Soil - Plant transfer of radionuclides in arid environments

Abstract

The use of nuclear power as an environmentally friendly, and sustainable means for energy production is heavily under discussion. Despite this recently several countries with a predominantly arid climate have sought to develop or deploy nuclear energy production systems. However, there is little information on how radionuclides behave in different, especially arid, climates. Members of the IUR task group for arid environment and of the IAEA MODARIA II working group 4 contributed to such a supplement to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Technical Report Series No. 472 (IAEA, 2010) Handbook of Parameter Values for the Prediction of Radionuclides Transfer in Terrestrial and Freshwater Environments under the IAEA Modelling and Data for Radiological Impact Assessments (MODARIA II) programme (2016-2019) to close this knowledge gap. Data on concentration ratios for plant and soil (CR) in arid environments following the Köppen-Geiger classification of climates were collated, summarised and quality assured. The combination of this data with transfer parameter data for root uptake of radionuclides by food crops in tropical environments (this issue) aimed to compare all data with those in TRS 472 recommended for use in dose assessment models. Therefore, a databank has been started based on an intensive literature research on published concentration ratio (CR) data in selected arid environments. After quality check data have been formatted to comply with TRS 472 and with the tropical data base criteria. Due to the scarcity of published information and the high uncertainty of the estimated mean values for individual plant and soil groups in arid environments no statistically relevant conclusions could be drawn, although some differences were notable. Nevertheless, despite its limitations and high uncertainties, this work presents the first reported comprehensive data collation on CR soil-plant values in arid environments.

Keywords: Arid environment; Concentration ratio; Crops; MODARIA; Radionuclides; Transfer.