5 
General remarks 
Before 1986, the two main sources of artificial radioactive substances in the Norwegian-Green- 
land Sea were atmospheric nuclear weapons testing and civilian nuclear technology. Although 
two orders of magnitude smaller than the worldwide radioactive fallout from the nuclear tests of 
the 1960s, the share of discharges from the European nuclear reprocessing plants at Sellafield 
(Irish Sea) and La Hague (English Channel) can nevertheless be clearly identified in the radio 
activity measured in wide areas of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea. The unevenly deposited 
fallout from the 1986 reactor accident at Chernobyl disturbed the radioactivity distribution 
pattern which until then had been created by ocean currents. 
METEOR cruise no. 71 in summer 1985, carried out by the German Hydrographic Institute 
(now Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency), continued earlier investigations, which had 
been conducted in these sea areas in 1968, 1972 [Kautsky 1977], 1979 and 1982 [Kautsky 
1988]. 
Papers already published 
The participants of METEOR-cruise No.71 have published the results of their investigations in 
several papers. 
The German Hydrographic Institute investigated the distribution and behaviour of radionuclides 
in seawater using the measurements collected in this data report [17]. A inventory was made of 
the l37 CS content of the whole waterbody of the investigated area [10]. In addition, hydrographic 
measurements were performed [5]. A separate investigation focussed on the distribution of chlo 
rinated hydrocarbons in the European Polar Sea [4]. 
The German Hydrographic Institute was joined on the cruise by the Institute of Environmental 
Physics of the University of Heidelberg which took numerous sample series for 3 H and 3 He. In 
this way, insight was to be gained into water renewal rates in the deep sea [15]. 
The distribution of the artificial nuclides "Tc and 237 Np was determined by the Institute for 
Radiophysics of the University of Lund. Using very large water samples which were analyzed 
for the nuclides 238 Pu/ 239 ' 240 Pu and I37 Cs/ 134 Cs, an attempt was made to identify water bodies and 
their drift time after leaving the North Sea [6 and 7]. 
Analytical methods 
A pump and pipe are used to collect the surface layer water samples to be analysed; subsurface 
samples are collected by means of special 50 1 stainless steel samplers or 270 1 glass-fibre rein 
forced plastic samplers. The following sample volumes are needed: 
2000 1 from the surface layer to detect the l37 Cs/ 134 Cs ratio; 
50 - 500 1 for 137 Cs and ^Sr detection (depends on the sampling depth); 
200 1 for transuranic nuclide detection; 
1 1 for tritium determination.