Radioactivity - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 56

late 1990s, discharge of 129 I from Cap de la Hague was running up to 1.83 TBq per year.
By 1999, 2,113 kilograms (Cap de la Hague) and 865 kilograms (Sellafield) of 129 I had
been discharged into local sediments. To put this into perspective, it is one order of mag-
nitude greater than the total 129 I inventory released to the environment by nuclear weapons
testing. Sampling taken one month after the August 2000 sinking of the Russian submarine
Kursk could not detect leakage from the vessel but confirmed the rising concentrations of
129 I derived from the European processing plants.
AMAP included information on the dispersion of 99 Tc in its reports to Arctic Council
ministers, whose declarations at that time encouraged the United Kingdom and France to
reduce Sellafield and Cap de la Hague discharges. In 2004, a new technology was intro-
duced at Sellafield designed to extract 99 Tc and discharge levels quickly fell to 14 TBq per
year. Since then, levels decreased and continue to fall in the Barents Sea and the Green-
land Current region - in seawater and in Fucus vesiculosus . The 2009 AMAP radioactivity
assessment reported that 129 I discharges from Cap de la Hague have fallen to between 1.0
and 1.5 TBq per year.