193 



very small amounts, a little cobalt, a little bit of cesium, out two 

 or 300 yards away, none of it anj^where near lethal amounts. And 

 I suspect that that's going to be the case for these other reactors 

 for perhaps a very long time. 



Keep in mind also that the circulation of the Arctic is important. 

 And from what I can tell from my colleagues, both here and in 

 Woods Hole, the circulation is such that material that may get out 

 of the Kara, White, Barents Sea that probably a very unlikely 

 pathway would be up onto the shelf off of Alaska. More likely it 

 would end up going back down eventually out and through the 

 East Greenland current. But there are experts right next to me 

 here who could prove me right or wrong. 



So the question really is, okay, what do we do? And I would 

 think we ought to look at what we've learned from our own reac- 

 tors on the bottom. We ought to look at where the reactors are that 

 are dangerous, and that we should probably monitor those very 

 closely and periodically with the robots rather than submarines, 

 which in that depth of the water and that neck of the woods is 

 probably overkill. We have instruments that can go down and 

 measure trace metals. And I would simply think that you'd find out 

 which reactors are fueled and monitor those and keep track of 

 what's going on. But I don't think there's any cause for any great 

 serious alarm or concern. 



But just to be sure, we're going to go over and talk, and I'm sure 

 that a lot of you realize that the scientific community is a fairly 

 small group of dedicated people. They speak a million different lan- 

 guages and they all have faxes now, which is really kind of inter- 

 esting. And we have great communication with our colleagues. And 

 to that extent, I've been asked to lead a U.S. delegation of sci- 

 entists, of people who are expert at robots, and reactor shielding 

 experts, to go over to St. Petersburg next month and start talking 

 to the people who build the Russian nuclear submarines about the 

 possibility of, with robots, monitoring the MIKE class Kosmolets 

 submarine that went down off Norway, and set up some sort of a 

 protocol for doing it logically, methodically, scientifically so that we 

 can start to learn how to work with our Russian colleagues. And 

 I must say that I'm looking forward to my first trip to St. Peters- 

 burg and to Moscow and I'm really looking forward to talking to 

 some of my colleagues over there in order to sort of join hands in 

 a joint research effort to figure out, is this a big problem, a little 

 problem or a non-problem. 



Thank you. Senator. That concludes my oral testimony. 



Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you very much. Dr. Hollister, for 

 your presentation and stajdng within the time limits as well. 



I would next move to Dr. Asker Aarkrog, Head of the Ecological 

 Section, Department of Environment and Technology, at the Riso 

 National Laboratory in Denmark. We welcome you to the commit- 

 tee and look forward to your testimony, Doctor. 



Dr. Aarkrog. Thank you very much. Senator. Thank you for ask- 

 ing me to come here to this very interesting hearing. I had actually 

 planned to give my presentation using overheads. So if I may do 

 so. 



