The behaviour of Cs-137 in the North Atlantic Ocean assessed from numerical modelling: Releases from nuclear fuel reprocessing factories, redissolution from contaminated sediments and leakage from dumped nuclear wastes

A Lagrangian model which simulates the dispersion of 137Cs in the North Atlantic has been developed. The model includes water/sediment interactions. It has been tested comparing calculated and measured 137Cs concentrations in water and sediments of the European Shelf resulting after the releases fro...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Periáñez Rodríguez, Raúl, Suh, Kyunk-Suk, Min, Byung-Il
Other Authors: Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Física Aplicada I, Universidad de Sevilla. RNM138: Física Nuclear Aplicada, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO). España
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2022
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Online Access:https://idus.us.es/handle//11441/136717
Description
Summary:A Lagrangian model which simulates the dispersion of 137Cs in the North Atlantic has been developed. The model includes water/sediment interactions. It has been tested comparing calculated and measured 137Cs concentrations in water and sediments of the European Shelf resulting after the releases from the nuclear fuel reprocessing plants of Sellafield and La Hague. Some additional numerical experiments have been carried out. First, the redissolution of 137Cs from contaminated sediments after the reduction in releases from the reprocessing plants has been studied. This allowed to calculate effective half-lives of 137Cs in several sub-basins. Later, potential leakage of 137Cs from dumped nuclear wastes in several locations of the Atlantic has been investigated. Even in worst-case scenarios, these leakages should not lead to any radiological implications. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FIS2015-69673-P