Excerpt:
For nearly five decades, more than 200,000 barrels of radioactive waste were dumped in the icy depths of the northeast Atlantic. Today, no one knows precisely where these barrels are located, or what kind of state they are in. On June 15, a French-led team of scientists will set sail from Brittany in a bid to map the barrels and assess their impacts on surrounding marine ecosystems.
It had long been considered a safe way to dispose of radioactive waste. For nearly five decades, tens of thousands of tonnes of waste – sealed in watertight barrels of asphalt and cement – were dumped in international waters.
Although the practice is now banned, between 1946 and 1993, 14 European countries – including France and the UK – carried out dumping operations at more than 80 locations in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific.
In the northeast Atlantic, home to the most concentrated stretch of this radioactive marine waste, some 200,000 barrels lie at a depth of 4,000 metres. On June 15, a team of scientists from the CNRS (France’s National Centre for Scientific Research), Ifremer (the French national institute for ocean science and technology) and the French oceanographic fleet, will set sail from the Brittany port of Brest in a bid to locate the barrels.
The team of nuclear physicists, geologists, oceanographers, biologists and marine chemists will be joined by UlyX, a 4.5 metre autonomous underwater robot that will be their eyes and ears during the 26-day expedition.
