Dataset on Cs-137 in waters surrounding Taiwan

Ting-Hsuan Huang; Ming-Ta Lee; Wei-Jen Huang; Liang-Yu Tao; Ming-An Lee; Sen Jan; Yiing-Jang Yang; Chen-Tung Arthur Chen

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2023.109758

Dataset on Cs-137 in waters surrounding Taiwan

Data Brief. 2023 Nov 7:51:109758. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2023.109758. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Ting-Hsuan Huang^{1

2}, Ming-Ta Lee³, Wei-Jen Huang¹, Liang-Yu Tao³, Ming-An Lee⁴, Sen Jan⁵, Yiing-Jang Yang⁵, Chen-Tung Arthur Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Oceanography, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 804, Taiwan.
² Taiwan Ocean Research Institute, National Applied Research Laboratories, Kaohsiung 852, Taiwan.
³ Radiation Monitoring Center, Atomic Energy Council, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Environmental Biology and Fisheries Science, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung 202, Taiwan.
⁵ Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan.

Abstract

The Fukushima accident released short-lived Cs-134 and longer-lived Cs-137 to the ocean. The amount, although substantial, is much less than that produced during the atomic bomb tests 60 yrs ago. Cs-134 and Cs-137 are anthropogenic radionuclides and soluble in seawater; hence, the radioactivity can be used as a tracer for special events or currents. Samples of Cs-134 and Cs-137 in seawater were collected around Taiwan, including the Kuroshio, the northern South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the southern East China Sea from 2018 to 2021. The average surface Cs-137 activity was 1.18±0.25 Bq m ^- ³, and the activities of Cs-134 samples were all under the detection limit. Complete data are archived, including sampling date, location, water depth, temperature, salinity, and Cs-137 activity; the total sample amount is 577.

Keywords: Fukushima accident; Kuroshio, Taiwan strait, South China sea, East China Sea.