The behaviour of I-129 released from nuclear fuel reprocessing factories in the North Atlantic Ocean and transport to the Arctic assessed from numerical modelling

• Main Authors: Villa Alfageme, María, López Gutiérrez, José María, Suh, Kyunk-Suk, Min, Byung-Il, Periáñez Rodríguez, Raúl
• Other Authors: Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Física Aplicada I, Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Física Aplicada II, Universidad de Sevilla. RNM138: Física Nuclear Aplicada, European Union (UE), Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICINN). España
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2022
• Subjects: Atlantic ocean; Iodine-129; Dispersion; Lagrangian model; Arctic Ocean; Arctic; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://idus.us.es/handle//11441/136689

A quantitative evaluation of the fate of 129I, released from the European reprocessing plants of Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France), has been made by means of a Lagrangian dispersion model. Transport of radionuclides to the Arctic Ocean has been determined. Thus, 5.1 and 16.6 TBq of 129I have been intro-duced in the Arctic from Sellafield and La Hague respectively from 1966 to 2012. These figures represent, respectively, 48% and 55% of the cumulative discharge to that time. Inventories in the North Atlantic, including shelf seas, are 4.4 and 13.8 TBq coming from Sellafield and La Hague respectively. These figures are significantly different from previous estimations based on field data. The distribution of these inven-tories among several shelf seas and regions has been evaluated as well. Mean ages of tracers have been finally obtained, making use of the age-averaging hypothesis. It has been found that mean ages for Sellafield releases are about 3.5 year larger than for La Hague releases. European Union FP7 EURATOM project PREPARE 323287 Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades FIS2012–31853