Aqueous uranium concentrations in the natural environment

Published geochemical data from groundwater and surface water throughout the world has been compiled in order to compare the concentration of naturally occurring dissolved uranium to lithology, sampling depth, pH, Eh, HCO3, SO4 and PO4 concentrations. The sole criterion used for the selection of data from the review articles was that each article contain raw data on naturally occurring uranium concentrations relative to other groundwater chemical components. A total of 1286 chemical data entries were used in the statistical comparisons. Although this database is not exhaustive, it is likely that the ranges of uranium concentrations in the data set are representative of the ranges occurring in nature. Finally, the observed uranium concentration distributions were compared with published results of model calculations and of used nuclear fuel leach tests. Models tend to predict a wider range of concentrations than observed (particularly the high values), and the leach test concentrations tend to fall within the upper half of the observations