Effect of Soil Moisture Content on Radon and Thoron Exhalation

Abstract

In this study, the authors considered the effect of soil moisture in the emanation process of radon and thoron gases. Weathered granite soil was selected as the test soil and it was packed in a polypropylene container (275 × 210mm2 and 100mm in height), up to 50mm in depth from the bottom. The container was covered with the exhalation rate measuring instrument adopting the accumulation method and γ-particles were counted at 30 s intervals for 30 min to estimate the exhalation rates. A sporadic increase in the radon and thoron exhalation rates was caused by the increase in the moisture content up to 8%. However, the exhalation rates showed a decreasing tendency with the increase in moisture content over 8%. Although the measured radon exhalation rate was about 25% of the calculated one, both measured and calculated radon exhalation rates had similar trends with an increase in the moisture content in the soil. The measured thoron exhalation rate agreed well with the calculated one. When the moisture content was in the range of 3.5–18%, it was considered that applying the correlation between the moisture content and the measured thoron exhalation rate is useful for estimating the thoron effective diffusion coefficient.