572 
Sas 
Another AEC Report states that "reactor fuel samples and 
other reactor experiment materials and by products of isotope 
production,"-- materials of "fairly high specific activities" -- 
31/ 
were dumped into the ocean. And congressional hearings held 
last year in Boston revealed that on at least one occasion 
"considerably hotter than normal" radioactive waste was dumped 
32/ 
in Massachusetts Bay. 
These points are especially significant in that 25 percent 
of the 275-300 waste containers examined by the EPA have been 
3SY/ 
damaged in some manner. _ The possibility that a substantial 
percentage of the 90,000 cannisters that were dumped may be 
damaged -- and that some of them represent a potential high-level 
risk -- points to the significant impact that deficiencies in 
available data can have on determining the environmental and 
health consequences of past dumping practices. 
Separate from "high-level" categories of wastes, while GAO 
correctly noted that low-level wastes can be "highly contaminated," 
31/ A. Joseph, United States Atomic Energy Comm'n, United 
States' Sea Disposal Operations: A Summary to December 1956 
32/ September 1981 Hearings, supra note 23, at 389 (testimony 
of Michael Pogodzinski). The GAO Report does not include the 
Massachusetts Bay dumpsite in their list of major ocean dumpsites 
(GAO Report, at 9-10) even though it is listed as a primary 
dumpsite by the EPA (November 1980 Hearings, supra note 26, at 
379). In addition to being by far the shallowest site (92 meters, 
approximately the length of a football field) and the closest to 
land (within 20 miles of Boston), this site is located in a fertile 
Marine estuary. Over 4,000 containers of radioactive waste are 
recorded as being dumped into Massachusetts Bay between 1946 and 
1959. The Bay is the subject of a current EPA study. See September 
1981 Hearings, supra note 23, at 410; Pogodzinski, M., “Nuclear Waste 
Dump Sites in Coastal Waters," New England Outdoors, July 1981, at 
37-42. 
33/ October 1980 Hearings, supra note 20, at 19 (testimony of 
David Hawkins). 
