Influence of Atmospheric Radon Transport on a Radon Flux from the Surface

Abstract

Radon-222 is inert radioactive gas with a half-life period of 3.8 days, it is a decay product of radium-226. Being escaped from minerals and underground waters into pore space of rocks and soil, it is transported to the surface by diffusion and advection and gone to the atmosphere. When modeling processes of atmosphere radon transport one sets value of radon flux from the surface, depending on contents of radium-226 in rocks and conditions of radon transport in soil, especially on soil porosity and humidity. The impact of radon turbulent transport in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) on radon flux density from the surface is estimated in this paper. It is shown that both for stationary state and for typical diurnal variations of the radon volumetric activity (VA) in the ABL, the correction to the radon flux density caused by its turbulent transport in the ABL is negligible (less than 1%) and doesn’t exceed measurement errors. Thus, when calculating radon VA in the ABL it is really possible to set an average value of the radon flux density on the surface as a boundary condition.