Releases of anthropogenic radionuclides from European nuclear fuel reprocessing plants enter the surface circulation of the high-latitude North Atlantic and are transported northward into the Arctic Ocean and southward from the Nordic Seas into the deep North Atlantic, thereby providing tracers of water circulation, mixing, ventilation, and deep-water formation. Early tracer studies focused on 137Cs, which revealed some of the first significant insights into the Arctic Ocean circulation, while more recent work has benefited from advances in accelerator mass spectrometry to enable the measurement of the conservative, long-lived radionuclide tracers 129I and 236U. The latest studies of these tracers, supported by simulations using the North Atlantic–Arctic Ocean–Sea Ice Model (NAOSIM) and enhanced by the use of transit time distributions to more precisely accommodate mixing, have provided a rich inventory of transport data for circulation in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans that are of great importance to global thermohaline circulation and climate.

中文翻译：

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核后处理示踪剂揭示了北极和副极地北大西洋之间的流动特征和连通性


欧洲核燃料后处理厂释放的人为放射性核素进入高纬度北大西洋的表面环流，并向北输送到北冰洋，从北欧海向南输送到北大西洋深处，从而提供水循环、混合、通风和深水形成。早期的示踪剂研究主要集中在 137C，它首次揭示了对北冰洋环流的一些重要见解，而最近的工作受益于加速器质谱技术的进步，能够测量保守的长寿命放射性核素示踪剂 129I 和 236U。对这些示踪剂的最新研究，得到了使用北大西洋-北冰洋-海冰模型（NAOSIM）模拟的支持，并通过使用传输时间分布来更精确地适应混合进行了增强，为流域内的流通提供了丰富的运输数据清单。北冰洋和北大西洋对全球温盐环流和气候具有重要意义。