Initial Mixing in Surface Waters
The most interesting thing that I came across on this subject was on the topic of Dispersion Coefficients and Mixing in a book by John E. Till titled Radiological Risk Assessment and Environmental Analysis. This was that stratification in lakes, not estuaries, takes places when water temperature variations are created by solar radiation. The thermal stratification critically limits the mixing of radionuclides between the epilimnion and hyplimnion.
The Large and Small Lake Screening Models help to model a reservoir with an unfiltered radionuclide concentration. Sediment addition adjustments are presented with these equations. Further research could be done on my part regarding the long-term mixing dynamics of nuclides in both air and water. Extensive modeling and publication has been done in this area.
Discharges to Bodies of Water
Radionuclide transfer studies up and downstream a river have been conducted along the Pasco-Vancouver stretch. Some isotopes of interest were chromium 51, zinc 65, scandium 46, antimony 124, cobalt 58 and 60, iron 59, manganese 54, etc. It is evident that what the power that be are looking for is comprehensive and specific. Overall, however, tritium and carbon-14 are of particular interest for their wide variety of use in groundwater study and management.
The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System is the world's largest fossil water resource and spans over Chad, Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. Libya's great man-made river uses nearly 1.6 million cubic meters of this water everyday since some of their other sources are subject to brackish mixing. Radioactive waste contamination in recent years now threatens lives by putting them at risk for cancer. Radioactive release becomes a part of every portion of the food chain in the ecosystem and its biological effects are additive.
Not all radionuclides in bodies of water are there by nature or introduced on accident. One geological technique uses radionuclide dispersion in bodies of water to map erosion (gamma spectroscopy on sediment).
References
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0433n/report.pdf
http://www.psipw.org/attachments/article/300/IJWRAE_1(1)25-32.pdf
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/contaminated-aquifers-radioactive-water-threatens-middle-east-a-865290.html
Where exactly is the radioactive contamination in the river coming from? Although not 100%, I'm pretty sure Libya doesn't have intensive nuclear processing facilities or anything of that nature. Or is this stuff just natural?
ReplyDeleteInteresting find with the Pasco-Vancouver river radionuclide transfer studies. Are those isotopes radioactive? I don't recognize them as being one of the heavy radioactive actinides which are generated with burnup in a reactor
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