Radioecological sensitivity in the Faroe Islands estimated from modeling long-term variation of radioactivity

The Faroes environment has received radioactive debris from the nuclear weapons tests in the 1950'ies and 1960'ies and from the Chernobyl accident 26 April 1986. The paper presents results from modeling the relation between 137 Cs and 90Sr in precipitation and the radioactivity from these nuclides in selected foodstuffs, using available data from the last four decades. The model relates the concentration of a radionuclide in a sample from a given year to the deposition rate of the radionuclide in the given year and in the year before, and to the accumulated deposition two years before. The effective ecological half-life of the radionuclides in the selected foodstuffs is estimated, and model-calculated sensitivities defined as time-integrated radionuclide concentration in an environmental sample from a unit ground deposition, as e.g. (Bq/kg)y per (kBq/m2), are presented. (au)