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

230 Notes to pp. 189–192
24. The LC’s Annex 3 does list such considerations; however, as McManus has
noted (1983, p. 124), it “is totally lacking in prescriptive content.”
25. For an early argument stressing that knowledge of the marine environment is
too limited for opening up the oceans to more waste disposal, see Kamlet 1981. For
Greenpeace’s criticism of the assimilative capacity concept, see “Critical Review of
GESAMP Report No. 45 on “Global Strategies for Marine Environmental
Protection,” submitted by Greenpeace International to Fourteenth Consultative
Meeting of the London Dumping Convention (LDC14/Inf.29, IMO, London,
1991).
26. Divergence between the view of experts and that of the public and policy makers
is by no means restricted to the issue of radwaste disposal. For other examples,
see Dædalus 119 (fall 1990).
27. For instance, a survey from the mid 1980s asking the British public who they
would trust to supervise nuclear waste (Campbell and Forbes 1985, p. 5) found that
“MPs [Members of Parliament] of any party, managers from the nuclear industry,
and anyone in the government, police, or armed forces were “the last people” that
interviewees would trust. Public trust was limited to groups like Greenpeace, “independent
scientists,” “women,” and “investigative journalists.” There was “deep
public scepticism about the feasibility of properly monitoring (any radioactive waste
disposal) system. Most people felt that bribery, corruption or hit squads might be
employed to shut up dissenters.”
28. Thus, most contributions on epistemic communities “seem to believe an idea
is utterly neutral when championed by an epistemic community” (Jacobsen 1995,
p. 288).