external dose conversion coefficients have been calculated by the uniform isotropic model for aquatic animals, and by the Monte Carlo method, which can simulate a photon transport in environmental media with different densities, for terrestrial animals. In the modeling all the target animals are defined as a simple 3D elliptical shape. To specify the external radiation source it is assumed that aquatic animals are fully immersed in infinite and uniformly contaminated water, and the on-soil animals are living on the surface of a horizontally infinite contaminated soil, and the in-soil organisms are living at the center of a horizontally infinite and uniformly contaminated soil to a depth of 50cm.