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

24 Chapter 2
most important being radium (which decays to produce radon). Huge piles
of tailings have accumulated at numerous sites. Typically, tailings are left
near the uranium mills where the ore is processed. Today, regulators see the
accumulation of huge piles of tailings as an unacceptable waste disposal
practice. The best solution is to require burial of the tailings well below
grade, or below the surface of the adjacent terrain. 11 So far, mill tailings
have not been a subject of long and severe public protests.
In the United States, low-level waste is defined by the Low Level
Radioactive Waste Policy Act as radioactive waste not classified as highlevel
radioactive waste, transuranic waste, spent nuclear fuel, or by-product
materials as defined in Section 11e(2) of the Atomic Energy Act
(uranium or thorium tailings and wastes). 12 It is, in other words, waste that
does not fall into any of the other three categories. Low-level waste can take
solid, liquid, or gaseous form. Typical waste includes contaminated protective
shoe covers and clothing, wiping rags, mops, filters, reactor water
treatment residues, equipment and tools, luminous dials, medical tubes,
swabs, injection needles, syringes, and laboratory animal carcasses and tissues
(U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 1996, p. 11). Low-level
radioactive waste is generated by hospitals; by medical, educational, or
research institutions; in private or government laboratories; and at facilities
forming part of the nuclear fuel cycle (e.g., nuclear power plants, fuel fabrication
plants). The overall volume of low-level waste produced by commercial
and government sources in the United States has increased steadily,
especially since the late 1970s. Approximately 4 million cubic meters of
waste were produced in 1990, and the waste volume is expected to almost
double by 2020 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1994, p. 2). At the
same time, as a result of the dramatically rising costs of disposal, which
have led to better packaging of the waste, the volume of disposed waste has
decreased.
International Ocean Disposal before 1973
Beginning as early as 1946 and extending into 1972, ocean disposal of lowlevel
radioactive waste was practiced by a number of states without international
controls. Disposal operations were carried out under the direction
of the relevant national authorities. Great Britain was the principal dumping
country between 1949 and 1970. Isolated instances of ocean disposal