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manufactured at all. I would feel much more secure if the research 

 that we were putting in in dealing with this kind of stuff is going 

 in to find alternative resources that were available to nature and 

 would naturally be decomposed. That is why I think the research 

 ought to go, that is where I think our commitment ought to go, I 

 think the Earth and its people would be happier if that happened. 



Mr. Pritchard. I guess the only other thing is if you have 

 foreign countries that have very little control over, and they are 

 going to be producing and possibly using the ocean, we also have to 

 go ahead with the research, do we not? 



Ms. MiKULSKi. I think the fact is, again, the moral leadership of 

 the United States ought to formulate a policy to discourage that 

 and encourage the scientists of the world to pursue the objectives 

 that I just outlined. 



As long as we are fighting in a rear guard action, there will 

 never be. We cannot get rid of it, whether it is PCB's or nuclear or 

 whatever, and eventually we are going to, under the guise of 

 saving ourselves, kill ourselves. 



Mr. Studds. That is a biblical citation that you better not re- 

 spond to. 



Mr. Pritchard. I will not. 



Mr. Studds. Mr. Carney. 



Mr. Carney. I appreciate what my colleague from Maryland 

 says. However being one who has been the benefactor of nuclear 

 medicine having gone through some very chancy invasive proce- 

 dures diagnostic procedures relating to my heart, now it can be 

 done with far less risk utilizing nuclear medicine. I appreciate the 

 other side of the coin, as well. But we do have to be very careful. 



The Department, you say in your statement on page 3, is con- 

 tinuing to cooperate with the EPA in assembling comprehensive 

 data on ocean dumping activities in the past. 



Do you think you have the ability to assemble the data necessary 

 to have a grasp on how much is indeed in the ocean now from our 

 past practices? 



Mr. Meyers. Well, the best we could do is go through the records 

 that we do have and provide them to the EPA. 



Mr. Carney. Do you have any idea how much might have been 

 dumped that is not a matter of record? 



Mr. Meyers. I do not know. The nuclear licensing program rec- 

 ords where those things were quantified are easier to get than to 

 search through the Department of Energy's or predecessor agency's 

 own laboratory records which were not licensed but we are trying 

 to do the best we can in assessing what was done several years ago. 



Mr. Carney. How much of this waste would you say offhand 

 would be related to the practice of nuclear medicine? 



Mr. Meyers. Well, I cannot give you figures from the past, but 

 the current generation rate of so-called low-level waste, which in- 

 cludes the residue of medical nuclear medicine is on the order of 25 

 percent of the total, and the total quantity of low-level wastes is 

 perhaps 3 million cubic feet per year. So, 25 percent of that would 

 be related to the nuclear medicine. 



Mr. Carney. You made a statement, and I believe I think we 

 heard contradictory statements, where you said even if the waste 

 were released, referring to the waste that we put into the ocean 



