ABSTRACT
A third source of interest is that of the reprocessing facility at Trombay, in India; but the quantities discharged are expressed in ""Sr equivalent" unitsk27). There are, however, intriguing differences between this site and those at Sellafield and La Hague, primarily due to the impact of the monsoon period (June to September) when land drainage and river run-off can be considerable, resulting in low salinities and very high sediment loads. And of equal value are the minor sites, such as effluents from power stations, which can provide useful data to examine local dispersion characteristics. Site-to-site comparisons may also reveal valuable information on the interaction betwe9n
9J elements in different chemical forms
and different receiving environments))
Solid packaged wastes have been dumped in the deep sea since 1947. The USA has used sites off their Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and a number of European countries have used sites in the NE Atlantic Ocean. The latter have been described and discussed in some considerable detail(2), and a further description is not warranted here; to date, a large mixture of radionuclides is estimated to have been dumped in them, none of which has been unequivocably identified in environmental samples. The most promising nuclide for detection is 3H (Figure 10a and b), both because it represents a large fraction (23000 TBq) of the total quantity of nuclides dumped (about 42000 TBq) which, allowing for decay, amounts to an inventory of some 13200 TBq of 3H as of 1987, and because of its high mobility and solubility. Samples in and around the NEA dump site, which is at about 4 km depth, have been taken by MAFF-DFR and are currently being analysed.
