Cosmogenic 22Na as an index of the residence time of water in freshwater basins: a review

The goal of this review is to draw attention to an opportunity for the use of cosmogenic 22Na for dating young surface and underground waters. After 1961 when a significant quantity of 22Na was released into the environment as a result of nuclear weapon tests, its concentrations in river waters were greatly increased, and a return to natural (cosmogenic) levels took until the mid-1980s. The studies made during this non-steady-state period showed that the one-box model for freshwater basin correctly describes the experimental data. For the 19 studied basins of Russia, the Baltic States and Japan, a calculation based on this model gave values for the mean residence time of water in the range from 4 to 23 years. Now, only cosmogenic 22Na is in the environment, and it is the single cosmogenic radionuclide at present, which can serve as a steady-state tracer for dating young waters (up to some decades).