The Behaviour of Natural and Artificial Radionuclides in a River System: The Yenisei River, Russia as a Case Study

Abstract

The Yenisei River is one of the largest rivers in the world. There is Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC) of Rosatom located at Krasnoyarsk, on the bank of the River Yenisei, 50 km downstream of the city of Krasnoyarsk. Since 1958 MCC used river’s water for cooling of industrial nuclear reactors for the production of weapon plutonium—238Pu. Besides the pollution caused by industry-related radionuclides, pollution by natural radionuclide—uranium and its isotopes— are also investigated. Besides the natural uranium isotopes (234U, 235U, 238U), exclusive artificial isotope—236U was also found. Yenisei water was also polluted by high tritium content: from 4 Bq/L (back road value) to 200 Bq/L (some sample of water). The total amount of radionuclides investigated was about 20 radioisotopes. These radionuclides have different physical and chemical properties, different half-lives, and so on. Thus, the data on artificial radionuclides entering the Yenisei River water were obtained by long-term monitoring, which is likely to be connected with the activity of the industrial enterprises located on the river’s banks of the studied area.