Coal-based power generation produces over 750 Mt of coal ash per year globally, but under 50% of world production is utilised. Large amounts of fly ash are either stored temporarily in stockpiles, disposed of in ash landfills or lagooned. Coal ash is viewed as a major potential source of release of many environmentally sensitive elements to the environment. This paper encompasses over 90 publications on coal fly ash and demonstrates that a large number of elements are tightly bound to fly ash and may not be easily released to the environment, regardless of the nature of the ash. This review provides an extensive look at the extent to which major and trace elements are leached from coal fly ash. It also gives an insight into the factors underlying the leachability of elements and addresses the causes of the mobility. The mode of occurrence of a given element in the parent coal was found to play an important role in the leaching behaviour of fly ash. The amount of calcium in fly ash exerts a dominant influence on the pH of the ash-water system. The mobility of most elements contained in ash is markedly pH sensitive. The alkalinity of fly ash attenuates the release of a large number of elements of concern such as Cd, Co, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Sn or Zn among others, but at the same time, it enhances the release of oxyanionic species such as As, B, Cr, Mo, Sb, Se, V and W. The precipitation of secondary phases such as ettringite may capture and bind several pollutants such ash As, B, Cr, Sb, Se and V.

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This study addresses a significant data deficiency in the developing environmental protection framework of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, namely a lack of radionuclide transfer data for some of the Reference Animals and Plants (RAPs). It is also the first study that has sampled such a wide range of species (invertebrates, plants, amphibians and small mammals) from a single terrestrial site in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). Samples were collected in 2014 from the 0.4 km sampling site, located 5 km west of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power complex. We report radionuclide (Cs, Sr,Am and Pu-isotopes) and stable element concentrations in wildlife and soil samples and use these to determine whole organism-soil concentration ratios and absorbed dose rates. Increasingly, stable element analyses are used to provide transfer parameters for radiological models. The study described here found that for both Cs and Sr the transfer of the stable element tended to be lower than that of the radionuclide; this is the first time that this has been demonstrated for Sr, though it is in agreement with limited evidence previously reported for Cs. Studies reporting radiation effects on wildlife in the CEZ generally relate observations to ambient dose rates determined using handheld dose meters. For the first time, we demonstrate that ambient dose rates may underestimate the actual dose rate for some organisms by more than an order of magnitude. When reporting effects studies from the CEZ, it has previously been suggested that the area has comparatively low natural background dose rates. However, on the basis of data reported here, dose rates to wildlife from natural background radionuclides within the CEZ are similar to those in many areas of Europe.

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