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TECHNICAL REPORTS
Plant and Environment Interactions

Uptake of Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 from Contaminated Soil by Three Plant Species; Application to Phytoremediation

^a Environmental and Waste Technology Group, Brookhaven National Lab., Building 830, Upton, NY 11973-5000
^b U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Lab., USDA-ARS, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY 14853
^c MSE Technology Applications, P.O. Box 4078, Butte, MT 59702

* Corresponding author (fuhrmann{at}bnl.gov)

Received for publication September 30, 1999. A field test was conducted to determine the ability of three plant species to extract ¹³⁷Cs and ⁹⁰Sr from contaminated soil. Redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.), Indian mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern.], and tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius A. Gray) were planted in a series of spatially randomized cells in soil that was contaminated in the 1950s and 1960s. We examined the potential for phytoextraction of ⁹⁰Sr and ¹³⁷Cs by these three species. Concentration ratios (CR) for ¹³⁷Cs for redroot pigweed, Indian mustard, and tepary bean were 2.58, 0.46, and 0.17, respectively. For ⁹⁰Sr they were substantially higher: 6.5, 8.2, and 15.2, respectively. The greatest accumulation of both radionuclides was obtained with redroot pigweed, even though its CR for ⁹⁰Sr was the lowest, because of its relatively large biomass. There was a linear relationship between the ¹³⁷Cs concentration in plants and its concentration in soil only for redroot pigweed. Uptake of ⁹⁰Sr exhibits no relationship to ⁹⁰Sr concentrations in the soil. Estimates of time required for removal of 50% of the two contaminants, assuming two crops of redroot pigweed per year, are 7 yr for ⁹⁰Sr and 18 yr for ¹³⁷Cs.

Abbreviations: CR, concentration ratio

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