TY - JOUR T1 - Concentration of Strontium-90 at Selected Hot Spots in Japan A1 - Steinhauser, Georg A1 - Schauer, Viktoria A1 - Shozugawa, Katsumi Y1 - 2013/03/07 N2 - This study is dedicated to the environmental monitoring of radionuclides released in the course of the Fukushima nuclear accident. The activity concentrations of β− -emitting 90Sr and β−/γ-emitting 134Cs and 137Cs from several hot spots in Japan were determined in soil and vegetation samples. The 90Sr contamination levels of the samples were relatively low and did not exceed the Bq⋅g−1 range. They were up four orders of magnitude lower than the respective 137Cs levels. This study, therefore, experimentally confirms previous predictions indicating a low release of 90Sr from the Fukushima reactors, due to its low volatility. The radiocesium contamination could be clearly attributed to the Fukushima nuclear accident via its activity ratio fingerprint (134Cs/137Cs). Although the correlation between 90Sr and 137Cs is relatively weak, the data set suggests an intrinsic coexistence of both radionuclides in the contaminations caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident. This observation is of great importance not only for remediation campaigns but also for the current food monitoring campaigns, which currently rely on the assumption that the activity concentrations of β−-emitting 90Sr (which is relatively laborious to determine) is not higher than 10% of the level of γ-emitting 137Cs (which can be measured quickly). This assumption could be confirmed for the samples investigated herein. JF - PLOS ONE JA - PLOS ONE VL - 8 IS - 3 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057760 SP - e57760 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057760 ER -