Objective
Foreseen Results
The objective of the proposed research is to reduce the radiocaesium concentration of fish in two lakes in the contaminated regions of Russia and Belarus by addition of potassium to the lake water.
The objective will be delivered in the form of progress reports at the end of each year, and scientific papers. The final report will include a full evaluation of the effectiveness of the countermeasure in the studied lakes, and recommendations concerning its applicability to other contaminated sites, and in future nuclear fallout events. If the method is successful, recommendations for the restoration of Chernobyl contaminated lakes will be made to radiation protection authorities in Russia and Belarus.
Studies on the contamination of aquatic systems following the Chernobyl accident have shown that, in general, radiocaesium levels in water rapidly declined. Bio-accumulation of radiocaesium in fish, however, resulted in the level (both in Western Europe and in the former Soviet Union) which were in many cases significantly above the maximum permissible level for consumption. In many lakes in Russia and Belarus, these problems have continued to the present day and evidence suggests that they may continue for the foreseeable future. Freshwater fish provides an important food source for many of inhabitants of the contaminated regions of Russia and Belarus (prior to the Chernobyl accident 17 % of the population of the Bryansk region consumed fish from local rivers and lakes).
The uptake of radiocaesium by fish is complex, being dependent on many ecological and environmental factors. It is however known that, all other factors being equal, the concentration factor of radiocaesium in fish is inversely proportional to the potassium content of the surrounding water. This effect has been observed in a large number of fish species and is generally accepted by the scientific community. During the proposed workprogramme, a large increase in the potassium content of two lakes will be effected using agricultural crop spaying techniques. The application, resulting in a predicted 5-fold increase in the mean potassium concentration, is comparable to volumes of fertilizer application to agricultural land.
Field studies will be carried out to assess the effectiveness of the countermeasure. On the basis of these data, models will be developed of the response of the ecosystem in order to provide a theoretical basis for the countermeasure and for prior assessment of the countermeasure in future applications. It is expected that the modeling studies will show that the long-term reduction would lead to the restoration of fisheries to safe radiocaesium levels several years earlier than in equivalent, untreated systems. Of course, a massive increase in the potassium concentration of a lake represents a large perturbation to the aquatic ecosystem. Changes to the system will be closely monitored. In particular, modeling of potential changes to the water chemistry and of possible releases of the radiocaesium from contaminated sediments will be carried out prior to and during application of the countermeasure. Monitoring will be carried out in 6 other lakes in Chernobyl contaminated regions of Russia and Belarus in order to provide a control.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries fisheries
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry alkali metals
- natural sciences biological sciences freshwater biology
- natural sciences biological sciences zoology ichthyology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences hydrology limnology
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Coordinator
BH20 6BB Wareham
United Kingdom
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