Ecological Risk Assessment for the Terrestrial Ecosystem under Chronic Radioactive Pollution

Abstract

A methodology of ecological risk assessment for the terrestrial ecosystem under chronic<br />radioactive pollution of a biotope near a regional radioactive waste storage has been developed in terms of the<br />critical environmental loads analyzed. It consists of five stages: determination of effect indicators and assessment<br />of their values; establishment of reference species and indices; assessment and analysis of critical loads by<br />plotting “dose-effect" dependencies; ecological risk assessment from critical loads versus permissible values;<br />plotting of risk functions to calculate the expected adverse alterations in the ecosystem. Based on the results<br />obtained the storage risk for a terrestrial ecosystem is considered to be inadmissible and this implies unstable<br />conditions in the territory in the nearest future. The calculations and mapping have shown that in the territory<br />studied the area with excess critical loads is 48% for CFU and 61% for 90Sr accumulation coefficient. The<br />analyzed risk functions give evidence of highly probable negative alterations in the tested ecosystem: 85% for<br />CFU and 99% for 90Sr accumulation coefficient.