This program should be carried out by a single agency of the 

 Federal government apart from that having regulatory authority. Since 

 the work requires development of techniques for detecting low level ra- 

 dioactivity and for sampling a wide variety of habitats and organisms, 

 and since the nature of the problem will be continually changing with 

 changing technologies of atomic power, the program must have a core 

 of excellent scientists capable of backing a dynamic directorate. In 

 order to attract such people (which is in itself a difficult problem), pro- 

 vision should be made to allow them wide latitude for independent re- 

 search related to the subject. 



The monitoring shoiild cover all harbors in the United States and 

 its territories entered by nuclear vessels to the extent required by 

 such use. It should be flexible enough to encompass, when circum- 

 stances require, all marine environments where organisnns are ex- 

 ploited by man. It should be directed towards the detection of the radio- 

 active isotopes produced in both corrosion and fission processes, dis- 

 tinguishing the quantities originating from fallout, from land based 

 reactors and from nuclear vessels. 



Although those engaged in the program must be given wide lati- 

 tude in its execution, the panel suggests that the following are sensible 

 subjects for observation: commercially useful organisms; certain other 

 organisms that have high concentration factors for any of the radioactive 

 elements; the water and its suspended solids; and the sediments. 



In this regard it is recognized that the permissible concentrations 

 recommended for the coastal waters are quite small from the stand- 

 point of detection, and would require special counting techniques to de- 

 termine. It is, however, not the concentration in the water phase of the 

 environment, but rather the activity in the marine organisms, which is 

 the controlling factor. The determination of environmental ppc values 

 has been primarily an intermediate step to provide the necessary means 

 of getting from the ppc value for the edible portions of marine organ- 

 isms to the permissible rate of introduction of radionuclides to the en- 

 vironment. An inspection of Table 2 shows that the ppc values in the 

 marine organisms are generally several orders of magnitude above 

 the corresponding ppc value for coastal water. It is thus obvious that 

 the most profitable method of monitoring the effects of the introduction 

 of nuclear wastes into the marine environment is through measure- 

 ments on the biota. 



All nuclear-powered vessels should be required to maintain a 

 record of all discharges of liquid waste effluent, of ion exchange resins, 

 or of any other materials which, by the definitions used in this report, 

 are classed as radioactive wastes. Such records should give informa- 

 tion as to the location and time of each discharge; the concentration, 

 total volume and total activity of each discharge (within the accuracies 

 of available practical techniques for estimating these quantities); as 

 well as an estimate of the isotopic composition of the discharge, with 

 estimates of the amount of activity associated with each of the major 

 constituents. Copies of such records should be transmitted at regular 



49 



