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

Changing the Global Ocean Dumping Regime 135
The Oceanic Society, a Washington-based environmental group, challenged
the scientific basis of the Navy’s proposal and coordinated domestic opposition
to ocean dumping of radioactive waste. 17 Governor Thomas Kean of
New Jersey called the proposal to dump off the New Jersey coast “a very
severe potential health hazard” (“Kean Assails Proposal On Dumping A-
Waste,” New York Times, March 28, 1982).
In September of 1982, to head off the Reagan administration’s proposal,
the House of Representatives approved legislation imposing a two-year
moratorium on any dumping of low-level radioactive waste (“House Backs
Moratorium on Ocean Dumping,” New York Times, September 21,
1982). 18 Despite assurances by ocean scientists and experts that the risks
were minuscule, the practice was perceived as a threat to the marine environment.
“As a common-access resource, the ocean is not protected by the
same economic and political forces that protect private property,” said one
of the bill’s sponsors. “It is up to the members of Congress to provide a
voice for the ocean and to insure that the ocean has sufficient protection.
We are specifically charged with the mandate of providing our citizens and
our future generations a healthy and unpolluted ocean environment.”
(Rep. Norman E. D’Amours (D, New Hampshire), chairman of the Subcommittee
on Oceanography, Congressional Record: House, September
20, 1982, p. H 7261) The Senate approved the bill in December of 1982,
although some powerful senators and President Reagan were opposed to
it (Congressional Quarterly: Weekly Report, December 25, 1982, p.
3138). 19 The sponsors in the House outmaneuvered them, however, by
attaching the bill to a gas-tax bill supported by the Senate and the president
(source: interview with anonymous U.S. government source). In 1984,
the U.S. Navy made it official that it had decided to bury the defueled
radioactive engine compartments of its retired submarines on governmentowned
land. 20
In summary, unlike the early 1970s, when a few European governments
(Britain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium) were dumping low-level
radioactive waste, the United States and Japan planned to resume ocean
dumping in the 1980s. Since the mid 1970s, several nuclear nations had
furthermore been examining the technical and scientific feasibility of highlevel
radioactive waste disposal into the deep ocean seabed. 21 Thus the regulatory
situation had changed dramatically since the global ocean dumping
regime had been created. Originally, the United States strictly regulated