Iodine-129 and plutonium isotopes in Arctic kelp as historical indicators of transport of nuclear fuel-reprocessing wastes from mid-to-high latitudes in the Atlantic Ocean

Radionuclides in marine macroalgae from Amchitka and Kiska Islands in the Aleutians: establishing a baseline for future biomonitoring

“…The former conclusion is not surprising since the Irish Sea is contaminated with radionuclides from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility (Cooper et al, 1998). These differences are not due to water temperature or latitude, or to species (since the comparisons were for the F. distichus in both studies; Fisher et al, 1999).…”

“…There are relatively few data for actinide levels for kelp, except for the Irish Sea, where Sellafield has conducted regular biomonitoring because of releases from its nuclear reprocessing facility (Cooper et al, 1998), especially of plutonium (Ryan et al, 1999). Below we compare the levels first for the anthropogenic radionuclides, and then the naturally occurring ones.…”

“…Anthropogenic radioactivity comes from fallout from atmospheric explosions since 1945 and from emissions produced by nuclear and radioactive facilities (Baeza et al, 1994;Cooper et al, 1998), discarded nuclear wastes (Fisher et al, 1999), as well as other nuclear accidents (Aumento et al, 2005). The disposal of large quantities of radioactive wastes in the Arctic Seas by the former Soviet Union has prompted interest in radionuclides in the Bering Sea ecosystem (Fisher et al, 1999).…”

A review on speciation of iodine-129 in the environmental and biological samples

“…It was reported that iodate is the dominant specie of iodine in soil solution under non-flooded oxidizing soil condition (85%), while under the flooded condition (anoxic); the dominant specie is iodide [78]. in terrestrial environment due to the nuclear weapons testing [26,35,77,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91].…”

Radionuclide Concentrations in Benthic Invertebrates from Amchitka and Kiska Islands in the Aleutian Chain, Alaska

“…Radionuclides enter the environment from natural geologic sources and from fallout from historic nuclear weapons testing (Aarkrog, 2003;Duran, Povinec, Fowler, Airey, & Hong, 2004), from nuclear facility and submarine accidents (Baeza et al, 1994;Cooper et al, 1998;Livingston & Povinec, 2000;UNSCEAR, 2000;Sanchez-Cabeza & Molero, 2000;Amundsen et al, 2002;Aumento, Donne & Eroe, 2005), and from discarded nuclear wastes (Fisher et al, 1999;IAEA, 1999). Over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were conducted from 1945-1980, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere (UNSCEAR, 2000.…”