Abstract
This study is dedicated to the environmental monitoring of radionuclides released in the course of the Fukushima nuclear accident. The activity concentrations of β− -emitting 90Sr and β−/γ-emitting 134Cs and 137Cs from several hot spots in Japan were determined in soil and vegetation samples. The 90Sr contamination levels of the samples were relatively low and did not exceed the Bq⋅g−1 range. They were up four orders of magnitude lower than the respective 137Cs levels. This study, therefore, experimentally confirms previous predictions indicating a low release of 90Sr from the Fukushima reactors, due to its low volatility. The radiocesium contamination could be clearly attributed to the Fukushima nuclear accident via its activity ratio fingerprint (134Cs/137Cs). Although the correlation between 90Sr and 137Cs is relatively weak, the data set suggests an intrinsic coexistence of both radionuclides in the contaminations caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident. This observation is of great importance not only for remediation campaigns but also for the current food monitoring campaigns, which currently rely on the assumption that the activity concentrations of β−-emitting 90Sr (which is relatively laborious to determine) is not higher than 10% of the level of γ-emitting 137Cs (which can be measured quickly). This assumption could be confirmed for the samples investigated herein.
Highlights
In the course of the Fukushima nuclear accident, large amounts of volatile radionuclides were released into the environment
The 90Sr levels were generally relatively low, and 1 to 4 orders of magnitude lower than the 137Cs levels in the respective sample. This experimentally confirms the modeling by Schwantes and colleagues [18], who predicted only very low releases of radiostrontium via the gas phase
Probably the local lack of rainfall as well as a specific soil composition led to low contamination levels at spots E and G and/
Summary
In the course of the Fukushima nuclear accident, large amounts of volatile radionuclides were released into the environment. The radioisotopes of xenon, krypton, iodine (especially 131I), cesium (especially 134Cs and 137Cs), and tellurium are regarded as the most relevant ones, which caused partly significant contamination of the Japanese land surface [1,2,3] and the Pacific Ocean [4,5,6,7,8,9] These radionuclides were monitored globally in various environmental media, see e.g. Its presence in the environment, causes much concern as it is often dictating risk of contaminated sites over longer periods of time and calls for the monitoring of this inconvenient radionuclide [18] This is of great importance especially for ensuring food safety
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