Accumulation of cesium and strontium from contaminated soils by some "bioenergy" crop varieties

¹ Institute of Power Engineering Problems, 99 Akademik Krasin Str., Sosny, 220109 Minsk, Belarus
² Research Institute of Radiology, 16 Feduninskogo Str., 246050 Gomel, Belarus
³ Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, SCK-CEN, 200 Boeretang, 2400 Mol, Belgium

Abstract

One of the options of contaminated site remediation strategy is culturing the crop varieties, which have biomass yield high enough to be further used as a local fuel in contaminated regions. A number of field tests of two "bioenergy" crops, namely Brassica juncea and Salix viminalis was carried out. The study was focused on accumulation ability of the given varieties in extracting ⁹⁰Sr and ¹³⁷Cs from contaminated soil. Two types of soil, peaty and sandy, were examined. For Brassica juncea, the accumulation factor of ⁹⁰Sr was about two orders of magnitude higher than that of ¹³⁷Cs. For Salix viminalis, leaves had twofold higher capability to accumulate ⁹⁰Sr and more than threefold higher capability to accumulate ¹³⁷Cs compared to stems. In our example, the peaty soil contained higher content of exchangeable forms of Ca and K compared to the sandy soil. This was a reason that radionuclide accumulation factors were higher for willow grown on a sandy soil. It was also revealed that ratio between exchangeable and total forms of both radionuclides was relatively high in sandy soil, and this also caused the higher accumulation factor for willow grown on a sandy soil type compared to a peaty one.