Transfer and mobility of 137 Cs and 60 Co in oxisol and alfisol

One manner to assess potential mobility of radionuclides in soils is the use of sequential extraction procedures. These procedures intend to provide the radionuclide partitioning in geochemical phases of soil affected by changes in physico-chemical conditions. In this study a new sequential chemical extraction protocol was choose to evaluate 60 Co and 137 Cs mobility under a large range of physico-chemical soil properties. The results of sequential procedure was further compared with soil to plant transfer factors data for maize and radish and with soil properties, showing rather consistent results. The 137 Cs distribution in soil showed that Fe oxides are the main sink for this element and after 14 years after contamination the 137 Cs was still available for plants. The 60 Co distribution showed that Mn oxides are the main sink for this element in Alfisol and 5 years after contamination no 60 Co was detected as bioavailable neither detectable in maize. The knowledge of the bio-geochemical behavior of radionuclides in soil system can be useful for risk assessment studies, to be applied in the case of nuclear accident or contamination scenarios. (author)