Radiation Pollution in the Waters of the Middle Reach of the River Yenisei (Russian Federation)

The Yenisei River is one of the largest rivers in the world. There is a mining and chemical combine (MCC) of Rosatom on the River Yenisei's right bank 50 km away from Krasnoyarsk city. Since 1958, MCC used water to cool industrial reactors, which were used to produce weapon plutonium-Pu-238. Besides pollution by industry-related radionuclides, there is an investigation of pollution by natural radionuclide-uranium and its isotopes. Besides the natural uranium isotopes (U-234, U-235, U-238), it was found exclusively artificial isotope-U-236. Another factor of artificial radionuclide income into Yenisei water can be caused by high tritium content: from 4 Bq/L (backroad value) to 200 Bq/L (some sample of water). The total amount of radionuclides was investigated near 20 radioisotopes. These radionuclides have different physical and chemical properties and different half-lives. Thus, long-term monitoring confirms the data on artificial radionuclides entering the Yenisei River water, which is likely connected with the industrial enterprises' activity profile located on the river bed's banks' studied area.