Journal
RADIOCARBON
Volume 61, Issue 4, Pages 1029-1040Publisher
UNIV ARIZONA DEPT GEOSCIENCES
DOI: 10.1017/RDC.2019.47
Keywords
Fukushima; HYSPLIT; nuclear accident; radiocarbon; tree rings
Categories
Funding
- European Union
- State of Hungary
- European Regional Development Fund [GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00009]
- National Nuclear Research Program - National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary [VKSZ _14-1-2015-0021]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Radiocarbon (C-14) analysis was performed on Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) tree rings from Koriyama, Fukushima prefecture. Our primary aim was to detect any C-14 release from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident on 11 March 2011. We also completed and assessed the C-14 level in Japanese tree rings for the period of 1990-2014 because of the lack of environmental C-14 results in the Japanese island that time. For this reason, we used a trajectory model to investigate the air mass forward and backward trajectories at the area of the power plant and sampling site. The modeling data show that the air masses mainly moved to the Pacific Ocean, both during March 2011 and during the growing season (March-September). During the period 1990-2014 there was no significant C-14 excess in any of the samples, but there was a detectable Suess effect in almost every tree ring sample. The average fossil contribution was 0.83 +/- 0.01 parts per thousand and the calculated anthropogenic component ratio, the C-14 excess varied between +0.5 and -1.6%. The Delta C-14 value decreased from 150.0 parts per thousand to 9.5 parts per thousand from 1990-2014, which follows the decline of the C-14 bomb peak, in addition to any detectable Suess effect.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available