10.1021/es400896t.s001
Bruno Fiévet
Bruno
Fiévet
Julien Pommier
Julien
Pommier
Claire Voiseux
Claire
Voiseux
Pascal Bailly du Bois
Pascal
Bailly du Bois
Philippe Laguionie
Philippe
Laguionie
Catherine Cossonnet
Catherine
Cossonnet
Luc Solier
Luc
Solier
Transfer of Tritium Released into the Marine Environment
by French Nuclear Facilities Bordering the English Channel
American Chemical Society
2013
biota HTO
seawater HTO
English Channel
French Nuclear Facilities Bordering
OBT
tritium transfers
English ChannelControlled amounts
2013-06-18 00:00:00
Journal contribution
https://acs.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Transfer_of_Tritium_Released_into_the_Marine_Environment_by_French_Nuclear_Facilities_Bordering_the_English_Channel/2404588
Controlled
amounts of liquid tritium are discharged as tritiated
water (HTO) by the nuclear industry into the English Channel. Because
the isotopic discrimination between 3H and H is small, organically
bound tritium (OBT) and HTO should show the same T/H ratio under steady-state
conditions. We report data collected from the environment in the English
Channel. Tritium concentrations measured in seawater HTO, as well
as in biota HTO and OBT, confirm that tritium transfers from HTO to
OBT result in conservation of the T/H ratio (ca. 1 × 10<sup>–16</sup>). The kinetics of the turnover of tritium between seawater HTO,
biota HTO, and OBT was investigated. HTO in two algae and a mollusk
is shown to exchange rapidly with seawater HTO. However, the overall
tritium turnover between HTO and the whole-organism OBT is a slow
process with a tritium biological half-life on the order of months.
Nonsteady-state conditions exist where there are sharp changes in
seawater HTO. As a consequence, for kinetic reasons, the T/H ratio
in OBT may deviate transiently from that observed in HTO of samples
from the marine ecosystem. Dynamic modeling is thus more realistic
for predicting tritium transfers to biota OBT under nonsteady-state
conditions.