137Cs in French soils: Deposition patterns and 15-year evolution
Résumé
Around 2000 surface samples have been taken from French soil at around twenty stations over the last fifteen years. Caesium 137, the only artificial radionuclide in the terrestrial environment currently detectable with gamma spectroscopy, was measured in the samples. The levels of caesium activity were compared to deposition estimates for deposits from atmospheric weapons tests and Chernobyl fallout. Since the start of data acquisition, specific activity in the samples has decreased with a mean effective half-life of between 8 and 11 y, for meadow soil and agricultural soil respectively. These field observations confirm that the conventional soil migration-retention model, which uses distribution coefficient Kd, is insufficient for modelling caesium distribution in the surface soil layer. Although the differences between sites tend to diminish with time, surface specific activity in agricultural and meadow soil varies on average from a few Bq to several tens of Bq per kg of dry matter. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Mots clés
Cesium Radioisotopes
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident
Environmental Monitoring
History
20th Century
21st Century
Radioactive Fallout
Soil Pollutants
Radioactive
Atmospheric acoustics
Cesium
Data acquisition
Fallout
Nuclear reactor accidents
Radioisotopes
Rate constants
Sampling
Deposition patterns
Environmental monitoring
Gamma spectroscopy
Soil migration-retention model
Soil pollution
cesium
radioisotope
agricultural soil
cesium isotope
deposition
environmental monitoring
fallout
gamma ray spectrometry
grassland soil
half life
radioactivity
radionuclide
terrestrial environment
agriculture
article
biomass production
chernobyl accident
France
gamma spectrometry
information processing
priority journal
soil
soil analysis
history
radiation accident
radioactive waste
soil pollutant
Eurasia
Europe
Western Europe
Accidents
Radiation