Actinide enrichment in marine aerosols
Actinide enrichment in marine aerosols
复制标题
海洋气溶胶中锕系元素的富集
作者：
M. I. Walker;W. A. McKay;N. Pattenden;P. Liss
以前的工作1 -4表明，从坎布里亚郡塞拉菲尔德（联合王国）核燃料后处理厂排放到爱尔兰海的钚和镅中有一小部分已转移到大气层并返回陆地。水柱中的气泡清除，加上气泡在表面破裂的液滴喷射，可能参与了转移机制;其他研究5 -7表明这对重金属是正确的。实验室测量8、9已证明放射性核素的气溶胶富集。在这里，我们描述了调查的海到空转移的钚和Am。初步结果表明，相对于它们在大量海水中的浓度，这些锕系元素在人工产生的海洋气溶胶中富集了30-600倍。我们相信这是第一个现场研究，表明破裂的气泡可以有助于提高海洋空气中的锕系元素水平。
Previous work1–4 has shown that a small fraction of the plutonium and americium discharged into the Irish Sea from the nuclear fuels reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Cumbria (United Kingdom) has been transferred into the atmosphere and returned to land. Bubble scavenging in the water column, coupled with droplet ejection from bubbles bursting at the surface, may be involved in the transfer mechanism; other studies5–7 have shown this to be true for heavy metals. Laboratory measurements8,9 have demonstrated aerosol enrichments for radionuclides. Here we describe investigations of the sea-to-air transfer of Pu and Am. Initial results indicate that, relative to their concentrations in bulk sea water, these actinides are enriched in artificially generated marine aerosols by factors of 30–600. We believe this to be the first field study which demonstrates that bursting bubbles can contribute to enhanced actinide levels in marine air.