Environmental impact of radioactive releases: Addressing global issues

In the decade after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, the IAEA organized a series of international meetings with themes concerned with radionuclides and their behavior in the environment. In the atmosphere of concern for the environment which followed the UN Conference, the IAEA-sponsored meetings provided a focal point for international discussion and served to summarize the state of knowledge on radionuclide behaviour in different environmental media. A considerable amount of research was, at that time, being directed in IAEA Member States towards achieving an understanding of the behavior of radionuclides, and especially of long-lived radionuclides, in the terrestrial and aquatic environments