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

144 Chapter 8
7,150,000 to 2,764,000. 47 At the end of August 1983, it was reported that
the British government had given up its dumping plans, together with the
Belgian and the Swiss governments. 48 On the eve of the 1985 meeting of the
members of the global dumping regime, the general secretary of the Trade
Unions Congress and the British seamen reiterated their opposition to any
British plans to resume dumping. 49 The International Transport Unions
Federation, in addition, was “putting its full weight behind a ban and could
force dumping nations to toe the line” (Dibblin 1985b, p. 21). An ENGO
had initiated a regime development which scientific consensus did not support
and which the hegemon and powerful states could not prevent.
The 1985 London Convention Resolution
Within the next few years the transnational anti-dumping coalition further
undermined both the historical dominance of power politics in this issue
area and the scientific justification for radwaste disposal. The eighth consultative
meeting of the global dumping regime, in February of 1984, agreed
on a more precise structuring of the review of effects of dumping of lowlevel
radioactive waste on the marine environment and human health. 50 It
was decided that a panel of international experts nominated by the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), an UN-based advisory scientific
body, and the IAEA should prepare a basic document which later
would be examined by an expanded panel including experts from governments,
international organizations, and ENGOs. This decision was a compromise
between a group led by Britain, which wanted the IAEA and the
ICSU to select the experts to review the evidence and make recommendations
for consideration at the next consultative meeting, and another group
of governments, led by Canada and Nauru, which felt that experts reflecting
different interests and regions should review the evidence and make recommendations.
51 The United States in particular insisted that the
representatives from NGOs were indeed experts in the relevant fields. 52
Experts should be knowledgeable in fields such as marine ecology, oceanography,
radiological protection, marine geochemistry, and marine mathematical
modeling. 53
In their final report, completed in the spring of 1985, the experts did not
make a recommendation on whether to amend the London Convention.
They judged that the question was not a wholly scientific-technical one,