History and Methods

Abstract

The first investigations of radioactivity in the marine environment were carried out by Russian and foreign institutes in the 1960–1980s. This time period coincided with the period of nuclear tests on the island of Novaya Zemlya and with the large-scale release of radioactivity by Western European nuclear facilities. Radio-ecological observations in the Barents and Kara Seas were conducted by PINRO, Murmansk Hydrometeorological Service, Typhoon enterprise (Obninsk), the Khlopin Radium Institute the Kurchatov Research Centre. German and British institutes began monitoring artificial radionuclide levels in water and bottom sediments of the Norwegian-Greenland Basin and the western part of the Barents Sea in order to trace the transport of radioactivity from Western European nuclear facilities (Kautsky 1980, 1986; Vakulovsky et al. 1985; Nies and Nielsen 1996; Nies et al. 1997, 1998) (Fig. 1.1). The Norwegian Institute of Marine Research investigated the contamination of marketable fish species in the zone of direct impact of the Novaya Zemlya nuclear tests.