ARPANSA is the Australian Government’s primary authority on radiation protection and nuclear safety, whose main objective, as set out in the ARPANS Act, is to ‘protect the health and safety of people, and to protect the environment, from the harmful effects of radiation’. The main mechanism to achieve this is the development and maintenance of robust, high-quality environmental monitoring and assessment programs, which produce high-quality data that encompass state-of-the-art environmental radiochemistry practices.1
Coastal and marine radioactivity levels in Australia vary geographically and temporally. Measurements of near-shore seawater, beach sand transects, shallow marine sediments, and drinking water seek to assess and directly characterise primary immersion and ingestion exposure pathways, sites of longer-term radionuclide accumulation, and marine transport pathways, with the ultimate goal of protection of people and the environment. In order to establish baseline environmental radioactivity levels in this manner, radiochemical methods must be established and verified for specific radioanalytical laboratory contexts.
Development in environmental radiochemical methodologies will be presented, encompassing naturally-occurring (226/228Ra, 3H) and anthropogenic (134/137Cs) radionuclides, as well as novel developments in environmental sampling methodologies for marine and coastal contexts. Integration with both national coordination mechanisms (through the Australasian Radioanalytical Laboratory Network (ARLN)) and international coastal and marine development programs (IAEA’s Regional Cooperative Agreement for Research, Development and Training Related to Nuclear Science and Technology for Asia and the Pacific) will also be presented.
1Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) 2025, Monitoring and Assessment of Radiation in the Australian Environment. Available: Monitoring and Assessment of Radiation in the Australian Environment.