Chernobyl fallout in southern and central Finland

Abstract

To study the levels and distributions of radionuclides released in the Chernobyl accident, we sampled surface peat from 62 sites in Southern and Central Finland and measured 131I, 134Cs, 137Cs, 132Te, 140Ba, 103Ru, 90Sr, 141Ce, and 95Zr. The distribution of fallout activities was highly uneven, depending on movement of the contaminated air mass and rainfall distribution during the critical days. The highest values observed were 420 kBq m-2 of 131I and 70 kBq m-2 of 137Cs. The nuclide ratios showed wide and partly unexpected variations. The high-boiling-point, or nonvolatile, elements Ce and Zr were spread mostly on a 200-km-wide zone extending across Finland from southwest to northeast. The more volatile elements, I, Ce, and Te, showed quite a different, more widespread, fallout distribution, while an intermediate behavior was observed for Ba, Ru, and possibly Sr. These results can be explained by assuming that pulverized nuclear fuel material released in the reactor explosion on 26 April reached Finland via Poland and the Baltic Sea and traversed the country along the above-mentioned narrow zone, while volatile material, evaporated in the reactor fire from 26 April to 5 May, arrived in several waves and was consequently more widely and evenly spread. From their elemental melting and boiling points, Ru and Mo would appear to belong to the nonvolatile group and Sr to the volatile. Yet, their actual behaviors were opposite; Ru in particular was found in the nonvolatile as well as the volatile fallout, possibly because Ru activities were present in the fuel partly in the metallic state and partly as volatile oxides.