Investigation of environmental radioactivity in Iron ore of Shams Abad in Arak, Iran

There are natural and artificial radionuclides in the environment, and the humans, wanted or unwanted, are exposed to nuclear radiation.Amount of radionuclides in the environment depends on soil type, rock and geographical situation. One of the ways for radionuclides transfer tohumans is application of inorganic material for production of necessary products. Thereforestudy of radioactivity of mines is very important.
In this research, 12 samples of Iron Ore of Shams Abad Iron mine have been studied. The samples were collected randomly according to color and identified type of composition in a mineralogy laboratory. The specific activities of natural radionuclides were determined using gamma ray spectrometry method, employing a high purity germanium detector (HPGe) model GCD30195 with 30% relative efficiency. Radium equivalent (Raeq), internal and external hazard indices (Hin and Hex), internal and external annual absorbed dose and absorbed dose rate for all samples were calculated.
The activity concentration of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in these samples varied from 9.39±0.53 to 271.70±1.84,