Atmospheric deposition of Be, K, Cs and Pb during 1993-2001 at Tokai-mura, Japan

Ueno, Takashi ; Nagao, Seiya; Yamazawa, Hiromi

To evaluate the migration of radionuclides to the ground surface, deposition was collected from 1993 to 2001 with basin set up at Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute at Tokai-mura. Monthly basin samples were evaporated to dryness to obtain residual samples.These samples were measured by a well type Ge detector for natural and fallout radionuclide. These monthly depositions showed a clear seasonal variation with peaks in the early spring from February to April, and also in May in some years. The depositions of K and Cs have good correlation with the dry weight of deposited material, the depositions of Be and Pb showed much lower correlation coefficients. This difference in the correlation coefficient between these two groups of radionuclides can be attributed to the difference in the originating processes. These features in the concentration are thought to be caused by the difference in mechanism and location of origination, which would result in difference in the contributing particle size, and hence by the difference in the transport and deposition processes.