OSPAR's Radioactive Substances Meeting

The annual meeting of OSPAR's Radioactive Substances Committee (RSC) took place in wonderful Stockholm (Sweden) from 28 February to 2 June 2018 in snow and temperatures as low as minus 14 degrees!

Despite the freezing conditions, enthusiasm was high as RSC discussed progress against OSPAR's current Radioactive Substances Strategy and began thinking about the future challenges and direction for RSC in its new strategy for 2020-2030.

Also on the agenda was RSC's continuing work to finalise the methodology for assessing concentrations in the marine environment from the nuclear sector as well as the important work on the modelling and assessment of additional concentrations of NORM in seawater from discharges of produced water from the offshore oil and gas sector.

The meeting also finalised the assessments of data from both nuclear installations and from the non-nuclear sector. The reports, along with the assessments will be published on the OSPAR website in June. OSPAR also collects data on concentrations of radionuclides in the marine environment which can be viewed on OSPAR's data portal.

Finally, RSC also agreed to further investigate the transport (shipping) of floating nuclear power stations and will prepare a report for RSC 2019 in conjunction with the International Automic Energy Agency (IAEA) who attend the meeting as observers.

^{RSC enjoyed a trip to Stockholm's Vasa Museum}