Radioactivity - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 57

Local Arctic “Hot Spots” and Potential Sources of
Radioactive Contamination
Ocean dumping of radioactive material into Arctic seas: I am going to begin this section
with some memories of what was I think one of the most seminal meetings of my life.
The tale began quietly enough with the second meeting of the AMAP task force in Toronto
(Canada) in November 1992. It was the first time that any of us had met the new Russian
delegate, Vitaly Kimstach. At the time, Vitaly was deputy chairman of Roscomhydromet,
an enormous organisation responsible for most environmental monitoring in Russia. If we
could in some way have added the cumulative influence of all the rest of us in environment-
al decision making, Vitaly would still have vastly outranked us! However, what really im-
pressed everyone was his intelligence, knowledge and obvious ability to help bring Russia
into the circumpolar monitoring plans of AMAP. Later, we learned about other attributes, in-
cluding a wonderful sense of humour. We wondered for how long he would represent Russia
in AMAP, but we never anticipated how things would actually come to pass. Great politic-
al upheavals were occurring at almost lightning speed. The Cold War crumbled and we all
looked for a new future as the Soviet Union vanished with the emergence of the new Russi-
an Federation. As part of the policy of glasnost (openness), Russian president Boris Yeltsin
established a commission to report on the state of the Russian environment. Later known
as the Yablokov Report, it included astonishing revelations concerning the Soviet legacy of
radioactive waste and derelict radioactive equipment disposal in the Arctic. It was released
in Russian early in October 1992.
Now we come to that remarkable meeting in February 1993. It was held in beautiful
wooden buildings at Holmenkollen on the mountains overlooking Oslo and was organised
bytheInternational IAEAandtheNorwegian government. Wewereisolated fromtherestof
the world by quite an impressive curtain of security arrangements. Vitaly had been a mem-
ber of the Yablokov Commission and he led the Russian delegation. He had the unpleasant
task of delivering technical details on the full extent of Soviet-era dumping of radioactive