ENVIRONMENT whether these results can be used to predict partitioning of plutonium in other environments. At the Farallones waste disposal area off the California coast near San Francisco, we see evidence of smajl amounts of plutonium-238 remobilization to bottom waters from sediments. The predicted ~ concentration in bottom waters (based on the surface sediment concentration and the distribution coefficient) is 0.2 {Ci/l (1 {Ci equals 10-3 pCi). The measured concentration is 0.29 + 0.14 fCi/l. We have recently completed a study of plutonium distributions in the marine environment of San Clemente Island, off the Summary LLNL studies of the behavior of plutonium in the Marshall Islands are providing data relevant to the behavior of plutonium in other marine environments and results germaneto problems related to the disposal of transuranics and other radioactive waste in the ocean. Key words: Bikini Atoll; Enewetak Atoll: Marshall Islands; plutonium; radioactive wastes: water pollution. Notes and references 1. K.M. Wong, G. S. Brown, and V. E. Noshkin, “A Rapid Procedure for Plutonium Separation in Large Volumes of Fresh and Saline Water by Manganese Dioude Coprecipitation,” Radioanal. Chem. 42, 7-15 (1978). coast of California. The mean con- centration of 229*240 py in 16 surface-sediment samples was 15 + 6 {Ci/g dry weight. Using the distribution coefficient of 2.3 X 10° determined from our studies in the Marshall Islands, we would predict that seawaterin equilibrium with these sediments should contain 0.07 + 0.03 {Ci/l in solution. The average measured concentration in seawater samples was 0.09 + 0.05 fCi/l. The agreement between the predicted and measured concentrations in these two examples is encouraging. 13 I0086b1