Technical approaches to decontamination of terrestrial environments in the CIS (former USSR)

Characterizing regional-scale temporal evolution of air dose rates after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident

“…This is the first time that the decontamination effect is visualized in the regional scale. After the Chernobyl accident, regional-scale decontamination was found to be ineffective due to re-contamination (Vovk et al, 1993). After the Fukushima accident, extensive research and investigation have been made in decontamination technologies and applications (Miyahara et al, 2012).…”

Development of a spatial decision support system for post-emergency management of radioactively contaminated land

“…Within the SDSS the selected countermeasures were allocated to each deposition scenario and farm type based on: (1) predicted contamination levels in food products; (2) external dose of the person executing a particular countermeasure; (3) the decontamination factor of the technique; and, (4) compatibility with typical farming practices. The soil treatments selected were: (1) shallow and deep ploughing techniques designed to dilute or bury the contaminated surface layer (Vovk et al, 1993;Roed et al, 1996); and, (2) application of lime and potassium fertilisers which compete with radiostrontium and radiocaesium respectively in the soil solution (Nisbet et al, 1994). In animal production systems a wide range of measures are suitable.…”

“…A wide range of long-term physical, chemical and management-based measures can be taken to reduce the soil-plant-animal transfer of radionuclides and in turn limit their entry into the human food chain (IAEA, 1994). Included are techniques such as deep ploughing (Vovk et al, 1993), soil application of fertilisers (Nisbet et al, 1994), use of binding agents in soils (Vandenhove et al, 1998) or livestock (Voigt, 1993), changes in livestock management (Howard, 1993) or in land use (IAEA, 1994). In the event of a future nuclear accident, it is critical that not only the 'optimal' countermeasure should be selected for each agricultural situation, but also that the benefits gained in lowering the transfer of radionuclides into the human food chain are not outweighed by negative environmental, social or economic impacts from that countermeasure.…”

Radiocaesium soil-to-wood transfer in commercial willow short rotation coppice on contaminated farm land

“…Following the Chernobyl disaster, many studies have focused on the efficiency and technical feasibility of physical and chemical countermeasures for contaminated terrestrial environments (Lembrechts, 1993;Vovk et al, 1993;Nisbet, 1993;Melin et al, 1996). Various remediation options have been compared for agricultural lands (Shaw et al, 1992;Segal, 1993;Melin et al, 1996;Renaud and Maubert, 1997) and for forest ecosystems (Davydchuk, 1997;Shaw et al, 2001) severely affected by 137 Cs deposits (Belli et al, 1995;Belli and Tikhomirov, 1996).…”