Soil-to-plant transfer factor database in Japan - Use of stable elements as analogues of radionuclides

There are important radionuclides that should be assessed for the safety of geological disposal of high-level radioactive and transuranic wastes. Among the environmental transfer parameters that have been used in mathematical models for the environmental safety assessment, soil-to-plant transfer factor (TF) is of importance; it is defined as the plant/soil concentration ratio. The critical paths for radionuclides and the critical foods in Japan differ from those in American and European countries because agricultural products and diets are different. Thus, the staple crop in Japan, such as rice, should be considered as well as domestic agricultural corps; In Japan, most rice is produced under flooded conditions, therefore, it is expected that the uptake of radionuclides by rice could be affected. When we consider evaluations of long-term transfer of long-lived radionuclides in the environment, stable elements can be used as analogues of the radionuclides. In this study, we focused on obtaining concentration data of stable elements in soils and crops collected from 142 agricultural fields throughout Japan to provide a TF database.55th Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Societ