Putting the Future at Risk in Oceans of Nuclear Waste Home Edition

• Published in: The Los Angeles times
• Main Author: W. Jackson Davis
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, Calif Los Angeles Times Communications LLC 29.06.1986
• Subjects: SANTA CRUZ
• ISSN: 0458-3035

In the early years of the nuclear era, the United States and other nuclear nations simply dumped radioactive wastes into the oceans. Later studies by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that waste containers had imploded or crumbled, releasing radioactive contents into the ocean sediments, where they were free to enter the oceanic food chain. Fears that the wastes might ascend the food chain and find their way into commercial seafood prompted local, national and international moratoriums on radioactive waste dumping at sea. These questions have for several years preoccupied the London Dumping Convention-the only international treaty that regulates all oceanic dumping of radioactive wastes. In a 1982 report to the convention, several colleagues and I emphasized that the fate of radioactive wastes dumped into the sea was not understood well enough to guarantee safety. Most of the parties to the convention agreed and placed a two-year moratorium on nuclear dumping at sea pending further studies by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). If not the oceans, then where? The unpleasant reality is that we have in excess of 8,000 metric tons of spent reactor fuel in the United States, nearly all of it stored at production sites. The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment estimated in l982 that 150,000 metric tons would be produced by U.S. reactors then in operation or under construction. And we have around 300,000 cubic meters of additional high-level radioactive wastes-equivalent to a cubic city block-produced almost entirely by the nuclear weapons and naval reactor program. What shall we do with these already existing or committed radioactive wastes?