UPDO News Release
ISOPE International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers
Underwater Radioactive and Chemical Waste Objects:
Monitoring System Based on Autonomous Devices
Chennai, India, 21 September 2009 ― The problem of long-term monitoring of underwater potentially dangerous objects (UPDO) containing radioactive or chemical components and explosives was one of the topics addressed at OMS-2009, the 8th ISOPE Ocean Mining (& Gas Hydrates) Symposium held in Chennai on September 20−24.
V.V. Stoyanov (SEATECHRIM, EDB OE, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow) presented the paper, System for Monitoring of Underwater Radioactive and Chemical Waste Objects: Information Control System on Basis of Autonomous Devices; co-authors are O.V. Stepanets and A.N. Plishkin, also with the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The problem arose at the end of WWII, when the USSR, USA and Great Britain submerged captured weapons, containers of toxic substances, and radioactive waste in various bodies of water, ranging from the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, waters off the USSR northern region, and the Sea of Japan. The objects were submerged at various depths. According to both Russian and other specialists, these UPDO present a significant safety hazard because:
· the formation of chemical mutagens can have more dangerous consequences than radiation exposure;
· the thinning and eventual breakdown of the ammunition jackets in the submerged vessels can lead to the destruction of the ammunition;
· radioactive-nuclide leakage follows any damage to radioactive-waste containers jackets.
Until recently, any monitoring of the UPD was undertaken only by the occasional sea expedition. Over the last two years, however, the Russian company SEATECHRIM, joined by other companies and scientific institutes, designed, manufactured and deployed a monitoring system along the sea bottom as deep as 500 m with which to measure the UPDO’s rate of radioactivity and toxicity. These autonomous monitoring devices transmit their signals to a satellite communication system; an information control system then registers the satellite signals and transmits the data to the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Emergency.
The autonomous monitoring devices are being deployed for up to 1-year service, making for long-term monitoring; this is an obvious advantage over the high cost of undertaking such work from surface vessels.
As the work is still in its development phase, data of a specific nature remain to be provided.
OMS-2009 ― the 8th such symposium since the first one, held in Tsukuba, Japan, in 1995 ― featured 13 sessions of 50 peer-reviewed papers and 8 additional oral presentations from 11 countries.
The symposium papers are all peer-reviewed for inclusion in the Proceedings of the 8th ISOPE Ocean Mining (& Gas Hydrates) Symposium (ISBN 1-978-1-880653-75-3; ISSN 1946-0066) from ISOPE: orders@isope.org .
The sponsoring society is the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE). Cooperating Organizations are the U.S. National Science Foundation, COMRA (China), MMIJ (Japan), IOM (Poland), India’s National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) and National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), KADOM (Korea), KSOE (Korea), and JASNAOE (Japan).
Supporting Organizations are India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), and other governmental and private organizations related to deep-sea technology and ocean mining.
Contact: Jin S. Chung
ISOPE Executive Director, Co-Chair OMS-2009
jschung@isope.org ; 1-650-254-1871; Fax 1-650-254-2038
ISOPE, 495 North Whisman Road, Suite 300, Mountain View, CA 94043-5711, USA