Horizontal and vertical distributions of Cs in seabed sediments around the river mouth near Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Tsuruta, Tadahiko  ; Harada, Hisaya*; Misono, Toshiharu   ; Matsuoka, Toshiyuki; Hodotsuka, Yasuyuki*

The seafloor topography was divided into flat and terrace seafloors based on their topographical features and seabed sediments were distributed in an area that was half a degree of the entire investigation area. The Cs inventory was several tens of kBq/m and the grain sizes (the D50 values) were nearly constant (fine sand) on the flat seafloor. On the terrace seafloor, the Cs inventory was larger than that on the flat seafloor, and the grain size varied from silt to coarse sand. The grain size distributions appear to be influenced by the mean shear stress at the seafloor bottom, and a significant factor in the mean shear stress is thought to be the seafloor topography. Distributions of remarkably large Cs inventories, more than several thousands of kBq/m, are thought to be confined to a small area. Vertical changes in the Cs inventories suggested that the Cs inventories have significantly decreased in large areas of the shallow sea.