The 12th International Conference on the Biogeochemistry of Trace Elements (ICOBTE 2013) will take place in Athens, Georgia USA from 16 to 20 June 2013. A session Environmental Radioactivity: Legacy Sites, Chernobyl and Fukushima will be organized.
Symposium Aims
The aim of the symposium is to bring together expertise from diverse disciplines and provide an open forum for those interested in radionuclide contamination of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. We welcome presentations that present state-of-the-art knowledge on fate and transport of radioactive contaminants; the use of radionuclides as tracers of biological/ecological processes (particularly relative to marine systems or soil/sediment transport); influence of source term characteristics; remediation; modelling; uncertainty analyses; risk assessment; post-accident management; optimisation; decision support systems; multi-attribute analyses of radioactively contaminated sites; or other relevant topics. Some questions of specific interest include:
· What are the key processes and variables controlling radionuclide transfers at contaminated sites?
· What are the potential benefits of process-based models and can they be quantified?
· Do we have process-based models sufficiently developed such that they can be applied at different sites?
· Which knowledge gaps did the Fukushima accident reveal?
· What viable alternatives exist to reduce model uncertainty when empirical data are lacking?
· How important is speciation of the radioactive substances, including radioactive particles, versus environmental variables and does this change with time or space?
· What is the impact of the presence of non-radioactive contaminants on the behaviour of radionuclides?
· Are new technologies and methods needed?
· Will climate change impact radionuclide ecosystem transfers?
· How can optimisation and multi-criteria analyses be used to better manage contaminated sites?