A contamination with the ubiquitous radioactive fission product 137Cs cannot be assigned per se to its source. We used environmental samples with varying contamination levels from various parts of the world to establish their characteristic 135Cs/137Cs isotope ratios and thereby allow their distinction. The samples included biological materials from Chernobyl and Fukushima, historic ashed human lung tissue from the 1960s from Austria, and trinitite from the Trinity Test Site, USA. After chemical separation and gas reaction shifts inside a triple quadrupole ICP mass spectrometer, characteristic 135Cs/137Cs isotope signatures (all as per March 11, 2011) were obtained for Fukushima- (∼0.35) and Chernobyl-derived (∼0.50) contaminations, in agreement with the literature for these contamination sources. Both signatures clearly distinguish from the characteristic high ratio (1.9 ± 0.2) for nuclear-weapon-produced radiocesium found in human lung tissue. Trinitite samples exhibited an unexpected, anomalous pattern by displaying a low (<0.4) and nonuniform 135Cs/137Cs ratio. This exemplifies a 137Cs-rich fractionation of the plume in a nuclear explosion, where 137Cs is a predominant species in the fireball. The onset of 135Cs was delayed because of the longer half-life of its parent nuclide 135Xe, causing a spatial separation of gaseous 135Xe from condensed 137Cs, which is the reason for the atypical 135Cs/137Cs fractionation in the fallout at the test site.

The “Chernobyl nuclear disaster” released huge amounts of radionuclides, which are still detectable in plants and sediments today. Bryophytes (mosses) are primitive land plants lacking roots and protective cuticles and therefore readily accumulate multiple contaminants, including metals and radionuclides. This study quantifies 137Cs and 241Am in moss samples from the cooling pond of the power plant, the surrounding woodland and the city of Prypiat. Activity concentrations of up to 297 Bq/g (137Cs) and 0.43 Bq/g (241Am) were found. 137Cs contents were significantly higher at the cooling pond, where 241Am was not detectable. Distance to the damaged reactor, amount of original fallout, presence of vascular tissue in the stem or taxonomy were of little importance. Mosses seem to absorb radionuclides rather indiscriminately, if available. More than 30 years after the disaster, 137Cs was washed out from the very top layer of the soil, where it is no more accessible for rootless mosses but possibly for higher plants. On the other hand, 137Cs still remains solved and accessible in the cooling pond. However, 241Am remained adsorbed to the topsoil, thus accessible to terrestrial mosses, but precipitated in the sapropel of the cooling pond.