Distribution of radiocaesium activities in the waters of a Bavarian chain of lakes.

The procedure to extract caesium from seawater developed by Mann and Casso (1984) has been slightly modified and applied to the determination of radiocaesium originating from the Chernobyl accident in the waters of a Bavarian chain of lakes. Activity concentrations and estimated water inventories are given for 15 lakes 5 years after the accident, and depth profiles of the 137Cs activity concentration in the water column of three selected lakes are presented. The activity concentrations in water of the different lakes show a high variability from 1.2 to 93 mBq l-1. The calculated inventory of dissolved radiocaesium has decreased over the 5 years to 0.03% and 2% of the deposited activity, respectively.