42 



the new land in the Kara Sea, but the influence of this dumping, 

 maybe several hundred meters about each place, and the Kara Sea, 

 it has no fishing, practically has no fishing. In the Bering Sea, we 

 have not any evidence that some level of radioactivity is rising in 

 fish or in other organisms, no. 



Mr. Bryn. Yes, and that is exactly our impression, as well. Our 

 concern is that we want to preserve this very positive situation we 

 have in the Bering Sea because of the fish resources, of course. For 

 us, it is really to apply a precautionary principle which says that 

 if there is a danger for irreparable damage, then one should act, 

 even if one does not necessarily have full scientific knowledge at 

 the time, because the odds here are very high, indeed. 



It is those dangers which so far have not really developed in the 

 worst way, as we talked about the nuclear submarine situation, the 

 storage facility with the northern fleet, the runoff from the river 

 systems, and so on. That could be catastrophes in the next ten, 20, 

 30 years, and so on. So that is the sort of preemptive action we are 

 talking about and that is the important thing. 



We must do those things now. You cannot wait, because if the 

 damage has been done, it is too late, actually. But it is important 

 to have in mind all the time that, as Dr. Yablokov said, as well, 

 that dumping so far has not led to any catastrophe. We have come 

 to the conclusion, as I said, that for us, the priority is not now to 

 deal with those objects which have been dumped. Thank you. 



Mr. Ortiz. We thank both of you for your dedication and commit- 

 ment to making this world a safer place. We appreciate your testi- 

 mony today. 



Mr. Weldon. I thank our colleague. 



Mr. Underwood from Guam. 



Mr. Underwood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I, too, would 

 like to commend you for this very important meeting. I know it is 

 important on an international scale. It is very important to those 

 of us who live in the middle of the ocean. 



Dr. Yablokov, you have outlined a very sobering picture about 

 the problems that are attendant to cleanup and storage and man- 

 agement of nuclear waste, and in the course of your presentation 

 you indicated, without giving any specific sums of money, you said, 

 well, maybe $100 billion would start to work us toward a solution 

 of this. 



I would like to just ask two questions off" of that. One, what is 

 Russia doing currently in terms of the expenditure of resources or 

 the dedication of resources to this problem, and second, let us as- 

 sume for the sake of argument that you had access to $100 billion. 

 What would you do? How would you tackle the problem? What 

 would you do in maybe two or three easy steps that someone like 

 me can understand? 



Dr. Yablokov. That is a difficult question. I have no good an- 

 swer. I have to say that our military now tried to drain more power 

 in my society, drain more budget money, and it will happen. Using 

 this tendency, my commission, during the last meeting of my com- 

 mission in the national security council last month, in November, 

 raised the question about creation inside the military, inside the 

 military forces, special environmental forces. If my military has 

 more money, why cannot we use this money for the proper way, not 



