Migration of plutonium in soils

The goal of their work was to assess the migration features of plutonium in various types of soils and to compile a tentative long-term forecasting of the plutonium travel from the point of its entry. For this purpose, experimentally obtained vertical profiles of the plutonium distribution in the soils of the USSR and several countries of the Northern hemisphere were analyzed for various times Δt, i.e., times which had passed between t0 of the beginning of migration and the data t of sampling. In research on the migration of global plutonium, years 1954, when the observation of the environmental contamination by this element was initiated, and 1963, which is characterized by the maximum of the plutonium arrival from the atmosphere through radioactive fallout, were taken as t0. The latter year was used in calculations for forecasting the 137Cs migration in soils. For the local technogenic contamination of soils, the time of the 137Cs arrival in the environment was taken as t0