Chernobyl radioactivity persists in fish

Bror Jonsson (), TorbjØrn Forseth and Ola Ugedal
Additional contact information
Bror Jonsson: Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
TorbjØrn Forseth: Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
Ola Ugedal: Norwegian Institute for Nature Research

Nature, 1999, vol. 400, issue 6743, 417-417

Abstract: Abstract After the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986, the concentration of radioactive caesium (134Cs and 137Cs) in fish was expected to decline rapidly. The estimated ecological half-life (the time needed to reduce the average caesium concentration by 50%) was 0.3 to 4.6 years1,2. Since 1986, we have measured radiocaesium in brown trout (Salmo trutta) and Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus), both of which are widely eaten in Scandinavia, in a lake contaminated by Chernobyl fallout3,4. We have measured radiocaesium in nearly 4,000 fish, taking samples 2-4 times every year from spring to autumn. We find that the decline in radiocaesium was initially rapid for 3-4 years and was then much slower. About 10% of the initial peak radioactivity declines with an ecological half-life of as long as 8-22 years.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/22675 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:400:y:1999:i:6743:d:10.1038_22675

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/22675

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().