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

62 Chapter 4
(April 15, 1970), the president directed the Council on Environmental
Quality to study and report on ocean disposal of solid waste. 8
In October of 1970, the Council on Environmental Quality announced
a national policy to prevent pollution of the oceans in the future. The CEQ
also recommended that the United States take the initiative to establish
international cooperation on ocean dumping, and that such proposals
should be presented in “international forums such as the 1972 UN
Conference on the Human Environment” (CEQ 1970, p. 37). Such proposals
should be made along the lines of national policy. President Nixon
welcomed the council’s recommendations and its approach of “acting
rather than reacting to prevent pollution” (Smith 1970). Senator and “antipolluter”
Gaylord Nelson, the Senate’s leading authority on ocean pollution,
declared: “We have the opportunity now to prevent the sea from
becoming the same kind of mess we now see in our rivers.” 9 A New York
Times editorial titled “To Save the Seas” (October 13, 1970) cautioned that
“if the nations continue to use the seas as a dump, scientists warned last
summer, the world’s oceans will become as “dead” as Lake Erie by the end
of this century.”
In a report titled “Ocean Dumping—A National Policy,” the Council
on Environmental Quality urged that strict limits be set on the wastes that
until then had been dumped indiscriminately into the Great Lakes and the
oceans. On radioactive wastes, the report said: “The current policy of prohibiting
ocean dumping of high-level radioactive wastes should be continued.
Low-level liquid discharges to the ocean from vessels and land-based
nuclear facilities are, and should continue to be, controlled by Federal regulations
and international standards. The adequacy of such standards
should be continually reviewed. Ocean dumping of other radioactive
wastes should be prohibited. In a very few cases, there may be no alternative
offering less harm to man or the environment. In these cases ocean disposal
should be allowed only when the lack of alternatives has been
demonstrated. Planning of activities which will result in production of
radioactive wastes should include provisions to avoid ocean disposal.”
(CEQ 1970, pp. vi–vii)
The Council on Environmental Quality’s decision was based on the anticipated
environmental and economic consequences of future dumping. A
member of the CEQ explained before a Senate hearing: “We think it is a
serious problem today. It is potentially a very critical problem for the future.