RICE UPTAKE AND LEACHING OF 99TC IN DIFFERENT PADDY SOILS CONTAMINATED ACCORDING TO TWO CONTRASTING SCENARIOS

Four different paddy soils collected around the Gyeongju nuclear site were treated with $^{99}TcO_4{^-}$ solution under the assumption of two contrasting contamination scenarios. Scenario I (SN-I) is for a pre-transplanting deposition of $^{99}Tc$ followed by plowing, whereas SN-II is for its deposition onto the water surface shortly after transplanting. Rice plants were grown in lysimeters in a greenhouse. Plant uptake of $^{99}Tc$ was quantified with the $TF_{area}$ ($m^2{\cdot}kg^{-1}-dry$). The SN-II $TF_{area}$ values for straws and brown rice, having been generally higher than the SN-I values, were within the ranges of $6.9{\times}10^{-3}{\sim}4.1{\times}10^{-2}$ and $5.2{\times}10^{-6}{\sim}7.3{\times}10^{-5}$, respectively. Sorption onto clay seems to have decreased $^{99}Tc$ uptake in SN-I, whereas it may have had an insignificant effect in SN-II. A phenomenon characteristic of submerged paddy soil, i.e., the development of a thin oxic surface layer may have greatly affected the rice uptake of SN-II $^{99}Tc$. The surface-water concentrations of $^{99}Tc$ were much higher in SN-II than in SN-I. For the percolating water, however, the opposite was generally true. At most 1.3% of the applied $^{99}Tc$ were leached through such percolation. The use of empirical deposition time-dependent $TF_{area}$ values was considered desirable in assessing the radiological impact of a growing-season deposition of $^{99}Tc$ onto paddy fields.