Artificial radioactivity in the lower Rhone river. Consequences of floods on activity levels and flow toward the mediterranean

Despite analytical strategies that today measure ultra-trace levels (i.e., <10-5 Bq.L-1) of artificial radionuclides, gamma spectrometry of Rhone River samples taken downstream from the nuclear installations located along the Rhone valley regularly detects only 137Cs, 60Co and 241Am. Since dismantlement of the Marcoule-COGEMA reprocessing plant began in 1997, lists of radionuclides in its effluent include 51Cr, 54Mn, 63Ni, 110mAg and 65Zn, released however at levels 10 to 1,000-fold lower than those of 137Cs or 60Co. Today Marcoule effluent is no longer the principal source of 137Cs in the Rhone River basin, as it was in the 1990's. Significant quantities of 137Cs now come from the Rhone watershed itself, from the drainage of soils exposed to atmospheric fallout from the past nuclear tests and from the accident at Chernobyl, and second, from remobilization of previously formed sediment. Our recent research shows that flood events may generate an increase of more than two orders of magnitude in 137Cs activity in downstream Rhone water, because of the input of contaminated particles from both watershed erosion and sediment remobilization. Flood events also generate the flow of high levels of particulate and associated contaminants towards the Mediterranean Sea. Of the 173±22 GBq of 137Cs transferred from the Rhone to the Mediterranean from August 2002 through August 2003, 111±9 GBq went during two floods in September and November 2002: 60% of the annual transfer took place in only 15 days and included almost ten times as much 137Cs activity as is released annually by the reprocessing plant today. The contribution to these flows of re-mobilized Rhone basin sediment inventories contaminated over the past 40 years is under study today. (authors)