General Considerations 



1,000 megawatts of electrical power there will 

 be produced 1.46 tons per year of fission prod- 

 ucts. Thus, the fission products from the fore- 

 going programs will amount to: United King- 

 dom 8.8 tons, "Euratom" 21.9 tons, Japan 1.5 

 to 14.6 tons. 



If we further assume that all other areas of 

 the world will in the next ten years develop 

 nuclear power equal' to the sum of that gen- 

 erated in the United States, Japan, the United 

 Kingdom, and "Euratom," there will be a total 

 of some 80 tons per year of fission products. 

 This represents, after 100 days' cooling, accord- 

 ing to the values given by Renn (see Chapter 1, 

 Tables 2 and 3), 3.9 x 10* megacuries of beta 

 radiation and 2.5 x 10* megacuries of gamma 

 radiation, or over Via of the total natural radio- 

 activity of all the oceans (Revelle, Folsom, 

 Goldberg and Isaacs 1955). The annual pro- 

 duction of the isotope of greatest long-range 

 hazard, strontium 90, will be 200 megacuries. 

 Craig (Chapter 3) has shown that a thousand 

 tons of fission products per year would result 

 from a 2.7-fold increase in the present world 

 energy consumption of about five million mega- 

 watts, if 10 per cent of this energy were derived 

 from the heat of nuclear fission at 50 per cent 

 efficiency. World energy consumption is now 

 doubling once every thirty years and a 2.7-fold 

 increase would be expected by about the year 

 2000. An annual production of a thousand tons 

 of fission products corresponds to an equilibrium 

 quantity of 7.7 x 10^ megacuries of radiation or 

 about 1.6 times the total natural radioactivity 

 of the oceans. The equilibrium amount of 

 strontium 90, plus its daughter yttrium 90, 

 would be 2.2 x 10^ megacuries. Carritt and 

 Harley (Chapter 6) have made calculations 

 based on an annual production of 4,000 tons of 

 fission products, corresponding to two million 

 megawatts per year of nuclear heat production 

 from fission. If no new sources of power, such 

 as thermonuclear reactions, become available, 

 this production would be expected in the very 

 early part of the twenty-first century because of 

 the limited world fossil fuel reserves. 



Our knowledge of just what share of these 

 fission products can be safely introduced into the 

 oceans is woefully incomplete because we simply 

 do not know enough about the physical, chemi- 

 cal, and biological processes. If the sea is to be 

 seriously considered as a dumping ground for 

 any large fraction of the fission products that 

 will be produced even within the next ten years, 



it is urgently necessary to learn enough about 

 these processes to provide a basis for engineer- 

 ing estimates. 



As shown in the several chapters of this re- 

 port, the necessary information can be obtained 

 only by extensive fundamental research. In the 

 next decade we should attempt to learn far 

 more about the ocean and its contents than has 

 been learned since modern oceanography began 

 80 years ago. 



Some of the required investigations of physi- 

 cal, chemical, and biological processes involve 

 the employment of naturally occurring or ex- 

 perimentally introduced radioactive tracers. Pol- 

 lution of the seas by the dumping of atomic 

 wastes, even at levels that are "safe" from the 

 standpoint of human health hazards, will make 

 such experiments progressively more difficult 

 because the presence of introduced pollutants 

 will add an unknown background variability. 

 The sooner the work can be commenced and the 

 cleaner our oceanic laboratory, the more precise 

 will be the experimental results. At the very 

 least, it is urgent that the details of any interim 

 introductions of radio isotopes be carefully doc- 

 umented, so that researchers can take account of 

 them in their investigations. 



INTERNATIONAL IMPLICATIONS 



The oceans and their resources cannot be 

 separated into isolated compartments ; what hap- 

 pens in one area of the sea ultimately affects 

 all of it. Moreover, the greater part of the 

 oceans and their contained resources are the 

 common property of all nations. Even the rela- 

 tively narrow territorial seas are amenable only 

 to juridical and not physical control; no nation 

 can effectively modify the natural interchange of 

 the biological and physical contents of its terri- 

 torial sea with those of the high seas or of the 

 territorial seas of other nations. The continuity 

 of the oceans, and their status as international 

 common property require that the oceanic dis- 

 posal of radioactive wastes be treated as a world 

 problem. 



It is, first of all, urgent that the nations of 

 the earth formulate agreements for the safe 

 oceanic disposal of atomic wastes, based on ex- 

 isting scientific knowledge. Second, because of 

 the vastness, complexity, and immediacy of the 

 underlying scientific problems, it is important 

 that pertinent oceanographic research be intensi- 

 fied on a world-wide basis. Third, from the 



