Environmental Uses
Studying the Environment
You might already know that nuclear energy is the number-one source of electricity that can be generated without also producing air pollution. What you probably don't know is that nuclear energy can also be used to study our environment in order to keep it safe from a variety of pollutants.
In the field of environmental science, radioisotopes assist scientists in exploring the world around us. Radioactive tracers follow materials as they travel through the atmosphere, the waterways, and the food chain, and provide scientists with vital information about the delicate balances in nature.
For instance, phosphorus is a plant nutrient found in streams. The addition of a radioisotope of phosphorus (phosphorus-32 or -33, for example) into a stream permits scientists to follow phosphorus up-take and observe how streams react to stressful changes resulting from high rainfall, heavy leaf fall, and pollutants. Such studies are referred to as “phosphorus spiraling.”
The radioisotope sulfur-35 permits scientists to study the effects of coal run-off and dry-acid deposition on plant life. By injecting sulfur-35 into trees, for instance, scientists are able to determine how trees handle extra sulfur. Measuring the ratio of radioactive sulfur-35 to stable sulfur, scientists have found that some trees send the extra sulfur to their roots, and others seem to throw off the extra sulfur into the atmosphere.
A naturally occurring radioisotope in the Earth's upper atmosphere, beryllium-7 has important applications for environmental studies. Because it is carried to the ground in rainfall, beryllium-7 can be used to help determine the age of sediments in lakes. The process permits environmentalists to determine the settling patterns for a variety of pollutants entering the waterways, thus, reducing the number of time-consuming chemical analyses necessary to characterize a sediment.
Scientists at the National Institute of Science and Technology are using radiocarbon dating to determine the origin of some organic atmospheric contaminants, such as methane. By determining the carbon-14-to-carbon-12 ratio, scientists can determine whether a contaminant comes from a living carbon source or a fossil fuel such as gasoline. Such research will be increasingly important in the growing study of global climate change.
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