WWF in the Arctic: Barents Sea

Nuclear waste

The Kola Peninsula has the world's highest density of nuclear reactors; many of them inside rusting decommissioned nuclear submarines. The area may contain the greatest potential nuclear threat to the environment in the world. Large quantities of liquid and solid radioactive wastes and spent nuclear fuel are often stored in run-down and unsecured facilities.

Russia is also considering importing nuclear waste from Europe, as well as facilitating transport from Europe to Japan via the Northern Sea Route. In both cases, radioactive material will be shipped along the Norwegian and Murman coasts.

At the moment, however, the only measurable radioactivity in the area comes from one single country outside the ecoregion: the United Kingdom. Technetium 99 from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant has been recorded since 1998 in Norwegian waters, and has reached as far north as Svalbard.

Arctic terrestrial ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to releases of radioactivity, but relatively little is known about the long-term effects on the marine environment of low dose, chronic exposures to radioactivity.