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

140 Chapter 8
required for amendment of the convention. The convention should consequently
not be amended. The British delegation was of the opinion that the
onus of proof that dumping was unsafe rested with those proposing to
change the convention. Britain failed, however, to get support for this view
(Edwards 1983, p. 6).
Switzerland fully supported the British position. The United States supported
the British position too, stressing that a change of the convention to
ban radwaste disposal should be based on sound scientific evidence of
adverse health effects and damages to the marine environment. A scientific
advisor, Charles D. Hollister of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute,
one of America’s most respected marine research centers, concluded that
the Nauru report “is clearly not the balanced scientific evaluation claimed
by the authors and thus it is my recommendation that no amendments to
the London Dumping Convention be considered until such an evaluation
is completed” (LDC 1983b, Annex 1). 36
Why did the United States not support a global nuclear dumping ban?
As mentioned already, the United States introduced a domestic radwaste
disposal moratorium in 1982. Realists and probably also epistemic-community
theorists suspect that the United States supported the regime on this
issue because it paralleled the recent policy change in the United States.
Importantly, however, the U.S. administration did not welcome the legislation
on radwaste disposal passed by Congress in 1982. The U.S. Navy was
still faced with the problem of disposing of its retired nuclear submarines
and preferred to keep the option of ocean disposal open. Moreover, the U.S.
marine scientific community generally did not support an unqualified ban
on ocean dumping of wastes, radioactive wastes included; U.S. legislators
and the public, scientists believed, exaggerated the risks involved in ocean
dumping. A report released in 1984 by the National Advisory Committee
on Oceans and Atmosphere, co-written with the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, indirectly recommended that Congress and
the administration revise the policy of excluding the use of the ocean for
low-level radioactive waste disposal. 37 In the view of the U.S. marine scientific
community, an international ban on nuclear ocean dumping would
instead be similar to “doing the same mistake twice” (interviews, Bryan C.
Wood-Thomas, August 29 and November 27, 1991). Environmental concerns
did not cause the administration to reverse its pro-dumping foreign
policy; hence, foreign policy (the domain of the executive branch of gov-