Radioactive contamination in the environment of the nuclear enterprise ‘Mayak’ PA. Results from the joint Russian-Norwegian field work in 1994

Sources of anthropogenic radionuclides in the environment: a review

“…Since l948 the production association Mayak, covering an area of 90 km 2 , has produced plutonium for nuclear weapons (Christensen et al, 1997;Balonov et al, 2006). As the first and still one of the largest and most diverse nuclear facilities in Russia, the Mayak complex includes plutonium and tritium production reactors; fuel reprocessing facilities; a plutonium processing, finishing, and component manufacturing plant; mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plants; and nuclear waste treatment and storage facilities (Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2008).…”

Does radioactive contamination affect the shell morphology of the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl NPP (Ukraine)?

“…The ecological conditions at these sites, which are influenced by radiation and chemical factories of PA ''Mayak'', have been reported in detail by many authors (Christensen et al 1997;Trapeznikov et al 2000;Standring et al 2002;Børretzen et al 2005;Smagin 2006Smagin , 2007, and only data relevant to the present study are combined here in Table 1.…”

Windscale and Kyshtym: a double anniversary

“…Until the 1990s, the results of this research were confined to the relatively inaccessible Russian language literature but they are now becoming more widely available through an increasing number of international collaborative projects and English language publications from the Russian institutes (Christensen et al, 1997;Kryshev et al, 1998;Avramenko et al, 2000;Monte et al, 2002;Kryshev, 2003;Sazykina and Kryshev, 2006). There is no doubt that much more can be done, and the East Urals Radioactive Trace remains as an area in which substantial radioecological research should continue.…”