Radioactivity Monitoring at North Aegean Sea Integrating In-Situ Sensor in an Ocean Observing Platform

• Main Authors: Christos Tsabaris, Effrossyni G. Androulakaki, Dionysios Ballas, Stylianos Alexakis, Leonidas Perivoliotis, Athanasia Iona
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
• Subjects: radioactivity; underwater sensors; ocean buoys; rainfall; North Aegean Sea
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/9/1/77
• ISSN: 2077-1312

The integration of the radioactivity spectrometer KATERINA II in a fixed station (buoy) of the POSEIDON network at the North Aegean Sea within the framework of MARRE Project is presented. The acquisition period lasted from 20 November 2019 till 22 February 2020. An intense increment of the activity concentration of radon progenies (up to an order of magnitude) was recorded during rainfall. More specifically, the ²¹⁴Bi activity concentration varied from 0.09 to 0.53 Bq L⁻¹ without rainfall and the ²¹⁴Pb activity concentration varied from 0.14 to 0.81 Bq L⁻¹. The ²¹⁴Bi activity concentration during rainfall ranged from 0.4 to 5.4 Bq L⁻¹ and of ²¹⁴Pb from 0.3 to 5.3 Bq L⁻¹. The minimum detectable activity of the KATERINA II detection system for measuring low level activities of ¹³⁷Cs is optimized applying background subtraction and the full spectrum analysis technique.