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Italy built and commissioned 4 nuclear power plants between 1958-1978, which delivered a total of 1500 MW. All four were closed down after the Chernobyl accident following a referendum in 1987. One of the plants was Garigliano, commissioned in 1959. This plant used a 160 MW BWR1 (SEU of 2.3 %) and was operational from 1964 to 1979, when it was switched off for maintenance. It was definitively stopped in 1982, and is presently being decommissioned. We report here details on the chemistry procedure and on the measurements for soil samples, collected up to 4.5 km from the Nuclear Plant. A comparison between uranium (238U) concentration as determined by means of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) and by ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry) techniques respectively at the ANU (Australian National University) and at the Ecowise company in Canberra, Australia, is reported, as well as 236U and 239,240Pu concentration results detected by AMS. 236U/238U and 240Pu/239Pu isotopic ratios by means of AMS are also provided. A contamination from Chernobyl is visible in the 137Cs/239+240Pu activity ratio measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Daly River drains a large (52500 km²) and mainly undisturbed catchment in the Australian wet-dry tropics. Clearing and cropping since 2002 have raised concerns about possible increased sediment input into the river and motivated this study of its fine sediment sources. Using 239Pu as a tracer it is shown that the fine sediments originate mainly from erosion by gullying and channel change. Although the results also indicate that the surface soil contribution to the river channel sediments from sheet erosion has increased to 5-22% for the Daly River and 7-28% for the Douglas River (a tributary of the Daly River) in 2009 vs. 36% for the Daly River and 4-9% for the Douglas River in 2005. This excess top soil likely originates from the cleared land adjacent to the Daly River since 2005. However, channel widening largely as a result of hydrologic change is still the dominant sediment source in this catchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) measures the ratio of extremely small amounts of a radioactive isotope in the presence of ∼ 1015 times more stable ones. The isotopes are injected sequentially over a repeated period and observed at the exit of the accelerator. so any fluctuations in ion source output or transmission through the accelerator over a time comparable to the measurement time, will reduce the accuracy of such measurements. This compromise in accuracy can be lessened by reducing the switching time between isotopes from several seconds to a few milli-seconds. New AMS systems accomplish fast switching by modifying the beam energy though the 90 injection magnet by pulsing the voltage by several kV on the flight tube in the magnet. That requires that the flight tube be electrically insulated which competes with having the flight tube as large as possible. At the ANU, insulating the magnet flight tube would not only have reduced the acceptance of the injection system, but conflicted with a beam chopper attached to the flight tube, that would also have had to be insulated from the ground. This was not practical so the novel alternative of pulsing the voltage on the high voltage ion source deck is being implemented. Beam optics calculations have been performed and beam tests conducted that demonstrated that, in addition to pulsing the voltage on the 150 kV ion source deck, a pulsed Einzel lens in front of the following electrostatic quadrupole triplet lens is required to maintain isotope-independent transmission through the 14UD Pelletron accelerator. The high voltage rise time performance of the components of the system has been shown to be satisfactory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A catchment level study to obtain soil formation rates using beryllium-10 (10Be) tracers has been undertaken in the Daly River Basin in the wet-dry tropics of northern Australia. Three soil cores have been collected to bedrock, with depths ranging from ~1-3.5 m. Due to agricultural practices, modern soil loss rates can be significantly higher than long-term soil formation rates, but establishing soil formation rates has proved to be a difficult problem. At long-term equilibrium, however, soil formation from the underlying rock is balanced by soil loss from the surface. This long-term rate at which soil is being lost can be determined using the cosmogenic tracer 10Be, created in spallation of atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen by cosmic rays. Since the annual fallout rate of 10Be is known, the complete 10Be inventory over the depth of the top soil can be used to establish the soil formation rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]