The Department is organized in one Laboratory (Environmental Radioactivity Laboratory) and less formal task groups dedicated to deal with particular current problems. The Environmental Radioactivity Laboratory conducted measurements of plutonium, americium, uranium, thorium, polonium, ,90Sr, 63Ni, 7Be, 99Tc and 137Cs in different kind of environmental samples. The main equipment consist of low background, high resolution (germanium) gamma-rays spectrometers, semiconductor alpha spectrometers and liquid scintillation spectrometers. The laboratory is involved in some Ministry of Science and Higher Education research projects. Two PhD thesis are under preparation within those projects. Both concerns radioactive contamination in polar environment: in Arctic and in Antarctic. to Since 1990 the Laboratory takes part in the Polish state monitoring network for radioactive contamination organized by National Atomic Agency (PAA) and Central Laboratory for Radiation Protection. The air filters are exposed and measured in the weekly basis for the presence of gamma-emitters with the detection limit below 1 µBq/m3. Currently one PhD work is under preparation based on relation between radionuclides present in aerosol filters and precipitation. Two PhD works were prepared using air-filter samples collected during past years. One work was devoted to use of cosmogenic radionuclides (22Na, 7Be) in investigations of vertical transport of aerosols in the troposphere. The second one was about using Pu isotopes in tracing pathways of aerosols. Here, besides alpha spectrometry the mass spectrometry was introduced as measurement technique in collaboration with Institute of Geological Sciences. The whole body spectrometer with a XIX century steel shield obtained from University Hospital of Łódź was installed in IFJ in 2008 and during 2010 it was equipped with two germanium detectors.
Two kind of works were conducted in our Department using AIC-144 cyclotron:
- one was about radionuclides for medicine,
- the another was about the activation analyses.
The Department has workshop for design, production and regeneration of germanium detectors. The germanium detector group leader developed method of obtaining a low electrical capacity germanium detectors which enables detection of low energy gamma radiation. Some such detectors were constructed in collaboration with JINR Dubna (Russia) for neutrino and double beta decay experiments.
