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

Power-Based Regime Analysis 79
the entire population through the disintegration of physical and mental
health, and, even more importantly, by the potentially lethal destruction of
ecological systems. Despite social, economic, and political barriers to
proper ecological accounting, it is urgent and imperative for human society
to get the books in order.” 28
During the spring hearings, covered in chapter 4, one congressman had
submitted a letter from Jacques Cousteau, who was, in the words of the
congressman, “the person most expert on the oceans of the world” and the
individual whose “testimony is the best available to alert us to the damages
we have done to our oceans and to the dangers we face if we do not act
quickly and constructively.” 29 The House report quoted a portion of
Cousteau’s letter: “Because 96 percent of the water on earth is in the ocean,
we have deluded ourselves into thinking of the seas as enormous and indestructible.
We have not considered that earth is a closed system. Once
destroyed, the oceans can never be replaced. We are obliged now to face
the fact that by using it as a universal sewer, we are severely over-taxing the
ocean’s powers of self-purification. The sea is the source of all life. If the
sea did not exist, man would not exist. The sea is fragile and in danger. We
must love and protect it if we hope to continue to exist ourselves.” 30 The
report also underscored the global scope of the ocean dumping problem.
Heyerdahl had “found evidence of pollution and dumping of materials
throughout his trip from Africa to the West Indies,” and “these issues
formed the focus and background for the hearings on the Administration’s
ocean dumping legislation.” 31
The administration’s proposal to ban the dumping of chemical and biological
warfare agents and high-level radioactive waste had the full support
of the committee. The committee considered high-level (“hot”) radioactive
waste so hazardous that it recommended an absolute ban on disposal at
sea. A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Commission had assured the committee
that the AEC did not consider resuming ocean dumping of low-level
waste (which, as described in chapter 2, had been almost completely phased
out since 1963 in the United States). 32 Hearing reports recommended that
an international agreement on the dumping of radioactive waste at sea be
established. They included papers, provided by conservation groups, advocating
“restraint and careful planning in nuclear exploitation of the oceans”
and stressing an urgent need for “worldwide agreements limiting radioactive
pollution.” 33