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

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 bee...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Villa Alfageme, María, López Gutiérrez, José María, Suh, Kyunk-Suk, Min, Byung-Il, Periáñez Rodríguez, Raúl
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/136689
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/136689
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.11.039
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Atlantic ocean
Iodine-129
Dispersion
Lagrangian model
Arctic Ocean
Descrição
Resumo: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.