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

Conclusion 181
It should also be acknowledged, although attention was paid to the pollution
control or abatement costs of ocean dumping regulation, that the
costs of environmental regulation did not attract as much attention in the
early 1970s as they did later. Other studies confirm that relatively little
attention was paid to costs of environmental protection in the early 1970s. 6
Governments and the private sector have learned since then that environmental
regulation, which in an early stage might appear innocuous, may
later turn out to be costly. On the one hand, this could make states less
likely to cooperate if they believed that cooperation was unacceptably
costly and that the environmental-protection benefits did not justify the
pollution-control costs. On the other hand, however, harmonizing the cost
of environmental policy and environmental regulation across countries is
often an important driving force behind international environmental policy
coordination. 7
As was explained in chapter 1, this study focused on radwaste disposal
because the emerging controversy around this issue made it a significant
and fascinating case study. How we choose to dispose of our radioactive
waste is an issue of paramount environmental significance. Furthermore,
the radwaste disposal issue was of great significance for the functioning of
the regime, a fact which also made it an appealing research topic. In addition
to low-level radioactive waste, the global ocean dumping regime deals
with a number of other waste forms and disposal forms (e.g., incineration
at sea). Though the analysis of the regime-formation process covered all
substances regulated under this regime, it could be seen as a limitation that
the study of the regime transformation process focused exclusively on radwaste
disposal. Although this is to some extent true, this limitation could
be remedied by comparing the results of this study with studies examining
other substances regulated under this regime.
The public, political leaders, and ENGOs perceive radioactive waste and
other aspects of nuclear technology mostly negatively. 8 What does this mean
for the generalizability of the findings? It means that some caution is called
for. It should be expected that policy entrepreneurs could quite easily persuade
the public that ocean disposal of radwaste is a horrid anti-environmental
activity. Because international public opinion is likely to perceive
radwaste disposal negatively, mobilizing domestic and international antidumping
sentiments would be reasonably straightforward for an influential
global ENGO. But it would be very hard to convince the general public