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Extractability of 137Cs in Response to its Input Forms into Fukushima Forest Soils
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  • Teramage Tesfaye Mengistu,
  • Loic Carasco,
  • Daniel Orjollet,
  • Frederic Coppin
Teramage Tesfaye Mengistu

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Loic Carasco

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Daniel Orjollet

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Frederic Coppin

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Abstract

In case of nuclear accidents like Fukushima disaster, the influence of 137Cs depositional forms (soluble and/or solid forms) on mineral soil of forest environment on its availability have not reported yet. Soluble (137Cs tagged ultra-pure water) and solid (137Cs contaminated litter-OL and fragmented litter-OF) input forms were mixed with the mineral soils collected under Fukushima coniferous and broadleaf forests. The mixtures then incubated under controlled laboratory condition to evaluate the extractability of 137Cs in soil over time in the presence of decomposition process through two extracting reagents- water and ammonium acetate. Results show that extracted 137Cs fraction with water was less than 1% for soluble input form and below detection limit for solid input form. On the same way with acetate reagent, the extracted 137Cs fraction ranged from 46 to 56% for soluble input and 2 to 15% for solid input, implying the nature of 137Cs contamination strongly influences the extractability and hence the mobility of 137Cs in soil. Although the degradation rate of the organic materials has been calculated in the range of 0.18 ± 0.1 to 0.24 ± 0.1 y-1, its impact on 137Cs extractability appeared very weak at least within the observation period, probably due to shorter observation period. Concerning the treatments of solid 137Cs input forms through acetate extraction, relatively more 137Cs has been extracted from broadleaf organic materials mixes (BL-OL & BL-OF) than the coniferous counterparts. This probably is due to the fact that the lignified coniferous organic materials (CED-OL & CED-OF) components tend to retain more 137Cs than that of the broadleaf. Generally, by extrapolating these observations in to a field context, one can expect more available 137Cs fraction in forest soil from wet depositional pathways such as throughfall and stemflow than those attached with organic materials like litter (OL) and its eco-processed forms (OF).