Year
2025
Abstract
From 1944 to 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands under leases with the Navajo Nation, which is about 27,000 square miles spread across Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona and is home to over 250,000 people. Today, the mines are closed, but a legacy of uranium contamination remains, including over 500 abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) as well as homes and water sources with elevated levels of radiation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency are responsible and are now working for the cleanup and closure of these mines. Uranium mining has caused many health problems for Navajo people, such as lung cancer, bone cancer, and kidney failure. Our main objective is to develop an automated portable semiconductor radiation detector for nuclear safety and security. The paper will present our initial development of a nuclear radiation detector integrated with a Global Positioning System (GPS) that will be mounted onto a drone for aerial survey of radiation sites at remote terrain and study the efficacy of the automated radiation detector system.