Study of radionuclide accumulation in Black Sea sediments

Solid sea bed sediment samples were collected after drying and placed in special Marinelli containers for measurement. The same procedure is applied to the aqueous phase after adding HCL to make the pH in the range between 2-3. The sample measurement was performed by means of low level gamma spectrometry. The sampling and measurement of radionuclide content in sea bed sediments was carried out at each season in order to evaluate more distinctly the contaminants' accumulation and their influence on marine ecosystems. Data were obtained for the main sea resorts as well as for the main dwelling places along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. The contribution of rivers running into the Black Sea was also studied. All these results are the part of a long-term programme 'Marine Radiobiology - Impact of Hazardous Radionuclides on Marine Ecosystems'. It is planned to apply an alpha-spectrometry measurement after the appropriate radiochemical treatment of samples selected from certain areas at the Bulgarian Black Sea cost which were already investigated by gamma-spectrometry. (author)