Abstract: Environmental radiochemistry was developed up in the middle of the 1950th along with the concerns of the health effects of radionuclides in the environment. During the past half century, as an important branch of radiochemistry, the environmental radiochemistry has been developed up rapidly in the world. Currently, since the serious concerns of the safety of high level radioactive wastes, the diffusion, migration, sorption in environmental media and taking up by plants and aquatic animals of weakly sorbed and long lived radionuclides need to be well understood in terms of safety assessment of geologic repositories. This paper briefly reviews the development of environmental radiochemistry, and the current focus of foundmental research of environmental radiochemistry in China is presented.