Most spe­cial per­mits for sub­soil use for the pur­pose of min­er­al extrac­tion con­tain a spe­cif­ic con­di­tion requir­ing annu­al radi­a­tion con­trol of quar­ry rocks and fin­ished prod­ucts in accor­dance with the require­ments of NRBU-97. Geo­log­i­cal con­trol author­i­ties car­ry it out through pedes­tri­an gam­ma sur­vey­ing, lab­o­ra­to­ry sam­pling, and clas­si­fi­ca­tion of rocks of the planned extrac­tion area by radioac­tiv­i­ty class­es. It is impor­tant to note that obtain­ing cer­tifi­cates (pass­ports) of radi­a­tion qual­i­ty for prod­ucts and raw mate­ri­als is not a suf­fi­cient con­di­tion for ful­fill­ing the spec­i­fied require­ment of annu­al radi­a­tion con­trol.

Ion­iz­ing radi­a­tion, which may be harm­ful to humans and the envi­ron­ment, is caused by radioac­tive ele­ments. In order to lim­it the impact of ion­iz­ing radi­a­tion on humans, con­trol lev­els of spe­cif­ic activ­i­ty of nat­ur­al radionu­clides in con­struc­tion mate­ri­als used in build­ing have been estab­lished. The Radi­a­tion Safe­ty Stan­dards of Ukraine (NRBU-97) and the State Build­ing Codes (DBN V.1.4–0.01–97, DBN V.1.4–0.02–97, DBN V.1.4–1.01–97, DBN V.1.4–2.01–97) reg­u­late the per­mis­si­ble lev­el of total spe­cif­ic activ­i­ty of nat­ur­al radionu­clides in con­struc­tion mate­ri­als.

Geo­log­i­cal con­trol author­i­ties under­stand annu­al radi­a­tion con­trol of quar­ry rocks as a report on the radi­a­tion and hygien­ic assess­ment of rocks of the planned extrac­tion area, which includes pedes­tri­an gam­ma sur­vey­ing, lab­o­ra­to­ry sam­pling, and clas­si­fi­ca­tion into radioac­tiv­i­ty class­es.

Accord­ing to the require­ments of reg­u­la­to­ry doc­u­ments, an assess­ment of nat­ur­al radioac­tiv­i­ty at devel­oped deposits of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als is car­ried out annu­al­ly. This is nec­es­sary to ensure the safe use of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als and to pre­vent pos­si­ble neg­a­tive con­se­quences for human health and the envi­ron­ment.

Con­struc­tion mate­ri­als are pro­duced from var­i­ous types of rocks, such as igneous, meta­mor­phic, and sed­i­men­ta­ry, which dif­fer in the con­tent of nat­ur­al radionu­clides such as ura­ni­um, radi­um, tho­ri­um, and potas­si­um. Ura­ni­um and tho­ri­um are usu­al­ly present in rocks dis­persed in rock-form­ing and acces­so­ry min­er­als. Potas­si­um is a com­po­nent of micas and feldspars in igneous and meta­mor­phic rocks, as well as in potas­si­um salts, glau­conite, alu­nite, and oth­er min­er­als of sed­i­men­ta­ry rocks. The radioac­tive iso­tope K40 con­sti­tutes 0.012% of total potas­si­um.

Most deposits of con­struc­tion raw mate­ri­als asso­ci­at­ed with sandy-clayey Qua­ter­nary deposits almost do not con­tain ele­vat­ed con­cen­tra­tions of nat­ur­al radionu­clides. How­ev­er, some Qua­ter­nary sed­i­men­ta­ry rocks have an increased con­tent of nat­ur­al radionu­clides:

• sands and sand­stones of the Polta­va series;
• rocks of the Sar­ma­t­ian stage of the Low­er Neo­gene with­in Zhy­to­myr, Rivne, Ternopil, and Khmel­nyt­sky regions;
• Menilite shales of the Oligocene of Lviv region;
• Low­er Devon­ian sand­stones of Ternopil region;
• Ven­di­an sand­stones of Vin­nyt­sia region;
• Buchak deposits com­posed main­ly of car­bona­ceous sands and clays, as well as brown coal.

Pre­cam­bri­an rocks occur­ring in Ukraine can be divid­ed into three groups depend­ing on their nat­ur­al radioac­tiv­i­ty: rocks with low, medi­um, and high radioac­tiv­i­ty. Rocks with low nat­ur­al radioac­tiv­i­ty include Mid­dle Pro­tero­zoic peri­dotites, dia­bas­es, gab­bro-dia­bas­es, Low­er Pro­tero­zoic gab­bro-anorthosites, gab­bro-pyrox­en­ites, Archean pla­giomigmatites and pla­giogran­ites, Archean pla­gio­clase-horn­blende migmatites, dior­ites and gra­n­odi­or­ites, ser­pen­tinites, acti­no­lites and pyrox­en­ites, Low­er Pro­tero­zoic quartzitic sand­stones, biotite-pyrox­ene gneiss­es, quartzites, talc-car­bon­ate acti­no­lite schists, quartzites, and horn­felses.

Rocks with medi­um radioac­tiv­i­ty include Low­er Pro­tero­zoic gran­ites of the Kle­siv, Osnyt­sia, and Rokytne dis­tricts, mon­zonites of the Kle­siv dis­trict, peg­matites and peg­ma­toid gran­ites of the charnock­ite com­plex, fine- and medi­um-grained apli­toid gran­ites with blue quartz among charnock­ites, migmatites of diorit­ic com­po­si­tion, gar­net-biotite gran­ites of the Chud­no­vo-Berdy­chiv type, charnock­ites, Archean pla­gio­clase migmatites, hyper­s­thene pla­giogran­ites, Mid­dle Pro­tero­zoic quartz por­phyries, meta­di­a­bas­es, por­phyrites, and schists.

High­ly radioac­tive rocks include Low­er Pro­tero­zoic rapakivi gran­ites, peg­matites and gran­ites of the Kirovohrad, Novoukrain­ka, Zhy­to­myr, Uman, and Tokariv­ka com­plex­es, as well as Mid­dle Pro­tero­zoic gran­ites and meta­so­matites of the Perzhan­s­ka zone. Regard­less of the age of the rocks, an increased con­tent of nat­ur­al radioac­tive ele­ments is observed in fault zones, which is asso­ci­at­ed with man­i­fes­ta­tions of epi­ge­net­ic and super­im­posed meta­so­mat­ic process­es.

At min­ing enter­pris­es that are oper­at­ing or under con­struc­tion, it is nec­es­sary to com­ply with the require­ments of the Basic San­i­tary Rules for Ensur­ing Radi­a­tion Safe­ty of Ukraine. Name­ly, in accor­dance with clause 18.1, indus­tries where increased expo­sure from nat­ur­al sources may occur include:

• extrac­tion of min­er­als (non-ura­ni­um) in under­ground mines and shafts,
• extrac­tion of min­er­als and min­er­al raw mate­ri­als in sur­face con­di­tions (quar­ries, oil extrac­tion),
• pro­cess­ing of min­er­als and min­er­al raw mate­ri­als with increased con­tent of nat­ur­al radionu­clides (fer­rous, non-fer­rous, and rare met­als, oil), etc.

Work­ers in these indus­tries may receive radi­a­tion dos­es caused by exter­nal gam­ma radi­a­tion from nat­ur­al radionu­clides con­tained in raw and sec­ondary pro­duc­tion prod­ucts, inhala­tion of indus­tri­al dust con­tain­ing nat­ur­al radionu­clides, inhala­tion of radon iso­topes and their daugh­ter radionu­clides present in the air of indus­tri­al premis­es, inges­tion of dust and small frag­ments, etc.

At the same time, if the effec­tive radi­a­tion dose from nat­ur­al sources does not exceed 1 mSv per year, radi­a­tion con­trol must be car­ried out at enter­pris­es and mea­sures must be tak­en to reduce indi­vid­ual com­po­nents and the total occu­pa­tion­al expo­sure dose; if the effec­tive occu­pa­tion­al expo­sure dose from tech­no­log­i­cal­ly enhanced nat­ur­al sources exceeds 1 mSv per year, radi­a­tion con­trol at enter­pris­es must be car­ried out at least twice a year. Based on the results of this con­trol, mea­sures aimed at reduc­ing both indi­vid­ual com­po­nents and the total occu­pa­tion­al expo­sure dose must be devel­oped and imple­ment­ed.

The set of works for assess­ing the radi­a­tion safe­ty of min­er­als con­sists of two stages: deter­mi­na­tion of the expo­sure dose rate of gam­ma radi­a­tion of rocks in the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and deter­mi­na­tion of the total spe­cif­ic activ­i­ty of radionu­clides in sam­ples tak­en at the deposit.

Accord­ing to the “Require­ments for the assess­ment of nat­ur­al radioac­tiv­i­ty…” of the State Com­mit­tee of Ukraine for Nuclear and Radi­a­tion Safe­ty, the fol­low­ing pro­ce­dures are car­ried out dur­ing field stud­ies:

• geo­log­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion of quar­ry walls (bench­es) using radio­met­ric stud­ies;
• mea­sure­ment of expo­sure dose rate (EDR) on dif­fer­ent rock types;
• deter­mi­na­tion of radionu­clide con­cen­tra­tions in dif­fer­ent rock types;
• mea­sure­ment of expo­sure dose rate of com­mer­cial prod­ucts and deter­mi­na­tion of radionu­clide con­cen­tra­tions based on chan­nel (or dot­ted chan­nel) sam­pling of rocks.

Geo­log­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion of walls (bench­es) includes radio­met­ric con­trol using the SRP-68.01 radiome­ter or oth­er instru­ments with sim­i­lar metro­log­i­cal para­me­ters that allow detec­tion of areas with increased rock radioac­tiv­i­ty, as well as chan­nel sam­pling to deter­mine total spe­cif­ic activ­i­ty in a sta­tion­ary lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Mea­sure­ments of expo­sure dose rates (field radi­a­tion con­trol) on var­i­ous rock types are car­ried out in field con­di­tions using a portable SRP-68–01 radiome­ter or anoth­er portable device with sim­i­lar metro­log­i­cal para­me­ters. Mea­sure­ments are per­formed in open areas at 5 m inter­vals with prob­ing of the rock sam­ple to a depth of 5–10 cm. The deter­mined expo­sure dose rate val­ues are reduced to uni­form stan­dard con­di­tions – in open space at a height of 1 m above ground lev­el – and are defined by gam­ma back­ground val­ues and radionu­clide con­cen­tra­tions.

After the stud­ies are com­plet­ed, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of rocks by radioac­tiv­i­ty lev­el is deter­mined. Based on the results of EDR mea­sure­ments, the bound­aries of zones with dif­fer­ent radioac­tiv­i­ty lev­els and the nature of dis­tri­b­u­tion of rocks with dif­fer­ent radionu­clide con­tent lev­els are estab­lished. Based on chan­nel sam­pling of rocks, the con­cen­tra­tion of radionu­clides in com­mer­cial prod­ucts is deter­mined.

The obtained research results are used to devel­op min­er­al extrac­tion strate­gies and min­i­mize envi­ron­men­tal impact, in par­tic­u­lar by estab­lish­ing regimes for the removal of rocks and waste con­tain­ing radionu­clides to spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed zones. These data are also impor­tant for mon­i­tor­ing the impact of min­ing activ­i­ties on the envi­ron­ment and assess­ing risks to human health.