384 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 63 



to be permitted, after testing or operation, to reenter the atmosphere 

 and to be disposed of in the oceans. Other models of nuclear power 

 plants operate within the ocean for such purposes as to recover natural 

 resources, to provide power for military and civilian buoys and data- 

 collecting systems, and to heat or desalt water. 



More than 100 radioisotopes are believed to have useful functions 

 in research, in medical treatment, and in military or industrial labora- 

 tories. On completion of their use, a majority of these isotopes will 

 have undergone radioactive decay to become stable isotopes of no con- 

 cern in waste disposal. The remainder are likely to be diluted or 

 modified in such a way that low-level, waste-disposal methods may 

 be used for oceanic disposal. 



Although disposal of laboratory wastes by dumping packages into 

 the sea is practiced by Atomic Energy Commission contractors (pi. 

 1), studies conducted in 1961 demonstrated that containment is 

 achieved only partially. Casing deformation and rupture occurred 

 in over one-third of the drums tested in a Pneumodynamics Corpora- 

 tion experiment. This disintegration is probably desirable since it 

 encourages diffusion and dilution of the radioactivity. To the con- 

 trary, the intact package of radioactive wastes remains a potential 

 hazard to future fishing, dredging, cable-laying, or other operations 

 in the area (pi. 2, fig. 1) . 



The ocean must, of course, receive fallout from atmospheric tests 

 of nuclear devices. It is inevitable that some very low-level wastes, 

 which enter sewers or are discharged into rivers, will reach the sea. 

 It is likely that the sea is the safest place to dispose of certain waste 

 materials where advantage may be taken of its tremendous ability to 

 dilute. Professor John Isaacs has calculated, in an article in Inter- 

 Tiational Science and Technology published in 1962, that an annual 

 release of all fission products from 80 tons of uranium per year could 

 be distributed in the ocean without obvious effect. 



Project Chariot of the Atomic Energy Commission was a proposed 

 nuclear experiment to excavate a shoreline and produce a protected 

 oceanic extension that could serve as a harbor. This experiment and 

 others that propose tagging water masses for studies of mixing and 

 exchange processes would result in the release of substantial radio- 

 activity into the ocean. However, the expected scientific value of such 

 experiments would come, at least in part, from careful control and 

 monitoring of the resultant pool of radioactivity for as long a time as 

 possible to dilutions well past any possible hazardous level. 



In March 1956, as Project Wigwam, the Atomic Energy Commis- 

 sion tested a nuclear device beneath the ocean surface with a release 

 of radioactivity into the surrounding water. As reported in a supple- 

 ment to the 1962 volume of the journal Limnology and Oceanography^ 

 the radioactive pool could be followed for about 1 month, after which 



