Abstract
The aim of the article was to verify the hypothesis concerning the diversification of plutonium sources in the natural environment of Antarctica. Plutonium activity and atom ratios were analyzed in two groups of biological samples: terrestrial and marine. Both isotopic ratios in the terrestrial set were consistent with global radioactive fallout ratios. The average activity ratio in the marine ecosystem was lower than global radioactive fallout. At the same time mass ratio values in this group turned out to be surprisingly varied. Analysis of the results showed statistically significant differences between the marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
Highlights
Antarctica is an isolated continent with unique and littlevaried ecosystems
The average activity ratio in the marine ecosystem was lower than global radioactive fallout
The results are similar to those published before [4, 5, 19, 21] and are consistent with global radioactive fallout ratio in the southern hemisphere [22]. These results indicate that there is a clear difference between terrestrial and marine ecosystems in terms of plutonium activity ratios (Fig. 4)
Summary
Antarctica is an isolated continent with unique and littlevaried ecosystems. Due to its location and separation by cold oceanic waters, it is a good study area to analyze radionuclides’ transport in the environment. The present article is aimed to study Antarctic marine and terrestrial ecosystems to check the hypothesis about different plutonium sources in the Antarctic environment. To achieve this goal, the biological samples were analyzed sequentially by alpha spectrometry and inductively-coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) methods
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