Monitoring of natural radioactivity in manganese ore

The natural radionuclides (238U, 232Th, and 40K) contents of Manganese ore collected by Sinai Manganese Company in Egypt-Cairo have been determined by low background spectroscopy using hyper-pure germanium (HPGe) detector. The mean activities due to the three radionuclides (238U, 232Th, and 40K) were found to be 3543 ± 106, 222 ± 6.6 and 3483 ± 104 Bq/kg, respectively. The absorbed dose rates due to the natural radioactivity in samples under investigation ranged from 1522 ± 45 to 1796 ± 53 nGy/h. The radium equivalent activity varied from 3807 ± 114 to 4446 ± 133 Bq/kg. Also, the representative external hazard index values for the corresponding samples were estimated