STRONTIUM 90 IN NORTH ATLANTIC SURFACE WATER

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Abstract
The various test nuclear fission explosions carried out since 1945 have resulted in the worldwide dissemination of detectable amounts of long-lived radioactive strontium 90. This isotope must have been delivered to the Atlantic Ocean essentially completely as fallout, and consequently to the surface layers only. Since the half-life of the radioactivity is long (28 years) compared with the time span over which it has been delivered, measurements of the concentration of radioactivity in sea-water strontium may be used to test various hypotheses both of the marine geochemistry of strontium and of the circulatory mechanism of the upper layers of the oceans. The relatively high Sr90 concentration of Woods Hole Harbor water, which represents large areas of shallow basins where interaction between water and bottom ought to be maximal, may be taken as indicating that transfer of the radioisotope to sediments must be very slow. It has been estimated from other considerations by Odum that the half-time of strontium in the oceans is about a million years, and, because of the high strontium concentration of sea water, isotope exchange is not expected to favor Sr90 transfer to the sediments.

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