ABSTRACT
The marine environment has received man-made radionuclides from many sources: the detonation of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, the localized inputs of low-level liquid wastes from the nuclear industries, the disposal of packaged wastes into the deep sea, lost military hardware and, most recently, from a power reactor accident. These various sources have, collectively, introduced a wide-range of nuclides both globally and locally that provide a means of studying the rates of oceanographic processes. In order to do so, however, it is necessary to consider the various origins of these nuclides because they usually have more than one source; fortunately sufficient is usually known of the isotopic composition to differentiate between them.
