Caesium-137: Its accumulation in a littoral community

The low-level radioactive liquid wastes which arise at the U.K. nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Windscale on the Cumbria coast are discharged into the Irish Sea. These wastes are initially dispersed but they can also become reconcentrated in marine organisms. The present work discusses the concentrations of ¹³⁷Cs relative to those of potassium in the various stages of marine food chains and shows that discrimination occurs in favour of ¹³⁷Cs over potassium during the transfer between the different trophic levels.