Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

8
Changing the Global Ocean Dumping
Regime
As was noted in chapters 1 and 2, the global ocean dumping regime
declared a ban on the dumping of low-level radioactive waste in the world’s
oceans in 1993. This permanent ban marks at the same time the most significant
policy development in the history of this global environmental
regime and in the history of international regulation of radwaste disposal.
The ban and the forces supporting it terminated radwaste disposal at sea,
a practice that had been in use since 1946. Importantly, ocean dumping was
suspended although several major nuclear nations—principally the United
States, Britain, France, and Japan—had a considerable stake in disposal at
sea because they lacked sufficient permanent land-based storage facilities
for their low-level radioactive waste. 1
Radwaste disposal is a significant environmental, security, and energy
independence issue for countries that use it. Realists would expect dumper
nations to fiercely protect radwaste disposal against attempts at interference
by other nations. From a realist viewpoint, it is therefore highly
unlikely that a powerful group of pro-dumping nations would accept a termination
of radwaste disposal. From a neoliberal perspective, a termination
of radwaste disposal is unlikely to happen as long as this waste disposal
practice creates benefits exceeding its costs to the dumpers—in other words,
as long as dumping low-level radioactive waste at sea makes the dumper
better off than discontinuing ocean dumping or other alternatives. In view
of the economic and political power of pro-dumping countries, it is most
unlikely that anti-dumpers would be able to offer pro-dumping countries
an attractive alternative to ocean disposal. Epistemic-community theorists
would expect that a transnational network of scientists had persuaded produmping
governments to halt radwaste disposal. Governments, uncertain
about the environmental and human health effects of radwaste disposal,