Acid extraction as a predictive tool of Radiocaesium Interception Potential (RIP) in a worldwide scale

¹ Unité des Sciences du Sol, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
² Biosphere Impact Studies, The Belgian Nuclear Research Center, 2400 Mol, Belgium
³ International Soil Reference and Information Center, 6701 AR Wageningen, The Netherlands

Abstract

The extent of radiocaesium in soil is very important to appreciate the risk of its recycling by the vegetation and thus the risk of food chain contamination. An intrinsic soil parameter, the radiocaesium interception potential (RIP), could be used to measure this retention. In this study, we tested the possibility to predict the RIP starting from a simple acid extraction in widely different soils coming from the whole world and pertaining to various soil reference groups of the WRB/FAO world soil classification. Our results show that a simple acid extraction could be used as an operational test to estimate the RIP whatever the soil type.