Baseline
Radiocesium monitoring in Indonesian waters of the Indian Ocean after the Fukushima nuclear accident

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.05.015Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The accident at Fukushima becomes public concern in Indonesia.

  • Very few data on anthropogenic radionuclide concentrations in marine areas.

  • Monitoring have been performed at West Sumatra Sea and South Java Sea.

Abstract

As data on anthropogenic radionuclide concentrations (i.e., 134Cs and 137Cs) in Indonesian marine environments including the Indian Ocean are scarce, offshore monitoring has been performed in the West Sumatra and South Java Seas. The activity concentration of 137Cs ranges from below minimum detectable activity (MDA) to 0.13 Bq m−3 in the surface seawater of the South Java Sea and from lower than MDA to 0.28 Bq m−3 in the surface seawater of the West Sumatra Sea. The concentrations of 137Cs in the surface seawater of the West Sumatra and South Java Seas are lower than the estimation of 137Cs concentration in the subsurface waters owing to the input of the North Pacific Ocean via the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF). The concentrations of 134Cs in the sampling locations were lower than MDA. These results have indicated that these Indonesian marine waters have not yet been influenced by the Fukushima radioactive release.

Section snippets

Acknowledgments

A part of this work was supported by the Competitive Research Incentive Program (SINAS) 2011–2012, the Indonesian Ministry Research and Technology. The authors are grateful to the captain of RV Baruna Jaya III. They are also grateful to Ms. Wahyu Retno Prihatiningsih and Mr. Pinta Budi for their assistance with sampling and radiocesium analysis.

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    • The distribution of radiocesium in the Indian ocean and its relation to the exit passage of the Indonesian Throughflow

      2019, Regional Studies in Marine Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      To anticipate the possible entry of radionuclide contaminants to Indonesian waters, 137Cs has been monitored in various areas through the national radioactive marine monitoring program, which includes monitoring in several Indonesian coastal waters and of several marine biota species (Suseno et al., 2018; Suseno and Prihatiningsih, 2014). This monitoring includes deep-sea monitoring off the west coast of Sumatra-Indian Ocean (Suseno et al., 2015), and monitoring in the ITF inlet (Suseno et al., 2017a, b) and the ITF outlet (Suseno and Wahono, 2018). The results from the above initiatives have not yet described the behavior of radiocesium across several layers of water due to the lack of data at the ITF exit passage.

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