Radioactive waste disposal in seas adjacent to the territory of the Russian Federation

The former USSR illegally dumped into the ocean liquid and solid radioactive wastes (RW) originating from nuclear-powered vessels and ships. The Russian President created a special Commission to analyse both the scale and consequences of this activity. According to documentary data and expert estimates at the Commission's disposal, the maximum activity of RW that entered the seas adjacent to Russian territory could have been as much as 2,500 kCi at the time of disposal. The greatest radio-ecological hazard comes from reactors from nuclear submarines and core plates of the nuclear icebreaker 'Lenin', which had spent nuclear fuel in place and which were dumped in shallow water in the Kara Sea near Novaya Zemlya. Editor's note: This article extracts material from a Commission which published a report produced in Russia in 1993. Numerous sources in many Ministries and other government agencies, noted in the text, formed the basis for the final draft. The authors of the draft report were A. Yablokov, V. Karasev, V. Rumyantsev, M. Kokeev, O. Petrov, V. Lystsov, A. Yemelyanenkov and P. Rubtsov. After approving the draft report, the Commission submitted the report to the President of the Russian Federation in February 1993. By Presidential decision, this report (after several technical corrections) was open to the public: it is known variously as 'the Yablokov Commission report, or more simply the 'Yablokov Report', the 'White Book' or 'Yablokov White Paper'. During April-May 1993, 500 copies were distributed among governmental agencies inside Russia, and abroad through a net of Russian Embassies. This article was later sent to Dr Mike Champ as part of the ongoing collections of papers on the Arctic published in this journal (edited by Champ et al.: 1997 'Contaminants in the Arctic', Marine Pollution Bulletin 35, pp. 203-385 and in Marine Pollution Bulletin 2000, vol. 40, pp. 801-868, and continued with the present collection).