Concentration and Distribution of ¹⁴C in Aquatic Environment around Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant

In order to study the concentration and distribution of ¹⁴C in aquatic environment in the vicinity of Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) after twenty years’ operation, an apparatus extracting dissolved inorganic carbon from water was set up and applied to pretreat the water samples collected around Qinshan NPP. The ¹⁴C concentration was measured by accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS). The results show that the ¹⁴C specific activities in surface seawater samples range from 196.8 to 206.5 Bq/kg ((203.4±5.6) Bq/kg in average), which are close to the background. The ¹⁴C concentrations in cooling water discharged from Qinshan NPP are close to the ¹⁴C values in near shore seawater samples out of liquid radioactive effluent discharge period. It can be further concluded that the ¹⁴C discharged previously is diluted and diffused well, and no ¹⁴C enrichment in seawater is found. Also, no obvious increment in the ¹⁴C specific activities of surface water and underground water samples are found between Qinshan NPP region and the reference region.