Protecting Public Health: Evaluating 90sr Contamination in Seafood and Human Exposure Risks Near Zhejiang Nuclear Power Plants, China

Abstract

Strontium-90, one of the radionuclides closely monitored in the event of a serious nuclear accident or nuclear leakage, can be absorbed by seafood and eventually enter the human body through the food chain. However, in Zhejiang Province, China, which hosts three nuclear power plants (NPPs), there has been few investigations related to the monitoring of seafood near these facilities. Herein, we investigated the distribution of radionuclide 90Sr in various types of seafood (fish, shrimp, mussels, crabs, algae) collected from the three NPPs between 2021 and 2023, and compared the results with Zhoushan City, a city without NPP. The results were well below the Chinese standard limits. The statistical analyses (Kruskal-Wallis test) of the three NPPs and the control site Zhoushan showed that the radioactivity concentrations of 90Sr in seafood were similar, with no significant differences observed (p>0.05), which provides additional evidence that the three NPPs were operating stably. The annual effective dose due to 90Sr intake from seafood for residents living around the Qinshan NPP, Sanmen NPP, San'ao NPP and Zhoushan are 3.06×10-5 to 3.83×10-4 mSv/y, 6.89×10-5 to 1.19×10-4 mSv/y, 7.03×10-5 to 2.51×10-4 mSv/y, 3.04×10-4 to 3.29×10-4 mSv/y, respectively, which are much lower than the global annual expected effective dose from internal radiation. In this work, the monitoring of 90Sr in seafood around the NPPs in 2021-2023 indicated that the radioactivity levels were at background levels and remained stable, and that the dose burden on the population was slight, with no significant impact on the health of the population.

Keywords: 90Sr, Seafood, Nuclear power plant, Zhejiang Province, risk assessment