Relevance of Radiocaesium Interception Potential (RIP) on a worldwide scale to assess soil vulnerability to 137Cs contamination

The extent of radiocaesium retention in soil is important to quantify the risk of further foodchain contamination. The Radiocaesium Interception Potential (RIP – Cremers et al., 1988, Nature 335, 247–249) is an intrinsic soil parameter which can be used to categorize soils or minerals in terms of their capacity to selectively adsorb radiocaesium. In this study, we measured RIP for a large soil collection (88 soil samples) representative of major FAO soil reference groups on a worldwide scale and tested the possibility to predict the RIP on the basis of other easily accessible or measurable soil data. We also compared RIP values with those obtained from separate chemical extraction experiments. The range of measured RIP values (1.8–13300 mmol kg-1) was shown to include nearly all possible cases of agricultural soil contamination. Only Podzols, Andosols and Ferralsols were clearly characterized by a very low RIP