Accumulation of Natural Radionuclides in the Bottom Sediments and by Aquatic Organisms of Streams

✍ Scribed by Jaromír Justýn; Zdenêk Stanêk

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1974
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 798 KB
• Volume: 59
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1434-2944
• DOI: 10.1002/iroh.19740590502

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The accumulation of natural radioisotopes by aquatic organisms and bottom sediments was studied in two small rivers, one uncontaminated and the other polluted by effluents of uranium ore mining and milling.

Parabolic regressions between the water and uppermost sediment content of both uranium and total beta activity (corrected for ^40^K content) is presented and demonstrates the water cumulative capacity of organically rich sediments. For ^226^Ra no significant differences between sediments with different organic content were found. The ^226^Ra content of bottom sediments is expressed as a power function of radium and calcium concentration in the water.

In the given reaches, 53% and 85% of uranium and over 90% of ^226^Ra and total beta activity (corrected for ^40^K) was accumulated in the upper two centimetres of sediments and biomass of aquatic vegetation. Filamentous algae, plankton, aquatic bryophyta and macrophyta from the present and other published data showed rather higher cumulation capacities as compared with bottom sediments.