438 



A. Colotkov 



Dumping cf Radioactive Waste at Sea 



jreer.peace/RIA Moscow Deadly Legacy Seminar 



The Aord ■aste" lias never aroused pleasant feelings, bein? associated 

 Mth odorous (lumps, chaotically heaped rusting constructions or simply Mth 

 matter presentins no interest for men. Though the word may be used 'vith 

 different adjectives, a e shall focus our interest on RADIOACTIVE wastes. 



They do not smell and for the most do not call up any negative feelings 

 with their view: liuman organs do not sense them. As ail wastes they 

 accumulate, create the problem of disposal, but recently this problem has 

 acquired special significance. It would be unjust to say the acuteness of it is 

 solely the result the Chernobyl catastrophe, however it was specifically the 

 year 1986 which marked the end of the uncontrolled reign of secrecy in the 

 USSR atomic authority. Almost regularly, the new facts of the barbaric 

 attitude to the environment are being revealed by the workers of the atomic 

 industry. The population of the territories surrounding atomic installations 

 has been greatly damaged. However, the mark of secrecy has stood in the 

 way of anybody trying to establish the truth. The truth was feared by the 

 upper echelons, who therefore thoroughly concealed the Bad side of the 

 "peaceful" and military atom industry. 



The information gulf, especially in regard to radioactive waste (RAW) has 

 been so deep that it now wUl require great effort to overcome the mistrust of 

 the population to everything connected with the word radioactivity. That is 

 why we cannot do without a brief historic introduction to the problem of RAW 

 disposal, particularly concerning their dumping at sea. 



From the very start of the development of the atomic industry, oceans 

 and seas were viewed as the eternal burial sites for RAW. In 1946, the first 

 dumping was made by the USA. in 1949 by the UK. in 1955 by Japan, in 1965 

 by the Netherlands. It is difficult for me to say when the USSR did this for 

 the first time, but it was no later than 1964. Both in the USSR and abroad, 

 sea dumping has been accompanied by special permissions but with no control 

 from international bodies. 



In the 1960s. IAEA and the Agency for Atomic Energy of the 

 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development started research to 

 determine the hazard of RAW sea dumping and to work out international 

 standards and regulations. 



In the period 1971 to 1983 annual dumping was made by Belgium. UK, 

 and periodically by the Netherlands and Switzerland. The quabtative and 

 quantitative evaluation of these operations was controlled by the Agency, the 

 characteristics of the main areas of RAW dumping sites in the Atlantic Ocean 

 present no secret: the review of low-level RAW sea dumping was published in 

 the Information Bulletin" No. 5 in 1991 by the Center on Public Information 

 on Atomic Energy. 



What are the criteria for choosing dumping sites? They are: the depth 



