Author:
Black E. E.,Buesseler K. O.
Abstract
Abstract. Quantifying the amount of cesium incorporated into marine sediments as a result of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident has proven challenging due to the limited multi-core sampling from within the 30 km zone around the facility; the inherent spatial heterogeneities in ocean sediments; and the potential for inventory fluctuations due to physical, biological, and chemical processes. Using 210Pb, 234Th, 137Cs, and 134Cs profiles from 20 sediment cores, coastal sediment inventories were reevaluated. A 137Cs sediment inventory of 100 ± 50 TBq was found for an area of 55 000 km2 using cores from this study and a total of 130 ± 60 TBq using an additional 181 samples. These inventories represent less than 1% of the estimated 15–30 PBq of cesium released during the FDNPP disaster. The time needed for surface sediment activities (0 to 3 cm) at the 20 locations to be reduced by 50% via sediment mixing was estimated to range from 0.4 to 26 yr. Due to the observed variability in mixing rates, grain size, and inventories, additional cores are needed to improve these estimates and capture the full extent of cesium penetration into the shallow coastal sediments, which was deeper than 14 cm for all cores retrieved from water depths less than 150 m.
Subject
Earth-Surface Processes,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Reference42 articles.
1. Aller, R. C. and Cochran, J. K.: 234Th/238U disequilibrium in near-shore sediment: particle reworking and diagenetic time scales, Earth Planet. Sc. Lett., 29, 37–60, 1976.
2. Anderson, R. F., Bopp, R. F., Buesseler, K. O., and Biscaye, P. E.: Mixing of particles and organic constituents in sediments from the continental shelf and slope off Cape Cod: SEEP-I results, Cont. Shelf. Res., 8, 925–946, 1988.
3. Aoyama, M., Tsumune, D., and Hamajima, Y.: Budgets and temporal change of radiocaesium distribution released from Fukushima NPP accidents in the North Pacific Ocean, Ocean Sciences Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah, 21 February 2012, Session 88, 2012.
4. Bowen, V. T., Noshkin, V. E., Livingston, H. D., and Volchok, H. L.: Fallout radionuclides in the Pacific Ocean: vertical and horiztonal distributions, largely from GEOSECS stations, Earth Planet. Sc. Lett., 49, 411–434, 1980.
5. Buesseler, K. O.: Fishing for answers off Fukushima, Science, 338, 480–482, 2012.
Cited by
43 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献