SOME RESULTS OF THE THIRD COMPLEX MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXPEDITION OF THE RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY FOR MONITORING OF THE RADIATION SITUATION IN THE KURIL-KAMCHATKA AREA OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN, 2014

The Third complex multidisciplinary expedition of the Russian Geographic Society for monitoring of the radiation situation in the Kuril-Kamchatka area of the Pacific Oceantook place in September – October 2014. The purposes of the expedition were monitoring of the radiation situation and assessment of the impact of the accident at the nuclear power plant “Fukushima-1”on radioactive contamination of the marine environment near the Russian coasts. This paper presents results on the activity measurements of the cesium and strontium radionuclides in the hydrobionts collected during the expedition in the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk. Nine samples of the sea hydrobionts including one species of invertebrates and four species of fish have been analysed. Determination of activity concentrations of radionuclides of cesium (separately ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs) were carried out by the gammaspectrometry method using a high-resolution semiconductor detector. Activity concentrations of ⁹⁰Sr were quantified with a radiochemical method. The activity concentrations of ⁹⁰Sr and the total activity concentrations of both cesium radioisotopes for all the samples analyzed did not exceed 1 Bq kg^–1 (wet weight). This value is much lower than the safe levels of 130 Bq kg–1 (radiocesium) and 100 Bq kg^–1 (radiostrontium) for the fish consumption inRussia. The study demonstrates that theFukushima accident has no considerable impact on radioactive contamination of the selected species of hydrobiota in Russian waters of theJapanSea andOkhotskSea.

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