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Dumping of Radioactive Waste at Sea 

 Greenpeace/ RI A Moscow Deadly Legacy Seminar 



an official response to my deputy inquiry: 



"In accordance -Mth IAEA documents, the USSR Goscomhydromet from the 

 moment of joinin? the convention has issued no permission for RAV, dumping 

 to their o'.vners. The regulation of the Convention do not apply to the vessels 

 enjoying sovereign immunity in accordance with international law. As it was 

 explained by the Foreign Affairs Ministry these are the vessels of the Navy." 



Thus. It appears to be like this: the civilian vessels have been given no 

 permission, a hile for the Navy the regulations of the convention do not 

 constitute a law: they dump as they wish. Is this indeed so? The cited part 

 of the answer above is yet another lie. which is refuted by the attached map. 



The map shows harbors and marine regions where RAW was dumped for 

 more than 20 years, from 1964 to 1986, by vessels of the Murmansk Shipping 

 Company, the status of which has got nothing to do with the Navy, though the 

 freight in the majority of these trips was the property of both the shipping 

 company and of the Navy. 



RAW (mostly solid), dumped in the vicinity of the Novaya Zemlya 

 archipelago, is composed of containers, metal structures, and additional 

 equipment of nuclear energy installations. The documents of these operations, 

 which I have read, are quite interesting from the point of view of the 

 technique of dumping. 



The very notion of a container presupposes a hermetically sealed 

 construction, preventing even a brief contact of the contents with the 

 environment. However the containers' content allowed them to remain buoyant 

 (they simply didn't sink). What was to be done in such cases? The problem 

 was solved in the simplest possible way: in the hermetically sealed (!) 

 container two holes were cut. it was filled with water, and thus sinking was 

 guaranteed. It is hardly worth analyzing different methods of RAW cementing, 

 bitumenising, or vitrifying, when the documents report on the search for 

 floating containers and their content. 



The reports testify to the sea water and ground samples being taken in 

 the area of the dumping, but the research results do not exist. I would like 

 to refer to an official document, given upon request and signed by the USSR 

 Goscomhydromet chief Mr. Israel: 



"As for the radioactive contamination of the Barents and Kara Seas, the 

 research conducted by the scientific research establishments allowed the 

 determination of the fact that the main source of these seas' contamination 

 comes from global fallout from previously conducted atmospheric nuclear 

 explosions and from contaminated water masses coming from the Sellafield Plant 

 in Great Britain.' 



