Behaviour of radionuclides in soil/crop systems following contamination

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the behavior of radionuclides in soil or crop systems following contamination. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the behavior of radionuclides, particularly those of caesium and strontium, in soil or crop systems after the Chernobyl accident contaminated large areas of continental Europe. For most radionuclides, the soil is the primary long-term reservoir in agricultural ecosystems. As a result, soil-based countermeasures to reduce food-chain contamination can be designed to reduce the degree of soil–plant transfer significantly although undesirable side effects of some of these treatments, such as heavy fertilizer treatments, may be experienced. Experimental mass or activity balance studies have shown that absolute losses from soils of key radionuclides such as 137 Cs by processes such as cropping and leaching are small: Radioactive decay can probably dictate the rate at which agricultural systems become decontaminated. The development of more rapid methods to clean-up soils is desirable and one of these is addressed in the chapter.