Arctic Ocean over the Arctic Ocean (see Polar route). The Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about , almost the size of Antarctica. The coastline is long. It is surrounded by the land masses of Eurasia, North America, Greenland, and by several islands. It is generally taken to include Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, White Sea and other tributary bodies of water. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait and to the Atlantic Ocean through the
Kara Sea depths of the dumping sites range from 12 to 135 meters, and in the Novaya Zemlya Trough at depths of up to 380 meters. Liquid low-level wastes were released in the open Barents and Kara Seas. A subsequent appraisal by the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that releases are low and localized from the 16 naval reactors (reported by the IAEA as having come from seven submarines and the icebreaker "Lenin") which were dumped at five sites in the Kara Sea. Most of the dumped reactors had suffered an accident. The Soviet submarine K-27 was scuttled in Stepovogo Bay with