Helen ApSimon founding member and Chairman of the European Association for the Science of Air Pollution. ApSimon is well known for her research into the transport of radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster. In the immediate aftermath, Russia issued a media blackout and ApSimon was one of few European scientists to detect rising radiation levels. She modelled the nuclear fallout, calculating Chernobyl released 15 - 20 megacuries of Iodine-131 and 1 - 2 megacuries of caesium-137. During the first few weeks after the disaster, ApSimon calculated the radioactive plum covered Scandinavia and the North coast of Europe. She travelled to Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia
Isotope separation first isotope separator was developed at the Copenhagen Cyclotron by Bohr and coworkers using the principle of electromagnetic separation. Today, there are many laboratories around the world that supply beams of radioactive ions for use. Arguably the principal Isotope Separator On Line (ISOL) is ISOLDE at CERN, which is a joint European facility spread across the Franco-Swiss border near the city of Geneva. This laboratory uses mainly proton spallation of uranium carbide targets to produce a wide range of radioactive fission fragments that are not found naturally on earth. During spallation (bombardment with high energy protons), a uranium carbide target