• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.45-54
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• 2005

A dynamic compartment model was developed to appraise the level of the contamination of agricultural plants by accidentally released tritium from nuclear facility. The model consists of a set of inter-connected compartments representing atmosphere, soil and plant. In the model three categories of plant are considered: leafy vegetables, grain plants and tuber plants, of which each is modeled separately to account for the different transport pathways of tritium. The predictive accuracy of the model was tested through the analysis of the tritium exposure experiments for rice-plants. The predicted TFWT(tissue free water tritium) concentration of the rice ear at harvest was greatly affected by the absolute humidity of air, the ratio of root uptake, and the rate of rainfall, while its OBT(organically bound tritium) concentration the stowing period of the ear, the absolute humidity of air and the content of hydrogen in the organic phase. There was a good agreement between the model prediction and the experimental results lot the OBT concentration of the ear.