Analysis of radioactive cesium-enriched particles and measurement of their distribution in marine sediment near Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

Abstract

Cesium-enriched particles released from the Fukushima Daiich Nuclear Power Plant (NPP1) exist in the Fukushima coastal waters and offshore, and they possibly affect the wide-area distribution of the radioactive cesium measured by the towed spectrometer. Therefore, the distribution of them in marine sediment was measured near NPP1 in November, 2016. We scanned the seafloor using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector. The sediment samples were obtained on the survey line by the ROV’s suction-type sampler. Five cesium particles, with diameters of approximately 400 μm, were isolated from the samples. The radioactivity of 137Cs was less than 360 Bq, and no nuclides other than 134Cs, 137Cs, and natural radioactive ones were found from gamma-ray spectroscopy. In the particles, titanium and calcium were commonly detected by energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry. We also estimated the particles’ presence from the change in the total counting rate of the scintillation detector. The average particle density is found to be 3.45×10−2 m −1 at most. The average increase in the counting rate directly above the cesium-enriched particles in the sediment was less than double. Therefore, the effect of such particles on the distribution of radioactive cesium is limited.

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