Objetivo
A considerable reduction in dose rate from contaminated arable land can be achieved by deep ploughing. The disadvantage of this practice is that less fertile subsoil is brought to the surface to replace topsoil. A better plough would be one which removes the contaminated (approximately 5 cm) layer and buries it beneath some 50 cm of soil without inverting the (5 to 50 cm) layer. Such a plough is not available at present. The object of this project, therefore, is to develop a plough to skim off the topmost 5 cm soil and place it beneath a noninverted soil layer. As well as a reduction in the radiation dose rate, the contamination will be much less available for uptake by plants.
A plough has been designed and developed that can remove a contaminated top layer of about 5 cm of soil and bury it beneath some 50 cm of soil without inverting the 5 to 50 cm horizon, in order to avoid less fertile subsoils being brought to the surface and to allow normal tilling procedure to be carried out without mixing the contaminated buried material with the, approximately 30 cm, layer of tilled soil. Instead of modifying a conventional plough, an entirely new type of plough has been designed in which a skim coulter places the uppermost layer of soil (about 5 cm) in a trench made by the main plough share which, in one movement, digs the trench and places the soil lifted in the former trench on top of the thin layer of topsoil in the bottom of the trench of the former run. In this way, the 5 to 50 cm soil layer is lifted only about 10 to 15 cm and therefore energy consumption is minimized.
Extended trials were carried out with a modified prototype developed from the small scale and then full sized models. The plough was tested on permanent pasture that had not been tilled for 40 years and on tilled soft soil. Labelled metal cylinders were placed in vertical columns in the soil and relocated after ploughing to determine the new positions of the original soil. The overall performance of the plough was very satisfactory on both the pasture land and the tilled land. The deeper, less fertile soil is not brought to the surface as is the case with deep ploughing. The plough can be drawn by a normal farm tractor. It can be improved further by making the skim coulter separate from the main ploughshare.
A small scale prototype plough (about one-tenth size) was built and tested in the field. The results were encouraging and based on this prototype a full scale version was built and tested but the results were disappointing. The top soil did not fall to the bottom of the furrow. A modified version also failed to meet requirements; the front of the furrow was too high and the soil fell over the shield and partially filled the bottom of the furrow before the topsoil could be placed there.
A much modified version of the plough has now been built and is ready for testing.
Future Work Programme
The latest version of the plough will be tested in October of this year. Should visual inspection indicate that the plough is performing reasonably well the true performance will be assessed by spreading a tracer on the soil surface, ploughing and then determining the vertical distribution profile.
Comment .SP 0 As expected, the construction of a skim and burial plough is proving to be very difficult although considerable progress has been made.
Although the original objective may prove difficult to achieve in the short term we are probably close to producing a plough which will bring about a considerable reduction in radiation levels with only limited loss in soil fertility.
Ámbito científico (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS clasifica los proyectos con EuroSciVoc, una taxonomía plurilingüe de ámbitos científicos, mediante un proceso semiautomático basado en técnicas de procesamiento del lenguaje natural. Véas: El vocabulario científico europeo..
CORDIS clasifica los proyectos con EuroSciVoc, una taxonomía plurilingüe de ámbitos científicos, mediante un proceso semiautomático basado en técnicas de procesamiento del lenguaje natural. Véas: El vocabulario científico europeo..
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Coordinador
13113 SAINT-PAUL-LEZ-DURANCE
Francia
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