Fate of Plutonium Released from a Former Nuclear Weapons Test in Australia

A series of the British nuclear weapons tests conducted between 1953 and 1963 at the southeast area of the Great Victoria Desert, South Australia (Fig. 1(a)), dispersed long-lived and radioactive nuclear debris including plutonium (Pu). A reliable assessment of the environmental impact of these radioactive contaminants and their potential implications for human health requires an understanding of their physical/chemical characteristics at the molecular scale. This study focuses on the physical/chemical characterisation of the Pu contaminant, the most problematic radioactive contaminant remaining at the former testing sites, by synchrotron-based X-ray microscopy / spectroscopy.
The Pu legacy samples investigated in this study were collected at one of the former testing sites, the Taranaki site at Maralinga (Fig. 1(b)). The collected soil samples were physically sieved several times and further fractionated by heavy liquid density separation to isolate a small particle with significantly high radioactivity. The isolated particles were then transported to the X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) beamline at the Australian Synchrotron. The X-ray fluorescence mapping indicates that the particle forms an inhomogeneous core-shell structure composed of a concentrated Pu core coated by the external layer containing Ca, Fe and U.1 This suggests that most of the Pu within the particle is currently unavailable for interaction with the environment, but the bioavailability of Pu could be potentially increased in the future when the particle morphology is further changed by the surface weathers. These findings also highlight the importance of the comprehensive characterization of radioactive contaminants for reliable environmental- and radiotoxicological assessment.