Metals in coastal sediments adjacent to the Youngkwang Nuclear Power Plant, west coast of Korea

Coastal sediments collected near the Youngkwang nuclear power plant were analyzed for major (Al2O3, Fe2O3, MgO, CaO, Na2O, K2O, TiO2, MnO), trace (Ba, Sr, V, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Zn, Pb) metal, and P2O5 contents. The composition of bulk metals from most stations fits within the range as those in the average crustal and sedimentary rocks, suggesting that the anthropogenic perturbation of these components is insignificant. The abundance and distribution of total contents for the majority of metals in the surface sediment could be explained by the grain size and were associated with mud (<63μm) contents. However, distributions of Ca, K, Sr and Ba did not have any significant association with the sediment grain size. This may be due to the geochemical coherence among these metals in certain minerals abundant in coarse grained fractions. The distribution of Pb appears to be partly affected by the contribution from aerosol fallout. Using the R-mode factor analysis, we show that the variance of the metal contents could be explained by four factors which account for 93.7% of the total variance. It appears that texturally controlled and/or sorting factors influenced by fine fraction are the most dominant factors which determine the relative abundance and distribution of metals in the study area. (author)