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Water was pumped from the wells, filtered, and sampled.
Radionuclides,
major elements, nutrients, and bacteria measurements were made at the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to provide data for water quality.
Specific
wells were pumped continuously over a day and serially sampled to follow
the changes in water quality as a function of usage.
The well network, is available for resampling on subsequent trips we
plan to the atol] to thoroughly assess the dynamics of radionuclide cycling
in the ground water reservoir and to maintain a surveillance of the water
quality.
The program operation was fashioned after our Enewetak ground
water study and comparison of the data from both atolls should be especially
valuable for predicting the mechanism and rates of constituents in ground
water at Pacific atolls.
A complete report on the Bikini and Eneu ground
water sampling and analysis has been published (4).
Plant/Soil Sampling Program
Purpose:
The main thrust of the program was to determine radionuclide
concentrations in food species; to correlate these with soil concentrations
at various depths; to determine nuclide availability to plants in the coral
soils; and to relate the radioactivity in food-species to that in indigenous
nonfood species which have the potential to serve as indicator species.
The
unique information that this survey provided is:
1.
Soil-to-plant and soil-to-fruit concentration factors for
detectable radionuclides.
2.
The relationship between food species and nonfood species at
the same location.
3.
Intra-island variability in vegetation radionuclide concentrations.
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