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

134 Chapter 8
At the same time it was alleged that parts of the oceans had a considerable
capacity to assimilate some wastes (Walsh 1981). 9
Around the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began
to look to the oceans as a possible disposal alternative for both low-level
and high-level radioactive wastes. Public concern over disposal of radioactive
waste made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find sufficient
permanent disposal facilities on land (Shabecoff 1982). One EPA official
explained in 1981 (Dyer 1981, p. 11): “With increasing public concern for
waste management practices on land and the need to find permanent disposal
sites, the United States is again looking towards the oceans as a possible
alternative to land disposal for both low-level and high-level
radioactive waste.” 10 In addition, when weighing the costs and benefits of
regulation, as the Reagan administration urged the EPA to do, ocean disposal
of old nuclear submarines was clearly more attractive than land disposal.
11 There also seemed to be a growing consensus among marine
scientists that radwaste disposal would cause no significant risks to either
human health or the marine environment. 12 Thus, in 1980 the EPA began
revising existing regulations so that thousands of tons of slightly contaminated
soil left over from the Manhattan Project and more than 100 retired
nuclear submarines, each representing more than 50,000 curies of radioactive
waste, could be dumped at sea. 13
The possibility of a change in the EPA’s policy on disposal of radioactive
materials in the ocean sparked considerable alarm within the environmental
community. Public attention was attracted to radioactive waste dumped
from the 1946 to 1970 when drums were found unexpectedly and previously
unknown dump sites were disclosed. The EPA sent some of its
researchers to examine a former site near Boston for health effects. 14 As the
EPA scientists expected, however, no evidence of harm was turned up. 15 The
public visibility of the issue was further heightened as environmental groups
organized public policy forums and “citizen workshops” that addressed
past dumping in the United States, legal aspects of international regulation,
and plans to bury high-level radioactive waste in the deep seabed. Hearings
on the early dumping were held in San Francisco and in Boston, and a hearing
on the proposed dumping of decommissioned submarines was held in
North Carolina. 16 Environmental pressure groups, conservationist groups,
private citizens, local business leaders, and commercial fishermen’s organizations
all advocated a ban on disposal of radioactive waste in the ocean.