Distribution of tritium in water vapour and precipitation around Wolsung nuclear power plant

Chae, Joon; Lee, Sang-Kuk; Kim, Yong-Jae; Lee, Jungmin; Cho, Heung-Joon; Cho, Yong-Woo; Yun, Ju-Yong

doi:10.1093/rpd/ncr182

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…For a more objective reflection of the spatial and temporal distributions of natural tritium in precipitation (also called rain tritium), the concentrations of rain tritium reported in areas without nuclear facilities in China [28,36,37,41,42,45,48,49,[57][58][59][60][61][62], Japan [28,35,39,51,52,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70] and South Korea [28,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77] in the past three decades were extracted and plotted against the latitude in Fig. 2.…”

Section: Tritium Levels In Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These results indicate that different species have different tritium uptake and metabolism [129,130,139]. Therefore, species with relatively high uptake and fast metabolism of atmospheric tritium are often used as indicators to check for tritium release near nuclear facilities [44,48,71,72,136,137,[143][144][145][146][147]. For example, numerous studies have used the TFWT concentration in pine needles as an indicator [51,71,72,138,143,144,148].…”

Section: Tritium Levels In Living Organismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, species with relatively high uptake and fast metabolism of atmospheric tritium are often used as indicators to check for tritium release near nuclear facilities [44,48,71,72,136,137,[143][144][145][146][147]. For example, numerous studies have used the TFWT concentration in pine needles as an indicator [51,71,72,138,143,144,148]. Recently, evergreen-tree leaves collected from the Fukushima region were also utilized to estimate the levels of environmental tritium in an accidental field at the beginning stage [145,146].…”

Section: Tritium Levels In Living Organismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia

Feng

Zhuo

2022

NUCL SCI TECH

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For a more systematic understanding of the levels of environmental tritium and its behavior in East Asia, a database on environmental tritium was established based on the literature published in the past 30 years. Subsequently, the levels and behavior of the environmental tritium were further studied by statistical analyses. The results indicate that the distribution of environmental tritium is inhomogeneous and complex. In areas without nuclear facilities, the level of environmental tritium has decreased to its background level, even though a certain number of atmospheric nuclear tests were performed before 1980. In general, the level of atmospheric tritium was marginally higher than the levels in precipitation and surface water; the levels in shallow groundwater and seawater were considerably lower. Furthermore, the levels of tritium in the atmosphere, precipitation, and inland surface water were strongly correlated with latitude and distance from the coastline. In soil and living organisms, the level of tissue-free water tritium (TFWT) was comparable to the tritium levels in local rainfall, whereas the persistence of organically bound tritium (OBT) in the majority of organisms resulted in an OBT/TFWT ratio greater than one. Conversely, extremely high levels of environmental tritium were observed near certain nuclear power plants and the Fukushima accident sites. These results highlight the requirement to know the tritium baseline level and its behavior in the environment beforehand to better assess the impact of tritium discharge. Further investigations of environmental tritium in East Asia using more efficient and adequate monitoring methods are also required.

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Section: Tritium Levels In Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tritium Levels In Living Organismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tritium Levels In Living Organismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia

Feng

Zhuo

2022

NUCL SCI TECH

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“…However, greater distances of 200 km or more have yet to be assessed (Connan et al, 2017). In addition to vapor releases, river waters are influenced by liquid discharge from nuclear facilities (e.g., Ciffroy et al, 2006;Jean-Baptiste et al, 2018). Elevated tritium concentrations in river water that discharges into the sea are diluted but can affect tritium concentrations in coastal surface waters.…”

Section: Tritium Outlier Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tritium as a hydrological tracer in Mediterranean precipitation events

Juhlke¹,

Sültenfuß²,

Trachte

et al. 2020

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Climate models are in need of improved constraints for water vapor transport in the atmosphere, and tritium can serve as a powerful tracer in the hydrological cycle. Although the general principles of tritium distribution and transfer processes within and between the various hydrological compartments are known, variation on short timescales and aspects of altitude dependence are still under debate. To address questions regarding tritium sources, sinks, and transfer processes, the sampling of individual precipitation events in Corte on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea was performed between April 2017 and April 2018. Tritium concentrations of 46 event samples were compared to their moisture origin and corresponding air mass history. Air mass back-trajectories were generated from the novel high-resolution ERA5 dataset from the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). Geographical source regions with similar tritium concentrations were predefined using generally known tritium distribution patterns, such as the “continental effect”, and from data records derived at long-term measurement stations of tritium in precipitation across the working area. Our model-derived source region tritium concentrations agreed well with annual mean station values. Moisture that originated from continental Europe and the Atlantic Ocean was most distinct regarding tritium concentrations with values up to 8.8 TU (tritium units) and near 0 TU, respectively. The seasonality of tritium values ranged from 1.6 TU in January to 10.1 TU in May, and they exhibited well-known elevated concentrations in spring and early summer due to increased stratosphere–troposphere exchange. However, this pattern was interrupted by extreme events. The average altitude of trajectories was correlated with the tritium concentrations in precipitation, especially in spring and early summer and if outlier values of extreme tritium concentrations were excluded. However, in combination with the trajectory information, these outlier values proved to be valuable for improving the comprehension of tritium movement in the atmosphere. Our work shows how event-based tritium research can advance the understanding of its distribution in the atmosphere.

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“…In the near 315 surroundings of nuclear facilities up to several kilometers vapor release was shown to enrich atmospheric tritium concentrations (e.g. Mihok et al, 2016;Chae et al, 2011). The shape and distance of these plumes can vary greatly depending on the type of nuclear facility and atmospheric conditions (CNSC, 2009).…”

Section: High Tritium Extreme Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tritium as hydrological tracer in Mediterranean precipitation events

Juhlke¹,

Sültenfuß²,

Huneau³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Climate models are in need of improved constraints for water vapor transport in the atmosphere and tritium can serve as a powerful tracer in the hydrological cycle. Although general principles of tritium distribution and transfer processes within and between the various hydrological compartments are known, variation on short timescales and aspects of altitude dependence are still under debate. To address questions for tritium sources, sinks and transfer processes, sampling of individual precipitation events in Corte on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea was performed between April 2017 and April 2018. Tritium concentrations of 46 event samples were compared to their moisture origin and corresponding air mass history. Air mass back-trajectories were generated from the novel high-resolution ERA 5 data set of the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). Geographical source regions of similar tritium concentrations were predefined using generally known tritium distribution patterns, such as a <q>continental effect</q>, and from data records derived at long-term measurement stations of tritium in precipitation across the working area. Our model-derived source region tritium concentrations agreed well with annual mean station values. Moisture that originated from continental Europe and the Atlantic Ocean was most distinct regarding tritium concentrations with values up to 8.8&#8201;TU and near 0&#8201;TU, respectively. Seasonality of tritium values ranged from 1.6&#8201;TU in January to 10.1&#8201;TU in May and exhibited well-known elevated concentrations in spring and early summer due to increased stratosphere-troposphere exchange. However, this pattern was interrupted by extreme events. The average altitude of trajectories correlated with tritium concentrations in precipitation, especially in spring and early summer and if outlier values of extreme tritium concentrations were excluded. However, in combination with the trajectory information, these outlier values proved to be valuable for the understanding of tritium movement in the atmosphere. Our work shows how event-based tritium research can advance the understanding of its distribution in the atmosphere.</p>

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Distribution of tritium in water vapour and precipitation around Wolsung nuclear power plant

Cited by 10 publications

References 5 publications

Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia

Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia

Tritium as a hydrological tracer in Mediterranean precipitation events

Tritium as hydrological tracer in Mediterranean precipitation events

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