Origins and levels of artificial radionuclides within the Rhône river waters (France) for the last forty years: Towards an evaluation of the radioecological sensitivy of river systems

Historical levels of heavy metals and artificial radionuclides reconstructed from overbank sediment records in lower Rhône River (South-East France)

“…This trend is globally observed for each radionuclide in sediment surveys where a decrease of activity levels by one or two orders of magnitude is observed since the beginning of the 1990's (Martin and Thomas, 1990;Eyrolle et al, 2005;Eyrolle et al, 2008). Table 4 Comparison between measured trace metal and major elements concentrations in the reference sediment core chosen in this study and literature data sets of SPM collected during the 2002 and 2003 large flood.…”

“…Martin and Thomas, 1990;Lambrechts et al, 1992;Santiago et al, 1994;Pont et al, 1996;Dange, 2002;Elbaz-Poulichet, 2005;Eyrolle et al, 2005Eyrolle et al, , 2008Rolland et al, 2005;Antonelli et al, 2008). However these works concerned short term surveys starting in the 1990's and the long term trend of these PCTE is unknown.…”

“…Nevertheless, in the specific case of the downstream part of the Rhô ne River, several studies report that over the last fifty years, 137 Cs has mainly originated from the Marcoule spent fuel reprocessing plant (Martin and Thomas, 1990;Charmasson, 1998;Eyrolle et al, 2005). As the studied sites are all located downstream of this last industrial radioactive source to the River, 137 Cs liquid releases from the Marcoule centre from 1960 to 2007 were thus used as a tool to estimate the approximate age of the various sedimentary sequences (see Provansal et al, 2010 for details).…”

La sensibilité radioécologique des territoires : vers un outil opérationnel – le projet SENSIB

“…L'application du concept de sensibilité de l'environnement aux systèmes aquatiques continentaux est donc également envisagée dans le cadre du projet SENSIB (Eyrolle et al, 2005).…”

Characterisation of naturally occurring radionuclides in the Lower Rhone River (France): preliminary results from suspended solid monitoring

“…At the lower course of the river numerous studies have been dedicated to solid fluxes and associated contaminants with a particular emphasis on floods since such events have been shown to play a fundamental role on fluxes of suspended sediment [3][4][5], trace and major elements [2,5,6] and artificial radionuclides [7]. Studies also focused on sediment and contaminant storages and dynamics in alluvial margins [7][8][9], and allowed to assess the origins and subsequent levels of artificial radionuclides [10]. Concerning the Rhone River, only very scare data have been published for particle bound naturally occurring radionuclides and, to our knowledge, none refers to the soluble phase [11,12].…”